ually uses_, and what is _taken into the
stomach_, are two very different things. It is often the case that food
containing less actual nourishment will give greater nourishment to the
body than chemically richer food, because the former fits the state of
the digestive system better. What each one must consider is, not what
food has most of the chemical elements needed by the body, but what
food will give up to his own body the most of these elements.

Another error is that the use of medicine can for long assist the body
to use heavier food. In a case of disease, medicine often is of the
greatest value as a temporary aid to digestion, but its continual use
is the parent of great evils, and at last defeats the very end for
which it was given. If a person needs continually to use medicine,
there is probably either some organic disease present, _or, more
commonly, great errors in the diet taken_. Avoiding medicine, then,
except as a very temporary resource, and remembering that food is to be
judged more by the way it agrees with us than by its chemical
constitution, what rules can we give for diet in certain common cases?

First, diet should vary in summer and winter as the season varies.
Foods rich in fat, such as ham and bacon, should be for winter use
only, and should even then be more or less used as the weather is cold
or mild. For summer diet, milk foods, such as milk puddings, etc., ripe
fruits, and green vegetables should predominate, being varied also with
the heat or coolness of the weather. In very hot summer weather, animal
food should be very sparingly partaken of. It must also be borne in
mind that warm clothing or heated rooms may convert a winter climate
into a summer one.

Second, diet should vary according to the occupation of the eater. The
writer and brain-worker will do best, as a rule, on little butcher
meat, taking chiefly fish, eggs, and light milk foods, with vegetables
and fruits. Alcohol in any form is especially fatal to brain-workers,
and must be avoided, if there is to be really good health.

Third, food must vary according to temperament, age, etc. To give rules
under this head is almost impossible. The growing boy will need
proportionately more food than the adult, the man more than the woman.
It is indeed true here that what is one man's food is another man's
poison, and that every man must find out for himself what he needs. It
may be generally said that the food which digests without