Selected excerpts from "Strength and Diet: A Practical Treatise

>In the towns of Scotland flesh is much eaten; the distinctive Scottish diet has almost disappeared. White bread [of an exceedingly lumpish quality], eggs, bacon, and tea have taken the place of the "halesome parritch." The excellent "Scotch broth" of mixed vegetables and barley is now seldom seen. Dried fish, mutton, and a very wretched kind of pork are now eaten. In the remote distrcits "kail-brose," shredded greens, and oatmeal, over which hot water is poured, is eaten with or without milk. Oatmeal with butter, salt, and sweet or sour milk was a long favourite diet; so was "pease-brose." The bread and tea which have supplanted the wholesome nad more tasty national dishes seem to be responsible for a vast increase of physical infirmities, and even of crime, and of a very notable loss of strength in the Scottish people.
>Professor Forbes made experiments on more than 800 persons, and his tables showed that the Irish are more developed than the Scotch, and the Scotch than the English.

>FRANCE.--The following particulars regarding ordinary French diet are derived from official reports presented to Parliament in 1871 and 1872:--
>Charente.--Good bread, a little flesh, vegetables, bread-soups; coffee in the morning, wine and water in the day. "Brandy is above all things to be avoided"; as it often leads to apoplexy and prostration.
>Bastia.--All Italians live on the flour of chestnuts made into polenta.
>Bordeaux.--(Note)--Englishmen cannot be too careful to observe temperance in the use of stimulants. Debility of mind, epilepsy, and insanity result from drinking absinthe. French physicians say it has sent a great number of people to the St. Anne's Lunatic Asylum at Paris.
>Calais.--Much the same as in England, but more vegetables.
>The sipping of alcoholic drinks and the cafe noir are responsible for much of the nervous disease and weakness now so common in France.
>The Corsicans, on the whole, are neither energetic nor distinguished.

>ITALY.--According to the Official Report, the food of hte Italian peasant in many parts consists of beans, oil, and bread. The two latter articles are especially important in winter. Lentils, lupins, etc., are used; flesh meat only rarely. Melons and unripe fruit often cause illness. The vilelest spirits are drunk, and are exceedingly poisonous.
>Rome.--Bread, macaroni (staple); in the middle classes, pork in great quantity, injurious to health.
>They are strong and hardy; women, as well as men, can bear aenormous burdens, and are must industrious.
>Sicily.--Bread, macaroni, cheese, pulse, vegetables, fruit, fish occasionally, flesh once a week, pure cheap wine; the labourers are hard worekrs. Another account gives the fruit of the prickly pear as the food of the poorer part of the population throughout several months of the year. "Bread and some fruit are almost the exclusive diet of the majority of the population." But flesh is actually imported for the tables of the richer classes. The food of the peasants in Sicily is good, says Mr. Beauclerk, but their houses are "very bad indeed."
>The Sicilians are not particularly strong; nor energetic, intellectual, or long lived.
>There are places in Italy, says Mr. Beauclerk, where the peasants have never even seen wheaten bread, and live almost entirely on chestnut bread and inferior food.
>In Calabria and much of Southern Italy the peasants live on bread, oil, and vegetables. The houses are very bad and dirty, and the infant mortality is very great.
>In Girgenti the Mafia still flourishes, and morality is nearly extinct in both people and priests. Uxoricide is astoundingly common.... "All this in the midst of vast superstition, superficial religious faith, and abject saint-worship in every hovel and house of evil."

>"Polenta, or Indian corn porridge, is the chief food of the Piedmontese." ... "These Piedmontese do the hard manual work of this part of the world; they work as navvies, porters, and so forth. They are, many of them, powerfully made." They are tall of stature.
>The Iazaroni of Naples are stated to have lived chiefly on coarse bread and potatoes, and slightly acidulated water. They were a tall and robust class of men.

>SPAIN.--
>"At 11 a.am. the Spanish labourer will have a good hunk of bread and some fruit or lard. It is perfectly marvellous on how little support a Spanish labourer will work, and what is more, work well; he scarcely ever tastes meat. Fried fish, when he can get it, peas, melons, bread, coffee, sweet batatas, tomatoes in oil, a kind of egg-plant boiled in oil,--on such sustenance as this the dock labourer will lift heavy weights week after week, the soldier will march.... We all know that no soldier can march as does the Spaniards."

