Manual of diet in health and disease / by Thomas King Chambers.

  • Thomas King Chambers
Date:
1876
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Manual of diet in health and disease / by Thomas King Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    CHAPTER I. THEORIES OF DIETETICS. What is the natural food of man ? Bacli animal in a state of nature finds substances suited for nutrition ready to liand, and within the grasp of the organs his body is provided with. And these substances seem, generally, the most proper to sustain the health. So that it has been not irrationally argued, that it would be a useful act of reasoning to infer from the structure of the human organs what kind of food they are most fitted to appropi-iate, for this would probably prove most conducive to each man's physical well-being. When in pursuit of this argument we come to compare man's form with that of other mammalia, his prehensile organs—his teeth, his jaws, and his feet and his nails—do not seem to fit him for grappling with any of the difficulties which the adoption of special kinds of food prepared by nature entails. He can conveniently neither tear his prey, nor crack many nuts, nor grub roots, nor graze. His digestive viscera, in middle life, are too bulky and heavy to qualify him for the rapid movements of the carnivora; and they are not lengthy enough to extract nourishment from raw vegetables. To judge by form and structure alone, the natural food of an adult must be pronounced to be notJdng. On the other hand, if we read the laws of man's nature by the light of the general consent'of the individuals of his race,
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