Traj an's scheme for the "alimentation" of poor children was carried out upon a larger scale under the superintendence of a special official called praefectus alimentorum.
Although an integral portion of the gut, it has ceased to assist in alimentation, its epithelium undergoes vacuolar differentiation and hypertrophy, and its lumen becomes more or less vestigial.
Every one, it would seem, can tell what value he sets on the pleasures of alimentation, sex, the senses generally, wealth, power, curiosity, sympathy, antipathy (malevolence), the goodwill of individuals or of society at large, and on the corresponding pains, as well as the pains of labour and organic disorders; 1 and can guess the rate at which they are valued by others; therefore if it be once granted that all actions are determined by pleasures and pains, and are to be tried by the same standard, the art of legislation and private conduct is apparently placed on an empirical basis.
The function of alimentation is closely associated with that of locomotion, somewhat as in the burrowing earthworm; in the excavation of its burrows the sand is passed through the body, and any nutrient matter that may adhere to it is extracted during its passage through the intestine, the exhausted sand being finally ejected through the vent at the orifice of the burrow and appearing at low tide as a worm casting.
In the hospital, not only will anorexics be given proper alimentation (by tube if they refuse to eat by mouth), but a barrage of tests will be done to assess the damage that has been done to the body.
