Physiological and pathological researches / being a reprint of the principal scientific writings of the late T. R. Lewis ... Arranged and edited by Sir William Aitken ... G. E. Dobson ... and A. E. Brown.

  • Lewis, T. R. (Timothy Richards), 1841-1886.
Date:
1888
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Physiological and pathological researches / being a reprint of the principal scientific writings of the late T. R. Lewis ... Arranged and edited by Sir William Aitken ... G. E. Dobson ... and A. E. Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

    844/920 (page 662)
    It will be seen that the above table is divided into two parts. In the upper part four of the scales of the Conference dietary are contrasted with the one to four months of the adapted English scale. Out of twenty headings under which comparisons are instituted, in four instances only are minus signs, and these refer to the fats. In the lower part of the table the same Conference scales are contrasted with the over four months adapted English scales, and here minus signs are appended to the Conference diet figures under six out of the twenty headings. Four of these are again due to paucity of fatty matter, and the remaining two refer to the same aliment in one diet, —a small difference in favour of the adapted English scale as against the non-animal food form of the rice dietary. The difference is very trifling, about one-tenth of an ounce of albuminates, which is equivalent to 8 grains of nitrogen. On the other hand, the plus signs appended to the Conference scales indicate in many instances a consi- derably more liberal supply of food, both in the nitrogenous elements and also in the carbo-hydrates. The latter are given in some of the scales to a considerably larger extent than would be accorded were the adapted English scale followed, so that if there be any truth in modern physiological teaching as regards the respective parts taken by the proximate aliments in the development of force, the extra amount of starchy food recommended by the Conference should not be objected to. 42. As, however, in most provinces a mixture of several cereals is adopted in prison dietaries, it may be that the mean value of the seven scales given in the table (para. 38) may furnish a closer approximate to the amount of nutriment which the Conference intended that their dietary should contain than is to be inferred from the data in the foregoing paragraph. Calculated in this manner, the daily value of the vegetable form of diet in terms of nitrogen and carbon is 223 grains of the former and 4,755 of the latter, the nitrogen being to the carbon as 1 to 21. Such a diet should be sufficient, on the English Local Prison standard, for labouring prisoners of an average weight of about 119 lbs, 43. As regards the curtailment of the fatty matter, the Conference appears to have suggested a retrograde step; for, although the deficiency is not so marked in all the scales, still it would probably be the opinion of most authorities that the amount is decidedly insufficient in some of them, and barely sufficient in others. 44. It does not appear that the recommendations of this Conference regarding dietary have as yet been very extensively adopted. So far as I can learn, the only jails in which the dietary proposed was introduced were those of Lower Bengal and of the Hyderabad Assigned Districts. There are, however, comparatively few prisoners in the jails of the latter province, the total labouring population barely reaching a daily average of 1,000. 45. In March 1879 the dietary which had been in force in Lower Bengal from about I860 was changed, and the Bengali prisoners were placed on the diet proposed by the Conference. The diet of the natives of Behar and of Upper India generally