THE DAILY RATION 157 



NITROGENOUS SUBSTANCES CARBON 



Bread contains . 2.469 ounces (70.00 grams) and 10.582 ounces (300.00 grams) . 



Meat contains . . 2.125 ounces (60.26 grams) and 1.109 ounces (31.46 grams). 



4.594 ounces (130.26 grams) and 11.691 ounces (331.46 grams). 



This daily ration, which is purely theoretical, is shown by actual 

 observation to be nearly correct. Dalton says : " According to our 

 own observations, a man in full health, taking active exercise in the 

 open air, and restricted to a diet of bread, fresh meat, and butter, with 

 water and coffee for drink, consumes the following quantities per day : 



Meat . . . V .... 453 grams, or about 1 6 ounces. 



Bread 540 grams, or about 19 ounces. 



Butter or fat 100 grams, or about 3.5 ounces. 



Water . . . _ . . . 1 530 grams, or about 54 ounces." 



Bearing in mind variations in the nutritive demands of the system 

 in different persons, it may be stated, in general terms, that in an 

 adult male, ten to twelve ounces (282 to 340 grams) of carbon and 

 four to five ounces (113 to 142 grams) of nitrogenous matters, estimated 

 dry, are discharged from the organism and must be replaced by the 

 ingesta ; and this demands a daily consumption of between two and 

 three pounds (907 and 1361 grams) of solid food, the quantity of food 

 depending, of course, greatly on its proportion of nutritive constituents. 



It is true that the daily ration frequently is diminished consider- 

 ably below the physiological standard in charitable institutions, prisons 

 and elsewhere; but when there is complete inactivity of body and 

 mind, this produces no other effect than that of slightly diminishing the 

 weight and strength. The system then becomes reduced without any 

 actual disease, and there is simply a diminished capacity for labor; 

 but in the alimentation of large bodies of men subjected to exposure 

 and frequently called upon to perform severe labor, the question of 

 food is of great importance, and the men collectively are like a machine 

 in which a certain quantity of material must be furnished in order to 

 produce the required amount of force. This important fact is strikingly 

 exemplified in armies ; and the history of the world presents few ex- 

 amples of warlike operations in which the efficiency of the men has not 

 been impaired by insufficient food. 



The influence of diet on the capacity for labor was well illustrated 

 by a comparison of the amount of work accomplished by English and 

 French laborers, in 1841, on a railway from Paris to Rouen. The 

 French laborers engaged on this work were able at first to perform 

 only about two-thirds of the labor accomplished by the English. It 

 was suspected that this was due to the more substantial diet of the 



