MISCELLANEA. 
I. The Statistical Study of Dietaries. 
By KARL PEARSON, F.R.S. 
There is not the least doubt that a proper statistical study of diet would be of very great 
value. Such a study is of first class importance when we turn to the accurate discussion of 
working-class budgets. A statistical study of dietaries should consist of two parts. In the 
first section an analysis should be made of the food consumed and of the physiological value 
of its constituents for, say, a hundred working-class families, noting their income, occupation, 
rent, size of house and other details. In the next place an anthropometric, and where possible 
medical survey should be made of the families, their numbers, ages, statures, weights and 
general healths should be recorded, special pathological or disease conditions noted, and some 
record made of the habits of house-mother and father. Only when this has been fully, 
accurately and extensively enough done will it be possible to draw conclusions of real scientific 
value, and to give advice to the working-classes as to the best expenditure of income on foods. 
A recent Report upon a Study of the Diet of the Labouring Classes in the City of Glasgow by 
Miss Dorothy E. Lindsay, issued by the authority of the Corporation and with a preface by 
Professor D. Noel Paton, M.D., has been widely reviewed, and various suggestions made therein 
have been cited as demonstrated facts without any critical examination of the data upon 
which they are based. Thus we have been told that a return to the national dish of porridge 
and milk is an urgent need of the Scottish working-classes, and Miss Lindsay's data have been 
cited as showing the inadequacy of the dietary of families with regular wages under 20s. per 
week. Miss Lindsay obtained dietaries of 60 working-class Glasgow families, and these dietaries 
show a very large amount of work and a considerable fulness of record. To the extent of 
60 families she has certainly fulfilled the first requisite of an adequate enquiry as to the 
effectiveness of diet. Her families contained 400 individuals, of whom 246 were under 16 years 
of age. If we are to judge of the relative value of the various dietaries, this can only be done 
by discussing their effects on the 400 persons who partook of them. In order to obtain real 
knowledge from Miss Lindsay's results, this population ought to have been weighed and 
measured. Without this the dietaries seem to us of exceedingly small worth. Actually Miss 
Lindsay did ascertain the height and weight of a few children, put together in Appendix IV. as 
Physical Condition of Children. 
This contains the heights of 10 girls and 7 boys, and the weights of 20 girls and 16 boys. 
These children are scattered over all ages from 5 to 13 and over the whole of the Groups A to L 
into which Miss Lindsay divides her families. If we only class her groups into three there is not 
even the weight of one boy and one girl for each year of age upon which to base any measure of 
the value of the dietaries ! As an illustration of this let us take the important Group E of 
families with regular wages under 20s. Miss Lindsay, p. 18, provides the dietaries of five such 
