In my previous lectures I have given the principles of diet in health and disease. Based upon them every physician will be enabled to arrange a diet suitable to the requirement of each case. In the following, however, I thought it best to describe briefly several important standard diet regimes, which can be used to advantage for shorter or longer periods of time in appropriate cases but never indefinitely.

Superalimentation Regime

Breakfast, 7:30-8 a. m.: Oatmeal with butter, or farina with cream, 2 eggs, bread (1-2 rolls) and butter, one cup of coffee (half milk) with sugar.

10:30: One cupful of milk with one raw egg beaten up in it; bread and butter.

Luncheon, 12:30-1: One cup of bouillon with one egg, 1-2 rolls, butter, tender meat, mashed or baked potato; weak tea (half milk) with sugar.

3:30: Same as 10:30 a. m.

Dinner, 6:30-7: Cream soup; fish; tender meat, potato, peas or beans; bread and butter, stewed fruit; small cup of coffee.

9:30: Kumyss and crackers and butter. The quantity of butter to be used daily should be about a quarter of a pound.

This superalimentary regime can be kept up for a long period of time and is suitable in conditions in which a building up of the system is required.

(A) Proteid - Fat Regime

Breakfast: One cup of tea (no sugar, no milk), one egg with butter, one portion of ham, or bacon.

Dinner: One cup of bouillon (3 vii), 200 gm. (3 vii) meat or fish broiled, 2 eggs, hard boiled, lettuce, spinach or asparagus, one cup of tea.

Supper: Fried eggs (3) and bacon, or fried fish with hard boiled eggs or a portion of cold meat, 150 gm.(3 v).

This diet is suitable for diabetes mellitus and for reducing corpulency. Elderly persons and patients with heart and kidney lesions do not bear well this rigorous regime. It is then necessary to add some more vegetables (green peas, beans) and a small quantity of milk or cream to the above bill of fare.

(B) Banting's Regime

Breakfast: Meat (beef, mutton, kidneys, fish or ham), 120-150 gm. (3iv-v); one big cup of tea (without milk or sugar); zwieback or toasted bread (without butter), 30 gm. (3 ii).

Dinner: Pish (excepting salmon) or meat (excepting pork), 150-180 gm. (3 v-vi); vegetables (excepting potato); toasted bread, 30 gm. (3 i); (red wine or Madeira, 2-3 glassfuls permissible; champagne or ale forbidden).

During the afternoon: Fruit, 60-90 gm. (3 ii-iii); 1-2 zwieback; one cup of tea without milk or sugar.

Supper: Meat or fish, 90-120 gm. (3 iii-iv); grog without sugar or 1-2 glassfuls of claret.

Notwithstanding the apparent great amount of foods this bill of fare contains, it furnishes but 1100 calories per day. The Banting regime is used principally as an anti-fat diet. A great many patients, however, cannot stand it and frequently collapse after using it a few days.

Ebstein improved the Banting regime and modified it as follows:

(C) Ebstein-Banting Regime

Breakfast: Tea, one cup, without milk or sugar; bread, 50 gm. (3 i 2/3), plenty of butter.

Dinner: Soup, one plate; meat, 120-180 gm. (3 iv-vi) fried or boiled with rich gravy; beans, peas and cabbage; (no potatoes, no beets); salad; raw or baked fruit without sugar; mild white wine, 1-2 glassfuls.

In the afternoon same as at breakfast.

Supper: One cup of tea without sugar or milk; one egg; fried meat or ham, smoked fish; bread about 30 gm.

(3i) well buttered; a small portion of cheese, and fresh fruit.

(D) Oertel-Banting Regime

Breakfast: Wheaten, bread, SO gm. (3i); coffee. 120 gm. (3iv), with milk, 30 gm. (3i); sugar, 5 gm. (3i); 2 soft-boiled eggs (90 gm. or 3 iii).

At 11 a. m.: Wine, bouillon, or water, 100 gm. (3iiiss); cold meat, 50 gm. (3i 2/3); rye bread, 20 gm. (3 2/3).

Dinner: Wine, 250 gm. (3 viii 1/3); fried beef, 150 gm. (3v); salad, 50 gm. (3i 2/3); pudding, 100 gm. (3iii 1/3); bread, 30 gm. (3i); fruit, 100 gm. (3iii 1/3).

4 p. m.: Coffee, 120 gm. (3iv); milk, 30 gm. (3i); sugar, 5 gm. (3i).

Supper: Wine or water, 250 gm. (3viii 1/3); caviar, 12 gm. (3iii); venison, 150 gm. (3v); cheese, 15 gm. (3 ss); rye bread, 20 gm. (3v); fruit, 100 gm. (3iii 1/3).

Vegetarian Diet Regime. (A) Schroth's Dry Diet

Patient is allowed to eat dry well-baked rolls, 2-3 days old. At noon-time he takes a soup, made out of water, rice, farina or broken up rolls with the addition of some butter or salt. As a drink patient is given oatmeal gruel and is told to sip it slowly, when real thirsty.

This diet is maintained for the first week. During the second week a glassful of wine mixed with half a glassful of water and some sugar is given warm in the afternoon, while the rest of the diet remains unchanged.

During the third week patient lives on the same diet, but leaves off the wine every alternate day.

Schroth's diet may be advantageously used in edematous swellings and ascites, also in arteriosclerosis, omitting the wine, however, for a period of 5 days or a week. Being a diet much deficient in calories and nutritive material it must be employed with great care and for short periods of time only.

Very similar to Schroth's diet is:

(B) Bulkley's Rice, Bread, Butter And Water Regime

The patient lives exclusively on rice, bread, butter and water.

The rice should be thoroughly cooked with water (not with milk). Generally it is better to have it dried out somewhat, so as to be flaky, by leaving it uncovered on the fire for a while. The rice is freshly prepared with abundance of butter and salt. It should be eaten slowly with a fork and be perfectly masticated. The bread and butter should also be well-chewed, to secure the full action of the saliva. Water, hot or cold, but not iced, is to be taken freely, but not to wash down the food in the mouth.

This diet should be kept up for 5 days, when an ordinary mixed diet is resumed.

1 L. D. Bulkley: Personal Experience with a Very Restricted Diet (Rice) in Acute Inflammatory Diseases of the Skin. Med. Record, Jan., 28, 1911. Also Bulkley, "Diet and Hygiene in Diseases of the Skin," Hoeber, N. Y, 1913.

This rice, bread, butter, and water diet is useful in acute inflammatory conditions of the skin like eczema, erythema, and principally itching.

(C) Hoffmann's Regime

Hoffmann's regime is a coarse vegetable diet consisting of brown bread, Graham bread, butter, potatoes, and all kinds of vegetables containing much cellulose, principally cabbage; beets, beans, mushrooms, salads; peas, lentils (not pureed); plenty of fruits.

Hoffmann's regime is best adapted for obstinate neuralgias of unknown origin and for obesity accompanied with constipation. It may be kept up for a period of two weeks. Then it must be changed into a diet of greater nutritive value.