Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 2 of 5

Christian, Eugene, 1860-1930Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

Rating 2.6
Word count
256K words
Chapters
26

Tags

English Originals Food and Drink Healthy EatingDaily WellnessScience EnlightenmentNutritional PairingHealth SciencePractical GuidePopular Explanation

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, Vol. 2 of 5 by ChristianAuthor: Christian, Eugene, 1860-1930,Language: English, Class: RM: Medicine: Therapeutics, Pharmacology, Release Date: Apr 20, 2015

Editor's review

Volume 2 of the Encyclopedia of Diet is the middle installment of Eugene Christian's five-volume dietary encyclopedia, offering a systematic discussion of the food question that touches on the relationship between food and bodily function, dietary combinations, and therapeutic ideas. Its value lies mainly at the level of historical documentation: the book presents the popular early twentieth-century Western framework for thinking about diet and health, helping readers understand the conceptual forms and modes of discourse that predated the formation of modern nutrition science. As a public-domain electronic edition, it is easy to search and compare for research, making it suitable for collecting material on the history of nutrition, the social history of medicine, and popular-science writing. One caveat: many of its views are products of their time and differ from modern evidence-based nutrition, so readers should treat it as a historical text rather than a practical health guide, and should not adjust their personal diet on its basis or use it as a substitute for professional medical advice.

Who it's for

A good fit for

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Reading tips

  1. Read it as a historical document, comparing its views against modern nutrition knowledge as you go.
  2. Break the reading down by topic, starting with the table of contents to locate chapters on food and bodily function.
  3. Take notes on the book's core claims and argumentative methods to help trace the history of ideas.
  4. Do not adjust your diet on your own based on the book's contents, and do not use it in place of advice from a doctor or dietitian.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

Contents

  1. 1
  2. 2
  3. 3
  4. 4
  5. 5
  6. 6
  7. 7
  8. 8
  9. 9
  10. 10
  11. 11
  12. 12
  13. 13
  14. 14
  15. 15
  16. 16
  17. 17
  18. 18
  19. 19
  20. 20
  21. 21
  22. 22
  23. 23
  24. 24
  25. 25
  26. 26

FAQ

Can the views in this book still be followed directly today? Following them directly is not recommended. The book was written in the early twentieth century, and many of its dietary claims were popular notions of the time that do not match modern evidence-based nutrition. It is better read as a historical document and research material; personal dietary changes should still be based on modern professional advice.
Can I read Volume 2 without having read Volume 1? You can try, but bear in mind that this is the middle volume of a five-volume work, and some discussions may build on concepts and classifications from the previous volume. It is advisable to skim the table of contents and opening remarks first to confirm the scope of this volume; if you find frequent references to the previous volume, go back and read Volume 1.
Does this edition have modern annotations or an introduction? This is a public-domain electronic edition from Project Gutenberg, offering mainly the original text and usually without modern scholarly annotations, introductions, or textual notes. Readers who need help with historical context and terminology will have to consult relevant works on the history of nutrition or medicine themselves.

This site is an index: you start “Search all sources” in your browser, and the entries it lists all point to third-party sites; please judge their availability yourself.

About the author

Christian, Eugene, 1860-1930 Author

Eugene Christian (1860–1930) is the author of the Encyclopedia of Diet: A Treatise on the Food Question, a five-volume work, all volumes of which are held in this library. Publicly available information about his nationality, education, and professional career is limited, and no speculation is offered here. Judging from the work he left behind, he was concerned with practical questions of diet and health, discussing food choice, nutritional balance, and everyday eating in an encyclopedic format that combines practical guidance with accessible popular science. The five volumes are extensive and clearly organized for consultation as needed, giving the work a representative place among early twentieth-century writings that popularized dietary knowledge. His discussion reflects how people of his time understood the relationship between nutrition and health, and it is also of value for understanding the spread of early dietary science.