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For the sedentary man, whatever his calling in life, 

 whose engagements permit him only to take just that 

 moderate amount of muscular exercise which is in all 

 circumstances essential to health ; for a great proportion of 

 women whose habits mostly are not, and often cannot be 

 active, the nutritive elements afforded by fish admirably 

 supply an important part of the wants of the body. The 

 moderate amount of flesh-forming material present in fish, 

 and in a form which entails little labour on the digestive 

 organs for most persons certainly less than meat and 

 the facility with which fish may be associated with other 

 elements fatty matters, or cereal and vegetable products 

 place it in the first rank of foods in that mixed dietary 

 which is suitable to those who lead more or less the kind 

 of life referred to. I by no means say that it should super- 

 sede the use of meat altogether, although it may do so 

 sometimes with advantage ; a point only to be determined 

 in each individual instance after some observation and 

 experiment. For in all cases, it is to be remembered that 

 no man who has habitually eaten meat two or three times 

 daily can at once exchange it for fish and cereals or 

 vegetables, without some discomfort, to say the least. All 

 radical changes in diet require to be gradually made : the 

 stomach conforms slowly, when long accustomed to deal 

 with highly nitrogenised animal food, to the task of deriving 

 from different materials the support necessary to the body. 

 Given time for such modification of function, and it is 

 remarkable at least it appears so to those who have not 

 practically studied the subject that a diet which, if adopted 

 suddenly might be equivalent to semi-starvation, may by 

 degrees become the most healthful and nutritious which the 

 individual can adopt. 



I may here advert to a belief which appears to be very 



