of the disaster is not
suspected. A physiologist is not consulted till too late, perhaps till
the disorder in the machinery of life is beyond repair.

Diminishing energy and power, decreasing endurance, slowing
circulation, lessening blood colour, falling temperature, altered
blood pressure, enlarging heart and liver, are some of the most
obvious signs with which the physician is brought into contact in such
cases. But every one of these may, and very often does, pass unnoticed
for quite a long time by those who have had no scientific training.
The public are extremely ignorant on such matters because the natural
sciences have been more neglected in this country in the last fifty
years than anywhere else in Europe, and that is saying a good deal.
Hence diet quacks and all those who trade on the ignorance and
prejudices of the public are having a good time and often employ it in
writing the most appalling rubbish in reference to the important
subject of nutrition.

Being themselves ignorant and without having studied physiology, even
in its rudiments, they do not appear to consider that they should at
least abstain from teaching others till they have got something
certain for themselves.

If the public were less ignorant they would soon see through their
pretensions; but, as it is, things go from bad to worse, and it is not
too much to say that hundreds of lives have been lost down this sordid
by-path of human avarice.

On one single day a few weeks ago the writer heard of three men, two
of whom had been so seriously ill that their lives were in danger, and
one of whom had died. The certified cause of death in this case might
not have led the uninitiated to suspect chronic starvation, but those
who were behind the scenes knew that this was its real cause. A
further extraordinary fact was that two out of these three men were
members of the medical profession, whose training in physiology ought,
one would have thought, to have saved them from such errors.

The conclusion seems to be that they did not use their knowledge
because at first they had no suspicion of the real cause of their
illness. In other words, chronic starvation is insidious and, if no
accurate scientific measurements are made, its results, being
attributed to other causes, are often allowed to become serious before
they are properly treated.

These three men went wrong by following a layman quite destitute of
physiological training, who APPEARED t