“Accessories are those by whose use the moulting and renewing (that is, the metamorphosis) of the organic structures are modified, so as best to accommodate themselves to required circumstances.  They may be subdivided into those which arrest and those which increase metamorphosis.”  It is under the former class that are placed alcohol, sugar, coffee, and tea.  Again, says Dr. Chambers,—­“Not satisfied with the bare necessaries,” (the common varieties of plastic and calorifacient food,) “we find that our species chiefly are inclined by a soi-disant instinct to feed on a variety of articles the use of which cannot be explained as above; they cannot be found in the organism; they cannot, apparently, without complete disorganization, be employed to build up the body.  These may be considered as extra diet, or called accessory foods.....  These are what man does not want, if the protracting from day to day his residence on earth be the sole object of his feeding.  He could live without them, grow without them, think, after a fashion, without them.  A baby does.  Would he be wise to try and imitate it?

“Thus, there is no question but that easily assimilable brown meat is the proper food for those whose muscular system is subjected to the waste arising from hard exercise; and if plenty of it is to be got, and the digestive organs are in sufficiently good order to absorb enough to supply the demand, it completely covers the deficiency.  Water, under these circumstances, is the best drink; and a ‘total abstainer,’ with plenty of fresh meat, strong exercise, and a vigorous digestion, will probably equal anybody in muscular development.  But should the digestion not be in such a typical condition, should the exercise be oversevere and the victuals deficient, then the waste must be limited by some arrester of metamorphosis; if it is not, the system suffers, and the man is what is called ’overworked.’....  Intellectual labor also exercises the demand for food, and at the same time, unfortunately, injures the assimilating organs; so that, unless a judicious diet is employed, waste occurs which cannot be replaced.”

Waste, we may be told, is life, and the rapidity of change marks the activity of the vital processes.  True, if each particle consumed is at once and adequately replaced.  Beyond that point, let the balance once tend to over-consumption, and we approach the confines of decay.  Birds live more and faster than men, and insects probably most of all; yet many of the latter are ephemeral.

Every-day experience had long pointed to the recurring coincidence, that, of the annual victims of pulmonary consumption, few were to be found among the habitual consumers of ardent spirits.  Science volunteered the explanation, that alcohol supplied a hydro-carbonaceous nutriment similar to that furnished by the cod-liver oil, which, serving as fuel, spared the wasting of the tissues, just in proportion to its own consumption