The development of germ life is accompanied by the excretion of toxins of greater or less virulence which circulate through the blood and affect the entire body. This poison, irritating sensor nerves, brings about motor reactions in the segments irritated and, since the normal operation of the laws of reflex action is interrupted somewhat by subluxation, and since the muscles immediately around a subluxated vertebra tend to pull upon it with unequal leverage, this motor reaction is likely to _increase_ already existing malalignments, especially in the same body segment in which the poison is generated and in which the irritation is consequently greatest. Thus subluxation is most pronounced during the activity of the disease caused by it and reacting upon it and thus a disease which began as a localized destructive process may manifest systemic effects through its action upon other abnormal spinal segments. DIET The internal chemistry of the body varies so greatly under changing conditions, the operation of any two different organisms is so hard to compare accurately, that it is impossible to set down any rule for diet which will apply properly to all patients or to all with the same disease or habit of body. In fact, only experiment with an individual can determine the exactly proper diet for him. Through lack of judgment or of observation of the effects of certain foods upon us we often eat that which our bodies cannot properly digest and assimilate. Sometimes through accident or negligence we partake of food which is proper in kind for us but improper in quality, perhaps partially decomposed. Improper food, when taken into the body, tends to exert a deleterious effect upon health. This fact should not lead us to confine ourselves to reasoning superficially that improper foods _cause disease_ or that dietary measures will _cure_ disease. Some Chiropractors have held that the hunger of individuals for certain foods is a safe guide to a proper diet. This is manifestly untrue in some cases; the voracious appetite of the convalescent typhoid patient is an example. But it would probably be true _if all men were normal_. Close observation of a few exceptionally well-developed and normal individuals has disclosed an interesting fact. If a man has no subluxation in that portion of the spine which controls the stomach, the ingestion of decomposing food, even though the alteration be so slight as to escape notice on casual examination, induces immediate vomiting followed by no untoward consequences. Only occasionally does one find persons without subluxations in some way affecting the stomach; in such cases the body promptly rejects and expels injurious material.