buds at the base of the tongue. This gives the stomach and other digestive organs an advance message of the kind and amount of the digestive juices required, which preparation is a great aid to digestion.

The gastric juices penetrate solids at the rate of only onetwenty-fifth of an inch per hour. Since the stomach, unless it has become thoroughly exhausted with previous efforts to empty itself, will not allow solids to pass its portals, insufficient mastication must surely delay the process of digestion.

When, in consequence of proper mastication, all food is tasted before being swallowed, the appetite gives warning whenever a sufficient amount of food has been eaten. Thorough mastication is thus a sure cure for overeating.

The more one chews his food, the more natural becomes his taste and appetite. The over-seasoning of food, in order to make it relishable even when bolted, and the excessive use of meat and eggs which can be eaten rapidly, are avoided when through proper mastication taste has been made reliable in the selection of food.

Thorough mastication means giving up the habit of forcing food down. Chew the first three mouthfuls of a meal until swallowing becomes involuntary and the slow pace thus established will in time come to care for the rest of the meal without further thought.

Eating when hungry and masticating thoroughly do not require the giving up of all things that taste good. It is true in many cases that sacrifices have to be made but the net result is not to diminish but to increase the enjoyment of food.

Air as an Energizer

In the search for best methods of increasing the output of physical energy, air oftentimes impresses one as being too much of a "nothing" to deserve serious consideration. Yet while air is invisible it nevertheless is a real substance, one cubic

foot of it weighing 564 grains. It has a definite composition, which is changed by its being breathed.

The following table shows how breathing changes the air's

What does this difference signify? Simply that within the lungs changes vital to life are constantly taking placeoxygen absorbed into the blood, carbon dioxide and water vapor expelled.

Body and brain are but myriads of tiny cells, furnaces in which food and oxygen unite to form the vital fires of life. Air is thus a true energizer. Our food, however well digested and assimilated, without oxygen is just as useless as coal without draft in a furnace.

Invigorating versus Devitalizing Air

Oxygen is a vital principle in air, and its removal means vitiation. The lungs throw off 3,000 gallons of poison air per day, every pint of which will spoil for breathing purposes an entire barrel of pure air. In consequence, the air in an ordinary office should be changed from four to six times an hour.

The enemies of pure air, which in the office one must commonly guard against, are gas jets, tobacco smoke, and the oldfashioned feather duster.

An overheated room is enervating. As a usual thing a temperature not above 70°-even five to ten degrees lower for persons in good health-increases both mental and muscular efficiency.

Stagnant air means poison breathed in and breathed out successively. But when the air is put into motion, either by

natural movement or by artificial means, the poisons are swept away and air with its normal proportion of oxygen may take its place. The electric fan in an office has a distinct hygienic value.

Man is by nature an outdoor animal and though for purposes of business he may shut himself inside some office, he must never forget the call of the great outside. A farm to the business man as far as crops are concerned is usually an expensive joke, yet health is there. Lacking farms and even denied vacations year after year, men might still easily spend more time outdoors every day than they do.

A third of our time is spent in bed, in other words, eight hours daily in which to a greater degree than during the day we control our air supply. The open bedroom window, better still the window tent, the open tent, and the outdoor sleeping porch have proved themselves for generations so beneficial for sick people that all well people will eventually recognize them as worth while.

Making the Best Use of Air

The nose performs two important functions in breathing. Air entering the nostrils is strained of its dust particles and if below body temperature is warmed as it passes along the nasal cavity richly supplied with blood vessels. The too common practice of breathing through the mouth is thus doubly bad; and the gratification one might feel over the fact that a certain book entitled "Shut Your Mouth" has passed through several editions is tempered by the feeling that common sense should have rendered such advice unnecessary.

In natural breathing both chest and abdomen should expand and contract together. Chest breathing alone, caused by wrong habits or constrictions, such as a tight belt at the waist, is artificial and deprives the body both of its due volume of air and of the good exercise that comes from full, natural breathing.

The flat chest advertises to the world that its owner does not know how to breathe, that he has a predisposition to lung diseases, and that with a body half nourished and half suffocated he is prepared to do only one-half a man's work. These things surely are not the marks of an efficient man, and they can be avoided.

In ordinary breathing only about ten per cent of the lung contents is changed at each breath. Deep breathing alone, by causing the air to penetrate into the more remote and minute chambers, forces the whole lung into action, promotes liver and abdominal circulation, sets stagnant blood into circulation, favorably influences the blood pressure, and heightens the brain activity.

Air is an invigorator, a blood purifier or spring tonic which is without snare and delusion, a food without money and without price.

Bodily Poisons

When food and air combine within the body energy is liberated. So far so good, but oxidation while it results in energy also forms waste products. Fatigue poisons develop in the muscles and brain tissues, fermentation in the mouth, putrefaction in the intestines, and sundry other poisons, such as spoiled foods, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs, are introduced into the system direct.

Stupefied by one or more of these various poisons, the average person "cannot strike the pace he desires"; he lacks "pep," enthusiasm, ability to concentrate and push his work. While suffering from the irritation and melancholy induced by this poisoned condition, otherwise sensible men are guilty of explosions of temper and absurd judgments which shame their saner moments. Poison in brain and muscle is like sand in the bearings of a watch.

Headache powders, "cocktails," tea and coffee, stomach

bitters, sarsaparillas, liver pills and cathartics are swallowed in vast quantities by the victims of sluggish livers, bad teeth, constipation and intestinal intoxication, in the vain search for relief. Their blood is foul with poison and its purification depends upon proper hygiene, not the putting into it of ill tasting or bad smelling drugs.

Don't Increase the Handicap

It is essential first of all to exclude poisons from the body in so far as such a course is practicable. The eating of decayed food and the use of habit-forming drugs torment the body with unnecessary enemies.

It is true that alcohol is widely used and that not a few believe that it enables them to work more effectively. Yet scientific experiments have shown that in reality alcoholic beverages merely numb the sense of fatigue and so deceive the user. You cannot cheat Nature with a lead nickel.

The evidence as to smoking is not yet so conclusive as in regard to alcohol, but the indications studied are adverse. It is true that the nicotine contained in one cigar is small in amount and most smokers assert that they will stop smoking when it begins to hurt them. But experiments at the Pasteur Institute have shown that the long-continued use of very minute doses of poisons ultimately produces appreciable harm, and the claim that one will stop before being injured is rarely carried out. In practice, it is easier to abstain than to be moderate.

Mouth Sanitation

A second source of infection arises from the fact that the mouth is necessarily exposed to numerous bacteria and its powers of protection are inadequate. Food particles left between the teeth or on their surface putrefy under bacterial action. Cavities are caused in the teeth which harbor more