Download the Full Version of the Ebook with Added Features ebookname.

com

Directing Public Companies Company Law and the

Stockholder Society 1st Edition Dean

https://ebookname.com/product/directing-public-companies-
company-law-and-the-stockholder-society-1st-edition-dean/

OR CLICK HERE

DOWLOAD NOW

Download more ebook instantly today at https://ebookname.com

Instant digital products (PDF, ePub, MOBI) available
Download now and explore formats that suit you...

Critical Company Law 1st Edition Lorraine Talbot

https://ebookname.com/product/critical-company-law-1st-edition-
lorraine-talbot/

ebookname.com

Company law 3. ed. Edition Hannigan

https://ebookname.com/product/company-law-3-ed-edition-hannigan/

ebookname.com

Company Law 2nd Edition Longman Law Series Ben Pettet

https://ebookname.com/product/company-law-2nd-edition-longman-law-
series-ben-pettet/

ebookname.com

Trauma Taboo and Truth Telling Listening to Silences in

Postdictatorship Argentina 1st Edition Nancy J. Gates-
Madsen
https://ebookname.com/product/trauma-taboo-and-truth-telling-
listening-to-silences-in-postdictatorship-argentina-1st-edition-nancy-
j-gates-madsen/
ebookname.com
Color Confidence The Digital Photographer s Guide to Color
Management Tim Grey Guides 2nd edition Tim Grey

https://ebookname.com/product/color-confidence-the-digital-
photographer-s-guide-to-color-management-tim-grey-guides-2nd-edition-
tim-grey/
ebookname.com

Epidemics And Pandemics From Ancient Plagues To Modern Day

Threats 1st Edition Edition Joseph P. Byrne

https://ebookname.com/product/epidemics-and-pandemics-from-ancient-
plagues-to-modern-day-threats-1st-edition-edition-joseph-p-byrne/

ebookname.com

RESTful Java with JAX RS 2 0 Second Edition Bill Burke

https://ebookname.com/product/restful-java-with-jax-rs-2-0-second-
edition-bill-burke/

ebookname.com

Flesh and bones of medical cell biology 1st Edition Robert

I Norman

https://ebookname.com/product/flesh-and-bones-of-medical-cell-
biology-1st-edition-robert-i-norman/

ebookname.com

Fundamentals and Application of Lithium ion Batteries in

Electric Drive Vehicles 1st Edition Jiuchun Jiang

https://ebookname.com/product/fundamentals-and-application-of-lithium-
ion-batteries-in-electric-drive-vehicles-1st-edition-jiuchun-jiang/

ebookname.com
Transport Phenomena 2nd Edition R. Byron Bird

https://ebookname.com/product/transport-phenomena-2nd-edition-r-byron-
bird/

ebookname.com
DIRECTING PUBLIC
COMPANIES

CP
Cavendish
Publishing
Limited

London • Sydney
DIRECTING PUBLIC
COMPANIES:
Company Law and the
Stakeholder Society

Janice Dean, MA (Oxon), LLM (Manchester)

PhD (Brunel), Solicitor
Lecturer in Law, University of Warwick

CP
Cavendish
Publishing
Limited

London • Sydney
First published in Great Britain 2001 by Cavendish Publishing Limited,
The Glass House, Wharton Street, London WC1X 9PX, United Kingdom
Telephone: +44 (0)20 7278 8000 Facsimile: +44 (0)20 7278 8080

E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.cavendishpublishing.com

© Dean, Janice 2001

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in

a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise, except under
the terms of the Copyrights Designs and Patents Act 1988 or under the terms
of a licence issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court
Road, London W1P 9HE, UK, without the prior permission in writing of the
publisher.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

Dean, Janice
Directing public companies: company law and the stakeholder society
1 Corporation law – England 2 Corporation law – Wales
3 Stakeholders – Legal status, laws, etc – England
4 Stakeholders – Legal status, laws, etc – Wales
I Title
346.4’2’0664

ISBN 1 85941 635 7

Printed and bound in Great Britain

 PREFACE

Modern Company Law for a Competitive Economy – the final result?

After more than three years of lively deliberations and consultations, the
influential Steering Group of the Company Law Review delivered its Final
Report entitled Modern Company Law for a Competitive Economy to the new
Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, Patricia Hewitt, as this book was
about to go to press (July 2001). Having followed the progress of the Review
from the outset, I am very grateful that Cavendish Publishing and my editor,
Ruth Massey, have given me the opportunity to add a few comments here on
its outcome.
In brief, the Company Law Review, established by the recently-elected
Labour Government in 1998, was charged with updating the UK’s company
law so as to meet the needs of the modern world, thereby helping to make UK
business and UK law successful in the international marketplace. It was
organised under the auspices of, but with administrative independence from,
the DTI. Chapters 1 and 9 below explain my view of how the once-in-a-
generation task of overhauling UK company law was approached on this
occasion. While the ‘think small first’ policy may have resulted in proposals
for simpler rules to serve private companies, my view is that complex issues
relating to economically and socially powerful public companies were not
squarely addressed.
It is appropriate firstly to point out that there is much in the rhetoric of
Chapter 1 of the Steering Group’s Final Report that recognises and supports
the position taken and expanded below. For example at para 1.23:
Effective management and control of resources requires a decision-making
process which takes proper account of all the factors relevant to the outcome ...
Relevant factors include the need to manage relationships with employees,
with suppliers of all kinds of resources – physical, intangible and intellectual –
and with customers ... They include the need to manage wider impacts on
consumers, the community and the environment. Reputational assets are also
of critical importance in a world where external perceptions can transform
business prospects, for better or worse.
I concur with those observations and much of this book explores arguments
that seem to me to support them.
The Final Report continues (at para 1.24):
All these constituencies can impact, positively or negatively, upon a company’s
success and this should be reflected not only in the operational rules but also in
the basis of accountability for stewardship. Companies, whether consciously or
not, are managing as part of their everyday operations a wide range of
resources and assets beyond the traditional balance sheet fixed assets cash and
investment, in the shape of accumulated human resource and know how,
intellectual property, brands, ongoing relationships, plans and strategies and
other wider reputational assets.
Again, readers of Chapter 8 below will find support for this assertion from
discussions with officers of major public companies.

v
 Directing Public Companies

In terms of the role of company law in these modern circumstances, the

Steering Group proposes (at para 1.56):
• [a codified statement of directors duties] embodying a modern, inclusive
view of the range of decision-making and objective standards of
professional care and skill
• [a disclosure regime for large companies] reflecting stewardship of assets
and relationships which are of real importance in the modern economy,
with public accountability for these ...
Thirdly, however, it adds:
• a sharper focus on the shareholder.
This is underlined by para 6.26 which expressly refers to:
• the Review’s reliance on shareholder-oriented directors duties and transparency
as the basis for stewardship discipline [emphasis added].
From a practical point of view, the Final Report itself identifies some
difficulties with the ‘shareholder-oriented’ approach in public companies.
Paragraph 6.24 notes the following concerns among others:
• that such [institutional] investors may be spontaneously influenced in the
exercise of voice or entry/exit powers by conflicting interests of
themselves or their associates
• ‘slacking’ by fiduciary investors – ie omitting actively to intervene in cases
of management failure where clearly necessary.
Some suggestions are given for improving shareholder ‘performance’ as
monitors. It is not acknowledged that those in other business companies, with
an interest in its performance (employees, suppliers and customers in
particular) might have a role to play in plugging the gap.
Even more fundamentally, however, it is submitted that to pay lip-service
to the recognition of various stakeholders in public companies while putting
in place a new legislative statement of directors’ duties that, while being
broadly ‘inclusive’, enshrines shareholder primacy above other considerations
(as discussed in Chapter 5 below) goes less than halfway to dealing with the
issue of the ‘other’ constituencies. Without some adequate means of
enforcement in law, new duties are unlikely to have much of an impact in the
very companies where they might change existing practice.
The Steering Group also places a great emphasis on transparency,
recommending a new annual Operating and Financial Review for public
companies, except the smallest (see Chapter 8 of the Final Report). It says:
para 3.29: Others [in addition to shareholders] – whether employees, trading
partners, or the wider community – also have a legitimate interest in the
company’s activities, particularly in the case of companies which exercise
significant economic power. Our proposals must satisfy these wider concerns
for accountability and transparency.

