134 DADB'S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SCRGERi. 



walking lanterns, (if lighted candles were placed within their 

 abdomens), only they happen, occasionally, to catch a stray dog 

 or pig, on which they make a savory meal, and thus furnish the 

 material for the formation of muscle and fat. 



Magendie has proved that even the canine race can not live 

 more than forty days on any single article of diet, let it be ever 

 so nutritious, for it is either followed bv starvation or disease ; 

 hence the necessity for variety in food. In allusion to disease 

 being produced by the long-continued use of a single article of 

 diet, I would mention that the Scotch peasants are great con- 

 sumers of oat-meal. This article is little inferior to wheat in the 

 flesh-making principle, and we might naturally infer that an arti- 

 cle of diet so valuable and palatable, when properly cooked, should 

 tend to promote health. This, however, is not the case. Those 

 who eat the most oat-meal are, according to medical testimony, 

 the notorious subjects of intestinal concretions, and in the EdiD- 

 b'urg Anatomical Museum is to be seen a vast and valuable col- 

 lection of intestinal calculi, most of which caused the deaths of 

 confirmed oat-meal consumers. 



Dr. Carpenter, an eminent physiologist, says that "no fact 

 in dietetics is better established than that concerning the impos- 

 sibility of long sustaining health and life on a single alimentary 

 principle. Neither pure albumen, fibrine, gelatine, gum, sugar y 

 starch, fat, nor oil, taken alone, can serve for the due nutrition of 

 the body. This is partly due to their failing in supplying the 

 waste of the tissues, and partly to the fact that single alimentaiy 

 »ubstances, long continued, excite such a feeling of disgust that 

 I he animals experimented on seem to prefer the endurance of 

 starvation to the' ingestion of the same." 



The reader is probably aware that when ;\ person has long been 

 confined to any particular article of diet, a craving for something 

 else is experienced, which very few persons can resist. Thi* 

 teaches us that, in order to preserve the health of live stock, we 

 must vary the diet, and are not to be over-particular in selecting 

 the most nutritious articles. But we want, as Napoleon says, a 

 little rubbish — coarse rubbish, The internal surface of the stom- 

 ach and bowels require to be irritated once in awhile, and this 

 probably was the idea which Graham had when he first recom- 

 mended coarse food. The stomach must be iride to labor hard 

 at times, or its function will deteriorate. Perse is whe complain. 





