DIGESTIBILITY OF ALIMENTARY SUBSTANCES.

FEW practitioners have made a careful study of aliments, considered individually or in their relations to one another. Even the relative composition of the various articles of food is to most of them an unknown quantity; and yet nothing is more important to the medical attendant on the sick than the knowledge judiciously applied of the principles of dietetics. With a proper appreciation of the amount of albuminous, starchy, saccharine, or oleaginous matters in each article of diet which his patient may employ, he will be much more competent to suggest the appropriate course to be pursued as supplementary to a rational medical treatment.

The following tables will at once give an insight into the digestibility of a large number of articles of food in common use, showing the various grades of easy, moderately easy, or difficult digestion; a comparison between animal and vegetable aliments in these respects; the elementary composition of the chief articles, etc.

Composition of Various Articles of Food (in 100 parts).'

Erom estimates by Letheby and Parkes, in Treatise on Food and

Dietetics, by F. W. Pavy, p. 427, Phila., 1874.

( 265 )

Another useful but less scientific classification of ali

mentary substances, is that which arranges them into the three groups mentioned in the following summary, according to their relative digestibility. The practitioner,

in special cases, where more minute information is needed, may supplement this table by data derived from works particularly devoted to dietetics.1

The following tables, exhibiting the relative digesti bility of animal and of vegetable substances, are selfexplanatory, the mode of cooking of each article being

1 Dr. H. Hartshorne's Essentials of the Principles and Practice of Medicine, p. 224, Phila. 1874.

given, as well as the time necessary for chymification. These facts are so constantly essential to the well-being of the patient, and to satisfactory treatment by the practitioner, that but little further comment is necessary.

A similar tabular arrangement of vegetable aliments may also be made.

1 II. Letheby, Lectures on Food, 2d edition, London, 1872, p. 56.

The practitioner is frequently appealed to for instructions, not only as to the nature of the diet appropriate for his patient, but also as to the precise manner in which it should be prepared, to be at once palatable, nutritious, and continuously serviceable. Not having familiarized himself with the simplest principles of cookery, he is sometimes at a loss to know what suggestion to make, or what advice to offer, in order to insure the greatest attainable perfection of culinary effort. At any moment he may be called upon for his views as to the best methods. of preparing even the most ordinary dietetic articles for

1 Letheby, op. cit., p. 58.