degree, also. But while the fats and carbohydrates can be eliminated by the system, or stored up within it, without positive danger, proteid in excess creates an abundance of uric acid, and causes much harm to the system throughout. It is the excess of proteid that is the chief cause of many of the diseases from which mankind suffers; and, if health is to be maintained, we must see to it that this great excess is not ingested into the body. While keeping up the due allowance, we must be careful not to eat those foods which tend to introduce this excess into the system; and, by avoiding them, it will be seen that we thereby avoid all danger of creating an undue amount of uric acid, and consequently of suffering from the induced diseases. Now, it is a well-known fact that meat contains a large proportion of protein; and further, that it has a great tendency to create uric acid in the system, owing to the decaying cell-nuclei that form a large part of its structure. Meat is by no means a clean article of diet, but on the contrary a very unclean one; and many foods, supplying an equal amount of proteid matter, are to be preferred, for the reason that they supply less toxic material—which invariably accompanies flesh-meat. It must be remembered that the tissues of all animals contain a certain amount of poisonous material—simply by reason of the fact that the animal has lived at all—since all animals are constantly creating poisons within their bodies, by the very process of living. These poisons are being thrown off by the body every minute throughout the day; and it is because of that fact the animal is enabled to remain alive at all. Were this process of elimination checked for a few hours, death by poisoning would inevitably result—in consequence of the poisons formed by the body itself. All animals, then, create these poisons; and it would be impossible to find an animal body without them. So that, when we eat the flesh of any animal, we must eat, together with the nutritious portions, these poisons—which are practically inseparable from all animal tissue. That is, whenever we eat meat, we invariably eat, at the same time, a certain quantity of poison—which it is impossible to avoid! I shall elaborate this idea at considerable length in my chapter on the hygiene of diet. In this place I shall only call attention to that fact—the strongest argument of all, to my mind, for abstaining from flesh; and shall point out that, if any diet furnishes all the nutritious properties of meat, without these poisons, it is certainly to be preferred, on that account. We shall see, when we come to the chapter devoted to the chemistry of foods, that all the elements contained in meat are also contained in a purer and better form in other substances—grains, some vegetables, and in nuts—and in as large or larger proportions than they are in meat.