vi
 Preface

para 3.30: We therefore make proposals which will:

• improve the quality, usefulness and relevance of information available to
shareholders and to others with an interest in the company [emphasis added]
• provide more timely information ...
There are, however, no concrete proposals to give these newly-informed and
interested non-shareholder groups any new legal means to challenge public
company boards or have an input into corporate decisions. In the wake of
‘anti-globalisation’ and ‘anti-capitalism’ protests in Seattle and Genoa, could
more knowledge without greater influence simply lead to more suspicion of
‘big business’ by employees, suppliers, customers and citizens? These points
seem not to have been considered. Chapter 6 below discusses the issue of
stakeholder rights and remedies in more detail. There are undoubtedly many
possible ways of tackling the issue. To disregard it completely seems unwise
in the current climate.
The Steering Group’s conclusions are all said to proceed from ‘the general
principle that company law should be primarily enabling or facilitative’ (para
1.10, emphasis in the report). While noting the arguments in favour of well-
drafted regulation in some circumstances (for example to correct possible
market failures or uphold the public interest), the Steering Group comments,
‘nonetheless the net effect of our proposals is one of substantial simplification
and deregulation’ (para 1.16). If all effective corporate governance systems
must ‘balance’ the ability of boards to drive businesses forward with ensuring
effective control of management in extremely powerful corporations (see in
particular Chapter 3 below), this approach appears to rank the first of those
concerns rather more highly than the second. This is unlikely to satisfy many
non-shareholder stakeholders, such as employees, customers and suppliers
(as described in Chapter 4 below).
Constraints of time and space do not permit me here to go through all
aspects of the Final Report (which contains many welcome proposals to
update and simplify current law). In these brief remarks I have naturally
focused on areas of relevance to the arguments in this book. The remit of the
Review itself was narrow, as the Steering Group pointed out. It remains to be
seen what the official response from the Secretary of State to the Final Report
will be. In addition to the technical and restricted ‘core company law’ matters
examined by the Steering Group, as a Cabinet Minister Ms Hewitt will
doubtless wish to have regard to broader economic and social factors. If
academic and analytical work (including this text) assists with that task in a
small way, it will have proved its worth.
Janice Dean
August 2001

vii
 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Thanks first and foremost to my supervisor John Lowry for his advice and
support, not only on my Thesis but on academic life generally. Also to the
interviewees, who generously gave their valuable time and expressed their
views with candour and clarity. Last but not least to Brunel and Kingston
Universities for the financial support that made the study possible.
This work is dedicated with thanks to everyone whose inspiring visions
and practical support helped towards it completion, especially friends from
Manchester University (among many, thanks to Nick Molyneux, Colenzo
Jarrett-Thorpe and Rupesh Chandrani), the Young Fabians (in particular
Seema Malhotra) and colleagues at Brunel and Kingston Universities.
Shorter versions of some of the material in Chapters 1 and 9 appeared as
articles in Company Lawyer in March 2001 (Vol 22(3)) and April 2001 (Vol 23(4))
respectively, under the titles ‘Stakeholding and company law’ and ‘The future
of UK company law’.

ix
 CONTENTS

Preface v
Acknowledgments ix
Table of Cases xv
Table of Legislation xix
Table of Statutory Instruments xxi

1 INTRODUCTION: STAKEHOLDING AND COMPANY LAW 1

1.1 INTRODUCTION TO THE ISSUES 1
1.2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND – WHAT IS A COMPANY? 3
1.2.1 The nature of the public company 4
1.2.2 The role of directors 8
1.2.3 Stakeholding theory 11
1.3 LEGAL IMPLICATIONS 14
1.3.1 Changes to company law to broaden responsibilities
of directors 15
1.3.2 Enforcement of stakeholder remedies 17
1.3.3 The structure of the board and European models 19
1.4 PUBLIC COMPANY OFFICERS’ VIEWS 23
1.5 CONCLUSION: TRUST AND UK PUBLIC COMPANIES 26

2 THE NATURE OF THE COMPANY 29

2.1 THE ORGANIC THEORY OF THE COMPANY 29
2.1.1 Separation of ownership and control 31
2.1.2 Power relationships 33
2.1.3 Managerial theory 34
2.1.4 Implications for social activism 35
2.2 THE NEXUS OF CONTRACTS THEORY OF THE COMPANY 36
2.2.1 Transaction costs 37
2.2.2 The contract with shareholders 38
2.2.3 Firm-specific investments 39
2.2.4 Implications for social activism 40
2.3 THE AMERICAN LAW INSTITUTE AND THE
UK EXPERIENCE 42
2.3.1 Evaluation of the principles 43
2.3.2 UK company law reform 44
2.4 OWNERSHIP OF THE PUBLIC COMPANY 48
2.4.1 Institutional investors 49
2.4.2 Other ‘owners’? 51

xi
 Directing Public Companies

2.5 RELATIONSHIPS AND THE COMPANY 52

2.5.1 Customers 54
2.5.2 Employees 54
2.5.3 Supply networks 55
2.5.4 Economic advantages 56
2.6 CONCLUSION 57

3 THE ROLE OF DIRECTORS 61

3.1 THE FOCUS OF BOARD ATTENTION: STRATEGY VERSUS
MONITORING 61
3.2 THE ACCOUNTABILITY OF THE BOARD: DELEGATES
VERSUS CONSCIENCES 65
3.3 CORPORATE STEWARDSHIP 70
3.4 BALANCING DIVERSE STAKEHOLDER INTERESTS 72
3.5 THE CADBURY AND HAMPEL APPROACHES TO
CORPORATE GOVERNANCE 74
3.6 PRACTICAL QUESTIONS FOR BOARDS 78
3.6.1 Board size 78
3.6.2 Executive/non-executive balance 79
3.6.3 Information 80
3.6.4 Time 82
3.7 EXAMPLES FROM PUBLIC SERVICES 83
3.7.1 NHS Trusts 83
3.7.2 The privatised utility companies 85
3.8 CONCLUSION: PRIORITIES FOR DIRECTORS 87

4 STAKEHOLDING THEORY 93
4.1 THE CONCEPT OF STAKEHOLDING 93
4.2 THE USES OF STAKEHOLDING 96
4.3 THE IDENTIFICATION AND DEMANDS OF
STAKEHOLDERS 99
4.4 THE CLASSIFICATION OF STAKEHOLDERS 103
4.5 RELATIONS WITH AND BETWEEN STAKEHOLDERS 106
4.6 CORPORATE STAKEHOLDERS AND ECONOMIC
PERFORMANCE 109
4.7 STAKEHOLDER MANAGEMENT 112
4.8 CONCLUSION: PRINCIPLES IN PRACTICE 116

5 DIRECTORS’ DUTIES IN LEGISLATION 121

5.1 PROPOSALS FOR CHANGE 121
5.2 ARGUMENTS AGAINST CHANGE 125
5.3 CONSTITUENCIES FOR CONSIDERATION 130
5.4 BOARD DECISION MAKING MODELS 133

xii
 Contents

5.5 FORMULATION OF NEW LEGAL DUTIES 136

5.6 RELATED LEGAL PROVISIONS 139
5.7 COSTS AND BENEFITS OF LEGISLATION 142
5.8 THE IMPACT OF NEW LEGISLATION 145
5.9 CONCLUSION 148

