ower, meat, which requires considerable trituration before it can be
made into chyme, is an unfit aliment. But this objection does not tell
against animal food from which the fibrous part has been extracted; nor
does it apply when, after the lapse of two or three years, considerable
muscular vigour has been acquired. And while the evidence in support of
this dogma, partially valid in the case of very young children, is not
valid in the case of older children, who are, nevertheless, ordinarily
treated in conformity with it, the adverse evidence is abundant and
conclusive. The verdict of science is exactly opposite to the popular
opinion. We have put the question to two of our leading physicians, and
to several of the most distinguished physiologists, and they uniformly
agree in the conclusion, that children should have a diet not _less_
nutritive, but, if anything, _more_ nutritive than that of adults.

The grounds for this conclusion are obvious, and the reasoning simple.
It needs but to compare the vital processes of a man with those of a
boy, to see that the demand for sustenance is relatively greater in the
boy than in the man. What are the ends for which a man requires food?
Each day his body undergoes more or less wear--wear through muscular
exertion, wear of the nervous system through mental actions, wear of the
viscera in carrying on the functions of life; and the tissue thus wasted
has to be renewed. Each day, too, by radiation, his body loses a large
amount of heat; and as, for the continuance of the vital actions, the
temperature of the body must be maintained, this loss has to be
compensated by a constant production of heat: to which end certain
constituents of the body are ever undergoing oxidation. To make up for
the day's waste, and to supply fuel for the day's expenditure of heat,
are, then, the sole purposes for which the adult requires food. Consider
now the case of the boy. He, too, wastes the substance of his body by
action; and it needs but to note his restless activity to see that, in
proportion to his bulk, he probably wastes as much as a man. He, too,
loses heat by radiation; and, as his body exposes a greater surface in
proportion to its mass than does that of a man, and therefore loses heat
more rapidly, the quantity of heat-food he requires is, bulk for bulk,
greater than that required by a man. So that even had the boy no other
vital processes to carry on than the man has, he would need, relativ