Medical Officers also have very important duties and responsibilities in connection with the feeding of prisoners. Prison dietaries in this country have always been prescribed by Statute, but these definite prescriptions--what a prisoner shall eat and drink--are always subject to the moderating discretion of a Medical Officer. Formerly, the prison dietary was regarded as an element of penal discipline. Sir J. Graham, when Home Secretary, had repudiated this principle as long ago as 1843, but the Secretary of State of those days had no power to enforce his views on the local Justices, who gave effect to the popular idea that the ordinary prison diet might properly be regarded as an instrument of punishment. It must not be supposed, however, that the elimination of the penal element necessarily connotes an attractiveness of prison fare. This is not the case; but the difficulties of framing a dietary which shall be sufficient and not more than sufficient, for the varying needs of many thousands of human beings of different ages and physique is admittedly very great. The dietary of 1900 has, at least, removed one grave reproach against the system, _viz_:--that prisoners habitually, and almost invariably, lost weight. Under the old dietary, no less than 80 per cent. of prisoners engaged on hard labour for a month or less lost weight. The progressive improvement of dietary scale, proportioned to length of sentence, has been effective in mitigating the ill-effects arising from the application of the principle of punitive diet as a part of the sentence of imprisonment. The skill and care of the medical staff would, however, be less positive in its results but for the sanitary condition of the interior of prisons, which has, for many years past, engaged the closest attention. Great improvements have taken place of late years in the construction of hospitals, and in the ventilation of halls and of cells, and in the reconstruction of drains on the most up-to-date lines. Formerly, the gas-lights, which are now in the corridors, were inside the cell--in many cases, naked lights,--an objectionable system from a sanitary point of view, and affording an easy means for mischief or self-destruction, while giving inadequate light for reading or working. It is not only with regard to artificial light that progress has been made. The opaque window glass excluding the light of day, and the hermetically closed window are now only memories of the past. All these things of late years have had the effect of improving the sanitary condition of prisons and the health of prisoners, and have, no doubt, contributed to the remarkable bill of health which our prisons present.