m 



CHEMISTRY. 



[CONDITION!, ETC., OP DIET. 



Or DIET. J 89. 



ity u shown in diffi 



and DtfnUitn of Diet. 



Real equality it shown in differences. Wo all are equal, 

 only because even the slightest differonco of circumstance 

 produce* i ditTeranoe in the composition and functions of 

 our Ixxlies : another modo of lifo, another kind of food, 

 another climate and soil, produce a different blood and 

 brain. And, indeed, when from tho icy north, up to the 

 pore glowing sky of the tropic*, so rich in flowers, we 

 punue the manifold gradations which act upon man by 

 the boldness of contrast, as well as by the abundance of 

 varying transitions heat and cold mountain and 

 valley sea and hind forest and steppes animals 

 and plants we are no longer astonished that many 

 refuse to recognise, in tho changeful and multiform 

 human species, the children of one ancestor, seeing that 

 form and colour, as well as mind and morals, multiply 

 distinctions in such prodigal abundance, as to render 

 the very conception difficult. 



Whatever, iu their numberless shades of form and 

 composition, the earth and the water produce, exercises 

 its influence upon the food of man. We no longer fear 

 to give offence by designating food itself as one of tho 

 most important sources of differences in our species ; 

 so much tho stronger emphasis, however, must we give 

 to tho assertion, that no influence exists, as an isolated 

 one, in the history of our eternally progressing life. 



Goethe, with reference to tho important axiom of 

 Hainan that everything isolated is objectionable says, 

 in a manner at once so true and consolatory in all tho 

 incompleteness of human intelligence and expression 

 " In every communication of thought, if not a poetical 

 one, there exists one great difficulty ; for the word must 

 detach itself, must become isolated, in order to say or to 

 signify something. By speaking, man necessarily for 

 the moment becomes one-sided ; there exists no com- 

 munication, no doctrine without separation." On the 

 ground of this necessity, it is to be explained why we 

 have left in tho background the equally powerful in- 

 fluences of the air and the soil ; of Nature as it surrounds 

 us in the solitary forest, in the undulating mountain- 

 region, in the wearisome monotony of vast plains, or in 

 tho awe-inspiring boundlessness of the tossing sea ; why 

 we have omitted to mention the intimate relation be- 

 tween plants and animals, tho effect of the intercourse of 

 man with man now elevating, now degrading, often the 

 source of the highest pleasures, but often, also, of the 

 keenest wounds ; why we have not specified the power of 

 oral .instruction, the magic of song in order that we 

 might speak with a greater emphasis of the far-reaching 

 influence of food. Under the united influence of all 

 these agencies, man becomes of necessity tho being he 

 is, comprehending the external world in just so many 

 various aspect* as the modes in which the latter acts 

 U;PII him. 



. ve treated one part only of this series of food ; 

 but certainly not with the intention to remove a single 

 link from tho chain. The sea bordering tho earth, and 

 tho earth tho sea, both affect the condition of plants and 

 animals ; and these, again, occasion infinite diversities in 

 the alimenU of man, according to the climate. Tho 

 effects produced by food upon man determine tho com- 

 and the character of the people, as well as the 

 iii'livMiul. Hut C'Miimitrco again alters man, man tho 

 food, and food tho fields ; everywhere action and re- 

 action. 



And to this reaction, tho power of which is tho surest 

 and most concuo expression of the heaven-storm in,' 

 reason of the race of Prometheus, man owes the plia- 

 bility, so tenacious and yet so flexible, by which ho 

 becomes indigenous in every climate of the vast domain 

 of nature. If he approach tho north polo he contents 

 himself with fish; while in the tropics he enjoys the 

 fragrant fruit iu addition to the savoury game ; and if in 

 tho plains of North America, tho huntsman lives on the 

 flenh of the buffalo alone ; while the Now Hollanders, 

 poeMUig on their vast island no edible fruit, not 

 the sue of a cherry, take animal food exclusively : in the 

 tropics, where moat taken in abundance is injurious to 

 health, a vegetable diet prevails, to which, indeed, tho 



inhabitants of Pegu and Malabar, from superstitious 

 motives, restrict themselves. 



