An argument on behalf of the primitive diet of man / [Frederic Richard Lees].

  • Lees, Frederic Richard, 1815-1897.
Date:
1855
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: An argument on behalf of the primitive diet of man / [Frederic Richard Lees]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    “ In Ireland, how many robust bodies are nourished solely on milk and pota- toes: now chesnuts aud grapes, and turnips and onions in Frauce, are what potatoes are in Ireland. The breakfast usually consists of bread and fruit, din- ner of bread and au onion, his supper of bread, milk, and chesnuts. Sometimes a lb of meat may be boiled with the onion, which, with management, will go thro tbe week” (p. 299). “The abundance of fruit gives an air of great plenty. The health of the peasantry may perhaps in good part be imputed to this vegetable abundance. It is a constant maxim with physicians, that those countries are most healthy, where, from an ordinary laxative diet, the body is always kept open. Half the diseases in the world originate in obstruction ” (p. 373). In contrast with this, we make an instructive extract from an article ou ‘The last Census of France,’ in the Edinburgh Review for April 1857 :— “ It is however certain, with the exception of some departments which are suffering from exceptional causes of distress—such as inundations or failure of crops—the general aspect of tbe French rural population [as to comfort] show's a marked improvement in the last 20 years. Every new house is better built and better arranged than the old cottages. The blue linen blouse is not the only garment of the peasant, winter and summer, but it is worn over good woollen clothing; the bread of the common people is whiter aud purer [not therefore better], and the consumption of meat increases. Five and twenty years ago in a small market-town of Normandy, which we have sometimes visited, there lived but one butcher, who earned a precarious subsistence from the neighboring gentry; in the same town there are now nine persons living by the sale of meat. The same progress is even more striking in Touraine, Picardy, and the environs of Paris. But this progress in the well-being [flesh-eating] of the community has not led to any corresponding increase in tbe population. On the contrary, whether the doctrines of Mr Malthus are followed or not in that country, some such check as he contemplated seems powerfully to operate against the rapidity of increase; and the more the ad- vantages and luxuries of increasing wealth arc felt and enjoyed, the less dispo- sed are the French to meet the demands of numerous families” (pp. 348-9). C. H. Scott, in his recent Travels in the Black Sea, observes:—“We particularly noticed the power of endurance, while subsisting on scanty fare, of our Volga boatmen, who worked hard day aud night, while living literally on black bread, salt, and water.” In conclusion, we shall only observe that the preservation and extension of human-life is the gravest of all problems in Social (Economy, while the re- moval of the causes of disease within the body, tho often ignored by noisy sani- tary reformers, is the most important of all the branches of Sanitary Law. We commend to the sincere Patriot and simple Christian, a pregnant passage from the Census Report:— “As there is no apparent reason why the mean ‘ lifetime’ in England should be 40 years, and as it is found to range in extent, under different circumstances, from 25 years in Liverpool and Manchester, to 45 years in Surrey, and in other