Those engaged in such feeding experiments have many of them told the writer that they wear gloves when handling these small animals, to fend off the danger of bites, only when the animal has suffered some noticeable deficiency in condition from a feeding experiment that is beginning to show its effects in the changing condition of the animal.

Always when the experiment is ended and the animal regains its former health there is an end to irritability and fear, showing this to be dependent on the state of health at the time.

What is a grouch but one who is out of condition?

No one who is normally nourished is ever a grouch, and to be well is to be free from all tendency to grouchiness.

The criminal is always an ingrown grouch, and his resentment toward a society that he fancies has wronged him is the excuse offered for his crimes, wrongs that are born in his own interior, for society seldom wrongs any one unless he first wrongs society.

Married women are taught that if they wish to get along with their mate they should feed the brute, on the assumption that only when the stomach is comfortably full is a man in good temper.

Irritability of temper is a concomitant of an empty stomach, if this happens to be one suffering from hyperacidity, for surely the gnawing feeling of a hyperacid stomach does tend to irritability.

This does not argue that it is best to keep the stomach filled to prevent the gnawing sensation that is too often mistaken for hunger, but rather to arrange the feeding habits so that no gnawing will ever again occur even when the stomach is entirely empty. Every gnawing feeling is evidence that the stomach contains a very uncomfortable amount of acid, the acid debris that follows the meal, when digestion is well completed.

The writer is thinking of an old man of seventy-two years who was very prominent in the affairs of his town. Business connections brought him intimately into contact with the public, both as banker and town official, and these contacts always dreaded an interview with him, and a favor was not to be asked unless the times and his temper were both unusually propitious.

This really fine old gentleman was a great sufferer, had gone through three distinct nerve breakdowns in the past twenty years, and had acquired certain very wrong habits of diet as a result of what he considered careful study of his digestive capacity and ability.

He presented himself for treatment very grudgingly, seeming to feel that this was to be but another of what he had always considered experiments, and acquiesced in the necessary directions without the least show of faith or enthusiasm.

In two weeks he had forgotten his former digestive troubles, though he was eating daily the very foods he had so carefully tabooed before, and in one month he returned to his place, the personification of good nature. The writer has many times since been thanked by his neighbors, who thoroughly appreciate the change, the complete change, diet worked in this fine old gentleman.

Where he formerly was suspicious in his dealings with his neighbors, he is now affable and pleasant at all times, and his business has prospered as never before, chiefly on this account.

He warned all concerned when he first came in for treatment that both tomatoes and grapefruit were his two particular bete noires, and that either of these would insure him a night of sleepless suffering.

His first meal, after three days of intensive detoxication, consisted of a bowl of tomato soup with a half grapefruit which he indignantly refused, but when put to the test of a good sport he consented to try it this once, on condition that if pain or discomfort resulted the writer was to sit by his bed all night and hold his hand.

The forfeit was accepted gladly, for there was not one symptom of trouble, his former difficulty having always been from the use of either starch or sugar with these innocent foods.

Now, this fine old gentleman was not a criminal, because he was fundamentally honest, but suppose he had not been reared to honesty, what would have been the result?

Financial crimes. Nothing deters such a person but fear of failure, and it is to his credit that in spite of suffering that would have overcome many a less fundamentally honest man, he never was guilty of taking undue advantage of his business associates or the public, expending all his wrath in vehement attacks on every one who came near him.

Even after this rather long life of suffering, he still in a very few weeks could come back to a normal disposition and agreeable temper, and is now one of the best-loved citizens of his locality.

Surely food has much to do with one's feelings, and one's feelings decide his actions; the criminal being under less restraint than one fundamentally honest.

A mother, a patient of the writer for several years, complained bitterly of the incorrigibility of her oldest boy, a lad of about ten years, and requested that he be examined as to his physical condition.

This showed a boy normally bright, but away below his grade in school and continually in trouble with his teachers, who one after another had passed him up as incorrigible, yet for no lack of ability, as he was very keen under questioning when his confidence was secured, and showed a fair degree of interest in his favorite sports.

This boy had always eaten white bread, together with boiled or fried potatoes and meat, the mother having the old-fashioned idea that these "plain foods" were the things to make him grow and to keep him in health.

He was continually unsatisfied, eating of everything that came in his way, usually candy, for which he had an abnormal craving.

His teeth were poor, his upper jaw contracted, with high arch, and the teeth badly crowded and no correction undertaken, as the mother could not afford the expense.

The boy was made to understand that all of his troubles came from the deficiencies in his feeding, and he promised to carry out the changes suggested, while the mother was advised as to the changes necessary in the table.