CHAPTER III.

Report on six months' use of special diets in Puri Jail.

     By the end of 1908 we had obtained undoubted evidence of the beneficial
effect of a reduction of the bulk of the ordinary jail diet on the level of
protein metabolism; it was therefore necessary to determine whether such a
reduction would be accompanied by a maintenance in the standard of the
prisoners' health and their physical condition. With this object in view it
was decided, in consultation with the Officiating Sanitary Commissioner with
the Government of India—Lieutenant-Colonel W. J. Bamber I.M.S.—and
the Inspector-General of Prisons, Bengal—Lieutenant-Colonel W. J.
Buchanan, I.M.S.—to place all the prisoners in Puri jail on diets in which
the bulk had been considerably decreased. This arrangement was carried out
over a period extending from the beginning of January to the end of July
1909.

     This experiment of some six months' duration is not really of much value
in determining the effects of the lessened diet on prisoners over long periods,
as Puri being a District jail few of the prisoners remained for more than
from one to two months. It shows, however, the effects of the diet on
the new admissions and on those prisoners under confinement when the
experiment was begun: by a comparison of the results thus obtained with
those of the same period in previous years, we are able to form a fair idea of
the effect of the reduction of the bulk of the ordinary jail diet.

     The prisoners were divided. into two classes of a nearly equal number of
prisoners in each. One class was given a diet composed of—

Class A.

     The other a diet composed of—

Class B.

     A batch of five men were selected from each of these two classes at the
beginning, in the middle and at the end of the experiment: these batches were

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