of a possible ancestral weakness of your brain arteries
this may happen: the arterial walls, because of habitual food in excess,
may undergo a fatty, limy degeneration that will make a rupture
possible, with death or paralysis of one-half or more of the body as the
direct result; or the small arteries may have their walls so thickened
as not to permit enough blood to circulate in order duly to nourish
parts of the brain they supply; hence softening of the structure and
more or less imbecility.

"The history of all overweights is that of a decline of muscle energy,
and very generally of the amount of muscle activity as the pounds and
years increase; but no cut in the amount of daily food so long as it can
be taken with relish and disposed of without any special protesting from
the stomach. This is the history of by far the largest majority of
those sudden deaths due to cerebral hemorrhage, and also the history of
most of the cases of imbecility with the overweights.

"Now, Colonel, you should make a radical parting with those surplus
pounds by a fast that may extend into months, or take one of the
lightest of meals once a day. Follow this out rigidly until you have
lost a hundred pounds, and then by as much will you be not only free
from disease, but free also from the danger of disease."

My experience with cases of epilepsy, or "fits," is confined to a half
dozen cases, in which permanent relief seems to be assured. There is an
acquired structural abnormality behind the spasms, acquired from surplus
food, with a cure to be reached ultimately in most cases along these
physiological lines.

XIV.

I shall not take time in telling the evils of alcoholics. It would not
be more enlightening were I to spend hours in telling of wrecked lives,
of wrecked homes, of prisons filled with their victims, of the immense
loss to states and nations from the loss to sufferers and the loss they
inflict. Alcoholism has no sense for frowning, ominous statistics, for
it is a disease to be rationally treated, a disease to be rationally
avoided.

In the light of later science the word "stimulants" has become a
misnomer as applied to alcoholics; the term, no doubt, came into use
from the fact that under their use there is more endurance to both
physical and mental ills, an endurance or indifference ascribed to
stimulation.

If power is stimulated by their use, then there should be a rise in
temperature whereby severe cold is be