MARCH 217 



tions where the ailments are the result of gout and 

 rheumatism. 



Some years ago all these symptoms in various degrees 

 were mine, and I fully expected that they would increase 

 with age; but I was wrong by gradual steps they all 

 disappeared. Nothing of course makes the old young; 

 but bad health, the chief dread of old age, I no longer 

 have. I can work out in the garden with even greater 

 impunity than I could have done twenty years ago. I 

 take long journeys say, of twenty-seven hours without 

 fatigue, and I sleep excellently. This all reads like an 

 advertisement for a patent medicine, but it is nothing of 

 the kind ; in fact, for years I have taken no medicine at all. 

 But if I am asked to account for this improvement, in one 

 word it is Diet. I have become an ardent advocate of 

 non-meat-eating, but without any of those sentimental 

 feelings about the killing of animals which many people 

 have who yet continue to partake of ordinary food ; nor 

 did it begin from the belief that meat is a frequent con- 

 veyor of poisons. I left it off at first simply as an experi- 

 ment. I believe that meat, especially if eaten daily 

 the small quantities ferment the other foods is on the 

 whole deleterious to the health of the human race, and 

 simply poisonous to the gouty, the rheumatic, or the 

 neuralgic. 



All through my lifetime there seems to have been 

 the strongest belief everywhere in Europe, amongst all 

 classes (especially those who are habitually over-fed), that 

 if they feel weak or anaemic, or what is called ' below par,' 

 therefore they must try and eat more, and cram them- 

 selves with stimulating food, such as meat-juices, beef- 

 tea, or even raw beef, and as with drugs or alcohol for 

 a time it often answers. The origin of this belief, no 

 doubt, has come from the teaching of the medical profes- 

 sion, only disputed now and then by a solitary member. 



