DIET IN DISEASE.] 



CHEMISTRY. 



367 



therefore, and in hot climates, where the oxygen is less 

 efficient, the fat of the food is digested with much greater 

 difficulty ; heiice the preference given in the tropics to 

 the constituents of fat over the fats themselves, is a 

 circumstance arising from natural laws. So long back 

 as the times of Herodotus, we know that in hot climates 

 popple lived chiefly upon a vegetable diet. The inhabi- 

 tants of the islands of the Pacific Ocean very seldom 

 eat fish of any kind, and pork and fowl only at festivals. 

 The food of the negro is rice, millet-seeds, maize, and 

 roots containing a great quantity of starch. The chief 

 meal of all inhabitants of the tropics, consists of rice. 

 Here we meet also with an illustration of the not un- 

 frequent fact, that a custom, apparently traceable to 

 superstition, is really founded on a deeper and more 

 rational foundation ; for inasmuch as at a high tem- 

 perature fat is less easily decomposed through the dimi- 

 nished activity of our lungs, a correct interpretation of 

 natural phenomena has led to the entire prohibition of 

 pork during summer to the inhabitants of Southern 

 Italy, and altogether to the Jews in Palestine. Obedi- 

 ence becomes superstition only when it continues to 

 exist after the reason for the law has ceased. 



If in summer everything must be avoided which 

 absorbs the oxygen so necessary for the organic con- 

 stituents of the body ; so, on the other hand, aliments 

 be taken in winter, which moderate the decomposi- 

 tion of our tissues, produced by the oxygen ; hence we 

 can bear in the winter not only a richer diet than in 

 summer, but those beverages are also relished which by 

 their abundance of alcohol retard the consumption of 

 the constituents of our body. It is inconceivable how 

 physiologists can preach the renunciation of brandy, 

 when we consider the simple fact, that the further north 

 the greater its consumption. While the inhabitant of 

 the south of Germany is satisfied with the proportion of 

 alcohol which he takes in beer and wine ; in Northern 

 Germany, Holland, and England, brandy, gin, and other 

 spirits are taken ; but the Russians, Swedes, and Nor- 

 wegians consume a still greater abundance of spirits. 

 In a very instructive public lecture at Mayence, Von 

 Kittlitz stated, that the Kamtschatdales, who are gene- 

 rally remarkable for their great respect of property, often 

 teal brandy ; but afterwards, with child-like simplicity, 

 confess their theft, avowing that they could not do 

 otherwise : they only steal what they consider a neces- 

 sary of life. This regular increase in the consumption 

 of alcohol, corresponding to the nature of the climate, 

 cannot but suggest the existence- of some valid reason 

 for this popular custom, which has been completely 

 confirmed by scientific investigation. The alcohol which 

 has been taken, is a new source of the development of 

 warmth, by which, on one hand, the food is more slowly 

 consumed ; and, on the other, the cushion of fat under 

 the skin, which is a bad conductor of heat, and suffi- 

 ciently protects the system against external cold, is kept 

 | from wasting. Travellers who have visited the Polar 

 ! Seas, assert, that in such voyages Europeans could not 

 exist without spirituous beverages. In low, cold, and 

 damp countries, experience has always proved spirit- 

 uous beverages, taken in moderate quantity, to be 

 useful.* 



It is true, science, as well as experience, warns against 

 excess. When spirituous beverages have been taken in 

 I Abundance, the venous and arterial blood have been 

 I found alike in composition ; and in animals even fits of 

 suffocation have been observed. It is apparent, that the 

 | oxygen which alcohol takes up in order to be trans- 

 formed into acetic acid and water, and then into car- 

 bonic acid and water, is withheld from the constituents 

 of the blood ; while it is upon the combination of these 

 matters with oxygen, one of the most important con- 

 iliti'i'is on which a healthy change of matter depends, 

 that the transmutation of the venous blood into the 

 ariuri.il takes place. 



