242 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



the cereal grains is followed chiefly by those nations who use a mixed animal 

 and vegetable diet, while those who arc led wholly on the products of the 

 vegetable kingdom reject the process of fermentation entirely. Thus, the 

 millions of India and China, who feed chiefly on rice, take it, for the most 

 part, simply boiled; and that large portion of the human race who feed on 

 maize, prepare it in many ways, but they never ferment it. The same is 

 true with the potato-eater of Ireland, and the oatmeal-eater of Scotland. 

 Nor do we find that even wheat is always subjected to fermentation; but the 

 peculiar physical properties of this grain appear to have tasked man's inge- 

 nuity more than any other, to devise methods of preparing from it food 

 which shall be both palatable and digestible. In the less civilized states, a 

 favorite mode of dressing wheat grain has been, by first roasting and then 

 grinding it. On the borders of the Mediterranean it is prepared in the form 

 of maccaroni and vermicelli, while in the East it is made into hard thin 

 cakes for the more delicate, and for the hard-working and robust into 

 thicker and more dense masses of baked flour and water. Even in our own 

 nurseries, wheaten flour is baked before it is prepared with milk for infants' 

 food. The necessity of subjecting wheaten grain to these manipulations 

 arises from its richness in gluten, and from the peculiar properties of that 

 gluten. If a few wheaten grains are taken whole and thoroughly masticated, 

 the starch y portion will be easily separated, mixed with the saliva, and swal- 

 lowed, whilst nearly the whole of the gluten will remain in the mouth, in the 

 form of a tough, tenacious pellet, on which scarcely any impression can be 

 made. A similar state of things will follow the mastication of flour. In this 

 condition, the gluten is extremely indigestible, since it cannot be penetrated 

 by the digestive solvents, and they can only act upon its small external sur- 

 face ; hence the necessity to prepare food from wheat in such a manner as 

 shall counteract this tendency to cohere and form tenacious masses. This 

 is the object of baking the grain and flour as before mentioned, of making it 

 into maccaroni, and of raising it into soft, spongy bread; by which latter 

 means the gluten assumes a form somewhat analogous to the texture of the 

 lungs, so that an enormous surface is secured for the action of the digestive 

 juices; and this, I believe, is the sole object to be sought in the preparation 

 of bread from wheaten flour. 



Wheat is said to be the type of adult human food. It supplies, in just 

 proportions, every element essential to the perfect nutrition of the human 

 organism. And j-et, in practice, we find that the food which we prepare 

 from it, and furnish to the inhabitants of our large towns and cities, is quite 

 incapable alone of sustaining the health and strength of any individual. 

 This is the more remarkable, since in Scotland we find that the food prepared 

 from the oat, a grain possessing the same elements of nutrition as wheat, 

 though in a coarser form, furnishes almost the exclusive diet of a very large 

 number of the hardiest and finest portion of the population. 



In the large towns of France wheaten bread certainly forms a very large 

 proportion of the diet of the laboring classes, but not so large as oatmeal 

 does in Scotland. And yet it has been remarked by contractors for public 

 works on the continent, that the chief reason why the Englishman is capable 

 of accomplishing double the work of a Frenchman is, that the one consumes 

 a very large proportion of meat, while the diet of the other is chiefly bread. 

 In Scotland, however, the laboring man is capable of sustaining immense 

 fatigue upon the nourishment afforded by oatmeal porridge. 



The deficiency in wheaten bread in affording the nourishment due to the 



