a diet,
or called accessory foods..... These are what man does not want, if the
protracting from day to day his residence on earth be the sole object
of his feeding. He could live without them, grow without them, think,
after a fashion, without them. A baby does. Would he be wise to try and
imitate it?

"Thus, there is no question but that easily assimilable brown meat is
the proper food for those whose muscular system is subjected to the
waste arising from hard exercise; and if plenty of it is to be got, and
the digestive organs are in sufficiently good order to absorb enough to
supply the demand, it completely covers the deficiency. Water, under
these circumstances, is the best drink; and a 'total abstainer,' with
plenty of fresh meat, strong exercise, and a vigorous digestion, will
probably equal anybody in muscular development. But should the
digestion not be in such a typical condition, should the exercise be
oversevere and the victuals deficient, then the waste must be limited
by some arrester of metamorphosis; if it is not, the system suffers,
and the man is what is called 'overworked.'.... Intellectual labor also
exercises the demand for food, and at the same time, unfortunately,
injures the assimilating organs; so that, unless a judicious diet is
employed, waste occurs which cannot be replaced."

Waste, we may be told, is life, and the rapidity of change marks the
activity of the vital processes. True, if each particle consumed is at
once and adequately replaced. Beyond that point, let the balance once
tend to over-consumption, and we approach the confines of decay. Birds
live more and faster than men, and insects probably most of all; yet
many of the latter are ephemeral.

Every-day experience had long pointed to the recurring coincidence,
that, of the annual victims of pulmonary consumption, few were to be
found among the habitual consumers of ardent spirits. Science
volunteered the explanation, that alcohol supplied a hydro-carbonaceous
nutriment similar to that furnished by the cod-liver oil, which,
serving as fuel, spared the wasting of the tissues, just in proportion
to its own consumption and assimilation. Other aid it was supposed to
lend, by stimulating the function of nutrition to renewed energy. Later
investigations have proved that it exercises a yet more important
influence as an arrester of metamorphosis. It was on arriving at this
conclusion, that Dr. Boecker was led to institute a series of c