It has been fully proved that “bulk, or a due proportion of innutritious matter in our food, is quite as important to health as nourishment.” Human beings may subsist from childhood to extreme old age on good potatoes and pure water alone, and enjoy the best and most uninterrupted health, and possess the greatest muscular power and ability to endure protracted fatigue and exposure. But if the purely nutrient matter of the potato be separated out by artificial means, and human beings, fed exclusively on this concentrated form of aliment and pure water, they will soon perish, because the alimentary organs of man are not constituted and endowed for such kinds of food. And this is true of all animals, in the higher orders, at least. We know that dogs fed on sugar and water, gum and water, fine flour bread and water, or any other kind of concentrated aliment, will soon languish, and droop, and emaciate, and die; but if a due proportion of proper innutritious substance be mixed with these concentrated forms of aliment, the dogs will subsist on them and remain healthy. So if horses, cows, deer, sheep, and other grass-eating animals be fed on grain alone, they will soon lose their appetite and begin to droop, and will shortly perish; but if a due proportion of straw or shavings of wood be given them with their grain, they will continue to do well. Man is affected in the same manner. He cannot long subsist on purely nutritious substances. And the reason is not because these substances have no azote or nitrogen in them; nor is it because man _necessarily_ requires a variety of alimentary substances, but simply and exclusively because the anatomical construction and vital powers of the alimentary organs, are constitutionally adapted to alimentary substances which consist of both nutritious and innutritious matter; and therefore a due proportion of innutritious matter in the food of man is as essential to the welfare of his alimentary organs, as a due proportion of nourishment is to the support of his body.