BY IfHE PRESIDENT 
133 
reference to the‘result as a disease of the rhachis or spine, and 
if Saxon it has reference to the appearance of the child as resembling 
a heap or hump or rick, a small hayrick. 
Here fond mothers will ask, How can we avoid so dreadful a 
disease, how can we know which foods contain, or do not contain, 
this mineral material? ” The full answer to that question would 
involve divergence into a lecture on certain chemical portions of 
physiology, which would he out of place. A short answer would 
he, “ Avoid such mere starchy foods as arrowroot, and use such 
hone-forming flours as that of wheat.” But that is an insufficient 
answer. Better fall hack on a principle, and reply, “ First recognise 
and become familiar with the law; then trust to your love and 
your intelligence to find the right mode of applying the law.” 
Let us all do what we can, by example and by precept, to aid the 
future parents of unborn generations to know more about themselves 
and more about the laws which govern the health of themselves 
and their descendants. If we read only good novels and read only 
what is worth reading in newspapers, we shall have time not only 
to study hut to become familiar with subjects more fascinating than 
those of fiction and infinitely more useful and elevating. If people 
spent less time in gossip about persons, they would have abundance 
of time for converse about things. 
But, continuing the subject of the food we eat, we must pass 
from the relation of food and work, and the relation of food and 
growth, to the relation of supply and waste. And first as regards 
bone]; respecting which, after what has been stated in connection 
with growth, very few additional words will be necessary. Growth 
having ceased, when our first score of years has passed, only the 
daily waste of bone has to be made good. This is accomplished 
by daily eating a commensurately small quantity of bone-material, 
contained so abundantly in many kinds of foods that we need take 
no thought of the matter so far as regards preservation of health. 
The point now insisted on is that here, as always, man is the 
creature of law; to the extent to which bone is w r orn away by 
the daily work of life, to exactly that extent is the waste made 
good by fresh supplies of bone-material in the food. 
All that has been stated respecting the correlation of waste 
and supply of bone-material is true of the waste and supply of 
muscle-material or flesh. The ceaseless alternation of contraction 
and expansion of heart or lungs, or any lifting with the arms 
or walking with the legs, or any work whatever, involves an 
exactly commensurate expenditure or waste of muscle-material, 
or of muscle-forming food, and this expenditure or waste must be 
