healthy diet.  Nor can you “make the body a more harmonious instrument for the true life of man” by habitually underfeeding it.  I thought that was a mediaeval notion that had been knocked on the head long ago.

Is there any man, lay or scientific, Mr Voysey notwithstanding, who can claim to have as wide an experience of diet in its relation to health and disease as “M.D.,” to say nothing of the trained mind and long years of patient thought that have been exerted in dealing with the facts of this wide experience.  For myself, I have come to see that, if “M.D.” does not hold in his grasp the absolute truth in the matter of diet, he is nearer to it, and is a safer guide, than all your low proteid advisers, lay or otherwise, where they come much below “M.D.’s” standard.

So, using Mr Voysey’s phrases, I would urge laymen like myself to shun that weak-kneed manikin, the low proteid diet, and unite with me in a long strong pull to get him and others like him out of the rut in which that sorry weakling holds him.

 HY.  BARTHOLOMEW.

 II

The Editors were quite right in saying that the article under this heading in the July issue would arouse discussion.  My wife and I, having discussed “M.D.” and many others with the title, feel constrained to put forth a warning against blind faith in anything which the faculty have to say on dietetics.

There are of course brilliant exceptions, such as Dr Rabagliati, Dr Knaggs, Dr Haig, the late Dr Keith and others, who give chapter and verse for every statement made; but when we consider the excellent work of laymen such as Albert Broadbent, Joseph Wallace, Horace Fletcher, Alice Braithwaite, Eustace Miles, Hereward Carrington, Edgar J. Saxon, Bernarr MacFadden, Arnold Eiloart, ordinary folks like ourselves may be excused if we venture to give our experience as against that of “qualified” men.

 With your permission, then, we reply to “M.D.’s” five suggestions in
 the order he gives them:—­

 1.  Food qualities are not of extreme importance.

 2.  Quantity tables may have been “settled” by physiologists to their
 own satisfaction many years ago; but very good reasons have since been
 given for altering, or even ignoring, them.

 3.  The particular number of grains of proteid to be consumed per day
 is not of serious moment.

4.  That departure from the quantity specified has not led to disaster is proved by the fact that the human race still persists, in spite of the very varying eating customs found in different nations.  The great majority being poor or ignorant, or both, know neither “tables” nor the need for them.

 5.  There can be no reply to such a general statement as:  “The nature
 of this disaster may appear to be very various, and its real cause is
 thus frequently overlooked.”