Coarse wheaten bread, then, by its adaptation to the anatomical structure and to the physiological properties and functional powers of our organs, serves to prevent and to remove the disorders and diseases of our bodies, only by preventing and removing irritation and morbid action and condition, and thereby affording the system an opportunity of recovering its healthy and vigorous action and condition. And the thousands of individuals in our own country of every age—of both sexes—of all situations, conditions and circumstances, who within the last six years have been benefited by using the coarse wheaten bread, instead of that made of superfine flour, are living witnesses of the virtues of that bread. But the testimony in favor of coarse wheaten bread as an important article in the food of man, is by no means limited to our own country nor to modern times. In all probability, as we have already seen, the first generations of our species, who became acquainted with the art of making bread, continued for many centuries to employ all the substance of the grain, which they coarsely mashed in their rude mortars or mills. And even since mankind began, by artificial means, to separate the bran from the flour, and to make bread from the latter, the more close and discerning observers among physicians and philanthropists, have perceived and asserted, that bread made of fine flour is decidedly less wholesome than that made of the unbolted wheat meal. Hippocrates, styled the father of medicine, who flourished more than two thousand years ago, and who depended far more on a correct diet and general regimen, both for the prevention and removal of disease, than he did on medicine, particularly commended the unbolted wheat meal bread, “for its salutary effects upon the bowels.” It was a fact well understood by the ancients, that this bread was much more conducive to the general health and vigor of their bodies, and every way better adapted to nourish and sustain them than that made of the fine flour. And accordingly, their wrestlers and others who were trained for great bodily power, “ate only the coarse wheaten bread, to preserve them in their strength of limbs.” The Spartans were famous for this kind of bread; and we learn from Pliny that the Romans, as a nation, at that period of their history when they were the most remarkable for bodily vigor and personal prowess and achievement, knew no other bread for three hundred years. The warlike and powerful nations which overran the Roman Empire, and finally spread over the greater part of Europe, used no other kind of bread than that which was made of the whole substance of the grain; and from the fall of the Roman Empire to the present day, a large proportion of the inhabitants of all Europe and the greater part of Asia, have rarely used any other kind of bread.