Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 15.djvu/396

 of heat and force, provided that he selects vegetables which contain all the essential elements named. But he must for this purpose consume the best cereals, wheat or oats, or the legumes, beans, peas, or lentils; or he must swallow and digest a large weight of vegetable matter of less nutritive value, and therefore containing at least one element in large excess, in order to obtain all the elements he needs. Thus the Irishman requires ten to eleven pounds of potatoes daily, which contain chiefly starch, very little nitrogen, and scarcely any fat; hence he obtains, when he can, some buttermilk or bacon, or a herring to supply the deficiency. The Highlander, living mainly on oatmeal, requires a much smaller weight, since this grain contains not only starch, but much nitrogen and a fair amount of fat, although not quite sufficient for his purpose, which is usually supplied by adding milk or a little bacon to his diet. On the other hand, the man who lives chiefly or largely on flesh and eggs as well as bread obtains precisely the same principles, but served in a concentrated form, and a weight of about two or three pounds of such food is a full equivalent to the Irishman's ten or eleven pounds of potatoes and. extras. The meat-eater's digestion is taxed with a far less quantity of solid, but that very concentration in regard of quality entails on some stomachs an expenditure of force in digestion equal to that required by the vegetable-eater to assimilate his much larger portions. And it must be admitted as a fact beyond question that some persons are stronger and more healthy who live chiefly or altogether on vegetables, while there are many others for whom a proportion of animal food appears to be desirable, if not necessary. In studying this matter individual habit must be taken into account. An animal feeder may by slow degrees become a vegetarian, without loss of weight or strength, not without feeling some inconvenience in the process; but a sudden change in diet in this direction is for a time almost equivalent to starvation. The digestive organs require a considerable period to accommodate themselves to the performance of work different from that to which they have been long accustomed, and in some constitutions might fail altogether in the attempt. Besides, in matters of diet essentially, many persons have individual peculiarities; and while certain fixed principles exist, such as those already laid down as absolutely cardinal, in the detail of their application to each man's wants an infinity of stomach eccentricities is to be reckoned on. The old proverb expresses the fact strongly but truly: "What is one man's meat is another man's poison." Yet nothing is more common—and one rarely leaves a social dinner-table without observing it than to hear some good-natured person recommending to his neighbor, with a confidence rarely found except in alliance with profound ignorance of the matter in hand, some special form of food or drink, or system of diet, solely because the adviser happens to have found it useful to himself!

It will be interesting now to take a general but brief survey of the