378 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



how vast the design, more or less of failure to rear the edifice results 

 when the materials are ill chosen or wholly unworthy to be used. 

 Many other sources of failure there may be which it is no part of my 

 business to note; but the influence of food is not only itself cardinal 

 in rank, but, by priority of action, gives rise to other and secondary 

 agencies. 



The slightest sketch of the commonest types of human life will 

 suffice to illustrate this truth. 



To commence, I fear it must be admitted that the majority of 

 British infants are reared on imperfect milk by weak or ill-fed 

 mothers. And thus it follows that the signs of disease, of feeble 

 vitality, or of fretful disposition, may be observed at a very early age, 

 and are apparent in symptons of indigestion or in the cravings of 

 want manifested by the " peevish " and sleepless infant. In circum- 

 stances where there is no want of abundant nutriment, over-feeding 

 or complicated forms of food, suitable only for older persons, produce 

 for this infant troubles which are no less grave than those of the 

 former. In the next stage of life, among the poor the child takes his 

 place at the parents' table, where lack of means, as well as of knowl- 

 edge, deprives him of food more suitable than the rough fare of the 

 adult, and moreover obtains for him, perchance, his little share of 

 beer or gin. On the whole, perhaps he is not much worse off than 

 the child of the well-to-do, who becomes a pet, and is already famil- 

 iarized with complex and too solid forms of food and stimulating 

 drinks which custom and self-indulgence have placed on the daily 

 table. And soon afterward commence in consequence and entirely 

 in consequence, a fact it is impossible too much to emphasize the 

 " sick-headaches " and " bilious attacks," which pursue their victim 

 through half a lifetime, to be exchanged for gout or worse at or be- 

 fore the grand climacteric. And so common are these evils that they 

 are regarded by people in general as a necessary appanage of "poor 

 humanity." No notion can be more erroneous, since it is absolutely 

 true that the complaints referred to are self-engendered, form no 

 necessary part of our physical nature, and for their existence are de- 

 pendent almost entirely on our habits in relation to food and drink. 

 I except, of course, those cases in which hereditary tendencies are so 

 strong as to produce these evils, despite some care on the part of the 

 unfortunate victim of an ancestor's self-indulgence. Equally, how- 

 ever, on the part of that little-to-be-revered progenitor was ill-chosen 

 food, or more probably excess in quantity, the cause of disease, and 

 not the physical nature of man. 



The next stage of boyhood transfers the child just spoken of to a 

 public school, where too often insufficient or inappropriate diet, at the 

 most critical period of growth, has to be supplemented from other 

 sources. It is almost unnecessary to say that chief among these are 

 the pastrycook and the vender of portable provisions, for much of 



