PHYSICAL NEEDS 



to change to a mid-day dinner on Sunday and on holi- 

 days, as many people do. Still worse is it, perhaps, 

 if you dine regularly say at mid-day, to postpone dinner 

 on these recurring holidays till two or three hours 

 past the accustomed time. The digestive system, 

 when in proper running order, is wonderfully clock- 

 like in its operations, and to disturb the regularity of its 

 activities once in seven days is not conducive to health 

 or happiness. 



Regarding this entire phase of our subject, I must 

 needs confine myself to mere hints; but I must not 

 neglect to call attention to two great universal food 

 supplies that might readily be overlooked because of 

 their very universality. I mean, of course, water and 

 air. So largely are the bodily tissues dependent upon 

 the watery solvent that makes up their main bulk, 

 and so rapidly is the supply exhausted, that the or- 

 ganism cannot maintain life beyond four or five days at 

 most, if totally deprived of this all-important food; 

 and the demand for a renewal of the oxygen supplied 

 by the lungs is even more insistent, since here the period 

 of deprivation consistent with the continuance of life 

 is to be measured by minutes, or even by seconds. 

 Meantime life may be preserved for several weeks 

 without the ingestion of any other foods than these. 



Notwithstanding the obvious dietetic importance of 

 water and of oxygen-supplying air, however, nothing 

 is more common than the over-abstemious use of the 

 former and the neglect to secure an adequate and pure 

 supply of the latter. In particular, persons that suffer 



