HEALTH QUERIES.

To People with Strong Convictions:

A holiday is the best of all opportunities for appreciating the opposite point of view to our own: this is why everyone needs a day's holiday once a week.

Under this heading our contributor, Dr Valentine Knaggs, deals briefly month by month, and according as space permits, with questions of general interest to health seekers and others.

In all Queries relating to health difficulties it is essential that full details of the correspondent's customary diet should be clearly given.

Correspondents are earnestly requested to write onone side only of the paper, giving full name and address, not for publication, but as a guarantee of good faith. When an answer is required by post a stamped addressed envelope must be enclosed.—[Eds.]

H.E.H. writes.—I should like your opinion of the statement of the late Mr A. Broadbent, that fruit when taken with starchy food by dyspeptics delays digestion, and that the digestion of starchy foods and vegetables occupied only one-third of the time needed for the digestion of starch with fruit. I have lived on a strict vegetarian diet and observed the laws of hygiene for two and a half years, to rid myself of dyspepsia, with great success, having increased my weight by thirty-six pounds; for the last nine months of this time I have lived on a largely “unfired” diet, but am still troubled with acid risings and flatulence and cannot account for it. Will you kindly enlighten me on the subject?I am a carpenter by trade and get eight hours in the open air every day. I take a tumbler of distilled water hot with the juice of one orange at 6a.m., breakfast at 7.30a.m., dinner at 12 noon and tea at 6p.m., all consisting of Wallace unfermented bread and biscuits, various fruits (mostly apples, bananas and tomatoes) and nuts, about ½oz. at a meal; also a little cheese, about 1 oz. at a meal.

I am a carpenter by trade and get eight hours in the open air every day. I take a tumbler of distilled water hot with the juice of one orange at 6a.m., breakfast at 7.30a.m., dinner at 12 noon and tea at 6p.m., all consisting of Wallace unfermented bread and biscuits, various fruits (mostly apples, bananas and tomatoes) and nuts, about ½oz. at a meal; also a little cheese, about 1 oz. at a meal.

The late Mr A. Broadbent was quite right, in my opinion, when he asserted that fruit taken with starchy foods delayed digestion.

To reap the true benefit from fruit it must be taken alone.

The dominant element in fruit is oxygen and the feature of oxygen is its power to start the process of oxidation in decomposing and disintegrating substances. It follows that when the stomach is filled with fermenting food-stuffs, or the tissues are clogged with the products derived from such, the oxidising action of fruit will be correspondingly intense.

The Naturist who applies the Schroth Cure for the purpose of curing chronic diseases uses fruit as his chief eliminating agent. The reader will remember that the peasant healer, Schroth, made his patients take dry stale rolls alone for three whole days, with nothing whatever to drink, and on the fourth day, he gave them a full bottle of white wine, which then caused intense oxidation, with marked elimination of poisons. His methods, if successful, were drastic and weakening, and so the latter-day exponents of Schrothism have modified this and give their patients zweiback or twice-baked bread instead of rolls, and on the third or fourth day make the patient partake freely of fresh fruit. This process of alternate dry days and fluid days is continued for some weeks until the cure is complete.

I have merely referred to this matter to show the part played by fruit in the body. To a healthy person fruit is in truth a splendid regenerating food, but it should, whenever possible, be eaten alone. To a dyspeptic, fruit is often equally good, iftaken by itself.

The case of vegetables is different, and I hold with Broadbent that salad or properly cooked vegetables do go well with cereals, because they contain, not oxygen and oxygen acids, but mineral elements like soda, lime and magnesia, which neutralise the acids and toxins which form in the body as a result of its work. The vegetable is just as active as the fruit as an eliminant, but it works on different lines. Cereal foods, if eaten slowly in a dry condition are made alkaline by the saliva, so that the vegetables, which are also naturally alkaline, would harmonise well with cereals if eaten with them.

Our correspondent should modify his diet as follows, and then, I anticipate, he will cease to be troubled with his acid dyspepsia and flatulence. He should take his fruit alone, and take any of the crisp unsweetened Wallace “P.R.” Biscuits in preference to the unfermented bread, which latter is often difficult to digest:—

On rising.—A tumblerful of hot distilled water.

Breakfast(at 7.30).—Fresh fruit only.

Lunch(at 12).—1 to 2 oz. of cheese, preferably home-made curd cheese; salad of green leaf vegetables; “P.R.” or Ixion biscuits with fresh butter, or nut butter.

Dinner(at 6).—1 to 2 oz. of flaked pine kernels, finely grated raw roots or tomatoes, with pure olive oil; Granose biscuits, or Shredded Wheat biscuits, and fresh butter.

At bedtime.—Cupful of dandelion coffee or hot distilled water.

