SCIENCE OF NUTRITION. 365 



" Supposing there to be just enough money in a given family to buy 

 the right kind and quantity of food. Now, if this money is not wisely 

 expended, or if after the food has been bought it is spoiled in cooking, 

 the results will be very serious for the members of that family ; they 

 will be undernourished, and they will suffer in clear-headedness, bodily 

 strength, and, in case of children, in bodily development. 



" Surely the right condition of the body is too important to be left 

 to chance ; the best scientific knowledge, the best practical head, should 

 be at its service; and this is the case, indeed, to a large extent in Europe, 

 where the food of the soldiers and of the inmates of public institutions 

 is furnished more or less according to certain rules that have been de- 

 duced, partly from observation, and partly from scientific experiment. 



" The application of scientific principles on these lines is not of 

 long standing, for the investigations that have clinched them are all 

 of comparatively recent date. At the end of the last century a begin- 

 ning was made in France and in Germany in connection with the 

 philanthropic effort to improve the food of the poor, and it was at this 

 time Count Rumford introduced into soup kitchens in Munich the soup 

 that has been named after him. From this time on, interest in the 

 subject of food, both for men and for domestic animals, steadily in- 

 creased, although experimenters were constantly coming to wrong con- 

 clusions because the sciences of organic chemistry and physiology, as 

 far as they concerned the subject, were not far enough advanced. 



" Every one will admit that it is of great importance for the farmer 

 to know in what proportion he shall lay in hay and other food for 

 winter feeding of his stock ; the animals must thrive, but there must 

 be no waste by furnishing food in the wrong quantities or proportions. 



" For the housewife, the food question, in its relations to her 

 family, can be stated in the very same way. It is important she should 

 economize, but her path will be full of pitfalls if she does not under- 

 stand in what true economy consists. Most people with a real interest 

 in the subject have had, at some period of their lives, certain pet 

 theories as to food. Perhaps they have been at one time convinced 

 that most people ate too much ; at another, that meat was the all- 

 strengthener ; or they may have been afflicted with the vegetarian fad ; 

 and whatever their special views may have been, they have thought 

 that they rested them upon facts. But surely they would never have 

 pinned their faith to one-sided diets if they had rightly comprehended 

 the main facts of nutrition. We believe that if these facts as at present 



