130 ALIMENTATION. 



etj of diet generally regulates itself; and in institutions, it is 

 a good rule to follow as far as possible the reasonable tastes 

 of the inmates. In individuals, particularly females, it is not 

 uncommon to observe marked disorders in nutrition attribu- 

 table to want of variety in the diet as well as an insufficient 

 quantity of food, as a matter of education or habit. 



The physiological effects of a diet restricted to a single 

 alimentary principle, or a few articles, have been pretty 

 closely studied both in the human subject and in the inferior 

 animals. Magendie long since demonstrated that animals 

 subjected to a diet composed exclusively of non-nitrogenized 

 articles died in a short time with all the symptoms of 

 inanition. The same result followed in dogs confined to 

 white bread and water ; but these animals lived very well on 

 the brown military bread, as this contains a greater variety 

 of alimentary principles. 1 Facts of this nature were multi- 

 plied by the "Gelatine commission," and the experiments 

 were extended to nitrogenized substances, and articles con- 

 taining a considerable variety of alimentary principles. 2 In 

 these experiments it was shown that dogs could not live on 

 a diet of pure musculine ; the appetite failing entirely, from 

 the forty-third to the fifty-fifth day. 3 They were nourished 

 perfectly well by gluten, which, as we have seen, is com- 

 posed of a number of different alimentary principles. 



Among the conclusions arrived at by this commission 



1 MAGENDIE, Precis Elementaire de Physiologic, Paris, 1817, tome ii., p. 390 

 et seq. The fourth edition of this work (Paris, 1836, p. 504) contains the experi- 

 ments of Magendie upon the comparative nutritive power of white and of brown 

 bread. In 1827, Tiedemann and Gmelin published an account of experiments on 

 geese which were confined to an exclusive diet respectively of gum, sugar, starch, 

 and coagulated white of egg. All of them died : the one fed with gum, on the 

 sixteenth day ; the one fed with sugar, on the twenty-first day ; the two fed with 

 starch, on the twenty- fourth and twenty-seventh days, respectively; and the one 

 fed with white of egg, on the twenty-sixth day. (Redierches Experimeniales, 

 Physiologiques et Chimiques, sur la Digestion, Paris, 1827, Second Partie, p. 266.) 



2 The results of the inquiry into the nutritive value of gelatine have already 

 been considered. See page 49. 



3 Comptes Rendus, Paris, 1841, p. 275. 



