on, fatigue,
good-for-nothingness, inefficiency, anorexia, anaemia, neurasthenia,
etc., etc., may all be due to blocking of the body with too much food
as well as to supplying it with too little. Fires may be put out by
heaping up too much coal on them. To make them burn briskly we ought
to push the poker in and gently lift the coal so as to admit of the
entrance of air. Then in a while our fire will become brisk and
bright. And so it may be in the body. Nay, my opinion is that almost
always these marks of depression are caused by blocking up of the body
and that therefore the proper treatment is, as a rule, not increase
but diminution of the diet. The place in the body in which the
blocking first occurs is the connective tissues or the tissues that
connect every part with every other. It is here that the lymph is
secreted, and as the lymph joins the thoracic duct which conveys the
products of digestion to the blood, it is obvious that lymph-secretion
is a complementary digestive process and it is also obvious how
blocking up of the connective tissues, which is the immediate cause of
anorexia and inanition, usually comes to exist in the body.

M.D. talks of "natural food." He seems to be a vegetarian? Good. But
is not the question of how much food we ought to eat equally urgent
whether we are vegetarian or omnivorous? I think it is. I do not think
that the chief cause of our illnesses to-day is taking wrong or
unsuitable food. In my opinion we are ill mainly because we take
suitable food too often and because we take too much of it. My answer
to the question, therefore--"How Much Should We Eat?--A
Warning"--turns on the previous question: What is the Function
performed by Food in the Body? As I think that this function in the
grown body is only to restore the waste, the warning in my mind is
far rather that we should take less than that we should (as M.D.
advises us) take more. I agree with him in the view that "chronic
starvation is insidious." But, as I believe that "chronic starvation"
is usually a form of Dr King Chambers's "starvation from
over-repletion" and of Dr Dewey's "starvation from over-feeding," I am
bound to be of the consequent opinion that it is to be met, not by
increase, but by diminution of the diet. This is one of my reasons for
thinking that none of us ought ever to eat oftener than twice a day,
under fifty years of age, and that after that we would do well to eat
once a day only. I feel sure that