
oe 
DEMANDS OF THE BODY FOR NOURISHMENT. LAS 
the palate rather than of reason, the constant and successful 
effort to secure the foods that are most palatable, and to cook 
and to serve them in the most attractive way, the utilizing of 
the facilities of modern commerce to ransack the four quarters 
of the earth for things that people like to eat, and the common 
practice of having them on the table three times each day, the 
prevalence of the theory that what we want to eat is good food 
and enough of it, the gradual tendency of large classes of peo- 
ple away from manual exercise while they are beset with this 
manifold temptation to excessive eating—all these things com- 
bine to cultivate an abnormal appetite and to provide for its 
gratification without the needed restraint. 
It is also a fair question whether the result of all these things 
has not been to induce among a large class of well-to-do people, 
with little muscular activity, a habit of excessive eating, which 
has become so fixed and natural that its existence is not recog- 
nized, but which nevertheless may be responsible for great dam- 
age to health, to say nothing of injury to the purse. ‘These 
things are well worth the careful consideration of students of 
dietetics, of physiology, of hygiene and social economy. 
Some thirty years ago it was my fortune as a student in Ger- 
many to become acquainted with the modern theory of the 
nutrition of animals. That theory was then just taking the 
shape which it has permanently assumed. German farmers 
were becoming familiar with the terms protein, fats, carbohy- 
drates, and feeding standards such as those of Wolff were com- 
ing into common use. I was greatly interested to observe not 
only the grounds upon which the scientific experimenters based 
these standards but also the view in which they were held by 
intelligent practical farmers. The expression ‘‘an indication 
not a rule’’ which I have just applied to dietary standards is a 
literal translation of what such a German farmer said to me of 
feeding standards at that time. 
Shortly after that experience it was my privilege to give 
a detailed explanation, so far as I know the first in the Eng- 
lish language, of the German feeding standards, at meetings of 
the Maine and Connecticut Boards of Agriculture and in pub- 
lic prints. Since then the subject has become very familiar 
to experimenters, teachers, writers and many farmers in our 
own and other English speaking countries. The underlying 
