we know little about their needs, but I am willing to wager that roughage is rough on cats. Human beings practically never can suffer from a lack of the reproductive vitamin E and it is a matter of extreme difficulty to deprive experimental animals of E and of F (the lack of which stunts growth in rats) sufficiently to cause sterility or stunting. Finally, a fact that stands out prominently is this - findings true of growing rats are surprisingly often applicable to growing children; but that does not mean that they necessarily apply to adult human beings. tends to prevent anæmia which will attack growing children whose principal article of diet is milk, merely because milk is horribly deficient in iron. The cod liver oil, like sunlight, protects against rickets and, unlike direct sunlight, promotes normal growth. All that is pretty definite and the gentleman heroically threw away a bottle of carbolic acid he had with him and decided to face life bravely once more. There can be no doubt that in spite of vagaries and fads very many pediatricians and not a few general practitioners are rather wisely utilizing sound dietetic knowledge in the feeding of young children. On the other hand I know of a lady whose child has an abdomen which protrudes like those of the famine children we see pictured now and then, and for very much the same reason. It was stuffed too full of indigestible matter on too many occasions — in this case spinach at the doctor's order. GENTLEMAN not long ago repined A to me: "A while back my doctor had my nephew on orange juice; then he shifted to tomato juice; then it was cod liver oil. Just recently he prescribed bananas, and now it's liver. Can you tell me what on earth he thinks he is trying to do?" I solaced him by remarking that the child would soon have to accustom itself to a daily portion of blue vitriol, since copper was the latest mineral to func. B their normal vitamin needs, ne tion as a blood regenerator in anæmia - it was insoluble iron salts, you know, then soluble iron salts, then a complex organic somethingorother, then vitamin E (the reproductive), then not vitamin E but iron, and then, or now for the moment, minute quantities of copper. But as the gentleman displayed distinct signs of throwing himself under a 'street car, I relented and remarked that the doctor was probably not very far wrong in any case. He said, "Thank God for that!" and he looked it. Orange juice is potent in vitamin C and prevents scurvy, tomato is in the same class, bananas ditto, and liver UT when it comes to adults and we know little. Of course on radically deficient diets explorers, missionaries and others do develop scurvy, beri beri, and such deficiency diseases. But the importance of vitamins to young children and to experimental animals is not duplicated in adult humans. In fact, in a rich country like ours it is very unlikely that any considerable groups of adult humans are habitually on diets so deficient in vitamins as to be injurious. We can certainly be sure that a patient could remain on a vitamin low diet for two or three weeks in a hospital without serious trouble. The body is a more resistant and adjustable mechanism than diet faddists give it credit for being, and it has but recently been shown that a complete deprivation of protein for more than two months failed to undermine the subject's constitution. While vitamin deficiencies are seri ous in the young, few physicians ever meet in ordinary practice conditions which they can definitely charge up to vitamin deficiency as causative. A physician at Hopkins remarks that in fifteen years' practice he has never seen a patient he could declare definitely diseased due to a vitamin lack, while a colleague has attended children ten years and has found but four cases of ophthalmia associated with a deficiency in vitamin A, yet the latter is supposed to develop very easily with such lack. Is true, as the experts constantly remind us in hushed tones, that many adult humans may run close to the minimum in vitamins A and B and calcium, on the meat, potato, gravy, white bread, coffee, pie ration. Some obscure nervous and gastric disorders may result from this condition, yet it is very doubtful whether the total amount of indisposition caused by such deficiencies is one-tenth that produced by the flurried, worried and dyspeptic health health alarmists The Amalgamated Order of Halitosis of America. Pediatricians, live stock growers, explorers and the health authorities of overpopulated districts, need to know their vitamins and to apply their findings, but it is probable that some nepenthe on the subject would be advisable among the great group of middlebrows. They take much greater health risks every day. I am reminded of the flapper who would drink anything said to be alco holic but who, at meal times, always reminded the others very self-righteously that she never drank coffee! A healthy, normal person will al A matter of fact the appetite of a most inevitably lead him to nourish himself adequately, in a country like this where such diverse food products are so readily available. We cannot trust these appetites blindly, simply because they are perverted in youth. But much would be gained if our appetites were less trammeled in childhood; if we were not compelled to eat so many unpalatable things merely because they were "good for us"; if a complete, varied and adequate diet was set before us and we were freely permitted to plough our way through it as we desired. Working on dogs at Yale, Dr. George R. Cowgill recently found that they will automatically regulate their own food intake on a caloric basis if permitted to do so. To show this he fed some dogs which had long been on a standard diet a ration of known caloric content. Then, after a time, and under precisely the same environmental conditions, he fed the same dogs a diet containing more calories. In every single case they voluntarily reduced their food intake in almost arithmetical proportion and simply refused to overload on calories which they did not need in their way of living. That looks very much like a basic, primitive instinct at work. From his experiments and observations Dr. Cowgill reaches the conclusion that the baby, not the doctor, knows best about its diet. If its diet is adequate and complete, the baby may safely be permitted to use its appetite as a guide; this is far better than stuff ing it at regular intervals with known quantities of food in accordance with some doctor's or book's instructions, which are intended to apply to an istent as the famous "economic man". HE basic thing about all this diet Tbusiness is, after all, our biological business is, after all, our biological heritage. Over and over again nature triumphs over nurture. Discussing longevity in Washington some years ago, Dr. Charles Mayo reflected the wisdom of Oliver Wendell Holmes when he said that the greatest factor was the choice of long-lived parents in a healthy line. This same factor rules our reaction to diseases, to debilitations, to fatigue, to all environmental conditions and to what we eat. An infection in the heel is fatal to one person whereas the same