6 REMEDIES FOR BREACH OF DIRECTORS’ DUTIES 151

6.1 RIGHTS AND REMEDIES 151
6.2 THE DERIVATIVE ACTION MODEL 154
6.3 THE ‘UNFAIR PREJUDICE’ MODEL 158
6.4 PERSONAL RIGHTS OF ACTION 161
6.5 THE AVAILABILITY OF REMEDIES 164
6.6 THE RANGE OF AVAILABLE REMEDIES 167
6.7 SHAREHOLDER ACTIVISM 170
6.8 THE IMPACT OF LEGAL REMEDIES 173
6.9 CONCLUSION 176

7 EUROPEAN CORPORATE GOVERNANCE MODELS 181

7.1 CONTINENTAL EUROPEAN MODELS AND ANGLO-
AMERICAN CAPITALISM 181
7.2 THE GERMAN SYSTEM AND CO-DETERMINATION 185
7.3 THE FRENCH SYSTEM AND LEADERSHIP 190
7.4 EUROPEAN UNION LEGISLATION AND PUBLIC
COMPANIES 194
7.5 EUROPE IN THE WORLD 200
7.6 CONCLUSION: CONVERGING CAPITALISMS? 204

8 PUBLIC COMPANY OFFICERS AND COMPANY LAW REFORM 209

8.1 THE COMMERCIAL CONTEXT 209
8.2 KEY ISSUES FOR DISCUSSION WITH PUBLIC
COMPANY OFFICERS 210
8.3 THE INTERVIEWEES 211
8.4 THE BOARDROOM ROLE 212
8.5 WHOSE INTERESTS DO DIRECTORS TAKE INTO
ACCOUNT IN MAKING DECISIONS? 216
8.6 WHICH STAKEHOLDER(S) HAVE PRIORITY? 222
8.7 MANAGING RELATIONSHIPS WITH STAKEHOLDERS 228
8.8 CHANGES TO COMPANY LAW 233
8.9 CHANGES TO BOARD STRUCTURE 240
8.10 CONCLUSION 247

xiii
 Directing Public Companies

9 CONCLUSION: THE FUTURE OF UK COMPANY LAW 251

9.1 ‘THE BUSINESS OF BUSINESS’ 251
9.2 ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF LEGISLATION 255
9.3 THE UK COMPANY LAW REVIEW PROCESS 258
9.4 THE COMPANY LAW REVIEW – POSSIBLE OUTCOMES 261
9.5 EUROPEAN AND GLOBAL INFLUENCES 264
9.6 DIRECTORS’ DUTIES 268
9.7 STAKEHOLDER REMEDIES 270
9.8 ENTITLEMENT AND EMPOWERMENT IN
COMPANY LAW 273
9.9 CONCLUSION 276

APPENDIX 1 279
Letter sent to public company directors and secretaries 279

APPENDIX 2 281
Company Directors and Secretaries: Questions asked of
public company officers 281

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Books 283
Articles 292
Reports 301

Index 305

xiv
Random documents with unrelated
content Scribd suggests to you:
brains of the survivors have always been bigger, and they have
become more educable and more educated until the race has
culminated in those models of "sweet reasonableness," the modern
rhinoceroses! It must be confessed that this character attributed to
the rhinoceros is a matter of inference and not of direct observation
of that animal when under his native sky. We do not judge the
survivor of a fine early Miocene family by the fury and annoyance he
shows when shot at, nor by the stolid contempt with which he treats
mankind at the Zoo. The same signification—"educability"—attaches
to the large brain of the higher apes; and man's still larger brain
means still greater educability and resulting reasonableness.
In order that natural selection and the survival of the fittest should
have led to this increased size and accompanying educability of the
brain, it is necessary to suppose that the individuals with the more
educable brain as they appeared profited by it, that is to say, did
become more educated, and so defeated their rivals, and survived
and transmitted their increased size of brain little by little in
succeeding generations. There is no difficulty about admitting this
supposition in regard to the passage from higher ape-like creatures
to later forms having a full-sized brain, such as we find in the
Neanderthal man and in some Australians. But we are met here by
what looks, at first sight, as a fact inconsistent with our view. The
obvious increased educability and consequent increased education of
lower races of man by the circumstances of their lives, places them
clearly enough in a position of great advantage over the higher
surviving apes. But when we compare the actual mental
accomplishments of the highest civilized races of man with those of
big-brained savages, we find that a large proportion of individuals in
the civilized races are much farther ahead of the lower savage races
than most of these are ahead of the higher apes. Newton,
Shakespeare, and Darwin are in mental accomplishment farther
away from an Australian black, or even a Congo negro, than these
"savages" are from a gorilla or a chimpanzee. Yet the difference
when we compare the size and the abundance of the convolutions of
the brain of the European philosopher and the black-fellow does not
seem, superficially, to be proportionate to the difference in the
mental performance of the two. No minute study of the microscopic
differences in the structure of the two brains has, as yet, been
made, and it is probable that there is a greater difference here than
in the mere shape of the brain-mass. It seems that the "educability"
of the brain measured by its size is little greater in the one group of
men than in the other. And it is found—so far as observation and
experiment have been carried—that individual savages belonging to
races showing very low mental accomplishments in their native
surroundings are yet capable of being "educated" to a far higher
level of mental performance, when removed in early youth from
their natural conditions and subjected to the same conditions as the
better-cared-for children of a civilized race, than any of them ever
reach in their own communities.
Very few really satisfactory experiments have been made in this
direction, but the history of the negroes in America shows that the
pure, unmixed negro brain is capable of showing high mathematical
power, musical gifts of the best, and moral and philosophic activities
equal to those of the best, or all but the exceptionally gifted,
individuals of European race. It seems that the large educable brain
gained by man in a relatively early period of his development from
the ape has now entered on a new phase of importance. The
pressure of natural selection no longer favours an increased
educability (and therefore size) of brain, but the later progress of
man has depended on the actual administration by each generation
to its successors of an increasingly systematized exercise of that
brain; in short, it has depended on education itself, and on the
gigantic new possibilities of education, which have followed from the
development, first, of language, then of writing, and lastly of
printing, together with the accompanying growth and development
of social organization, the inter-communication of all races, and the
carrying on, by means of the Great Record—the written and printed
documents of humanity—of the experience and knowledge of each
passing generation of men from them to the men of the present
moment.
Huxley agreed with Cuvier in the opinion that the possession of
articulate speech is the grand distinctive character of man. It was no
sudden acquirement, but was slowly, step by step, evolved from the
significant grunts and cries of apes in the course of long ages, and
corresponded in its progress with a parallel progress in mental
capacities. Once attained, it led to the formation of vast educative
products, namely, to oral tradition, to written and then to printed
memorials and records. It is not desirable in our present state of
knowledge to speculate as to whether the transitional ape-man
acquired the use of fire before or after he had invented articulate
speech. It probably was acquired very soon after some skill in the
flaking of flints had been attained, and was of immense value, both
as a defence against predatory animals and as a means of preparing
food. Man probably learnt at a very early period to cover himself
with clothing made from the skins of other animals, and thus to
tolerate cold climates. The use of clothing was correlated with the
diminution of his natural hairy covering. As to the circumstances
which led to the reduction in size of his canine teeth and the
diminution of the projection of his jaws, it is impossible to say more
than that this was favoured by the increased skill of his hand and by
the use of weapons, and probably was directly correlated with an
increased growth of the brain. It is an interesting fact that very
young children still exhibit the ancestral tendency to bite when
angry, and that the use of the teeth as weapons of attack is more
frequent among lower races with "prognathous" jaws than among
Europeans.
A definite habit of the human infant, that of "crying"—the peculiar
spasmodic howling of very young children—seems to be unknown in
any of the apes. I do not know what ingenious reason may have
been assigned for this difference. Apes laugh under the same
circumstances as do men, but with less production of sound than is
the case with man and the hyena. Man was, far back in his monkey-
days, a social and companion-loving animal, and the fact that his
laughing and his weeping are accompanied by noise is due to the
desire for attention and sympathy from his friends. A great
difference between man and apes is the greater power of expression
of various feelings or emotions by the face, and also the greater
variety and significance in man of the gestures both of the upper
and the lower limbs. These again are methods of seeking for and
gaining sympathy and co-operation. Though not all men and not all
races in an equal degree have mobility and constantly varying
expression in the face, yet it is the fact that the man-like apes which
have been studied in life (the chimpanzee and orang) have even less
variety and range of expression than the most unintelligent savages.
Man seems to have developed in an ever-increasing degree the habit
of watching and interpreting the face and of giving by it expression
to his emotions and states of mind, thus establishing a ready means
of producing common feeling and interest in a group of associated
individuals. This seems to have led to a special appreciation of the
features of the face, and so to the exercise of sexual selection,
resulting in what we call "a standard of beauty" in regard to both
shape and expression. It is quite possible that the reduction of the
threatening canine teeth and projecting jaw may have been
furthered by sexual selection when once a bite had become less
effective than a blow with a sharp flint, and when persuasive sounds
and gestures gained more adherents than the display of tusks by a
snarl.
What I have written in this and the preceding chapters, on the
differences and likenesses between apes and man and the probable
steps of the transition from ape to man, may assist the reader to
form a judgment as to the importance of such remains of extinct
races of men as the skeleton of the Sainte Chapelle, the Heidelberg
jaw, and the Piltdown jaw and cranium lately dug up in Sussex, in
helping us to further knowledge of those steps. It should be
definitely noted that we have not yet found any extinct animals,
definitely to be classed as apes, which come nearer to man than the
chimpanzee and gorilla, although we are led to infer that such
creatures existed, and that their fossil remains will probably some
day be discovered. On the other hand, we have in the jaw and skull
recently discovered in the gravel of Piltdown, in Sussex, evidence of
a man-like creature which was in most important features more ape-
like than any fossil man yet discovered.
 CHAPTER XXX

