-iIe &.C ealc ,y j \ ~/ taining iron, silica, and some other elements required in the.b ****(Th^^ human system, and not found elsewhere in the wheat, but composed mostly of ~_a - _ — ) indigestible woody Magnified 150 diameters. fibre, which is also useful as waste to keep the bowels in action-even the outer bran should therefore be saved. b. Gluten cells, surrounded by diffused gluten and bound by it to the true bran, so that in sifting or bolting a large portion is lost. Nine tenths of all the muscle-making elements reside in this coat or crust, and also the phosphates of lime and soda, of which bones are made; the most of which are lost in fine white flour. c. Cells forming the central mass of the wheat, composed mostly of starch, with a little albumen and gluten intermixed, and also some of the phosphates connected with the gluten. Starch, though a valuable element of food, and the principal element in vegetable food to keep up animal heat, is so perfectly destitute of the essential element for sustaining life, that living on that alone, as proved by experiment, any animal will die in thirty days. A DIFFERENT METHODS OF ANALYSIS. 33 glance at this plate will enable any one to understand and believe the estimate of MWge Mouriks to be true, that there are fourteen times as much of the phosphates and nitrates "in commercial bran as in commercial superfine flour;" and this important fact is proved by three separate and.distinct calculations: by MWge Mourids, in France; by chemical analysis of the bran and flour; by Dr. A. A. Hayes, of Boston, who first suggested the idea of applying tests to the whole grain, showing the arrangements of elements as delineated in Fig. 2, and other plates, the truth of these statements I have carefully tested, as have other chemists; and Mr. Thomas J. Hand, of New York, an amateur microscopist of great assiduity and skill, who has spent many years in microscopic observations on wheat, and to whom I am indebted for the original drawings of plates 6 and 7, and also for many other facts and observations, fully substantiating the facts above stated. There can be, therefore, no proof more clear and positive than that superfine white flour is deprived of a large portion of the most important elements of food. Bread-Making. The most important use of wheat is for breadmaking. For this purpose, on many accounts, it is better than any other grain, and being better, is more extensively used in every civilized country. As bread is the staff of life, wheat, of which it is most extensively made, is called the " queen of cereals;" 3 34 BREAD-MAKING. and though by producing sickness, and suffering, and death, her reign is one of terror, especially in this country and in Europe, it would not be desirable to dethrone her; but it would be desirable to inaugurate such a change as to make her reign a reign of. mercy. The necessity and importance of a change in regard to the use of white bread can be understood by considering a few facts. It is estimated that ninety-five per cent. of bread used in Boston is made of wheat flour, out of which has been taken, by the process of grinding and bolting, all but about five per cent. of its muscle-making and lifesupporting elements, so that fifteen barrels are required to furnish as many of these elements as one barrel of unbolted wheat meal. This will be fully comprehended by reference to the grain of split wheat, drawn under a microscope, Fig. 6, and the proportions of nitrates, and carbonates, and phosphates, delineated by different colored lines in plates on a previous page. Carbonates white, nitrates in lines, and phosphates in darker lines. The nitrates and phosphates are inseparable by mechanical means, being bound together by gluten, of which it is mostly composed, while the carbonates, being mostly starch, which is granular, and loosely adherent, is easily separated from the glutinous crust by the process of grinding and bolting. In making superfine flour twenty-five per cent. of the meal goes off in the siftings, of which fifteen per cent. is of the nitrates and phosphates, and ten per cent. of carbonates. BRAN AS FOOD FOR HORSES AND CATTLE. 35 A glance at Fig. 6 will also show us the value of bran as food for horses, working cattle, and fowls, and growing pigs, and give us some hints as to the right way of using it. These animals require about the same proportions of nitrates and carbonates as man, under similar circumstances as to temperatures, &c., from twelve to eighteen per cent. of the one to'sixty to eighty of the other. The microscopic analysis above referred to gives only about ten per cent. of the muscle-making elements and phosphates, while chemical analysis gives fourteen; but they are both correct, microscopic analysis recognizing only these elements as they exist in the outer shell of the grain, while chemical analysis recognizes them as mixed with the carbonates. That superfine white flour bread does not contain all the elements necessary to keep the system in order, under any ordinary condition of life, is universally admitted by all who have given attention to the subject; and that there are objections to the usual manner of making bread, is also well known by all scientific men; and the question has become an important one, How shall wheat bread be made a reliable "staff of life," instead of the broken reed which it is now admitted to be? 36 TWO NEW PLANS OF BREAD-MAKING. Two New Plans of Bread-Making Have been devised by scientific men, both of which have been quite extensively tried. One by Professor Horsford, of Cambridge, and the other by Moge Mourids, of Paris. The plan of Professor Horsford is explained in a little book published in 1861, and entitled "The Theory and Art of Bread-Making." It contains many valuable suggestions, and many important facts in regard to the sacrifice of indispensable elements in the process of grinding and bolting wheat, -the effects of fermentation, the difficulties of bread-making, &c., which, though not professing to be original, were some of them new to me, and from which I have derived great advantages in the preparation of this treatise, especially as they refer to the work of Mr. Hand, and other sources from which I could obtain important additional information. But the professor's "plan for bread-making" is open to very grave objections, and, involving as it does the life and health of those who adopt it, certainly demands a candid, but critical and faithful chemical and physiological consideration. My first objection to the professor's plan is, that it does not attempt to restore the muscle-making elements of the flour, of which it is mostly deprived by the process of bolting, but leaves out these important parts as a sacrifice to a ridiculous caprice of the community- a whim, on account of which, flour deprived of its most important elements of nutrition, and those which give OBJECTION TO PROFESSOR HORSFORD'S PLAN. 37 its most delicious relish, is preferred and universally used only because it is white, colored bread being unfashionable; and this idea appears the more absurd, when we consider that this same flour is frequently colored to make many common and fashionable articles of food, as gingerbread, rich cake, &c. The first impulse of science would seem to be to teach us to use wheat, as every other gift of God, just as He made it, adding nothing to it, and taking nothing from it; and this, I propose in another place to show, is perfectly practicable. Serious Objection to Professor Horsford's Plan for Bread-Making. But my great objection to Professor Horsford's plan for bread making is, that, instead of recommending that the phosphatic elements usually taken out with the nitrogenous elements in bolting should be restored in Nature's own way, or rather that they should not be taken out at all, he attempts to restore them from his own laboratory, by phosphates chemically disorganized -a plan utterly at variance with Nature's laws, and therefore utterly impossible; and if it were simply a failure, the objection would be of less consequence; but, like all other attempts to thwart the purposes of God, the very effort is obnoxious to penalties. God's plan, as clearly revealed in his book of nature, as I have elsewhere partly explained, is this: having, at infinite expense of time and labor, made the world for man,* and suppled the soil with every element which * Writing after the manner of men. 38 DISORGANIZED ELEMENTS POISONOUS. the human system requires; and having ordained that the vegetable kingdom should be his great laboratory, in which these elements should be fitted for, and placed in harmony with the assimilating powers of the different organs, so that these elements should be gratefully received as they are wanted, to supply the requisite nutriment; God, in infinite wisdom, in order to protect the organs from all elements not thus organized in some vegetable, has made these very elements poisonous, so that they shall be rejected by the different organs at whose gate they shall call for admittance, and they are therefore made poisonous more or less according to their relative importance in the human economy. Phosphorus, being the element on which the brain and nerves depend, and, therefore, the physical source of life itself, is, when not thus organized according to Nature's plan, the most virulent poison of any element found in the human system, indeed one of the most virulent poisons in nature; and it is susceptible of proof that the form of phosphorus which is recommended by the professor, in making his phosphatic bread, is not one of the mildest, but one of the strongest and most poisonous combinations. Dr. J. Francis Churchill, of Paris, who has devoted more time than any one else to experiments on the different preparations of phosphorus, with a view to find the best form for the treatment of consumption, makes himself believe that while the combinations of phosphoric acid, the acid which Professor Horsford uses for his OPINIONS OF LEARNED CHEMISTS. 39 bread-making, is very poisonous - the combinations of phosphorous acid, which he (Dr. Churchill) recommends as medicine, being much milder, are perfectly innocent, if carefully used; but he has the candor to quote from Dr. Buckheim, a celebrated chemist, the following opinion from four other celebrated German chemists, in regard to his own milder form of phosphorus:"Woehler and Frenich, basing their opinion as much upon their own experiments as upon those of Weigel and Krug, have concluded that phosphorous acid has a poisonous effect analogous to arsenic,... and acts upon the economy exactly like phosphoric acid.... The same also holds good with the salts (phosphatic salts) of soda." And this opinion completely covers the ground of the professor's phosphatic bread. On page 21, Professor Horsford says, "The phosphoric acid is prepared from the only practicable source of phosphorus -the bones of beef and mutton. They are boiled, then calcined." This burning of course disorganizes the bones, and the phosphorus is in the same condition as that used for matches, which we know to be very poisonous. Now, if we apply to this case the law to which I have referred, that elements once disorganized can never be restored to their normal condition till they have been returned to the soil and reorganized in some plant, and, unless thus organized, can never be made to enter into the composition of any organ of the 40 ORGANIZED PHOSPHORUS IN BONES. human system, we can understand how he deceives himself. Being an analytical chemist, and not a physiologist, and retaining the exploded notions of his old master, Liebig, he does not understand that chemical laws must always yield to vital laws, as all lower law must subserve the higher: the laws which control the elements of the earth must yield to the laws which control the life of man, for whom the earth was made. If vital law had been understood as well as chemical law, he certainly would not have answered his own question, "Is bread made by the new method healthy?" by referring to articles of food in which the phosphates exist in an organized state, as in the following quotations from his book, page 23: "The French army was at one time supplied with soup-cakes, prepared from bones, with the aid of Papin's digester. The bones thus liquefied at an elevated temperature and pressure, supplied phosphates in quantity greatly beyond the normal wants of the soldiers' diet; but Nature appropriated such portions of the nutriment offered as she required, and the remainder was rejected." Does this prove that Professor Horsford's phosphates are wholesome? Then it also proves that nitric acid is wholesome: for nitrogen is known to be the basis of beefsteak as well as of nitric acid. It does, however, illustrate the dependence of chemical law on vital law. Phosphatic salts in bones were organized there through the grass and the grain which the animal ate, which contain these elements; and the process FRENCH PLAN OF BREAD-MAKING. 41 of cooking or softening did not disorganize them. They were, therefore, ready in the soup, to be taken up and appropriated by the organs which needed these elements, and were wholesome; but the professor's phosphatic salts, made as they were from calcined bones, were of course disorganized, and, instead of being wholesome, are poisonous, just as the nitrogen in aqua-fortis, not being organized, is a poison; while the beefsteak, being composed of organized nitrogen, is eminently wholesome, although the elements of beefsteak and aqua-fortis are the same, and in not dissimilar proportions. "The advantages of the new method" of bread-making over those of the ordinary method of making it "light" with acids and alkalies mixed, or sour milk and saleratus, or tartaric acid and soda, are not to my mind obvious; while the disadvantages are in just the proportion as phosphoric acid is more poisonous than the acids in common use for that purpose. MIge Mouri/s' Plan of Bread-Making. The other new method to which I referred - that of Mege Mouries, now quite extensively adopted in Paris, -is not liable to the objections which have been made to Professor Horsford's plan. It neither leaves out of the flour any important elements, nor adds thereto anything injurious. It simply restores elements of the "groats and bran," as nearly as possible in their original proportions to the superfine flour out of which they have been taken; but the question to my mind is, why be at such trouble and expense to get out the 42 THE OBJECT GAINED BY THE FRENCH PLAN. bran, and then be at equal trouble and expense to get it back again? All the object claimed to be gained by MouriEs' process is, that while it makes a ferment to raise the bread or make it light, it takes out the color of the bran, and leaves the bread white; but it also takes out the sweet natural taste of the unbolted wheat bread, and is also objectionable on the ground that the bran from mouldy and otherwise diseased wheat cannot be detected in detached bran as in unbolted flour. But thus to attempt to improve what God has made perfect, is too absurd, philosophically, to be worthy of any extended comments; and though less dangerous than the similar effort of his American contemporary, because not subject to the charge of attempting to smuggle into the system an actual poison, must still be placed in the same category, and help to show that "all human wisdom, to divine, is folly." What advantages, then, has either the new French or new American method over the common method of bread-making by yeast? Both make science subservient to "prejudice against color" of bread, and seem to think that, at any rate, bread must be white; while the one, to some extent, saves the evils of the loss of the muscle-making elements of wheat, and the other saves the evils of yeast, and substitutes an evil a thousand times worse than that of yeast; and while it has no advantages over the common substitutes for yeast, in the production of carbonic acid gas, as cream of tartar and soda, sour THE OBJECT OF RAISING BREAD. 43 milk and saleratus, or any other mixture of acids and alkalies, is as much more injurious as phosphoric acid is more injurious than the acids in common use. The object to be gained by using any of these materials for raising bread, is simply this: Flour, especially superfine flour, when wet becomes compact, or solid; and if thus cooked, as in some kinds of pastry, and thus eaten, will allow the juices of the stomach, which produce digestion, to have access only to the surface of the morsel, and of course must be slow of digestion; but if the particles of flour are separated from each other, as in light bread, the juices have access to every part, and the process of digestion is commenced in every part immediately. To effect this object, some substance is intimately mixed, by kneading, so as to intervene between the particles, which, when heated.in the oven, or by gentle heat beforehand, will be changed into gas, and thus separate the particles from each other; then, if the flour be sufficiently glutinous to hold the gas till the bread is baked, the particles remain separated, and the bread is light; but superfine flour is deprived of much of its gluten, and therefore is not sufficiently tenacious without the most scrupulous care to be well raised or to retain its lightness after standing. Unbolted wheat flour, having in it all its natural gluten, is much more easily managed, and indeed may be raised without the addition of any other than natural and useful elements, as we shall further explain. In using yeast, two gases are produced by fermenta 44 THE EFFECT OF YEAST ON BREAD. tion, carbonic acid and alcohol. These expand the flour and make it light, and though both are poisonous, they do no essential harm to the bread, because they are removed from it, or should be, before eating. The alcohol is all removed in baking, and the carbonic acid has such an affinity for oxygen that it unites with it on being exposed to the air, and if the bread is placed in the air, the pores will be filled with pure air instead of carbonic acid gas. Bread raised with yeast, therefore, is not unwholesome, unless eaten too soon after baking, while bread raised with phosphatic, or any other acid or alkaline salts, leave these foreign, unnatural elements in the bread after the carbonic acid gas is evolved. Yeast, however, consumes in fermentation a portion of the gluten and sugar of the flour, which, in superfine flour, are already greatly deficient; but this evil in unbolted wheat flour is of very little consequence. Unbolted flour bread, raised with yeast, loses perhaps six per cent. of its muscle-making element. Bolted flour bread, raised with phosphatic salts, has lost ninety-five per cent. of these elements. What, then, is the True Method of making Bread? My "ideal loaf" is made from wheat perfectly fair, and free from smut or other disease; not having been wet and moulded either before or after harvesting, and not having been heated before or after grinding; carefully kept clean after being properly ground so as to need no sifting, and, not being bolted, it retains every NATURAL BREAD. 45 part that belongs to it, and needs no addition, except cold water and a little salt. Such bread has been made light, and of course digestible, sweet and delicious to the taste, and, containing as it does in just the right proportion every element required by the human system, and being sufficiently porous to allow access to every part by the juices of the stomach, and containing in its cells neither carbonic acid gas, or in its substance any phosphorus, or soda, or potash, or other deleterious materials, is perfectly adapted to fulfil every requirement of nature, without, so far as I know for general use, a single drawback. Such bread I have known placed on the table of a large, particular, not to say fastidious family, with the nicest and whitest family bread, and every member take it in preference. Light bread cannot be thus made from bolted flour for want of the natural gluten, and this is an additional evidence that "true bread" requires for- its construction no additions to, or subtractions from, its natural elements; indeed, the conclusion is to my mind irresistible, that after such infinite pains in collecting in the soil, and making laws by which they should be collected in a single grain of wheat, all the elements in just the right proportions and combinations necessary to supply the wants of the human system, our heavenly Father would not leave this food so imperfect as to require either addition or subtraction in order to render it digestible. 46 THE DIFFERENT METHODS OF BREAD-MAKING. Recipe for making Natural Bread. Bread, light, sweet, delicious, and eminently wholesome, may be made by mixing good unbolted wheat meal with cold water, making a paste of proper consistence, which can only be determined by experiments, pouring or dropping it quickly into a heated pan, (that with concave departments is best,) and placing it quickly in a hot oven, and baking as quickly as possible without burning. The heat of the oven and pan suddenly coagulates the gluten of the outside, which retains the steam formed within, and each particle of water being interspersed with a particle of flour, and expanded into steam, separates the particles into cells, and being retained by the gluten, which is abundant in this natural flour, till it is cooked, the mass remains porous and digestible, and, containing no carbonic acid gas, is wholesome when eaten immediately, and of course equally so on becoming cold. But for family bread, if not eaten till'it has stood in pure air till the carbonic acid gas in the cells is exchanged for the oxygen of the air, there is no important objection to bread made from good unbolted wheat meal with fresh yeast. It contains all the elements necessary for feeding the muscles and brains, and for producing all the fat and animal heat required, and contains no materials essentially deleterious; and bread thus made from good superfine flour is only negatively deleterious, having lost its food for muscles and brains; and it need not, therefore, be discarded if DIFFERENT QUALITIES OF FLOUR. 47 at the same meal these elements are supplied in lean meat, fish, or cheese, or other food containing similar elements; but if eaten with butter or sugar only, and nothing else, would soon make of us bloated and stupid idiots. Diferent kinds of superfine flour retain different proportions of food for brains and muscles, and all retain some. Indeed, bread could not be raised from flour absolutely deprived of gluten, which contains these elements. Gluten absorbs water, and causes the paste to swell. That flour is therefore best which is most glutinous, and it is also most economical, as it will make the most bread. The proportion of gluten in wheat varies greatly according to cultivation and time of harvesting, and to the amount of nitrogen in the soil in which it grows. And by a beautiful provision of Nature, it varies also in a much greater degree according to the climate in which it grows, and this is true of all other grains. In northern climates, where more heat is required, a larger proportion of starch and other carbonates are found, so as to get with the requisite amount of food for muscle and brain more heat-producing elements. Many hundreds of analyses have been made in Europe by different chemists with very remarkable results. In England and the more northern states the average amount of gluten in the best flour was but ten per cent., while some samples from Italian and Turkish 48 SOUTHERN FLOUR BETTER THAN NORTHERN. wheat yielded as high as thirty-five per cent. of gluten. In this country, also, a similar difference, but not so great, has been observed between the nourishing qualities of flour from southern and northern wheat. Chemical analyses have not, so far as I know, been made to determine the comparative amount of gluten in southern and northern flour; but the comparison is made by a different process, and the difference between flour from Georgia wheat and that raised in Canada is at least twenty-five per cent. The report of the Patent Office for 1848 states that Alabama flour yielded twenty per cent. more bread than flour from Cincinnati. Upon this principle the quality of flour may be tested in a tube graduated like a thermometer, only being large enough to hold an appreciable amount of dry flour, which, on being wet, will swell and rise in the tube in proportion to the amount of gluten contained in the sample used; or the experiment may be varied by noticing the degree of expansion under regular increments of heat. Upon the same principle housekeepers judge of the " strength" of flour, which is only another term for expressing the amount of gluten or strength-giving element, by noticing the height to which a given quantity will rise in a similar vessel in which it is being preparaed for baking; and when we consider that flour with the most gluten is not only twenty-five per cent. more economical than flour with the minimum of that important element, but is also sweeter and more digestible in the same proportion, it becomes a matter of NORTHERN AND SOUTHERN GRAIN. 49 great importance to be able to judge of its richness in gluten. Another fact worthy of notice in this connection, and which may be made of some practical importance, is, that the gluten of southern wheat, or of any other southern grain, does not, to so great an extent as in northern wheat, reside in a crust around the surface of the grain, but is more enclosed in the starch in the centre - a provision of nature probably for the protection of the germ from inclement weather. This is shown in the plate, Figs. 3 and 4, in the drawing of corn. Superfine flour, therefore, made from southern wheat, is much richer in gluten than the same quality of flour from northern wheat, while the difference is much less between the unbolted flour from the different regions; and this I think accounts for the well-known fact that Italian maccaroni is much more nourishing than American. Wheat is also made into very valuable food in the form of grits, or cracked wheat. In this form we get, in their natural state, all the elements of the human system; even the iron and silex are all there, which are sifted out of much of the unbolted flour in the outer or true bran. This bran is also the natural stimulant to keep the bowels in proper action, and, for the few exceptional cases in which it proves too irritating, the "cerealina," or grits, from wheat, deprived of its outer hull, is the very perfection of food. This new article has been lately introduced, and is used to some extent in Philadelphia. 