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261
There are two chief requirements of a satisfactory diet. First,
such a diet must contain food which will provide sufficient energy
to enable a man to do work (average, 3,500 units of energy), and,
secondly, it must provide for the upkeep of the tissues of the body
(average, 125 grammes of proteid). Now it has been found by
investigation that the diet of the Edinburgh working man is
deficient by 280 units of energy and 13 grammes of proteid, while
in York the average diet was 17 per cent. below standard in energy
and 29 per cent, too low in proteid. We have no similar figures
for Finsbury, but it cannot be doubted that the diet of the larger
proportion of the workers in this Borough is, at least, equally
deficient. Yet nutrition is the most important factor in physical
growth and development.
3. Inferior' Housing, Overcrowding and Domestic Insanitation.—
Reference has already been made to the influence of this result of
poverty. It is unnecessary at the present day to emphasise the
gross physical and moral evil of such conditions as overcrowding
and insanitary housing.
4. Strain of Continual Effort.—Fatigue and insufficient rest are
two conditions which exercise an unfavourable influence upon
health. Sir James Paget said that "in every-day practice fatigue
has a larger share in the promotion or permission of disease than
any other single casual condition you can name." The continual
strain and anxiety of the poor to battle against their poverty and
the evils which follow in its train, unquestionably affect their
health. Further, it is noteworthy how little refreshing sleep is
obtainable in some insanitary tenement houses, especially those
which are verminous and overcrowded or adjoining public houses
or in streets used for night traffic.
5. Uncleanliness.—Dust and dirt follow in the train of poverty.
It is thus that food, especially milk, becomes contaminated; houses
retain tubercle infection; lungs become diseased; tenements
become filthy and the home of every kind of domestic insanitation.
Cleanliness may come next to godliness in ethics, but it stands first
as a preventive of physical disease.