Instead of adding to the bodily vigour and increasing the fitness of the organism to do its daily work, we are really hampering the delicate mechanism, upon the smooth running of which so much depends. Why, now, should we assume that a daily diet of over 100 grams of proteid, with fats and carbohydrates sufficient to make up a fuel value of over 3,000 large calories, is a necessary requisite for bodily vigour and physical and mental fitness? Mainly because of the supposition that true dietary standards may be learned by observing the relative amounts of nutrients actually consumed by a large number of individuals so situated that the choice of food is unrestricted. But this does not constitute very sound evidence. It certainly is not above criticism. We may well ask ourselves whether man has yet learned wisdom with regard to himself, and whether his instincts or appetites are to be entirely trusted as safe guides to follow in the matter of his own nutrition. The experiments of Kumagawa, Sivén, and other physiologists, have certainly shown that men may live and thrive, for a time at least, on amounts of proteid per day equal to only one-half and one-quarter the amount called for in the Voit standard. Sivén’s experiments, in particular, certainly indicate that the human organism can maintain itself in nitrogenous equilibrium with far smaller amounts of proteid in the diet than is ordinarily taught, and, further, that this condition can be attained without unduly increasing the total calories of the food intake. Such investigations, however, have always called forth critical comment from writers on nutrition, indicating a reluctance to depart from the current doctrines of the Voit or Munich school; and, indeed, it may justly be claimed that the ordinary nutrition experiments, extending over short periods of time, are not entirely adequate to prove the effect of a given set of conditions when the latter are continued for months or years. Thus, Schäfer writes: “It may be doubted whether a diet which includes considerably less proteid than 100 grams for the twenty-four hours could maintain a man of average size and weight for an indefinite time. It has frequently been asserted that many Asiatics consume a very much smaller proportion of proteid than is the case with Europeans. The inhabitants of India, Japan, and China chiefly consume rice as the normal constituent of their diet, which contains relatively little proteid; and this has been advanced as an argument in favour of the view that the minimal amount of proteid is much less than that ordinarily given as essential to the maintenance of nutritive equilibrium. It must, however, be stated that we have no definite statistics to show that, in proportion to their body-weight, Asiatics doing the same amount of work as Europeans require a less amount of proteids; indeed such evidence as is forthcoming is rather in favor of the opposite view.” This statement is