Our blood is intermediate in its properties between 

 that of tho carnivorous and the herbivorous animals ; 

 but it is not in the blood that the difference begins, in 

 the first instance, which distinguishes us from tho animals 

 that live on an exclusive diet. In our digestive organs 

 themselves, a compromise has already been effected; and 

 those differences present themselves, which are so sharply 

 marked in the formation of these organs in the animals 

 feeding exclusively on animal or vegetable food. If tho 

 herbivorous animal bo enabled, by numerous and va- 

 riously-formed teeth, to gnaw and grind, and by a long 

 digestive canal and large salivary glands, to digest sub- 

 stances which could not be sufficiently comminuted hy 

 the loss-developod and sharper teeth of the beast of prey, 

 nor dissolved by their smaller salivary glands and shorter 

 intestinal canal ; in man wo observe, in the structure of 

 tho teeth and of tho jawbone, of the stomach and of the 

 intestinal canal, of the salivary glands and the muscles 

 of mastication, a proportion intermediate between the 

 two. 



Man, therefore, is able to digest both animal an. I 

 vegetable food ; and as there exist vegetable as well as 

 animal aliments in which all three groups of the simple 

 alimentary principles are to bo found as both bread 

 and meat are able to convey to the blood its requisite 

 elements the native of Pegu gets accustomed to an 

 exclusive vegetable diet, just as many North Americans 

 live on animal food, and the Greenlandere almost entirely 

 on fish. 



Where both these products of nature tho gifts of tho 

 field and the gifts of tho wood exist in abundance, the 

 taste selects from both sections some important repre- 

 sentatives of nutriment ; and if we denominate cattlo 

 and swine the domestic animals of man, corn and legu- 

 minous plants ought, with equal justice, to be designated 

 his domestic fruits. 



The more civilised that nations are, the more perfectly 

 is the cultivation of domestic animals and fruits deve- 

 loped among them. Where agriculture as well as tho 

 breeding of cattlo flourishes or, to speak more cor- 

 rectly, where a thriving flock increases tho fertility of tho 

 , and a productive agriculture the opulence of tho 

 stables man takes for his nourishment meat and broad, 

 milk and fruits. While digesting both with ease, tho 

 composition of his blood conforms to the digestion, just 

 as digestion depends upon the structure of its organs ; 

 and if in man the digestion and formation of blood 

 corresponds with his mixed food from plants and animals, 

 will not a nutrition afforded by this mixed diet, just as 

 it produces muscles and bones peculiar to man, dm 

 also the brain, which, as really human, thinks and feels? 



Equally remote from the savage hunting-tribes, kin- 

 dred with that of beasts of prey ; and the vegetable- 

 eating Hindoos, with their greater mental indolence 

 not digesting in order to live, but living almost in order 

 to digest stands the cultivated European, who digests 

 his mixed diet with ease, and from whoso blood is evolved 

 a brain, the action of which wo admire in those f. 

 where human beauty and wisdom are embodied. 



This circulating mutual action, which on all 

 unites man with nature, is continually recurring : the 

 difference produced by the degrees of this mutual action 

 causes the peculiarity of tho individual. I'rirf 



description of tho chango of matter in the tissues, as it 

 generally takes place iu tho human spi-rirs, wo passed to 

 the description, in general outlines, of the action of the 

 several aliments. As sex and age, position ami mode .>f 

 life, habit and climate, exert various influences, wo know 

 but one-half of the science of food, so long as our ac- 

 quaintance is limited to the metamorphosis of tissue' in 

 the species, and to tho general action only of the alii.: 

 The remaining half consists in describing tho manner in 

 which the tissue-change, as modified in tho individual, 

 determines the selection of tho aliments. Tin 

 constitutes diet ; and hence there remains, iu this book, 

 for us tho task of determining the diet in tho principal 

 circumstances of individual life. 