4 ANALYSIS OF RYE. Farina, Also, as made by ecker, is an excellent preparation, in which most of the elements of wheat are retained in a form very aeceptable to delicate stomachs. It is deprived of some of its gluten, but being made from the varieties of wheat which are richest in that element, is valuable, especially for those who find the grits too irritating. Rye. Next to wheat, especially for bread-making, rye is the best of the cereals. It is a favorite article of diet of the people of northern Europe, especially Russia, where it is called "black bread." It contains more of the heat-producing but less of the muscle and brainfeeding elements than wheat, as may be seen by comparing the following analysis with that of wheat:One hundred parts of rye contain Water,... 13.001 Gluten,... 10.79 Albumen,.. 3.04 j Water,... 13.00 Starch,... 51.14 Muscle-feeders, 13.80 Gum,.... 5.31 or, Heaters,... 71.5 Sugar,.. 3.74 Food for brains Fat,..... 0.95 and bones,. 1.7 Woody fibre,. 10.29 Mineral matter, 1.7 J Containing more waste materials than wheat, it is more stimulating or laxative to the intestinal canal, and may therefore be useful in a constipated condition. ORIGIN OF CORN. 51 Maize. or Indian Corn. Fig. 8. Fig. 9. Fi,. 10. Fig. 11. T.uscarora Corn. Northern Corn. Sweet Corn. Southern Corn. This cereal is generally supposed to be a native ot America; but having seen and planted a sample that was taken from folds that had enveloped a mummy for at least three thousand years, which sprouted and grew, and which produced the grain on a bundle of stalks like those of broom corn, or as if the seed-bearing stalks of the broom, corn had been tied together and had adhered, as I have described in another chapter, I am of opinion, that, like the other cereals, it was cultivated from grass, at a period too remote to be traced to its origin, and that it came from the same species as broom-corn and sorghum. It contains less muscle-making materials and more heaters and fatmakers than wheat, and consequently is much used in fattening cattle and pigs, for which purpose it is better than any other grain. Why this grain is better than wheat for fattening animals is seen by the fact that it contains more than six times as much oil. Starch, sugar, and fat are classed together as carbonates, or fat and heatproducers, but the effect of each is different from the other of these elements. Fat giving two and a half ANALYSIS OF CORN. times as much heat as starch, there should be added at least sixteen, making the heaters eighty-nine. The average composition of one hundred parts of Indian corn is about,Water,..... 14' Gluten,.....12 Water,.....14 Starch,.....60 Muscle-makers,. 12 Sugar, Heaters,.... 73 Gumg, F * 3 or, Fat-producers, Fat,...... 7 Food for brains Fibre,..... 51 and bones,.. 1 Mineral matter,. 1 Sugar and starch generally furnish the necessary heat, and have less tendency to be converted into fat, while the oils, as butter, the fat of meats, &c., are without much change deposited as fat. If sugar or starch alone are supplied, they will not only supply heat, but fat; but if oil be added, sugar and starch will supply the heat, and the oil the fat that is necessary, while on the other hand, if sugar and starch be deficient, and oil supplied, it will supply the heat as well as the fat of the system. Sugar and starch, and especially sugar, are supplied for keeping up the necessary animal heat in summer and the oils for winter, Indian corn, especially northern corn, is excellent food for cold weather. Nature, however, provides that the corn of southern climates has less of the fat INDIAN CORN AS FOOD. 53 and heat-producing elements, as will be seen by reference to the plates, Figs. 2, 3, 9, 11. Indian corn has too little gluten to make good light bread alone; but mixed with rye meal, which is very glutinous, the most wholesome and best of bread is made, which in many places in New England constitutes the staff of life to the laboring classes. Hominy, especially "large hominy,' which is merely the grain cracked into two or three pieces, is excellent food, and if made from southern corn, as it generally is, contains a full share of muscle-making material, and is well adapted to laboring men; it also contains a large share of the life-giving principles, and is well adapted to sedentary and literary employments. "Small hominy," which is mostly used in New England, is generally made from flint corn, which contains less of the food for muscles and brains, and more of the heaters, and is therefore best in cold weather. Hulled corn also contains the elements of the corn, except those which reside in the hull; and being soaked in some alkali, the oil is removed, and it is therefore good summer food. Well washed from the alkali used to decorticate it, it is unobjectionable and wholesome to those who like it. Buckwheat. Fig. 12. Buckwheat, or "brank," as it is called in England, is cultivated more for feeding fowls and birds in winter than for food for man. It is inferior to wheat in its nutritive Buckwheat. 54 BUCKWHEAT. elements, containing more heaters and not half the muscle and brain-feeders. Eaten alone, therefore, it is not much better than superfine flour; but with beefsteak or fish, to furnish requisite nutriment, it will serve to keep up the heat for a winter's day. In one hundred parts of buckwheat are, - Water,.... 14.2 Gluten,.. r t8.6 e Starch,. 50. 14. Starch.. 50.0 Muscle-makers, 8.6 Gum,..... 2.0 Gum g... 2..o Heaters,. 75.4 Sucrar, 2.0 Sugar.0 Food for brains Fat 1.0 * and bones,. 1.8 Woody fiibre,. 20.0 Mineral matter, 1.8 Containing a large amount of woody fibre, which is waste, buckwheat is good for constipated habits. Barley. This cereal compares well with wheat in nutritive elements, but does not form light bread, and therefore is nowhere used for that purpose, but is in many places used for making barley-cakes, which are valuable for persons inclined to constipation, containing, as it does, more of waste, which is the natural stimulant of the bowels. Barley is peculiar also for the amount of phosphates which it contains,- more than twice the amount contained in wheat, - and therefore might be made useful to literary men of sedative habits, adapted, BARLEY. 55 as it is, both to promote the action of the brain and bowels. For this purpose it would be useful and palatable in the form of cakes or porridge. Pearl barley, which is barley deprived of its outer coat, is also very valuable in sickness when vitality is low. One hundred parts of barley contain, - Water,.... 14.0 Gluten, &c.,. 14.8 Starch,.... 48.0 ater * * * 140 Sugar o, 3.8 Muscle-feeders, 15.0 Gum,.. 3.7 or, Heaters,... 69.5 Fat,.. 0.3 Food for brains, Fat,. 3.. 2 Fibre,.. 13.2 Mineral matter, 4.2 The Oat. This plant is found wild in the northern parts of Europe, and is the only cereal except rice that has been traced to its origin; all others having been so changed by cultivation as not to be recognized in their original seeds or plants. It flourishes in northern climates, and degenerates in warm. Unlike the wheat, its muscle-making materials are not connected with the hull, and are not therefore removed in making fine flour. Oat meal is rich in food for muscles and brains, and this may explain the fact that Scotchmen, who are raised principally on oat-meal porridge and oat-meal cakes, are remarkable for mental and physical activity. It is much used also in the northern counties of Eng 56 OAT. land, and furnishes the most material for hard work of any known grain. One hundred parts of oat contain, — Water,.... 13.6Gluten and albumen,... 17.0 Starch,.... 39.7 Sugar,... 5.4 Gum,..... 3.0 Fat,..... 5.7 Fibre,.... 12.6 Mineral matter, 3.0, Water,.... 13.6 Material for muscles,.. 17.0 or Heaters,... 66.4 Food for brains, &c.,.... 3.0 Some inferences of great practical importance may be drawn from these facts in regard to the adaptation of different grains for gruels, &c., in the different forms of disease, which will be more fully discussed in a chapter devoted to this subject. By comparing the above analysis with that of wheat, and that showing the loss of important elements in superfine flour, the following conclusions will be irresistible: Of heatproducing material, oat meal and unbolted wheat meal contain about the same; but in one pint of oat-meal gruel there is as much of muscle-making material as in five gills of unbolted meal gruel, and as in three quarts of fine flour gruel. Rice. Rice is the only cereal except oats that has been traced to its original plant. It is found wild on the borders of lakes of the East Indies, and is very RICE. 57 extensively cultivated in marshy grounds in Asia, the southern parts of Europe, and in some of the southern states of America. It is more largely consumed by the inhabitants of the world than any other grain, wheat, perhaps, excepted; but it is poor in materials for the support of brain or muscle; and rice-eaters are everywhere an effeminate race. It contains, as will be seen by the following analysis, less than half the muscle-supporting elements of wheat, and only one quarter of the supporters of brain and nerve, and containing, as it does, a large amount of starch, can only support a life of indolence and feebleness. One hundred parts of rice contain, - Water,... 13.5 Gluten,.. 6.5 Starch,.. 74.1 ater,... 13.5 Sugar,... 0.4 | Muscle-feeders, 6.5 Gum,.. 1.0 or, Heaters,... 79.5 Fat... 0 0;, i For brains and Fat,..... 0.7 F bones,... 0.5 Fibre,... 3.3 Mineral matter, 0.5 Rice may be useful as a part of a meal, with beefsteak or vegetables that contain no starch; or, in some cases of sickness, when the stomach is weak, and when little is wanted of food but to keep the bellows of life blowing; but for mental or muscular strength it is the poorest article in the common lists of nutritive food; and this shows the worthlessness of " standard tables," as they are called, and as they are found in our physio 58 "STANDARD TABLES" OF NUTRIMENT. logical school-books and health journals, showing, as they profess to show, the amount of nutriment in different articles of food, - but making no distinction between nutriment which feeds the system and the fuel which really consumes the system. - See table of comparative " amount of nutriment," in Hall's Journal of Health, page 211, in which rice is said to contain eighty-eight per cent. of nutriment, while beans contain eighty-seven per cent.; whereas, by analysis, rice contains but seven per cent., while beans contain twenty-seven and one half per cent. of real nutriment. This table would indicate that, except in regard to ease of digestion, it would make very little difference whether we ate rice or beans; whereas one pound of beans would support life, in action, as long as four pounds of rice. This is only a specimen of articles in the "standard tables," and shows the importance of a new " standard"l by which to judge of the nutritive value of articles of food. Beans. Having given an analysis of all the cereals in common use for food, let us now examine the leguminous seeds, or those produced in pods. These are all rich in nutritious materials; but their muscle-making element is not gluten, as in the grains, but casein, as in cheese -a substance not so easily digested as gluten, and therefore adapted to strong healthy persons with good powers of digestion. BEANS. 59 One hundred parts of common field beans contain,Water,.... 14.8 Casein,.. 24.0 Water,.... 14.8 Starch,... 36.0 Muscle-makers, 24.0 Sugar,.... 2.0 or,b Heaters,. 57.7 Gum,..... 8.5 Food for brains Woody fibre,. 9.2 and bones,. 3.5 Mineral matter, 3.5 Two pounds of beans will therefore help do more muscular work than three pounds of wheat, and more brain work than three and one half pounds. But, as they contain less by twenty per cent. of their requisite amount of heaters, they are very appropriately eaten with fat pork, or some other heat-making food. Different varieties of beans contain some different proportions of the same elements; but all are very nutritious. Beans are also eaten green, when the starch is not formed. In that state they are much less nutritious, and require with them butter or some other heat-giving material; but are useful food in warm weather, as are all green vegetables, with other more nutritious food. Peas Contain very nearly the same elements in the same proportions as beans. They are, however, more easily digested, and are too rich in true nutrition to be eaten alone, but require some less nutritive article, like potatoes, and also an addition of heat-givers, as butter, or the fat of animals. 60 PEAS. In one hundred parts of peas are, - Water,.... 14.0O Casein,.. 234 Water. Starch,.... 37.0 Muscle-makers, ] Muscle-makers, Sugar,.... 2.0 Gum, o... 9.0o,. u.Fat0, f...0 Food for brains Fat,..... 2.0 [ and bones,. Woody fibre,. 10.0b Mineral matter, 2.5 14.1 23.4 60.0 2.5 Peas also, when green, are excellent in warm weather, containing less starch and less casein, but more sugar than dried peas. They also require butter or other heaters. Lentils. Lentils also contain much casein, even more than peas. They are not much used for food, except at the East, where they are the favorite food in connection with rice; and they seem to be intended to supply the deficiencies of each other, rice containing too few and lentils too many muscle-making materials, in proportion to their carbonates, as will be seen by reference to their tables of analysis. Lentils contain, in one hundred parts, - Water,.. 14.0 Casein,. 26.0 Water cWater,.... 14.0 Starch,.... 35.0[ oStar ch, 35.0 Muscle-feeders, 26.0 Sugar,. 2.0 Fa t. 2.0or, Heaters,... 58.5 ~at,..... z~v - 2.0 Gut m * 20 Food for brains Gum,..... 7,0 Woody fibr, 7*. 12 and bones,. 1.5 Woody fibre, 12.5 Mineral matter, 1.5 LENTILS. 61 It will be seen that while rice contains but half its true proportion of muscle-making element,- 6.5 in 100, -lentils contain much more than their proportion, or 26 in 100. When used together, therefore, as is customary with the Hindoos, they give sufficient muscular power for such an inactive people. It will be seen, also, that both lentils and rice are deficient in food for brains; and this may likewise be a providential arrangement to adapt the proportion of food to the proportion of brain to be fed. This idea is perhaps corroborated by the fact that the higher classes in the East, who furnish brains for the lower, and do all their thinking, use food containing more of the phosphates, the little seeds of the huge grasses, of the sorghum species, called millet, which forms a large part of their food, being admirably adapted for that purpose, used in connection with rice. It is a curious fact, developed by scientific researches, that the smaller the seed in proportion to the plant of which it is the germ, the larger is the proportion of phosphates which it contains. Millet, being the small germ of the large plant sorghum, abounds in elements of food for the brain, the physical germ of human vitality. A practical use may be made of this principle, especially with those who use much of fine flour, or butter, or sugar, in either of which is found only a trace of the phosphates, - remembering that in all our nourishment we need but two per cent. of phosphates. We can get sufficient of these elements to produce a sensible effect from the seeds of fruits and berries: 62 STARCH. many of them, like those of the tomato, are digestible without crushing; others, like those of currants and most berries and apples, should be crushed with the teeth. The core of the apple should always be chewed, and the fibrous envelope rejected. The pits of all fruits and nuts are rich in phosphates; a small quantity are therefore useful as a dessert after a meal of too carbonaceous food. Starch. Of the three principal heat-giving principles of food, starch, sugar, and fat, starch is the most abundant and most important in all vegetable food. It constitutes, indeed, more than nine tenths of all the carbonaceous principles of our grains and leguminous seeds on which we mostly depend. The ultimate elements are the same in starch, sugar, and fat, — carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen,- and their use in the system is not in building up the structure of the body or in repairing its waste, but is in fact the fuel which keeps up animal heat. This, however, is not a subordinate office, requiring, as it does, more than three fourths of all our food to accomplish it; and the adjustment of scientific principles, so as to keep the internal temperature of the body in summer and winter, in violent exercise or at rest, at just 98~ Fahrenheit, is wonderful; and yet it is found that under no circumstances does it vary more than one or two degrees. The most important principle in the production of GRANULES OF STARCH. 63 heat is starch, which is found in all vegetable food except the fruits. It exists in irregularly shaped granules, varying in size from 2-1 — to T; of an inch in diameter, in different species of plants, each plant furnishing its own peculiar granules. These granules are insoluble in cold water, but are readily diffused through it, so that by bruising or crushing the grain or potato that contains it, and washing in cold water, the starch is separated from the other principles, and, being of greater specific gravity than water, settles to the bottom of the vessel containing it, and may thus be obtained in greater or less amounts from all edible vegetables and grains. On being mixed with water of a temperature of 180~, starch becomes glutinous and loses its granular character, and in this state is much used in the arts to give firmness and inflexibility to fabrics of clothing, &c. Starch is turned blue by iodine, and the extent of its presence in any grain can therefore be easily tested by carefully slicing and soaking the grain and applying a solution of iodine. From wheat and corn, &c., thus treated, the drawings were made for Figs. 2, 3, 4, &c. The nitrogenous and phosphatic principles may be delineated by other appropriate tests. When starch is taken as an article of diet, its carbon is burned in the lungs in contact with the oxygen of the air, and gives out heat to warm the system, just as the carbon of wood, uniting with the oxygen of the air, gives out heat to warm our apartments; but before 64 STARCH CONVERTED INTO SUGAR. it is thus appropriated by the lungs, it must undergo a change in the process of digestion, so that it becomes sugar; and all starch is thus changed into sugar before it can be taken iuto the circulation to be used in the lungs or skin. When starch and sugar, therefore, are taken into the stomach together, the sugar is first used for fuel; then the starch is converted into sugar, and used till the demand is supplied, and all that remains unchanged into sugar is cast from the system as waste, and if oil or fat of any kind be taken with sugar and starch, the fat will only be used for fuel when the sugar and starch have failed to supply the demand. From this fact we may derive the important practical lesson of giving to the most feeble stomach sugar for fuel, and next starch, and depending on fatty substances only in the most robust, and in the cold weather, when, being more concentrated, it is useful. Starch exists in a state of almost absolute purity in arrowroot, tapioca, and sago. These articles of food are therefore only useful by themselves when the muscles and brain are in a state of absolute rest, as in some cases of sickness. Potatoes, rice, and Tuscarora corn also contain so little nitrogen or phosphorus, that life can scarcely be sustained on them alone, but are very useful with lean meat, peas, beans, &c., which, being deficient in carbonates, need some such articles to supply the defficiency. The proportion of carbonates to the nitrates in potatoes, rice, or Tuscarora corn, is fourteen or fifteen to one; while in the standard ARROWROOT. - TAPIOCA. 65 article of food, - wheat,- it is only four to one. During the growth of plants sugar is first formed, so that in all green vegetables what little of carbonaceous food is obtained is in the form of sugar, which is converted into starch as the plant progresses, and when the grains, or leguminous seeds, are perfected, very little sugar is left, and starch is predominant; but in fruits, the sugar increases as they ripen, and, when perfectly matured, sugar is almost the only principle of nourishment. Arrowroot Is a form of starch obtained from the root stocks of plants. The most common source is the maranta, which is a native of tropical America and the West India islands. From these islands and Bermuda this country and England are principally supplied. Another species of the maranta is said to yield the East Indian arrowroot, and the French tous-les-nois is produced by another plant of the same order, which is a native of Peru, and is called canna. In China arrowroot is said to be obtained from the root of the water-lily. Tapioca Is starch from the mandioc plant, a native of South America. This plant contains prussic acid, and is very poisonous. The poison is, however, separated from the root, which, after preparation, yields cassava and tapioca. The cassava, being formed into cakes, is 5 66 SAGO. - SEA-WEEDS. eaten mostly by the natives, while the granules of starch cells and tapioca are extensively used in Europe and this country for the same purposes as rice and arrowroot. Sa'o Is obtained from several plants, the most common being the sago-palm, which grows in the islands of the Indian Archipelago. The sago is obtained from the celular tissue or pith in the interior of the trunk of the tree, and some of these palms, being very large, yield sections of sago pith as large as the body of a man. A single tree, therefore, yields some hundreds of pounds of sago, and the preparation of it furnishes employment for a large part of the inhabitants of Java and the Philippine and Molucca Islands, which furnish it to all the world. In many places it is much used for the sick, it being erroneously understood to possess some peculiar virtues. Moss and Sea-weeds. The nutritive properties of these articles of diet consist mostly in starch, but are all too poor in any nutritive properties to be of much consequence, the gelatinous substance, on account of which it is mainly used in making blanc-mange, &c., being like the gelatine in fish and animal flesh, entirely indigestible, and only useful as waste to keep the bowels in order. The nice jellies made from calves' feet, or isinglass, or the mosses, are all destitute of nutriment. MOSSES. 67 Reindeer Moss. Reindeer moss, however, must contain some nutritive qualities, as it seems to be a provision of nature to support the reindeer in a climate where almost nothing else grows. In Iceland and Lapland, in spite of the extreme cold to which it is subjected, this lichen grows in great abundance, and during the winter season, which constitutes the most of the year, the reindeer has no other means of support, digging down for it with his nose through the deep snow.; and some arctic navigators in their extremity have been obliged to resort to the same miserable diet, but only with temporary success, the gastronomic capacity of man being too limited to contain a quantity sufficient to sustain life but for a very limited period. Irish Moss. A sea-weed known under the names of carragheen moss, pearl moss, and Irish moss, grows on the rocky sea-shores of Europe, especially those of Ireland and the'north of England and Scotland. It contains but little nutriment, but is used in England, and sometimes in this country, perhaps with advantage, with our too concentrated nourishment; but alone it can sustain life but for a short time. It is, however, resorted to by the poorer classes on the sea-shores of Ireland when the ordinary crops of corn and potatoes have failed, and for a time will keep them from actual starvation. 68 A CHINESE LUXURY. Several other sea-weeds are used in England and Scotland as gelatine, to thicken and flavor soups and ragouts, and other dishes of food; but in all there is a flavor of the sea which renders them objectionable and keeps them from general use. Edible Bird's Nest. In China, however, the people are very fond of seaweeds, and many kinds are collected and added to soups, or are eaten alone with sauce. They also esteem the edible bird's nest a great luxury, making it an important article of commerce, and paying for it a great price, a large number of persons making it a trade, and doing nothing else from youth to old age but hunt for these nests in caves of rocks so difficult of access that none but adepts attempt it. They are the nests of a swallow, which are made from the gelatinous substance of sea-weeds, and are therefore valueless for nourishment, and would be almost tasteless but for the flavor imparted by the excretions of the families which have made them their home; but, having been thus occupied, they have a flavor which is relished exceedingly by the aristocracy of China, who alone can afford the expense of such a luxury.* * Some enterprising south-shore Yankee might make his fortune by making a decoction of the gelatinous sea-weed with which he manures his land, and a decoction of old swallows' nests from the beams of his barn. Decanting, straining, and drying this decoction, he would get a better article than that made from Oriental nests, inasmuch as clay nests must retain more of the flavor which constitutes the value of this luxury. THREE KINDS OF SUGAR. 