NUTRITION AS A FACTOR IN EDUCATION.
The influence of diet in the development not only of physical power, but
of intellectual and spiritual power also, has now begun to attract general
attention. There is no longer any doubt that the character of the bones,
of the muscles, of the nerves, and of the brain itself, is decided to a
considerable extent by the food that is eaten. There is no longer any
doubt that many children have been urged to do work which becomes
destructive beyond the fatigue point of their little brains, when their
brains have not been properly nourished, either from lack of proper food
or of properly cooked food, or from eating too much or too little.
The deterioration of the physical system, and especially the deterioration
of the neurological system, is one of the most startling subjects within
the range of view of educators and psychologists. One of the most
attractive departments of child study is that which investigates the means
of deciding from external manifestations of form, proportion, action,
voice, and attitude the nature and condition of the brain and neurological
system of the child. When this discovery has been made, however, it but
prepares the way for further investigation to discover in what way
abnormal or weak systems may be helped to become normal and strong.
One of the fundamental things to be done by scientists and educators is to
discover the kinds of food adapted to different stages of the child's
growth, and to the varied functions of study and work required of him. By
proper nutrition and by proper exercise much may be done to increase the
power and efficiency of the body and the brain and the rest of the
neurological system.
Dickens saw the need of attention to the problems of nutrition very
clearly. He began to write about it in Oliver Twist.
He first exposed the horrors of baby farming, with its terrible percentage
of deaths, resulting almost entirely from the villainous indifference to
the diet of the children. Children yet die in homes from similar causes,
or, if they do not die, they go through life weakened and dwarfed.
For the next eight or ten months Oliver was the victim of a systematic
course of treachery and deception. He was brought up by hand. The
hungry and destitute situation of the infant orphan was duly reported
by the workhouse authorities to the parish authorities. The parish
authorities inquired with dignity of the workhouse authorities whether
there was no female then domiciled "in the house" who was in a
situation to impart to Oliver Twist the consolation and nourishment of
which he stood in need. The workhouse authorities replied with
humility that there was not. Upon this the parish authorities
magnanimously and humanely resolved that Oliver should be "farmed,"
or, in other words, that he should be despatched to a branch workhouse
some three miles off, where twenty or thirty other juvenile offenders
against the poor laws rolled about the floor all day, without the
inconvenience of too much food or too much clothing, under the
parental superintendence of an elderly female, who received the
culprits at and for the consideration of sevenpence halfpenny per
small head per week. Sevenpence halfpenny's worth per week is a good
round diet for a child; a great deal may be got for sevenpence
halfpenny, quite enough to overload its stomach, and make it
uncomfortable. The elderly female was a woman of wisdom and
experience; she knew what was good for children; and she had a very
accurate perception of what was good for herself. So she appropriated
the greater part of the weekly stipend to her own use, and consigned
the rising parochial generation to even a shorter allowance than was
originally provided for them. Thereby finding in the lowest depth a
deeper still; and proving herself a very great experimental
philosopher.
The system did not work well for the children.
For at the very moment when a child had contrived to exist upon the
smallest possible portion of the weakest possible food, it did
perversely happen in eight and a half cases out of ten, either that it
sickened from want or cold, or fell into the fire from neglect, or got
half-smothered by accident; in any one of which cases, the miserable
little being was usually summoned into another world, and there
gathered to the fathers it had never known in this.
It can not be expected that this system of farming would produce any
very extraordinary or luxuriant crop. Oliver Twist's ninth birthday
found him a pale, thin child, somewhat diminutive in stature, and
decidedly small in circumference. It _was_ his ninth birthday; and he
was keeping it in the coal cellar with a select party of two other
young gentlemen, who, after participating with him in a sound
thrashing, had been locked up for atrociously presuming to be hungry.
The famous meal in the workhouse when Oliver asked for more was intended
to direct attention to the way children were fed and treated in
institutions. The boys were fed on gruel.