E.M.A. writes.—At the age of five years I had an attack of rheumatic fever through taking a severe cold, and have been troubled more or less with pains since that time, which I feel sure are caused through rheumatism of the nerves. I am now fifty-eight years of age and have been a vegetarian for six years.My diet is:—8a.m., cup of Sanum Tonic Tea; 9a.m., Cup of dried milk; 10a.m., half of an apple and a little crust of wholemeal bread; 1p.m.conservatively cooked vegetable, using “Emprote” for sauce; 4p.m., cup of dried milk; 6p.m., a little green salad with St Ivel lactic cheese (size of one large walnut); 9p.m., cup of dried milk. Do you think dried milk is harmful to me? I should miss it very much were I to leave it off. I must mention how great a helpThe Healthy Lifemagazine is to me in many ways.

My diet is:—8a.m., cup of Sanum Tonic Tea; 9a.m., Cup of dried milk; 10a.m., half of an apple and a little crust of wholemeal bread; 1p.m.conservatively cooked vegetable, using “Emprote” for sauce; 4p.m., cup of dried milk; 6p.m., a little green salad with St Ivel lactic cheese (size of one large walnut); 9p.m., cup of dried milk. Do you think dried milk is harmful to me? I should miss it very much were I to leave it off. I must mention how great a helpThe Healthy Lifemagazine is to me in many ways.

Neuritis is a painful and wearying form of nerve trouble which mostly affects the arms and legs. It can, however, originate in any other part of the body through the spinal nerve centres. It may sometimes be due to injury, but the usual cause is some form of thickening or misplacement of the spinal structures, which induces pressure upon the nerves as they emerge through the apertures between the spinal bones. A careful examination of the back will show the site, and often the nature, of the thickening or encumbrance which is present.

In our correspondent's case the thickening processdoubtless occurred as an after effect of the attack of rheumatic fever.

The best remedy is suitable osteopathic treatment for the spine, supplemented byeither veryhot orquitecold spinal sitz baths, by acetic acid skin treatment, or by any other means which will have the effect of disencumbering the spine. By means of our treatment we free the painful nerves from harmful pressure and promote an increased blood circulation in the parts affected. In this way the cause of the disorder is removed.

A diet along the following lines would be better than the present one:—

8a.m.—Tumblerful of hot distilled water.

9.30.—One raw egg beaten up with cream and vegetable juice or clear vegetable soup made without salt. Wholemeal bread with plenty of butter and some celery or watercress.

1.30p.m.—Two conservatively cooked vegetables done without salt, with grated cheese as sauce and a Granose biscuit with butter.

4.—Tumblerful of hot distilled water only.

6.30.—2 oz. of cottage cheese or cream cheese, salad and Granose biscuits, or “P.R.” crackers, with butter.

9.30.—A raw egg beaten up with cream and vegetable juice or soup.

I think dried milk preparations are inadvisable in such cases as these (especially when taken as beverages, as the “milk sugars” present are very prone to ferment and to hinder the cleansing of the digestive tract), and that the required proteid is best obtained from eggs and curd cheese. Fat is very necessary in nervous troubles; hence plenty of cream, fresh butter and cream cheese should be taken; also pure oil with the salad.

L.F.H. writes.—Is malt extract a good thing to take daily with an ordinary non-flesh diet, two teaspoonfuls or so at breakfast? And is the desiccated or dry malt extract to be preferred to the ordinary sticky article?

Malt extract of good quality, containing an activeform of diastase, is a good form of relish to take with meals. The diastase promotes starch digestion and makes a good addition to foods of the cereal order. The thick sticky form is the best because the diastase is then in an active condition. Dried malt usually will have this diastase destroyed, hence, although much more convenient to handle, it is not so good dietetically as the sticky original extract.

C.T. writes.—I have read the article on sugar with considerable interest. I have noted nervous disorders, etc., manifest in cases of excessive consumption of manufactured sugar. I have been an abstainer from cane sugar (all commercial sugars, thoughI do not know of any objection to milk, sugar) for many years, regarding it as an unnatural excitant and stimulant as well as being inimical to digestion. As a physiologist I have taken immense interest in longevity, feeling that an active life past the age of ninety-five or a hundred, and upwards, carries with it, in evidence of right living, the force of demonstration, and more conclusively, in direct ratio to the advance of years. I firmly believe that all anomalies will ultimately admit of resolution. In this connection I could mention a number of strange and paradoxical cases for which, as yet, I have obtained no solution. I know of centenarians who began using “sugar” freely late in life. In one case, when past eighty, a new set of teeth (not odd “supernumeraries”) appeared all round! How is it, again, that the natives of the West Indies, when living on sugar (in its crude state, I suppose) have excellent teeth and perfect health? Is not raw sugar better the less manufactured it is? On the other side, Captain Diamond, at 114, attributes his health in great measure to abstinence from sugar.

Most of these queries are answered in the completed book[10]published this year. The point about “milk sugar” not being injurious he will find answered on page 72.

[10]The Truth about Sugar, 1s. net. (C.W. Daniel, Ltd.)

“Milk sugars” taken to excess with a mixed diet, or in the form of milk as a beverage, break down into lactic, butyric and other destructive acids under the influence of intestinal germs and thus do harm to the body.