PORTUGAL.--The Portuguese, like the Algerians, subsist largely on the olla, which resembles the kouskousou of the Algerians, the staple dish of neighbouring North Africa, a "mess of pottage."

>SWITZERLAND.--
>Boys and girls do not pluck unripe fruit as they do in England. "I shall never forget the cry of horror or disgust which spontaneously burst from a group of boys who were fishing in the Aar when they saw an Englishman draw down the bough of a plum tree and pluck a still green fruit. It was as though he committed some sacrilege."

>GERMANY.--
>According to Count Rumford, the Bavarian wood-chopper, one of the hardest workers in teh world, and one of the hardiest, receives for his weekly rations one large loaf of rye bread and one small quantity of roasted meal. Of the last he makes a soup with salt, and with it eats his rye bread. Water is his only drink. He works harder and has a better digestion than the average Englishman or American. [This was nearly a century ago.]

>HUNGARY.--
>"The Polish and Hungarian peasants from the Carpathian mountains are among the most active and powerful men in the world; they live almost entirely on oatmeal bread and potatoes." The Polish soldiers under Buonaparte would march forty miles a day, and be fresh for further duties next morning.
>The Slovaks, who live on a sour fermented decoction of bread, with milk, bread, and eggs added, are slow, dreamy, pious, ignorant, and fatalistic; not remarkable for strength in any way.
>The Wallach men are feeble, superstitious, demonstrative, and excitable; the women are active and strong physically and mentally. They do not live on the Slovak soup. Fruit forms a part of their dietary.
>The Saxons live on farinaceous dishes, butter, cheese, milk, fruit, vegetable soups, bacon, coffee, and a little cheap wine. They are big, strong, practical, clean, orderly, severe, silent, hard-working, and un-romantic.

>The Szeklers and Magyars are splendidly built, handsome, energetic, poetic, inventive. Their diet is like that of the Saxons, which the addition of a little flesh and light wine. Fried potatoes with pickled cucumbers and brown caraway bread is a favourite daily dinner; their common milk is half-and-half coffee and milk.
>The Roumanians are tall, handsome, proud, and fond of ornament. Their food consists largely of maize, fruit, poppy-heads, and sunflower seeds,--the two last being eaten raw, sprinkled over dumplings.
>All these races are described as, on the whole, good-natured and orderly.

>SCANDINAVIA.--
>The modern Swedes are slow, patient, steadily industrious, but many are wanting in energy. There was much intemperenace as regards drink, especially in the towns. Courtesy, hospitality, and a combined social equality and individual independence are everywhere observable in Scandinavia.
>The food of the field Lapps consists chiefly of milk, cheese, and reindeer flesh. They are not highly intelligent; they were much addicted to drunkenness; they were manually skillful.
>The Finns were in every respect superior; tall, well built, hardy, and industrious. They lived chiefly on corn, vegetables, milk, etc., and on fish.
>In Thelemarken, one of the most characteristic provinces of Norway, the people are tall, well built, graceful, and intelligent-looking.
>The Laplanders are very fond of dried powdered blood mixed with porridge.

>RUSSIA.--The Official Reports (1870, 1872) give the following:--
>Kertch.--The watkey (brandy) is an exceedingly poisonous drink, and rapidly produces delirium tremens.
>In the article "Finland" in Chambers's Encyclopedia, the Finns are described as a strong, hardy race, with high mental and moral qualities. Their staple food was rye, potatoes, barley, and various fruits.
>A letter from "The Helder" in the Sun newspaper in 1799 describes the Russian grenadiers: "The finest body of men I ever saw; not a man under 6 feet high. Their allowance consists of 8 lb. of black bread, 4 lb. of oil, and 1 lb. of salt per man for eight days."

>Poland.--The general fare is bread and potatoes. The Polish workmen are strong and enduring. A mason will walk five to eight miles nad back, and work all day, on little else than bread.

>GREECE.--The Official Reports gives the following particulars on diet in Greece:--
>Patras.--The Albanians eat olives and bread, little else.
>"The Greek boatmen," said Judge Woodruff, who was sent to Greece by a New York committee, "are exceedingly abstemious. Their food always consists of a small quantity of balck bread, made of unbolted rye or wheatmeal, generally rye, and a bunch of raisins or figs. They are, nevertheless, astonishingly athletic and powerful; and the most nimble, active, graceful, cheerful, and even merry people in the world. At all hours they are singing, blithesome, jovial, and ful of hilarity. The labourers in the shipyards live in the same simple manner, and are equally vigorous, active, and cheerful." They have a light supper or none at all, going foodless from mid-day dinner till breakfast. One "hearty man" in New England seems to eat as much food in a day as six of these Greeks. Yet there is no people in the world more athletic and cheerful.

