It has been already shewn in this work, that the want of sufficient and wholesome food is frequently attended and followed by disease. It is now proposed to shew how important food and drink, of good quality, are to the preservation of health; but the fact is so well known, and so undoubted, that it is almost unnecessary to say that they are essential to the preservation of the body in its strength and dimensions.
That sense of sinking and languor, which is so commonly experienced upon long fasting, would soon be exchanged for the actual pains of disease, were it not to be removed shortly by the taking of food.
When the body is exhausted from the want of food for some hours, a good and ample repast imparts strength to the body, and cheerfulness to the mind, and goes far to prevent the evasion of some forms of disease.
An individual who is well fed, is generally more secure against the invasion of disease of a low character, than another who is only scantily and occasionally supplied with food.
It is generally believed that individuals who have lately partaken of food, are less subject to the operation of vitiated air, or as it is commonly termed, “contagious air;” and it was commonly reported during the late prevalence of cholera, that persons who took breakfast before going out, suffered less from that disease than those who followed a contrary course.
Many well authenticated instances are recorded of the health of armies undergoing very great improvement, and of disease in these bodies being greatly checked by the distribution of ample wholesome food, and by the privation which they had suffered for some time previous, being ended, by some accidental circumstances, as the gaining the enemy’s magazines, or the reduction of a siege. Sir George Ballingall relates in his work on Military Surgery, that “during the prevalence of a malignant fever in this regiment (33d), then stationed in the garrison of Hull, in the autumn of 1817, amongst other measures calculated to check the rapid extension of the disease, I recommended the regular supply of breakfast to the men. This was immediately ordered by the commanding officer, and nothing appeared either to the officers, to the soldiers, or to myself, to have so much effect in obviating attacks of the fever.”
The institution of soup kitchens in this country, for the distribution of wholesome and nourishing food to the perishing poor, there is no doubt, has a most salutary influence in the prevention of disease, by, in short, so fortifying individuals, otherwise incapable of resistance, as to render them proof against the influence of many causes of pestilence.
There can be little doubt that the liberal distribution of nutritious food, which of late years has happily taken place from these charitable institutions, has gone far to check the ravages of fever, which is so prevalent in this climate, during winter, when the labouring classes are subject in so great a degree to cold, and the privation of food and other necessaries of life.
It is stated on good medical authority, that no measure which was instituted for the purpose of stopping the progress of typhus fever in Glasgow, in the winter of 1837–8, then very prevalent and mortal, was so useful, and so immediately and obviously efficient, as the establishment of soup kitchens in that city.
Among the arrangements in Edinburgh in 1832, which tended apparently to render cholera less extensive than in other large towns, a soup kitchen formed one.