69 Sugar. Sugar and starch have very nearly the same chemical composition, but in some of their physical properties they are very different. Sugar is soluble in water, while starch is only diffusible through it. Sugar undergoes the process of fermentation, starch does not; sugar has a sweet taste, starch is almost tasteless. Starch, however, is convertible into sugar, and then assumes all the characteristics of other sugar, being capable of fermentation and of thus being converted into alcohol. It is converted into sugar by the juices of the mouth and stomach, and this is the first process of digestion with starch. Sugar, therefore, is more quickly prepared to be absorbed into the blood, and better adapted as a heat-giver for the young, and in warm weather when the digestive organs are enfeebled. This is indicated in children by the almost universal love which they manifest for food containing it, and Nature furnishes it in the milk of all animals, and in the summer in fruits and berries and green vegetables, clearly indicating the importance and the appropriate use of sugar. Sugar assumes three different forms in common articles of diet, which, though very nearly alike in chemical composition, have yet the same peculiarities. These are called cane sugar, grape sugar, and milk sugar. They vary in composition as follows:Carbon. Hydrogen. Oxygen. Cane sugar, 12 10 10 Grape sugar, 12 12 12 Milk sugar, 11 12 12 70 ALCOHOL. They are all alike sweet and soluble in water; but the cane and milk sugars differ from the grape in that they do not ferment till they have first been converted into grape sugar. Sugar is found in almost all plants at certain periods of their growth and development. The Process of Malting. - Sugar is formed in the germination of seeds, as is well illustrated in the process called mnalting, which consists in placing the grain, generally barley, in a condition to favor its germination. When in the process of growth the starch is converted into sugar, that process is arrested and the sugar is secured for the purpose of fermentation. Alcohol. All kinds of grain may be thus converted into malt, and used for making wine, beer, and distilled spirits; indeed, all grasses, and fruits, and vegetables, which contain sugar or starch, - and to just the extent of the sugar or starch, - can be converted into alcohol; but the process is one of decomposition, and therefore, according to principles already described, sugar and starch are then brought into a condition to be poisonous. The same elements and the same chemical combinations which in sugar are nourishing food, are in alcohol poisonous; and while the beers, and wines, and distilled spirits may afford nourishment on account of the sugar and starch, and other nutritive elements in SUGAR IN VEGETABLES. 71 them, and although the system may become so accustomed to the influence of the alcohol mixed in them as not to be in all cases, in their moderate use, positively or perceptibly injurious, still their habitual employment is useful or injurious in just the proportion as their carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen are organized as they came from the grain, or disorganized by fermentation. Sugar in the Sap of Trees. Sugar is circulated in the sap of trees and plants just before the unfolding of the buds; and in some species, as the birch and maple, is then found in such quantities as to be collected and manufactured in large quantities. The sap of the birch is collected in the spring in Scotland, and fermented, and thus birch wine is manufactured; and in the northern part of the New England States and New York sugar is annually manufactured from the sugar maple to the amount of hundreds of tons. Vegetables and Fruits, and roots also, contain sugar, and can be fermented into intoxicating beverages; and from some, as the beet and mangel-wurzel, large quantities of sugar are manufactured, especially in France. The Huge Grasses, as the sugar cane and sorghum, contain it, however, in the largest proportions, and are the principal sources of its supply. Treacle or molasses is that portion of the sugar which will not crystallize, and which is therefore separated by draining from the brown sugar before it is purified, andis not objectionable as carbonaceous nutriment. 72 EDIBLE ROOTS AND TUBERS. Potato. Of the class of edible roots and tubers, the potato stands at the head. It contains but little muscleforming material, and a large proportion of starch, and is therefore well adapted to be eaten with lean meat, which consists chiefly of nitrogen, and has no digestible carbon. Its native country is Chili, but it is also found wild in Mexico. Before being cultivated it is a gnarly, bulbous root, not considered edible. From this root grows a stalk, which blossoms and bears seeds. These seeds, being planted in a new soil, produce improved bulbs, which, being transplanted, improve from year to year, and form a distinctive character as to shape, color, &c., and receive a distinctive name by which the variety is known, as "kidneys," "reds," "blues," "whites," "pink-eyes," &c., each of which after a few years degenerates, and, going out of use, makes way for a new variety, produced in the same way; and thus, within the last three hundred years, it has been introduced into all Europe and America, and is an inestimable blessing to their teeming populations. To this country especially, where every one eats meat, it is invaluable, - supplying, as it does, the elements wanting in that food, and waste material to counteract'the influence of our too concentrated nutriment. It is also very valuable to the laboring classes of England, Ireland, and Scotland, used as it is with POTATO. 73 oat meal, beans, and peas, which supply the musclemaking elements in which it is deficient. In one hundred parts of the potato are, - Water and waste,... Albumen, &c., Starch,... Iextrine,... Sugar,. Fat,.... Mineral matter, 78.2 1.4 15.5 0.4 3.2 0.2 0.9. Water and waste,... >or, Muscle-makers, Heaters,... Food for brains,'78.2 1.4 22.5 0.9 All the muscle and brain-feeding principle in the potato resides in the rose end, about the eyes or germ. Sweet Potato. The sweet potato is used mostly in tropical climates. It differs from the other potato but little, and that difference consists mainly in their relative amounts of sugar and mineral matters. Water and waste,.. 68.50 Starch,... 16.05 Sugar,.... 10.20 Albumen,..1.50 Fat,.... 0.30 Fibre,.... 0.45 Gum, &c.,.. 1.10 Mineral matter, 2.90 Water and waste,.. 68.50 Muscle-makers, 1.50 >or, Heaters,... 28.05 Food for brains, &c.,... 2.90 74 VEGETABLES. Parsnips, Turnips, Carrots, Beets, Onions. The different varieties of the roots above named are all, besides the potato, that to any extent are used in this country as food for man. So large a proportion of their bulk is made up of water and waste that the stomach of man is not sufficiently capacious to contain enough of either to support life and health alone; but for that reason they are valuable adjuncts to concentrated food, especially in warm weather, when but for these, and other similar vegetables and fruits, we should not get the bulk and waste necessary for proper digestion and intestinal action. In one hundred parts are, - In Parsnips. Water and waste,... Muscle-makers,.... Fi2aters,... Food for brains, &c.,. In Turnips. Water and waste,. Muscle-makers,... Heaters, Food for brains, &c.,. In Carrots... 89.0. 1.2 ~... 7.0 *.. 1.0. 94.0 ~... 1.1.. 4.0.. 0.5 Water and waste,... Muscle-feeders,..... Heat-givers,....... Brain-feeders,........92.0 0.6 6.6 1.0 BEETS. -75 Beets contain more sugar, and therefore more heating elements, than other vegetables, but contain the same proportions of nutrition and waste, while onions are still more nearly all water and waste. Other green vegetable food, as cabbage, cauliflower, lettuce, cucumber, &c., and all the fruits and berries which are kindly furnished at the season in which they are most needed, are useful for the same reasons as stated above, and a choice in them can only be made by reference to the particular taste and power of 4:g<^tioz ~a oPti' iadividual; that which relishes best is generally most easily digested. No one, therefore, can judge for another what is or is not wholesome. Every article of food containing the elements of the system is wholesome if it can be eaten with a relish and be digested, and on the other hand, any article is unwholesome which contains elements not needed, and which cannot be relished or digested; and generally they are most desired when most needed, and will be digested if they can be eaten with a good natural relish. The taste, unperverted, is a sentinel that admits no enemy and rejects no friend to the human system. It is folly, therefore, to dispute among ourselves, or to ask the doctor, whether this article or that is wholesome. Having determined beforehand, as all intelligent providers easily may by reference to the simple principles herein explained, what class of elements is wanted to adapt the food to the circumstances of the family, they have only to select from the great variety of articles which God has given such as will be 76 ANALYSIS OF BEEF. best relished, and, with very rare exceptions, nothing thus selected and properly cooked will ever prove indigestible or unwholesome, and these exceptions will only be found where the digestive organs are deranged by previous imprudence. Animal Food. The flesh of animals, fat and lean together, contains, as does a grain of wheat, every one of the fourteen elements of which the human system is composed, but not in the same proportions, or in the same proximate principles. In one hundred parts of the carcass of an ox, of average fatness, are of food for brains, &c., about 4; for muscles and tissues, 15; for heat and fat, 30; water, 50. In wheat, for brains, &c., about 2; for muscles and tissues, average 14; for heat and fat 70; water, 14. The muscle-making principles in wheat are gluten and albumen, while in beef they are fibrin and albumen; but each of these principles so perfectly agrees in chemical composition as to be considered mere modifications of the same substance, and being dried, contains precisely the same elements and in the same proportions. The heat and fat-producing principles in wheat are sugar and starch, principally, starch, with very little fat, while in beef it is fat only; and as fat produces two and a half times as much heat as sugar or starch, and beef contains more than three times as much water ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT MEATS. 77 as wheat, the differences of the heat-giving powers of beef and wheat are much more nearly alike than would at first appear. The five articles of animal food on which in this country we principally depend differ in their proportions of nutritive qualities, and are therefore adapted to different temperatures and different circumstances, as may be seen by the following condensed analysis of each. In one hundred parts are, - Mineral matter, Fibrin and albumen, or food for or food for mus- Fat, or food brains, &c. cles and tissues, for heat. Water. Veal,.... 4.5 14.5 16.5 62.5 Beef,.... 5.0 15.0 30.0 50.0 Mutton,.. 3.5 12.5 40.0 44.0 Lamb,... 3.5 12.0 35.0 50.5 Pork,... 1.5 10.0 50.0 38.5 By this table it is seen that while veal contains but little more than an equal quantity of the principles that support muscle and heat, pork contains five times as much of the heaters as of the muscle-feeders. Of course pork is best adapted to food for cold weather, and veal for warm weather Under ordinary circumstances we require four times as much of food for producing heat as for making muscle, that is, four times as much sugar or starch as albumen, fibrin, gluten, or casein; but one pound of fat contains an equivalent for two and a half pounds of sugar or starch, and therefore in animal food the 78 BEANS AND PORK. carbonates, always being furnished in the form of fat, less than half the bulk of animal food is required than the best vegetable food. This, also, renders it necessary to take more animal food in winter than in summer; and hence the provision for animal heat in cold climates is the fat of animals, while in warm climates sugar is the principal provision, or sugar and starch as in fruits and vegetables. But this table is formed on the supposition that we use an average of fat and lean meat; yet this is only true in the small meats, while in beef and pork we take very little, having an average mixture of fat and lean. In lean beefsteak we get almost all muscle-making principles, while in fat pork we get all heaters. With steak, therefore, we require some butter, or fat of pork, or some farinaceous vegetable food, as potatoes, rice, Indian corn, or wheat; while with fat pork, we require beans, peas, or lean meat, to furnish food for muscle; and if our labor or exposure to cold requires such concentrated nourishment, nothing can be more wholesome than beans and pork —the one containing heaters, in the most concentrated form, and the other the most of muscle and life-giving principles of any vegetable food. But what an absurd meal is that of beans and pork of a hot summer's day, especially of a Sabbath morning! and yet, from the landing of our Pilgrim fathers this has been the Sunday morning breakfast of a majority of New England people, and I have somewhere seen an estimate made by a quaint old divine, as IS PORK HEALTHY? 79 a part of his sermon, of the number of tons of beans and pork preached to in New England every Sunday while the owners were asleep. On the other hand, seeing the stupefying, and congesting, and heating, and blotch-making influence of these articles on sedentary people, some housekeepers condemn them as altogether and always unwholesome, especially pork, which is supposed to cause scrofula and all manner of diseases, and will not, under any circumstances, use it in the family. But why not use our reason, and consider what pork is, and what it was made for, and treat it as the creature of God, and therefore good, and not to be despised? The elements of the fat of pork and fat of beef, and all other meats, as also of butter, and the oil of corn and oils of the vegetables, are precisely the same, except the osmazome, which distinguishes the taste of each, and gives to one a relish for mutton and another for beef. All are wholesome or unwholesome as they are taken at the right time in the right proportion to other food, &c., and all unwholesome if taken without regard to circumstances. "Fishes of the Sea." "Everything wherein there is life," God gave to man "for meat even as the green herb," and of course we find in all these living things the same elements as in the products of the green herb. An analysis of codfish and haddock gives the same elements, and in just about the same proportions, as 80 FOOD FROM FISHES. lean beef and mutton, the only remarkable difference being in the amount of phosphates, which are much larger in the fish; but varying more in proportion in fishes than in mutton, and varying according to the habits of the fish in regard to muscular power. Codfish, haddock, halibut, stand in relation to each other in regard to the three classes of elements- the nitrates, the carbonates, and the phosphates —as beef, mutton, and pork; halibut having less of the nitrates and phospates, and more of the carbonates, than codfish or haddock, as pork less of the former and more of the latter than beef and mutton. Fishes of the same species also have more or less of the carbonates, according to climate, being providentially adapted, as are the grains and the land animals, to supply the heat of man according to his necessities. In regard to the nitrates and phosphates, a great difference is found in the different species, those which have the most muscular power having, of course, more of the nitrates, or muscle-making element, and those which have the most activity, the most of the phosphates, which not only furnish food for the brain, but for the nerves, and which give vitality and activity. From a collection of facts, which I will now proceed to give, may, I think, be deduced an inference of great practical importance, both in regard to the selection of food adapted to different degrees of activity of mind and body in health, but also adapted to different degrees of vitality in sickness; and as this, so far as I know, is an application of science to dietetics not MENTAL STRENGTH DEPENDENT ON DIET. 81 hitherto made, and as, indeed, no such effort has been made to apply the plain laws of Nature to the supply of the natural wants of the human system, as have been made by Johnston and others to apply them to the wants of vegetable, I propose to bring together facts, and show the principles upon which I deduce the corollary which I place at the head of the next chapter. Mental as well as Physical Health, Strength, and Activity, can be regulated by, as it is to a great extent dependent on, Diet. The vitality of plants, the muscular activity of all animals, and the mental as well as muscular and organic health and vigor of man, depend on phosphorus. These are legitimate inferences from facts, presented clearly, as you shall see, in the organization of plants, animals, and man. In grains, and all seeds, the phosphates which give vitality, and furnish food for the brain.and nerves, reside in the germ or " chit," while the fixed phosphates, which are devoted to bones, &c., are mixed with gluten in the crust under the hull, as seen in the plates of corn and wheat, Figs. 2, 3 &c. That the phosphates are concentrated in the germ of all seeds, and that they vary in different seeds, is easily ascertained by chemical tests applied to the grain or seed, and the drawing of these plates above was suggested from experiments first made by Dr. Hayes, of 6 82 PHOSPHATES IN SEEDS. Boston, and first introduced by Dr. Jackson into his geological and mineralogical survey of New Hampshire, in colored plates, showing the extent of phosphates and other elements; but I have not been content without re-testing, and getting re-drawn, each specimen. The process is very simple, and the discovery of it very important, as I have elsewhere intimated. In this manner can be shown just the proportion of phosphates, nitrates, and carbonates each seed contains, and therefore which is best adapted to feed the muscle, and which to feed the brain, and give vitality, and which to furnish heat. It is thus ascertained that some seeds and some grains contain two or three times as much phosphates as others. Wheat, for example, contains two per cent., while millet four per cent. Grass seed from six to seven per cent., and some, as clover and herdsgrass, from seven to nine. In all seeds, and roots, and nuts, which germinate from chits or eyes, the phosphates centre about these eyes, and what is not found there is always found connected with the muscle-making part of the grain or fruit, showing that the phosphates are connected with vitality and the life-giving principle. The same thing is shown in animals by a test of their flesh, and by their manner of living. The flesh of quadrupeds, and birds, and fishes contain phosphorus in just the proportion to their natural activity, wild animals much more than domestic. The most active birds, like the pigeon and the migrating birds, much STRENGTH OF INSECTS. 83 more than domestic fowls, and quiet and lazy birds. The migrating fishes, whose astonishing muscular power enables them to swim up rapids and over falls, contain more phosphates than the flounder and halibut, which are clumsy and comparatively dormant. Insects abound in phosphorus in proportion to their activity and strength of muscle, and among them are the greatest gymnasts in the world. The leap of a flea is as great, in proportion to size of muscle, as if a man should jump over the Atlantic Ocean, from Boston to London; and a beetle, not weighing a scruple, will lift and move a junk bottle, with contents, weighing nearly a pound - a weight more than one hundred times as great, in proportion, as Dr. Windship could lift (and the beetle wears no yoke). Being wanted for scientific purposes, a beetle was placed, for safe keeping, under a bottle partly filled with liquid, in the inverted cup made in the bottom of the bottle. Immediately the plucky little insect was seen walking off with the bottle on his back, - as if the strong doctor, being shut up in his own office in the basement of Park Street Church, with a steeple two hundred feet high, should hoist the old thing, steeple and all, over into the cemetery. 84 ACTIVE ANIMALS EAT TIE MOST PHOSPHATES. Quadrupeds, Birds, and Insects instinctively select Food containing Phosphorus in Proportion to that of which they are composed, and in Proportion to their Activity. The active bird lives on active insects or small seeds, which contain the most phosphorus, while the sluggish hen or robin is content with corn or worms, which contain much less of the life-giving element; and migratory birds, while they remain quiet, raising their young, live on worms and berries, but in the fall get a supply of strength for annual flight by eating seeds and active insects. The kingbird is the smartest little bird in New England, and gets his name from the fact that he governs all other birds, large and small, or drives them from his domain if they give him offence. Even the hawk, which is such a terror to other birds, seems to be a source of amusement to the kingbird. Many a time have I seen this little bird, not one tenth as large as the hawk, flying just over his back in the air, keeping out of his way by superior activity, occasionally pouncing on him, and giving him such annoyance that he was glad to leave the neighborhood to escape his little tormentor. A brace of these jolly and eccentric little kingbirds are just now affording infinite amusement to the denizens and visitors of Chester Square, in Boston. Iaving, according to the custom of other royal families, selected a beautiful city residence for a part of the year, and having built their nest, and the queen being engaged, a la Victoria, in matters pertaining to the THE KINGBIRD. 85 perpetuation of royalty, the king is obliged to entertain visitors. This he does by pouncing on the backs. of dogs and driving them from the square; diving at the bright buttons on the policemen's coats; knocking off tall, black, awkward stove-funnel hats, &c., &c. Looking out at my office window, which looks over an open lot to the square, the other day, I saw this kingbird pouncing with tremendous vigor into a thicket of shrubs, and soon came out a big cat, escaping, as for dear life, to the nearest shelter, with the little bird every moment striking at his back and head. This little kingbird lives on bees and hornets, - insects proverbial for their industry, strength, and persevering activity, - and on flies, whose activity keeps them up in the air for amusement, and the bird amuses himself in catching them. The wild pigeon, which is said to fly more miles in a day than any other bird, chooses for his food, in preference to all other grain, the millet and barley, which contain three times the phosphorus of other grain, leaving all other grains untouched while these can be had. This, the boys in the country understand, and they take great pains to use barley millet or grass seed to decoy them to their nets; but the domestic pigeon, which is comparatively inactive, is content with corn, or the other grains containing much less phosphorus; and thus it is clearly established that active animals require food which contains more phosphorus than inactive animals, and the inference is conclusive 86 FOOD FOR THE NERVES. that man also will have more or less activity of brain or muscle in proportion to the elements he takes to feed the brain and muscle. In the preceding chapters we have seen that in the germ of life is found phosphorus in proportion to the future wants of the plant, and that the phosphorus is supplied by, and taken from, the soil as it is required. We have seen that quadrupeds and birds also depend on phosphorus for their muscular activity, and this element is supplied by the seeds of plants, and by insects and other animal food containing it. We come now to consider that highest and most important order of vitality which is peculiar to man, and to see if the same element, although in a different combination, and the same law for applying it, does not pertain to that, as to the lower orders of vitality. Of the solid matter of the brain, one twelfth, on an average, is found by chemical analysis to be phosphorus, and the proportion of phosphorus is found to be in proportion to mental development and mental activity. A celebrated French chemist has made many analyses of brains of children, idiots, and men of different degrees of intellect and mental activity, and the uniform results were, that the brains of those whose minds were most developed and active contained most phosphorus. I will transcribe one of his tables. WASTE OF PHOSPHORUS BY MENTAL EFFORT. 87 Composition of Brain and Nervous Substance. In Infants. Youths. Adults. Aged. Idiots. Albumen, 7.00 10.20 9.40 8.65 8.40 Cerebral fat, 8.45 5.30 6.10 4.32 5.00 Phosphorus, 0:80 1.65 1.80 1.00 0.85 Osmazome and salts, 5.96 8.59 10.19 12.18 14.82 WVater, 82.79 74.26 72.51 73.85 70.93 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 By this table it is seen that the brain of infants and idiots contains less than half the average of that element in adults. Another fact, established also by chemical analysis, which, with that above mentioned, proves to a demonstration that the action of the mind is dependent on phosphorus, and is subject to the same law of waste and supply as other faculties, is the following: Immediately after active mental labor the excretions exhibit a larger proportion of phosphates than at any other time, e. g., on Mondays and Tuesdays in clergymen, and at court times in lawyers. Experiments of this kind have gone to show that the amount of phosphates used up and excreted is in exact proportion to the intensity and continuance of the mental effort; and, at these times, observing clergymen and lawyers have told me their appetite calls for phosphatic food, as fish, cheese, unbolted wheat bread, oat meal, and barley 88 FOOD FOR THE BRAIN. cakes, &c., and some desire, and will have made for them, cakes of bran, which contain most of all the phosphorus of the grain from which it is taken. Food for the Brain and Nerves. That mental and nervous power is dependent on food, is an idea that may at first strike the mind as absurd, and unworthy of investigation; but the same process that proves muscles to be dependent for development, and vigor, and health on food containing nitrogen, proves the brain and nerves to be dependent for the development, and health, and the vigorous exercise of their functions on food containing phosphorus. This subject, being somewhat new, and, as it seems to me, of vast importance, requires a little in detail the reasons for the belief that the same laws apply to the brain as to the muscular system, and that as the muscles can be trained, and their power developed by appropriate food as well as appropriate exercise, so that the brains of our children may be developed in the dining-room as well as in the school-room - the caterer and cook being important auxiliaries to the schoolmaster. All nature is governed by one comprehensive and perfect system of law. The law which controls the circulation of sap in one plant controls it in all other plants. The law by which the bones of one animal are so constructed as to adapt them to the conditions in which the animal is destined to live, is the law which governs the construction of the bones of all other ani MIENTAL ACTIVITY DEPENDS ON PHOSPHORUS. 