184
DONALD C. BOWIE
in September and December, and two each in October and November. In 1945 we had one intake in January, a tiny intake in February, one in March and two in June. I imagine that most of the tinned foods came from overseas. I learned later that two ship loads of Allied Red Cross stores had reached Hong Kong during the war having been transhipped to Japanese vessels.
Effects of supplements upon the General Diet
In February 1943 I began to estimate and record the protein, fat and carbohydrate contents of the contributions from the three voluntary sources to the general diet. I started also to calculate the calorie values of our general diet, but the figures I arrived at were undoubtedly high partly due to the fact that I made no allowances for losses in preparation and cooking and partly due to assumptions I was forced to make when calculating the value of unknown varieties of flabby fish or lily roots or chrysanthemum leaves. I have not thought it worth while to burden readers with these calculations but making them occupied many hours of my time.
Feeding the Patients
I referred earlier to the problems of feeding patients suffering from acute infections and how these were tackled. In the case of the deficiency diseases some patients had turned against all food and went downhill in spite of everything that we could do for them. In these fatal cases the walls of the intestine had become as thin as a sheet of paper and were quite incapable of absorbing nourishment. Little that we could do therefore influenced the cases of these patients at all. Those among us who were able to eat a rice diet and who escaped major infections were indeed fortunate.
Our system of feeding patients suffering from deficiency diseases and those in whom the acute stage of infection was passing was quite simple. Anything in the food store was available for them in as great quantities as they could take, the aim being of course to arrest the declining state of nourishment and to reverse this as soon as possible. This policy was undoubtedly the right one and certainly preserved many lives. It had less obviously good results in those with defects of vision and certain other neurological damage.
Patients therefore had first call upon the extra food stuffs received from all sources. Reference to the tables showing food
184
DONALD C. BOWIE
in September and December, and two each in October and Novem- ber. In 1945 we had one intake in January, a tiny intake in February, one in March and two in June. I imagine that most of the tinned foods came from overseas. I learned later that two ship loads of allied Red Cross stores had reached Hong Kong during the war having been transhipped to Japanese vessels.
Effects of supplements upon the General Diet
In February 1943 I began to estimate and record the protein, fat and carbohydrate contents of the contributions from the three voluntary sources to the general diet. I started also to calculate the calorie values of our general diet, but the figures I arrived at were undoubtedly high partly due to the fact that I made no allowances for losses in preparation and cooking and partly due to assumptions I was forced to make when calculating the value of unknown varieties of flabby fish or lily roots or chrysanthemum leaves. I have not thought it worth while to burden readers with these cal- culations but making them occupied many hours of my time.
Feeding the Patients
I referred earlier to the problems of feeding patients suffering from acute infections and how these were tackled. In the case of the deficiency diseases some patients had turned against all food and went downhill in spite of everything that we could do for them. In these fatal cases the walls of the intestine had become as thin as a sheet of paper and were quite incapable of absorbing nourish- ment. Little that we could do therefore influenced the cases of these patients at all. Those among us who were able to eat a rice diet and who escaped major infections were indeed fortunate.
Our system of feeding patients suffering from deficiency diseases and those in whom the acute stage of infection was passing was quite simple. Anything in the food store was available for them in as great quantities as they could take, the aim being of course to arrest the declining state of nourishment and to reverse this as soon as possible. This policy was undoubtedly the right one and certainly preserved many lives. It had less obviously good results in those with defects of vision and certain other neurological damage.
Patients therefore had first call upon the extra food stuffs re- ceived from all sources. Reference to the tables showing food
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