Sick people searching for means whereby they may be made well, sometimes fall into this error, and for want of thoroughness in their reading of a health-book make blunders in carrying out the prescribed treatment. In such cases, not only do the patients themselves suffer, perhaps lose their lives, or fail in some way, but their failures exert an influence tending to throw a sound method into disrepute. In this way it often happens that what is termed “dieting” is either overdone, half done, or not done at all in the manner designed by the author; “exercise” is taken under wrong conditions, as, for example, in point of time in relation to meals, it is conducted spasmodically or, perhaps, carried to excess, and the organism thereby depleted instead of strengthened; if the prevailing habit of over-wrapping the body is emphatically condemned, as is the case in the present volume, the reader, if a convert and designing to “go by the book,” may conclude that he is expected to go shivering about in shirt-sleeves in all weathers; and the unfriendly critic is sure to make a point——taking off the idea in a manner to send a chill along the spine of an inquiring consumptive. In this way, too, has arisen the saying, as applied to the supposed notion of food-reformers, “Whatever is good is bad, and whatever is bad is good.” Whatever it may be worth, therefore, I preface this volume with the simple request that the health-seeker, the casual reader, and the critic, alike, shall examine it in a manner to get the real meaning of the text before practicing, praising or condemning. CHARLES E. PAGE. BIDDEFORD, ME., _February, 1883_. 47 RUTLAND ST., BOSTON, _February, 1884._ CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. PAGE INTRODUCTION, 7 CHAPTER II. CONSUMPTION, 28 CHAPTER III. CONSUMPTION——(_Continued_), 50 CHAPTER IV. CONSTIPATION, 107 CHAPTER V. BRIGHT’S DISEASE——(ALBUMINURIA), CROUP, DIPHTHERIA, ETC., 116 CHAPTER VI. INSOMNIA——INSANITY, 133 CHAPTER VII. RHEUMATISM, FATTY DEGENERATION, ETC., 145 CHAPTER VIII. BILIOUSNESS, “HAY FEVER,” NEURALGIA, ETC., 152 CHAPTER IX. THE FLESH-FOOD FALLACY, 158 CHAPTER X.