The integrity of the functions of the intestines is of supreme importance, for it is here that absorption and assimilation of most of our food occurs. If our intestines are not in perfect order we shall soon waste and dwindle away, even within a short period, and sometimes very rapidly. Thus if we wish to retain our strength we must treat the intestine with the greatest care. This is especially the case in old age, for then an atrophy of the glandular mechanism of the digestive tract, stomach, and intestines, takes place. Thus old people will not be able to assimilate nourishment to the same extent as younger ones; they will lose a portion of its nutritive value, and it will become more and more difficult for them to completely digest their food. To such people, therefore, it will be necessary to give food in a form that is easily absorbed, preferably in liquid form; it would also be desirable to give them their albuminous food in a predigested and soluble form. In Germany, especially, are used a considerable number of so-called “Nährpräparate,” a nutritive preparation which contains albumin in the form of albumose, which naturally can be assimilated easier; there are also carbohydrate preparations in which the starch is transformed into dextrin or maltose. There is a legion of such preparations, but it would lead us too far to enlarge on them by a longer description. They are produced from proteids, many of them from fish, or from blood, or from eggs; also from milk; while others consist of finely ground preparations of wheat, oatmeal, barley, rice, arrowroot, sago, tapioca, buckwheat, Indian corn, etc. As aged persons have greater difficulty in assimilating in their intestines and stomach food in its natural state, the use of the best of these predigested preparations would certainly be advisable in order to insure a healthy condition of the intestines and a prolongation of life. The last mentioned carbohydrate preparations possess also the great advantage of preventing an excessive putrefaction of the intestinal contents with its harmful consequences, which tendency is always greater with albuminous food, starchy foods in large quantity tending, as already stated, to produce acid fermentation in the intestines by which many products of albuminous digestion can be destroyed. Against these poisons formed in the intestinal tract we possess a natural defense in certain ductless glands, the thyroid and liver, which are degenerated in old people; therefore carbohydrate is the best for them.