nger than they did twenty years ago. How does he account for
that? No doubt some of the increase in the length of life is due to
the diminution of the birth rate, but still I suppose M.D. would
admit that there is an increase in the duration of life over and above
what can be accounted for in this way. If so, how does he account for
it?

M.D. says, further: "For the public it will now probably suffice if
they insist on raising (or considering, A.R.) the question of
quantity" (of food, A.R.) "wherever they suffer in any way." I agree
with all my heart. But M.D. implies, if I read him aright, that the
public should increase the quantity of their food when they suffer in
any way. I, on the other hand, and rather unhappily for myself, am
convinced that the raising of this question implies that it should be
answered in the exact opposite way to that of M.D. and that we should
diminish our food if we "suffer in any way." And I can point to
Nature's own plan as a corroboration of the truth of my view, for her
plan when we suffer in any way is to fling us into bed and take away
our appetite, or at least to diminish our appetite if we are not so
ill as to require to remain in bed.

The whole question of medical practice depends on the answer we give
to this question, and therefore one might go on indefinitely with its
discussion. Neither the Editors' space and patience nor my time allow
of this; but I should like to ask M.D., with all respect, if he
remembers what Dr King Chambers said of the starvation that comes of
over-repletion? Dr King Chambers occupied one of the most prominent
places as a consultant in London (very probably, I suppose) when M.D.
was a very young man. My late lamented friend, Dr Dewey of Meadville,
Pennsylvania, used the phrase "starvation from over-feeding," not
knowing that Dr King Chambers had used practically the same expression
before him. That I made the same discovery myself, and independently,
is not, I take it, a sign of acuteness of intellect or of observation.
The amazing thing is that every practitioner is not compelled to make
the same discovery. But if it is a true discovery, then it follows
that all the signs of lowered vitality referred to by M.D., while
they _may_ be caused by under-feeding, may also be caused by
over-feeding and may therefore require for proper treatment, not
increase of the diet, but diminution of it. A low temperature,
therefore, a slow pulse, languor, pallor, inaniti