"In calculating the English dietaries, I have been obliged to guess at the pudding, soup, and vegetables, and have not exact data for the bacon; my results, however, cannot, I think, be far wrong; they give the average daily nutriment as follows:

"This may surprise you; but it must be borne in mind that, weight for weight, meal is much more nutritious than bread, and that even butter-milk contains about one fourth as much azotised nutriment as meat, so that 1 pint (16 oz.) of butter-milk, is equal to 4 oz. of meat. Potatoes, too, have a very low value, though bulky, being nearly three fourths water, and having only one fortieth of azotised matters.

"The want of variety is, to my mind, the chief fault of the Irish dietaries; and it is to be borne in mind, that the fact is now well-ascertained (by the experience of prisons,) that a diet which will answer very well when the body and mind have the variety of out-door exercise and freedom, does not answer under the monotony of confinement."

I entirely coincide in the truth and importance of the last observation respecting the want of variety in the Irish dietary. The extreme sameness of this, day after day, week after week, is quite remarkable; and cannot fail, in my opinion, to have an injurious effect, through its influence on the mind, at least, if

It is perfectly

not directly as physical nutriment. true, that the private domestic dietary of many nations, that of the Irish themselves among the number is almost as little varied; but there is a vast difference between an unvaried diet with an unvaried life, and an unvaried diet with a varied life ; between the life led in the open air, by the free Irishman, or Scotsman, or Hindoo, and the life led within the dreary walls, and amid the stagnant air of a workhouse.

On these grounds, therefore, and on many others equally obvious and strong, I cannot but think that the present Irish dietary is really defective, and may probably be dangerous. And, notwithstanding the fair appearance of health witnessed by me among the inmates, at least among the children, I cannot free my mind from the suspicion that the greater prevalence of fever in the Irish workhouses, and the astounding prevalence of ophthalmia, may be partly, at least, owing to this defect.

We have seen that the dietaries of several of the workhouses in Ulster, are improved by the allowance of a third meal in the day, and by the addition of a small portion of animal food (2 oz. per head), in the vegetable soup, three days in the week. If this plan were somewhat extended, and generally adopted throughout Ireland, together with an increased allowance of fresh vegetables, it would in itself be a great improvement; but to effect all that seems desirable, the whole dietary ought to assume

something of the varied character of that of the English workhouses.

I remarked, in a former chapter, on the great singularity (as it seems to me,) of one feature in the Irish workhouse dietaries-viz., the almost total exclusion of potatoes from them. I had, at one time, a notion that such exclusion might have been intentional on the part of the authorities, with the object of weaning the peasantry from the use of this root, and of giving them a greater relish for food of a safer growth. I believe, however, that no idea of this kind influenced the arrangement of the dietaries; although I cannot yet understand, why so wholesome and economical a species of food, should have been so rigidly excluded. I believe, nevertheless, that its exclusion will have the effect-whether contemplated or not—of rendering the people of Ireland less dependent on this treacherous root, and more attached to cereal food. This latter taste has evidently grown greatly of late years in Ireland, particularly in regard to Indian meal, which has, as formerly remarked, become of universal use among the peasantry, and is greatly liked and prized.

3. Ophthalmia. The prevalence of any disease, whether contagious or not, so very extensively and so obstinately as the ophthalmia has prevailed of late years in the Irish Unions, leads one naturally to suspect that there must be some predisposing or exciting cause of it within the establishments themselves; and when we find the houses, on the whole,

so clean, roomy, and well-aired, and the inmates well-clothed, we are naturally led to consider whether diet, the most general cause of all, may be calculated to lead to such results. That the want of a fair proportion of animal fibre or of fresh vegetable matter in the diet, or the extreme sameness of the food, continued through long periods-all shown to exist in the present dietary-should, singly or combined, be capable of producing such a state of constitution as predisposes to certain diseases of a low type, and to ophthalmia among others, will not appear improbable to any medical man. On this ground alone—although my reports of the individual houses show, generally, a healthy condition of the inmates, and especially of the younger classes; and although I admit that I have not myself traced any certain connection between the two events,-I feel justified in urging on the Irish authorities, in the event of the persistence of the malady, the propriety of permanently improving the dietaries in the way pointed out. I am the more induced to take this view of the case from finding that the two eminent medical authorities consulted by the Poor Law Commissioners respecting the prevalence of the disease (Dr. Jacob and Mr. Wilde) take precisely the same view of the subject, and advise the like alteration.1 And it is but doing justice to the Commissioners themselves to state that in their

1 See Reports of Dr. Jacob and Mr. Wilde in the Commissioners' Fourth Report.

circular to the Guardians on this subject, they adopt the views of their medical advisers.1 The view now taken of the dietary receives additional support from some statements made by the Medical Inspector, Mr. Phelan, in 1849, and by Mr. Hall in 1852. The former states that in one of the workhouses a number of patients were found to be actually affected with scurvy, and "which the medical officer attributed to the want of a sufficiency of vegetables and milk in the dietary." Mr. Hall, in commending the system of attaching small farms to the workhouses, names as one of their advantages, the supply of vegetables to the inmates, "whereby the injurious effects which have been found to arise from the continued and exclusive use of farinaceous food, are counteracted." 3

That diet alone, however, should be made chargeable for the whole amount of ophthalmic disease prevailing in the workhouses, would be most unjust. It may be the chief remote cause, but many other causes must co-operate in exciting the actual disease, and in diffusing it. Among this number may be mentioned, the numerous common influences, moral as well as physical, necessarily affecting a large mass of human beings collected in one place, and shut out, in a considerable degree, by stone walls from the open air; also topical inoculation, contagion, &c. It is also a melancholy fact, worthy of notice, that a certain portion of the cases have 1 Ibid., p. 128. 2 Third Report, p. 44. 3 Fifth Report, p. 133.

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