Miscellanea 
531 
families containing 29 individuals, of whom 19 were children under 16. She writes of this 
Group : " In this section, which embraces those who may properly be called poor, not one diet 
reaches the minimum energy value of 3000 calories " (p. 18). Criticising individual diets she 
says : " In LI. the use of a greater proportion of the cheaper vegetable foods, e.g. potatoes and 
haricot beans, gave a better energy value for the same cost In XXV. the animal protein is 
considerably in excess of the vegetable protein (see Appendix III.). As the former is more 
expensive, this diet could be improved and a higher protein content obtained by reversing the 
proportion of animal and vegetable protein. In view of the fact that the fat is low, necessarily 
so because of its cost, the carbohydrate intake should have been greater." 
Dr Chalmers in his recent paper before the Royal Society of Medicine, " The House as 
a Contributory Factor in the Deathrate*," notes that Miss Lindsay's observations bear so 
directly on the inadequacy of the dietary of persons in the smaller houses that he quotes her 
sample dietaries in families with regular wages under 20s. per week and concludes with Miss 
Lindsay's remark that " the children are nearly all small and light in weight." It is not clear 
whether Miss Lindsay intended her remark to apply to Family XXV. only, or as Dr Chalmers 
supposes to the whole of Group E. Dr Chalmers' interpretation has been widely taken to 
be the true one although which is the correct interpretation matters little : For of the in- 
dividuals in this group not a single boy's weight is provided by Miss Lindsay, and of the girls in 
the group only two were measured. These two are certainly below weight ; they do not belong 
to Family XXV. but one to Family XVII. who shows developed rickets, and whose father has 
beeu a heavy drinker, and the other to Family LI I. where the father suffers from phthisis and 
is in receipt of parish relief. It would therefore appear that Miss Lindsay's remark must 
apply to the group in general. But the whole demonstration of the effect of the dietaries 
is thus seen to turn on the weight of two individual girls aged 9 and 5 years respectively, 
one of whom has rickets t, and both of whom have degenerate fathers! 
In order to test what relation, if any, the income of family has to weight of child, the corre- 
lation coefficients of weight (w) and income (i) for constant age have been found for both girls 
and boys for the whole of the 20 and 16 cases respectively provided by Miss Lindsay. We 
have I : 
Weight of Girls and Income for constant Age 
a r i!( ,= -03 ±-15, 
Weight of Boys and Income for constant Age 
„r iro =-22±-16. 
In neither case is there any significance having regard to the probable error. Whether the 
weight of the child is or is not related to the parental income cannot possibly be settled on the 
data provided by Miss Lindsay, and, whether she possesses it or not, she publishes in her paper 
no material on which it would be possible to tell the effect of the dietaries of families with 
incomes under 20s. on the size and weight of the children. 
But there are a great many other question-begging conclusions in Miss Lindsay's memoir. 
She starts apparently with the opinion that the physiological construction of the food is of no 
importance, and that a " calorie " whether obtained from peas or eggs, beans or beef is of equal 
value. But surely this is the very sort of question that an investigation of this kind should 
answer, not assume ? Miss Lindsay criticises — at times severely — the housewife who spends her 
* Proceedings of the Royal Society of Medicine, Vol. vi. (Section Epidemiology and State Medicine), 
pp. 155—181. 
t Eickets can hardly be due to lowness of "calories" for some of the families with the highest 
calories (II. with 4003, and IV. with 3882) and high wages (IV. with 50s. 8d., V. with 39s., XXXIX. 
with 41s.) are rickety. 
X I have most heartily to thank my colleague Miss Ethel M. Elderton for the values of most of the 
correlation coefficients of this note. 
