Yes, finding it, even in a crust of bread or in a morsel of potato, in those humble foods which the most of us seem to take more as matters of habit; for by giving the saliva in the mouth a chance to fulfill the work for which it is put in our mouths by nature, we find that the starch in the bread and in the potato is turned into a sweet, toothsome and partly digested morsel of sugar. Here is a point that answers another of the questions which arose a paragraph or so back. This turning of the starch in bread into sugar by the action of saliva is only one of the numerous acts of digestion which is accomplished in the mouth by the teeth, the tongue, the palate, and the various kinds of juices, or saliva, which are in the mouth. Horace Fletcher pointed out, and medical science now confirms his assertions, that many of the most important parts of the digestive process are meant by nature to be carried out in the first three inches of the alimentary canal. And this is the only place in all the thirty feet or so of the alimentary canal where digestion is in our own control. If we bolt or insufficiently masticate our food, these mouth processes of digestion are simply not accomplished; and for this the whole system suffers sooner or later. The stomach and the intestines are called on to do a great deal of extra work, and much of this extra work is of a kind which they are unable to do. Consequently, what food can not be digested must decompose in the intestines, with the consequent production of poisonous fluids and gases which permeate the body. The whole machinery of digestion is thrown out of gear. All the various germs of disease race to be first to enter the disarranged mechanism, as criminals rush to a city that is in disorder. The blood not being as well nourished as it should be, the white army of the soldiers of the body begin to weaken and to die, and the forces of disease penetrate through their warding lines and attack the fort of life from many sides, or else concentrate their strength in the form of some virulent sickness.