The natives of the West Indies (page 39) take thesugar cane in its natural state as a living vegetable food—a very different thing from the isolated and chemicalised sugar on our tables at home. Moreover, the chewing required helps digestion. This is very different to the drinking rapidly of sugared beverages, which do not receive this necessary mouth preparation.

One is quite prepared to admit that paradoxical cases do occur where sugar seems to agree well even with octogenarians, but they are, in my opinion, the exceptions, and I am constantly coming across cases where the free consumption of table sugars has proved very harmful to both old and young.

A.L.M. writes.—Our domestic servant, a girl aged twenty-four, is suffering from ulceration of the stomach and has had periodical attacks for the past six years. She has apparently, until she came to us, eaten and drunk very unwisely. She has been with us seven months and has been fed on a non-flesh diet since she came. For the last four weeks tea, coffee and cocoa have been forbidden, and as little sugar is consumed as possible. She had a very bad attack in August and we had to call in a doctor is we did not like the responsibility. He strongly recommended the hospital and an operation, which would ensure that there would be no repetition of the complaint. She decided to go and was there six weeks. After much experimenting there, inoculating and wondering whether it was tuberculosis, they operated and in due course she came back. We went to the sea for three weeks and shortly after our return the vomiting of blood and pains recommenced. After four days in bed she returned to light dishes, and a fortnight after another slighter attack came on, which in twenty-four hours. She takes hot boiled water five times a day. She suffers also from a horny skin on the palms of her hands, with deep cracks where the natural lines are. These periodically bleed. This skin exists also on her heels and the soles of her feet. Before and after, an attack this skin seems to be worse than ever.I mentioned the fact of the recurring attacks since the operation to the doctor and he seemed surprised and said the matter must be constitutional and there was no hope for her.My own opinion is that pure food will put her right eventually, and that these attacks will recur in diminishing force until the poisons are eliminated front the system.Her diet is at present as follows:—On rising.—Half-pint of boiled water (hot).Breakfast.—Either Shredded Wheat softened in hot milk orbreakfast flakes and cold milk: followed by either bananas or apples. Half-pint boiled water (hot).Lunch.—Ordinary vegetarian cooked dishes, vegetables conservatively cooked, some fruit. Half-pint boiled water (hot).Tea meal.—Wholemeal bread (Artox flour), usually non-yeast, nut butter. Lettuces and radishes when obtainable. Half-pint boiled water (hot).Before retiring.—Half-pint of boiled water (hot).

I mentioned the fact of the recurring attacks since the operation to the doctor and he seemed surprised and said the matter must be constitutional and there was no hope for her.

My own opinion is that pure food will put her right eventually, and that these attacks will recur in diminishing force until the poisons are eliminated front the system.

Her diet is at present as follows:—

On rising.—Half-pint of boiled water (hot).

Breakfast.—Either Shredded Wheat softened in hot milk orbreakfast flakes and cold milk: followed by either bananas or apples. Half-pint boiled water (hot).

Lunch.—Ordinary vegetarian cooked dishes, vegetables conservatively cooked, some fruit. Half-pint boiled water (hot).

Tea meal.—Wholemeal bread (Artox flour), usually non-yeast, nut butter. Lettuces and radishes when obtainable. Half-pint boiled water (hot).

Before retiring.—Half-pint of boiled water (hot).

It has been shown by Brandl and other investigators that ulceration of the stomach can always be produced in animals by feeding them with an excess of sugar foods. The same thing applies to human beings, who, if fed with an excess of sweetmeats, sugar, milk or soft mushy cereals, will first contract catarrh of the stomach, which will ultimately deepen into a condition of ulceration.

The rationale of the process is this: Fermentation and putrefaction of the foods eaten to excess produce in the stomach various acids and toxins. These become absorbed and pass into the liver. Then the liver becomes clogged, its flow of blood is obstructed and this naturally retards the flow of food from the stomach. That organ becomes congested and inflamed and, when the lower end, or pylorus, is obstructed, this congested state may easily deepen into ulceration. We also nearly always find a tender spine, showing that the nervous system has equally participated in the conditions produced, and this nervous factor intensifies the trouble by retarding the due working of the digestive functions.

What we have to do to cure a case of ulcerated stomach isto withhold the foods which create fermentation. Then the liver will be allowed time to work off the poisons which are clogging its substance and when this has come about the stomach will slowly return to its normal condition.

The diet which our correspondent cites is badly arranged. It is a mistake to give fluidwiththe meals, and the mushy food at breakfast and the soft food at dinner should be changed to drier and crisper forms of nutriment.

The following diet would be a distinct improvement:—

On rising.—Half-pint of boiled hot water, sipped slowly; or quarter-pint Sanum Tonic Tea, taken hot.

Breakfast.—A Shredded Wheat biscuiteaten dryand well buttered; a lightly boiled egg and some finely grated raw roots, especially carrots and turnips.

