XIII.

The corn bread furnished was made, according to the evidence, from corn and the cob, ground up together, and sometimes mixed with what is called in the south cow peas. It varied from four to twelve ounces in weight daily, generally from four to eight ounces. A pound (of sixteen ounces) of corn bread contains, according to chemical analysis, two thousand eight hundred grains of carbon and one hundred and twenty-one grains of nitrogen, and therefore the highest quantity of corn bread furnished, say twelve ounces, afforded but two thousand one hundred grains of carbon and ninety grains of nitrogen, leaving a deficiency, according to the physiologists, of more than twelve hundred grains of carbon and two hundred grains of nitrogen, to be supplied by the two or four ounces of doubtful bacon.

That the bacon could not furnish this deficiency must be apparent to the scientific observer. The quantity of bread alone, required to furnish the desired amount of carbon and nitrogen, would have been over three pounds daily, which quantity the prisoners did not have.

Milne Edwards, after treating at length the subject of alimentation, and offering many examples, arrives at the conclusion that the mean quantity of bread and meat required to sustain the life of man, consists of sixteen ounces of bread and thirteen ounces of beef daily. This conclusion is sustained by most of the experimentalists, and if lesser quantities are used, they must be of choice selections. A small loaf of bread made of flour, ground from ripe, healthy wheat, will accomplish more for nutrition than two or three larger loaves, baked of damaged and unripe grain; and likewise it is with meat: half a pound of beef from cattle killed instantly in their native pastures, when the flesh retains all its natural juices and sweetness, is worth more for the support of the system than two or three pounds of beef from animals that have been fasted and terrified, and have thereby lost, in a very great measure, their nutritious qualities.

The flesh of mammalia undergoes a great change in its nutritive qualities by reason of fasting, disturbance of sleep, and long-continued suffering, resulting in its becoming not only worthless, but deleterious.