Quantity and Variety of Foods.  — as we have already seen, the human body consists of numerous mechanics or artisans, who are constantly at work repairing and upbuilding the unceasing destruction that is continually going on.  If fresh food be not daily supplied, this work would soon cease, and the lamp of life flicker out.  To replace this constant waste we required nearly 3 pounds of solid food, and fully 3 pounds of liquid food for our daily allowance.  But to convert the pent-up energies of bread, meat and vegetables into the tissues of our own mechanism require a number of differently constructed organs, and these we now desire to draw your attention to this beautiful chart.  The organs consist of the stomach, liver, pancreas and intestines, which comprise the principal organs concerned in the process of digestion.

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In 2007 I can hardly imagine what eating 3 pounds of food a day might be like, and I tend to eat a lot having a very high metabolism.  For example I had two waffles for breakfast, two products on hot dog buns for supper and to bananas today.  I think the total of all that food combined may have been a pound for pound and a half if you don’t count the banana peels.  To put it differently, I can’t quite imagine eating six half pound cheeseburgers every day.  Not to mention the half pound cheeseburgers that you get a fast food place like Wendy’s, are weighed before they’re cooked and not after.  So a half pound cheeseburgers going to weigh less when you eat it because they took out some of the crease and fat, but probably not enough.

Drinking 3 pounds of liquid definitely caught my attention.  There have been many references over the years to the US nutritional food pyramid.  By many accounts the pyramid has been traced to some Washington, DC bureaucrat that came up with a concept that a person needs to drink eight glasses of water every day.  To my knowledge, no one has come up with any scientific basis for why that Washington bureaucrat would chose an eight glasses as opposed to five or 10, or even just stating that a person should drink as often as they are thirsty.  Now I’m curious to learn if 3 pounds of water equates to approximately 8 glasses of water.  This book was published in 1916 and the food pyramid was was written up in the 1930s approximately 14 years later.

Is it possible that I found an early reference in this medical textbook that may have been the basis for that quackery prescribing eight glasses of water every day?

It definitely could be possible as this to tomb of a book was definitely reference material that I could envision a bureaucrat pulling off a shelf of the Library of Congress, what better book than the Library of Health to be found in the Library of Congress.  I don’t expect ultimately be accredited with finding the source for that quackery anymore than you or I expect to find a publisher’s clearing House letter in our Mailboxes containing an actual check for $1 million.