m, as
regards its quality, at three years old, is best for them at thirty; or,
should they live so long, at ninety. I repeat it; there is very little
difference in the nature of the food required ever after teething.

Let me not be understood as saying that the strong, and the robust, and
the active cannot digest food which the weak, and enervated, and
indolent cannot. Undoubtedly they can. But this does not prove that they
_ought_ to do it. It does not prove that their strength and vigor were
not given them for other purposes than to be expended on the poorer
substances for food, when they might have better. Nor is it true, as
often pretended, that the hard laborer needs either more food, or that
which is of a stronger quality, just in proportion to the severity of
his labor. The man or the child who labors moderately, just sufficient
for the purposes of health, and labors with his hands in the open air,
needs rather _more_ food than the indolent or the sedentary, or those
who labor to excess; but not that which is of a stronger quality. It is
he who labors to excess--if any difference of quality were required at
all--who should eat milder food, as well as less in quantity.

Some physicians there are who tell us that all mankind would live
longer, as well as be more healthful, if they ate nothing but bread, and
drank nothing but water. It may be so, but I do not believe it. Water,
as I shall show hereafter, is indeed the only appropriate drink; but I
do not believe that bread, even after the second year, is in all cases
and circumstances the best food. Besides that the experiments of
Majendie and other physiologists go a little way--though not far, I
confess--to prove that animals generally, (and if so, why not man, as
well as the rest?) thrive best with some degree of variety in their
food, it seems to me more in accordance with the general intentions of
the Creator, so far as we can discover what they are.

While, therefore, I deny that either milk or bread is better, in all
cases, for human sustenance, than any other articles of food, I must, at
the same time, be permitted to regard them as among the best, and as
deserving more general attention. Every infant, after leaving the
breast, should, as it seems to me, make bread, in some of its forms, a
chief article of food.

This article, so justly and emphatically called the staff of life, may
be found in almost every country. Common sense seems to have dictated
th