or in the best mental and physical state possible under the circumstances.

If a person's nutrition and strength are maintained and all the eliminative functions are working properly (the blood and urine being normal and the lung capacity and weight proportionate to the height) his food and drink for the time are approximately what they should be and his occupation and habits such as his physique can endure. Here the "physiological balance exists or has been found; yet the disease for which he is undergoing treatment, may persist or has not been wholly relieved by regulating the foods. Cause for this persistence is probably due to some one food, or foods, eaten in too great quantity or too continuously, or in insufficient quantity, or to too much liquid at meals, or to some mental or physical habit, that must be sought out and overcome.

These diet lists will be found good working formulas, right in principle, but it is not expected they will act perfectly with all.

By careful attention, however, to the Notes regulating each and to individual requirements, it is hoped they can be made to relieve with fair certainty the abnormal states for which each is intended, whether due to improper foods, failure of elimination or bad habits.

GENERAL RULES.

One should be temperate in the adoption and use of foods named in the diet selected. Change in any one particular is change enough for that day.

It is too much to expect that regulation of the food will promptly revolutionize the habits of a life time.

These diets must be carefully and intelligently followed, if the results claimed for them and expected are to be realized.

Fried food in any form, especially fried fat, is indigestible.

The best time to drink water or other liquids in amount, is the same in every case-on rising, an hour and a half before meals. and half an hour before retiring.

Not more than two glasses should be taken at any meal and but one when soup. is indulged in. Drink slowly.

Water should be taken at the close of a meal, milk during the meal: sip after swallowing food. The mouth should be rinsed after drinking milk.

Only liquids should be taken between meals, unless fruit or other food is required for constipation or nourishment.

Constipation must be avoided: it is intimately related to all chronic disorders for which regulation of the foods is indicated.

Properly the heartiest meal should be eight hours away from sleep. If one is at work, however, and a heavy lunch causes indigestion or drowsiness this rule should not be followed. Insomnia, on the other hand, with many, is nature's signal for a light supper.

No attempt has been made to furnish an elaborate bill of fare.

Health and good digestion are the first considerations sought.

Figures for the height and weight mentioned here are taken from the records of the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co.

The lung capacity based on the height for men, is in the ratio of 3 to 1-for every inch of height there should be three cubic inches of lung capacity. For women the ratio is 2 to 1.

The lung capacity based on the weight is derived from multiplying the weight by 1.8.

The thoracic perimeter should not be less than half the height; this is found by dividing full inspiration and expiration added, by 2.

"Milk and grains, grains and eggs, grains and vegetables or meats, grains and fruits" are compatible.

"Fruit and vegetables, milk and vegetables, milk and meats, or fats cooked with grains" are incompatible.

DIET IN CONSTIPATION.

(Copyright.)

Take a glass of hot or cold water on rising, salted to taste or flavored with lemon juice, cloves or unfermented grape juice. Orange juice, grape-fruit juice. BREAKFAST: Cereals-Corn meal mush,

oat meal mush, thoroughly cooked, with cream and a dash of sugar; rye mush with clear honey or New Orleans' syrup; cracked wheat, coarse hominy.

Meats (red) Rump steak, round steak, sirloin; mutton chops, lamb chops; thin bacon with dry toast. Pepper and salt, Chutney or Worcestershire sauce.

Fish (oily) Salmon, mackerel, blue fish, sword fish, eels, boiled or baked; (fine fibred) cod, haddock, halibut; trout or other lake or brook fish, boiled or broiled.

Eggs-Soft boiled. poached or raw, twice a week.

Breads-Cestus gluten and bran bread, corn bread; whole wheat, rye, graham and brown bread. Butter, clear honey, orange marmalade.

Fruits-Stewed prunes, stewed figs; fresh stewed fruit, raw ripe fruit. Apples, apricots, gooseberries, blackberries, strawberries, huckleberries, blueberries. Melons.

Drinks-Clear coffee, cold water. Vigor chocolate.

A. M. BETWEEN MEALS: Cold water, root beer, sweet cider, buttermilk. French prepared prunes, Turkey figs, dates. LUNCH: Meats-(red) Roast beef, roast lamb, roast mutton; (white) stewed or roasted chicken, turkey, capon, duck or goose; quail, partridge or other game birds.

Any fish mentioned. Sardines in oil.
Any vegetable mentioned.

Any bread mentioned.

Any fruit mentioned.

Any drink mentioned. Unfermented grape juice. Milk.

Any dessert mentioned, if desired. Nuts, with crackers or fruit.

