Every imaginable experiment upon what would and what would not support life must have been tried thousands of years ago, and yet our most striking proofs of how highly men value their "precious right of private haziness," as George Eliot shrewdly terms it, are to be found in the realm of dietetics. The "light that never was on sea or land" still survives for the most matter-of-fact of us in the memory of "the pies that mother used to make," and nowhere else do we find preferences so widely accepted as evidence, and prejudices as matters of fact, as in this arena. In fact, if we were merely to listen to what is said, and still more to read what is printed, we would come to the conclusion that the human race had established absolutely nothing beyond possibility of dispute in this realm.

When the Doctors Disagree.

Every would-be diet-reformer, and we doctors are almost as bad as any of them, is absolutely certain that what nine-tenths of humanity find to be their food is a deadly poison. One philosopher is sure that animal food of every description, especially the kind that involves the shedding of blood, is not only absolutely unfit for human food, but is the cause of half the suffering and wickedness in the world. Another gravely declares that the only thing which, above all things, is injurious is salt. Another takes up his parable against pork. Still another is convinced that half the misery of the world is due to the use of spices; and one dietetic Rousseau proclaims a return to very first principles by the abolition of cooking.

Another attacks the harmless and blushing tomato, and lays at its door the modern increase of cancer, insanity, and a hundred kindred evils; while Mrs. Rohrer has gently but firmly to be restrained whenever she hears the mild-eyed potato mentioned.

There is almost an equally astonishing Babel when one comes to listen to the various opinions as to the amount of food required. Eighteen grave and reverend doctors assure us that overeating is the prevalent dietetic sin of the century, while the remainder of the two dozen are equally positive that the vast majority of their patients are underfed. One man preaches the gospel of dignified simplicity on one meal a day and one clean collar a week, while the lean and learned Fletcher declares that if we only keep on masticating our one mouthful of food long enough we shall delude the stomach into magnifying it into ten, and can dine sumptuously on a menu-card and a biscuit.

Fortunately, when it comes to practise, philosophers, reformers, and doctors alike have about as much influence here as they have over conduct in other realms—and that is next to none at all. The man in the street follows his God-given instincts and plods peacefully along to his three square meals a day, consisting of anything he can find in the market, and just as much of it as he can afford, with special preference for rich meats, fats, and sugars.

Instinct Far Superior to Reason.

Here, as everywhere, instinct is far superior to reason, and a breakfast diet of sausage and buckwheat cakes with maple syrup and strong coffee has carried the white man half around the world; while one of salads and cereals, washed down with a post-prandial subterfuge, would leave him stranded, gasping, in the first ditch he came to.

All the basal problems of dietetics were, by the mercy of Heaven, settled long ago in the farmhouse kitchen, in the commissary department of the army in the field, in the cook's galley amidships, and in the laboratory.

There is little more room for difference of opinion upon them than there is about the coaling of engines. Simply a matter of size of boiler and fire-box, the difference in heating power and ash between Welsh and Australian, and the amount of work to be got out of the machine, multiplied by the time in which it is to be accomplished.

Writers of that type come and go. They seize upon the excitement of the moment and presently rise like a flock of shore birds and whirl away to another spot where they think they can find a fresh feeding ground. These modern imitators of Titus Oates will pass away as he passed away. They will bring no innocent heads to the block as he did, although they may here and there cause distress. They will not end in the pillory as he did, because the pillory has been abolished, but they will go out of fashion just as he did into silence and contempt.

Treason is an ugly word. It is punishable by death. We have got so used to superlatives that our own racy tongue has become debauched and we have no superlatives left. The Senate of the United States—is it a treasonable body? A body that holds a man like Murray Crane, of Massachusetts? Because some men are there who ought not to be there—some who bought the position—shall we say that the governors of our body politic are guilty of treason? Base men are there, but when in the bright, breezy sentiments of modern newspaper life you assert there is treason, you either lie or misconceive the meaning of the English language.

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