Oxygen 97 12 -- Carbon 30 -- -- Hydrogen 14 10 -- Nitrogen 2 14 -- Calcium 2 -- -- Phosphorus 1 12 190 Sulfur -- 3 270 Sodium -- 2 196 Chlorin -- 2 250 Fluorin -- 2 215 Potassium -- -- 290 Magnesium -- -- 340 Iron -- -- 180 Silicon -- -- 116 Manganese -- -- 90 There are a number of other body-elements, but they are so remote that they have not been clearly defined by physiological chemists. All these body-elements are nourished separately, or, as it were, individually. They must be replenished in the body as rapidly as they are consumed by the vital processes, and this can be accomplished only through the action of the elements, in the forms of food, air, and water, received into the body and assimilated by it. [Sidenote: Where 91 per cent of human ills originate] From my professional experience I have estimated that about 91 per cent of all human ills have their origin in the stomach and the intestines, and are caused directly by incorrect habits in eating and drinking. If this is true, or even approximately true, it shows that, in its relation to health and the pursuit of happiness, food is the most important matter with which we have to deal; yet the average person devotes far less consideration to it than he does to the gossip of the neighborhood, or to the accumulating of a few surplus dollars. [Sidenote: Eminent writers agree as to importance of diet] Profs. Pavloff, Metchnikoff and Chittenden; Hon. R. Russell; Drs. Rabagliati, and Wiley, Ex-Chief of our Federal Bureau of Chemistry, and many other profound thinkers and writers have given in their various books an array of facts which prove beyond doubt that food is the controlling factor in life, strength, and health; yet they have given us but few practical suggestions as to how it should be selected, combined, and proportioned, so as to produce normal health, and especially how to make it remedial and curative, or to make it counteract the appalling increase in disease. I have endeavored to begin where the great theorists left off-- 1 By becoming familiar with the chemistry of food 2 By becoming familiar with the chemistry of the body [Sidenote: Food chemistry useless without body chemistry]