Of this festive composition each boy had one porringer, and no
more--except on occasions of great public rejoicing, when he had two
ounces and a quarter of bread besides. The bowls never wanted washing.
The boys polished them with their spoons till they shone again; and
when they had performed this operation (which never took very long,
the spoons being nearly as large as the bowls), they would sit staring
at the copper, with such eager eyes, as if they could have devoured
the very bricks of which it was composed; employing themselves,
meanwhile, in sucking their fingers most assiduously, with the view of
catching up any stray splashes of gruel that might have been cast
thereon. Boys have generally excellent appetites. Oliver Twist and his
companions suffered the tortures of slow starvation for three months;
at last they got so voracious and wild with hunger that one boy who
was tall for his age, and hadn't been used to that sort of thing (for
his father had kept a small cookshop), hinted darkly to his companions
that unless he had another basin of gruel _per diem_, he was afraid he
might some night happen to eat the boy who slept next to him, who
happened to be a weakly youth of tender age. He had a wild, hungry
eye; and they implicitly believed him. A council was held; lots were
cast who should walk up to the master after supper that evening, and
ask for more; and it fell to Oliver Twist.
The evening arrived; the boys took their places. The master, in his
cook's uniform, stationed himself at the copper; his pauper assistants
ranged themselves behind him; the gruel was served out; and a long
grace was said over a short commons. The gruel disappeared; the boys
whispered each other and winked at Oliver; while his next neighbours
nudged him. Child as he was, he was desperate with hunger and reckless
with misery. He rose from the table; and advancing to the master,
basin and spoon in hand, said, somewhat alarmed at his own temerity:
"Please, sir, I want some more."
The master was a fat, healthy man; but he turned very pale. He gazed
in stupefied astonishment on the small rebel for some seconds, and
then clung for support to the copper. The assistants were paralyzed
with wonder; the boys with fear.
"What!" said the master at length, in a faint voice.
"Please, sir," replied Oliver, "I want some more."
The master aimed a blow at Oliver's head with the ladle; pinioned his
arms; and shrieked aloud for the beadle.
The board were sitting in solemn conclave, when Mr. Bumble rushed into
the room in great excitement, and addressing the gentleman in the high
chair, said:
"Mr. Limbkins, I beg your pardon, sir! Oliver Twist has asked for
more."
There was a general start. Horror was depicted in every countenance.
"For _more_!" said Mr. Limbkins. "Compose yourself, Bumble, and answer
me distinctly. Do I understand that he asked for more, after he had
eaten the supper allotted by the dietary?"
"He did, sir," replied Bumble.
"That boy will be hung," said the gentleman in the white waistcoat. "I
know that boy will be hung."
Having shown how infants were starved in "farming," and how boys were
starved in the workhouses, he next directed attention to the way
apprentices were treated.
Mr. Sowerberry was an undertaker, who decided to take Oliver from the
workhouse. He took Oliver "upon liking," which meant that "if he could get
enough work out of him without putting too much food into him, he should
keep him for a term of years to do what he liked with him."
When Oliver had been driven to desperation by Noah Claypole, and had
punished him as he deserved, Mrs. Sowerberry sent for Mr. Bumble. When Mr.
Bumble asked Oliver if he was not afraid of him, Oliver bravely answered
"No!" The Beadle was petrified with amazement, and he accounted for
Oliver's wickedness by saying:
"It's meat."
"What?" exclaimed Mrs. Sowerberry.
"Meat, ma'am, meat," replied Bumble, with stern emphasis. "You've
overfed him, ma'am. You've raised a artificial soul and spirit in him,
ma'am, unbecoming a person of his condition; as the board, Mrs.
Sowerberry, who are practical philosophers, will tell you. What have
paupers to do with soul or spirit? It's quite enough that we let 'em
have live bodies. If you had kept the boy on gruel, ma'am, this would
never have happened."
"Dear, dear!" ejaculated Mrs. Sowerberry, piously raising her eyes to
the kitchen ceiling; "this comes of being liberal!"
