what appeared to
be some form of dyspepsia. He was quite unable to pass any of the
above-named tests as to physiological standards, and an investigation
of his excreta showed that his food was at least one-fifth or
one-sixth below its proper quantity and had probably been so for many
months past. Some of his doctors had been giving his "disease" a more
or less long list of names and yet had not noted the one essential
fact of chronic defective nutrition and its cause--underfeeding.
Naturally their treatment was of no avail, but when he had been sent
to a nursing home and had put back the 20 lbs. of weight he had lost
he came slowly back to more normal standards and is now out of danger.
In this case there was marked loss of weight, and few people, one
would think, would overlook such a sign of under nutrition. But loss
of weight is not always present in these cases, at least not at first.
Some people tend to grow stout on deficient proteid, and then the fact
that some of the essential tissues of the body (the muscles, the heart
and the blood) are being dangerously impoverished is very likely to be
overlooked. In the case last mentioned the loss of weight was put down
to the dyspepsia, whereas the real fact was that the "dyspepsia" and
loss of weight were both results of a chronic deficiency in food.

It is evident that some care about food quantities must be taken by
all those who do not live on natural foods. For physiologists there is
no difficulty in settling the question of quantity in accordance with
the signs of the physiology of a normal body. That all, even
physiologists, may run into danger if, while living on unnatural or
partly unnatural foods, or while making any change of food, they do
not consider the question of quantity with sufficient care.

That the question of nutrition should be considered in relation to
_every illness_ even though it may appear on the surface to have no
direct connection with foods or quantities. As a matter of fact, the
nature of the food and its quantity controls all the phenomena of
life. Some twenty years ago most people lived fairly close to the old
physiological quantities, now they have been cut adrift from these and
completely unsettled and are floundering out of their depth. A most
unsatisfactory, even dangerous, condition of affairs.

For the public it will now probably suffice if they insist on raising
the question of quantity whenever they suffer in any way. If they ar