THE USE AND ABUSE OF FOOD. 339 



At a lecture delivered at the Royal Museum of Physics 

 and Natural History at Florence, by Professor Mantegazza, 

 a few years since, the Professor dwelt on the insufficient food 

 which Italians are in the habit of taking, as among the most 

 important causes of the weakness of the nation. " Italians," 

 he said, "you should follow as closely as you can the 

 example of the English in your eating and in your drinking, 

 in the choice of flesh-meat (in tossing off bumpers of your 

 rich wines),* in the quality of your coffee, your tea, and your 

 tobacco. I give you this advice, dear countrymen, not only 

 as a medical man, but also as a patriot. It is quite evident, 

 from the way millions of you perform the process which you 

 call eating and drinking, that you have not the most ele- 

 mentary notions of the laws of physiology. You imagine 

 that you are living. You are barely prolonging existence on 

 maccaroni and water-melons. You neither know how to eat 

 nor how to drink You have no muscular energy ; and, 

 therefore, you have no continuous mental energy. The 

 weakness of the individual, multiplied many millions of times, 

 results in the collective weakness of the nation. Hence results 

 insufficient work, and thence insufficient production. Thus 

 the returns of the tax-collector and the custom-house officer 

 are scanty, and the national exchequer suffers accordingly." 

 Nor is all this, strange as it may sound, the mere gossip of 

 the lecture-room. " The question of good feeding," says 

 Dr. Lankester, "is one of national importance. It is vain 

 to expect either brain or muscles to do efficient work when 

 they are not provided with the proper material. Neither 

 intellectual nor physical work can be done without good 

 food." 



We have now considered the two principal forms of 

 food, the heat-forming sometimes called the amylaceous 

 constituents, and the flesh-forming or nitrogenous constituents. 

 But there are other substances which, although forming a 

 smaller proportion of the daily food, are yet scarcely less 



* To this article of the Professor's faith decided objection must be 

 taken, however. 



