Crime, Health and Diet

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CRIME, HEALTH AND DIET.

The Scalpel¹ for April has just come to hand, and in its original familiar quarterly garb. The experiment of issuing it monthly in quarto, seems to have failed, and it is to be regretted, as an indication that the popular taste has not become sufficiently wholesome to appreciate the valuable and health promoting prescriptions of Dr. DIXON, even so often as in monthly doses.

The leading paper in the number is an article on the "Natural History of Crime," being a lecture delivered by the Editor at Hope Chapel in March last, and with which the reports in the newspapers at the time, abridged as they were, have no doubt made most of our readers in some degree familiar.

The prominent idea evolved by the lecturer is that early training—mental and physical—is all-potential in repelling or inciting the propensity to crime, and as a corollary that by proper youthful education and training only—and this compulsory if it cannot be secured otherwise—can crime be decreased. There is no novelty in this proposition—it is axiomatic with that school of political economists whose theories and teachings are made familiar to us through the columns of the Tribune. It is not his text, but his illustrations in enforcing it, that contain what in the paper is really worthy of attention. For example, he assumes, in fact, that crime is a natural incident to property—in other words that "poverty is an inward principle, enrolled deeply within the man, and running through all his elements; it reaches his body, his health, his intellect, and his moral powers, as well as his estate." The result he contends is that among those whom the world calls poor, there is less vital force, a lower tone of life, more ill-health, more weakness, a diminished longevity, and also less self-respect, ambition, and hope, more idiocy and insanity, and more crime, than among the independent. And this it is claimed is sustained by reference to the most reliable statistics both in this country and Great Britain. This is a reversal of the theory that "honor and shame from no condition rise," and we fancy is a doctrine that will meet with but few supporters, in this country at least. If it is true, then "two dollars a day and roast beef" is your surest preventative to crime.

Again, in the view of Dr. D., food and diet have a controlling influence among the causes of crime. Says he—

If the organs of the brain are influenced by the power of the circulation, and the amount of use to which they are put, if the evil passions thrive upon the quantity of blood their originating centres receive, then I think you will be obliged to admit the converse of this; it is a physiological truth, that the brain, in common with all the other organs of the body, must suffer in consequence of defective and insufficient nourishment. If a man’s surroundings are such as to convey through his senses to these organs low and despairing examples and emotions, he will suffer in his whole moral and physical nature. I hold it indisputable, that if a man for several generations be accustomed to eat rice and potatoes, he will physically and morally partake largely of the nature of rice and potatoes; he will assimilate readily with the earth, and can easily be made contented with a cabin, and the earth for a floor, and sods for walls, till he becomes a more troglodyte, a two-legged ground-hog; or he can be subdued by a mere handful of men, as in India, or held in moral thraldom by a benighted priesthood."

Dr. Dixon is no vegetarian, it will be readily seen—to use his own words, he is a believer "in the physiological and life—prolonging influence of good meat-diet and wine." Neither is he by any means an admirer of the Celt. The Hibernian, in his view, is degraded physically and mentally by the use of the potato. To use his own language, "the immediate influence of prosperity on the excitable Irishman, is too often shown in his passion for drink." This increased wages here enable him to procure in quantities never dreamed of in his wildest imaginings at home, and your potato or vegetable-fed man cannot resist the effects of liquor as well as he who has enjoyed a diversified diet. The result is, the commission of crime among them is frequent, and "their children are likely to resemble them morally and physically, and furnish a crowd of garotters, thieves and murders." This is a fearful picture, truly, of the results of potato feeding, but the Doctor is prone to exaggeration of coloring in his sketches.

He is quite as severe on the American for his tobacco chewing and spirit drinking. Our national failings, he says, are hypocrisy, excitability and love of display, and they are all prolific sources of crime. We regret our space will not permit us to follow him further on this head.

There are various other articles of interest—among them a counter blast against tobacco, a favorite subject with Dr. D.—satires on fashion, the popular drama, et.c., all very readable and suggestive, but to which we cannot refer more particularly to-day.

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