This circumstance ought always to be kept in mind ; 



It may bp utated, hnwew, that nomc Arctic voyagers hare nrired an 

 aVtmrnct from the une of pirituou* liquors u being euential to health 

 In high latitudes. to. 



for then only do we restrain our fellow-creatures from 

 intemperance, when we distinctly inform them that its 

 injurious consequences are founded upon a necessary 

 natural law, and one therefore infallible. A rational in- 

 telligence is the sole basis of all real morality. By total 

 abstinence, and under the form of a solemn under- 

 taking, we create slaves of an irrational promise, and 

 treat men no better than animals, which we shut up in a 

 stable that they may not stray too far away. 



Inasmuch ae man is formed by all the circumstances 

 conjointly, the influence of which upon diet we have 

 endeavoured to describe in this treatise, the rules given 

 must be separately considered. The nature of man is 

 the product, or rather the sum of all those effects of 

 parentage and country, age and sex, position and habits, 

 and even of the time of the day and year, which we 

 have referred to. It is for the reader to determine the 

 choice of food, according to the individual influences 

 bearing in mind that other circumstances to which we 

 have not all in led still remain for consideration. These 

 combinations of circumstances are nearly as numerous 

 as the men themselves ; and it must be left to the 

 judgment of the individual to accommodate his diet to 

 his own particular case. 



All that we have written bears exclusively on man in a 

 healthy state. " But in disease V we hear you ask. It 

 is just when the activity of the bodily functions deviates 

 from the ordinary state of health, that the question of 

 diet is the most important ; and should not the book 

 contain some instruction bearing upon this condition ? 



As truly as we are convinced of the usefulness to the 

 people of a treatise on food for the healthy, so certainly 

 do we know that we should only do mischief by giving 

 here rules for the selection of food, of beverages and 

 condiments, in disease. One point only is of the 

 highest value in daily life ; intemperance may become 

 the source of the various diseases. This affirmation, in 

 its widest sense, bears on the use of aliments of every 

 description. And this general statement renders super- 

 fluous any attempt to explain why in autumn, for 

 instance, the abuse of fruit will cause diarrhoea or 

 dysentery ; why meat immoderately taken may occasion 

 the formation of calculus ; why from an excessive use of 

 spirits, gout or cancer of the stomach may originate. 

 Such an attempt would be without any bearing in prac- 

 tical life, neither could it be justified on scientific 

 grounds ; for in the present state of our knowledge, it is 

 absolutely impossible popularly to describe, with a 

 proper chain of deduction, intemperance as cause, and 

 the various diseases as effect. Such a description would 

 require so thorough a scrutiny of each particular case, 

 with so detailed a consideration of the condition of the 

 body, that either superficiality would annihilate its value, 

 or profundity destroy its clearness. The doctrine of the 

 causes of disease, pre-supppses a thorough knowledge 

 of disease itself ; and this requires a considerable 

 familiarity with all the more important laws of 

 science. 



If this be the case as regards the knowledge of disease, 

 it is much more so with regard to diet when under its 

 power. Only the man who has devoted his whole life, 

 with all his powers of sense and thought, to the investi- 

 gation of the condition of man in health and disease, can 

 unite with the necessary knowledge the more subtilely 

 discriminating judgment under such circumstances ; and 

 that only after the most accurate account of country 

 and training, of climate and weather, of age and sex, of 

 habits, occupation, and of parents. No one would re- 

 quire this if he consider that every action has its neces- 

 sary consequences; that the widest experience only, 

 purified by the clearest judgment, and after careful per- 

 sonal examination, is able to secure in the individual 

 case the desired effect with any degree of certainty. 

 Runder, therefore, to the medical man that which is 

 his, yet without neglecting, for the healthy state, the 

 study of those rational rules of life which are given by 

 science ; for man is only obedient to such laws as he 

 understands. 



While solid and liquid food furniih the matter which 



