METABOLISM • DICCIONARIO INGLES.COM • Definition of Metabolism

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noun

Metabolism n. (Physiol.)

The act or process, by which living tissues or cells take up and convert into their own proper substance the nutritive material brought to them by the blood, or by which they transform their cell protoplasm into simpler substances, which are fitted either for excretion or for some special purpose, as in the manufacture of the digestive enzymes. Hence, metabolism may be either constructive (anabolism), or destructive (catabolism).

(Biol.) The series of chemical changes which take place in an organism, by means of which food is manufactured and utilized and waste materials are eliminated.

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Etymology of 'Metabolism'

Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48

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"Metabolism" Quotes from Famous Books

... Metabolism: is transformation: the whole process or series of changes of food into tissue and cell-substance and of these latter into waste products the first of these changes being anabolic, the ...

— Explanation of Terms Used in Entomology • John. B. Smith

... providing for the endless mysteries of the future a terminology and an idiom! We follow the vein, we mine and accumulate our treasure, but who can tell which way the vein may trend? Language is the nourishment of the thought of man, that serves only as it undergoes metabolism, and becomes thought and lives, and in its very living passes away. You scientific people, with your fancy of a terrible exactitude in language, of indestructible foundations built, as that Wordsworthian ...

— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... became more and more automatic, there was a return to the normal adrenal discharge and consequent normal rise in pressure. It is possible, of course, that there may be another explanation in the inhibition of metabolism caused by fear. Most of us have experienced the arrest of salivation and digestion under the influence of fear or rage. This inhibition would affect the products upon which the adrenal secretion depends, but the more likely cause ...

— The Journal of Abnormal Psychology - Volume 10

... who may not possess the scholarship of the "younger investigators" but who argue for a general course in which laboratory work shall be reduced, technique minimized, and attention focused on giving an extensive view of chemical forces. The simple chemical facts in digestion, metabolism, industry, war, medicine, etc., would be presented in such a way as to make life a more intelligent process and to give an insight into the method of science. In the courses that follow the introductory one, there would be ...

— College Teaching - Studies in Methods of Teaching in the College • Paul Klapper

... Empedocles and Pantheia, but nowadays the dead in mind and the deformed in body may be restored by the touch of the magic wand of science. The study of the interaction of these internal secretions, their influence upon development, upon mental process and upon disorders of metabolism is likely to prove in the future of a benefit scarcely less remarkable than that which we have traced in the ...

— The Evolution of Modern Medicine • William Osler

... aim will be to inculcate the principles which govern the process of perfect metabolism—that is to say, the changes of nutritive matter within the body—as the means of bringing into being a race endowed with health and beauty and therefore ...

— Valere Aude - Dare to Be Healthy, Or, The Light of Physical Regeneration • Louis Dechmann

... indicates a periodic variation in the bodily metabolism, and is probably directly influenced by the rhythmic activity of the menstrual center. This observation would seem to be nullified by the fact that the phenomena referred to have been found to occur in men as well as in women; and that ...

— The Four Epochs of Woman's Life • Anna M. Galbraith

... discipline and self-control and mastery of difficulties which restitutes the whole equilibrium, and with the equilibrium comes a new calmness and serenity which may react almost miraculously on the entire nervous system and through it on the whole organism and its metabolism. ...

— Psychotherapy • Hugo Muensterberg

... Susan Sidwell said. "Once, in the laboratory, we analyzed their blood. The color was different for one thing. They also have a much different metabolism." ...

— Be It Ever Thus • Robert Moore Williams

Words linked to "Metabolism" : citric acid cycle, inborn error of metabolism, hemimetabolism, fat metabolism, holometabolism, katabolism, dissimilation, metamorphosis, organic process, heterometabolism, Krebs cycle, Krebs citric acid cycle, constructive metabolism, hemimetamorphosis, respiration, metabolic process, cellular respiration, metabolous, internal respiration, metabolic, anabolism, tricarboxylic acid cycle, organism, being, biological process, hemimetaboly, basal metabolism