East Indian
curries, and the Mexican and Spanish _olla_, are therefore founded on
common-sense.

In France the _pot-au-feu_, or soup-pot, simmers in every peasant or
middle-class home, and is not to be despised even in richer ones. In this
dish, a small portion of meat is cooked so judiciously as to flavor a
large mass of vegetables and broth; and this, served with salad and oil
and bread, forms a meal which can hardly be surpassed in its power of
making the most of every constituent offered. In Germany soups are a
national dish also; but their extreme fondness for pork, especially raw
ham and sausage, is the source of many diseases. Sweden, Norway,
Russia,--all the far northern countries,--tend more and more to the oily
diet of the Esquimaux, fish being a large part of it. There is no room for
other illustrations; but, as you learn the properties of food, you will be
able to read national dietaries, from the Jewish down, with a new
understanding of what power food had and has in forming national
peculiarities.

It is settled, then, that to renew our muscles which are constantly
wearing out, we must eat the food containing the same constituents; and
these we find in meat, milk, eggs, and the entire gluten of grains, &c, as
in wheaten-grits or oatmeal.

Fat and heat must come to us from the starches and sugars, in sufficient
supply to "put a layer of wadding between muscles and skin, fill out the
wrinkles, and keep one warm." To find out the proportion needed for one's
own individual constitution, is the first work for all of us. The laborer
requires one thing, the growing child another, the man or woman whose
labor is purely intellectual another; and to understand how best to meet
these needs, demands a knowledge to which most of us have been
indifferent. If there is excess or lack of any necessary element, that
excess or lack means disease, and for such disease we are wholly
responsible. Food is not the only and the universal elixir of life; for
weak or poor blood is often an inheritance, and comes to one tainted by
family diseases, or by defects in air or climate in general. But, even
when outward conditions are most disastrous, perfect food has power to
avert or alter their effects; and the child who begins life burdened with
scrofulous or other diseases, and grows to a pale, weak, unwholesome
youth, and either a swift passing into the next world, or a life here of
hopeless invalidism, can, nine times out of ten,