THE MISSING LINK

U
NTIL the discovery of the wonderful fossil jaw in the gravel of
Piltdown, near Lewes in Sussex, a favourite view as to the
probable relationship of man and existing apes was, that if you could
trace back the pedigree of man and of the chimpanzee into remote
antiquity far back in the Tertiary period—probably in the early
Miocene—you would arrive at a smallish creature with,
proportionately to its size, larger jaws and teeth than any modern
man, yet smaller than those of the living man-like apes, and with a
brain not two-thirds the size of that of the least developed of
modern savages, yet larger (in proportion to its general bulk) than
that of the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang, and gibbons. This
hypothetical creature would represent, it was held, the common
ancestor of the two great "strains" or "stocks" one of which in the
course of gradual modification gave rise to our living "humanity,"
and various non-surviving offshoots on the way; whilst the other
gave rise to the company of great apes, with their tremendous jaws
and dog-teeth, their small brains, and great bony skull-crests for the
attachment of huge jaw muscles.
It was insisted that the obvious and immediate suggestion when
once man's descent from animal ancestry was admitted, namely,
that man has taken his rise from the most man-like animals we know
—the great apes—is erroneous. The public was warned that they
must not jump to such a conclusion; it was too obvious, too facile.
The "celebrated ape of the Darwin shape," which popular songs
made familiar to a wide public, was declared to be only a remote
rustic, not to say brutalized, cousin of humanity, not in the direct line
happily! Our real ancestors, it was declared, were mild, intelligent
little creatures, animals, it is true, but animals which hastened to
separate their mixed qualities in two divergent lines of descent—(1)
the intelligent, mild-mannered clan who ceased to climb trees, and
walked uprightly on the soles of their feet, whilst their teeth grew
smaller and smaller, and their brains grew bigger and bigger; and (2)
the violent tree-climbing members of the family, who refused to
stand up, and acquired bigger and bigger jaws and teeth, whilst
their brains remained small, their temper morose, and their conduct
violent.
Fig. 23.—Comparison of the right half of the lower jaw of A, Modern
European; B, Eoanthropus from Piltdown; and C, Chimpanzee. The size of
the drawings is two-thirds of the linear dimensions of the actual specimens.
The dotted outline in B represents the part which was wanting in the original
specimen and was thus re-constructed by Dr. Smith Woodward. X in A is the
bony chin or "mental protuberance"; in B and C it marks that part of the jaw
 which would become the mental protuberance were the palisade or line of
teeth retracted as in A.
Old writers before the days of Darwin had talked and written about
the "missing link," though I cannot say who first used the term in
reference to a creature intermediate between man and apes. Sir
Charles Lyell in 1851 made use of the term in regard to extinct
animals which were intermediate in structure between two existing
types. A learned and able writer—the Scotch judge, Lord Monboddo
—in the later half of the eighteenth century put forward a theory of
the development of mankind from apes such as the orang, quite
independently of any general theory of "transformism" or of the
progressive development of the animal and vegetable worlds, from
simple beginnings. Lord Monboddo, in the absence of any knowledge
of a "missing link," or of animals intermediate between man and the
highest living apes, made reasonable speculations (based on wide
study of anthropology and ancient philosophy) as to the passage
from the monkey to man. He regarded man as of the same "species"
as the orang-utan. He traced the gradual elevation of man to the
social state as a natural process determined by "the necessities of
human life." He looked on language (which he said is not "natural"
to man in the sense of being necessary to his self-preservation) as a
consequence of his social state. His views about the origin of society
and language, and the faculties by which man is distinguished from
the brutes, are in some interesting ways similar to those of Darwin.
He conceived man as gradually elevating himself from an animal
condition in which his mind is immersed in matter to a state in which
mind acts independent of body. He was ridiculed and declared to be
half mad by his co-temporaries (among them Samuel Johnson),
although he was, philosophically, far in advance of those with whom
he came into contact. Darwin's views on the "Descent of Man" were
met in the same contemptuous spirit at first. But he held a much
stronger position than Monboddo, having first of all established the
general theory of organic evolution, and having, further, a well-
established mass of evidence at his command in regard to the
relationship of man and apes. Further, he had that wonderful
champion, Huxley, to fight for him. Huxley's book, "Man's Place in
Nature," originally given as lectures which I, then a boy, attended,
placed the evidence of the close relationship of man and the higher
apes in the clearest way before the public, and, indeed, established
the identity of the structure of man with that of the ape, bone for
bone, muscle for muscle, and nerve for nerve.
Still, there was always a gap—a place unfilled—between the large-
brained, small-jawed man and the small-brained, large-jawed ape.
The link was missing. It was hoped, when in 1859 the human
workmanship of the flint axes found with the bones of extinct
animals in our river gravels was recognized, that the bones of the
men who made the flint axes would turn up alongside of them, and
that they would show characters intermediate between those of
modern man and the great apes. But no such human bones ever
were found in the older gravels deposited as terraces along their
beds by the rivers of Western Europe. Human bones, and more or
less complete human skulls, of a highly-developed modern type (the
Cromagnards) were found in caves associated with flint tools of a
different character to those common in river gravels. Then we heard
a good deal about the strangely flat skull-top, or calvaria, found in a
cave near Dusseldorf on the Rhine, associated with the preaching of
a certain hermit named "Neuman" (= Neander). The valley was
called "the Neanderthal," and the skull-top thus came to be called
the "Neanderthal skull." Some authorities regarded the Neanderthal
skull as that of an outcast idiot! Huxley studied it minutely, and
compared it to that of Southern Australian black-fellows, and held
that it took us no nearer to the apes than they did. Then an
unsatisfactory small flat skull-top, together with a long, straight
thigh-bone, was found in a gravel in Java, and the name
"Pithecanthropus" was applied to these remains. Still we had got no
nearer to any knowledge of the missing link.
Of late years we have, however, learnt a great deal more about the
race or species of men of which the Neanderthal skull-top was the
first indication. We now know that this species of man belonged to a
period older than that of the other prehistoric cavemen—the artistic
Magdalenians and the bushman-like Aurignacians, which are races of
Homo sapiens, not distinct species. The older period is called the
Moustierian, or Middle Paleolithic, period, and is marked by a
peculiar type of flint implement. It is later than the older river
gravels, in which big tongue-shaped and almond-shaped flint
implements are common. The two skulls and bones from the cave of
Spey, in Belgium, the Gibraltar skull, and the skeletons and skulls of
the cavern called the Chapelle aux Saints in the Corrèze (Central
France), and of Ferassy, and some neighbouring localities, all belong
to this Moustierian age (so named after the village "Le Moustier," in
Perigord), and to the peculiar species Homo Neanderthalensis.[10] It
is also necessary to include here the more ancient man indicated by
the important lower jaw found by Schottensack near Heidelberg (see
Fig. 25). The Neanderman or Neanderthal-man had a low forehead,
with overhanging bony brow-ridges, and a depressed, flattened
brain-case, which, nevertheless, was very long and broad and held
an unusually large brain, measuring 1600 cubic centimetres,
whereas the modern European averages 1450 only of such units. He
had a powerful lower jaw, with a broad, upstanding piece or vertical
"ramus," and no chin protuberance. Yet his teeth were identical with
those of a modern man. His thigh-bones were much curved, and his
arms a good deal longer in proportion to his legs than those of a
modern man. He did not carry himself upright, but with a forward
stoop.
[10] For figures of the skulls and flint implements of these ancient
men, see my volume, "Science from an Easy Chair," First Series.
Methuen, 1910.