>TURKEY IN EUROPE.--The following notes are from the Official Reports of 1870-72:--
>The Turks, in general, are described by travellers as endowed witih a singularly strong vitality and energy
>The Ottoman army consisted largely of men on "herculean form"

>MONTENEGRO.--The Montenegrins are able to go for a long time without food, but eat colosally when food is plentiful. Loaves of rye bread, lumps of lamb, bowls of milk, and onions, are common fare on their tables. Milk and maize flour boiled in oil are the staple food. It is a hard struggle to live, and only the very fit survive. In the lamb season flesh is plentiful. The men of Kolashin are huge and extremely strong, good hewers of stone, etc., and of splendid physique.
>At Belgrade, Servia, the men have a habit of drinking cold water all day, and are singularly lacking in activity.

>Iceland and Greenland.--
>The Icelanders of the country were industrious, strong, and almost free from crime and dishonesty, but one-sixth of the deaths were caused by worms derived from dogs which share their houses.

>CHINA.--
>The country people live practically on rice and vegetables, with a little fish or flesh occcasionally. They are "hardy, capable of enduring extraordinary fatigue, obedient, and intelligent." In the towns, especially in treaty ports, they are degraded in character; and in foreign countries, although they may show great capacity and attain prosperity, they are not to be compared with their countrymen of the best districts.
>According to Mr. T. W. Robertson Scott, Lord Wolseley said in 1895: "I believe the Chinese people to possess all the mental and physical qualities required for national greatness."
>Dr. Rennie, at Peking, was convinced by his residence among them that the lower orders of Chinese generally are better conducted, more sober and industrious, and intellectually superior to the corresponding class of our own countrymen.

>"Look at the clean-limbed, muscular Chinaman of the fields! He is the picture of health and agile strength as he sings through the hottest or coldest day's work. Singing at work, which is practically universal in China, indicates a vital energy in excess of that required for the labour in hand.... Drunkenness is practically non-existent in China."
>Mr. Weale is convinced that the reason why Chinamen have failed in war is that they were badly led by incompetent officers, and badly treated. Give them good officers, he says in his recent book, and "the North Chinaman will yet make one of the finest, and certainly one of the most hardy, soldiers in the world" (p. 368). In business intelligence, "one Jew equals ten Russians, one Scotchman equals two Jews, and one Chinaman equals sixty Russians."

>"The Albanian and the Greek populations have (as a whole) the same broad characteristics. They are distinguisehd by physical and mental alertness and agility. They appear, as do very hardily trained athletes, fine-drawn in body and mind, ready for instant action or thought, but not capable of sustaining thought or action strenuously or for long." Their food is small in quantity, but quickly assimilated. "Olive oil has no supeiror in the rapid capacity both to satisfy and nourish." This oil and milk and bread and light wine constitute their diet. Their failure to comprehend the European's demand for full and varied meals is often expressed and profound.

>On the eastern side of the Spine, where the heating grain of maize replaces wheat, and where meat, vegetables, soups, and butter replace olive oil, the people are heavy and slow, but enduring long both with body and mind. The Bulgar-Slav race rivals the Turk in its excellence as military material. At a college in Constantinople the strongest intellect among various races is the Bulgarian.

>The Armenians of the eastern plateau are a worthy peasantry, intelligent and enterprising when trained.

>"There is no more enterprising, no keener intellect in the Nearer East than the Syrian of the Fringe. Here the food is wheat, oil, milk, and wine." The Bedouin is the athlete over-trained, living on dates meagrely. He is restless, alert, incapable of sustained thought or action. The rice and date eating Arabs of the Mesopotamian delta are weak and degraded, but more stable thant hose who live without grain in the desert.

>The Moors are a hansome race, having much more resemblance to Europeans and Western Asiatics than to Arabs or to Berbers. They are an intellectual people, but cruel and revengeful, and they exhibit few traces of the delicacy of feeling and nobility of mind which distinguished their ancestors in Spain. They are temperate in their diet, except the richer classes.

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