In a case of this sort it is best not to mix cereals with fruits.

An alternative breakfast would consist offruit alonesuch as two apples, finely grated at first, or two bananas mashed and mixed with pure olive oil and sprinkled with flaked nuts but care must be taken that the pulped banana is well chewed.

Lunch.—Grated cheese, or cream cheese, with some finely chopped salad, or grated raw roots, or conservatively cooked vegetables (preferably roots or onions baked fairly dry by the casserole method) can be taken at this repast. Follow with a slice or two of cold ordinary toast or rusks with butter.

Tea meal.—Half-pint of hot boiled water with a little lemon or orange juice added to it for flavouring.

Supper(about 6.30).—Stale standard bread with butter and curd cheese or an egg. The non-yeast bread should be avoided as in the weak state of the stomach it will not be properly digested; besides, the bran may irritate the lining in the present condition of the stomach. As soon as the stomach has regained its power of digesting food, and the ulcers have healed, then fine wholemeal biscuits of the Wallace or Ixion kind can be taken, but the unfermented bread had better be avoided.

At bedtime.—A half-pint of hot water.

W.O.C. writes.—As a bachelor who (not believing in, and therefore doing without domestic help) is anxious to reduce time spent on cooking to a minimum, I shall be glad if Dr Knaggs will tell me whether the use of the oven, pan and kettle are necessary to healthy diet. For instance (1) would a diet of bread and butter, biscuits, cheese, fruit (fresh and dried), ordinary cold water and cold milk, be as healthy as a diet of hot vegetables, puddings,cocoashell, etc.? (2) Are cooked lentils, butter-beans, macaroni, etc., more beneficial taken hot than after they have cooled? (3) Could uncooked vegetablesof sufficient nutrimentbe substituted for these? I shall be glad if it is quite safe to live entirely on raw foods, whether fresh or “prepared.”

The use of the oven, pan and kettle is not essential to a healthy diet, but few people in this changeable, and often cold, depressing climate are willing to forgo their occasional use. One cannot get hot water for a drink without a kettle or a small saucepan and a gas ring, and hot water is often a very comforting and useful drink, especially where an effort is being made to break off the tea and coffee habit.

A diet of bread and butter, biscuits, cheese, fresh and dried fruits is excellent, provided our correspondent also includes grated raw roots and salads as the medicinal part of the regimen, and keeps the fresh fruit to itself as one meal of the day. Cold water or cold milk could also be taken in the place of hot water or hot milk, although I deprecate the use of milk as a beverage unless a person is willing to live entirely on milk like a baby does. The hot vegetables are uncalled for, provided the raw vegetables are substituted for them. The puddings can well be discarded. Cocoashell beverages are useful in very many cases.

Beans or lentils can be eaten sparingly in a raw state if first soaked, then flaked in a Dana machine, and afterwards flavoured with herbs or parsley. I certainly think that, if theyareto be cooked, the taste is better if eaten hot; but there is no reason why cold cooked lentils should not be eaten any more than is the case with an other form of cooked food. Uncooked vegetables will not take the place of lentils, because they are of a different order of food-stuff. The uncooked vegetable would go well with the lentils as neutralising agents of the acids into which all nitrogenous foods break down in the body. Most people will find that nuts, cheese and eggs are better sources of proteid than lentils or other “pulse foods.”

H. Valentine Knaggs.

Vol. VNo. 27October1913There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—Claude Bernard.

Vol. VNo. 27October1913

There will come a day when physiologists, poets, and philosophers will all speak the same language and understand one another.—Claude Bernard.

Just as there is a pride that apes humility, so there is an egotism that apes selfishness, a cowardice that apes stoicism and an indolence that apes effort. This is especially apparent in matters pertaining to health.

How often, on the plea of not causing worry or expense to others, does a man or woman not put off taking necessary rest, or consulting a doctor, until a slight ailment that once would have yielded to treatment becomes an irreparable injury.

Such conduct is often admired as unselfish, but for unselfishness and stoicism a psychologist would read fear, indolence and egotism. Fear of being thought hypochondriacal and fear of facing facts; shrinking from the exertion involved in the effort to become healthy and from the pain involved in witnessing the possible distress and anxiety of friends should the complaint prove serious—regardless of the fact that its neglect and resultant incurability would cause infinitely more distress; above all, that mental egotism which breeds in its victim an unreadiness to acknowledge that he does notknowwhat may be wrong and to take prompt steps to remedy his ignorance.

It is not fair, of course, to attach too much blame to the patient. Such faults as those cited above are in themselves symptoms of nervous disease. Body and mind act and react upon one another. Nevertheless, the practice of the virtues loses its meaning when there is no pull in the opposite direction.—[Eds.]

Regular readers will recognise in this article a continuation of the series previously entitled “Healthy Brains.” The author of “The Children All Day Long” is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness.

It is an unpleasant subject, but have you ever faced the fact that your widow might be left in poverty?

