not swollen and not painful, they merely crack.  My whole system seems to be over-acid, and my mouth gets sore and ulcerated.  I have got very thin, having lost a stone in twelve months.

I notice that you always advise for dilated stomach greatly restricting the liquid part of the diet.  Will you tell me just how much one may drink in a day, because when I go without drinking my constipation and other troubles are worse and the urine gets thick and muddy.

You also deprecate milk.  This puzzled me until you explained to a correspondent last month in The Healthy Life.  Will you tell me if the same applies to dried milk—­will it tend to increase intestinal trouble?  I am anxious to know this because I have been relying somewhat on Emprote and Hygiama lately, for I had got so that I could scarcely digest anything.

Do you consider it better to use the enema than to take a mild aperient?  I do not want to start with the enema again if I can possibly manage to do without, because I found that my bowels depended upon it.  And that is why I want to ask if it is absolutely necessary when on an antiseptic diet to entirely avoid fruit.  I find it so necessary to keep the bowels working naturally.

I do want you to answer me these questions, because I have got so worried and fearful (people’s theories are so varied) that I scarcely dare eat any food at all.  I am at present taking only two meals daily (I like the two-meal plan best):  at eleven A.M. and 6 P.M.  I take a cup of weak coffee on rising, without milk or sugar—­this warm drink seems to start the peristaltic action and I then get bowel action.  I think of changing the coffee for Sanum Tonic Tea or Dandelion Coffee.

     At eleven o’clock I have an egg with Winter’s “Maltweat” bread
     and almond butter, and some conservatively cooked vegetable
     (celery or carrot or spinach).

     At six P.M.  I have one or two baked apples, a teaspoonful or two
     of malted nuts, or Emprote, and more “Maltweat” bread and butter.

     At four P.M.  I take a cup of barley water or carrot water, and at
     bedtime another cup of barley water.

     Do you think that if I went on to a milk diet for a time it would
     do good?

This correspondent seems to be suffering from auto-toxaemia, or self-poisoning in a severe form, and a condition of what is termed arterio-sclerosis or premature old age.  Associated with it are evidently symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis, which is affecting her joints and teeth.  It is not one of ordinary gout or uric acid poisoning.  The trouble no doubt has been caused by past errors of diet, so that the present efforts at reform have come too late to be of service to her.  Something more than diet is now needed to clear the acids and toxins from the system.  It is not a simple case