Nuts and fruits are a splendid combination, since the fat of the nuts and the sugar of the fruits supply the energy and heat producing substances. Fruit sugar indeed is merely a digested form of starch—the digestive process having been accomplished by the heat of the sun in the ripening of the fruit. Fruits contain no fat and practically no starch, and with the exception of the fig, the banana, and a few others, they contain so small an amount of proteid that that element may be considered practically missing. Fruits are used for the sugar, the acids, and the water they contain. Nuts and fruits may be eaten and digested raw by persons who have sound teeth, and who will thoroughly masticate these foods. Bananas should never be eaten until they are completely ripe, this condition being shown by the appearance of black or dark brown spots on the skin. When in this condition they are usually thrown into the garbage can by the fruit dealer. Before eating them, one should scrape off the outside fluff, which is next to the skin, as experiments have shown this to be highly indigestible. Eaten when ripe no fruit is more nutritious or delightful than the banana. The only way in which unripe bananas should be used is baked, the same as apples, when they make a succulent and nutritious dish. Sweet apples will digest more quickly than any other raw fruit substance; but if eaten raw, apples should be thoroughly ripened, and most thoroughly masticated, else hard pieces of apple will enter the stomach and give rise to fermentation. A mealy apple is considered by physiologists as a food substance almost completely predigested, and ready for absorption. If such an apple is reduced to a smooth pulp by chewing, it will pass out of the stomach within an hour. Baked, sweet apples are digested by persons whose stomachs will not tolerate any other fruit. The acid of sour apples is an excellent corrective for foul conditions of the stomach, such as exist in biliousness. The germs of typhoid, of cholera, and others likely to produce acute disease, are quickly killed by solutions of citric and malic acids, the acids of the lemon or the apple. The juice of a lemon added to an ounce of water will render that water sterile within half an hour, even though it may contain the germs of typhoid fever and cholera. The antiseptic properties of fruit juice render it exceedingly valuable as a means of killing the germs in the stomach and the alimentary canal; a fact which explains the benefits derived from various “fruit cures,” which have been for many years practiced in Europe, and more recently have been employed in various parts of the United States.