Disease will have no opportunity to develop if we are daily applying only so much as is now definitely known of foods and their uses.

These are not loose statements, but are the result of twenty-four years of daily application of this knowledge to every condition of the body, at every age and under every circumstance of environment and occupation.

Disease is absolutely unnecessary if we but give heed properly to our daily nourishment, and if nothing else has ever been proved but this statement it is enough.

The blessed thing about regeneration from deep seated organic disease is that this requires but a small fraction of the time represented by the degeneration of the many years preceding, and even if this were not true, the rewards of faithful adherence to the proper rules of diet would be sufficient incentive to induce any one who understands these facts to wait patiently for the new birth that is as certain to follow as that morning invariably follows night.

Exception need be made only in those cases that have so far degenerated that no time remains in which regeneration can occur, and such cases must be far gone indeed before hope is lost, for cases do come back to a high degree of efficiency and health very long after all hope had previously been abandoned.

What has modern medicine to offer here? Nothing but the age-old statement that "the cause of disease is a great mystery," with temporising, symptomatic forms of treatment only, or radical removal of diseased organs surgically, no phase of which touches causes of disease in any manner or degree.

To wait till disease has progressed to recognizable form, till it has developed a definite pathology, is to sacrifice needless time and opportunity, and such manner of treatment is never anything more than symptomatic, never can be anything else, in the very nature of things.

Such is a mere locking of the stable door after the horse has been stolen; a feeble gesture.

This is not in any sense a knock at medicine as an art, but merely a recognition of its extreme limitations as a science.

Science is truth, always, and if not truth then it is never science, for science is always demonstrable truth.

It is not difficult to understand the disinclination of organized medicine to pry into these remote causes of disease; their solution would very largely eliminate the physician from our scheme of life, a consummation not so very devoutly to be wished from the standpoint of medicine.

Dr. Leonard Williams, an eminent physician of London, in speaking of the omissions from medical training in the matter of proper dietary and nutritional study, says that for these omissions some one should be hanged, but who?

We cannot hang a principle or a system, and whom shall we select as the individual for this perhaps needed execution?

However, the light gives evidence that it is about to break, and if official medicine will not harken to the voice of protest on this question of adequate training, the attitude of an enlightened public will force such change within a very few more years, else the medical colleges will have to close their doors.

No one will willingly commit daily suicide, unless already insane, and when the public fully understands the origin of its ills there will be a great stirring and effort among them to go to the bottom of the causes of disease, causes that even the heavily endowed institutions, such as the Rockefeller Institute, have never yet been able to elucidate.

When the average plain citizen understands that his troubles are made and unmade at the dinner table daily, he will begin to attach to the subject of eating something of the importance that belongs to it as the most fundamental consideration of life.

The usual attitude of the average physician toward the subject of diet is to attach little importance to it, and the patient is told, in answer to questions as to what he should eat, to "take plenty of good nourishing food," the very thing he has always done, else he would not be in such condition as to need medical advice, that is, if he takes the usually accepted idea of what constitutes "good nourishing food."

The average citizen thinks that because he has always eaten nothing but what he has been taught to believe are plain, good nourishing foods, he, therefore, should be immune from disease. He will usually take great credit to himself that he has had no bad habits, has never chewed tobacco, never smoked, never used alcoholic intoxicants, and usually has a very clean record for marital virtues, yet here he is, sick, after living on meat, bread and potatoes, with perhaps pies and coffee, the usual good, plain American food of the average family.

What is the use in telling this man to keep well nourished when he has been living on what he understands to be good nourishing food?

It would be difficult to find a combination of foods that, eaten at the same meal, would exceed this combination in acid-forming possibilities, nay, acid-forming potentiality, for such cannot be eaten without an absolute certainty of acid formation.

It is not strange that the average citizen becomes confused in the face of directions to "keep well nourished."

A diet of this type cannot be overcome by any amount of exercise or outdoor living, accounting for the fact that farmers, who live on the average about as described above, show the same line of deficiency and degenerative diseases as do their brothers who live in cities and depend on restaurants or hotels for their nutritional needs.