The liberality of Mrs. Sowerberry to Oliver had consisted in a profuse
bestowal upon him of all the dirty odds and ends which nobody else
would eat.
By this conversation Dickens meant to teach that a well-fed child is a
different type from one who is not properly nourished; that food has an
influence on the spirit, as well as on the body. He did not disapprove of
Oliver's spirit, but he heartily commended him for resenting the way he
was treated. This lesson was needed too, as children were expected to
submit uncomplainingly to those who were their legal guardians, whether
strangers or parents. Now, largely through Dickens, children are not only
encouraged to defend themselves against cruel and tyrannical guardians or
parents, and to run away from them, but the state itself will take them
away, if cruelty is proved against those who should be their protectors.
Dickens also revealed by this incident the meanness of adults not only in
institutions but in homes, in giving to the children the "odds and ends,"
the scraps, the parts of the fowl or the meat that older people do not
care for. He brought the matter up again in Great Expectations. At the
Christmas dinner Pip "was regaled with the scaly tips of the drumsticks of
the fowls, and with those obscure corners of pork of which the pig, when
living, had least reason to be vain."
One of the reasons given by Snawley to Squeers to induce him to take his
stepsons at a lower rate was that "they were not great eaters."
The selfishness of adulthood toward childhood, and the stupidity of the
general idea, that children do not require good food because they are
young and do not have to work hard, were held up to deserved ridicule, in
Squeers's manner of breakfasting in London, and the food he provided for
the five hungry little boys to strengthen them for their long ride to
Yorkshire in cold weather.
He found that learned gentleman sitting at breakfast, with the three
little boys before noticed, and two others who had turned up by some
lucky chance since the interview of the previous day, ranged in a row
on the opposite seat. Mr. Squeers had before him a small measure of
coffee, a plate of hot toast, and a cold round of beef; but he was at
that moment intent on preparing breakfast for the little boys.
"This is two penn'orth of milk, is it, waiter?" said Mr. Squeers,
looking down into a large blue mug, and slanting it gently, so as to
get an accurate view of the quantity of liquid contained in it.
"That's two penn'orth, sir," replied the waiter.
"What a rare article milk is, to be sure, in London!" said Mr. Squeers
with a sigh. "Just fill that mug up with lukewarm water, William, will
you?"
"To the wery top, sir?" inquired the waiter. "Why, the milk will be
drownded."
"Never you mind that," replied Mr. Squeers. "Serve it right for being
so dear. You ordered that thick bread and butter for three, did you?"
"Coming directly, sir."
"You needn't hurry yourself," said Squeers; "there's plenty of time.
Conquer your passions, boys, and don't be eager after vittles." As he
uttered this moral precept, Mr. Squeers took a large bite out of the
cold beef, and recognised Nicholas.
"Sit down, Mr. Nickleby," said Squeers. "Here we are, a-breakfasting
you see!"
Nicholas did _not_ see that anybody was breakfasting, except Mr.
Squeers; but he bowed with all becoming reverence, and looked as
cheerful as he could.
"Oh! that's the milk and water, is it, William?" said Squeers. "Very
good; don't forget the bread and butter presently."
At this fresh mention of the bread and butter the five little boys
looked very eager, and followed the waiter out, with their eyes;
meanwhile Mr. Squeers tasted the milk and water.
"Ah!" said that gentleman, smacking his lips, "here's richness! Think
of the many beggars and orphans in the streets that would be glad of
this, little boys. A shocking thing hunger is, isn't it, Mr.
Nickleby?"
"Very shocking, sir," said Nicholas.
"When I say number one," pursued Mr. Squeers, putting the mug before
the children, "the boy on the left hand nearest the window may take a
drink; and when I say number two, the boy next him will go in, and so
till we come to number five, which is the last boy. Are you ready?"
"Yes, sir," cried the little boys with great eagerness.