We all know the phrases that come so glibly from the lips of the insurance agent. Perhaps the very fact that it pays companies to spend thousands a year on the salaries of agents, and other thousands on broadcast eye-catching advertisements, shows that there are many things which our imagination only accepts “against the grain.” Fire, storm, loss by theft or burglary, sickness, disablement and death we do not, by choice, dwell on these things in thought.

Now some people are inclined to pet this impulse of turning away. “Do not think dark thoughts,” they tell us, “the best insurance is unconsciousness,insouciance, denial. Misfortune will pass you by if you do not look for it.”

Perhaps there is something to be said for this method when it comes with absolute spontaneity from the innermost nature. But if for the radiant apprehension of beauty and health we substitute an effort to cling to the picture of good when our very bodies and nerves are warning us with suggestions of evil, we run grave risks. By adopting someone else's sense of freedom from danger and repressing our own conviction that for us a certain danger, more or less remote, exists, we are putting great pressure upon ourselves. At times of ill-health or accidental worry, a sleepless night may bring us an agonising succession of imaginative pictures, those very pictures which we have attempted to banish from our daily life. If we have still greater power of repression these grim images, forbidden throughout every moment of waking life, may reappear in dreams.

(Of the still more serious dangers of repression and of its relation to various forms of insanity, this is hardly the place to speak.[11]It ought not to be necessary to appeal to alarming instances in order to make us attend to a suggested warning.)

[11]See Bernard Hart's illuminating treatment of the whole subject inThe Psychology of Insanity, Cambridge Manuals of Science.

Now if we decide to regard all fear as a suggestion of precaution, the emotional part of it to be laid aside as soon as it has fulfilled its function of arousing interest and directing action, it is easy to see the psychological justification for insurance.

Of course pecuniary insurance is but one instance of such sequences of action, though it happens to be a rather obvious one. In a different field, most of us know the delightful feeling of relief experienced after consulting a doctor about some symptom that has perhaps been troubling us for a long time. “May I safely do this? Ought I to refrain from that?” and such perpetually recurring irritations to the attention are replaced by the knowledge that it is now the doctor's business to decide whether this or that is “serious,”and that as long as we carry out his orders we may lay aside all worry about the matter.

So in the case of fire insurance, what we are really buying with our annual premium is freedom from haunting questions as to the loss that would ensue if our house or shop or office were burnt down or damaged. Whenever the thought comes, it may, as far as the money loss is concerned, be dismissed.

We see then that instead of keeping the suggestion of such misfortunes before us, as some people might allege, the act of insurance substitutes for vague and recurrent fears a formal and periodical recognition of possibilities, a recognition, too, that contains within itself a precaution against some of the results of the misfortune should it ever occur. What we buy, at the cost of a fixed number of pounds or shillings of money and a few minutes of time once a year, is the right to put the dangers out of our consciousness altogether and yet leave no residuum of repressed fear to split up our personality or give us indigestion.

If we choose, for some reason or other, to let our imagination dwell on the objective side of the possibility we have insured against, we shall find a pleasure in thinking of what can be done by many people working together. If we need help to meet some misfortune, it is ours as a right, not doled out to us through others' pity. And every year that we have made no claim we have the delight of knowing that we are helping those who need.

The art of working together is yet in its infancy. But if even the present standard of method devised for money insurance were to be adopted in the deeper matters which we so often allow to trouble us, what an advance in mental development we should have made and what new possibilities of safe action would be opened up!

E.M. Cobham.

Every youth should learn to do something finely and thoroughly with his hands.—Ruskin.

This article has been translated from the French of Prof. H. Labbé, the head of thelaboratoire à la Faculté de Médecine, in Paris. It reflects a rather characteristic aloofness to any considerations other than scientific or economic. But it will well repay careful study.—[Eds.]

Vegetarianism has been the object of many attacks, and has also been warmly defended. Most of its adepts have sought to give the value of a dogma to its practice.

For quite a number of people “vegetarianism” is a kind of religion, requiring of its votaries a sort of baptism, and the sacrifice of many pleasures. It is this which justifies the infatuation of some, and the systematic disparagement of others.

“Vegetalism”[12]cannot pretend to play a similar part, or to lend itself to ambiguity. To be a “vegetalist” is to choose in the vegetable kingdom, with a justified preference, foods susceptible of filling the energy-producing needs, and the needs of the reparation of the human system.

“Vegetalism” is a chapter of dietetic physiology which must utilise the precise methods and recent discoveries of the science of nutrition.

[12]The word “Vegetarianism” implies a judgment of the qualities which such a diet entails. This word is derived, in fact, from the Latin adjective “Vegetus” (strong). The word “Vegetalism,” which we oppose to the preceding one, admits only the establishing of a fact, that of the choice—exclusive or preferred—of the nutritious matters in the vegetable kingdom.

