All have been brought up on these lines: never pressed to eat, but continually asked to chew thoroughly. Foods "rich in proteid" put sparingly before them. Milk has been well watered; and eggs, bacon and other tempting and rich foods only on rare occasions given to them.

We would ask readers who can to make the following experiment: Let your children have a good drink to start the day, and then run and play; don't offer food till asked for. You will almost to a certainty find, if you start this plan immediately after weaning, that day by day and year after year it is twelve to one o'clock before they inquire for "something to eat." We have done this for twelve years, with children of entirely different temperament and of both sexes. They go to school, poor things! breakfastless. During these twelve years light breakfast for father has been on the table - he goes without lunch - and not once in fifty do they ask to join him. Nor, if invited, will they after three or four years of age.

The have never had a fever which lasted more than a day or two, and they are all above average height and weight.

They get fruit in season just as asked for, and as much to drink as they like, but not at meal-times.

Our experience is over a period of twelve years, and we have come to the conclusion that the infectious diseases so prevalent and death-dealing amongst children of all classes, rich or poor, are, in the main, the result of over-feeding. We find it wise to keep highly nutritious foods (like eggs, cheese, meat, etc.) away from children - that is, for regular consumption; a little occasionally may do no harm.

You will have it borne in on our minds year by year, as your children grow up under such a plan, that Dr Rabagliati, Hereward Carrington and others are quite right. We do not get our strength, nor heat, from food. Let the force of animal life (zoo-dynamic, I believe Dr Rabagliati calls it) have free play, and your children can't help growing up well and strong.

In to-day's London Daily Chronicle I see a special article by Dr Saleeby, under this heading: World's Doctors versus Disease. 5000 Medical Men Meet To-day. The Triumphs of Three Decades. We know how much this wonderful faculty knew thirty years ago about, e.g., fresh air for consumptives. There is not a word said in this article (which is a sort of programme of the weighty matters for discussion) on the relation of food to the body. That question probably 4950 of them believe was settled by the eminent physiologists who compiled those "food-tables" years ago - and in so doing went far to pave the way for the modern frightful increase of cancer, Bright's disease, etc., as well as for "scientific" horrors like anti-toxin, tuberculin - not to mention compulsory eugenics!

J. Methuen.

III

I lift my hat to M.D. and trust that, as I don't know him, the somewhat jarring difference that I have with his views will not be put down to personal feeling. A.A. Voysey has put my first objection quite well from the layman's point of view. He says "there is no agreement between those who have been taught physiology." This is true. Playfair's full diet is different from Voit's. Voit's is different from Atwater's. Atwater's is different from Chittenden's.

The custom of reducing the diets to calories, inasmuch as it introduces a false theory, has had a disastrous effect on progress, and has been a great hindrance to the attainment of knowledge. If the coal in the fireplace were the cause of the heat of the fire (but is it?), there is no analogy between the elevation of the heat by hundreds and even thousands of degrees when the fire is lighted, and the elevation of half-a-degree or a degree which occurs when food is taken into the body, especially when we remember that a similar elevation of temperature occurs when work is performed by means of the body without eating or drinking at all.

It is quite evident to every clear seer, or it ought to be, that the force of animal life or zoo-dynamic is the cause of the heat of the body, just as the electric force is the cause of the liberation of heat through the battery, and the chemic force is the cause of the heat of the fire, and that zoo-dynamic and electro-dynamic and chemico-dynamic are forms or species or varieties of the one omnipotent and eternal energy by which all things in this universe consist. The aggregate of all the particular forces makes up the eternal energy which is one. They are all species of the one, but it is convenient and even necessary for our limited intellects to consider them separately, for the indefinite number of the facts and also their intricacy and complexity stagger and overwhelm us unless we do; and indeed they stagger us even when we try to treat them and take them up separately for consideration and examination. But now for the proof of A.A. Voysey's statement.

Ranke found he required 100 grammes proteid; fat 100 grammes; carbo-hydrate 240 grammes to keep him going. These he could have got from 9 oz. of lean meat or 250 grammes, 18 oz. of bread or 500 grammes, 12 oz. or 55 grammes of butter and 1 oz of fat (I do not, of course, suggest that it would have been wise for him to get them so). Moleschott's demands are: proteid 120 grammes, fat 90 grammes, carbo-hydrate 333 grammes. Voit demands for hard work: proteid 145 grammes, fat 100 grammes, carbo-hydrate 450 grammes. Atwater demands for hard work the following: - proteid 177 grammes, fat 250 grammes, carbo-hydrate 650 grammes. Horace Fletcher, we are told by Professor Chittenden, took for a time, when everything was accurately measured and weighed: proteid 44.9 grammes, fat 38 grammes, carbo-hydrate 253 grammes. Cornaro lived on 12 oz. of solid food and 14 oz. of red wine a day for a period of something like 60 years, from 38 years of age to about 97, and had vigorous health during the time except when he transgressed his rule.

Of course, he was not a hard physical worker - i.e. he did not do the work of a navvy. But how, in view of these differences, can M.D. say: "These quantities were settled by physiologists many years ago, and no good reasons have since been adduced for altering them"? It is amazing to me to read such a statement. It reminds me of a statement by a distinguished physician in London during last year to the effect that we could not give a growing schoolboy too much food - we could not over-feed him. My opinion, on the other hand, after a long experience, during which time my eyes have not been shut, is that the large majority of the diseases of humanity are due to mal-nutrition and that the form of that mal-nutrition is over-feeding - not under-feeding. This opinion should be taken for what it is worth. But to test it we should ask ourselves: What is the reason for the necessity to take food into the body? Is it to give strength and heat to the body? Or is it to restore the waste of the body sustained by the action on it of the force of life or zoo-dynamic which inhabits it? The demands for food will vary and vary much according to the way in which we answer this question.