bor with our hands, taste, hear, smell, see, and feel
through the brain. Broken bones and wounds heal, diseases are cured
through energy evolved in the brain or the brain system as a whole. The
other so-called vital organs and the muscles are only as so many
machines that are run by the brain power, with the stomach an
exceedingly important machine. That powers so rare do not originate in
the bones, ligaments, muscles, or fats, does not need argument; that
when the nerve-trunks that supply the arm or leg are severed power of
movement and feeling is lost, is known to all; and equally would the
power of the stomach be abolished were the nerve-trunks cut off. In a
general way, then, it may be stated that the strength of the body is
directly as the strength of the brain.

With this physiology, who in or out of the medical profession can fail
to see clearly that the digestion of even an atom of food is a tax upon
the strength of the brain for whatever of power needed by the stomach,
the machine, for this purpose? Unless it can be proved that the stomach
has powers not derived from the brain system, this will have to be
admitted.

How is the strength kept up in the light of this physiology? The
universal belief is that it is kept up by the daily food. In proportion
to the prostration of sickness, so are physicians anxious to conserve
the energies by working the stomach to the limit of its powers.

The impression that there must be something digested to support the
vitality of the system is a belief, a conviction that has always been
too self-evident to suggest a doubt.

If the well need food to keep up the strength, the sick need it all the
more; this is the logic that has been displayed upon this question. Let
us keep it clear in mind that, if the nerves going to the stomach are
severed, paralysis will result as in the case of the arm, in order more
definitely to conceive the stomach as a _machine_ that requires power to
run it even to a tiringout degree. This is strikingly illustrated by the
exhausted feeling that invites the after-dinner nap for rest, which,
however, does not rest overfilled stomachs, overfilled brains. The brain
gets no rest while getting rid of food-masses with more of decomposition
than of digestion.

If food really has power to keep up the strength, there should not be so
much strength lost by the general activities--indeed, it would seem that
fatigue should be impossible. But the fact remains tha