RELATION BETWEEN BLOOD PLASMA PROTEINS AND TOXEMIAS OF PREGNANCY

Abstract

Diets for pregnant women are not modern, though their use in the past was more empiric than scientific. The angel in Biblical times gave the father of Samson instructions before his birth, saying "She may not eat of anything that cometh from the vine, neither let her drink wine or strong drink nor eat any unclean things" (Judges 13: 14). Since then each generation has added or subtracted, restricted or insisted, on a variety of foods. The textbooks of the middle nineteenth century have practically no antepartum advice and only mention that an adequate diet should be prescribed for convulsions without saying what constitutes an adequate diet.¹ Even as late as 1928 De Lee,² in his antepartum instructions concerning diet, did not advocate a balanced diet. He advised that the patient "omit meats and broths and limit eggs and fish." Curtis,³ with two full pages on diet,