220 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



lowed, and of course beer and alcoholic liquors are excluded ; these, 

 with starch, are almost the sole articles of respiratory food. He 

 dwells upon the imperative necessity for an increase of fat, both 

 in relation to the wants of respiration and to the due digestion of 

 starchy food ; and under the present system much food must be 

 wasted from non-digestion, and the system must, and often does, de- 

 crease in weight. He explains the mode of working the wheel, that 

 the labor is not only in raising the body as the wheel descends, but 

 in maintaining it erect in opposition to gravity, since the centre of 

 gravity is probably external to and in front of the body. He shows 

 that it is an uneven punishment, the inequality not being that of 

 guilt, but of physical conformation and health ; that the resistance 

 offered by the wheel is not uniform in various prisons, and has been 

 lessened at the Coldbath-fields prison, and hence that the lives of the 

 prisoners are at the mercy of uneducated engineers ; that the old, 

 the tall, and feeble, those having unsound teeth and diseased lungs 

 and heart, those not accustomed to slow walking or climbing, and 

 those with small bones and muscles of the back and upper extremi- 

 ties, must suffer the most ; and hence that the punishment falls with 

 different degrees of severity upon different classes of the community. 

 The author points out the fact that weak hearts and lessened vital 

 capacity of the lungs may exist with a fair amount of health, and 

 hence would not be necessarily known to the prisoner, nor, indeed, 

 to the surgeon, except on a minute examination. He expresses his 

 opinion that it is a punishment unfit for the age, as the discontinu- 

 ance of it in many prisons also implies, and certain, if long contin- 

 ued, to induce disease and premature death ; and not only renders 

 the prisoner a greater cost to the community whilst in priso-i, by 

 reason of the increased quantity of food which the labor demands, 

 but subsequently from a premature old age ; and since the labor is 

 not employed to meet the cost of maintenance of those who fur- 

 nish the power, it is so much of human flesh and life wasted. The 

 author refers in a postscript to the government dietary for prisoners 

 condemned for short periods, and shows that a system which affords 

 only bread and water, or bread and gruel, for the whole diet, must 

 be calculated to injure the health of the prisoners, a system far more 

 repulsive than the private whippings which have been proposed and 

 opposed. 



THE INFLUENCE OF FOODS. 



In a paper recently read before the Royal Medical and Chirurgi- 

 cal Society, by Dr. Edward Smith, the well-known English physio- 

 logical chemist, the author stated that the practice of administering 

 arrowroot, or other fashionable foods consisting of starch, with water, 

 under the impression that it was more nutritious and easier of assim- 

 ilation than wheat flour, was indefensible ; since it did not sustain the 

 vital action to a degree capable of maintaining life, and that nature 

 has not provided starch as food altogether apart from nitrogenous 

 substances. He contrasted the action, or rather want of action, of 

 starch with that of the cereals, and showed that the latter is nearly 

 as great as that of any substances with which we are acquainted. 

 He drew the distinction between an action which increases the ex- 