89 mnals, so that the naturalist will take a single bone of any animal which he has never seen, and from it will construct the animal from which it was taken, show his disposition, the arrangements of his digestive organs, his habits, and the kind of food on which he was accustomed to live. To apply this general principle to the question under consideration, we find that wheat contains phosphorus, which it gets from the soil in which it grows, and which is necessary for its development. If the soil is deficient in phosphates the grain will be deficient in this element, and the proportions which it contains within certain limits are in exact accordance with those of the soil. Now the ultimate purpose of wheat and all its elements is evidently to supply these elements to the human system, and that a part of these elements are intended to give mental support, is proved, I think, by the fact, that the brain contains phosphorus in proportion to its activity or power of producing mental efforts, and that phosphorus is consumed and carried from the system in proportion to mental efforts, just as muscle contains nitrogenous elements in proportion to its size and power; and these elements are consumed, and must be supplied, in proportion to muscular exercise. That mental exercise does thus consume phosphorus, is proved, as I have elsewhere shown, by chemical analysis; proof of the above assertion is therefore complete. Let any man observe his feelings and mental capacity after a breakfast of white bread and butter, or griddle-cakes and sirup, or any other such 90 PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN. carbonaceous articles of food, and I am sure he will find himself unable to perform the same mental labor as he can on a breakfast of beefsteak, or fish and potatoes, or unbolted bread and milk, or any other articles abounding in the phosphates. Brains can no more be made or worked without phosphorus than Egyptian bricks can be made without straw. Why not, then, apply these plain laws to raising children, and cultivating their minds, as we do to the raising of wheat, and hens, and bees, and developing their properties and powers. No man who understands his business would expect to raise wheat in soil in which is no nitrogen, lime, or phosphorus, or make hens profitable on food containing no lime for egg shells, or keep bees on a desolate island where no flowers could be found. Why, then, expect to develop brains on white bread, griddle-cakes, and doughnuts? Precocious Children. Many of the most promising children are sacrificed to a desire to bring them forward in advance of other children, and this desire is stimulated by natural instincts. Every living creature rejoices in the use of the faculties which God has given it, "as a strong man to run a race." The boy whose muscles are well developed will never keep still, but is ready for anything, good or bad, in which he can stir himself. To such a one study is a punishment. But the boy whose muscles are feeble, and whose ACTIVE BIRDS EAT MOST PHOSPHORUS. 91 brain is largely developed, sits still and reads, and the appetite of course conforms to the kind and amount of exercise. If he wastes his muscles by exercise, his appetite will demand the muscle-making nitrates to supply the waste. If he exhausts the phosphorus of the brain by study, he will desire phosphatic food to restore it. While the fat and stupid boy, who has neither muscles nor brain, will crave carbonaceous articles to feed his stupidity; and indulgence in these appetites will of course increase the peculiarity. I have seen the plucky little kingbird, after an hour of extraordinary exertions in driving from the neighborhood an intruding hawk, devote the next hour to catching and eating bees and hornets, which are made up of nitrates and phosphates, as a means of restoring his muscular and vital energy; while the dormant robin would be content to live on cherries and worms, which contain very little food for either muscle or nerve. The bird is safe in following his inclinations; living as it does according to natural laws, and having no abnormal development of faculties, and no abnormal appetites, it can eat what it desires, and as much, with perfect impunity. But the child, changed in its condition as it may be by the ignorance and folly of its parents, even before its birth, is abnormally developed, and of course has abnormal appetites. Indulging these appetites in case of precocity of the brain, of course increases the excitement of the brain, and the result is inflammation and premature death; 92 PRECOCIOUS CHILDREN AND PHOSPHATIC FOOD. and so common is this result, that it is well understood that a precocious child is short-lived. And is it inevitable that the fondest hopes of parents must always be blasted? A child with a precocious brain, or who is very forward, to use the common expression, is of course more liable to dangerous diseases of the brain than other children; but if parents would give the subject thought, and use their reason in this, as in other less important matters, these diseases might generally be warded off. If our eyes have been overworked, or are weak and liable to inflammation, we avoid over-using them, especially in too strong light; and if so inflamed that the light, and all use of them gives pain, we shut out the light altogether, and give them rest till they recover. Both light and seeing are pleasant to the eyes in health, and absolutely necessary to give them health and strength, but when diseased, are both alike injurious, and we avoid the influence of both till they recover. And when only weak, and not absolutely diseased, we are careful to have the light, or use the eye only moderately and carefully. So of any other organ or faculty, that which is necessary to it in health, must be carefully used in tendency to disease, and abstained from in actual disease. Apply this principle to a precocious brain. The brain is as dependent on appropriate exercise, and a supply of phosphorus in health, as is the eye on exercise and light; and as we withdraw the exercise and light from the eye in weakness and disease, so should EFFECTS OF CARBONACEOUS FOOD. 93 we allow the brain to rest from exercise and phosphatic food in case of disease or predisposition to disease. A child with a precocious brain would probably desire fish, lean meats, beans and peas, &c., in which phosphorus abounds; and while in health and perfectly developed, this desire would be an indication that these articles of food were good and necessary; but when the desire is the result of too great activity of the brain, it should be more or less scrupulously and perfectly resisted in proportion to the degree of precocity, and we should give instead cooling fruits and vegetables, with bread and milk, and other articles containing starch and sugar, to furnish the necessary heat, more or less, according to the temperature in which he lives, instead of fat, and oils, and butter, in which the carbonates are more concentrated and more stimulating. Of the effects of diet mostly carbonaceous, we can judge from the testimony of Rev. Mr. Dall, missionary at Calcutta. In describing the character and habits of Asiatics, who live mostly on rice, an article containing, as you will see by the analysis, very little else than starch, and therefore very like our superfine flour, he says, " With the thermometer at one hundred degrees in the day time, and eighty-five to eighty-eight in the night, wakefulness is the exception and drowsing is the rule - the poor, old or young, who brings you a note from his'master' (a word in which Asiatic reverence delights), no sooner delivers it than he flings himself on his back at full length, and is sound asleep in three quarters of a minute, so that it is hard to arouse him if 94 MUSCULAR ACTIVITY. you are five minutes penning your reply. This Indian faculty of literally dropping asleep used to make me smile; but I've got used to it. I now expect to see Bengal'gentlemen' asleep in their carriages on their way to office, and less wealthy, as a matter of course, asleep in their palanquins. When the rajahs, &c., see English people dancing at the Government House, they ask, in wonder,'Why not let your servants do this?''Eternal sleep is the bliss of God - and never be born again!' is Hindooism, is Buddhism, is Asianism, is the Oriental, as compared with our idea of religion." That this stupidity is not induced entirely by the climate, is proved by the fact that the English never become so by a residence there, however long, and by the fact that other people who live on less carbonaceous food, in climates equally hot, are not thus inactive and sleepy; but it is the legitimate effect, as I have elsewhere explained, of living on food that has no nourishment for brain or muscle. Precocity of Muscular Activity. This is less dangerous, as the steam of vital force can be let off through the muscles till it is exhausted, without much danger, except to outsiders. Still the same law pertains to the muscles as to the brain, and, as a matter of convenience, at least to parents and schoolmasters, such boys should be limited in their supply of muscle-making materials, and might be indulged to a greater extent with the carbonates. Let AMOUNT OF FOOD NEEDED. 95 them fill the stomach with crackers and milk, or vegetables and fat pork, and there would be no room for nitrogenous articles of food- or, at least, they could not be over-stimulated by them. The daily Amount of Food necessary, and the Proportion of Nitrates and Carbonates. Experience sustains fully the chemical and physiological deductions of the preceding chapters. Animals have been fed on pure starch, or sugar, or fat alone, and they gradually pined away and died; and the nitrates in all the fine flour bread which the animal can eat will not sustain life beyond fifty days; but others, fed on unbolted flour bread, would continue to thrive for an indefinite period. It is immaterial whether the general quantity of food be reduced too low, or whether either of the muscle-making or heat-producing principles be withdrawn while the other is fully supplied. In either case the effect will be the same. The animal will become weak, dwindle away, and die sooner or later, according to the deficiency; and if food is eaten which is deficient in either principle, the appetite will demand it in quantity till the deficient element is supplied. All the food, therefore, beyond the amount necessary to supply the principle that is not deficient, is not only wasted, but burdens the system with efforts to dispose of it. Food, therefore, containing the right proportion of heaters and muscle-makers is not only best, but most economical. 9-6 EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF FOOD. To make this statement plain, suppose we have a meal composed of roast beef, rare, with potatoes and dish gravy, and as much of unbolted wheat bread, or rye and Indian, and fruits, and cheese, and perhaps, if the beef be lean, or with green vegetables, butter or fat pork, to give them their heating principles. Of such a meal the appetite would be satisfied with just the amount of food necessary to supply either the heating or the muscle-making principles, and they would be taken in the right proportions. But suppose, instead, we tried to satisfy the appetite with a meal composed of fried fat pork and potatoes, fine wheat bread and butter, griddle-cakes and siruparticles almost entirely destitute of food for muscle or brain. When the stomach was filled with these articles, there would still be a demand for the nitrates or phosphates, and we should still crave some article to supply the deficiency, and all the carbonates above those which the system required would be wasted. On the other hand, if we ate only lean meat, or fish, and green vegetables and fruits, which are deficient in carbonates, we should require a quantity of these articles in proportion to that deficiency, or the lungs would not be supplied with fuel sufficient to "run the machine." But in Boston, and probably in all American cities, a large part of the expenses of the table are for butter, superfine flour, and sugar, neither of which contains enough of the muscle or brain-feeding element to sustain life over fifty days, as has been proved by MIXTURE OF DIFFERENT ELEMENTS. 97 experiment with flour, while butter and sugar would not sustain life a single month without other food. As far as we have articles of food deficient in carbonates, we can use, without loss, butter or sugar to supply the deficiency; but most of our natural food, both animal and vegetable, contains a due proportion, and if with them we use butter or sugar, they cannot be appropriated by the system, and are therefore lost. All meats, fat and lean together, all grains and milk, contain all the carbonates that are needed or can be used to furnish heat in moderate weather. All the butter or sugar, therefore, that is added to either of these common articles of food, as they are used in making cakes, custards, pies, &c., are not only lost, but by adding too much fuel, increase the tendency to inflammations, embarrass the stomach, and induce dyspepsia, congestions, obstructions, &c. With beefsteak, or any lean meats, or fish, or potatoes, or any green vegetables, or dried beans or peas, some oily substance seems to be needed, as all these articles are deficient in carbon, and in common use we have the choice between lard, sweet oil, or butter, or perhaps fat pork, all of which are precisely alike in chemical construction, and that one is most wholesome which is best relished. Sugar also is needed with the acid fruits and berries, and especially with apples, which in New England are the most valuable of all fruits, either with or without cooking, and which, with sugar, furnish excellent food, 9 98 THE MINIMUM OF NECESSARY FOOD. especially in winter and spring, when other fruit cannot be had. But to find a good use for superfine flour, out of which has been taken nine tenths of its food for muscle or brains, is exceedingly difficult, indeed, impossible in health; and it can only be useful in disease where the irritability of the stomach or bowels forbids the use of their natural stimulant, just as inflammation of the eye makes it necessary to exclude the light. Experiments on Prisoners as to the Amount of Food needed. The best test of the influence of kind and quantity of food in sustaining life and health can be made in prisons, where the habits are all alike, and where the test can be made on a large scale. In five prisons in Scotland experiments were made to ascertain the smallest amount of food, and the proportions of nitrates and carbonates, that would keep the prisoner up to his weight while doing nothing, with results as shown in the following table: Muscle-making Food. Heat-producing Food. Total Food Nitrates. Carbonates. given each Day. Edinburgh, 4. oz. 13. oz. 17. oz. Glasgow, 4.06 12.58 16.84 Aberdeen, 3.98 13.03 17.67 Stirling, 4.27 13.04 17.67 Dundee, 2.75 14. 16.75 EXPERIMENT ON PRISONERS. 99 Percentage of Prisoners who lost or gained Weight. Edinburgh. -18 lost 1-2 lbs. each; 82 held their own 2 * or gained weight. Glasgow.-33 lost 4 lbs. each; 67 held their own or gained weight. Aberdeen.- 34 lost 4 lbs. 2 oz. each; 66 held their own or gained weight. Stirling. - 34 lost 4 lbs. 2 oz. each; 66 held their own or gained weight. Dundee. -50 lost 4 lbs. 5 oz. each; 50 held their own or gained weight. The above is the result of observations for a term of imprisonment for two months. The Effect on Prisoners of substituting Molasses for Milk. It is a remarkable fact, which shows the importance of connecting science with practice, that the deterioration in the quality of the diet in Dundee prison consisted in substituting molasses for milk, which had been previously used with oat-meal porridge and oatmeal cakes, molasses being entirely destitute of musclemaking material, while milk contains a full proportion of these important principles. This one experiment, and its results, are worthy of study by every mother and every housekeeper in the land. If any class of persons would suffer less than others from the use of 100 MOLASSES AND MILK. too much carbonaceous and too little nitrogenous food, it would be that class who are idle; and yet the one hundred prisoners of Dundee, with one ounce a day more of the fat and heat-making principle than those of Edinburgh, lost two hundred and seventeen and one half pounds, while the same number in Edinburghl lost only twenty-seven pounds; the difference in their diet being, as stated in the report, that the prisoners of Edinburgh had milk with their porridge and cakes, while those of Dundee had molasses instead. If the same experiment had been tried on men in active life, or on children, who are never still except when asleep, the results would have been more remarkable, in proportion to the greater waste of muscle in those who are active, and the greater demand for nitrogenous food; and yet how few mothers stop to consider, or take pains to know, whether gingerbread, made of fine flour, which has but a trace of food for muscle or brain, and sugar or molasses, and perhaps butter, which have none, or cakes made with unbolted wheat, mixed with milk or buttermilk, all of which abound in muscle and brain-feeding materials, is the best food for a growing, active child; indeed, the whole food of the child is given with the same want of knowledge or consideration. But, in view of these simple experiments in the Scotch prisons, who can doubt that a want of consideration of these principles of diet is the means of consigning to the tomb many of our most promising children. An intelligent farmer knows how to feed FOOD IN ACTIVE LIFE. 101 his land, his horses, his cattle, and his pigs; but not how to feed his children. He knows that fine flour is not good for pigs, and he gives them the whole of the grain, or perhaps takes out the bran and coarser part, which contains food for muscles and brains, and gives them to his pigs, while the fine flour, which contains neither food for brain or muscle, he gives to his children. He separates also the milk, and gives his pigs the skim-milk and buttermilk, in which are found all the elements for muscle and brain, and gives his children the butter, which only heats them and makes them inactive, without furnishing a particle of the nutriment which they need. The Amount and Proportion of Muscle-makino and Heat-producing' Elements of Food in Active Employments. We see by the preceding table that prisoners, without exercise, could not be sustained with an amount of food short of four ounces nitrogenous food and thirteen ounces carbonaceous; all short of that amount being insufficient to supply the waste, and the remainder was drawn from the body itself, constantly diminishing in its weight; and that, whether the diminution was in the nitrates or carbonates. To supply four ounces nitrogen and thirteen ounces carbon in the most concentrated food, requires of 102 HOW TO GET THE REQUISITE AMOUNT OF FOOD. Weight. Nitrates. Carbonates. Lean beefsteak,. 4 oz. 1 oz. 0 oz. Fat pork, or fat of beef, or any meat,... 2 0 2 Unbolted wheat bread,. 8 1 5 Beans or peas,. 8 2 4 Butter,.. 2 0 2 1- lbs., or 24 oz. 4 oz. 13 oz. With active exercise,.. 48 8 26 Active exercise in winter,. 58 10 31 t Food thus concentrated would be adapted only to the most active employment in the coldest weather. Let us, therefore, make another bill of fare, in which we shall get the thirteen ounces carbonates and four ounces nitrates in a form adapted to warm weather. Codfish,.... Potatoes,.. Wheat bread, Green vegetables and fruits,.... Milk,... Sugar,.... Butter,.. Weight. 4 OZ. 1 lb. lb. lb. 1 lb. -1 oz. 2 1 Oz. Nitrates. 1 oz. 1 oz. 1 oz. 1 OZ. IOZ. 0 0 Carbonates. O oz. 3 oz. 8 oz. 0 oz. 30 grs. i OZ. 2 z -- oz. 2 1 oz. 51 lbs. 4 oz. 13 oz. * In moderate weather the waste is double. t In New England one fifth more in winter than in summer. NOURISHMENT IN ONE POUND OF WHEAT. 103 This bill would be extremely diluted, as the first is extremely concentrated; but both together will show how greatly our food can be varied in quantity to get the same amount of nourishment. And with the following tables, with a little study, would enable a housekeeper to adapt the amount and variety of food to be provided to the number and circumstances of her family. Average amount Nutriment in One Pound of W7ieat. Water,.. Gluten,.... Albumen, Starch,.. Sugar,.... Fat,..... Fibre,.. Gum,.. Mineral matter, } Nitrates.. Carbonates. 2 oz. 215 gr. I2 0 0 146 9 215 1 0 I0 52 } Waste. { Phosphates. 0 104 104 108 Amount of Nutriment in One I Water,.. Gluten,. Albunen, Starch, Sugar, Fat,... Nitrates..... Carbonates. * * * oound of Bye. 2 oz. 35 gr. {1 318 L0 213 r 8 79 0 2262 0 0 66 {0 371 I1 284 0 122 Gum,...... W } Waste. Woody fibre,.. Mineral matter,. Phosphates, 104 SOUTHERN AND NORTHERN CORN. The average Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Northern C(orn (liaize). Water, Gluten, Starch, Sugar, Fat,*. Woody j Mineral * * * 2..... N itr a te. 1....... 9.... Carbonates. 0..... ) J 1 fbre,.. Waste. 0 matter,. Phosphates. 0 oz. 105 gr. 402 262 21 101 350 70 iTe average Amount of Nutriment in Southern Corn. One Pound of Water,..... Gluten,..... Starch,.... Sugar,... Fat,.... Woody fibre,.. Gum,...... Mineral matter,. Nitrate. } Carbonates. } Waste. ( Phosphates. 3 oz. 0 gr. 4 215 3 218 0 200 0 20 1 21 0 200 0 250 * Or oil, two and one half times more fattening than starch or sugar. BARLEY, OATS, AND BEANS. 105 The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Barley. Water,.... 2oz. 215 gr. Gluten,..... 2 AGluten >,. Nitrates. 1 Albumen,... J L 0 Starch,... 7 Sugar,.... Carbonates. 0 Fat,.... Mineral matter,. Phosphates. 0 Average Amount Nutriment in One Pound Wo+tr 9n nY 110 100 215 215 30 215 Oat Meal. 1 A)n sr..I. C ~ ~,..~ ~. J. A..dV &'I L Gluten..... Nitrates r 2 0 >Nitrates. q Albumen,... 0 350 Sugar,..... 0 360 Starch,..... Carbonates. 0 100 Fat,. 0 360 Mineral Matter,. Phosphates. 0 200 The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Beans. Water,.. 2 oz. 161 gr. Casein,.... Nitrates. 3 368 Starch,..... 5 333 Sugar,.. Carbonates. 0 140 Fat,...... 0 140 Woody fibre,..W r 1 206. Waste. Gum,......J 1 157 Mineral matter,. Phosphates. 0 245 106 PEAS AND BUCKWHEAT. The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Peas. Water,. Casein,.. Starch,.. Sugar,... Fat,.. Woody fibre, Gum,.... Mineral matter 2 Nitrates. 3 Carbonates. { 5 Carbonates. 0 0 oz. 112 gr. 324 403 140 140'' Waste.,. Phosphates. 1 263 1 193 0 175 Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Buckwheat. Water,.... Gluten,.... Starch,.... Sugar,.... Fat,..... Gum,..... Fibre,.... Mineral matter,. Nitrates. Carbonate } Waste. ~ Phosphate 2oz. 118gr. i 165 18 0 3es. 0 140 0 70 0 140 I0 126 es. 0 126 RICE AND POTATOES. 107 The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Rice. Water,..... Gluten,..... Starch,..... Sugar,.... Fat,..... Gum..... Fibre,..... Mineral matter,. Nitrates. }Carbonates. 2 oz. 26gr. 1 0 11 360 0 370 0 30 0 40 0 215 0 20 } Waste. { Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Potatoes. Water,.... Starch,.... Sugar,.... Fat,...... Albumen,.. Woody fibre, Gum,.... Mineral matter,. Carbonates.. Nitrates. W \ aste.. Phosphates. 12 oz. Ogr. 2 205 0 215 0 2 0 142 0f 354 l0 20 0 354 108 SWEET POTATOES. Amount Nutrtnzent in One Pound of Sweet Potatoes. Ounces. Grains. Water,.... 10 340 Starch,.. Sugar,.. Fat,... Albumen,.. Fibre,.,.. Gum... Mineral matter,. l 2 249. Carbonates. 1 277 J s0 I 18 Nitrates. 0 105 IWaste. f 0 35 * 0 77 Phosphates. 0 210 Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Parsnips. Water,... I Albumen,.. Sugar, Starch, Fat, Fibre,. Gum, * * * X * * *. *... *.. * * *. 13 53. Nitrates. 0 87 ~.)~ [0 210. Carbonates. 0 245 J I 0 35 { 1 123 I Waste. 2 Phospha. 0 52. Phosphates. 0 70 Mineral matter, TURNIPS. - CARROTS. 109 The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Turnips. Ounces. Grains. Water,... Albumen, &c., Sugar,.... Gum,..... Fibre,.. Mineral matter, Nitrates. Carbonates. PoWaste. Phosuhates, 14 213 0 77 0 28 {0 107 0 168 0 35 Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Carrots. Water,... 14 6 Albumen,.. Nitrates. 0 42 Sugar,..... 1 11 z Carbonates. Fat,...... J J 0 14 Gum,..... 0 70 \ Waste. q Fibre,.. 0 231 Mineral matter,. Phosphates. 0 70 Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Cow's Milk. Water,..... Casein,..... Nitrates, Butter,.... } Carbonat Sugar,.....J Mineral matter,. Phosphat es.;es. 13 533 0 350 0 245 0 215 0 70 110 MILK. Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Human llilk. Ounces. Grains. Water... Casein,..... Nitrates. Butter,... Sugar, Mineral matter, } Carbonates. Phosphates. 14 41 0 210 0 210 J0 300 0 35 Amount of lutriment in One Pound of Goat's Milk. Water,.. Casein,..... Nitrates. 10 0 Butter,.... Sugar, Mineral matter, Carbonates. 0 LPh h t 0. Phosphates. 0 0 325 230 280 70 The casein and phosphates are in larger proportions in the milk of the cow and goat than in human milk, to adapt them to the different conditions of their young. The calf and the kid, being active from their birth, require the nitrates for feeding the muscles, and the phosphates for vital power, at first; while the child, being dormant and helpless, requires less of these principles; and therefore, to substitute the milk of the cow or goat for food for the child, about one third water is required, and a little sugar - a little more for cow's than goat's milk, - but the difference between the milk of the cow ANIMAL FOOD. 111 and that of the goat is too little to make it an object to be at much trouble for the choice. The proportions vary in different cows, and therefore it is important, in raising children on cow's milk, to get the milk that suits, and then use the same cow's milk constantly. The Four Principal Meats, of average Fatness, compared with Vegetable Food. The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Beef of average Fatness. Water,.. ~ Fibrin and ) Albumen, Nitrates. Albumen, J Ounces. Grains. 8 0 rEqual to same ain't 122 casein, gluten, or albumen —1 oz. t 122 grs. (Equal to 2.A times A 3AJn as much sugar or o starch, or 11 oz. 0 350 75 grs. 1 122 Fat,.. Mineral,.. Gelatine,. Carbonates. Phosphates. Waste. The Amount of Nutria nent in One Pound of Veal. Ounces. Grains. 10 9 Water,.. Fibrin and 1 Albumen, Nitrates. Albumen, Fat,.... Carbonat, Mineral,.. Phosphat Gelatine,.. Waste. es. es. 1 199 (Equal to 2. times <2 281 as much sugar or 2 starch- 6 oz. 265 0 312 grs. 1 82 112 MUTTON. - PORK. The Amount of Nutriment in One Pound of Mutton. Ounces. Grains. Water,... Fibrin and } Albumen, Nitrates. Fat,.... Carbonates. Gelatine,.. Waste. Mineral,.. Phosphates. 