RECOGNIZING the fact that catarrh has its basis in alimentary fermentation, and that fermentation in its turn arises from starchy foodstuffs, the adherents of the "mucous-free" or raw-food diet aim at a more or less thorough exclusion of cooked as well as of general starch - bearing plants or grains from their dietary. The plants which we thus have been asked to avoid are principally made up of tubers and pulses, such as the potato, bean, pea, squash, rice, pumpkin and the cereals in general. On the other hand the foods considered "mucous free" and dietetically reliable, are contained in the green, leafy vegetable, the nuts and fruits of the season, and the cereals, bread and crackers made up of bran and cellulose.

That the human body can be sustained on a strict "mucous-free" diet can be subject to no doubt. We admit freely that fruits, nuts, lettuce, cucumbers, turnips, carrots, celery, cabbage, bread and milk contain all of the tissue salts that have been considered indispensable to the sustenance of human life. In fact, we may even go so far as to assert that a complete discharge of every vital function can be maintained on a diet of grain alone, or on fruit alone, or on milk, and even on vegetables alone. For the cells of any kind of food have potential energy sufficient to sustain, for longer or shorter time, every form of life; the question being merely to what extent the constitutional power of individual assimilation can penetrate and absorb the latent nutritional energy and transform it into biologically available power. In other words, it devolves upon the individual organism to polarize the potential energy of the food cell into the kinetic power of organized, physiologically dynamic life.

For, after all, the problem of diet has not its solution either in the quantity or quality of the food itself, but in the processes of nutritional chemistry, at work in the individual. The same food which saves human life may also wreck it, according to the biologic and physiologic condition of the individual himself; just as the same physical-culture exercises may break down one individual and build up another. It is not in the minimum of food that we encounter the danger of tissue destruction, but in its maximum; not in the lack of calories and grams of proteids, but in the mixtures of incompatible foodstuffs, and in the fermentation and auto-intoxication arising from the inevitable chemical reactions. For, above all, we must never ignore the fact that the stomach is a chemical retort, and subject to the same processes of reaction that take place in the chemical laboratory. And these reactions, whether we realize them or not, take place whenever chemically heterogeneous substances are allowed to enter the stomach, though the immediate disastrous effect upon the system may be diverted by the constitutional reserve power of the individual, or by some saving personal idiosyncrasy which may keep him away from a given form of food.

The conditions that affect digestion may thus be summed up in two groups of reactions; those related to the food itself - its amount, quality, combination and temperature, and those related to the individual, his temperament, nerve-power, occupation, disposition and previous modes and habits of living.

From this it is self - evident that the problem of diet is not solved on a basis of mere individual sustenance, or on his position and character as a vegetating organized creature in evolution. The question is considerably deeper and involves the balance between a maximum of available, constitutional energy and a minimum of vital and nervous expenditure. The business of life is based on the same principles of profit and loss as that of sociological, organized industry; in either case the determining issue is to insure a continuity of production upon a self-sustaining basis. The expenditure of energy involved in the digestion, peptonization, emulsification, assimilation, ionization and vitalization of the food in its transit through the nutritional exchanges, from potential elemental energy into kinetic muscular power, must not exceed the available vital sum-total of the physiological resources of the body itself, or the ulti mate result will be ruinous, notwithstanding its apparent, though temporary success.

Brought to the stress of expediency, while yet backed up by the heredity of a vitally powerful ancestry, nature becomes a true miracle worker, and may again and again reproduce the ancient miracle of Canaan, in feeding the numberless hosts of her cells with the mere salvage of her physiological wreckage. Heredity is a factor which must be seriously reckoned with in the relation of an individual to his food, and his general power of endurance. Thus we may frequently find how one individual may triumph in the very indulgences that result in the ruin of another. Yet the ultimate result, however long deferred, will be the same: foreshortening of the vital perspective of the individual, through the premature degeneracy and breakdown of his organism.

Nor does the real danger to life lie in underfeeding. Innumerable are the reports that come to us from individuals who have been able to sustain life on a menu which, from an ordinary dietetic point of view would mean disaster. Most of us, perhaps, are acquainted with Prof. Yates' experiment with the Ham - mam Bath attendant, who, during a fifteen hour fast, while continuing his work as masseur, lost three pounds of weight. At the end of the fast, he was placed in front of an open window, where after two hours of complete rest and relaxation, and with no other form of nourishment than a glass of port-wine, he regained every ounce of his loss.

Another case is reported by Horace Fletcher of a well-known Boston author, who for fifteen years sustained an active existence on a diet of three whole wheat biscuits a day, with a glass of fresh milk at each meal. Not less strange is a case reported by a German medical journal, of a Hungarian peasant who for three years had been living on alfalfa and milk; while in a number of the London Lancet, dated 1910, mention was made of a lawyer, carrying on a prosperous practice in a suburb of London, who for over ten years . had been living on a menu of apples, either in their natural, raw state or prepared in different forms of cooking. We all know about the old Scotchman, attaining the age of 105 years on a diet of oatmeal and milk; and the

Irishman reaching the same milestone on a staff of life made up of potatoes and salt. Again we have the old Dutch woman living over a hundred years on a "pumpernickel, pickled-herring and small-beer diet;" while macaroni, onions and cheese accomplished the same feat with the Italians; and rolls, wine-soup and lettuce salad bring longevity to the French. Finally, we find the Bulgarians reach an almost incredible longevity on black bread and onion - garlic - barley puree - while last, but not least, comes the famous case of the Irish Mayor, Clarence MacSwiney, performing his 75 days fast under the most adverse conditions, on a diet of mere sips of water!

What at once captures our attention in this array of long-lived men and women, is their disregard for any rule laid down by the canon of the "mucous-free" or any other specialized "health-food" diet. The Scotch oatmeal, the Irish potato, the Italian macaroni and the French roll, are the very substances which the "mucous-free" dietician especially warns against, and which go to prove that the premises for his food system are wrong and unreliable, overlooking facts which are of enormous significance in the science and practice of a rational life-prolonging diet.