IN a study of diet it is well to realize, that all natural foods are in themselves wholesome to a healthy organism; while on the other hand, all foodstuffs, even when in themselves most nourishing and wholesome, if combined incongruously, may react chemically on the system as deadly poisons. And any form or system of diet, which does not consider the all-governing influence of physiological chemistry, is not reliable, and will never succeed in solving the problem of human nutrition.

It is one of the strange paradoxes of life that the most delicate and precious food of our diet - the fruit - under certain conditions may turn into a fatal poison. For any mixture of fruit with other foodstuffs - especially if these be starch bearing - results in fermentation and subsequent alcoholization of the mass, which may often require all the available nerve power of an individual, aided by his vital reserves, to make it possible for him to survive the physiologic ravishes arising from the combinations of the average family dinner. And it is in the light of these facts, verified by the experiments of Prof. Pavlow, that the term "mucous-free" diet, to the extent it disregards the discrepancies of promiscuous food mixing, loses every vestige of scientific and practical value.

According to this distinguished scientist, each kind of food has the power to excite a specific secretion for each particular type of it taken into the system. And so different in character are the secretions in each case, that Pavlow speaks of "milk juice" as the secretion necessary for the physiological splitting up and emulsification of the milk- fat; of "bread-juice" with its amylolytic secretion for the digestion of bread-stuff or cereals; "flesh-juice" with its strong proteolytic secretion for the treatment of meat; while there are yet other distinct secretions required for fruits, vegetables and pulses - plainly bringing out the difficulty experienced by digestion in furnishing the different secretions, which the corresponding fields of physiological chemistry call for, in order to meet the emergencies involved in the indulgence of promiscuous and heterogeneous food mixtures. Thus the problem of nutrition is by no means solved by so vague and unqualified a system of diet, as the mere elimination from the bill-of-fare of cooked foods, or foods containing starch. The chemistry of digestion, in conjunction with human individuality, can alone safeguard us in our choice of diet.