The writer nearly twenty years ago checked the rate of passage of these food residues through the body in a large number of cases, and found it to be seventy-two hours from the time food is taken till it is all voided from the body, not that this was normal, though the cases were those with history of one bowel movement every day, but that the average was away below what Nature plainly intends for man.

This has been done since by competent observers who got the same average, twenty-four hours before the food appeared in the stool, forty-eight hours when at its peak of passage, and seventy-two hours before it was finally all dejected.

Here is too great an opportunity for fermentation and putrefaction, and that we get it the odor of the usual stool can bear ample testimony.

Now, this state comes not from any mistake in Nature's arrangements, but from a breakdown of her arrangements, due wholly to our false way of living, putting too many obstacles in the way of Nature, and when she fails to work we lay the blame on a perverted civilization or the general decadence of man, or our surroundings or our work or anything but what it is, and that is our own individual failure to work with Nature instead of against her, and if we quit right where we are and live as we were intended all this will correct itself.

Once again, all we can do to cure disease is to stop causing disease.

In a later chapter all the suggestions for selecting and combining foods to prevent the usual fermentations will be laid out plainly, so that any one can understand the extreme simplicity of the arrangement, and a few weeks spent in faithfully putting the whole matter to the final proof will convince any one that he simply does not have to be sick at all if he will exercise half as much common sense and display half as much desire and persistence as he puts into any half' way successful line of endeavor.

The heavy user of starches or sugars, if he combines these with cither acid fruits or with meat or eggs, can get up a very sizeable jag from the alcohol generated in the stomach and intestine.

You will see this if you watch, for the glutton who fills himself up with this sort of food will sit down after a meal and almost immediately fall sound asleep and snore vociferously, and many a time has one seen such on a park bench mistaken by a police officer for a common drunk and waked rudely and told to move on or take a ride.

This is a drunk all right, a starch drunk, for the alcohol manufactured after such a meal is produced in exactly the same way as the distiller produces it for moonshine.

Yet this same man will take great credit to himself for temperance, when some of them are far more intemperate than is the average alcohol addict, if they only understood the mechanism of starchy digestion better.

Alcohols, glycerins, esters, all are produced in this way, by fermentation of starches and sugars in the digestive tract of one who has eaten heavily of either starch or sugar and then interfered with the process of Nature in disposing of this mass.

The almost universal "sour stomach" can be stopped at once if the simple law of compatibility of foods is followed, even the first meal eaten being free from this very disagreeable penalty, as the writer has seen accomplished times without number.

Men have complained that they never eat a single meal without an acid stomach following for several hours, but always when the habits were analyzed it was found that they ate bread with every meal, and that either acid fruit or meat or eggs were also taken.

However, if starches or sugars are bolted, without thorough mixture with saliva, they can ferment in the stomach without any acid to cause this, simply because there is no provision in the stomach for their digestion, the saliva being Nature's provision for this, and many a breakfast of toast washed down with coffee is productive of. acidity soon afterward for this very reason.

We can handle a certain amount of starch very nicely if thoroughly chewed and intimately mixed with saliva, but we all eat entirely too much of this, especially in the form of bread, for we have been taught to think bread the staff of life, and even whole grain bread is never this.

But when we eat large amounts of bread or other starchy or sweet foods, chewing these imperfectly and generally washing them down with liquids of any kind, or taking them in saturated or mushy form, we have done enough to insult the digestive organs without at the same time making the task of digestion wholly impossible by mixture of either acid or protein with this incompleted task.

We usually do all of this, and then we express surprise that living on such plain foods we should develop, perhaps early in life, so many acid conditions.

The wonder is not that so many develop these states but that any are left to complain.

Now, is it any wonder that we do develop so many acid conditions so early, or that we perhaps die of these early?

Never forget for a moment that acid is THE cause of disease, and that acid can be caused in no other way than by our mistakes in eating, and you will have the key to health.