Now that we know more of him, we may ask, "Does this

Neanderthal or Moustierian man fill the place of the missing link?" It
appears that he does not. He seems to have died out without
leaving any descendants. In so far as that his bony jaw sloped
directly downwards and backwards from the margin of the sockets of
his front teeth, as in the apes, without projecting below, to form a
chin protuberance—as it does in all races of Homo sapiens, on
account of the shrinking inwards of the gum-line or palisade of front
teeth (incisors and canines)—the Neanderman offers a certain
approach to the condition of the apes; but in other details of shape
of the lower jaw, and especially in regard to the narrowness of the
lower surface of the chin and the large and deep attachments on its
inner face, for the digastric muscle and certain muscles of the
tongue, the bony remains of the Neanderman show that he is
distinctly and altogether human, and not like the higher apes.
Moreover, in the very large size of his brain (as much as 1600 units)
the Neanderman shows no approach to the relatively small brain of
the higher apes (which measures 500 units, possibly 800 by
exception). There is in these structures some argument for the
conclusion that the Neanderman could use articulate language, and
inasmuch as the climate in which he flourished was extremely cold,
there is ground for supposing that he could produce fire and clothe
himself with skins. The flint implements which are definitely
associated with him are of more skilful workmanship than the earlier,
more elaborate, but less cleverly conceived, Chellean and Acheuillian
implements. We cannot refuse to call him "man"—not Homo sapiens,
we agree—but of the "genus" Homo—Homo Neanderthalensis.
Fig. 24.—Diagrams of the lower surface of the lower jaw of A, man; B, the
Eoanthropus of Piltdown (the left half reconstructed); and C, the
Chimpanzee.
The jaws are supposed to be immersed in sand, so as to
conceal all but the lower surface. The narrowness of the actual
inferior margin of the jaw in man, A, a, b, contrasts with the
breadth and flatness of this same border in Eoanthropus, B, a,
b, and the Chimpanzee, C, a, b.
 In the human jaw A we see behind the narrow front border a
the large semicircular excavations for the attachment of the
digastric muscles right and left. They pass from here to the
hyoid bone. From the spine (double in origin) between the two
digastric impressions passes a pair of muscular slips, called the
genio-hyoid muscles, also to the hyoid bone, and from the pair
of spines marked y a pair of muscles, called the genio-glossals,
pass to the tongue. These inferior and superior mental spines
and the digastric impressions, much smaller in size than in man,
are seen in the chimpanzee's jaw, C, but are rubbed or partly
broken and partly rubbed away in the Piltdown half-jaw, B. In
the figures A and C the size of the digastric impressions and
mental spines is exaggerated, but their relatively much greater
size in man than in the chimpanzee is correctly given, and this
greater size is connected with the greater control of the tongue
and the floor of the mouth in man, possibly connected with
speech.
Reference Letters.—a, Broad, upwardly and forwardly sloping
surface, reduced in man; b, lower border of the jaw-bone; x,
front margin of the digastric "impression" of the right side. Dig,
digastric impression; y, superior mental spine of the left side;
Fr., fractured edge of the Piltdown jaw, and corresponding
region in that of the chimpanzee.
So long as the Neanderman was the sole indication of a creature
nearer in some features to the apes than are any living or extinct
races of the species Homo sapiens, the view was possible that the
two stocks which to-day blossom and display themselves—the one
as the human race, the other as the man-like apes (gorilla,
chimpanzee, orang, and gibbons), became separated from one
another in long past geologic ages, and that they have undergone
each an independent development from a creature so unlike both as
seen to-day, that we cannot speak of it as a missing link or a link at
all. That view must be considerably modified by the discovery of the
Piltdown jaw—the jaw of Eoanthropus Dawsoni—which is not that of
a "man," that is not of the genus Homo, but must, in my judgment,
be considered as one of the family Hominidæ—a Hominid, as we
may say—a species assigned to a new genus Eoanthropus by Smith
Woodward, which is grouped with the genus Homo and the ill-
defined genus Pithecanthropus, to form the family Hominidæ; just as
the genera Gorilla, Anthropopithecus (chimpanzee), Simia (orang),
and Hylobates (gibbon) are grouped together to form the family
Simiidæ. In Eoanthropus we have in our hands, at last, the much-
talked-of "missing link"—the link obviously connecting man, the
genus Homo, with the apes.
The immense importance of the discovery of the jaw of Eoanthropus
by Mr. Dawson, and of the clear perception of its distinctive features
by Dr. Smith Woodward, is not, as yet, sufficiently recognized. The
Piltdown jaw is the most startling and significant fossil bone that has
ever been brought to light. The Neandermen and the Java skull-top
are simply commonplace and insignificant in comparison with it.
"What leads you to say that?" I may be asked. I say so because this
jaw and the incomplete skull found with it (Fig. 29) really and in
simple fact furnish a link—a form intermediate between the man and
the ape. Some fragments of the brain-case were found close to the
jaw, indicating a fairly round, very thick-walled brain-case, holding a
brain of about 1100 units capacity—very small for a man, very large
for an ape. It is in the highest degree probable that the brain-case
and the jaw belong to the same individual. If we were to put the
brain-case aside as not certainly belonging to the same individual,
we should guess that the owner of the jaw might have had a brain
of about this size—intermediate between that of the larger apes and
the living races of men.[11]
[11] The recent discovery by Mr. Dawson of fragments of a
second skull of the same character as the first and at the same
spot justifies a certain amount of hesitation in concluding that the
lower jaw and the fragments of the first found skull belong to one
individual.
 Fig. 25.—The Piltdown Jaw (shaded) and the Heidelberg Jaw (outline only)
super-imposed and compared by placing the first and second molar teeth (1
and 2) of the two specimens in exact coincidence on the horizontal line A, B.
The linear dimensions of the drawings are reduced to two-thirds of those of
the specimens. It is obvious that when the front bony part of the Piltdown
jaw is completed with an outline like that of the Heidelberg and Neander
jaws, as shown by the dotted line m, the space between its molars and the
sockets of its front teeth cannot be filled by teeth of the normal human
dimensions, as it is in the Heidelberg jaw. As the figure shows, they would
stop short half an inch from the front of the jaw. Hence Dr. Smith Woodward
inferred that larger teeth like those of a chimpanzee were present in this
region in the Piltdown jaw (Eoanthropus).

