Strength and diet : a practical treatise with special regard to the life of nations / by the Hon. R. Russell.

  • Russell, Francis Albert Rollo, 1849-1914.
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Strength and diet : a practical treatise with special regard to the life of nations / by the Hon. R. Russell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    149/672 (page 137)
    scones, oatcakes, etc., with butter and cream — are almost despised in many localities. The expulsion of the people from the land of Scotland has been followed by an assimilation of habits to those of the Southron. But whisky keeps its pre-eminence, and shares with tea a dual control, which works ruin in every direction. The increase of nervous disease and of crime in Scotland is justly described as alarming, but probably the victim multitude will be the last to be alarmed. Taking the United Kingdom as a whole, the richer and middle classes may be described as living on a diet of flesh, fish, bread, vegetables, fruit, milk, butter, cheese, pastry, and sugar, in abundance, and the labouring classes on bacon, flesh, fish, bread, vegetables, fruit, fat or butter, cheese, sugar, and pastry or sweet cakes, and on alcoholic drinks and tea. But the poorer among them leave out some of the most nourishing of these articles, and subsist wretchedly on such expensive items as watery and innutritious bread, tea, fried fish, entrails or scraps of beasts’ carcases, pickles and jam, and often gin, brandy, or beer.1 Dr. Robert Hutchison considers that the chief fault in the diet of the working classes is excessive tea and bread. Dr. Young, of Belfast, testifies much to the same effect.2 The effects of the abuse of alcohol and tea will be noticed later. Tinned foods have largely superseded fresh food, even in farms and country cottages. Heaps of empty salmon tins may sometimes be found in the labourer’s garden. And the children are often fed on tinned milk, an expensive and improper substitute for new