PHYSIOLOGICAL ECONOMY IN NUTRITION. 123 



PHYSIOLOGICAL ECOIs^OMY IN NUTRITIO^v'. 



By RUSSELL H. CHITTENDEN, 



DIRECTOK OF THE SHEFFIELD SCIENTIFIC SCHOOL OF YALE UNIVERSITY. 



AMONG the many problems awaiting solution, none is of greater 

 importance for the welfare of the individual and of the race 

 than that which relates to the proper nutrition of the body. Man 

 eats to live and to gain strength for his daily work, and without suffi- 

 cient nutriment the machinery of the body can not be run smoothly 

 or with proper efficiency. The taking of an excess of food, on the 

 other hand, is just as harmful as insufficient nourishment, involving as 

 it does not only wasteful expenditure, but what is of even greater 

 moment, an expenditure of energy on the part of the body, which may 

 in the long run prove disastrous. While it is the function of food to 

 supply the material from which the body can derive the necessary 

 energy for its varied activities, any excess of food over and above what 

 is needed to make good the loss incidental to life and daily activity 

 is just so much of an incubus, which is bound to detract from the 

 smooth running of the machinery and to diminish the fitness of the 

 body for performing its normal functions. 



A proper physiological condition begets a moral, mental and phys- 

 ical fitness which can not be attained in any other way. Further, it 

 must be remembered that lack of a proper physiological condition of 

 the body is more broadly responsible for moral, social, mental and 

 physical ills than any other factor that can be named. Poverty and 

 vice on ultimate analysis may often be traced to a perversion of nutri- 

 tion. A healthy state of the body is a necessary concomitant of mental 

 and moral vigor, as well as of physical strength. Abnormal methods 

 of living are often the accompaniment or forerunner of vicious tastes 

 that might never have been developed under more strictly physiological 

 conditions. Health, strength (mental and physical) and moral tone 

 alike depend upon the proper fulfilment of the laws of nature, and it 

 is the manifest duty of a people hoping for the fullest development 

 of physical, mental and moral strength to ascertain the character of 

 these laws with a view to their proper observance. Poverty, crime, 

 physical ills and a blunted or perverted moral sense are the penalties 

 we may be called upon to pay for the disobedience of nature's laws; 

 penalties which not only we may have to pay, but which may be passed 

 down to succeeding generations, thereby influencing the lives of those 

 yet unborn. 



There is to-day great need for a thorough physiological study of 



