Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/394

 function of the palate, and derived from a study of the table. For it is certain that nine tenths of the gormandism which is practiced, at all events in English society—where for the most part it is a matter of faith without knowledge—is no more a source of gratification to the eater's gustatory sense than it is of digestible sustenance to his body.

Our subject now shapes itself. Food must first be regarded in relation to its value as material to be used for building up and sustaining that composite structure, the human body, under the varied conditions in which it may be placed. Secondly, the selection of food, and the best modes of preparing it, resulting in the production of "the dish," a subject of great extent and importance, must be dealt with very briefly. Lastly, the exercise of taste in relation to the serving of food and drink, or the art of combining dishes to form "a meal," must also be considered.

I shall not regard this as the place in which to offer any scientific definition of the term "food." I shall include within its range all the solid materials popularly so regarded, and therefore eaten. And drink being as necessary as solids for the purpose of digestion, and to supply that large proportion of fluid which the body contains in every mesh and cell thereof, I shall regard as "drink" all the liquids which it is customary to swallow with our meals, although probably very few, if any, of them can be regarded as food in any strict sense of the term.

Food is essential to the body in order to fulfill two distinct purposes, or to supply two distinct wants inseparable from animal life. As certainly as a steam-engine requires fuel, by the combustion or oxidation of which force is called into action for various purposes—as the engine itself requires the mending and replacing of parts wasted in the process of working—so certainly does the animal body require fuel to evoke its force, and material to replace those portions which are necessarily wasted by labor, whether the latter be what we call physical or mental—that is, of limbs or of brain. The material which is competent to supply both requirements is a complete or perfect food. Examples of complete food exist in milk and the egg, sufficing as these do for all the wants of the young animal during the period of early growth. Nevertheless, a single animal product like either of the two named, although complex in itself, is not more perfect than an artificial combination of various simpler substances, provided the mixture (dish or meal) contains all the elements required in due proportion for the purposes of the body.

It would be out of place to occupy much space with those elementary details of the chemical constitution of the body which may be found in any small manual of human physiology; but for the right