The great harm that was done to the world by the academic prescription of excessive protein rations[M] was that it started a vicious circle of extravagances which led as surely to untimely death as murder. The perpetrators of this pernicious prescription were innocent of intention to do harm; in fact, they were full of the most generous of motives in issuing their poisonous advice, and one of the most prominent, at least, paid the penalty by dying miserably of his own fatal ignorance. [M] Voit, Atwater, etc. I may also say that it is "presumption," advisably, for almost all prescriptions of food which do not have their basis on the natural body calls are presumptuous. Nature knows! If given a chance to show her knowledge Nature prescribes rightly and delivers her message in the form of appetite and the other instincts. She will do this in the midst of the most complicated of artificial food mixtures, as I have reason to know from personal experience, confirmed by many others over and over again. Therefore I may say more surely than ever, that whatever NATURE PROVIDES and PERMITS as NOURISHMENT I HAVE NO RIGHT TO _PRO_SCRIBE. THE ONLY _PRE_SCRIPTION that Honesty approves is the Optimum Economic Nutrition; and my great preceptor, Dr. Hindhede, the ideally honest scientist and doctor, ventures to prescribe only the plainest of foods that are delicious to a true, keen appetite, and cost the least through being in season and so common and easy to grow as to be cheapest. This good and superlatively honest doctor does not _Pro_scribe anything that Nature permits as food and he does not even _Pro_scribe the transportation of grapes from Madeira to the North Cape of Norway for the enjoyment of those who can afford to pay for them. Would the _Pro_scribers of flesh food have denied Amundsen and his companions the flesh of their faithful dogs as a last resort in securing nourishment for the completion of their journey to the South Pole? It was their truly last resort in gaining the victory over the Ice God; and would to God that brave Captain Scott and his band of faithful ones had had such a last but saving resort to help them accomplish the eleven miles between them and rescue! But then, the world would have missed a model of altruism that is worth a million lives, and one of which million everybody would like to be, if their lives are worth the living. THE PROTEIN ENTHUSIAST