CUP AND PLATTER:

NOTES ON FOOD AND ITS EFFECTS.

INTRODUCTION.

HE importance of an extended knowledge of the principles which regulate the processes of digestion and assimilation of food cannot be too highly estimated. It is the possession of this knowledge, and this alone, which can enable persons to discriminate between the good and bad in food, to select those foods which are suitable for the purposes required, and to reject those, unfortunately now so common, which are manufactured to secure large profits, altogether without regard to wholesome and judicious composition.

The first great principle which must be realised, is that the body itself, in all its various structures, is composed of different groupings of the same elements as exist in the several kinds of food. The

next is, that after the arrangement of the components of food has been altered by the juices with which they come into contact in the body during digestion, by which they are rendered soluble, they are taken up and assimilated, that is, they join the other elements similar to themselves already present in the structure, and in this manner alone new tissue is formed. It is manifest from this that food, to be properly balanced, must contain a sufficiency of all the various components of the body in something like the proportion in which those components are wasted in healthy organisms.

If there is an insufficiency of any of these components, those tissues requiring that particular component necessarily dwindle, being worked off in the splitting up of their composition and the elimination of their waste products, and not having the necessary increment of their own kind to maintain them at their normal standard, they become gradually worn out.

Now, if every one were born healthy, and there were no constitutional diseases, the proper system of diet might soon be arrived at; but inasmuch as, from the earliest times to the present, a certain peculiar tendency to some one particular form of disease, or a deviation from health, has been recognised in each individual, it is of the highest importance to ascertain in which direction the

tendency lies. By a well-regulated system of life, and notably by a proper selection of food, we may counteract that disposition, affording in plenty those matters which are lacking, and withholding such as in each individual case tend to form compounds in excess of those necessary for health.

In this way, for example, taking infancy and childhood, the well-known disease called "rickets" is caused by a deficiency of phosphate of lime, on the presence of which solidity of bone depends. A healthy child may be starved into rickets by withholding those components of food, otherwise plentiful, which contain these salts, just as a rickety child may be fed into health by giving food which contains them in full proportion.

In the case of rickets, lime is an absolute necessity; but in the case of children brought up to drink plentifully of water charged with lime, we find Goitre, or Derbyshire neck, all kinds of deposit in the urine, and often stone in the bladder. Here, that which is beneficial to a rickety constitution is most injurious when the system is overcharged. Advancing, we may take the cases of pallor and weakness so common in over-crowded towns and cities, which are due to a want of salts of iron in the blood; in them, the kind of food taken is of the utmost importance, in order that it may provide a sufficiency of such salts.