1 883.] Dietetic Reforms . 711 
seasons of the year. Peaches preserved in tins are often 
deficient in flavour, and their acid juices — like those of all 
fruits — are certain to a £1 upon the tin-plate and solder, ex- 
tracting therefrom a dose of lead. Hence we must pronounce 
this breakfast, for England at least, an impracticability. 
Tea and coffee are certainly open to grave objections ; but 
they can be stored for use, and obtained in all seasons and 
in all climates, and render the use of certain solids possible 
which would have otherwise to be set aside. Banish tea 
and coffee, and bread and butter follow them,— -not perhaps 
a grievous loss, considering of what modern butter is com- 
posed. 
Another authority recommends for breakfast “ simple 
vegetable food, which must have thorough mastication. No 
drink during the meal or immediately afterwards.” We 
might here ask how many kinds of vegetable food, obtain- 
able at all times of the year, are sufficiently juicy to be got 
down without accompanying drinks in the short interval of 
time which modern industrialism allows for meals ? The 
faCfory-worker may take with him in the morning his coffee 
or tea and sugar in a can, and at breakfast-time can easily 
obtain a supply of boiling water ; but imagine him having 
to cook a breakfast of cabbage, turnips, or carrots ! Or 
suppose his wife having to prepare such a meal in the 
morning, and send it to him to the workshop without its 
becoming cold ! Even in much higher positions of life a 
vegetable breakfast would not be obtainable without great 
disarrangement of the household. At most hotelsthe traveller 
would be advised to seek his reformed breakfast elsewhere. 
In short, before the opponents of tea and coffee can expert 
to make much headway, they must find some substitute 
equally convenient and capable of fitting in with the wants 
of the times. 
It must not be forgotten that long before tea and coffee 
made their appearance in Western Europe breakfast was 
not a dry meal. The bread and beef of the fifteenth and 
sixteenth centuries were washed down with a tankard of ale. 
The oatmeal porridge of the North of England and Scot- 
land, regions which certainly reared in the olden time a hardy 
and eupeptic population, was in itself a very moist food, and 
was accompanied by milk or buttermilk. 
But milk itself no longer passes unchallenged. We are 
told that it may very possibly contain the germs of tubercu- 
lar disease, and that, if it has been diluted with water from 
some well guilty of cesspool contamination, it may introduce 
typhoid fever into our families. 
