Ogtobkr 22, 1859. J THE COOK OR
Of the wild bee’s placid murmur, of the breeze and
of the wave, —
Cries of mothers for their offspring, and of wives for those still dearer,
And of children calling fathers from the crystal of their grave.
And the crazed yet harmless Amy wander’d ^hither
every morning,
Through the driving snows of winter and the summer green and cool, —
Talk’d in fancy to her William till the holy angels call’d her:
And this short but tragic legend is the tale of Brad- mere Pool. Louisa Stewart.
THE COOK OR THE DOCTOR?
It is always with a shock of surprise and pain that we read, in the Registrar’s Reports, and in the accounts of Coroners’ Inquests, of death from starvation. Everybody says the same thing on every occasion of the kind; — that there must have been great fault somewhere, because the law of the land provides subsistence for every person in it. Let it be granted that deaths from destitu- tion of the necessaries of life are gratuitous: this is but a small part of the mortality from hunger. The number of persons who die annually from being underfed is very great. The victims themselves are often unaware of the fact: and so are their neighbours generally. Whatever disease last lays its grasp upon them, — invited by their low condition of body, — is called the cause of their death; but if the truth were fully understood, we should Bee in the register, instead of columns of entries of low fevers, tubercular diseases, and fatal affections of the viscera, one comprehensive term,— deficient nutriment.
If this kind and degree of mortality were owing to national poverty, or to social arrangements which condemn large classes to destitution, this would not be the place for any remarks on the
THE DOCTOR? 331
subject. It would be a political topic of extreme
gravity, which ought to occupy the full attention
of Queen, Lords, Commons, and the political
press: but it is far otherwise. There never was
a time when work and means of subsistence were
so generally diffused in the United Kingdom, as
in the middle of the nineteenth century. There
is every reason to believe that there is food enough
in the country to keep up the health and strength
of every person in it: and it is only the deficiency
of our knowledge and skill in regard to food which
causes a large number of men, women, and children
to be underfed in the midst of abundance.
It is a rare thing to find the head of a house- hold in any rank of life well informed as to the right kind and degree of nourishment for any one person. Hence there is such a thing as a family being underfed in the midst of wealth. This happens where jthe quantity which goes down the throat is considered to be the same thing as so much nutriment. The same mistake is to be expected in the labourer’s home; and it is found there, with the aggravation that the food which is eaten, whether more or less nourishing at best, is in great part spoiled by bad cookery. If it was thoroughly well known throughout the country how much nourishment every body ought to have, what articles of food yield that nourishment best, and how they may be best prepared, there need be no underfeeding, from the palace to the labourer’s cottage. It is only within a short time that this has been fully understood. The know- ledge is now being applied to improve the diet and the health of our soldiers: and we must hope that the benefit will extend to all other classes.
The main principle of the matter is simply this.
A large proportion of the food we eat is mere water and material which does not nourish. What is nourishment? What is the precise mean- ing of it?
There are two kinds of nourishment in good and sufficient food; but they are not quite of equal necessity; they are of very different pro- portions; and the smaller amount (by weight), is the most indispensable. This smaller element is absolutely necessary to life, as it goes to repair that waste of the substance of the body which never stops. When this waste is not supplied by food containing this element, the parts perish very soon. A person starved to death on a desert island lives only a few days. I am acquainted with one who lived thirty days under these cir- cumstances: but he was tike only survivor of his party; he was barely breathing when assistance came; and his case is considered almost unparalleled.
He and his comrades had been set ashore in a mutiny. He made the Freemasons’ sign to the leading mutineer, and the man returned in thirty days, landed with a kettle of hot brandy-and- water in his hand, and found my friend sense- less under a bush, with the bodies of his comrades lying about him. His appearance was extraor- dinary ever afterwards, as if every fibre in his face was vibrating without ceasing; but he re- covered to be a world’s wonder, for having lived thirty days through the waste of his frame, with- out its having been repaired more or less. Four
days of absolute fasting is, I believe, usually con-