(34 DADD’S VETERINARY MEDICINE AND SURGERY. 
walking lanterns, (if lighted candles were placed within theix 
abdumens), only they happen, occasionally, to catch a stray dog 
or pig, on which they make a savory meal, and thus furnizh the 
materia] for the formation of muscle and fat. 
MaGeEnDIE has proved that even the canine race can nt live 
more than forty days on any single article of diet, let it be ever 
so nutritious, for it is either followed by starvaticn or disease; 
hence the necessity for variety in food. In allusion to disease 
being produced by the long-continued use of a single article of 
diet, I would mention that the Scotch peasants are great con- 
sumers of oat-meal. This article is little inferior to wheat in the 
desh-making principle, and we might naturally infer that an arti- 
cle of diet so valuable and palatable, when properly cooked, should 
tend to promote health. This, however, is not the case. Those 
who eat the most oat-meal are, according to medical testimony, 
the notorious subjects of intestinal concretions, and in the Edin- 
burg Anatomical Museum is to be seen a vast and valuable col- 
lection of intestinal calculi, most of which caused the deaths o 
confirmed oat-meal consumers. 
Dr. CARPENTER, an eminent physiologist, says that “no fact 
in dietetics is better established than that concerning the impos- 
aibility of long sustaining health and life on a single alimentary 
principle. Neither pure albumen, fibrine, gelatine, gum, sugar, 
starch, fat, nor oil, taken alone, can serve for the due nutrition of 
the body. This is partly due to their failing in supplying the 
waste of the tissues, and partly to the fact that single alimentary 
substances, long continued, excite such a feeling of disgust that 
‘ne animals experimented on seem to prefer the endurance of 
starvation to the ingestion of the same” 
The reader is probably aware that when 1 person has long been 
confined to any particular article of diet, a craving for something 
else is experienced, which very few persons can resist. This 
teaches us that, in order to preserve the health of live stock, we 
mast vary the diet, and are not to be over-particular in selecting 
the most nutritions articles. But we want, as Napoleon says, a 
tittle rubbish—cuzrse rubbish The internal surface of the stom- 
ach and bowels require to be irritated once in awhile, and this 
probably was the idea which Graham had when he first recom- 
mended coarse food. The stomach must be n:ade to labor hard 
at times, or its function will deteriorate. Perscig whe complain 
