"As so many people fail to distinguish between fruit sugar occurring naturally in fruit and ordinary separated and concentrated cane sugar, or even beet sugar separated by various chemicals--'shop sugar,' in fact--I translate for you a passage from Dr Carton's _Trois Aliments Meurtriers_[20]:-- [20] _Some Popular Foodstuffs Exposed_, translated by D.M. Richardson. 1s. net. Daniel. "'Let us proceed now to the study of the third deadly food. The sugar contained in vegetables and raw fruits is a living aliment, physiologically combined with the protoplasm of the vegetable cells, associated with ferments and with vitalised chemical salts. The absorption of this natural sugar is effected by a harmonious contact, by an exchange of energy between the living vegetable cells and our living digestive cells. "'The sugar of commerce, on the contrary, is a dead food which has lost all association with vegetable protoplasm, with vitalised mineral salts and with oxidising ferments which would render it physiological. It is nothing more than a drug, a dangerous chemical, because Nature has nowhere presented it to us in this form.... Its absorption involves an anti-physiological irritation which over-excites the viscera, and when repeated ends by profoundly altering them.'" "This is all very well," cries Pseudo-Science, "but people may eat too much fruit." "Certainly, but then I warn them at once," quoth Taste. "But they have an idea it is good for them, and they disregard your warnings." "If they 'have an idea' which runs counter to my warnings and my penalties, to say nothing of my promises and my rewards, then they can only get that idea from you, Mr Pseudo-Science, with your theories and your figures and your long words." "Why not from your relative, Unnatural Taste? Anyhow, it is my duty to warn them." "If they don't heed my warning, they certainly won't heed yours," says Taste. "But I can paint such a picture of the trouble they store up for the future if they persist in excessive fruit eating!" "Never mind about persisting and storing up for the future. I punish excess in fruit eating as in everything else by prompt discomfort and pain." "But what do you know about oxalic acid?" "Enough to avoid it. Like every other poison it is repugnant to me." "Yet fruit which is so nice in the mouth may ferment in the intestines and form that very poison. Then what are you going to do about it?" "Take care that not too much fruit is eaten another time." "But in the meantime the oxalic acid already formed must be neutralised at once." "No, no! It would be a pity to do that. Oxalic acid is the latest fashion. What would your patients do without it? And what would you do without your patients?" "It must be neutralised at once. It can only be neutralised at the cost of abstracting lime from the system. Result: oxalate of lime, forming calculus, or 'stone,' which you don't want, and tissues depleted of lime which you do want."