7 16 0 385 (Equal to 2A times as much sugar or 6 176! starch-16 oz., 1 52 or lb. 1 52 0 241 The Amount of _Nutriment in One Pound of Pork. Ounces. Grains. Water,.. Fibrin and ) Albumen, Nitrates. Fat,.... Carbonates. Gelatine,.. Waste. Mineral,.. Phosphates. 6 69 0 315'Equal to 2j times as much sugar or 8 0 starch - 20 oz., 0 315 or 14 lbs. 0 315 0 312 Rations for the English Soldier.-The amount and proportion of carbonates and nitrates necessary to keep the English soldier in a fighting condition, are found to be five ounces of nitrates to twenty ounces carbonates; and this amount is therefore daily furnished, both in England and in India, and the English colonies; and the English sailor has the same allowance. Rations of the Dutch Soldier. - When in war, it is five ounces of nitrates and twenty-one ounces carbonates; but when in peace, or in garrison, it is only three SOLDIERS' RATIONS. 113 and one half ounces nitrates and twenty ounces carbonates; but with this diet he is below fighting condition. Rations of the French Soldier. - The diet of the French soldier is very different from that of the English or Dutch, they using much more of liquid food; still the proportion or amount of nitrates and carbonates is not very dissimilar. He gets about four and three fourths ounces nitrates and twenty-four ounces carbonates, and on this is always kept in a fighting condition - probably wasting three or four ounces of the carbonates. English Soldiers in the Chelsea Iospital have their nitrates reduced to three or four ounces, but their carbonates remain the same; as also the sailor in the Greenwich Hospital; but, having no exercise, they need less carbonates as well as less nitrates, it being known that the demand for both nitrates and carbonates is equally increased or diminished in proportion to the amount of exercise. Rations of Greenwich Pensioners. - They have three and one half ounces nitrates and twenty ounces carbonates. Rations of Chelsea Pensioners. - They have four and one half ounces nitrates and twenty and one fourth ounces carbonates. Rations of Old Men of Gillespie's Hospital, Edinburgh. -They have three ounces nitrates and twenty ounces carbonates. Rations of Paupers. - In all the workhouses of England, Scotland, and Ireland, the average is daily 8 114 HOSPITAL RATIONS. three and one half ounces nitrates and sixteen and one half ounces carbonates. Rations of Boys of Ten Years old. -In the English schools two and one half'ounces nitrates and fifteen ounces carbonates are allowed daily. Rations of Boys in Christ's Hospital in London.Only two and one half ounces nitrates and fourteen ounces carbonates are allowed; but the average age is not stated. Massachusetts State Prison. Average inumber of Prisoners, 545. Food consunecl in one Week - Flour, Meal, 13 bbls.. 60 bush.. Beans, 9 " Peas, 3 " Rice, 41 (" Potatoes, 100. Fresh beef,.. Fish (fresh and salt), Fat pork, Hard bread,. Lard,.... Pounds. 2600 3000 576 192 306 6000 925.1100 525 40 60 Each man. lbs. oz. 50 5 8 10 05 18 10 0 18 20 10 0 1 02 Carbonates. Nitrates. DS. oz. oz. 42 6 38 8 08 5 0 31 1-a 0 7 02 8 0-. 0 7 3 0 10 4 1 0 0 0 1 o0 0 2 0 28 00 13 08 - 298 Each man consumes in one day thirty ounces carbonates and four and one fourth ounces nitrates. STATE PRISON RATIONS. 115 By comparing the above bill of fare with the standard already given, it will be seen that the musclemaking elements are three fourths of an ounce below the standard, while the carbonates are at least one third too high. It should be considered that living in a moderate and uniform temperature, and using only moderate muscular exercise, neither nitrates nor carbonates need be above the average,- probably not more than twenty ounces of carbonates are consumed: all the remainder is cast off.as waste; and not being the natural waste, tends to derange the stomach and bowels, and clog and render dormant the whole system. The prisoners may be fat, and may look healthy, and indeed may be, and should be, with their regular habits, healthy, and the bill of mortality be much below the average; but they cannot have much muscular or mental energy. By changing the first two articles on the bill, a saving of more than one hundred dollars would be made in a week, and a bill be made giving them more agreeable food, and giving them more of the nitrates and phosphates, and therefore more energy of mind and muscle. Half the amount of unbolted wheat flour, made from good wheat, would give more than the same amount of nitrates, with about one pound less of carbonates, and the bread would be equally satisfactory; and then half the amount of Southern corn (thirty bushels) meal, made from the variety of corn represented by Fig. 3, would give more nitrates and more phosphates than is obtained from sixty bushels of Northern corn, and the bread would be lighter and 116 6ARMY RATIONS. better, - which would also reduce the amount of carbonates perhaps one pound more. And the bill might be still further improved by substituting for the four and one half bushels of rice as many bushels of peas, which would add an ounce to the nitrates and subtract another pound from the carbonates, as may be seen by the analysis. The Bill of Fare of Chinese Passengers from China to California. Carbonates. Nitrates. Rice,... 1 lbs. 17 oz. 11 oz. Beef or fish,. 1 lb. 1 oz. 1 oz. Salted vegetables, - lb. 1 oz. 0 oz. 87 gr. Tea,.... - oz Water,... 3 qts. 19- oz. 2oz. 87 gr. Having a full supply of carbonates, and only half the amount of nitrates necessary for active life, probably they sleep most of the time. American Army Rations. Carbonates. Nitrates. Pork or bacon,. - lb. if all fat, 12 oz. 0 oz. Fresh or salt beef, 14 lb. average fatness, 7 oz. 2 oz. Bread or flour,. 1 lb. 8 oz. or 1 lb. 6 oz. 2 oz. Hard bread,.. 12 oz. 11 oz. 1 oz. Corn bread,.. 4 oz. 1 oz. 4 oz. 8 qts. of beans in one hundred rations; or, in lieu, 10 lbs. rice twice a week; or, in lieu, 150 oz. dried potatoes and 100 oz. dried vegetables; 1 lb. tea, 15 lbs. sugar. AMERICAN DIETETICS. 117 These rations are very unscientifically made up. If I understand the bill, a man may have three fourths of a pound of fat pork and twelve ounces of hard bread on the same day, and nothing else, and get twentythree ounces of carbonates and only one ounce of nitrates; or he may have one pound and one fourth of fresh beef and one pound and one half of flour bread, and get twenty-nine ounces of carbonates and four ounces of nitrates; or he may have the same quantity of fat pork, which contains no nitrates, and bacon, which, if of average fatness, would give a good share of nitrates. It is evident that in any combination the rations give too large a proportion of carbonates to beget activity and energy, and a large amount of flour or hard bread must be wasted. A great improvement would be made by leaving out three fourths of the flour and all of the rice, and giving instead Southern corn bread or hominy and beans and peas. This would give much more muscle power, and would save a large amount of expense. The great dietetic fault of the nation lies in eating too much carbonaceous food, especially with that part of the people who have followed old English habits. Probably the Massachusetts state prisoners live more nearly in accordance with physiological laws than any five hundred men outside; but we see that they waste one third of their food in superfluous carbonates. By all the bills of fare for soldiers and prisoners, and all other tables by which it could be ascertained how much of muscle-making nutriment is required 118 ELEMENTS OF FOOD. under different circumstances, it is seen that men in sedentary life, in this country or Europe, are not content with less than four ounces of the nitrogenous elements of food, and, in considerable degree of activity, they demand, and will have, five ounces; and in the same way it is ascertained that from four to five times as much of the carbonates are required as of the nitrates. If food is set before us containing these proportions of elements, we shall eat only just enough to furnish the system with the elements required; but if we have before us food containing ten times as much of the carbonates as of the nitrates, we should then eat twice as much of the carbonates as are required, in order to satisfy the demands of the appetite for the necessary supply of nitrates. Wc will demonstrate this proposition. To get muscle-making food in right proportions, take natural food - 1 lb. milk,.. 1 lb. beef, roasted, 1 lb. potatoes, 1 lb. unbolted bread, 1 lb. apples,. Carbonates.. 0 oz. 245 gr. 4 oz. 340 gr. 3 oz.. 10 oz. 165 gr. 3 oz. 21 oz. 313 gr. Nitrates. 0 oz. 350 gr. 1 oz. 122 gr. 145 gr. 2 oz. 110 gr. 145 gr. 4 oz. 335 gr. To get muscle-making food in unnatural proportions, PROPORTION OF ELEMENTS. 119 take food in common use, some of which is in a natural state, others not: - Carbonates. Nitrates. 1 lb. roasted beef,. 4 oz. 340 gr. 1 oz. 122 gr. 1 lb. milk,... 245 gr. 350 gr. 2 lbs. superfine bread, 22 oz. 370 gr. 4 lb. butter,...4 oz. 0 gr. 4 lb. sugar,.. 4 oz. 0 gr. 1 lb. potatoes,..3 oz. 145 gr. 1 lb. apples,... 3 oz. 145 gr. 41 oz. 143 gr. 3 oz. 258 gr. In this bill one half the carbonates must be wasted. Of the first bill, you may take of either of the articles as much as you please without varying the proportions of carbonates and nitrates, and consequently are in no danger of wasting food or embarrassing the system by eating too much, the appetite being satisfied when the requisite amount of nitrates is supplied; or you may vary the amount of different articles, taking more of one and less of the other, without varying the proportions of the nitrates, and therefore still eat all the appetite demands. For example, suppose, instead of a pint of milk and a pound of bread in a day, you take double the amount of milk and one and one half pounds of bread, you would then get four ounces and four hundred and twenty-eight grains of nitrates,- almost the requisite amount, 120 PERRORS OF DIET. from bread and milk alone; indeed, for a warm day, at rest, the amount of nitrates and carbonates would both be too large; or, with one half or one fourth of the beef, you would take more of the other articles in proportion, and could thus safely trust your appetite to the full extent of its demands without harm. But with the last bill of fare, you must take double the quantity to get the requisite amount of musclemaking and brain-feeding nutriment, and consequently one half of all the food taken would be lost. All the sugar and butter, and more than half of the flour, would be thrown from the system as waste, and not only lost, but by giving extra and unnatural work for the exeretories, embarrass their functions and render them liable to disease; while the presence of these heating articles renders every organ more liable to inflammation and disease, and the efforts of the stomach and bowels to dispose of these offensive materials, together with the fermentation of these undigested elements, would cause flatulence, acidity, dyspepsia, and the thousand and one pains, inflammations, liver and bowel complaints, which are liable to attack us, especially in warm weather, when the system is not as well able to resist these influences. When we consider how many families, especially among the poor, live very nearly on the same kind of food summer and winter, eating in warm weather butter, fat pork, superfine flour, lard, &c., is it strange that in the height of the warm season we have bowel and liver complaints, gastric and typhoid fevers, dysen ANALYSIS OF FOOD. 121 teries, dyspepsias, &c.? I think that, considering the articles wasted are among the most expensive, I am sustained in the assertion that more than one half of the expense of food in Boston, to say nothing of all the diseases, would be saved by adapting our food to the wants of the system, and that we should enjoy life, and especially the pleasures of eating, as we never can while living in disregard of Nature's laws. Analysis of Articles of Food in a Dry State.,. Wheat,. Barley,. Oats,. ce 0.0 0, 2s0 2.0 16.001 81 17.50 80 4.011 Wheat is thebest grain for bread, in unbolted meal. In fine flour, only useful when the stomach 3.4 and bowels are in an irritable state, as in diarrhcea, cholera morbus, &c. r Barley is excellent for students, as it abounds.6.9 in food for the brain, and in waste to keep the bowLels active. r Oats are good for ac-.5.6,tive men, either with muscle or brain. Northern corn is fattening, containing as it 5.0 does more than five times as much oil as is found in wheat. r Hominy from southern corn is excellent food in warm weather, 8.0 ]abounding in food for muscle and brain, and khaving few carbonates. 19.75 77 3.511 Northern corn, 14.00 85 1.3 Southern corn, 140.001 52 4.91 122 ANALYSIS OF FOOD. Tuscarora Tuscarora corn, Di 5 Potatoes,. Sweet potatoes, Parsnips,.. Carrots,.. Turnips,.. Veal,.... Beef,... Lamb,.. Mutton,.. Pork,.... 5.6 4.00 6.7 4.8 10.00 42.00 30.00 22.00 19.00 15.00 IW' 88 80 Cso 80 39 28 40 100 150 170 150 212 I cs 4. - 3.0 8.8 5.5 8.0 5.0 12.0 10.0 7.5 5.3 2.4 3.0 1.5 9.1 4.3 4.0 7.5 7.0 7.0 7.0 5.0 These and all other green vegetables and fruits, contain all the requisite elements of nourishment, but with such an amount of water and waste, that the capacity of the human stomach is insufficient to contain the necessary supply, while animal food is too concentrated to give the necessary distention and waste; but eaten together they each supply the deficiency of the other class of food. Fat being the source of supply of carbon in animal food, and supplying as it does two and one half times as much heat as sugar or starch, the true amount is obtained in this table by multiplying the figures of the next table by 2l * While therefore beef is reported to have twice as much carbon as nitrogen, it actually has five times as much. For this reason, animal food is too concentrated, and having also too much phosphorus, requires vegetable food to dilute and modify it. * See page 124. 124 ANALYSIS OF FOOD. Analysis of Articles of Food in their Natural State. Articles. Nitrates. Carbonates Phosphates. Water. Wheat,..... 15.0 69.8 1.6 14.0 Barley,.... 17.0 69.5 3.5 14.0 Oats,.... 17.0 66.4 3.0 13.6 Northern corn, or maize, 12.0 73.0 1.0 14.0 Southern corn,.. 35.0 45.0 4.0 14.0 Tuscarora corn,... 5.0 80.0 1.0 14.0 Buckwheat,.... 8.6 75.4 1.8 14.2 Rye,......13.8 71.5 1.7 13.0 Beans,..... 24.0 57.7 3.5 14.8 Peas,... 23.4 60.0 2.5 14.1 Lentils,.... 26.6 58.5 1.5 14.0 Rice,... 6.5 79.5 0.5 13.5 Potatoes,.... 1.4 22.5 0.9 75.2 Sweet potatoes,.. 1.5 26.5 2.9 67.5 Parsnips,.... 1.2 7.0 1.0 82.0 Turnips,... 1.1 4.0 0.5 90.5 Carrots,.. 0. 6.6 1.0 87.5 Cabbage,.... 4.0 5.0 1.0 90.0 Cauliflower,... 6.4 3.6 1.0 90.0 Cucumbers,.... 1.5 1.0 0.5 97.0 Apples,..... 5.0 10.0 1.0 84.0 Milk of cow,... 5.0 8.0 1.0 86.0 Human milk,.. 3.0 7.0 0.5 89.5 Veal,......16.0 16.5 4.5 62.5 Beef,..... 15.0 30.0 5.0 50.0 Lamb,..... 11.0 30 3.5 50.5 Mutton,.... 12.5 40.0 3.5 44.0 Pork,......10.0 50.0 1.5 38.5 FISH AS FOOD. 125 Articles. Chicken, Codfish, Haddock, Sole, Plaice,. Flounder, Turbot,.. Trout, Whiting, Smelt, Salmon, Eels,. Herring, Halibut, Oyster,. Clam,. Lobster, Eggs, white of, Eggs, yolk of, Butter,... Nitrates. Carbonates. 20 35 14 very little 13 very little 15 very little 14 very little 15 some fat 14 very little 17 very little 15 very little 17 very little 20 some fat 17 some fat 18 some fat 18 some fat 10 very little 12 very little 14 very little 15- none.17 a 28l all carbonates Phosphates. 5 o 5 or 6 5 or 6 5 or 6 5 or 6 3 or 4 5 or 6 5 or 6 5 or 6 5 or 6 6 or 7 3 or 4 4 or 5 3 or 4 2 or 3 2 or 3 5 or 6 4' 2 51 2 Water. 73 79 82 79 80 78 79 75 78 75 74 75 75 74 87 79 80 54 Fishes. Of the fishes, there has not yet been made analyses sufficiently accurate to make a reliable table. The nitrates of common white fish, like cod and haddock, are in about the same proportion as in beef and mutton, and of the phosphates rather more; while the more active fish, as the trout, pickerel, shad, &c., contain more nitrates and phosphates in proportion to their activity. The amount of carbonates depends on the amount 126 FISH AS FOOD. of fat; the gelatinous. principle, although containing carbon, is not digestible, and therefore furnishes no carbonaceous food; the nitrates consist mostly of albumen, which is easily digested, but furnish less muscular power than fibrine of red-blooded meats. Fishes, therefore, afford better food for students and sedentary men than for those who work hard. Except the fatty fishes, most of them require to be cooked with lard, fat pork, or butter, and to be eaten with potatoes, or some farinaceous food, to furnish the requisite carbonates. There is a class of fishes, however, like the salmon, halibut, &c., which are quite well supplied with the carbonates; they are easily digested, or not, as they contain more or less fat; and the cod, haddock, trout, shad, &c., are excellent food, if relished, for invalids, convalescents, &c.; while the fatty fishes and the preserved fishes are more suitable for those who take active exercise in the open air, and have better powers of digestion. PRESERVED FISH. - Various methods are devised for keeping fish, as pickling in salt, drying, smoking, &c. Pickled fish are objectionable, having lost most of their nutritive element and their soluble phosphates. The brine in which fish as well as beef has been pickled has been analyzed, and found to contain most of the albumen and the phosphates which are adapted to give vigor to the brain and nervous system; but not the fibrine, which makes muscles, or the phosphates, which make bones. Fish, therefore, which has been in brine, is suitable for laboring men, but not for sedentary persons, or those who use their brains. LIFE AND POWER TO MOVE. 127 " Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you." This promise was made to man on the basis of immutable law. In every living thing, life and power to move is found to depend on the same elements,phosphorus and nitrogen, - and of course every living thing is capable of imparting life and power to move to every other living thing which has digestive powers by which to appropriate these elements; and, as has before been intimated, this power of imparting life and muscular power in any article of food is in proportion to the phosphorus and nitrogen contained in it. On the other hand, "every moving thing that liveth" contains these elements in proportion to its own vital activity and muscular power, so that we need not analyze every living thing in order to know its dietetic value. This principle is not only established by chemical analysis, but by observation on the habits of animals, and the experience of every man. (See page 84, 85.) Who has not experienced the difference of power and activity of mind and muscle produced by different kinds of food? For example, by a dinner from the muscles of an ox, that have been developed by hard work, and one from the muscles of a dormant hog? Indeed, the difference is perceptible between the used and the unused muscles of the same creature. The breast of the chicken or turkey, which is made up of the unused muscles of the wings, is white, dry, and comparatively insipid, containing but little phosphatic or nitrogenous food, while the muscles which 128 IS PORK WHOLESOME? move the legs are dark, juicy, rich in flavor, and contain a very much larger proportion of the life-giving and muscle-making elements. On the other hand, the breasts of the birds which live on the wing are rich in these elements, and their thighs and side bones are covered with poor, dry meat. This principle holds good in relation to all animal food, from quadrupeds, fishes, fowls, and reptiles; and it may be useful in assisting to determine the comparative value of different articles, and in adapting them to our circumstances. A full understanding of this principle in the community will relieve the doctor from that inevitable question, which meets him wherever he goes. In the sick room or at the dinner table, in the horse cars or at the social circle, wherever he is, somebody bores him with the question, Doctor, is pork wholesome? Are potatoes wholesome? &c., &c.; questions which can be answered yes or no, or both yes and no, with equal propriety, unless, with the answer, he goes into a disquisition on the peculiar properties of each, and the circumstances which make them wholesome at one time and hurtful at another. A rattlesnake, all but the head, would make a delicious and wholesome meal to a man who was starving, and could get nothing else, while the most delicate woodcock would be poison to a man prostrated with typhoid fever. That abstract question, then, so often asked (is this or that kind of food wholesome), is only consummate nonsense. THE GREEN TURTLE. 129 "Every moving thing that liveth," and "every herb bearing seed which is upon the face of the earth," is wholesome under some circumstances, and unwholesome under other circumstances. Of Reptiles. Crustacea and mollusks, and indeed " every creeping thing," either from necessity or choice, in some part of the world, is eaten by man; but in this country and in England only a few species are used. Turtle. Of reptiles, the turtle only is eaten, unless under this title we class eels. The green turtle is brought from the West India Islands and the Bahamas. It as seldom crawls on the land as the eel, and, indeed, has no feet, having in the place of them little paddles, with which it swims with great swiftness; and being very muscular and active, its flesh is very nitrogenous and phosphatic, and not being fat, is an excellent article of food taken fresh from its native element. I have eaten it cooked in four different ways —fried, broiled, fricasseed, and in soup, and found it a palatable and highly nutritious article of food. In this country it is seldom used except in soup. It is very different in its taste, and far inferior in its nutritive qualities, after being kept out of water, on its back, in the cruel manner in which it is kept on the passage. Fresh from the water, some parts of the 9 130 LOBSTER. turtle resemble the flesh of the chicken, other parts have a fishy taste, other parts are albuminous, like the white of an egg, and all parts seem to be nutritious. Crustacea, Many of the species of this class are esculent, and some are excellent food. In this country and England are used the common lobster, the thorny lobster or sea crawfish, the river crawfish, the large edible blackclawed crab, the common or small edible crab, the prawn, and the shrimp. They have all the same characteristics. Being active in their habits, and having powerful muscles, their flesh abounds in nitrates and phosphates, but is rather hard and compact, and therefore requires good powers of digestion, and they are adapted for food to active, healthy persons to assist in the labor of the day, but they are most miserably misapplied to evening entertainments in the form of salads. The lobster is the most valuable of this class of food, and is much the most extensively used. Molluscous Animals. In this country the only species of this class used as food to any extent are clams and oysters; and in England, besides the oyster, the mussel, the cockle, the scallop, the periwinkle, the limpet, and the whelk. But the oyster holds the highest rank in this class of food, and is used among all classes, forming a branch of trade very extensive and important. OYSTERS. 131 This class of animals differs from the crustacea in this, that while the crustacea have powerful and active muscles, the mollusks have almost no muscles at all, having no motion except the opening and shutting of the bivalves, and a slight contractile power by which they imbibe their food. Of course they have not as food the muscle-making elements of the crustacea or other active fish; and although their chemical composition indicates phosphatic salts, they are mostly salts of lime, which go to form the shell and to make bone rather than afford food for the brain and nervous system. Oysters, therefore, are very unsatisfactory food for laboring men, but will do for the sedentary, and for a supper to sleep on. They contain but twelve and one half per cent. of solid matter, including fibrin, albumen, gelatine, mucus, and osmazome, and much of that is gelatine, which affords no nourishment, while butchers' meat contains on an average twenty-five per cent., and the poorest fishes contain fourteen per cent. of pure nitrates. The nitrates in oysters are in the form of albumen, like the white of the egg; they are therefore more easily digested in a raw state than when cooked, but stewed are not indigestible, and for feeble persons and convalescents are better stewed than raw, as in this state they are relished with less stimulating condiments. To oysters, as to all shell-fish, and indeed to all kinds of fish, there is the serious objection that great care must be used to avoid eating them after the 132 POISON FISH. slightest decomposition has commenced, otherwise they may occasion serious disturbance of the digestive orgalls, and even in some cases terrible and fatal diseases. There is also occasionally a very serious poisonous effect from fish perfectly fresh and apparently healthy, in which chemistry can detect nothing deleterious. I have known but few cases of the kind in Boston, and they were occasioned by eating mackerel; but in the Bahama Islands I saw a man, who, fifteen years before, ate a meal from a fish called there blue fish, though very different from the blue fish of New England coast, which in two hours brought on excruciating internal distress, with painful eruption of the skin, and these turns of awful distress had occurred occasionally ever afterwards, entirely unfitting him for any kind of business, and making his life a burden. Not one in a hundred of these fishes is poisonous, but no man has sagacity sufficient to detect the good from the bad; and therefore the inhabitants eat none of these fishes till they submit them to a curious test. They place a piece of fish in the way of a species of ant which is common there: if the ant eats it, they eat it with impunity; if the ant rejects it, they of course do not eat it;- an example which gives force to the idea of Pope, - " Reason raise o'er instinct as you can; In this'tis God directs - in that'tis man." FOUR CLASSES OF FOOD. 133 Classification of Food in common use. 1st Class. -That in which the proportion of heatproducing elements is too large for the common wants of the system, and which alone would sustain life only for a time, shorter or longer in proportion to the amount of other elements which they contain. Lard, butter, sugar, or any animal fats being capable of sustaining life, without other food, only from twenty to thirty days; and superfine flour, being mostly composed of starch, has been proved by experiment on animals to be capable of sustaining life, without other food, only from fifty to sixty days. These are the Carbonates, described in another chapter. 