The first law of black hole mechanics (in the form derived by Wald) is
expressed in terms of integrals over surfaces, at the horizon and spa
tial infinity, of a stationary, axisymmetric black hole, in a diffeomo
rphism-invariant Lagrangian theory of gravity. The original statement
of the first law given by Bardeen, Carter, and Hawking for an Einstein
-perfect fluid system contained, in addition, volume integrals of the
fluid fields, over a spacelike slice stretching between these two surf
aces. One would expect that Wald's methods, applied to a Lagrangian Ei
nstein-perfect fluid formulation, would convert these terms to surface
integrals. However, because the fields appearing in the Lagrangian of
a gravitating perfect fluid are typically nonstationary (even in a st
ationary black-hole-perfect-fluid spacetime) a direct application of t
hese methods generally yields restricted results. We therefore first a
pproach the problem of incorporating general nonstationary matter fiel
ds into Wald's analysis, and derive a first-law-like relation for an a
rbitrary Lagrangian metric theory of gravity coupled to arbitrary Lagr
angian matter fields, requiring only that the metric field be stationa
ry. This relation includes a volume integral of matter fields over a s
pacelike slice between the black hole horizon and spatial infinity, an
d reduces to the first law originally derived by Bardeen, Carter, and
Hawking when the theory is general relativity coupled to a perfect flu
id. We then turn to consider a specific Lagrangian formulation for an
isentropic perfect fluid given by Carter, and directly apply Wald's an
alysis, assuming that both the metric and fluid fields are stationary
and axisymmetric in the black hole spacetime. The first law we derive
contains only surface integrals at the black hole horizon and spatial
infinity, but the assumptions of stationarity and axisymmetry of the f
luid fields make this relation restrictive in its allowed fluid config
urations and perturbations than that given by Bardeen, Carter, and Haw
king. In the Appendix, we use the symplectic structure of the Einstein
-perfect fluid system to derive a conserved current for perturbations
of this system: this current reduces to one derived ab initio for this
system by Chandrasekhar and Ferrari.