In the alimentation of armies bread is the basal element. If it be poor,
the whole system of the commissariat is deranged. History shows that it is
the most important item in the feeding of soldiers, and that many a
campaign, since the disaster to the army of Belisarius at Methon, has been
lost in consequence of the quality of its munition bread.
France allows to her soldiers 26 ounces of bread, England 24, Belgium 28,
Sardinia 26, Spain 23, Prussia 32, Austria 32, Turkey 33, United States
22, _Rebel Prisons_ 4 _to_ 12 _ounces_!
The quantity of corn meal allowed to the rebel soldiers by the rebel
government was about one and one-third pounds daily: this would give about
28 ounces of bread, allowing 30 per cent. of water, which is the rule
among bakers; at least it is the average quantity established by the civil
tax commission of Paris. Besides the corn meal they had six ounces of
bacon, and peas, and rice. This ration was sufficient to preserve life, as
it has been shown by the condition of the rebel armies; the bread alone
contained 4900 grains of carbon, and 210 grains of nitrogen, without the
aid of bacon or the peas. The bread alone has an excess of 1600 grains of
carbon, and a deficiency only of about 100 grains of nitrogen, which was
readily supplied by the bacon and other articles. Corn bread is one of the
chief articles of diet in the Southern States, and it is likewise used
extensively in the South of Europe. It makes heavy bread unless carefully
prepared and mixed with flour, and when mixed with the cob it often
produces a laxative effect, the degree of which depends greatly upon the
quantity the meal contains. When properly prepared with milk and the usual
ingredients, it becomes an agreeable and nutritious article of diet, but
carelessly handled, it is disagreeable to the palate and difficult to
digest.
The bread furnished to the prisoners was simply mixed with salt and the
dirty water from the brook, or the foul spring in the rear of the bakery,
and then dried in the heat of the oven. That bad effects arose from such a
quality of bread cannot be doubted; the injurious influences of impure
water in panification have been pointed out by Boussingault, in a paper
presented to the French Academy in 1857.
It is the common saying in the Southern States, where the use of wheaten
bread is comparatively rare, that a bushel of corn contains more nutriment
than a bushel of wheat. Yet the southern wheat is superior to the northern
varieties, and is richer in the azotized, glutinous principles so
essential to the formation of blood and muscle. Vermicelli and macaroni
can be made only from the best southern wheat.
Of the varieties of Indian corn in America, the yellow flinty corn is
reckoned the sweetest and most nutritive; the white corn of the South
makes the fairest, but considerably the weakest flour. We do not find
special fault with the coarsely ground meal, provided the cob is not
included, for Mayer has pointed out, in discarding the commercial bran we
throw away fourteen times as much phosphoric acid as there is in superfine
flour. In this bran are contained most of the layers of gluten, in which
are lodged the phosphates and the companion nitrogenous compounds--the
sources of living tissues. The nutritious Graham bread is an example; also
the pumpernickel of Westphalia, the black bread of Russia, the coarse
oatmeal of Scotland, contain all the gluten, all the phosphates and
nitrogenous compounds, as well as the starch of the grains. Such was the
bread that Celsus considered as equal to flesh in its capacity of
nourishing.