P. M. BETWEEN MEALS: Same as A. M. DINNER: Soups-Vegetable, oat meal or

cracked wheat soups. Veal, lamb or mutton broths, chicken broth, with cestus bisbak or pearl braley or okra. Croutons.

Any fresh fish mentioned. Oysters raw with horseradish.

Any meat mentioned.

Vegetables-Green corn, boiled onions, spinach, cauliflower, tomatoes, asparagus, celery; Brussles sprouts, radishes, sauer-kraut and cabbage. Carrots, turnips, haricots, parsnips, green beans, green peas, beet tops.

Cold water is to be preferred to hot; hot water may be used morning and evening by the anemic, in cold weather.

Coffee should be drunk not too hot; black coffee and lemon juice, on rising, has a laxative effect with many.

Only fresh foods should be eaten.

Sugar and other sweets should be eaten sparingly.

Gross eating tends to constipate; especially if the digestion is weak.

A breakfast of oat meal and cream, or rye mush and syrup, has a decidedly laxative effect. If cream disagrees, malted milk, unfermented grape-juice or prune-juice may be substituted.

Stewed fruits should be one of the regular dishes, morning and evening, if vegetables are not eaten instead. Dried plums and prunes should be minced before boiling. Dried or canned peaches tend to constipate. Bananas tend to constipate.

Fruit between meals is more laxative in action than when taken at meal time.

Tomatoes at breakfast help constipation; better

eaten raw.

Avoid fruits between meals if fruit with meals is effectual. Fruit and vegetables at the same meal are objectionable, if digestion fails. Cabbage causes flatulency.

Apples at the close of every meal with many, are especially good for constipation.

If the digestion is imperfect cooked fruit is the better.

Use saccharine in place of sugar on cooked fruit.

If dyspeptic or gouty, a dash of rum or sherry

may be used to flavor grape fruit, in place of

sugar.

Sweets and starchy foods do not often go well together.

Sweetened coffee with starchy food is apt to produce flatulency.

Avoid eggs if the tongue is furred, if there is nausea, flatulency or loss of appetite.

Red meat tends to constipate some people and not others.

White bread tends to constipate some people and not others.

All breads must be eaten cold and in strict moderation.

All soups must be thin; soups tend to constipate dyspeptic patients.

Soups or purees should be served with grains

or croutons.

The constipating effect of milk may be overcome by adding a tablespoonful of sugar of milk to each glass.

Milk and meat at the same meal are incompatible.

Root beer should contain either sarsaparilla or sassafras.

A little water poured on a tablespoonful of linseed (let stand for an hour) and drunk just before a meal, is laxative in action.

Walnuts, filberts or pecans, for lunch with fruit do not constipate; masticate thoroughly.

If fleshy, avoid corn-meal mush, oat meal, corn bread, oily fish, figs, dates, sweets, soups, beer and ale.

If rheumatic avoid the free use of tomatoes, asparagus, rhubarb, onions, spinach, soups, beer, ale and sweets.

Constipation, generally speaking, is nothing but a bad habit. By the persistent use of proper foods, the maintenance of regular habits and some form of treatment or exercise, the majority of cases due to faulty foods can be relieved.

ANNOUNCEMENT.

KNOWING Dr. J. Warren Achorn to be greatly interested in diet in disease we have made an arrangement with him to write a series of "Diet Lists" for certain abnormal conditions, to be published in the GAZETTE, one in every issue, during 1901. In this number of the GAZETTE we publish his diet list in constipation. For February the one for indigestion or dyspepsia will be given. We will announce in each succeeding issue of the GAZETTE the diet list which will be published in the next following number.

ACCORDING to F. L. Keays (Medical Record) the routine diet in vogue at the New York Hospital throughout the active stage of typhoid fever is milk, fifty to seventy ounces being given in twenty-four hours. It is customary to keep a daily record of the amount of milk taken, so that it will not fall below what is necessary. When plain milk is not acceptable to the patient it is varied in different ways; a little brandy or a few spoonfuls of coffee or some malted milk is added; koumyss or matzoon is substituted for milk from time to time for variety. Patients who complain of hunger are given broth or beef juice. As soon as the temperature reaches normal, more active feeding is begun. The patient is given a lamb chop, or an egg boiled for twenty minutes, and finely chopped, or scrapedbeef sandwiches. Proper mastication of the food is urged. Each day, as the food agrees, new articles of diet are added to the list, or those already given are increased in amount. Baked custard, bread, milk toast, and finally chicken, raw oysters, baked apple, baked potato, rice, hominy, and green vegetables are allowed, the milk all the time being cut down. The patient is kept upon this food while in the hospital and is told to continue it for several weeks after leaving.