Before putting “vegetalism” into practice the first point is to know whether the foods of “vegetal” origin contain, and are susceptible of producing regularly, the divers nutritive principles indispensable to the organisation of an alimentary diet. The principles are the following:—Proteid or albuminoid substances; hydrocarbonated and sweet substances fatty substances; mineral matters, alkalis, lime, magnesia, phosphates and chlorides, etc. In most compound foods, no matter of what origin, mineral materials almost always exist in sufficient quantities. The most important amongst them, at all events, are found combined in liberal, even superabundant, portions in dishes of vegetal origin. The analysis of the ashes of our most common table vegetables fixes us immediately to this subject: Leguminous plants supply from about three to six per cent. of ashes, rich in alkalis, lime and phosphates. Potatoes, green vegetables and fruit as a whole absorbing considerable quantities of mineral elements. These are the elements of a nature to allow a precise reply to this question which we propose to expound briefly.

In order to examine a food thoroughly, for the purpose of ascertaining if it can be advantageously introduced for consumption, whether albumins, fats, hydrate of carbon, or sugar, etc., or again an association of these principles in a composite article of food are in question, divers researches must be carried out before giving a final judgment.

If a more or less complex article of food is in question, before considering it as a good nutriment, its centesimal composition, or its immediate composition, should be established; its theoretic calorific power should be known, and it should be measured if this has not yet been done.

Besides the calorific yield thus estimatedin vitro, the real utilisation in the human organism of articles of food alone or mixed with other foods should be determined, taking simultaneously into account their effects, whether tonic, stimulating or depressing.

From a different point of view it is no longer allowable to neglect before judging whether such and such a nutritive substance is advantageous, the valuation of what we have called, with Prof. Landouzy, the economicyield—that is to say, the price of the energy, provided by the unity of weight of the article of food.

It is only in reviewing “vegetal” substances, taking these divers titles into consideration, that we shall be justified in attributing to the practice of “vegetalism,” integral or mitigated, its definite value.

Only a few years ago, when Schützenberger, emulator and forerunner of Fischer, Armand Gautier, Kossel, first disjointed the albuminoid molecule, to examine one by one its divers parts, the composition of the various albumins was very little known. Whether, therefore, albumins of the blood, or those of meat or eggs, were in question, these bodies were hardly ever separated, except through physical circumstances, amongst others by constant quantities of different coagulation. As to the centesimal formula and the intimate structure of the different protoid substances, they could be considered as closely brought together.

From this fact, the physiological problem of the utilisation of albumin was simpler. No matter which article of food contained this albumin, its nutritive power by unity of weight remained the same. At the present time the number of albumins is no longer limited. It is not now physical characteristics founded difficult separations which arbitrarily distinguish those bodies from each other. The individuality of each of the albumins results from its formula of deterioration, under the influence of digestive ferments, or of chemical bodies acting in a similar way, as do mineral acids and alkalis. For want of constituary formula this methodical deterioration makes known the number of molecules (acids or other bodies) which are responsible for the structure of each albumin. These deleterious formula of proteid matter are not less suggestive than composition ones. They reveal notable differences between “vegetal” and animal albumins.

To be sure, animal albumins (beef, veal, mutton, pork, etc.) which we are offered in an alimentary fleshdiet, resemble more nearly the structure of our own bodily albumins than do the gluten of bread or the albumin of vegetables. This fact seems actually the best support of the theory which affirms the superiority of the flesh over the vegetable diet. Such a remark is therefore well worth discussing by showing that the consequences which can be deduced from it are paradoxical, and rest upon hypothesis which, not very acceptable in theory, are hardly verified in practice.

Admitting that albumin plays in alimentary diet only the plastic part of reconstruction of used-up corporal matter, it might be advantageous to ingest but one albumin the composition of which is very similar to our own. By virtue of the law of least effort such a one in equal weights ought to be of more service than a foreign albumin, as it requires less organic work. For man, albumin of animal origin ought to be more profitable in equal weight than vegetable albumin. In the organism, indeed, albumin passes through a double labour. After the intestinal deterioration, followed by a passage through the digestive mucus membrane, a re-welding of the liberated acids takes place, with a formation of new albumin.

If, therefore, alimentary albumin's mission is, not to be definitely burnt up in the organism, but to help in the plastication of the individual, the more its initial formula approaches the definite one to which it must attain, the more profitable it becomes, giving out less useless fragments and waste. Animal albumin approaching more nearly to human albumin, is also the one whose introduction into the daily alimentary diet is most rational. This statement seems to be the defeat of vegetal albumin. But let there be no mistake. It consecrates at the same time the triumph of anthropophagy, for there could not be for man a more profitable albumin than his own, or that of his fellow-man! This should make us pause and reflect, before allowing this deduction to be accepted.

Besides, these argumentsad hominemdo not appear to us necessary for repelling such an interpretation of facts. Modern works have shown us that the greater proportion of ingested albumin played, in fact, a calorific, and not a plastic, part. Under these conditions one is justified in doubting whether there takes place with regard to the total albumins ingested a work of reconstruction thus complicated in the organism, after their first deterioration. Evidently one may come to believe that this complicated labour applies only to the more or less feeble portion of albumin really integrated.