The astonishing thing about this half-jaw from Piltdown is that it is

definitely and obviously more like that of a chimpanzee—especially a
young chimpanzee—than it is like that of a man (see Fig. 23, A, B,
and C and their explanation). If it had been found under other
circumstances it might quite well have been described as the jaw of
a simiid—a large ape allied to the chimpanzee—with some
unimportant resemblance to a human one. The front part of the
bony jaw of Piltdown, instead of forming a narrow ridge below the
protruding bony chin as in man, is wide and flat; there is no
protruding chin. This very important fact is shown in our Fig. 24, in
which the lower margin of the lower jaw of modern man, of the
chimpanzee and of the Piltdown specimen are compared. The jaw
ended in front in a wall of bone sloping forward and upward
continuously from the flat and broad lower surface of the jaw. In this
the great incisor teeth were set, as in all Simiids. In man, on the
contrary, the front group of teeth is much smaller than in the apes,
and the semicircle formed by the line of the gums is much smaller
than the semicircular lower margin of the jaw. The semicircle of
teeth in man retreats (as it were) behind the front part of the bony
jaw which is left projecting far in advance of the line of teeth,
forming the "chin" or "chin protuberance." The Piltdown jaw when
found had only two of the cheek-teeth in place, as shown in Fig. 25.
They were certainly very human in pattern and in the smoothness of
their worn surfaces. But it was found impossible to fill the front part
of the bony jaw with the missing teeth if they also were fashioned
according to human pattern. They would in that case only reach
along the jaw to a distance of an inch and three-fifths from the first
molar tooth, whereas to fill the space from that tooth up to the front
end of the bone in which the teeth are socketed they must be big
enough to occupy a length of two inches and two-fifths (consult Fig.
25 and its explanation). Dr. Smith Woodward did not hesitate, in
view of the shape of the jaw so closely like that of a chimpanzee, to
postulate the former existence in it of big front teeth—canines and
incisors—like those of a chimpanzee, and unlike those of man,
although there was no trace of them left in the specimen. He
restored the jaw, giving it very much the shape and the teeth of a
chimpanzee's jaw (Fig. 23, B). That this was a correct interpretation
was proved a year later, in a startling, almost romantic way, by the
discovery by Mr. Dawson and a young French naturalist who were
resifting and searching the gravel at the exact spot where the jaw
was found, of one of the great canine teeth, twice as big as that of
any man and resembling that of a chimpanzee (see Fig. 26 and its
explanation). There was a good deal of hesitation about the
admission of the correctness of Dr. Smith Woodward's presentation
of the jaw of Eoanthropus, with so close a resemblance to that of a
chimpanzee. But the careful consideration of the specimen, and
above all the welcome discovery of the great ape-like canine, has
now convinced every anatomist of the truth of Dr. Woodward's
restoration. The jaw itself and the recovered canine tooth, as well as
the completely restored model of the two sides of the lower jaw and
of the brain-case, may now be seen and studied by visitors to the
Natural History Museum. They are placed in the Geological Gallery. I
have visited with Mr. Dawson the gravel at Piltdown where the jaw
and skull were found, and have picked up there humanly worked
flints of very primitive workmanship. I have also followed with Dr.
Smith Woodward the development and confirmation of his
interpretation of the jaw.
I now desire to insist upon the legitimate
conclusion to be drawn from this wonderful
specimen. That conclusion is that the
creature, indicated by it, is not (or was not
when it was alive) an eccentric cousin either
of the Simiid or of the Hominid stock, but
represents a real "missing link," an animal
intermediate in great and obvious features
between the two stocks, and either to be
Fig. 26.—The canine
described as an ape which had become man- tooth of the right side
like or as a man who still retained of the lower jaw of
characteristic ape-like features—a truly Eoanthropus Dawsoni,
connecting or linking form. Nothing like it, found at Piltdown
nothing occupying such a position, has a year after the
discovery and description
hitherto been discovered. It brings the focus of the lower
of interest in the knowledge of primitive man jaw, to which it belongs.
away from the caves of France to the thin Drawn of the
patch of iron-stained gravel in the meadow- natural size. To the
land of the River Ouse as it flows through the left a back view, to
the right a side view,
Sussex weald. These remains are the first showing the wearing
remains of a man-like creature found in a away of the surface
Pleistocene river gravel, and they exceed in of the tooth.
interest any human remains as yet known.
There is now reason to hope that more such
remains will be discovered in similar gravels.[12]
 [12] The human lower jaw found at Moulin-
Quignon fifty years ago by workmen who brought
it to M. Boucher de Perthes, was dismissed after
much study and examination by the most
competent anatomists at the time as being a
comparatively recent specimen. I do not know
whether it has been preserved. I have a flint
implement found with it which was given to me
in 1862 by M. de Perthes as genuine. It is a
forgery, and the jaw was fraudulently buried with
it and others in order to deceive M. de Perthes Fig. 27.—Canine
and earn a pecuniary reward for the forgers. tooth of the right
side of the lower
It would be highly important were we able to jaw of a European
arrive at a satisfactory conclusion as to what child, milk dentition.
age must be attributed to the Piltdown jaw and This "first"
skull. Did we know their age their true tooth is drawn of
significance as a link between man and ape twice its actual
length and breadth,
would be more easily estimated. The gravel in which brings it very
which they were found contains a handful, as it nearly to the same
were, of the sweepings of the land surface of size as the canine of
the great Weald valley of Sussex of all ages and Eoanthropus. It is
periods since the emergence of the chalk from more closely similar
in shape to the
the ocean floor—an immense lapse of time, canine of the Piltdown
amounting probably to millions of years! In this jaw than is
sparse and inconspicuous patch of gravel we the canine of the
find fragments of teeth of mastodon and second or permanent
elephant and rhinoceros of Miocene and dentition of
modern man.
Pliocene age; we also find bones of quite late
kinds of mammals of the Pleistocene period; we
also find two kinds of roughly chipped flint instruments belonging
the one to an earlier and the other to a later age. All are mixed up
together in the gravel. When we come to the question as to which of
these remains are of animals which were the contemporaries of
Eoanthropus, all we can say is that Eoanthropus, the creature whose
jaw was found at Piltdown, may have lived as late as the latest or as
early as the earliest of the animals whose remains are associated
with it. The Eoanthropus remains are not so heavily mineralized, it
seems to me, as are the fragments of teeth of Miocene age found
with them. At the same time, we have no ground for assuming that
this creature made either the earlier or the later type of flint
implements found with it, or was capable of such manufacture. I see
no reason for supposing, whatever may be the age which we may
have to attribute to Eoanthropus, that that creature was capable of
flaking flints to a desired shape or of making fire or had developed
the use of articulate speech. Nor is there any evidence to show that
the humanly cut elephant-bone recently found at Piltdown by Mr.
Dawson was cut by Eoanthropus. It is more probable that this was
done by a more highly developed creature of the genus Homo. In
fact, the only ground which at present justifies the association of
Eoanthropus with the Hominidæ or human series rather than with
the Simiidæ or ape series—derived from a common ancestry—is the
man-like rather than ape-like size of the brain, which we must
attribute to Eoanthropus on the assumption, which is at present a
reasonable one, that the half-jaw and the incomplete skull found
near each other at Piltdown are parts of the same individual.[13]
[13] But see foot-note on p. 284.
Fig. 28.—The Piltdown Jaw (Eoanthropus) with dotted lines showing the
parts as now "re-constructed" or "imagined" by Dr. Smith Woodward,
together with the late-found or recovered canine in its natural position.

