Is it not ridiculous that the average man is so ignorant of the engine which supplies him with all his activity and upon which depends every action of his life? Could you tell, were you asked, the particular need and purpose of your last meal and what it is likely to accomplish? Consider your body as an engine: would you accept yourself as a competent engineer on your own examination and confession? Would you employ a chauffeur to run your automobile who knew as little about its mechanism and requirements as you do about your own stomach? Yet which is of greater importance? Were you the owner of valuable live-stock, would you dare entrust their care to a farm-hand or stableman who knew as little about their proper feeding as you know about your own proper feeding or that of your children? Have you ever stopped to think why the excrements are foul and odorous? Simply because undigested food, which should have been so masticated as to give the body nourishment, is thrown off by the stomach into the intestines, there to decay and produce this unclean condition. If the dead carcass of a cow is lying in the road, it is removed before it has an opportunity to decay and thus become filthy and dangerous. Yet how much more safe it would be for the carcass to lie where it was than for you to take portions of it into your intestines and allow it to decay there instead of in the road? In other words, food is intended to be eaten that nourishment may be gained from it, and when you only gain a part of the nourishment, you prostitute your stomach and take tremendous risks of germ diseases in your body. These facts are set forward thus simply in the hope that they may impress the reader as they have impressed the writer. Economic nutrition is not a joke, is not a fad; it is solely an appeal to self-examination and self-instruction in the most vital question of all the world, since upon perfect nutrition depends not only health, but strength, mental acuteness, moral tendencies, attractability to others, happiness, and, in fact, life itself. FIRST SCIENTIFIC RECOGNITION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC NUTRITION OUTLINED IN “GLUTTON OR EPICURE” [With the exception of a brief review of _Glutton or Epicure_, by Dr. Joseph Blumfield, of London, published in _The Lancet_, no scientific or professional recognition of the principles of an economic nutrition attained by means of thorough buccal digestion was gained until issue of the following paper by Dr. Ernest Van Someren, of Venice, Italy. The previous autumn and winter had been devoted to experiments by Dr. Van Someren and the writer, in co-operation with Dr. Professor Leonardi, for twelve years Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pavia, Italy. In the spring and summer of 1901 the field of experiments was changed to Mendel Pass, _bei_ Bozen, Süd Tirol, Austria, and related to endurance work in climbing mountains and bicycle runs among the Dolomites.