Patent foods and patent medicines : two lectures / by Robert Hutchinson.

  • Hutchinson, Robert., Sir, 1871-1960.
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Patent foods and patent medicines : two lectures / by Robert Hutchinson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    11/48 (page 11)
    qii the ground of cheapness ? Well, if there is one generalisation which you can make about all the patent foods presented to you, it is this—and I make the statement without any reservation whatever— that not one of them is worth the money asked for it, and that some of them contain a ridiculously small amount of nourishment at the price. Com- pare the units of energy obtained by spending one shilling on some of the patent foods which are presented to you. In Valentine’s Meat Juice you get six units of energy for a shilling. In Denaeyer's Peptone you get nine units of energy for a shilling. In Somatose, which is so largely advertised, there are 16^ units of energy for the same money. Now let us look at the amount of energy which we get from certain natural foods. In meat we get 511 units of energy for a shilling, in egg 1,065 units, in milk 3,440 units, and in sugar nearly 5,000 units. So you are able to see from that how very badly patent foods compare with common ordinary foods in point of cost. To us as practical men that is one of the greatest disadvantages of patent foods. Ex- cept in the case of rich patients their use to any extensive degree is hardly justifiable at all. They cost so much in proportion to the amount of nutri- ment and benefit which they give that they are most extravagant methods of feeding. You may reply that all this may be true, but that your patients are not physiological machines—that their needs and demands are not to be judged by physiological experiment or analysis in a chemical laboratory. You may also reply that although it is true that some of these foods do supply very little energy and that at a great cost, and that though they are not really more digestible or more nourish- ing than ordinary foods are, yet your patients demand them and therefore you must give them.