6

     The scales for Bengalis and Beharis were alike, with the exception that the
staple cereal in the dietary of the Behari consisted of a mixture of 12 ozs. rice and
10 ozs. wheat flour or a similar mixture of rice and maize.

     Lewis remarks on these diets that," taken as a whole, the nutritive value of this
dietary not only exceeds, under every heading, the ' adapted ' scale, which has been
prepared from English Local Prison scales, but, in most cases the amount of food
actually issued is more than is given as a maximum dietary in either the convict or
the Local Prisons in England and Wales. Computed on the English standard
these scales should suffice for men weighing considerably more than the average
weight of natives of Bengal and of Behar — the Bengali scales for a body-weight of
from 123 to 150 lbs.; and the Behari scales for persons weighing 140 to 172 lbs."

     We need not follow Dr.Lewis in the discussion of these diet scales further than
to note that he shows that, on a dietary much inferior to this 1881 scale, Burma pri-
soners were exceedingly healthy and over 85 per cent. gained in weight. He further
instances, as an illustration of the caution that should be observed in attributing
exceptional sickness and mortality amongst prisoners to insufficient food alone, the
experience furnished by the Punjab jails. The mortality in certain of these jails
was unprecedentedly high although the special dietaries sanctioned were practically
double the ordinary scales.

     Further, the fluctuations in mortality seem to occur quite irrespective of the
nature of the dietary and no appreciable result followed the issue of specially liberal
scales of diet. Nevertheless, as will be gathered from the records of the history of
jail diets in India, there seems to have been a gradual increase in the quantities of
the several food-stuffs sanctioned, in the majority of cases to meet exceptional sick-
ness and mortality, while the sanitary conditions were never thought of. The
whole idea seems to have been to fortify the body against infection by means of
continually increasing the food intake—specially the nitrogenous intake—and no
one at that time ever thought of making any attempt at removing the source of
infection—at least we have no information of any such attempts. The teaching
of Liebig had a marked influence in these increases of jail diets and very great
prominence was given to the necessity of increasing the albuminous or nitrogenous
principles of food in proportion to the amount of work exacted, on the supposition
that the nitrogenous, chiefly muscular, tissues of the body are rapidly wasted as a
result of exertion, and that the non-nitrogenous elements of food were simply useful
in the production of heat. In the endeavour that had been manifested by many
framers of jail dietaries to raise the proportion of the nitrogenous element a large
addition to the pulses had been a favourite mode of meeting the requirements ;
but, as Lewis pointed out chemical analysis, however exhaustive, can only
afford such information as will enable an approximate estimate to be formed of
the nutritive value of any food, seeing it is not only what nutriment a particular