With the one exception of the stomach during the first stages of protein digestion, acid is wholly intolerable to the body, all function ceasing entirely in an actual acidity, so we find the body quick to bind or neutralize acid anywhere, and to do this it must give up of its precious alkalin reserve enough to neutralize completely all acids in the circulation, else they would wreck the entire machine.

Harmless acids, those not in themselves poisonous, if injected into the circulation of the little laboratory animals in quantity just sufficient to neutralize the normal alkalinity of the blood, will cause almost instant death, all function suspending till alkalinity can again be restored, and they do not live long enough for this to occur.

This intolerance of acid is a normal protection for body function, and if we cannot spare enough alkali from our reserves to neutralize all acids we die, as at the last end of any acid condition actually happens.

This is what Dr. Crile meant when he said there is no natural death, that all deaths from so-called natural causes are merely the end-point of a progressive acid saturation.

This acid saturation is progressive almost from the moment of birth, through over-feeding, increasing the protein intake over what is necessary for tissue replacement, and that is all protein is for.

So, when we have reached the point where we can no longer neutralize the acids present we die, and we are said to have died of natural causes. Are they natural causes when Nature provides first for their limiting to the normal and then by a natural neutralization of these by your body alkalin reserves?

Such death is always unnatural because it has violated Nature's provisions for health, and is a suicide just as is the knife or the pistol way of taking off.

Seneca said nearly two thousand years ago that men do not die, they kill themselves.

So they do, not violently, but little by little through their whole, lives they set the stage for a taking off that is always premature, even if delayed beyond the usual limits of life.

Keep in mind the four sources of acid formation referred to in a previous chapter and you will see that these are self-created sources, therefore, if understood and not avoided, one is a suicide to die through acidosis.

The first of these sources is found in the habit of taking ten times as much protein as the body requires for tissue replacement, the building material with which the body is to repair itself, the most highly acid-forming of all the foods per se.

The second cause or source is found in the general use of the processed, dealkanized, refined or denatured foods that are so common: those made from white flour or refined white sugar, acid-forming in themselves and robbed of their own normal alkalies.

The third source of acid formation is found in the use of good or bad foods in incompatible mixtures such as have been outlined, the fermentation arising from arrested starchy digestion producing much acid with each such mistake.

The fourth source of acid formation is found in the greatly prolonged residence in the colon of fermenting and putrefying food residues: constipation, but as constipation results from rising acidity which lowers function by depleting the alkaline reserves, then this fourth source may be regarded as dependent on the other three, and we can say that all the sources of acid formation in the system are from food mistakes.

In beginning the correction of eating habits it is well to be satisfied at first with the elimination of the incompatibles alone, and watch the result.

This is not difficult, as it does not necessitate the giving up of customary food, but simply consists of separating into different meals those foods that require completely dissimilar digestive treatment, as the starches and sugars at one meal, and the proteins at another.

Cases could be recited by the hundred in which this one change in diet corrected annoying conditions of many years' standing, conditions that were caused and continued through this one mistake, the acids resulting from fermentation that was caused by these incompatible mixtures being wholly responsible for the troublesome condition.

Thus cases of asthma who refused to alter materially the selection of their foods or to clear the colon daily of fermenting and putrefying debris, would consent to separate their incompatible foods, and this one change completely removed all traces of asthma.

One such case spent her summers in the White Mountains, her winters in Asheville, N. C, and "visited" her family in Buffalo for a short season in the spring and fall.

Her husband said he scarcely got acquainted with her on these semi-annual visits till she had to go again, and her life was spent in hypodermics and smotherings and misery continually.

She was seen in March, but refused to make any further change in her way of eating than to separate the incompatibles, and even this was not done thoroughly, as there were too many occasions when she felt that she could break over just this one time and take her bread with her meat; but her husband reported six months later that she had required but one hypodermic, and that on the day when she received her directions, and before she had put them into effect, nor has she ever been to either the White Mountains or Asheville since that time, now seven years ago.

There is still some thick breathing, no doubt from a permanent thickening or fibrosis of the bronchial walls, but she now knows why she had asthma and how to prevent it, and if she suffers again she will know how and why.

An exceedingly fine young man was head bookkeeper in a railroad freight office, but suffered much from what had been diagnosed as gastric ulcer, though an Einhorn test failed to show the presence of an open ulcer at the time, the test failing to show any blood cells or occult blood present in the stomach. His fellow employees dreaded his bad days, as he was irritable, suspicious, faultfinding, and cross, and why should he not be when each day was a mightmare, and still he was compelled to go through with it?