r consumptives. There is not a word said in this article (which
is a sort of programme of the weighty matters for discussion) on the
relation of food to the body. That question probably 4950 of them
believe was settled by the eminent physiologists who compiled those
"food-tables" years ago--and in so doing went far to pave the way for
the modern frightful increase of cancer, Bright's disease, etc., as
well as for "scientific" horrors like anti-toxin, tuberculin--not to
mention compulsory eugenics!

J. METHUEN.

HEALTH THROUGH READING.

Do many people consider reading from the point of view of health of
mind and body--of refreshment in times of struggle--of recuperation
after knock-down blows of sorrow, disappointment or misfortune?

Let us begin by saying that some of the greatest books are not to be
read by everybody at all seasons. When one's heart or ankles are weak,
one does not start to climb mountains, or one may end as a corpse or
a cripple. So with one's soul under shock or stress. Personally, I can
imagine nothing more cruel than the action of two women, one a
story-teller of great repute among the "goody," who, to a specially
stricken and lonely young widow, tendered as "bed-side books," Victor
Hugo's _Les Miserables_ and Browning's poignant _The Ring and the
Book_. If they had wished to make her realise to the bitterest depths
the awfulness of the world wherein she was left alone, and the
blackest depravity of the human nature around her, they could not have
done differently. _Les Miserables_ she read till she reached the
dreadful scene where a vicious cad hurls snowballs at the helpless
Fantine. Then the strong instinct of self-preservation made her put
the book aside--not to touch it again for nearly thirty years. With
_The Ring and the Book_ her mind was too wrung and too weary to
wrestle--all it could receive was a picture of wronged innocence, and
especially of the rampant forces of evil with which she was left to
contend. With the same want of tact and judgment, if with unconscious
cruelty, the gloomy, fateful _Bride of Lammermoor_ was selected out of
all Scott's novels for the reading of a very homesick youth, solitary
in a strange country!

Yet we must always remember that, as in affairs of the body so of the
spirit, "what is one man's meat may be another man's poison." Some of
the wisest and most successful nurses or doctors will occasionally
permit an invalid to indulge in a longed-for