Most men eat six times the minimum and twice the optimum quantity of food
per day. For every one who starves, hundreds gorge themselves to death.
"Food kills more than famine", and the poor, who eat sparsely from
necessity, suffer far less from gout, cancer, rheumatism and other
food-aggravated diseases than the rich.

Most books give detailed lists of foods to be eaten and to be avoided, but
this we believe is productive of little good.

Let the patient eat a mixed diet, well and suitably cooked, taking what he
fancies in reason, masticating everything thoroughly, and gradually
eliminating foods which experience teaches him are difficult for him to
digest.

* * * * *

CHAPTER XIV

CONSTIPATION

"Causing a symptom to disappear is seldom the cure of
any ill; the true course is to _prevent_ the symptom."

Rings of muscle cause wormlike movements of the bowels, and so propel
forward food and waste. Weakening of these muscles or their nerve controls
from any cause, results in a "condition of the bowels in which motions
occur only when provoked by medicines or injections". In some cases though
motions occur freely, food ingested is retained too long in the digestive
tract.