ease and with fewer noticeable bad results than any man of his age and condition I have ever worked with.”  “To appreciate the full significance of this report, it must be remembered,” writes Professor Chittenden, “that Mr. Fletcher had for several months past taken practically no exercise other than that involved in daily walks about town.”  Sir Michael Forster had Mr. Fletcher and others under observation in his Cambridge laboratories, and in his report he remarks on the waste products of the bowel being not only greatly reduced in amount, as might be expected; but that they are also markedly changed in character, becoming odourless and inoffensive, and assuming a condition which suggests that the intestine is in a healthier and more aseptic condition than is the case under ordinary circumstances.  If we can obtain sufficient nourishment, as Mr. Fletcher does, on half the usual quantity of food, we diminish by half the expenditure of energy required for digestion.  By thorough mastication the succeeding digestive processes are more easily and completely performed.  What is also of great importance is that there is not the danger of the blocking up of the lower intestines with a mass of incompletely digested and decomposing residue, to poison the whole body.  Even where there is daily defaecation, there is often still this slowly shifting mass; the end portion only, being expelled at a time, one or more days after its proper period.  All this improved condition of the digestive tract, leaves more vitality for use in other directions, a greater capacity for work and clearness of brain.

Professor R.H.  Chittenden, in “Physiological Economy in Nutrition,” writes:—­“Our results, obtained with a great variety of subjects, justify the conviction that the minimum proteid requirements of the healthy man, under ordinary conditions of life, are far below the generally accepted dietary standards, and far below the amounts called for by the acquired taste of the generality of mankind.  Body weight, health, strength, mental and physical vigour and endurance can be maintained with at least one-half of the proteid food ordinarily consumed.”

From these and other considerations, we see that it is not only unnecessary, but inadvisable to diet ourselves according to any of the old standards, such as that of Voit, or even to any other standard, until they have been very thoroughly revised.  We shall probably find that as the body becomes accustomed to simpler food, a smaller quantity of the food is necessary.  The proportion of proteids to other constituents in all the ordinary, not over manfactured vegetable foods, such as are generally eaten, may be taken as sufficient.  Several cookery books have been compiled in conformity with certain proteid standards and also with some more or less fanciful requirements; these give the quantities and kinds of food which it is imagined should be eaten each day.  Theoretically, this should be calculated to accord with the weight, temperament,