large doses of olive oil in cases of severe gastric distress. In his first case the young man had suffered from an injury in the gastric region, and it seemed probable that a traumatic ulcer had resulted. The pain on eating was so great as to make the patient avoid food. A wineglass of olive oil taken before meals gave complete relief. The same remedy was tried in other cases in which stomach discomfort was a prominent symptom. Even in cases of gastric cancer relief was afforded to many symptoms. In cases of pyloric stenosis most satisfactory results were secured as far as the alleviation of symptoms was concerned. Besides, the dilatation of the stomach that existed began to diminish, and eventually in some cases disappeared completely. Cohnheim has treated twelve cases of gastric catarrh by this method with uniformly good results whenever the patients bore the oil well. In one or two cases this method of treatment was tried as an absolutely last resort before operation, and it proved successful. Patients who had lost so much in weight as to appear almost cachectic began immediately to gain in weight, and within a couple of months gained from fifteen to thirty pounds.

Professor Mathieu, of Paris, said that in certain of the country parts both of Germany and France olive oil is used as a family remedy for all stomach pains. It is most effective and has a high reputation. In his practice at the Hôpital Andral, Dr. Mathieu has often used this remedy and knows how efficient it is where less simple remedies have failed. He recommends it with confidence despite its utter empiricism and lack of claim to any scientific basis.

THE SOURCE OF OXALIC ACID IN THE URINE.

THE question as to the source of the oxalic acid found in the urine has not yet been satisfactorily solved. According to Lommel (Deutsches Archiv für klinische Medicin) the oxalic acid excreted by the kidneys seems to be derived only in small part from that introduced into the organism by the food. More than one hundred analyses made by this investigator under varying conditions of diet failed to show that the amount of oxalic acid excreted was greater after a mixed or a vegetable diet than after a diet free from this salt, i. e., one that consisted chiefly of meat and bread. By far the greatest part of it is formed in the body itself, for even during absolute abstinence from foods containing oxalic acid this substance appears in the urine in considerable quantity-about 30 milligrams per day.

When oxalic acid has been ingested in large quantities with the food, only a small fraction appears in the urine and feces. Lommel believes it to be highly probable that the salt is for the most part decomposed during its passage through the organism, it being possible that a certain proportion is destroyed on reaching the intestine. The excretion of oxalic acid bears no direct relation to the disintegration of albumin; the introduction of food rich in nuclein, however, causes, besides an increase of uric acid, a heightened excretion also of oxalic acid. Food containing much gelatin increases likewise the output of this salt.

THE DISADVANTAGES OF RAWMILK FEEDING.

THE objection to the raw-milk feeding of infants is based, according to Louis Fischer (Medical Record), upon the contamination of milk with various pathogenic bacteria. Such risk, however, is reduced to a mini

mum when all the principles of modern hygienic measures are rigidly enforced. It is a well-known fact that the prolonged use of sterilized or boiled milk will produce scurvy, and when scurvy exists both sterilized and boiled milk must be discontinued to give place to fresh raw milk. Does it not seem more plausible in the face of such clinical experience to commence feeding at once with raw milk rather than risk the development of scurvy and be compelled to discontinue all other forms of feeding excepting raw foods? There is a certain deadness, or, to put it differently, absence of freshness in milk that is boiled or sterilized. It seems to be the lack of this same element of freshness which in the absence of fresh meat and green vegetables will produce scurvy in the adult. Speaking of the development of scurvy in children fed on sterilized or boiled milk, Rundlett says that changes take place not in the albumin, fat, or sugar; but in the albuminate of iron, phosphorus, and possibly in the fluorin, vital changes takes place. The albuminoids are certainly in milk, derived as it is from tissues that contain them and are present in a vitalized form as proteids.

On boiling the change that takes place is due simply to the coagulation of the globulin or proteid molecule, which splits away from the inorganic molecule, and thus renders it as to the iron and fluorin unabsorbable, and as to the phosphatic molecule unassimilable. This is the change that is so vital, and it is this only which takes place when milk is boiled. It is evident that children require phosphatic and ferric proteids in a living form, which are contained only in raw milk.

Cheadle says that phosphate of lime is necessary to every tissue. No cell growth can go on without earthy phosphates; even the lowest form of life, such as fungi and bacteria, cannot grow if deprived of them. These salts of lime and magnesia are especially called for in the development of the bony structures.