In recent years another disease has come to attract attention which represents the result of an overindulgence in food materials that can be limited without much difficulty. This is diabetes which used to be comparatively rare but has now become rather frequent. An authority on the disease declared not long since that there are over half a million people in this country now who either have or will have diabetes as the result of the breaking down of their sugar metabolism. It is not surprising that the disease should be on the increase, for the consumption of sugar has multiplied to a very serious degree during the last few generations. A couple of centuries ago, those who wanted sugar went not to the grocery store, but to the apothecary shop. It was kept as a flavoring material for children's food, as a welcome addition to the dietary of invalids and the old, and quite literally as a drug, for it was considered to have, as it actually has, to a slight extent at least, some diuretic qualities that made it valuable. A little more than a century ago, a thousand tons of sugar sufficed for the whole world's needs, while the year before the war, the world consumed some twenty-two million of tons of sugar. It is said that every man, woman, and {165} child in the United States consumed on the average every day a quarter of a pound of sugar. Our candy stores have multiplied, and while two generations ago the little candy stores sold candies practically entirely for children, eking out their trade with stationery and newspapers and school supplies, now candy stores dealing exclusively in confectionery are very common. There are several hundred stores in the United States that pay more than $25,000 a year rent, though they sell nothing but candy and ice-cream sodas. Corresponding with the increase in the sale of candy has come also the consumption of very sweet materials of various kinds. French pastries, Vienna tarts, Oriental sweetmeats, Turkish fig paste, Arabian date conserves, and West Indian guava jelly, are all familiar products on our tables. Chocolate has become one of the important articles of world commerce, though almost unknown beyond a very narrow circle a little more than a century ago. Tea and coffee have been introduced from the near and the far East and by a Western abuse consumed with such an amount of sweetening as make them the medium of an immense consumption of sugar.