It has been a marvelous intelligence that has created so perfect a machine as man, and no matter by what name we call this intelligence, its supreme wisdom enlists our awe, and puny man should stand reverent in the thought of the possibilities that are potential in him if he will only conform strictly to all the well defined laws of his being.

There is no use trying to evade the punishment for infractions of the law, nor to try to change this law or any one of its tenets, for it has long governed the universe and will not be changed by light wishes of lighter man.

So all we can do is to conform, if we wish to escape the penalties for transgression, and to seek to better understand the law with regard to ourselves.

The usual acid stomach is so general and so easily corrected that it is a very wise thing to make this the test of the correctness of what has preceded, so if this is your particular trouble start in by a rigid separation of the starches and sugars from both acid fruits and the acid-compelling protein, and see if you do not then realize the entire truth of everything that has been said as to compatible and incompatible foods, and if this should so turn out that you are freed from the discomforts of gastric acidity in this simple way, then please believe all that has been said or will still be said in regard to the food causes of all disease, for it is all just as true as this.

It is frequently objected that every one does these things, makes these mistakes, but if that is your attitude, then be prepared for the answer, for it will be: "Look at everybody, and pick out some one who is as well as he should be."

Sickness is universal almost, and in some form disease is present in nearly every one, even in those who think themselves about right.

Not all are ill because of incompatible mixture of their foods, nor from a too high ratio of concentrated protein, nor yet because of the use of denatured foods, but one or all of these things is at the root of nearly every case of departure from the normal, in large degree, so if these very palpable mistakes were corrected there would be very little left to do to approximate closely again the normal in health and efficiency.

One is reminded of the man who while carrying a bag containing all his earthly winnings in money was jostled off the ferry into the Hudson river, and while he could swim, yet he could not both swim and carry his rather heavy bag.

Passengers seeing that he was a swimmer called to him to drop the bag and save himself, but he could not make up his mind to do this, so was drawn under and drowned.

We can easily recognize this as a mistake in judgment, for had he let go the bag he could have saved himself very easily, and might have made another pot of money bigger than the one he strove to. save, but holding to it prevented further earning, and not only so but he was not able to use what he clung to.

It is ever so with habits, for if we can save ourselves without habit we stand in a position to do anything that man can do, but clinging to these we go down, and not only so but we lose even the enjoyments that these formerly brought us, as they pall on us.

One cannot keep his cake and eat it, neither can he attain to health while adhering to his bad habits, even if these are such as are considered harmless, for any habit that destroys Nature's arrangements for man's nutritional sustenance and repair is a bad habit, even if this is neither alcohol nor tobacco.

The body fully provisioned with competent fuels and repair materials is a body unconscious of handicaps, and can rise to heights in performance that are never possible to a body not so fueled.

Referring to what was said in regard to the influence of the body on the mind, we can then see that such a body offers no obstacles to mental growth or activity, and the mind usually reflects this change in nutrition more plainly and earlier than does the body, for the body has to grow better after its handicaps are removed while the mind is better at once.

Thus memory is positive, the mental processes quickened, optimism is the rule, and every one suddenly becomes one's friend, for there is no longer the depression that formerly made for suspicion and feeling of inferiority.

It has been said that one's first duty is to society, but if this is true then one should for society's sake render his own equipment as effective as possible, and in this sense his first duty is after all to himself.

If we can by reducing our own handicaps also place ourselves in position to lighten those of our fellows we will be doing society itself the highest favor.

When we reflect that sickness of all kinds is not the inevitable lot of man, but his own self-inflicted punishment, it is surely the part of wisdom to make such changes in the way of living as will free us from such penalties as disease.

The time is on the way when the ill will not be objects of pity, as we now regard them, but rather objects of censure and candidates for enlightenment.

We, no doubt, owe it to our neighbor to teach him the way of sane living, living for health, but as yet he is not willing to listen, having been always taught that he has little or no responsibility for the diseases that afflict him, and rather enjoying the attitude of the injured party when he gets sick, but when he has been the rounds of much medical talent and then gives up in despair of ever regaining his health he will be in a mood to listen. Then teach him.