a
fruitarian dietary in cases of cancer, tumour, gout, eczema, all kinds
of inflammatory complaints, and wounds that refused to heal.

H. Benjafield, M.B., writing in the _Herald of Health_, says: "Garrod,
the great London authority on gout, advises his patients to take
oranges, lemons, strawberries, grapes, apples, pears, etc. Tardieu, the
great French authority, maintains that the salts of potash found so
plentifully in fruits are the chief agents in purifying the blood from
these rheumatic and gouty poisons.... Dr. Buzzard advises the scorbutic
to take fruit morning, noon, and night. Fresh lemon juice in the form of
lemonade is to be his ordinary drink; the existence of diarrhoea should
be no reason for withholding it." The writer goes on to show that
headache, indigestion, constipation, and all other complaints that
result from the sluggish action of bowels and liver can never be cured
by the use of artificial fruit salts and drugs.

Salts and acids as found in organised forms are quite different in their
effects to the products of the laboratory, notwithstanding that the
chemical composition may be shown to be the same. The chemist may be
able to manufacture a "fruit juice," but he cannot, as yet, manufacture
the actual fruit. The mysterious life force always evades him. Fruit is
a vital food, it supplies the body with something over and above the
mere elements that the chemist succeeds in isolating by analysis. The
vegetable kingdom possesses the power of directly utilising minerals,
and it is only in this "live" form that they are fit for the consumption
of man. In the consumption of sodium chloride (common table salt),
baking powders, and the whole army of mineral drugs and essences, we
violate that decree of Nature which ordains that the animal kingdom
shall feed upon the vegetable and the vegetable upon the mineral.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] This was the original treatment; now other food is added, although
excellent results were obtained under the old _regime_.

_Fruit and the Teeth._

I mention the above because one of the objections that I have heard
cited against the free use of fruit is that "the acids act injuriously
upon the teeth." Until I became a vegetarian I used to visit a dentist
regularly every six months. I had done this for ten years, and nearly
every tooth in my gums had its gold filling. The last time I visited the
dentist I told him that I had become a vegetarian, and he replied that
he rathe