The cheapest and most nutritious food for charitable institutions and the poor : being the result of an inquiry, made by desire, on the food supplied to the Hill Street Female Refuge / by C.H.F. Routh.

  • Routh, C. H. F. (Charles Henry Felix), 1822-1909
Date:
1854
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The cheapest and most nutritious food for charitable institutions and the poor : being the result of an inquiry, made by desire, on the food supplied to the Hill Street Female Refuge / by C.H.F. Routh. 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.

    54/64 (page 50)
    Before leaving the subject of meats I would recom mend a trial to be made of preserved meats, on th ground of tneir remarkable cheapness. 7. Meat may be considered as the essence of vegetablet its nutritive qualities being more concentrated, if I ma use the expression ; in evidence of which, apart fror its chemical analysis, we have the anatomical conforma. tion of the intestinal canal in carnivora, which ] much shorter than in the herbivora, because thei ' food requires less digestion. Meat has a nutritive equ valent of 48, w^heat being 100 ; in its dried state of 1. : so that in its natural state it may be considered as moi ; than twice, in its dried state nearly seven times : i nutritive as wheat. In its purely lean state, as a con ] bustible equivalent, it is nearly expressed by 32.' ; wheat being 100, and therefore rather more than thre ; times less valuable in this respect than wheat. In it i dry state, however, it is superior to wheat, being 8ij| while wheat is 100. The subject of preserved meats has lately been prominently before the public, that it can scarcely I passed over in this place. Indeed, the revelations (|' the daily journals, and the government board of inquiry ' have sadly poisoned the public mind against their en ployment. The subject, however, now appears in a diflfei i ent light before us, having recently been lucidly ex plained by the late editor of the Medical Times and Gc zettCj Dr. Bushnan ; to whose leading article I cann( forbear alluding. It would appear that the utmost that cai be urged against Mr. Goldner is a little carelessness, even that. In a late return moved by Mr. Miles, it stated, 2,741,988 lbs. have been issued to the nav}i since the contract with Goldner, up to January 7, 1851| Out of this number, 2, 613, 069, or 95 per cent., hav proved fit for use, only 19 being rejected from contain ing so-called offal (which was, however, only undigesi