84 
REVIEWS. 
“ My deduction from these premises is, that children are almost universally under-fed, 
and that the majority of the diseases of children arise from the debility of constitution 
induced by this habit of under-feeding. If I am right in this view, preventive medicine 
may do much towards the prevention of disease by correcting an error so widely spread. 
“ The diet of children of all ages should be, a substantial breakfast, with animal food 
in some shape; a substantial dinner of meat, vegetables, and cereal pudding • and a sub¬ 
stantial supper, also consisting, in part, of animal food. The drink may be milk, tea, 
cocoa, and possibly beer. I would call this the diet of health ; a diet capable of making 
a strong body and also a strong mind ; and a diet capable of preventing disease. Com¬ 
pare it for an instant with the milk-and-water and bread-and-butter diet of some es¬ 
tablishments ; the meagre dinner of meat, and the miserable grouting of rice and amy¬ 
laceous pulp. Bice and amylaceous food should have no place in the diet of health, but 
should be reserved for the sick-room. 
“Born in prejudice and nurtured in prejudice, it is the struggle of a lifetime to throw 
off the trammels of prejudice. We are apt to attach a peculiar signification to the terms 
which we are in the habit of employing. Ask a person what he usually takes for break¬ 
fast, and he will pretty certainly begin his enumeration with the word ‘tea,’ the mere 
drink of the meal; it is, in truth, with him a mere break-fast, instead of being, as it 
ought to be, a substantial morning meal. The dinner of labour is the luncheon of 
fashion ; then follows the mildly alkaline and stimulating drink that is termed ‘ the 
tea and last of all comes the supper, the late dinner of fashionable life. We have, 
therefore, before us a succession of three meals and an intermediate drink, but the drink 
piecedes the last meal; and, therefore, the orderly matron, who is more attentive to her 
one, two, three, than she is to the intention of the daily fare, prescribes for her children 
bieakfast, dinner, and tea—two slops 3,nd a meal. But let her, in good English phrase, 
call the children’s meals breakfast, dinner, and supper, and then we immediately obtain 
two dinners and one slop, the breakfast—an obvious improvement. I have secured to 
many a child a reasonable evening meal by suggesting to the mother the mere use of 
the word ‘ supper ’ as the name of the third meal. No human being could call bread- 
and-butter and tea by the hearty name of supper. 
Assuming that the amount and richness of the supply of food should be determined 
by the odices which it has to perform, there is no period of life- when more food is re¬ 
quired than in childhood and youth. The hard-worked labourer in a long summer's day 
scarcely exhausts a greater quantity of nutritious matter than a growing boy of ten or 
twelve years of age ; in the labourer the consumption is waste; in the growing boy it is 
bestowed in the construction of the body, in developing and building up the future man. 
And it is no uncommon thing to find that although the general construction of the body 
has been fairly performed, there is some one organ of the economy that has fared less 
well than the rest, and that part not uncommonly the skin; hence the origin of acne 
of the ringworms, et hoc genus omne. 
L it be admitted that food is the source of the elements of which the bedv is com¬ 
posed what kind of body can be expected in the case of a deficient supply of food, 
w hethei that deficiency proceed from actual want or from some perverse theory of re- 
iinement founded on a false conception of the nature and objects of food and ignorance 
of its direct convertibility into the flesh and blood of man ? Parents are too apt to take 
then own stomachs as the standard of diet of their children: a cup of tea and a slice of 
toast suffices for them, so it must suffice for the little ones. I knew a lady who brought 
up her children on mutton alone, because she herself could digest nothing but mutton, 
lier children were a feeble, puny, sheepish race, always in the doctor’s hands. A mother 
in anticipation of the full meal at seven o’clock, can afford a light lunch ; but she un¬ 
fortunately concludes that, because a light midday meal is good for her, a spare dinner 
! s , e< W a y P r TP er ^ or ber children. She has heard somewhere that suppers are heavy and 
interfere with sleep ; so the children must be content with their tea, and go supperless to 
bed. Parents have rights over their children, but not the right of feeding them in such 
a manner as to make them the subject of disease. Such parents become the authors of 
a puii} and degenerate race, and are unintentionally traitors to their country. 
“ If the two periods of life already adverted to be important in their influence on the 
future man—namely, the period of infancy, ranging from birth to the age of two years, 
and the period of childhood, ranging from two years to seven years—the next two periods 
—namely, those of boyhood and youth—are equally so. While the food of the infant 