germs would not even make another person ill. Worry makes one man lose weight, yet plenty of fat people worry over their diet all the time and simply get fatter. The slightest dietetic indiscretion causes one person gastric distress; the grossest nutritional ignorance does not disturb the digestive equanimity of another the slightest bít. Food which is poison or infected with deadly germs never acts the same upon all who eat it. I revert in thought to the kind gentleman who accompanied me to lunch and who figured so desperately on the caloric content of his meal. He worried about vitamins and calories and roughage, meal after meal; he did his utmost to eat exactly what he should -scientifically-and he was in chronic ill health. The chances are that if he could have forgotten all about diet, he might have recovered from stomach trouble. But he may, for all I know, be a type that would ail under any circumstances. A lative and eliminative processes classify physiologically under the head of involuntary operations. Such operations, like breathing and the heartbeat, proceed far better when left to their own unconscious devices than when an effort is made to direct and to oversee them consciously. Taking forethought will not add a cubit to their effectiveness. SA WHOLE our digestive, assimi As to diet, a very little reflection will convince us that men as races and as individuals live suprisingly well upon the most varied foods. This should restrain us from being alarmists and should lead us to conclude that salvation cometh neither in raw foods, nor in vegetarianism, nor in fruits, vitamins, minerals nor calories — as fads. We cannot properly nourish ourselves by grabbing an ill-established theory here, a fact there and a suggestion elsewhere, and trying to piece these into a system and press them into service. Instead, common sense and a little fundamental knowledge are our best endowments. But the avoidance of fads and crazes is paramount. We should pray for strength to resist the nefarious idea that a temporary and slight vitamin deficiency is of serious consequence and to stand firm against the self-righteous alarmist and extremist. Thereafter our body weight and our feelings are reputable guides. Deviations above and below our normal weight are natural suggestions demanding investigation. Digestive disturbances, headaches, feelings of heaviness, undue fatigue on moderate F exertion, dullness of mind- these also are indications of maladjustment and bid us examine our nutrition and our environment critically to eliminate whatever is injurious to us. And what is injurious to or good for us is by no means the same thing as that which injures or prospers our neighbor. There heredity gets its innings. We should remember in general, ; however, the following classifications: Carbohydrates are energy foods and are easily disposed of. Fats and carbo isms individually as well as we ourselves know them. They are hurried and they know the patient's reliance on a prescription. They are led to prescribe some combination of drugs whereas the patient, if he gave the matter a moment's thought, might easily discern that he was eating too much pork this summer or that he should not raid the icebox before going to bed. HAT is not to say that either habit hydrates are interchangeable, though Tis pernicious per se. The point is fats are not so easily disposed of in the body and tend to be more expensive. Protein is absolutely essential to well being, is rather more difficult to dispose of than the first two grand divisions and it is both extravagant and ill-advised to eat it to excess, especially in hot weather. Meat, egg and milk proteins are utilized decidedly better than vegetable proteins and it is sensible and palatable to balance our diet with meat protein. Moderate amounts of lightly cooked green vegetables, of raw fruits and cooked vegetables and of dairy products should find a place on our tables. Of such variety, then, let each partake as his experience dictates. UCH rational self-experimentation would repeatedly assist people to make helpful adjustments in their way of living which visits to a physician may not alter. All due respect to them, physicians cannot know our organ that such habits which react injuriously upon each of us as individuals—one habit here, quite another there—account for most of the minor illnesses about which we bother busy doctors. In Plato's Republic we hear of people who expect some nostrum to mend their way of living; but, Plato continues, "They have a charming way of going on, and the charming thing is that they deem him their worst enemy who tells them the truth, which is simply that, unless they give up eating and drinking and lusting and sleeping, neither drug nor cautery nor spell nor amulet nor anything will be of any avail." Plato was right. Such people still exist. Many of them are now diet faddists. Yet calm, judicial, sober common sense and a reasonably decent heredity will do more to ensure that they have life and have it more abundantly than any number of calorie crazes or vitamin drives. I Life in the Raw BY CATHERINE BEACH ELY Miss Ely's "Hokum of the Intelligentzia," in a recent issue, IFE in the raw is what many women of today demand-on paper and on the boards. One of that type effervesced during a current successful play; she received its mélange of adultery and brutality with irrepressible delight. "It's life in the raw!" she chirruped ecstatically to her companion. Large numbers of eminently respectable women today enjoy and pay for theatre situations both raw and tainted. Some of the devourers of rawness are small, roundfaced, and babyish in contours like the aforesaid enthusiast. Others are tall, fashionably lean and hungry-eyed, hungry for the drama's strong cheese-parings. Thespis, unbridled and riotous, allures many women. There sit the urbanites with a sophisticated assurance which seems to say, "We know what we want. There sit the transient tourists collecting naughty lines before returning to Dulgap. In the second balcony gather the wearers of bargain furs; in the orchestra seats bask the owners of costlier symbols of the cave. All these seek "life in the raw." raw Feminine financial support is indispensable to the would-be authors, and to the little pseudocritics who pour libations to the would-be Raws in the cozy-corner columns. Petty authors and petty critics, trying to color the vaporings of their pale brains with red ink for blood! And women are their dupes. V TELL, life in the raw is what our pioneer ancestors wanted, at least it is what they got when they invaded hostile territory in the Covered Wagon. But it was raw life sliced otherwise, with a quite different flavor. In a modern New York apartment a hostess sketches for her guests a bit of typical family history: "My grandmother left New York in 1833 for a settlement in Michigan, where life was simple, yet exciting. The men were needed for work in the field, so grandmother, then a young married woman, sprang into a wagon and started the team of horses toward Pontiac, the nearest source of supplies - a long journey over almost impassable roads. She left her three children |