2d Class. - That in which the muscle-making elements are too large in proportion to their carbonates. Some of these articles would be capable of sustaining life only for a limited period without articles of the first class to keep up the steam. These are the Nitrates, described before. 3d Class. - That in which the proportion of elements which support the brain and nerves, and give vital energy both of mind and muscle, is too large for the common duties of life. These are the Phosphates. 4th Class.- That in which there is too much waste material in proportion to nutritive principles, and which, therefore, if eaten alone, produces diarrhoea and debility, but which, taken with other more nutri 134 PRINCIPAL ARTICLES IN EACH CLASS. tive food, subserves the important purpose of giving distention, and keeping the bowels in action, and the system free and cool, by preventing a surplus of stimulating food. The representative articles of these four classes are as follows: — 1ST CLASS. 2D CLASS. 3D CLASS. 4TH CLASS. Carbonates. Nitrates. Phosphates. Waste. Butter and Lean meats. Shell fishes. Green vegelard. Cheese. Lean meats. tables. Fat of all'Peas and Peas and Fruits, bermeats. beans. beans. ries, &c. Vegetable Lean fishes, Active fishoils. &c. es, birds, Fine flour, &c. &c. Under ordinary circumstances, in moderate weather, with moderate exercise of muscle and brain, the proper proportions of carbonates, nitrates, and phosphates seem to be the average proportions found in unbolted wheat meal, viz.: Sixty-five of the carbonates to fifteen of the nitrates, and two of the phosphates to seventeen or eighteen of water and waste, - or something more than four times as much of the carbonates as of the nitrates, and two per cent. of the phosphates, the amount of water not being of much consequence, as it is supplied as it is demanded, and taken as drink when it is not supplied in the food. FOOD WHICH PRODUCES STUPIDITY. 135 A consideration of this classification will help us to understand and correct many important errors in diet. Every observing person has noticed that after a meal in which the predominant articles were chiefly composed of fat meat, fine flour, butter or sugar, he is stupid, or sleepy, and indisposed to exercise either mind or muscle; and the reason is plain: as very little food for either brain or muscle is found in either of the articles named, and this torpor will be found to be in exact proportion to the excess of these carbonates over their proper proportion. And this is the inevitable consequence of separating the important principles which God has joined together, and furnished in every article of appropriate food, in the right proportions, as nourishment for every faculty. If the fat meat had been eaten as it was made, mixed with an appropriate amount of lean, and instead of the flour, the bread had been made of meal from the whole wheat as it was created, and milk had been substituted for the butter, and the sugar taken as it was intended to be taken, with the vegetables and delicious fruits, mixed' with such other elements as the system required, then the appetite might have been indulged to the fullest extent, and no organs or faculties would have been oppressed and overburdened while others were not supplied, and every part of the system would have been prepared, without stupor or sleepiness, to perform the duties assigned it. If we take our food as it is made, with the elements mixed by Infinite Wisdom, we need use our judgment 136 PERVERTED ARTICLES OF FOOD. only in cooking it so as best to develop its flavor and fit it for digestion, and our appetite would safely direct us, both as to the articles to be eaten and the amount required. But presuming as we do to know better than our Maker how to mix the different elements of food, we have spoiled some of our best articles of nourishment, and have at the same time so perverted our appetites and tastes that they are no guide, at least so far as relates to the use of the articles with which we have thus interfered. The only articles of diet in this country which to any extent are thus perverted are wheat and milk, and these are perverted in the same way, by taking out and rejecting the nitrates and phosphates, and using the carbonates only. The effects, especially in our cities, are manifest in our liability to inflammatory diseases; in our feebleness and weakness of muscle, for want of the nitrates; in our defective, aching teeth, for want of lime, &c.; in our physical and mental debility, for want of the phosphates; and in our ash-colored, chlorotic girls, for want of the iron, - all of which elements, except the carbonates, being entirely wanting in butter, and almost all in very nice white flour. See plate of wheat, Figs. 2, 6, and 7. FOOD FOR COLD WEATHER. 137 Practical Application of the Analysis of Food to the different Conditions in Life. Food for Out-of-door Tbork, with the Thermometer below Zero. Let us first take a case requiring the most concentrated nourishment, or, in common parlance, the most hearty food. A man works in the open air in the coldest winter weather: what articles of diet will best sustain him? Under these circumstances he must exercise his muscles to their fullest capacity or he will freeze, and he will therefore require more than twice as much musclemaking food as he would need with moderate exercise: then he would require of the most concentrated heat-producers five times as much as of the fleshmakers. Fat of animals is the most concentrated article of carbonates, and yet we are astonished at the amount necessary to support animal heat in.cold climates. It is said that an Esquimaux woman will eat a gallon of whale oil in one day, or ten or twelve pounds of tallow candles, besides the necessary muscle-making food. The stomach will not, therefore, in active life in the cold, contain food sufficient to sustain life, except in its most concentrated form. For a man, therefore, chopping wood in the cold, fat and lean meats are the articles mostly to be depended on, fat containing two and one half times the heating power of the vegetable 138 FOOD FOR COLD WEATHER. carbonates, sugar and starch, while the muscle of meat contains, of course, the concentrated elements for working power. Of vegetable food adapted to accompany pork and beef, beans, peas, and northern corn bread are best, as may be seen by reference to the analytical table, beans and peas containing more of the nitrates and phosphates than any other vegetable food, and Indian corn containing more carbonates, especially more oil, than other grains. Cheese is also a good concentrated article with corn bread. These articles of food are not easily digested, but are the better on that account, the stomach being subject to the same law as other organs and faculties, - "the more work to do, the more strength to do it." Exposure to cold, without exercise, requires different and more digestible articles. Carbonates, such as sugar, buckwheat or flour cakes, rice, &c., and even the less digestible articles which cannot be eaten in summer, as cheese, beans and pork, &c., may be eaten with impunity in winter, upon the principle stated above, much more food being required in winter than in summer, proportionate powers of digestion are given to correspond. And hence we seldom find trouble from dyspepsia in cold weather, especially with those who exercise in the open air; and it is always best, in order to strengthen the stomach, to take articles of food that will tax the full power of digestion, just as it is best to take active exercise in order to strengthen the muscles. One who lives on rice, can FOOD FOR WARM WEATHER. 139 digest nothing else; but one who can eat and digest beans, cheese, &c., can generally digest everything. Vhat Articles of Food are best adapted to Warm Weather? If it be true that in cold weather we need, and the appetite demands, concentrated carbonaceous food, as has been explained in the preceding chapter, it is also true, as might be expected, and as we all know, that the appetite demands in warm weather a very different class of articles of food; and the reason is obvious. Four fifths of our food being devoted to the production of heat, we need four times as much in cold weather as in warm. If, therefore, we ate the same articles in summer as in winter, and only what our nature required, the stomach and bowels would collapse into one quarter of their size, and could not properly carry on their functions. Nature, therefore, provides for warm climates and the summers of cold, food in which all the elements are greatly diluted, and in which the proportions of carbonates are much smaller than those provided for cold weather. This you will see in the analysis of southern and northern corn, in a very remarkable degree (Figs. 3 and 4). While the proportion of northern corn is six of the carbonates to one of the nitrates, the proportions of these principles in southern corn are nearly equal: it would therefore require six times the bulk of southern corn as of northern to support the same degree of heat; and this disparity is 140 FOOD FOR WARM WEATHER. still more strikingly seen if we compare northern corn with some of our common vegetables. Corn contains seventy-three per cent. of carbonates, turnips four per cent., and cucumbers one per cent. Consequently it would require eighteen pounds of turnips, or seventythree pounds of cucumbers, to furnish as much heat as one pound of northern corn meal. The comparative proportions of carbonates and nitrates in wheat, and indeed all the cereals that grow both in northern and southern climates, as well as those of all other natural products of the soil, plainly declare the will of God in regard to summer and winter food, as do also our appetites and tastes. In the spring we lose our desire for butter and buckwheats, and begin to crave some acid fruits and green vegetables. And yet how mar thoughtless housekeepers at the north go through nearly the same routine of cooking in summer as in winter, with just about as much butter and lard and fat beef, and even pork, and fat gravy, and flour puddings, with butter sauce; not because they like it as well, or think it as wholesome, but only because "their mothers did so before them!" And so powerful is this thoughtless and absurd habit in the Southern States, that it is said that however plentiful may be the supply of milk, and cheese, and green vegetables, fresh lean beef, and fruits, &c., a southern family always has on the table a smoked ham or a "side of pork," and their vegetables are cooked swimming in fat; and to force an appetite, they use the most stimulating spices and condiments. In short, their food in MAN EXPECTED TO UNDERSTAND THE LAW. 141 the hottest weather is suitable only for the coldest northern winter weather. Is it strange that diseases prevail? We need in summer or winter, whether using muscles or brains, or neither, every day food containing carbonates for the lungs, nitrates for the muscles and tissues, and phosphates for the vital powers, but we need them in very different proportions, according to the temperature in which we live and our habits of life. These elements are furnished at our hands, varying in proportions so as to be adapted to the different temperatures and habits; and for animals that have instincts and not intellects to guide them, from the elephant to the smallest animalcule, these different elements are so mixed and prepared, and the appetite so adjusted to them, that they always'want, and always have, and always eat the right kind of food at the right time, and the right quantity. But man, who has intellect, is expected to understand the laws of his being, and to adapt his food to the wants of his nature, varying it according to circumstances. We are creatures of habit, and our systems have wonderful power in adapting themselves to circumstances; and therefore we do not all die, however thoughtlessly we live, and however perseveringly continue the wrong habits to which we have been accustomed; and our appetites falling in with our habits, the evils of wrong living are perpetuated. Still it is true everywhere that the average amount of health and the average length of life are in exact 142 RESPONSIBILITY OF WIVES AND MOTHERS. proportion to the care we take to live in accordance with the laws of our being. This statistics show, and our own observations confirm. But what a responsibility these considerations place upon wives and mothers, who have, or ought to have, the direction of these matters! To them, in providence, as in the word of God, the injunction emphatically is, " Keep my commandments, for length of days, and long life, and peace shall they add to thee," and to thy family. This important promise is fulfilled literally to those who study to obey physical laws, however figurative its fulfilment may be in regard to moral law. Does any one doubt that peace' to the digestive organs, and freedom from fevers and summer complaints, and many other fatal diseases, would result from a strict observance of the law, so clearly revealed, that fat meats, and butter, and fine flour, and other stimulating carboniferous food should be avoided in warm weather, while such articles should be substituted as contain the carbonates in a less concentrated form, combined with such acid fruits and vegetables, and the grains which contain less oil and starch, and more of the nitrates and phosphates? With half the study that is required to learn a complicated piece of needlework, or a difficult piece of music, any intelligent housekeeper could learn the dietetic laws, and institute an arrangement adapting them to the mental or muscular employment of her family, so as to give them the requisite variety of FOOD FOR OLD PEOPLE. 143 wholesome food for summer and winter; for work of brain or work of muscles; and add immeasurably to the length of life and to the comfort and health of her family. But how little attention is given to this important subject! Adaptation of Food to different Conditions and Employments in Life. Food for Old People. Is your fat, good-natured old grandfather living on fat beef and pork, white bread and butter, buckwheat cakes and molasses, rice and sugar, till he has lost all mental and physical energy, and desires to sit from morning till night in the chimney-corner or at the register, saying nothing and caring for nothing?-change his diet, give him fish, beefsteak, potatoes, and unbolted wheat bread, or rye and Indian, with one half or three quarters of the carboniferous articles of his former diet, and in one week he will cheer you again with his old jokes, and call for his hat and cane. Is he lean, and cold, and restless, and irritable? - give him the fattest meats, with the best of butter, and as much sugar and molasses as he desires, net taking away entirely food for the brain and n scles, but adapting them to his circumstances. Perhaps his brain has been overworked, and exhaustion and fitful action follow. If so, he needs some form of phosphatic food to which he has not been 144 FOOD FOR NURSING MOTHERS. accustomed, as oat-meal porridge, or oat-meal cake, with milk, or a diet of fish, and pearl barley, or pea soup. Or perhaps his restlessness comes from inactivity of the bowels: if so, he needs fruits, vegetables, unbolted wheat bread, &c., with care to keep his mind at ease, and to have only such company as is soothing and agreeable. Or perhaps his irritability arises from the use of too much meat and other phosphatic food: if so, keep him on a diet in which the phosphates are deficient, as rice, flour bread and butter, &c., with other food adapted to his other conditions and habits. But that a regard to these different conditions, and an adaptation of food to conform to them, will very much contribute to comfort and happiness in the declining years of life, there is not a shadow of doubt. Food for Children. Is your nursing babe, eight months old, feeble and inactive, its teeth coming through the gums already black and defective, and its soft, flabby flesh indicating a want of muscular fibre? - change your own food at once, and give up butter, and fine flour, and cakes, and puddings with sweet sauce, and take instead beefsteak, oat-meal or barley porridge, with milk and unbolted wheat bread, grits, pea soup, &c., which abound in phosphates and nitrates, and in one week you shall see an improvement in the condition of the child; but if your own health will not admit of such a change, wean FOOD FOR CHILDREN. 145 the babe, and give it the milk of the cow, oat-meal gruel, &c.; and for the next child, be sure and commence furnishing the material for bone and muscle at least fourteen months earlier, and its teeth will not be defective, or its muscles feeble and flabby. Nor are defective teeth and undeveloped muscles the only or the greatest evils that accrue from neglect to furnish suitable material for the foundation of that structure which is so important as to be denominated the "temple of God." "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?" All nature, as well as the word of God, testifies that the crowning work of creation was man; indeed, all other creative work was but a preparation for man, and so far at least as relates to this planet, all creative work ended in making man. But man was not created from nothing, but from elements which had for ages been collecting in the "dust of the ground;" and having at first taken these elements directly from the soil, and constructed a perfect man, God, with wisdom as incomprehensible to man as that by which the first man was created, instituted laws by which all necessary elements should be taken out of the soil by plants, and so organized as under certain laws and conditions to be able to construct other perfect human beings, and thus perpetuate the race, as we have before explained. These fourteen elements, which were at first taken directly from the soil and atmosphere, are now all found deposited in the grains, and flesh of animals, 10 146 FOURTEEN ELEMENTS REQUIRED. and fruits and vegetables, and for the construction of a perfect human being must all be used, at first through the mother's system, and afterwards directly from the food in which they are deposited. This wonderful arrangement can be better understood by further explanation. A grain of wheat, as proved by analysis, contains every one of the elements found in the human system. Plant a grain of wheat in soil in which is no lime, or phosphorus, or nitrogen, and the plant may grow from the carbon and hydrogen, and other elements which it can get from the soil, the air, and water, but the grain would not be developed, and analysis would show that phosphorus, lime, and nitrogen would be wanting in the plant and grain as it was wanting in the soil. Now, as in such imperfectly developed grain the phosphorus, and lime, and nitrogen, which were intended for forming brains, and bones, and muscles, are not there, is it not certain that such grain could not develop brains, and bones, and muscles? - for if wheat does not contain phosphorus, lime, and nitrogen, unless the soil in which it grows contains these elements, is it not certain that the human system cannot be developed by food wanting in these or any other important elements? In soil containing as little phosphorus, lime, and nitrogen as are found in superfine flour bread and butter, the grain of wheat would not be developed at all; and can a child, for which wheat was made, be developed on white bread and butter? Milk of the cow contains all the elements of the human system, PREMATURE DEATHS. 147 and in the right proportions; and if concentrated, or if the stomach was large enough to contain these clements in their diluted state, in sufficient quantities, would support the life and health of any man indefinitely. Primarily it was intended to develop the calf, and it does develop every part perfectly; but feed the calf on cream alone, or butter, and it would die in two weeks. Can butter, then, develop a human being? And yet low many expectant and nursing mothers thoughtlessly provide themselves and their precious little ones with food made up mainly of superfine flour, butter, and sugar, without knowing or thinking that sugar and butter have no elements at all for muscles, or bones, or brains, and white flour very little. If they ate nothing else, of course their children would all die within a month; and as it is, only one half in all Christendom, and not one eighth in all Heathendom, have vital power to carry them through the first five years. Those that live have a life of struggle with disease and suffering in just the proportion as they are deprived of food containing elements adapted to develop the whole system, and give power to resist and overcome disease. The inevitable effects of the diet almost universally adopted is, to stimulate all the organs by the undue proportion of carbon, of which the butter, fine flour, and sugar are composed, which form so large a part of our diet, and which render all organs more susceptible to inflammations and other diseases; while the deficiency of the nitrates 148 EFFECTS OF HEATING FOOD. and phosphates, weakening the organs and diminishing the powers of life, renders them less able to resist and throw off diseases as they occur. Take, for example, the lungs, whose duties are to keep up the steam and "run the machine,"-duties, the importance of which is seen by the fact that, if for a single moment they cease to act, every operation of the system is suspended and life becomes extinct. Overburdened with work in order to dispose of the great excess of fuel imposed upon them, the tissues are feeble for want of their appropriate food; and is it strange that they fail, and become diseased? Or, take the brain and nervous system, which, being overheated with carboniferous blood, and weakened by want of phosphorus, become sluggish and inactive, or act fitfully, and headache and neuralgia ensue; or, being nervous and irritable, a thousand ills, real and imaginary, render life a burden. Or, take the liver, whose office is to eliminate effete elements from the system and assist digestion. Overburdened with work, especially in the spring, after the steam has for months been kept up to the highest practicable point, it gets tired and sluggish, and the bile becomes obstructed, and jaundice and many other bilious difficulties ensue, and thus all organs are made more susceptible to disease, and less able to resist it, by too much of the carbonates and too little of the nitrates and phosphates. While, therefore, all animals, in their natural state, living as they do according to natural laws, raise all APPROPRIATE FOOD FOR CHILDREN. 149 their young, and bring them perfectly developed to full maturity, a perfectly developed young man or woman, at full maturity, with perfect teeth and sound lungs, and well developed muscles and brains, is a rare exception to the general rule; and to every reflecting mind the reason must be obvious: we neglect to learn, and utterly disregard the plain laws of our being, and these terrible sufferings and bereavements are the natural and just penalties for our disobedience. Can any other explanation be given, why beings supported by the same elements, and subject to the same physical laws, should be found in such different physical conditions? Mothers' milk, if the mother live on proper food, is undoubtedly the best, as it is the natural food for children till teeth are formed, which indicate a maturity that requires some other food; but sickly mothers, and those who live on white bread and butter, would subserve the interests of their children by weaning them, and substituting the milk of the cow. For young children the cow furnishes milk with too much of the nitrate element; and the reason for this provision is obvious, as I have explained. When other food than milk is required, that containing some nourishment for the muscles and brain should always be selected, which can readily be known by reference to the tables of analysis; but starch, and arrowroot, and sugar, and cream, all of which are sometimes given in ignorance of their character, contain no element of food but carbon, and would only tend to develop torpidity and foolishness; but, on the 150 FOOD TO DEVELOP VITAL POWER. other hand, beefsteak and oat-meal, and such other articles of food as contain large proportions of nitrogenous and phosphatic elements, tend to develop the muscles and brain too rapidly, and render the child liable to congestion of the brain; and a special regard should be had to this consideration where the child is very active and precocious. Such children always die young, unless special care is taken of their diet and general management. Food for CYhildren deficient in Vital Energy and Muscular Power. That muscular power is increased by exercise has been long known. More than seven hundred years before the Christian era the Olympic games were celebrated, consisting in throwing quoits, leaping, wrestling, boxing, &c., which were held on a certain day corresponding to the 11th of July, and lasting five days, for which the competitors prepared themselves by training in the gymnasium for ten months. For a thousand years at least these games, with a few temporary interruptions, were regularly celebrated, occupying the minds of the whole Grecian nation; and at that age the training of muscles was considered vastly more important than the training of mind. Of the diet used in this training but little is now known; but Pliny says, " the gladiators ate only barley bread, and hence they were called Hordearii," hordeum being the Greek name for barley. FOOD TO DEVELOP MUSCLES. 151 Jackson, the noted English trainer of prize-fighters, feeds his men on the lean muscle of fat beef and mutton, with coarse barley and wheat bread. It is not likely that ancient gladiators or modern prize-fighters understood either the chemical elements of the human system, or the adaptation of those articles of food to supply the requisite elements of muscular power; but it is interesting to notice that experience brought them to the same conclusions as chemical analysis.