Leaving generalities, let us come to a specific case, an actual difficulty propounded to me by a sufferer, one who had spent her substance till she could spend no more in having various parts of herself examined and in learned prescriptions and processes of cure, but who found herself as far from health as ever. Obsessed by certain theories of "Science," this lady had acquired a dread of sugar _in every form_. Hence her query addressed to me: "In your book, _No Rheumatism_, you say that sugar is to be avoided. Why, then, do you recommend fruit, which is mostly sugar?" I replied as follows: "The reason I recommend ripe uncooked fruit--in spite of its containing a certain quantity of sugar--is that it contains also purifying salts, and that for most people it is the pleasantest form in which these salts can be taken. Moreover, fruit sugar appears to be more wholesome than that formed from starch. When you say that 'fruit is mostly sugar,' are you not leaving the water of the fruit out of account? As the water often amounts to 90 per cent. this makes all the difference. Taking the fruits generally grown in this country the average proportion of sugar is seven per cent. [This statement is based on the following figures given in Goodale's Physiological Botany:-- Apples contain 7.73 per cent. sugar Pears " 8.26 " " Plums " 3.56 " " Strawberries 6.28 " " Gooseberries 7.03 " " Grapes are stated to contain 24.36 per cent, but often contain much less and sometimes even more.] "Now a person eating fruit _ad lib._, but allowed other foods, will hardly ever eat more than a pound or two a day (generally less). But suppose him to eat two pounds. Seven per cent. of this is 2+1/4 oz. If he eats only 1 lb. he takes 1+1/8 oz. sugar. Now compare this with the amount he gets from starchy foods, say, bread, which contains fifty per cent. of starch and sugar. As the starch, if it is to be assimilated, must be (and as a general rule practically all is) converted into sugar during digestion, we get from 1 lb. of bread 8 oz. of sugar (to be exact, nearly 9 oz., because starch forms rather more than its own weight of sugar). But the weight of bread allowed for daily food, if no other starchy or sugary food is taken, is--according to orthodox physiology books--1 lb., 11 oz., yielding over 14 oz. of sugar. Now I reduce the starchy food to 8 oz. or less (_No Rheumatism_, p. 34), yielding at most about 4+1/2 oz. of sugar. You see, then, that the patient can now afford to take even 2 lbs. of fruit, because this will bring his total of sugar up to only 6+3/4 oz., as against 14 oz. allowed by the orthodox. And if, as I recommend (p. 33), fruits containing but little sugar (especially cucumbers) are taken, his total sugar under my regime will be even less than 6+3/4 oz.