The writer was called some time ago to Hartford, Conn., to consult with two physicians there, and, not being able to get the two consultants together till afternoon, was entertained by a former patient for lunch at the Hotel Bond, one of the best hotels in New England.

Neither the patient nor the writer had had any breakfast, accord' ing to fixed habit, so when seated at lunch nothing was desired by either except a glass of milk and one or two oranges.

This meager meal greatly perturbed the waiters, and three times we were served with white bread, rolls and butter, which were as often sent away.

The consultation finished, we returned to the hotel for dinner, the time being about seven-thirty, and when the patient was again asked what he was going to have, he replied that anything that was good enough for the writer would suit him very well.

The bill was looked over, very tempting and appetizing as a whole, as measured by conventional standards, and the selection was green pea soup, from fresh peas, a double order of combination vegetable salad and a piece of Swiss cheese, with apologies for the meagerness of the selection.

The patient replied that this was all he would wish, and the order was given, and again the waiters were in apparent distress on account of the very light order, with all of the usual standard foods left out, offering several suggestions as to the items on the bill that were particularly good on this day.

Again we were served without order with white bread, rolls and butter, which always were promptly returned, and when the meal arrived the head waiter stopped at our table and said to my friend: "Harry, where did you get this idea?"

The friend nodded in my direction, and the waiter said: "Where are you from? Boston?" Being assured that the writer was from Buffalo the waiter was asked why he thought me from Boston, and replied, "This meal."

Asked what was the matter with this meal, he said: "Nothing at all. That is the best meal I have ever seen ordered in the Hotel Bond, and I have been head waiter here for the past nine years."

It was then the writer's cue to become curious as to the reasons for such opinion on the part of the waiter, and he was informed that this man was a Frenchman, which was evident, and that his hotel training had been taken in France, and in France, when meat, eggs, fish or cheese were ordered (that is in the strictly French hotels, not those that cater to tourists) no starchy or sweet food was offered, as it was not the custom of the French to combine in one meal these dissimilar foods.

This was grateful news, for the writer was under the impression that the evils of this combination were known to but himself and a few others of the elect in matters of food selection and combination.

The tourist hotels cater to the tourist travel, which is very largely English and American, and it is their boast that no one need know he is traveling in a foreign country, for he can be served there with the usual foods of his home country.

This very common knowledge in France no doubt accounts for the excellent health of the average French peasant, and for the fact that outside urban France the physician is rare, towns of quite considerable size often not being able to boast the presence of either physicians or hospital facilities.

In America we have always combined these very incompatible foods, the concentrated protein group with the starchy or sweet foods, the carbohydrate group, which require alkalin conditions throughout for their digestion, while the concentrated protein group requires and compels the presence of hydrochloric acid for the first step in stomach digestion, so guarantees inhibition of the carbohydrate digestion, always.

Arrested carbohydrate digestion means carbohydrate fermentation, in the presence of heat and moisture, and we get it in every case, whether we are aware of it or not.

Fermentation of carbohydrate foods means production of the carbon group of acids, so we have created much acid every time we make such combinations.

This is of such vital importance that it will be gone into more fully in a later chapter, but its mention in this connection will serve to fix it more fully in mind as one of our chief sources of acid formation, and it is the writer's hope and intention that all of the common and usual sources of acid formation will be so firmly fixed in the reader's mind before the end of this little book that eating will become a natural process, without the painful indecision as to the bill-of-fare for each meal, a thing that takes away much of the joys of the table.

All food that is not refined and thoroughly denatured is good food, if combined in such manner as to prevent the usual fermentation and acid formation, and all may be eaten as freely as is required without fear of harm, if the simple rules of selection and combination are kept constantly in mind.

This is how disease originates, as outlined heretofore in this connection, starting with the feeding of the baby and continuing with the common mistakes of the adult, not at all hard to understand or to avoid when one gives it but a modicum of thought.