To store up fat in the tissues and to increase muscular power, the diet must consist of both nitrogenous and carbonaceous elements. The fats themselves hold the first place as fat-forming foods. Those most frequently employed for this purpose are the fat of meat, butter, olive-oil, cream, and milk. Sugar and saccharine fruits and vegetables rank next in importance as fat formers. The organism has the power of transforming starch into fat, whence bread, potato, pastry, rice, arrow-root, etc., belong to this class. The malt liquors undoubtedly possess an extraordinary energy in the same direction, hence the use of beer and ale by nursing women; but it is undoubtedly true that milk is better for increasing the production of milk. Less force is lost in the conversion of cow's milk into human milk than in the complex process needed for transforming the nutritive elements of malt liquor. The same fact is true in regard to the relative facility of the appropriation of fatty aliment and of the conversion of saccharine and farinaceous food into fat. It is also true that, for the increase of muscular power, muscular tissues and juices are more easily applied by the organism.

In the scrofulous, mercurial, plumbic, syphilitic, and paludal ca-chexiae, and in phthisis, a combination of the flesh and fat forming foods is necessary. The hunger or denutrition cure, as already explained, may be applied to the treatment of these cachexiae, the object being to produce such waste and molecular changes as to cause the elimination of the morbific matters. On the other hand, the object sought to be accomplished in these states of disease and in phthisis, by improving the body nutrition, is to supplant by fresh material the lesions of the anatomical elements.

In rickets (mollities ossium) it is necessary to supply a food rich in phosphate of lime and other phosphate salts. Oatmeal, bread of unbolted flour, cracked wheat, etc., should be added to the dietary.

Gout, rheumatism, and the so-called uric-acid diathesis, require a diet composed chiefly of farinaceous vegetables and acid fruits. Animal food and saccharine substances are contraindicated in these disorders.

In no disease is the influence of diet more conspicuous for good or evil than in diabetes. I have already alluded to the milk-cure, revived by the Montpellier school and popularized in England by Dr. Donkin. All saccharine substances and fruits and vegetables containing them, and all farinaceous foods the starch of which is easily convertible into dextrine and sugar, are injurious in diabetes. In this prohibition are included bread, potato, beets, beans, peas, sugar, milk, pastry, and sweetmeats of all kinds. Tomatoes, celery, and raw cabbage, are not objectionable. In order to compensate for the loss of bread, the greatest deprivation endured by these diabetics, gluten and almond bread are now prepared. To supply the deficiency in the alimentation of diabetics caused by the withdrawal of the starch elements of the food, fats must be used, as butter, olive and cod-liver oil, fat of meat, cream, etc.