It is, probably, speaking within bounds, to say that nine tenths of the adults, and nearly as large a proportion of youth in civic life, are more or less afflicted with obstructions and disturbances in the stomach and bowels, and other organs of the abdomen, the symptoms of which are either habitual costiveness or diarrhœa, or an alternation of both; or frequent and severe attacks of what are called bilious colics, &c., &c.; and in children and youth, worms, fits, convulsions, &c. And I cannot but feel confident, that the use of superfine flour bread is among the important causes of these and numerous other difficulties. I have indeed been surprised to observe, that in the hundreds of cases of chronic diseases of every form and name, which have come to my knowledge within the last five or six years, costiveness of the bowels has in almost every instance been among the first and most important symptoms. And I have never known this difficulty, even after an obstinate continuance of five, ten, twenty or thirty years, fail to disappear in a short time, after the coarse wheaten bread of a proper character has been substituted for that made of superfine flour. Some physicians and other individuals, without properly examining the subject, have raised several objections against the coarse wheaten bread. It is said, in the first place, that bran is wholly indigestible, and therefore should never be taken into the human stomach. This objection betrays so much ignorance of the final causes and constitutional laws, clearly indicated by the anatomical structure and physiological economy of the alimentary organs, that it scarcely deserves the slightest notice. If the digestive organs of man were designed to receive nothing but digestible and nutrient substances, they would have been constructed and arranged very differently from what they are. As we have already seen, everything which nature provides for our sustenance, consists of certain proportions of nutritious and innutritious matter; and a due proportion of innutritious matter in our food is as essential to the health and functional integrity of our alimentary organs, as a due proportion of nutritious matter is to the sustenance of the body. Another objection is, that although bran may serve, like other mechanical irritants and excitants, for a while, to relieve constipation, yet it soon wears out the excitability of the organs, and leaves them more inactive than before. Here again, a false statement is urged by inexcusable ignorance; for it is not true that the bran acts in the manner supposed in this objection; nor are the effects here asserted ever produced by it.