endency to continually overeat. All alcoholic beverages must be
strictly forbidden.

Diet for the Lean.--To a large extent the preceding article will
suggest what is suitable here, remembering, however, that regular
exercise will be also necessary in order to enable the muscles to
increase in size. Green vegetables and fruits should be largely used in
addition to the carbonaceous foods, as their FOOD SALTS (_see_) are
necessary to keep the blood in a condition to allow of proper
assimilation. In the case of nervous and consumptive patients, the more
digestible forms of fat, such as cream and butter, are to be
recommended. Some thin people do not seem able to assimilate much fat.
These cases will do better on a smaller quantity. Remember always that
it is not what is eaten, but what is assimilated, that goes to increase
the weight, therefore if any particular food is found, after a careful
trial, to constantly disagree, it must be accepted that for that one at
all events, it is not a suitable article of diet.

Diet for Middle Age and the Aged.--In advancing years when less
exercise is, as a rule, taken, a restriction in the amount of food
consumed is highly desirable. The increasing corpulence, which often
begins to show itself from 30 to 40, is far from being a healthy sign;
indeed, is often the premonitory symptom of serious disease. It should
be remembered that a lessening quantity of food is required from middle
life on. This applies to all the elements of food. It is noticeable
that a fat person seldom lives to old age, most octogenarians being
thin and wiry, and almost all attribute their long life to increasing
watchfulness over their health, and largely over what they eat.

When a person is young and taking active exercise, a good deal of
surplus food can be worked off, and if the excess be too great, a
bilious attack tends to prevent any more being taken, for a time at
least.

But as we get on in life, the surplus food, if much is eaten, is
deposited in various parts of the body as fatty or gouty accumulations.
The liver becomes deranged, and loss of health and strength are at once
apparent.

It is then, as Sir Henry Thompson has well pointed out, that the fond
but foolish wife often does her husband incalculable harm by her
efforts to "keep up his system." She urges and tempts him to take more
food, fetching him, between meals, cups of beef-tea, soup, or cocoa,
when he really would be greatly the bett