NATURE AND DESTINATION OF FOOD. 383 



though less aggravated in degree ; and this, if slight, may be expected to mani- 

 fest itself, not so much in the production of idiopathic disorders, as in favoring 

 any peculiar tendency to disease which may exist in the system, and in prevent- 

 ing or retarding recovery from its effects. 1 The employment of fresh fruits and 

 of green vegetables seems especially indicated, where a general chronic disorder 

 of nutrition indicates a perverted condition of the circulating material ; and espe- 

 cially where there is a disposition to chronic inflammation, induration, and ulce- 

 ration, in different parts of the body. 



v. Finally, then, a well-arranged dietetic scheme ought to consist of such a 

 combination of the Albuminous, Oleaginous, and Farinaceous constituents, as is 

 most appropriate to the requirements of the system; a larger measure of the 

 albuminous being supplied, when an unusual amount of nervo-muscular exertion 

 is put forth, and this supply being then most advantageously derived from 

 animal flesh; a larger measure of the oleaginous being required for the susten- 

 tation of the heat in a frigid atmosphere, and this being supplied equally well 

 by the vegetable kingdom as by the animal ; and a larger proportion of the 

 farinaceous., as a substitute for the oleaginous, being most favorable to health 

 under a high atmospheric temperature. An habitual excess in the use of either 

 of these constituents, above what the demands of the system require, tends 

 towards the production of a particular " diathesis" or constitutional state, which 

 may manifest itself in a great variety of modes. Thus, an excess of the albu- 

 minous components, such as is only likely to occur when too large a proportion 

 of animal food is employed, undoubtedly favors the arthritic diathesis, which 

 seems to consist in the presence of imperfectly assimilated histogenetic substances 

 and wrongly-metamorphosed products of disintegration, that are not duly elimi- 

 nated in the kidneys; and this diathesis not only displays itself in gout and 

 gravel, but modifies the course of other diseases. So, again, an excess of the 

 oleaginous constituents of the 1 food tends to the production of the bilious diathesis, 

 in which, through the insufficient elimination cf hydrocarbonaceous matters, the 

 blood becomes charged with the elements of bile. The excess of farinaceous 

 matters, moreover, especially when combined with a deficiency of the albuminous 

 (as it too frequently is among those who are obliged by necessity to live chiefly 

 upon a u poor" vegetable diet), tends to the production of the rheumatic dia- 

 thesis; which seems to consist, like the arthritic, in the mal-assimilation and 

 wrong metamorphosis of the components of the tissues, but to lie especially 

 favored by the presence either of lactic acid, or of some other product of the 

 metamorphosis of the saccharine compounds. And, as already pointed out, the 

 deficiency of oleaginous matters seems to tend to the development of the scro- 

 fulous diathesis; and that of fruits and fresh vegetables to the production of the 

 scorbutic.* 



1 This " scorbutic tendency" was fully recognized by the past generation of physicians, 

 who practised in those good old times when potatoes were a luxury, and green vegetables 

 in the winter almost unknown, when the middle classes fed upon salted meat during a 

 great part of the year, and when sagacious old women prescribed nettle-tea and scurvy- 

 grass, with a course of lenitive "spring-physic," for the " cleansing of the blood." 



2 It is worthy of remark that, in the times when even the wealthy lived during four or 

 five months of the year almost exclusively upon meat, bread, and flour-puddings, and 

 when, therefore, the diet was far too highly azotized, as well as deficient in fresh vegetables, 

 arthritic, calculous, and scorbutic disorders were much more common than at present 

 The introduction and universal employment of the potato has unquestionably done much 

 to correct these two tendencies ; on the one hand, by diluting the azotized constituents 

 of the food, so that, with the same bulk, a much smaller proportion of these is now intro- 

 duced ; and on the other, by supplying to the blood some element which is essential to 

 the maintenance of its healthy condition. But with the diminution of the arthritic dia- 

 thesis, which the experience of our older practitioners, and the- medical writings of the 

 last century, indicate as having taken place during that period, there has been an increase 

 in the rheumatic ; a change which seems to have a close relation to this alteration in diet 