Fig. 29.—Complete Skull and Jaw of Eoanthropus Dawsoni. One-third the

natural diameter. The parts indicated by dotted lines are re-constructed. The
rest is drawn from the actual bones discovered at Piltdown.
Fig. 30.—The complete Skull and Jaw of a young Chimpanzee. Drawn of one-
half the natural diameter in order to compare with Fig. 29, representing the
adult skull of Eoanthropus, reduced to about the same size.
 CHAPTER XXXI

THE SUPPLY OF PURE MILK

I
T is becoming more and more certain that the character and
quality of the actual things—the natural products—which we use
as food and accept as "diet" are far more important matters in
regard to the preservation of health than had been until recently
supposed. There has been a tendency, resulting from some of the
well-ascertained chemical necessities of the animal body and the
equally well-ascertained chemical composition of different articles of
food, to suppose that all that we have to do in regard to diet is to
make sure that our food supplies us with so much carbon, hydrogen,
nitrogen, and oxygen, with small quantities of phosphates,
sulphates, and chlorides of potassium, sodium, calcium (lime), and
iron, in a "digestible" form, in order to replace those chemical
elements as their combinations are used up and thrown off as waste
by our bodies. The general notions current are little more exact than
this. It is recognized, it is true, that these elements must be
combined in certain forms; that it is necessary to take so much
"proteid" (meat, gluten of flour, casein of cheese and milk, albumen
of egg), in which nitrogen is a leading component, foods which are
called flesh-formers; and, further, that it is necessary to take others
which supply carbon and hydrogen but have no nitrogen, namely,
the hydro-carbons—fat, butter, and oil—and the carbo-hydrates—
sugar and starch—foods which serve as mere fuel or heat-and-force
givers. The late proprietor of "Truth," Mr. Henry Labouchere, once
said to me that the doctors ought to provide us with a sausage
containing in their simplest form the necessary proportions of
proteid and of heat-giver (fat and sugar), and that we should
abandon all "sit-down" meals, pulling the necessary sausage out of
our pockets without any fuss or interruption to our occupation, and
eating a couple of inches or so, three or four times a day!
Experimental feeding of animals (in menageries, etc.), and even of
men (in prison, on the march, and on ships), has sometimes taken
very nearly as simple a form as this.
But we now know (and many, indeed, have recognized it for many
years) that the nutrition of the animal body, and especially of man's
body, is not so simple a matter as this method would suppose. It is
necessary not merely to supply the proteids, fats, starches, and
sugars, in correct weight and bulk, but also certain qualities and
substances in food, much more subtle and difficult to estimate
precisely, which are required in order to maintain health. There are
elaborate chemical compounds present in really "fresh" meats and
vegetables which seem to be absolutely necessary in order to keep
man (and some of the higher animals) in health, and not only that,
but it is ascertained that without them he cannot be properly
nourished, but dies! These subtle, highly complex bodies seem to be
present in very small quantities in good fresh food, and yet are
absolutely necessary though so minute in amount. The failure of a
diet consisting exclusively of tinned meats and preserved foods is
due as much to this as to the nausea set up by it—of which I have
written on a former occasion ("Science from an Easy Chair," Second
Series, 1913, p. 171, "Food and Cookery").
Let us take an example. A distinguished medical chemist, Mr.
Gowland Hopkins, has recently published an account of some
experiments in which he fed young rats on a purely chemical, or
"artificial" diet. He gave them, in proper proportions, chemically
purified casein or curd, starch, sugar, lard, and salts, mixed into a
thin paste with water, of which they had an abundant separate
supply. Young rats fed with abundant natural foods of mixed
substances, such as cheese, bread, egg, bits of meat and vegetable,
and water, grow rapidly; they double their weight in twenty days.
The young rats fed by Mr. Hopkins upon the artificial pure food—
though supplied with it and taking it in abundance—did not increase
in weight, and most of them died before the twentieth day! The
curious and important fact was established (by careful and repeated
experiment) that if a teaspoonful of milk was added to the artificial
food (less than one twenty-fifth of the solid matter of their daily
food) the young rats did as well as on "natural" food, doubled their
weight in twenty days, and grew up to be strong and healthy rats. It
was made clear that something was obtained by the rats from the
small quantity of milk—something necessary for carrying on their
nutrition, something the importance of which was not its quantity
but its peculiar quality, which was absent in the artificial diet, but
present in the mixed diet of varied materials which a young rat
naturally gets. It seems that some highly elaborated proteid is
necessary, if only in minute quantity, to set nutrition going, and that
this is furnished by the teaspoonful of milk. Here, then, we have a
case in which the simple rough conclusions as to all that is necessary
in diet being the proper quantities of flesh-forming and heat-giving
substance, are found to be erroneous.
Take another case—that of the disease known as "scurvy." The word
"scurvy" means "afflicted with scurf, mean and dirty." It was applied
to persons afflicted by this particular disease, and a Latin medical
word, "Scorbutus," was made from it in the Middle Ages, which
survives as "scorbutic" at the present day. Scurvy was formerly very
common on board ship, in beleaguered armies, in prisons, and in
other conditions in which men's food was limited to dried and salted,
often badly preserved, meat and biscuit, or stale bread. Its real
causation is not even now agreed upon: some holding that it was
due to actual poisoning by the badly preserved food, others that it
was due to the absence of certain elements—only to be obtained
from fresh meat or fresh vegetables. Others think that it was caused
by a bacterium. The victim of scurvy becomes much debilitated, the
gums become spongy and ulcerated, and extravasations of blood are
found in all parts of the body, often leading to ulceration. In the old
times a whole ship's crew of the Navy would be attacked by it, and
half or more died before a port could be reached and fresh food
obtained. It was found that the use of fresh vegetables, fresh meat,
and the juice of fruits prevented its outbreak, and cured it when
once started. For one hundred and fifty years it has been held in
check by the use of lime-juice as a drink whenever supplies of fresh
vegetables and meat run short. It has now become so unusual a
disease that there has been no proper study of it in the light of
modern knowledge.
It seems to be essentially the same condition of malnutrition as that
which prevailed in cities and large tracts of country in the Middle
Ages and occurs at the present day in Norway, caused by a diet of
badly salted fish and dried meat. This produced ulceration of the
extremities, allowing the leprosy bacillus to make its way through
the broken skin into the tissues, and thus led to the widespread
occurrence of leprosy. Whether bacilli of any kind were concerned in
the old virulent outbreaks of "scurvy" on sailing ships must remain
uncertain, but it is highly probable that they were. In any case, it is
certain that the juice of fresh meat or of fresh vegetables when
taken set going a better condition of nutrition in the body, and so
acted as a preventive and a cure of scurvy. Some writers suppose
that it was the salts, such as citrates and lactates, present in fresh
fruits and vegetables which were effective in staying the disease; but
this has by no means been proved, and is not, at the moment,
accepted. It is probable that here, as in the case of Mr. Hopkins's
rats, it was a quite minute quantity of a readily-destroyed proteid
present in fresh meat and vegetables which was necessary to keep
the chemical processes of nutrition in healthy activity.
This view is supported by the fact that in recent years a disease of
infants similar to scurvy, and called "infantile scurvy," has been
described by Sir Thomas Barlow, and fully recognized. It is a
condition of "malnutrition," and is accompanied by "rickets," and is
due in the first place to failure of the mother's milk, and secondly to
the bad quality of the cows' milk substituted for it. Owing to the