Practically speaking, the best criterion for judging the utilisation of an ingested albumin lies in the persistence of the corporal weight, allied to the ascertained fact of a stable equilibrium in the total azotized balance-sheet which is provided by the comparison of the “Ingesta” with the “Excreta.” From this point of view there exists the closest similitude between the albumins of animal and those of vegetable origin; both, in fact, are capable of assuring good health and corporal and cellular equilibrium.

However, the digestibility of vegetable albumins seems to remain slightly inferior to that of animal albumins. 97 per cent. of the animal fibrine given in a meal are digested, where 88 to 90 per cent. only of vegetable albumins are absorbed and utilised. It is a small difference, but not one to be overlooked. We must say, however, that the method one employs in determining these digestibilities takes from them a part of their value, and renders difficult the comparison of results obtained. Sensibly pure albumins are too often compared in an artificial diet. One deviates thus from the conditions of practical physiology. In fact, in ordinary meals, all varieties of foods are mixed together, acting and reacting upon each other, reciprocally modifying their digestibility. If one conforms to this way of acting towards alimentary albumins, the results change sensibly. In the presence of an excess of starch, under the shape of bread, for example, vegetable albumin seems to be absorbed in about the same proportions as animal albumin.

If, in a flesh diet, animal albumins are always consumed nearly pure (lean meat containing hardly anything but albumin, besides a little fat, and an inferior quantity of glycogen) vegetable albumin is always, on the contrary, mixed with a number of other substances. This is doubtless one of the reasons which causes the digestibility of vegetable albumins to vary, the foreign nutritive matters being able to bring about, under certain circumstances, and in cases of superabundant ingestions, a real albuminous “saving” in the newest sense of the word.

Besides, a prejudicial question makes the debate almost vain. When it was admitted by such physiologists as Voit, Rubner and their school that from 140 to 150 grammes of albumin in the minimum were daily necessaries in the human diet, a variation of a few units in the digestive power presented some importance. Nowadays the real utility of albumins is differently appreciated. The need of them seems to have been singularly exaggerated; first lowered to about 75 gr. by A. Gautier, it has dropped successively with Lapicque, Chittenden, Landergreen, Morchoisne and Labbé, by virtue of considerations both ethnological and physiological, to 50 grs., 30 grs. and even to 25 or 20 grammes. The “nutritive relation”—that is to say, the yield from albuminoid matters to the total nutritive matters of diet—is thus brought down from 1/3 its primitive value to 1/15 or 1/20 at most. It follows that the slight inferiority found in the digestive powers of vegetable albumin appears unimportant. It is sufficient to add 2 or 3 more grammes of albumin to a ration already superabundant of from 40 to 50 grammes of vegetable proteins to bring back a complete equilibrium in the use of vegetable and animal varieties. The theoretical inferiority of vegetable albumin thus almost completely disappears.

H. Labbé.

(To be continued.)

If your system has become clogged, go slow—and fast.

OWild West Wind, thou breath of Autumn's being,Thou from whose unseen presence the leaves deadAre driven like ghosts from an enchanter fleeing,Yellow, and black, and pale, and hectic red,Pestilence-stricken multitudes! O thouWho chariotest to their dark wintry bedThe wingèd seeds, where they lie cold and low,Each like a corpse within its grave, untilThine azure sister of the Spring shall blowHer clarion o'er the dreaming earth, and fill(Driving sweet buds like flocks to feed in air)With living hues and odours plain and hillWild Spirit which art moving everywhere;Destroyer and preserver; hear, oh hear!Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,Angels of rain and lightning! there are spreadOn the blue surface of thine airy surge,Like the bright hair uplifted from the headOf some fierce Mænad, even from the dim vergeOf the horizon to the zenith's height,The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirgeOf the dying year, to which this closing nightWill be the dome of a vast sepulchre,Vaulted with all thy congregated mightOf vapours, from whose solid atmosphereBlack rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear!Thou who didst waken from his summer dreamsThe blue Mediterranean, where he lay,Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,And saw in sleep old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave's intenser day,All overgrown with azure moss, and flowersSo sweet the sense faints picturing them! ThouFor whose path the Atlantic's level powersCleave themselves into chasms, while far belowThe sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wearThe sapless foliage of the ocean knowThy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh, hear!If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;A wave to pant beneath thy power, and shareThe impulse of thy strength, only less freeThan thou, O uncontrollable! if evenI were as in my boyhood, and could beThe comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speedScarce seemed a vision,—I would ne'er have strivenAs thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowedOne too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:What if my leaves are falling like its own?The tumult of thy mighty harmoniesWill take from both a deep autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;And, by the incantation of this verse,Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!Be through my lips to unawakened earthThe trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Thou on whose stream, 'mid the steep sky's commotion,Loose clouds like earth's decaying leaves are shed,Shook from the tangled boughs of heaven and ocean,Angels of rain and lightning! there are spreadOn the blue surface of thine airy surge,Like the bright hair uplifted from the headOf some fierce Mænad, even from the dim vergeOf the horizon to the zenith's height,The locks of the approaching storm. Thou dirgeOf the dying year, to which this closing nightWill be the dome of a vast sepulchre,Vaulted with all thy congregated mightOf vapours, from whose solid atmosphereBlack rain, and fire, and hail, will burst: Oh hear!

