The Message of Science. 87 



Under favorable conditions, a cell may gain potential ; 

 but the severe, steady draught on cellular energy, neces- 

 sary to maintain organic nutrition, even on the best food 

 at present procurable, bankrupts the collective energies of 

 the cells within a century. 



The horse, ox, and other ruminants that have to do 

 even more hard grinding and furnish more energy, rela- 

 tively, to maintain nutrition, succumb much sooner than 

 man. 



In one sense, therefore, it is our food which brings us 

 to death's door, that is to say, the exhausting physiologi- 

 cal processes, necessary to prepare it for cell nutrition, 

 will in the end work the most perfect existent animal 

 organism to death. 



It is only when the organism is young, the lungs 

 pervious and the tissue cells little encysted as yet, that a 

 gain in cell potential, for fifteen or twenty years, can be 

 made over the draught on vital energy, requisite for 

 nutrition. 



We may properly attach great significance to these 

 facts, since the general opinion is, that food, once eaten 

 and drunk, reaches its proper destination in the body, 

 without much expenditure of energy. Yet sudden death 

 not infrequently follows over-feeding, purely and solely 

 from organic inability to summon sufficient power to 

 initiate the process of food reduction. 



It is along the line of improved food, as well as re- 