danger of infection by bovine tubercle-bacillus and the great
expense of "certified" milk from specially selected cows (eightpence
a quart), it is customary to boil the milk given to children. There
seems to be no doubt that good milk, freshly boiled, is satisfactory.
But the constant use of sterilized milk and so-called Pasteurized milk,
as well as inferior "watered" and more or less stale milk, is
frequently the cause of infantile scurvy. Something is destroyed in
the milk by prolonged heating which is necessary for its proper
action as a food. The addition to the milk of a small quantity of fresh
meat-juice or beetroot-juice appears to replace this destroyed
matter, and to prevent malnutrition and scurvy. And thus the babies
are rescued from "infantile scurvy." Here, again, it is a question of
the presence of a minimal quantity of an easily destroyed proteid,
which is necessary to start the nutritional process and to keep it
going.
A very interesting case of the unsuspected influence of minute
quantities of such a "proteid" body (that is, a body like casein and
albumen, but higher in the complexity of its chemical structure and
nearer to the readily destroyed chemical complexity of living matter
itself) has lately been discovered. In the East, especially amongst
Chinese "coolies" and other people who feed on rice, a very
troublesome disease is known, called "Berri-berri." It is chiefly
marked by pains all over the body, lassitude, and debility, and
renders its victims unfit for labour, and so causes great
inconvenience to employers of "Chinese cheap labour." All sorts of
causes have been suggested for it. But it has now been found that it
is due to the feeding of the coolies with "polished rice." This is an
inferior rice, the grains of which have become (by bad, damp
storage) rough and powdery on the surface. The bad rice grain is
purchased by dealers and shaken up and sifted so as to get rid of
this dull surface, and is then known as "polished rice." The grain has
lost its outer coat. It has been found that domesticated birds
(pigeons and fowls) fed on this polished rice become ill with
symptoms like those of "Berri-berri," and even die. And it has been
further discovered that these same birds can be cured by mixing
some of the separated outer coat of sound rice grains with the
"polished rice." The result of this observation on birds has been
applied to human patients suffering from "Berri-berri." It is found
that they are rapidly cured by giving them rice "outsides" to eat, and
that those who are feeding on "polished rice" can be prevented from
acquiring the disease "Berri-berri" by mixing rice "outsides" with the
polished rice. The study of the subject has gone further.
A crystallizable substance allied to proteids has been separated by
the chemist in quite minute quantity (one part by weight in 10,000
parts of rice) from the outer coat of rice grain, and is called
"vitamine." It is this substance which prevents the "whole" rice grain
from causing "Berri-berri" in men and birds who feed on it, and it
has been shown experimentally that it prevents the development of
"Berri-berri" when taken with "polished rice," and cures it when
administered to man or bird suffering from that disease. This case
calls to mind the popular notion that the indigestion caused by
eating a "peeled" raw cucumber can be prevented by eating some of
the dark-green "rind" or outside of the cucumber. I do not know that
anyone has ever shown that this is a true doctrine, but it serves as
an illustration of what has been demonstrated in the case of rice
grains and "Berri-berri." Here, then, again we have, in the case of
rice, a minute quantity of a substance naturally present in an article
of food when taken in its natural normal condition, which is
destroyed and removed by the ignorant manipulation of man,
although necessary and essential if that article of food is to serve as
healthy diet. In this case (as so many others) it is the attempt of
greedy traders to make money by giving to a worthless spoilt article
the appearance of the regular and valuable article, which has led to
disease and disaster. It becomes more and more obvious that the
selection of articles of food and the whole question of what is a
healthy diet, are not such simple things as is often supposed. Here,
as in everything we do, we must either keep to the long-established
habits sanctioned by Nature, or we must have full and detailed
knowledge to guide us in new ways, so that we shall not recklessly
blunder by ignorance into disaster and death. The "feeding" of man
and of his herds requires new and continued investigation. Old
convictions and traditions in these matters must not be lightly thrust
aside by the possessor of that little knowledge which is a dangerous
thing. Meanwhile, for the civilized man the advice of Pasteur's pupil
and successor, the late Professor Duclaux, is noteworthy: "Do not
eat much, but eat many things; there is safety in variety, danger in
uniformity."
When we reflect on the importance of these small quantities of
easily destroyed constituents in natural foods, we begin to
appreciate the difficulty of securing a pure milk-supply which shall be
at the same time a nourishing and a healthy one. The sterilizing of
milk by heat before it is sold as an article of diet seems to be
desirable in order to destroy the bovine tubercle-bacillus which may
be there and the other injurious microbes due to the dirty conditions
in which the cow is kept and the milkers keep themselves. The
heating of the milk for some twenty minutes to a temperature below
that of boiling water seems to be the best plan. For infants, meat-
juice or beet-juice may then be added to the milk when used, and so
"infantile scurvy" be avoided. Consumers (older children and adults)
who are taking other foods do not need this additional precaution.
Milk thus "Pasteurized" is the safest milk.
But there is a very serious precaution to be observed in all cases. In
such Pasteurized milk the lactic organism or ferment usually present
is destroyed. Consequently the milk does not "go sour" by the
growth of the lactic ferment. This is no advantage, but a serious
danger. For the lactic "souring" of milk is not injurious, but, on the
contrary, a safeguard. It actually prevents the growth in the milk of
other really harmful and deadly germs. Thus when the lactic germ is
not there, but killed by heat, these other deadly germs get their
chance. A fly or other dirt-carrier brings to the sterilized milk
"putrefactive" bacteria and such germs (terribly common) as those
of "green" or infantile diarrhœa, not to mention others. If the milk
had been unsterilized and gone sour by the growth of the lactic
ferment, these more dangerous germs could not have flourished in
the acid conditions produced by it. The danger of Pasteurized milk is
that if kept more than a few hours at the ordinary temperature of a
dwelling-room, and not carefully protected, it may be a very ready
means of communicating infantile diarrhœa and other intestinal
disease. It would therefore seem to be desirable to restore to the
Pasteurized milk a small quantity of a pure culture of lactic germs.
This could be easily done. The milk would have had its tubercle-
bacilli and others removed by heat, and then, after cooling, it would
receive a very few lactic germs as a protective in case it should be
kept by the consumer long enough to get infected by the bacteria of
intestinal disease. It is imperative that good, nourishing milk, free
from germs of tubercle and of diarrhœa, shall be accessible to the
millions in this country who cannot afford to pay eightpence a quart
for it. It is a difficult demand to meet. What is said above explains
the difficulty, and suggests an attempt to overcome it.
Welcome to our website – the ideal destination for book lovers and
knowledge seekers. With a mission to inspire endlessly, we offer a
vast collection of books, ranging from classic literary works to
specialized publications, self-development books, and children's
literature. Each book is a new journey of discovery, expanding
knowledge and enriching the soul of the reade

Our website is not just a platform for buying books, but a bridge
connecting readers to the timeless values of culture and wisdom. With
an elegant, user-friendly interface and an intelligent search system,
we are committed to providing a quick and convenient shopping
experience. Additionally, our special promotions and home delivery
services ensure that you save time and fully enjoy the joy of reading.

Let us accompany you on the journey of exploring knowledge and

personal growth!

ebookname.com