* The muscles of beef and mutton contain the same elements as human muscles, and are therefore adapted to nourish them, while unbolted wheat and barley furnish also a due proportion of flesh-making materials; and also in each of these articles are the phosphates, which give vital force, wheat containing them in proportions necessary for common exercise, and barley and the flesh of beef and mutton more than double the proportion of those of wheat. If, then, both science and experience show that muscular power can be increased by muscle-making food, is it not reasonable that feeble children should be made stronger by application of the same principle? What duty, then, can be clearer than the duty of feeding our dormant, sleepy, and feeble children on food containing a full share of nitrates and phosphates, as lean meat, oat meal, barley cakes, beans, peas, &c., rather than the stupefying carbonates, as fat meat, fine flour, butter, sugar, or puddings and pies, cakes, &c., which are made up of these articles? * Jockeys also reduce their weight by living on fish and lean meat with little carbonaceous food. 152 IMPURE BLOOD. IHow the Blood becomes Impure. We find by chemical analysis that the blood is composed of the fourteen elements which make up the different parts of the system, and such other elements as have been taken into the system with improper food and drink, and are allowed to go into the circulation, although not wanted for the use of any organ or function, because they cannot be removed in any other way than through the lungs, or skin, or kidneys, and must go into the circulation to get out of the system. They are, of course, not permanently found in the blood, but vary in proportions and character according to the care we take in regard to our food and drink. If we ate only natural food, and drank only pure water, and breathed only pure air, the blood would consist of the fourteen elements only which constitute the solids and juices of the human system. It is evident, therefore, that pure blood is made from pure air, pure water, and natural food, and that while nothing else is admitted into the system, the blood cannot be impure; and if the blood in any case is found to be impure, it is because the food, or drink, or air are not plentifully supplied, or are not pure or natural, and in just the proportion as they are not pure and natural, or are not supplied in sufficient quantity. We come, then, at once to the only way in which the blood can be kept pure, or renovated when found to be PURE BLOOD. 153 impure. If the blood is impure in consequence of additions to its natural element derived from the food, or air, or water, our first duty is to see that the source of impurity is stopped, and then Nature will soon remove the impurities. If it is impure from want of supply of its natural elements, then our duty is also plain, for every necessary element is supplied in natural food, and we have only to use our judgment in selecting the articles which contain such as are needed. How can we know what Elements are wanted to make the Blood Pure? Just as we determine what is wanted to supply any requisition-by comparing the supply with the demand. If a merchant was required to furnish a dozen different articles of merchandise, including gloves, and should by mistake deliver only eleven articles, he would have no difficulty in determining that gloves were the item wanted, if the other articles had all been supplied. Suppose we have a daughter of sixteen, ash-colored, feeble, and undeveloped. If we look over the list of elements, and the proportions of them required to keep the system and blood in perfect condition, as shown by the table of analysis of different articles of food, and as compared with elements of the human system, we shall probably find that, instead of the necessary elements for the blood and the vital powers, she has been accustomed to food made up to a great extent of 154 WHY BLOOD IS NOT PURE. butter, superfine flour, and sugar, which contain but very little nutriment for the blood or vital powers, mixed perhaps with other articles containing the requisite elements, but out of proportion to the wants of the system. Being supplied to repletion with carbonaceous food, there was no room for other requisite principles, and the results were inevitable. Her blood is colorless and impure, and she is feeble and chlorotic, because her food was deficient in the elements which constitute good blood. I have investigated scores, and perhaps hundreds of such cases, and invariably find the principal cause to be, that from childhood they have been fed on white bread and butter, sweet cakes, flour puddings, piecrust, confectioneries, &c., which had kept the system in a heated, feverish condition, with a deficiency of fruits and vegetables, that assist in eliminating from the system the impurities engendered by the excess of carbon in the system, and a deficiency of coarse bread, milk, fish, lean meat, &c., which contain the phosphorus, iron, and other mineral elements necessary for the purity of the blood; and they had generally lost their appetites for the necessary articles of food, and had acquired instead a morbid desire for something strange and unnatural, as chalk, slate pencils, pungent spices, pickled limes, &c. The evils of these habits are generally increased by want of exercise to carry off accumulated impurities, and the blood becomes too poor to be able to carry on the functions of the system. The tissues 6f the lungs break down under the burdens 11OW TO PURIFY THE BLOOD. 155 imposed upon them, consumption ensues, and we lose our daughters, murmuring, perhaps, at the mysterious providence by which we are so afflicted. How to Purify the Blood. We have seen that impurity of the blood consists of excess of some elements and deficiency of others, and that by comparing the list of elements required with the list habitually supplied, we can ascertain what elements are wanting and what are in excess; and having an analysis of all the articles of food in common use, which contain all the elements of the human system in different proportions, we have but to use our common sense in selecting such as will supply the deficient elements, or avoid the excessive. The intelligent farmer finds that some of his land will not produce wheat; and by analysis he will be sure to find that the elements of wheat are wanting, or are excessive. If wanting, he supplies them in such manure as is known to contain them, and is sure of a crop of wheat; or, if excessive, he plants the ground with other crops that need the excessive elements, and after they are thus removed he can get a crop of wheat. What should we think of the farmer whose land needed phosphorus, and nothing else, for a crop of wheat, who should follow the advice of his neighbors, as ignorant as himself, and use lime, and ashes, and salt, and a dozen other things that contained no phosphorus, because somebody else had used some of these 156 HOW TO PURIFY THE BLOOD. articles on land perhaps entirely different, and had found them useful. No article in the world could do good unless it contained phosphorus, but might do harm if it contained elements already sufficiently supplied, and perhaps already in excess. But this is the method almost universally adopted by mothers, in order to purify the blood of their children. That mother is indeed a rare exception, who does not, when her daughter is pale, and she fears impurities of the blood, or perhaps to prevent such an evil, resort to something which somebody says is good for the blood, for she has tried it, without stopping to consider the absurdity of the experiment, or whether it may not, as it must, do harm by troubling the stomach with elements never intended for the human system, and therefore necessarily injurious. In this way are annually expended millions of dollars in Purification, or Plantation Bitters, "Important Medical Discoveries, that cure all humors but the Thunder Humor," Oxygenated Gas, Compound Sarsaparilla, and the thousand and one other advertised sovereign remedies, not one of which contains a single element of the blood, or can by any possibility do good, and all must, from their want of adaptation to the plain requirements of the system, if not from their poisonous character, do more or less harm; and that they cannot as medicines do good, can be shown by principles as simple. But this subject will be considered elsewhere; MINERAL ELEMENTS. 157 All Elements of Food must have been organized m some Vegetable, or they are rejected. Not only is it impossible to purify the blood by the use of articles recommended by ignorant empirics, as we have endeavored to show, and useless to attempt any purification except by the common-sense expedient of supplying deficient elements, and removing or withholding redundant ones, statements, the truth of which will be understood and appreciated by all, learned or unlearned; but it is also true, as I shall endeavor to prove, that no element, however much it may be wanted in the system, can be made to become a constituent of the blood, or be appropriated by any of the tissues, unless that element has been organized in some plant, and is thus fitted to be received according to the law of nature. I make this proposition with diffidence, because it has not been considered by our scientific physicians; and every day, chlorotic girls and other patients are furnished with disorganized iron, and other elements from the shops, with the expectation that they will supply the deficiency of the elements which are supposed to be wanted to restore the blood to its normal condition; and one learned professor, as I have before stated, is endeavoring to supply the posphorus, which had been taken out of the wheat, where it was organized and prepared to supply the system with that important 158 ALL ELEMENTS MUST BE ORGANIZED. element, by adding to the flour salts made from disorganized phosphoric acid. I have elsewhere referred to the great plan of nature, by which all the elements necessary to be used in making or repairing the system were deposited in the soil before man was made, to be taken up in the sap of plants, and vegetables, and fruit trees, and deposited in the seed, and fruits, and juices of these trees and plants, in just the proportions necessary to supply every organ and function; then to be eaten, and digested, and made a constituent of the blood, and appropriated by the organs and tissues; then to be cast off by the excretions, and again deposited in the soil, to be again taken up by vegetation, and continue their rounds perpetually. Now this is undoubtedly the best arrangement for supplying the human system with all necessary elements that even God could make - an arrangement9 to short-sighted man, wonderful and incomprehensible; and is it for us, who have not intellect sufficient to understand one of the processes by which this plan is executed, to say that any part of it is unnecessary?that iron and phosphorus, prepared from crude, unorganized materials, in the laboratory of any chemist, are just as well adapted to supply the wants of the human system, as these elements prepared in Nature's own laboratory? Why not, then, take carbon and nitrogen, or the other elements, directly from the ground, and repair the whole system, or make a new man, by a shorter and cheaper process? WHAT CONSTITUTES A POISON. 159 The Penalty for taking' into the Stomach Elements of Food not organized. After such infinite pains to perfect a plan for supplying the human system with every necessary element, it seems to me reasonable, and perfectly consonant with Nature's other laws, that an ordinance should be instituted requiring that no elements should be admitted into the system except in accordance with this arrangement, and that every attempt to introduce them should be visited by punishment, more or less severe, according to the importance of the element; and this we find to be true. Not an element is allowed to be incorporated into, and become a part of the blood, or any organ or tissue, that is not fitted for digestion in some vegetable; and if any element is offered that is not thus prepared, a rebellion ensues, more or less energetic and severe, according to the importance of the element. This rebellion, or excitement, is injurious to the system, and all the organs and functions involved; and this is what is meant by the word poison, and constitutes the penalty. Phosphorus, for example, is a very important element, being the element on which the action of the brain depends, and the physical source of vitality, and an important constituent, as well, of bones and other solid tissues. In a common-sized man there are found to be nearly two pounds of solid phosphorus, doing its 160 MOST IMPORTANT ELEMENTS MOST POISONOUS. important work quietly and harmlessly; but take two grains of the two pounds which have been disorganized as can easily be done by calcining a bone, and attempt to put them back and reorganize them, by giving them at once to a healthy man, and such an excitement is produced, especially of the brain, that delirium, inflammation, and death might ensue within a single hour; but give ten times that amount, organized in oat-meal or barley cake, or any other natural food containing, it, and the system will quietly and gratefully appropriate what it needs, and reject the remainder without excitement or harn. And can we resist or gainsay the evidence thus furnished, that oat-meal and barley cakes, and unbolted wheat flour, are the appropriate means of introducing phosphorus into the system, rather than phosphatic bread, the phosphorus in which was taken from calcined bones? The Penalty of taking Disorganized Iron. Iron is a necessary, but less important, element of the human system than phosphorus. It is found in the bran of wheat and other grains, and vegetables, and, being transferred from them, is found also in the muscles and blood of animals, and in the curd of milk, and other natural food, in quantities as large as can be appropriated by the system; and this is proof to my mind that Nature intended it to be furnished through these articles of natural food. IRON IS POISONOUS. 161 Being less important than phosphorus, the penalties for attempting to introduce it in any other way are less severe and less manifest, but are still sufficiently apparent to corroborate my position. Dr. J. Francis Churchill, a French author, who has given great attention to the effects of different mineral. elements on the human system, in an article headed "Danger of Iron in Consumption and Chlorosis," says, that M. Trousseau, another very celebrated French physician, whose authority in this country to-day is as high as that of any man living, has carefully investigated the effects of iron, and from a synopsis of a report of these investigations he makes the following quotations: "M. Trousseau has just given utterance to an authoritative and positive statement, which will, no doubt, surprise the profession everywhere. He declares that iron in any form, given in chlorotic affections, to patients in whom the consumptive diathesis exists, invariably fixes the diathesis, and hastens the development of the tubercles. The iron may induce a factitious return to health; the physician may flatter himself that he has corrected the chlorotic condition of his patient; but to his surprise, he will find the patient soon after fall into a phthisical state, from which there is no return. This result, or at least its hastening, M. Trousseau attributes to the iron. The assertion is a most startling one. M. Trousseau is nevertheless so certain of what he says, that he denounces the administration of iron in chlorosis as criminal in the highest degree." (The Italics are as in 11 162 -DISORGANIZED ELEMENTS NEVER USED. the quotation.) This opinion is confirmed by my own observation in a practice of forty years, and furnishes proof sufficient that iron as well as phosphorus must be introduced into the system only as organized for digestion in some plant, or a penalty must be paid. The excitement that follows the taking of iron is less active and less dangerous than after taking phosphorus, because it is less important to the system to reject it immediately; but it illustrates the arrangement of Providence, and establishes the same principle. Can phosphorus, iron, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, carbon, or any other of the fourteen elements which constitute the human system, be made to form a constituent of the blood, or any organ or tissue, unless introduced as they are organized for that purpose, in the atmosphere and water, and in vegetable and animal food, before they have become fermented or decomposed? To comprehend the importance of this question, let us first glance at the various methods in which important elements are forced upon the human system, with the expectation that they will be received and appropriated as if they were introduced in accordance with natural laws, keeping in mind what I have endeavored to prove in the preceding chapters, that all elements offered are either kindly received and appropriated, or are rejected as poisonous. Thousands of invalids, feeble children, and especially feeble girls, are taking every day some preparation of * Since making this quotation M. Trousseau has deceased. A PHYSIOLOGICAL ERROR. 163 iron, with the expectation that it will supply the supposed deficiency of that element, and thus give them health and strength. Phosphorus, also, is introduced in superfine flour bread, with the understanding that it can be made to take the place of that element, which had been bolted out; and it is also used to supply the supposed deficiency of that element in consumption and other diseases. Oxygen, likewise, in the form of gas, is taken to purify the blood and give vigor to the system. Carbon and hydrogen are taken in the form of alcohol, with the expectation that they furnish natural heat to the system. These ideas seem to have come from Liebig, a very learned German chemist, who gave to the world much valuable information on the subject of the chemistry of food, and whose ideas for the last twenty years have been very generally adopted, but who ignored the vital law as controlling chemical laws, and classed alcohol with sugar and other carbonaceous food, because it contains the same elements, and who offered the analytical table of alcohol and sugar which I have copied in another chapter, as proof that alcohol must be nutritive because sugar was nutritive, notwithstanding the fact that the taste and smell, and perceptible effects of the two articles, were no more alike than any other two articles containing different elements. The same argument is still used by eminent chemists, which may be condensed from an argument already quoted, as follows: Phosphorus, taken from bones without de 164 ERRONEOUS OPINIONS. composition, is wholesome, as proved by experiment; therefore phosphatic bread, although containing phosphates chemically decomposed, cannot be unwholesome. Arguments relied on to sustain the Use of Disorganized Elements, and to prove that such Elements may be and are incorporated into the Blood and Tissues. Practically, as has been said, it is generally conceded that elements wanted by the human system can be supplied, and will be received, whether they have been prepared in any vegetable organization or not; but when the question is put directly to our chemists and scientific physicians, as it lately was before the committee of the Legislature on licensing the sale of alcohol, "Is alcohol, or any other disorganized element, actually appropriated by the organs or tissues as food, and incorporated into them as nutrition?" the answer is, "That question is not settled;" very few being ready to make the assertion that it is. And the reason is obvious. There is no proof that a single element ever was made to enter into the blood, or any organ or tissue, as a part of their constituents, unless it was taken with, and formed a part of, some food organized directly or indirectly by passing through some vegetable. I find but one author who claims to bring such proof, and this proof I think can be clearly shown to be fallacious. Frederick William Headland, of the Royal College THE EFFECT OF IRON ON THE SYSTEM. 165 of Physicians in London, has written a book on the action of medicines, which has recently been published in' this country, and which is adopted as a standard work. It goes more thoroughly into the subject than any other author. He places alcohol as a stimulant and narcotic, without the pretence that it can be appropriated by the system, to make any part of its tissues or fat, or even be used as fuel to produce animal heat; but in proof that iron from the shops does enter into the blood as a part of it, he says, "In some cases of chlorosis the blood was analyzed before giving iron and after it had been given for a few weeks, and the blood was found to contain more of red globules after taking the iron than before." And this is accepted as proof positive that the red globules, or at least the color of the globules, were produced by the iron thus introduced. But scores of cases can be brought, where, under a different treatment, the results were the same, and even more striking, without using a particle of iron; and my explanation is, that the effect of the iron was that of a mere stimulant, promoting sanguification, from food taken in the mean time containing iron. Of abundance of testimony on that point, I will bring only one witness. Dr. Churchill, whom I have already quoted as condemning iron on account of its tendency to develop tubercles, says, in his book on "Pulmonary Phthisis and Tubercular Diseases," that phosphoric acid and its preparations " are the most valuable blood-creating 166 IRON MUST BE TAKEN AS FOOD. agents known, as is shown by the fact that more rapidly than any other medicine it increases the quantity and color of the blood;" and he gives cases to prove it quite as remarkable as those referred to by Dr. Headland, and thus the proof that iron produces the red globules directly is entirely neutralized. Now let us bring into one view the different parts of that wonderful, and to us incomprehensible arrangement, made "in the beginning," when "God created the heavens and earth," by which all the solid elements that man should ever require should be placed where, by laws ordained for that purpose, they should be pulverized, and mixed, and scattered, and deposited, and after countless ages be fitted to supply all his physical wants. And then " the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground," and instituted laws by which the elements of which he was made, and which would ever afterwards be needed for his repair and reconstruction, should be taken up in the sap of herbs, and grasses, and fruit trees, and deposited in seeds, and juices, and grains, and fruits, or in the flesh of animals, and birds, and fishes, in such abundance and profusion over the face of the earth, that anywhere, and in all circumstances, to the end of time, these elements should be ready at his hand, requiring only the use of his intellect and physical faculties to procure them and fit them for his digestive organs. With this arrangement, so perfectly adapted to all the exigencies of human life, so clearly revealed as the plan of Infinite Wisdom, is it reasonable that we short BEEFSTEAK AND NITRIC ACID. 167 sighted beings should presume to say that any part of it is unnecessary or unimportant, and that elements not prepared in accordance with it are just as good, and this on no other ground than that they have the same chemical character as organized preparations of the same elements? while the evidence before us is abundant that the same elements, with the same chemical combinations, are wholesome food or virulent poisons as they are or are not organized according to this wonderful plan? Beefsteak and nitric acid both owe their active properties to nitrogen, and the chemical combinations in both are nearly the same; the one is nourishing and the other poisonous in proportion to the amount of nitrogen it contains. What folly, then, to attempt to decide on the influence of any substance on the human system by its chemical combination! Chemical must always obey vital law, as lower law the higher. 168 WATER. WATER. WE have seen that mineralogy, geology, and natural history all corroborate that incomprehensible statement of the word of God, that man was made from the "dust of the ground;" and I have endeavored to delineate also the great law of nature by which the solid elements of the human system are constantly supplied; and we have seen that less than one quarter of the weight of the system is composed of solid matter, more than three quarters being water. We come now to consider the arrangement, equally wonderful, and above human comprehension, by which water, without which life could not have been begun or continued for a single day, should, with unfailing certainty, always be supplied. And here we shall also find in the book of nature the same interesting and complete corroboration of the word of God. Away back in the ages of eternity, farther than the imagination of the human mind can reach, -"in the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth," the sun, moon, and stars, and every element of matter contained in them; but for ages the condition of things was such that all we could understand, and therefore all that is revealed, is, that the "earth was without form and void.," PREADAMITE ARRANGEMENT FOR WATER. 