"That's right," said Squeers, calmly getting on with his breakfast;
"keep ready till I tell you to begin. Subdue your appetites, my dears,
and you've conquered human natur. This is the way we inculcate
strength of mind, Mr. Nickleby," said the schoolmaster, turning to
Nicholas, and speaking with his mouth very full of beef and toast.
Nicholas murmured something--he knew not what--in reply; and the
little boys, dividing their gaze between the mug, the bread and butter
(which had by this time arrived), and every morsel which Mr. Squeers
took into his mouth, remained with strained eyes in torments of
expectation.
"Thank God for a good breakfast," said Squeers, when he had finished.
"Number one may take a drink."
Number one received the mug ravenously, and had just drunk enough to
make him wish for more, when Mr. Squeers gave the signal for number
two, who gave up at the same interesting moment to number three; and
the process was repeated until the milk and water terminated with
number five.
"And now," said the schoolmaster, dividing the bread and butter for
three into as many portions as there were children, "you had better
look sharp with your breakfast, the horn will blow in a minute or two,
and then every boy leaves off."
Permission being thus given to fall to, the boys began to eat
voraciously, and in desperate haste, while the schoolmaster (who was
in high good humour after his meal) picked his teeth with a fork, and
looked smilingly on. In a very short time the horn was heard.
"I thought it wouldn't be long," said Squeers, jumping up and
producing a little basket from under the seat; "put what you haven't
had time to eat in here, boys! You'll want it on the road!"
Young Wackford Squeers was fed on the fattest meats, so that he might be
kept plump and energetic, in order that he might be taken to London to
show intending patrons how well the boys were fed in Dotheboys Hall.
Again, in The Old Curiosity Shop, the starving of child servants is
condemned by the way Sally Brass fed the Marchioness. Dick Swiveller's
curiosity led him to peep through a crack in the kitchen door one day
while Sally was giving the little servant her dinner.
Everything was locked up; the coal cellar, the candle box, the salt
box, the meat safe were all padlocked. There was nothing that a beetle
could have lunched upon. The pinched and meagre aspect of the place
would have killed a chameleon; he would have known, at the first
mouthful, that the air was not eatable, and must have given up the
ghost in despair.
The small servant stood with humility in presence of Miss Sally, and
hung her head.
"Are you there?" said Miss Sally.
"Yes, ma'am," was the answer, in a weak voice.
"Go farther away from the leg of mutton, or you'll be picking it, I
know," said Miss Sally.
The girl withdrew into a corner, while Miss Brass took a key from her
pocket, and opening the safe, brought from it a dreary waste of cold
potatoes, looking as eatable as Stonehenge. This she placed before the
small servant, ordering her to sit down before it, and then, taking up
a great carving knife, made a mighty show of sharpening it upon the
carving fork.
"Do you see this?" said Miss Brass, slicing off about two square
inches of cold mutton, after all this preparation, and holding it out
on the point of the fork.
The small servant looked hard enough at it with her hungry eyes to see
every shred in it, small as it was, and answered, "Yes."
"Then don't you ever go and say," retorted Miss Sally, "that you
hadn't meat here. There, eat it up."
This was soon done. "Now, do you want any more?" said Miss Sally.
The hungry creature answered with a faint "No." They were evidently
going through an established form.
"You've been helped once to meat," said Miss Brass, summing up the
facts; "you have had as much as you can eat, you're asked if you want
any more, and you answer 'No!' Then don't you ever go and say you were
allowanced, mind that."
Dickens showed the evil effects of eating too rapidly in his description
of the dinner in Mrs. Pawkins's boarding house in New York, where Martin
Chuzzlewit boarded for a short time after reaching America.
