It does not follow that a patient has been living luxuriously because he is suffering from habitual dyspepsia. It is not uncommon to hear people say that they cannot understand why they should be so afflicted, as their diet had been of the plainest. Bacon and dry bread, with toast and marmalade to follow, sounds rational enough in all conscience. But if the bacon is badly fried and swimming in fat, the bread new, and the toast hot and soaked in butter, it is not surprising that people feel wretched and uncomfortable for the rest of the morning. The way in which food is cooked has always to be taken into consideration. Some cooks and housewives have a genius for spoiling good food, either in the way they prepare it or by their neglect to clean the pots and pans. Greasy saucepans have much to account for. [Sidenote: Classes of food.] Sometimes, however, the fault lies at the door of the person concerned. A partiality for new bread, and an unwillingness to give it up when so advised, have been at the root of a chronic dyspepsia with all its attendant evils. Articles of diet are divided into four classes: Proteids or meat foods, carbohydrates or starchy, oils and fats, water and other liquids. [Sidenote: Meats.] Proteids or meat foods, include fish, fowl, butcher’s meat, and vegetables, such as peas, beans and lentils. The problem of meat, and particularly butcher’s meat, is a vital one for all who are getting on in years. So long as people have no organic disease necessitating special diet they cannot go far wrong in regard to fowl, fish, tongue, ham or bacon. It is a different matter when we come to deal with butcher’s meat, for this contains a large proportion of fibre, which constitutes one of the most difficult forms of waste matter to get rid of. [Sidenote: Meat and gout.] And the ill-effects of this waste matter are more pronounced as people get older, for however healthy they may be, their systems become less capable of eliminating it. It is an excellent rule, therefore, for all persons approaching middle age, even for those who have got into the forties, to reduce their allowance of butcher’s meat, especially beef, taking it no oftener than once a day, and preferably at midday instead of in the evening. Digestion goes on very slowly, if at all, during the hours of sleep, and the habit of eating meat at late dinner or supper is one of the chief causes tending to gout and rheumatism of the gouty type. It is this disease in some phase or other which is the starting-point of so many breakdowns in health. The harmful residue in the system affects almost every organ and tissue, and the arteries in particular. Its most serious effect is on the vessels of the kidney: when once they have become thickened, the elimination of waste matter is reduced to dangerous limits. Then the health of the whole system is imperilled, for one of the most important outlets has become blocked up.