169 The first intimation we have of the particulars of its construction, is made concerning water, in this statement: "And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters." And this is all we know, or could be made to understand, and therefore is all the explanation given till the first day, or period, wheni "God said, Let there be light, and there was light." This, too, being incomprehensible to the human mind, unenlightened by scientific developments, is not explained. In the description of the second day, or period, we begin to get a glimpse of the condition of things. "And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament." "In the beginning," the earth was made of molten rocks: fhis is clearly understood by the condition in which we find it; and of course the water existed only in a state of vapor, or in gaseous elements. To " divide the waters from under the firmament from the waters above the firmament," was, therefore, to cool the outside and form a crust of the earth, so that the vapor could be condensed into water, and thus be separated from the vapors in the regions above the earth. The second day, or period, seems, therefore, to have been devoted to a preparation of the supply of water for man, who was not to be created till the sixth day, or period, when all necessary preparations for him should be completed. The third period seems to have been devoted to the same work of perfecting an arrangement for the supply of water. "And God said, Let the waters under the 170 " LET THE DRY LAND APPEAR." heaven be gathered together in one place, and let the dry land appear." How this was accomplished can now be read much more clearly in the " book of nature " than in the written word. The internal fires of the earth, pent up as they were by the solid crust that enclosed them, began, in their efforts to escape, to throw up the surface of the earth into ridges, and hills, and mountains, and of course the waters retired from these ridges, and hills, and mountains, and they became dry land; and one third of the earth being thus raised, the other two thirds were of course depressed, and there the waters gathered into oceans, and seas, and lakes: and thus was completed the third period of preparation for supplying man with water. That the mountains were once raised from level layers, or strata, which had previously for ages been covered with water, there is not in the mind of any reflecting man, who knows the facts, a shadow of doubt. Look into any cave, or excavation, or mine, in any mountain on the face of the earth, and we can see that the strata of different materials, such as coal, slate, &c., which must have been formed under water, and of course on a level, have been pushed up from a level to the position in which they are now seen, by some power from beneath, as if the wet leaves of a pamphlet had been pushed up into an inverted cup, and there left to dry. Finding such a semi-globular mass of printed matter afterwards, and separating these leaves, it could be seen that they once were on a level, THE FOURTH PERIOD OF CREATION. 171 and that in that position the words must have been imprinted on them. In a similar manner can be seen, in the leaves or strata of sandstone, evidence, in the position of the strata, and in the shells and other materials imbedded in them, evidence unmistakable that these strata were for ages under water, and of course on a level, and had been pushed up to their present position, and there left to dry and consolidate. Thus was so far accomplished the work of supplying water for man, that some vegetation could grow; and before the close of the third period we find "the herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself after his kind." But the earth was not yet ready for man, for mists and clouds in the heavens had not yet dispersed, so that the sun had ever shone, or even penetrated but imperfectly the darkness that shrouded the earth, " for the Lord God had not caused it to rain on the earth, but there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground." But the fourth period of creation seems to have been devoted to clearing off the mists from the face of the earth, so that the rays of the sun could penetrate through them, and divide the day from the night; and then for the first time appeared the sun and the moon in the revelating vision to Moses, as if they had just been created and set there, "the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night;" and as if then "He made the stars also," their light having never before reached the earth. Then came the fifth 172 ARRANGEMENT FOR WATER PERFECTED. period, when the sun, having cleared off the mists and clouds from the earth, a system of distillation could be commenced from the surface of the ocean and the earth, and pure water be taken up to be condensed, and fall in dews and rains, and be collected into rivulets, and streams, and rivers, and the great system be inaugurated which to the end of time shall circulate the waters from the ocean to the air and from the air to the ocean, supplying men, and animals, and the minutest insect, without cessation, with this necessary element. Then, and not till then, was the earth prepared for animals, whose life depends on a constant supply of water for the circulation of the food, for perspiration, and the necessary secretions; and not till then were created "every living creature that moveth," "and every winged fowl after his kind," that could in any way contribute to the support or comfort of man. And then, everything being made ready, God said, using for the first time the plural pronoun, as if the councils of heaven were called for the crowning work of creation, " Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth on the earth." Let us now review the history of this preparation for the advent of man, and notice the perfect harmony between the revelation to us through Moses, twenty-five hundred years after the work was finished, and the revelation to us in the mountains, and rocks, THE REVELATION TO MOSES. 173 and rivers, and the chemical character of the elements that compose them. This harmony is the more striking when we consider that Moses knew nothing of astronomy, mineralogy, geology, or chemistry, as is evident from his descriptions, in all of which he gives us not the actual condition of things, or the actual development of events, but only a description of things and events as they appeared to him, or as by a kind of panoramic vision they were revealed, to be described in his own words. Thus, in his description of the sun, moon, and stars, as they appeared when the mists had cleared off so as to reveal them, as if they were then created, he says, "And God made two great lights, the greater to rule the day, and the lesser to rule the night;" "and he made the stars also." And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth." This was on the fourth day, but on the second day, he says, " God said, Let there be light;" and this was when " God moved upon the face of the waters," and the mists were so far condensed that light from the sun began to shine through them. It is evident, therefore, that Moses wrote in his own language a description of appearances, as revealed by a kind of panorama, as suggested by Hugh Miller in " The Testimony of the Rocks." First, he saw the earth, so enshrouded in mists that not a ray of light could penetrate to its surface, and it appeared "without form and void;" then, next, as it appeared when the mists were partly condensed into 174 THE REVELATION TO MOSES. water, so as to let in a little light; then, as the mountains and hills were raised, and the waters settled into seas and oceans; and finally, when the arrangement was fully perfected, so that every blade of grass, and every little insect should be sure of a supply of water, and the earth was fully prepared for the advent of man, for whom all this preparation was made. Now, astronomy, geology, and chemistry all demonstrate that all that was thus revealed to the vision of Moses, and all he describes as appearances, were in perfect accordance with, though not a revelation of, scientific truth. The earth must have been enshrouded in darkness, for water cannot exist at a temperature above 212~; and of course a temperature sufficiently high to melt the rocks must have driven all the water into vapor around the earth. Now, if the little fog which gathers over a city, as it sometimes does over the city of London, can so obstruct the light as to leave the inhabitants groping in darkness, what must have been the darkness when the whole ocean was in vapor around the earth? And as the surface of the earth cooled, and the vapor condensed, after a while the light of the sun must have begun to shine through, according to the description of the first day, and there would be a manifest division between the water and the fog, described as the firmament dividing the waters below from the waters above, which constituted the work of the second day. And when the hills and the mountains were raised, as geology teaches they were raised, to form the dry land OPINION OF CHRISTIAN PHILOSOPHERS. 175 of every continent, then the waters must necessarily have been " gathered together in one place." The sun must have been in the heavens when "darkness was upon the face of the earth," but it could not "divide the day from the night," and " be for signs and for seasons, arid for days and for years," till the mists should have been dispersed so that its light should shine on the earth. And then, to complete the harmony of the testimony of Moses and the testimony of nature, in the chemical composition of plants and animals, we find a description of the earth as being covered with vegetation, and the animals as being created, which was to finish the preparation of the earth for man, just when the arrangement was completed by which vegetation and animals could be perpetually supplied with water. If, then, we take the view of Dr. Kurtz, that the narrative of Moses was "simply prophecy described backwards," and of Chalmers, Pye Smith, and Hugh Miller, and other Christian philosophers, "that the Mosaic account of creation can only be regarded as a record of appearances," we find in the record of Moses respecting the formation of water, and the arrangements for its perpetual supply, and in the records of geology and chemistry, the most perfect harmony and consistency. That this view is true, not only of the revelations of Moses but of all Old Testament revelations, is now almost universally admitted by all Christian philosophers; and, being admitted, there is no longer among them the least anxiety lest the truth of the Bible should be overturned or weakened. But until this was 176 A REVELATION OF APPEARANCES. understood, there was a constant jealousy lest some astronomer or geologist should discover some discrepancy between the written word of God and the book of nature. Thus, when Galileo announced the discovery through his telescope that the earth revolved around the sun, the Christian philosophers of his day, with that strange perversion of intellect by prejudices which always characterized the human mind, demanded as security for their precious Bible that he should retract his opinion, and let the sun go on its revolutions around the earth, and even demanded that he should do so on pain of death. Not one of them dared to look into the telescope, lest they might be convinced of the revolution of the earth; for if the earth did revolve, then Joshua's testimony was not true. Joshua said, when "the sun stood still in the midst of the heavens, and did not go down about a whole day,"... "there was no day like that before it or after it." Galileo said the sun had always stood still, and the revolution of the earth divided the day from the night; and so determined were these philosophers to preserve the Bible from harm, and so darkened were the minds of these the best men of the age, that they deliberately concluded to take his life as a choice of evils, —the life of one man, even one of the best of men, being considered of little value compared with the value of the precious word of God. But now that it is understood that Joshua only described a miraculous event, as it appeared to him, there is no difficulty on that " GOOD'S BOOK OF NATURE." 177 point in the mind of any intelligent Christian, whether philosopher or not. In our day, also, we have seen the jealousy awakened among intelligent Christian men, and even philosophers, upon the statement being made that the earth, according to its geological construction, could not have been formed in a single week. All Christendom was thrown into alarm and excitement again, lest the Bible might be discredited, and many an anathema was heaped on the names of good men who dared to interpret the Bible by the revelations of Nature. I remember, as if it were but yesterday, though now fortyfive years since, the day and the room in which I began to read the then recently published " Book of Nature," by J. Mason Good, in which the idea first struck my mind that the six days of creation, as recorded by Moses, really meant six periods, or ages, of indefinite and inconceivable length. The idea did literally strike my mind with such force as to produce an effect almost stunning; and for that day I read not another word in the book, but gave up my mind to the strange reveries which it excited. I trembled lest the Bible should fall under such a plausible statement of geological revelation; but, looking into the subject, I found that the record of Moses and Joshua must be understood as a record of appearances; and since then I have felt no apprehensions for the revelations of the Bible, and no difficulty in reconciling them with the revelations of geology or chemistry. 12 1.78 A CHEMICO-VITAL PROCESS. Uses of Water in the Human System. By the table of analysis of the human body, we see that three fourths of its weight consists in water. Without water no vital process could be carried on for a single moment. The blood must be liquid or it could not circulate, and not circulating, no elements could be supplied, and none could be removed; and then oxygen and hydrogen are very important elements in the composition of the organs as well as the blood. And thus water occupies a position in the economy of the system which fully explains the importance which seems to be attached to it in nature, rendering it necessary to institute that complicated arrangement for its production, circulation, and minute distribution over the face of the earth which we have been considering. But one of the most important, and to me the most interesting purposes subserved by water, is that chemicovital process by which the temperature. of the body is regulated so as, under all circumstances and external temperatures to which it can be exposed, internally to remain of the same temperature. That certainly is an admirable adjustment of vital and chemical principles, which, without regard to external clothing, or external temperature, or the kind of food taken, or the amount of exercise used, shall keep the internal temperature at 98~, so that in the same individual, under all ordinary circumstances in health, it will not vary from that point more than one or two degrees, in summer or winter, at rest or in violent exercise. A CIIEtMICAL LAW. 179 In a series of experiments on one hundred and fourteen individuals, of both sexes, of different ages, among various races, in different latitudes, and under various temperatures, Dr. J. Davy found that a thermometer placed under the tongue indicated a temperature varying only from 96.5 to 102 -only 5-~; and the extremes of these cases were found very rarely, and always in individuals of great peculiarities of constitution. The process by which this adjustment of temperature is made, as I have said, is partly vital and partly chemical. That part which is vital I will not attempt to explain; but the chemical process is in accordance with a law instituted "in the beginning," and instituted especially for this very purpose (if we believe that the earth was made for man, and all the laws which govern it). This law is easily understood, and is worthy of particular consideration. If a solid is changed into a liquid, or a liquid into a gas, heat is required, which is taken from surrounding objects to supply it. If you place a pot of cream within a vessel, in which it will be surrounded by ice and salt, both of which being solid, the action of the salt on the ice changes it into water, which, requiring more heat, takes it from the cream, which is the nearest object, and freezes it into ice-cream. If you allow moist clothing to remain touching the surface of the body, the moisture, by the heat of the body, or by the atmosphere, is changed into vapor, and produces a dangerous sensation of cold. I have often amused the class to whom I was lecturing by an 180 COLD PRODUCED BY EVAPORATION. application of this law, in freezing water in a warm lecture-room. Take two watch crystals, and put in one a little water, and in the other a little ether, which being light, boils at the temperature of the atmosphere. when the pressure is taken off. Put these together, under an air-pump, and take off the pressure: the ether will boil, and give off vapor, which, abstracting the heat from the water, causes it to freeze; so that in the same temperature we have the processes of boiling and freezing at the same time. This principle is used in warm climates in cooling water and other drink. A porous jug, called a monkey, or a bottle with a wet cloth around it, is always seen hanging in the window where the breeze is drawing through, and the evaporation from the surface of the jug or bottle abstracts the heat from the water within; and I have drank it as cool as was desirable, with the sun directly overhead. We have seen also the operation of this principle in heating and boiling water. Apply heat to water, and its temperature increases till it comes up to 212~; then a violent agitation commences, and steam is evolved more or less rapidly in proportion to the heat applied; and this evolution keeps the water at the same temperature, so that no amount.of heat in the open air can raise the temperature above 212~. And this is the principle which regulates the temperature of the human system, and keeps it at 98~, regulated by the operation of a vital law which we do not understand, and the evaporation of water, as before POWER TO RESIST THE EFFECTS OF HEAT. 181 described, so as to keep the internal parts of the body at 980, while water, under the regulation of physical law alone, is kept, when boiling, at 212~. By this law all animals can, to some extent, adjust themselves to different temperatures; but each species, being intended to occupy only a limited range of heat and cold, each being limited to a few degrees of latitude, have not the necessity for that power to a very great extent. But man, who is destined to have dominion over all animals in all latitudes, must have power to adapt himself to a great range of temperature. In many parts of the tropical zone, the thermometer rises every day, through a large portion of the year, to 1100, and in British India it is occasionally recorded at 1300; while the arctic voyagers frequently record it as low as 55~ below, and Captain Franklin at 58~, and one record by Captain Back is made as low as 70~; making a range of temperature in which men live from 130~ above to 70~ below -two hundred degrees. Workmen in furnaces are accustomed, in some places, to enter a room where the floor is red hot, and the temperature of the air stands at 350~; and the " Fire King " Chabert was in the habit of entering an oven, at a temperature of from 400~ to 600~; and it is not an uncommon feat to take beefsteak into an oven and wait for it to be cooked; indeed, the temperature which Chabert was accustomed to endure would crisp a steak to charcoal. This almost miraculous power of resisting the effects of heat is evidently not purely chemical, as is shown 182 EFFECTS OF COLD ON THE HEALTH. by the different effects of the same temperature on the living and dead muscle; but that chemical law comes into play in this power to sustain extraordinary heat, is shown by the fact that the evaporation of water on the surface of the body is in proportion to the degree of heat to which it is exposed, and of course the heat is evolved from the body according to chemical laws. It is, therefore, a power partly chemical and partly vital, - great changes can therefore be endured with impunity only by persons with good vital powers and in good health. Young children suffer greatly by changes of temperature, and many an infant is killed by treatment which would be safe at maturity, the nurses or mothers exposing them to the influence of cold air or cold water, not knowing their want of power to resist the cold, or perhaps having the idea that exposure will render them tough. Old people also suffer from exposure to changes; and statistics show that from the age of eighty and upwards more than twice as many die in January and February as in July and August; indeed, the mortality of all ages is greater in winter than in summer. M. Quetelet gives, as the results of a large number of statistical observations in Brussels, the following table of the mean monthly mortality at different ages, reckoning the average of the whole year at one hundred per month: - MONTHLY MORTALITY. 183 Mean Monthly Mortality in Brussels. January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December, First Month. 139 128 121 102 93 83 78 79 86 91 93 109 2 to 3 8 to 12 Years. Years. 122 108 Years. Years. 105 130 113 130 127 112 94 82 73 76 78 91 101 25 to 30 1 50 to 60 90Years 106 127 134 121 99 88 82 81 76 80 96 104 111 106 102 102 91 96 95 93 97 97 122 111 102 93 85 77 85 89 90 100 115 and above.158 148 125 96 84 75 64 66 76 74 103 129 This difference in the rate of mortality in summer and winter physiologists have generally supposed to depend on the changes of temperature and the want of power to resist them, especially in infants and old people, and to a great extent this explanation is undoubtedly correct; but experiments to which I have elsewhere referred, made in the Foundling Hospital and in the Zoological Garden of London, thirty-five years ago, by which the length of life of infants and monkeys were increased one hundred per cent. in two years, by a new system of ventilation, would seem to indicate 184 POWER TO RESIST THE EFFECTS OF COLD. another reason for the difference of mortality in infants and old people in summer and winter. Probably in Brussels, where the winters are long and cold, as a matter of economy in heat the houses are not well ventilated, and infants and old people, not being able to go out, are exposed constantly to impure air, which would help to account for the facts presented in M. Quetelet's bill of mortality. In July and August old men and infants breathe pure out-of-door air; in January and February that luxury perhaps cannot be afforded. There is, however, no doubt that the power of generating heat and of resisting cold is very different at different ages; and this depends entirely on the degree of activity. The young Guinea pig, which can run about and pick up food for itself as soon as it is born, is no longer dependent on its mother for heat, or the power of resisting the effects of cold; but young dogs, cats, and rabbits, which are born blind, do not for some weeks acquire the power of resisting the effects of cold, and would die but for the warmth imparted by the mother. The infant is the most helpless of all animals, and is longest in arriving at maturity sufficient to resist the cold air, and it cannot be too carefully protected, unless in our care to protect it from cold we deprive it of pure air, which is quite as essential as a regular temperature. Demand for Water in the Human System. Besides the great demand for water, especially in warm weather, for the purpose of evolving heat, as I AMOUNT OF WATER EXCRETED. 185 have described, it is wanted in large quantities to supply the excretions, and thus carry off effete matter from the system. Three quarters of the system is water; and if the waste of water was no more rapid than that of the solids, we should require half a gallon in a day, the waste of solids being reckoned at nearly two pounds, but the waste of water in warm weather and in active exercise is many times greater than the waste of the solids. The amount of water excreted by the kidneys varies, being to some extent in the inverse proportion to the excretions from the skin. In summer it is less than in winter; the quantity, therefore, excreted in twenty-four hours cannot be exactly ascertained. It is estimated at about thirty ounces in summer, and forty ounces in winter, for a person who only drinks what nature requires; but many persons drink, from mere habit, twice as much as is needed, which must of course pass off in excretions. From the skin is excreted, in ordinary circumstances, from one pound and three fourths to five pounds in twenty-four hours, and in extraordinary circumstances, as in the case of glass-blowers, furnace workmen, &c., it has amounted to sixteen or twenty pounds. More than half as much as the ordinary excretions from the skin is also excreted from the lungs, besides an indefinite and very variable amount from the bowels. We require, therefore, from four to twelve pounds of water daily to keep all the organs and functions in healthy working order. 186 WATER IN THE HUMAN SYSTEM. Importance of Using Pure Water. Water, to perform perfectly the duties assigned it in the human economy, must be perfectly pure; nothing but oxygen and hydrogen combined can pass through the system to accomplish the various purposes which I have described, and every element combined with them in water must be disposed of by the excretories, and must be a source of embarrassment and disease to the delicate organs whose duty it is to expel all intruding elements from the system. Our study, therefore, should be to get water as pure as possible. Nature has provided, in two ways, never-failing sources of supply of pure water, — in the juices of all natural food, animal or vegetable, and in the condensation of vapor in the atmosphere. By comparing the analysis of the human body with that of different articles of food, we shall be interested to find on an average as much water in the different articles in their natural state as in the system, and that to compensate for the increased expenditure of water in summer, the amount of water in the fruits and vegetables intended for summer food is vastly greater than is found in the grains and fat meats that are intended for winter. The average amount of water in fruits, and vegetables, and berries, is more than ninety per cent., while seal oil, of which an Esquimaux will eat a gallon in a day, contains no water at all. This interesting provision of nature will be impressed on our minds by bringing WATER IN FOOD. 187 together the different articles of food, with the amount of water in each, as in the following table, from analyses already given: — Quantities of Water in One Hundred Pounds of Vegetable Food. Indian meal, Rye,. Peas,. Rice,.. Beans, Lentils, Buckwheat, Barley, Oatmeal, Oyster, Egg.... Milk, Beef without fat, Veal,. Mutton,. Pork,. Chicken,. Codfish, Haddock, Pounds. 14 13 14 13 14 14 14 14 13 87 67. 87 74 75 71 76 73 79 82 Potatoes,. Carrots, Turnips, Parsnips, Mangel-wurzel, Cabbage,. Apricot, Green Gage, Peach, Cherries, Gooseberries, Cucumber, Apples, Pears,... Butter,.. Lard,. Almond oil, Olive oil,. Mutton suet,... Fat of all meats, Pounds.. 75 86 87 79 85 92 75 71 80 75 81 97 84 84 None.