Thou who didst waken from his summer dreamsThe blue Mediterranean, where he lay,Lulled by the coil of his crystalline streams,Beside a pumice isle in Baiæ's bay,And saw in sleep old palaces and towersQuivering within the wave's intenser day,All overgrown with azure moss, and flowersSo sweet the sense faints picturing them! ThouFor whose path the Atlantic's level powersCleave themselves into chasms, while far belowThe sea-blooms and the oozy woods which wearThe sapless foliage of the ocean knowThy voice, and suddenly grow grey with fear,And tremble and despoil themselves: Oh, hear!

If I were a dead leaf thou mightest bear;If I were a swift cloud to fly with thee;A wave to pant beneath thy power, and shareThe impulse of thy strength, only less freeThan thou, O uncontrollable! if evenI were as in my boyhood, and could beThe comrade of thy wanderings over heaven,As then, when to outstrip thy skiey speedScarce seemed a vision,—I would ne'er have strivenAs thus with thee in prayer in my sore need.Oh lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud!I fall upon the thorns of life! I bleed!A heavy weight of hours has chained and bowedOne too like thee—tameless, and swift, and proud.

Make me thy lyre, even as the forest is:What if my leaves are falling like its own?The tumult of thy mighty harmoniesWill take from both a deep autumnal tone,Sweet though in sadness. Be thou, Spirit fierce,My spirit! Be thou me, impetuous one!Drive my dead thoughts over the universe,Like withered leaves, to quicken a new birth;And, by the incantation of this verse,Scatter, as from an unextinguished hearthAshes and sparks, my words among mankind!Be through my lips to unawakened earthThe trumpet of a prophecy! O Wind,If Winter comes, can Spring be far behind?

Percy Bysshe Shelley.

What is it makes a holiday? Some people want Paris, some Monte Carlo, one man cannot be satisfied without big game to hunt, another must have a grouse moor. The student has his sailing boat, the young wage-earner his bicycle, three girl friends look forward to their week in a Hastings boarding-house. Almost anything may be “a change”; most things, to someone or other, are “a holiday.” What does it all mean?

The sands of West Sussex are wide and free, firm and smooth for walking with bare feet, lovely with little shells and sea-worm curves and ripple marks and the pits of razor-shells. Above them are the slopes of shingle, gleaming with all colours in the September sun. Farther up again, the low, brown crumbling cliffs crowned with green wreaths of tamarisk. The sea comes creeping up, or else the wind raises great white breakers; if the waves are quiet, old breakwaters, long ago broken themselves, smashed fragments here and there of concrete protections put by man, gaps in the cliff and changes in the coast-line, remind us of the vast force behind the gentle and persistent lap of water. The beach itself reminds us of it; there a flint and here a rounded pebble made out of brick or glass, worn down from man's rubbish to sea's proof of power.

Over it all are the children, brown-legged and bare-headed. (Is it something in the weather this year that has given us the particular red-brown, suggestive of shrimp and lobster, that is the colour-vintage of 1913?) Babies with oilskin waders, bathers, girls in vividly coloured coats walking along the sands; all make up the picture and give us once again the thrill of holiday.

Inland, the Sussex lanes are green and the trees are broad and shady. Thatched cottages are everywhere, and barns with heavy brows; yesterday I saw some pots put for shelter from the sun under the far-projecting thatch of a farmhouse. The gardens are full of sun-flowers and hollyhocks, fuchsia and golden rod; the walls are covered with jasmine and passion-flowers. Old, old churches make us feel like day-flies. The yew in the churchyard five minutes' walk from here is said to be 900 years old; the church itself is thirteenth century, but into its walls were built fragments of a former church, far older, on the same site. It carries us more than half-way back to the foundation of Christianity. Dim tales of heathen earls and Norman kings hang around the villages, and the very floor of the sea beyond the land is richly laden with stores of half-forgotten memories.

Which of all these things makes these days my holiday?

All of them, perhaps. Present moving life, and long-past history, the mighty movement of nature and the changes of geologic time: sheer beauty too and the gaiety of amusements and excursions; do not all have their place in unwinding us from the tight coils we make for our working days?

Freedom to take from the world whatever is there of beauty and of interest—it really hardly matters what or where; freedom enhanced by sympathy, perhaps, for we seem to need some comrade in our play; so many days and nights following each other—no matter exactly how many—for letting ourselves go, and letting the world and all its power and wonder flow into us; that, whatever be place, time and conditions, is the making of a holiday.

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