It was a numerous company, eighteen or twenty perhaps. Of these, some
five or six were ladies, who sat wedged together in a little phalanx
by themselves. All the knives and forks were working away at a rate
that was quite alarming; very few words were spoken; and everybody
seemed to eat his utmost in self-defence, as if a famine were expected
to set in before breakfast time to-morrow morning, and it had become
high time to assert the first law of Nature. The poultry, which may
perhaps be considered to have formed the staple of the
entertainment--for there was a turkey at the top, a pair of ducks at
the bottom, and two fowls in the middle--disappeared as rapidly as if
every bird had had the use of its wings, and had flown in desperation
down a human throat. The oysters, stewed and pickled, leaped from
their capacious reservoirs, and slid by scores into the mouths of the
assembly. The sharpest pickles vanished, whole cucumbers at once, like
sugarplums, and no man winked his eye. Great heaps of indigestible
matter melted away as ice before the sun. It was a solemn and an awful
thing to see. Dyspeptic individuals bolted their food in wedges;
feeding not themselves, but broods of nightmares, who were continually
standing at livery within them. Spare men, with lank and rigid cheeks,
came out unsatisfied from the destruction of heavy dishes, and glared
with watchful eyes upon the pastry. What Mrs. Pawkins felt each day at
dinner time is hidden from all human knowledge. But she had one
comfort. It was very soon over.
Dickens repeats this criticism of rapid eating in his American Notes, when
specifying the causes of disease among American people. He says: "The
custom of hastily swallowing large quantities of animal food three times a
day and rushing back to sedentary pursuits after each meal must be
changed."
Poor Paul Dombey was sacrificed to his father's pride. Mrs. Toodle was
dismissed by Mr. Dombey because she dared to take his infant son with her
when she went to see her own children. Paul was thus robbed of the natural
food, which his sensitive nature needed so much. This was largely
responsible for the fact that Paul was delicate. By first depriving him of
proper food, and then sending him to Doctor Blimber's school "to learn
everything," Mr. Dombey led directly to Paul's death. His pride and vanity
overreached themselves.
In Mrs. Pipchin's meals Dickens tried to show two things: First, the
selfishness of adulthood in regard to children's diet as compared with its
own; second, the absolute insufficiency of the kind of food commonly
supplied to children for building up strong, energetic, and well-developed
men and women.
She regaled the children with a repast of "farinaceous and vegetable
foods--chiefly rice," but she herself had a good hot dinner with mutton
chops.
The children were required to repeat a form of grace thanking Mrs.
Pipchin for a good dinner. Oliver was told he must be thankful to the kind
gentlemen who provided food for him in the workhouse. The same mockery of
religion by mixing it up with the starvation of childhood is made
ridiculous in the letter which Squeers read to the unfortunate children in
Dotheboys Hall, pretending that it had been written by the stepmother of
Mobbs.
"Mobbs's stepmother," said Squeers, "took to her bed on hearing that he
wouldn't eat fat, and has been very ill ever since. She wishes to know, by
an early post, where he expects to go to if he quarrels with his vittles;
and with what feelings he could turn up his nose at the cow's liver's
broth, after his good master had asked a blessing on it." "Cow's liver's
broth" would not be a very strengthening diet for children even with the
blessing of so good a man as Squeers upon it.
Dickens makes a characteristic hit at the fashionable idea which was
popular at one time, that it was rather indelicate, especially in a lady,
to have a good robust constitution and a vigorous digestion in describing
Mr. Vholes in Bleak House. "His digestion was impaired, which is always
highly respectable."
Mrs. Cruncher, in A Tale of Two Cities, objected to the questionable ways
in which Mr. Cruncher earned his money sometimes. Her husband charged her
with flying in the face of Providence by refusing the "wittles and drink"
he provided for her, and especially for neglecting to give it to their
son. "With you flying into the face of your own wittles and drink! I don't
know how scarce you mayn't make the wittles and drink here by your
flopping tricks and your unfeeling conduct. Look at your boy: he is yourn,
ain't he? He's as thin as a lath. Do you call yourself a mother, and not
know a mother's first duty is to blow her son out."
Abel Magwitch, when describing the terrible training he received at the
hands of a Christian community in the most advanced Christian civilization
of the world, said that when he was in jail some philanthropists "measured
his head to find out the cause of his wickedness," and added with great
wisdom, "they had better a-measured my stomach."
