Noted gluttons are many; only a few of them can be noticed her. Samuel Pepys lists as his typical dinner: "a dish of marrow bone, a leg of mutton, a loin of veal, three pullets, two dozen larks, a great tart, a neat's tongue, anchovies, prawns and some cheese."

Charles V was a glutton of no small capacity. An historian of the time tells us that he would breakfast at 5 A.M. on an entire fowl stewed in milk. He had dinner at noon with at least twenty dishes. Two suppers were eaten--one at 5 P.M., the other at midnight. Although he suffered persistently with gout and indigestion he insisted on a feast for and with all the visiting nobles.

Samuel Johnson, literary man and dictionary maker, who lived in the eighteenth century, was a notorious glutton and food drunkard. Queen Elizabeth is said to have begun her day with enormous helpings of mutton stew, beef, veal, and chicken.

The French kings and nobility were as gluttonous as the English. They were wedded to the ancient philosophy of Epicurus: "eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die." Even after the kings had passed, we find Napoleon possessed of an appetite that knew little bounds. Though, as one authority puts it, "he frequently stupefied himself with food," there were times when he was abstemious.

In Colonial America the upper classes--the landed gentry and the aristocracy--regarded "good feeding" as an evidence of physical prowess. A Frenchman who visited a Virginia home describes a "simple" luncheon of "corned beef, stewed goose and leg mutton; with vegetables of every kind--all washed down with generous libations of hard cider."

"He aged," writes Frank Parker Stockbridge, of Bryan, in Current History, for Sept. 1925, "but he retained * * * his gargantuan appetite until the last. A teetotaler by conviction, he was the most intemperate of feeders. To see Bryan devour a large platter of sour kraut and frankfurters, served originally for four men, and call for another helping, as I saw him do one hot day in St. Louis, was a liberal education in gastronomies."

Bryan was a food inebriate. He had been food poisoned for many years. His advocacy of temperance did not extend to food and eating. Sloane Gordon, a newspaper correspondent, who accompanied Mr. Bryan on all his great campaign tours and on many other lesser excursions, says of him: "It is probable that few more intemperate men ever lived. Not in drinking but in eating." Writing in the Chicago Herald and Examiner. After Mr. Bryan's death, Mr. Gordon describes a "breakfast--a breakfast mind you--" as follows:

"Cantaloupe was first served. Bryan ate a whole one--an immense yellow-meated melon. It was in the Fall season--early Fall--and quail were on the bill of fare. Bryan ate two. Virginia ham and eggs followed. Bryan ate almost ravenously of this delicious ham in large portions and consumed not less than six eggs, * * * when batter cakes were served, * * * the commoner disposed of a plateful, swimming in butter and then accepted a second helping and got away with that.

"Numerous cups of coffee, potatoes and side dishes of various kinds accompanied the cantaloupe and the ham and eggs and the rest of it. * * *"

Tom L. Johnson, the celebrated single-taxer, himself a hearty eater, once remarked, "I guess I'm a glutton, but if I am one, William J. Bryan is two of them."

There has been much wasted speculation about what killed Bryan. The true cause of his death is so patent that everyone, who is not wilfully blind, may see it. Bryan dug his grave with his teeth. He shoveled in enormous quantities of food in the most reckless combinations. He may never have taken a drink of alcohol in his life, but he manufactured it in great quantities.

Bryan had diabetes. Professor Scopes tells us that at a banquet, attended by both the prosecution and the defense of the great Tennessee side-show, Bryan refused all sweet foods, all foods containing sugar, because of his diabetes, but ate more potatoes than an Irish paddy. He ate a very hearty meal an hour or so before his death.

He had hardening of the arteries. I do not know whether he died of "heart failure" or of "apoplexy"; but I do know that, whichever of those was given as the cause of death, he was killed by gluttony. He worked his body to death with intemperate eating. He poisoned himself with alcohol and other toxins generated in his stomach and intestine. He ate enormous quantities of denatured, acid-forming foods in combinations that made digestion impossible. His reserves were consumed, his tissues weakened and his organs impaired.

Graham began his career as a temperance lecturer in Pennsylvania, in 1830. He soon discovered that temperance should not be limited to drink. For, even the most thirsty could not live by drink alone. He saw that intemperance in food was as potent to make men gross and diseased as drink. Indeed, it was his thought that if drunkenness had slain its thousands, gluttony had certainly slain as many more.

It would be difficult to estimate the extent to which the people of Graham's day over ate, but gormandizing was certainly one of the favorite indoor sports. Were Graham living now he would probably think that most of our people are temperate eaters by comparison. Over-indulgence in meats and starches was very common then, even as it is now. The "old timers" had a capacity for roasts and barbecues. An old cook book warned husbands that should they bring home some of their gentlemen friends for dinner, unannounced, not more than two or three kinds of meat could be expected. It is not certain how many meats were served if the company was properly announced, but the menus of ceremonial banquets shows that it was not unusual to serve as many as thirty or more kinds of meat, including fish, at one occasion.

Leisurely pre-civil war gentlemen sometimes sat at the table for as much as seven hours at a stretch imbibing meats and wines, to be followed by gout and other of the ills that were considered as the marks of "good living." In contrast to this, ancient philosophers prided themselves on their frugal habits, which ranked next to godliness in their esteem.

Physical workers think they must eat an abundance of food, especially of the kinds that are said to "stick to the ribs," in order to produce and maintain the strength and endurance required in their work. Most athletes hold to the same view.

That all of these ideas are false has been demonstrated over and over again. Overeating by athletes and physical workers is one of the chief causes of premature ageing in these classes. Perhaps the most signal demonstration in modern times of the ability of the body to build and maintain Herculean strength and great endurance on little food, was given by Prof. Gilman Low when he established the phenomenal record of lifting one million-six-thousand (1,006,000) pounds in thirty five minutes and four seconds, after a period of training on one meal a day and less. This lift was accomplished by lifting 1000 pounds 1,006 times in the time specified. This feat was accomplished after two months of training on a diet on which the average stenographer would "starve to death." For the first five weeks he ate one meal a day, almost wholly of uncooked foods, having meat only twice during this period. His diet consisted of eggs, wholewheat bread, cereals, fruits, nuts, milk and distilled water. During the last three weeks of his training period he ate only four meals a week; the last meal was consumed eleven hours before the lift. In fifty-six days of training for this lifting Low ate forty-seven meals.

Mr. Low lost five and three-quarter pounds during the thirty-five minutes. Fifteen minutes later, he lifted one ton forty-four times in four minutes. It is particularly instructive that Mr. Low had previously attempted the big feat after training on two meals daily and had been compelled to quit, after reaching a little more than the half-million mark, due to sore distress and dizziness. See, also, Vol. III. (Here, Shelton obviously means Vol. III of his Hygienic System.)

Fasting men, when active, lose an average of about one pound a day. As these fasters are consuming all (or more) water than the body demands, the loss must be regarded as true body loss. This would indicate that sixteen ounces of actual nutritive matter (food exclusive of bulk or waste) represent about the actual daily needs of the body. This does not mean sixteen ounces of dehydrated nutritive substance.

The amount of nitrogen or protein in the pound of daily loss is very small and should further confirm what has been said about our need for only a small quantity of protein. Due to mineral conservation by the fasting body, the daily mineral losses during the fast probably do not represent the actual daily need for these. Activities are rarely as great during the fast as when eating and the daily carbohydrate requirement is slightly greater than the fasting losses indicate. Nutritive redundancy, more especially a redundancy of protein, tends to overflow into reproductive channels and manifest itself either in wasteful sexual activities or in redundant and inferior multiplication.