in THE THEOEY OF HUMAN NUTKITION 95 



activity. It is undeniable that the regimen adopted by our race 

 is to be attributed, at least in part, to the influence of bad habits 

 strengthened by heredity in the course of many generations, such 

 as the use and abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and certain alkaloids, 

 which are certainly not included in the category of the principal 

 natural articles of food. 



" Sir William Eoberts," as Chittenden remarks, " said that the 

 palate is the dietetic conscience, but he also added that degenerate 

 palates are very numerous ; and we may reasonably ask ourselves 

 whether an erroneous system of life has not as a general rule 

 perverted our dietetic conscience. The habit of satisfying our 

 appetite on every occasion, of obeying every fancy of our palate 

 even to satiety, taking little or no account of the physiological 

 needs of our body, may easily and naturally have constituted a 

 false rule of life, far removed from the true laws of nutrition." 



In order to find a scientific foundation for the theory that the 

 large majority of our nations eat much more than is physiologically 

 useful, it was necessary to employ the test of experiment. 



Instead of studying the diet of persons who are free to choose 

 at will both the quality and quantity of their food, those persons 

 should be studied who voluntarily submit themselves in the 

 laboratory to a special regimem. 



As early as 1888 Hirschfeld, wishing to determine on himself 

 the smallest quantity of protein necessary for nitrogenous equili- 

 brium, obtained the following result : During his first series of 

 researches he took daily an average of 4'73 grms. of nitrogen, 

 135 of fat, 266 of carbohydrate, and 54 of alcohol. He found 

 that from the fourth to the eighth day of this diet he discharged 

 daily in the urine and faeces an average of 6'65 grms. of nitrogen. 

 There was therefore a definite daily deficit of nitrogen. During 

 another series of investigations he took an average of 7'44 

 grms. of nitrogen ( = 47 grms. of protein), 165 of fat, 354 of 

 carbohydrate, and 43 of alcohol, and found that from the fifth to 

 the eighth day he discharged 7'53 grms. of nitrogen. With this 

 diet, which, compared with Voit's average, is very poor in protein, 

 he almost maintained nitrogenous equilibrium. 



Similar results were obtained by Kumagawa and Klemperer 

 (1889). The former in nine days took an average of 8'75 grms. of 

 nitrogen ( = 55 grms. of protein), 2'5 of fat, 370 of carbohydrate, 

 and discharged on an average only 8'10 grms. of nitrogen, that is, 

 he retained daily 0*65 grm. of nitrogen. Klemperer experimented 

 on two young workmen of 20 and 28 years of age. Their diet 

 consisted on an average of 5'28 grms. of nitrogen ( = 34 grms. of 

 protein), 264 of fat, 470 of carbohydrate, and 172 (!) of alcohol. 

 From the sixth to the eighth day the average discharge of nitrogen 

 was 4-60 and 3'91 grms. respectively, therefore in this case also 0'68 

 and 1*37 grms. of nitrogen were retained. 