The folly of hoping that healthy infants can be nourished by mothers who
are compelled to labour continuously through long hours without rest is
shown in the description of the child whose mother was a waitress, in
Somebody's Luggage. Incidentally, too, Dickens reveals in this case the
facts that the power of assimilation of little children is usually
impaired, and that, as a consequence, they become more peevish, and
therefore get shaken and otherwise abused for the ignorance of the adults
responsible for their care. Speaking of the treatment of the baby, he
says:
You were conveyed--ere yet your dawning powers were otherwise
developed than to harbour vacancy in your inside--you were conveyed by
surreptitious means into a pantry adjoining the Admiral Nelson, Civic
and General Dining-Rooms, there to receive by stealth that healthful
sustenance which is the pride and boast of the British female
constitution. Under the combined influence of the smells of roast and
boiled, and soup, and gas, and malt liquors, you partook of your
earliest nourishment; your unwilling grandmother sitting prepared to
catch you when your mother was called and dropped you; your
grandmother's shawl ever ready to stifle your natural complainings;
your innocent mind surrounded by uncongenial cruets, dirty plates,
dish covers, and cold gravy; your mother calling down the pipe for
veals and porks, instead of soothing you with nursery rhymes. Under
these untoward circumstances you were early weaned. Your unwilling
grandmother, ever growing more unwilling as your food assimilated
less, then contracted habits of shaking you till your system curdled,
and your food would not assimilate at all.
The schoolmaster in Jemmy Lirriper's original story was captured and put
into confinement for his treatment of the boys, and he was to have nothing
to eat but the boys' dinners, and was to drink half a cask of their beer
every day.
The schoolboy in The Schoolboy's Story describes the food given to the
boys as one of the grievances they had against the institution.
As to the beef, it's shameful. It's _not_ beef. Regular beef isn't
veins. You can chew regular beef. Besides which, there's gravy to
regular beef, and you never see a drop to ours. Another of our fellows
went home ill, and heard the family doctor tell his father that he
couldn't account for his complaint unless it was the beer. Of course
it was the beer, and well it might be!
However, beef and Old Cheeseman are two different things. So is beer.
It was Old Cheeseman I meant to tell about; not the manner in which
our fellows get their constitutions destroyed for the sake of profit.
Why, look at the pie crust alone. There's no flakiness in it. It's
solid--like damp lead. Then our fellows get nightmares, and are
bolstered for calling out and waking other fellows. Who can wonder!
Old Cheeseman one night walked in his sleep, put his hat on over his
nightcap, got hold of a fishing rod and a cricket bat, and went down
into the parlour, where they naturally thought from his appearance he
was a Ghost. Why, he never would have done that if his meals had been
wholesome. When we all begin to walk in our sleeps, I suppose they'll
be sorry for it.
At Doctor Blimber's school they used "to crib the boys' dinners." There is
no more outrageous practice than that of depriving a child of food as a
means of punishment.
Dickens ended his sketch entitled A Walk in a Workhouse with a plea on
behalf of the inmates for "a little more liberty--and a little more
bread," and even in his last book, Edwin Drood, he was still directing
attention to the poor food supplied in boarding schools.
Mrs. Billickin was very plain in her hints about the poor board supplied
to Rosa at Miss Twinkleton's when she received the schoolmistress in her
own home. Referring to Rosa, who was now residing with Mrs. Billickin, she
said:
"I did think it well to mention to my cook, which I 'ope you will
agree with, Miss Twinkleton, was a right precaution, that the young
lady being used to what we should consider here but poor diet, had
better be brought forward by degrees. For a rush from scanty feeding
to generous feeding, and from what you may call messing to what you
may call method, do require a power of constitution, which is not
often found in youth, particularly when undermined by boarding school!
I was put in youth to a very genteel boarding school, the mistress
being no less a lady than yourself, of about your own age, or, it may
be some years younger, and a poorness of blood flowed from the table
which has run through my life."