U4 



In ihis way I hope to make these lectures not only more interesting but 

 more instructive than they othesvvise might be to a general audience. 

 By learning the functions of the constituents of foods in the system we 

 may — as we shall see more clearly later on — be the better able to prac- 

 tise economy and preserve health. 



To many of us civilized life has brought with it the accumulation 

 of wealth, and wealth grants us comparative leisure and the means of 

 obtaining not only necessities but luxuries in abundance. It gives us 

 plenty of good, nutritious 'and palatable food, but it also gives us the 

 opportunity of indulging in those luxuries of the table, the excessive use 

 of wliich is so disastrous to our health. Leisure takes from us the 

 necessity of that wholesome amount of exercise, which promotes a nor- 

 mal and healthful condition of the system. 



On the other hand the conditions of society make us ambitious and 

 encourage us to strain every muscle and nerve towards the attainment 

 of more money and power, and thus it is that often we overwork our 

 selves, body and mind — become physical wrecks, not from the want of 

 an ample supply of food, but because from the mode of our living we 

 have not allowed it to nourish us properly. 



I, therefore, wish to emphasize the great and, I may say, vital 

 importance that a knowledge of the requirements of the human body 

 and of the composition and character of our daily foods is to everyone 

 nowadays. In the first place we are confronted with the statement on 

 good authority that more suffer from overeatmg than from over-drinking, 

 though the number of victims of the latter vice, we must all admit, is 

 not small. Over-eating is a term used not only to designate the more 

 than sufficient use of simple, wholesome food but also to include the 

 taking in excessive quantities of rich and concentrated foods, most of 

 which may be called luxuries, and lastly, one-sided diets adopted either 

 from necessity or from mere fancy. Such diets are sooner or later 

 inevitably followed by disease or a disordered system. That dyspepsia 

 and allied ailments, especially on this side of the Atlantic, are very 

 prevalent, and that the same are due to an abnormal or excessive diet, 

 is well known, but that probably over fifty per cent, of the common dis- 

 orders now afflicting mankind are from the same causes, and which are 

 Dreventable by a proper care of the body and a judicious diet, is cer- 



