Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 64.djvu/465

The conclusions to which Bell's study led him are worthy of brief mention. He summarized as follows:

1. A diet of both animal and vegetable food is adapted to the condition of the New England laborer.

2. No grand errors exist in his present system of diet, and no radical change is demanded to ensure a greater amount of health and strength, though many minor, but still important errors exist.

3. The proportion of animal food usually customary is too great, and a considerable reduction would be expedient and advantageous, though it is impracticable to make a precise statement of the extent to which this is required, which must depend upon circumstances, as amount of labor performed, climate, season, bodily constitution, habits of life, etc. A general statement of this fact can alone be made.

4. The amount of food in general, customarily used, is more than is necessary for the maximum of health and strength, though a more specific statement of this abuse is also impossible. It must be left for each individual to attempt to reduce his quantity of food to that point at which he finds his mental and bodily powers most energetic. In searching for this point the New Englander may be almost certain that he must look for it in descending ratio.

5. The great principle in regulating diet is to regard quantity rather than kind.

Most students of dietetics will, I think, readily admit the validity of the majority of these statements, even in their application at the present day. In contrasting the conditions during colonial days with those prevailing in our own times it is entertaining, if nothing more, to recall some ideas regarding the diet of the people of the United States at the end of the eighteenth century which were published by the French traveler Volney.^[1] A grain of truth may doubtless be gathered from his vivid observations, even though they can not be taken too seriously. Thus he writes:

I will venture to say that if a prize were proposed for the scheme of a regimen most calculated to injure the stomach, the teeth, and the health in general, no better could be invented than that of Americans. In the morning at breakfast, they deluge their stomach with a quart of hot water, impregnated with tea, or slightly so with coffee; that is, mere colored water, and they swallow, almost without chewing, hot bread, half baked toast soaked in butter, cheese of the fattest kind, slices of salt or hung beef, ham, etc., all of which are nearly insoluble. At dinner, they have boiled pastes under the name of puddings, and the fattest are esteemed the most delicious; all their sauces, even for roasted beef, are melted butter; their turnips and potatoes swim in lard, butter or fat; under the name of pie or pumpkin (pumpkin pie?) their pastry is nothing but a greasy paste, never sufficiently baked; to digest these substances they take tea almost instantly after dinner, making it so strong that it is absolutely bitter to the taste, in which state it affects the nerves so powerfully that even the English find it brings on more obstinate restlessness than coffee. Supper again introduces salt meats or oysters: as Chastelux says, the whole day passes in heaping indigestions on one another; and to give tone to the poor relaxed and wearied stomach, they drink Madeira rum, French

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1. 'View of the climate and soil of the U. S. of America,' by C. F. Volney.