[Footnote 4: Dr. Dewey's expression of surprise at the lay incompetence of the author is interesting in view of the fact that he himself is responsible for the untitled, unprofessional deficiency at which he wonders. When the author met Dr. Dewey, in Dayton, Ohio, where he was conducting some experiments, in 1898, he was then on the point of taking up a complete medical course with a post-graduate course of research-physiology in order to give character to his authority in advancing the cause of his amateurish discovery, as related in this book. There were the time, the energy, the means and the inclination of a student's craving inviting him to take the whole course to M.D. degree; but Dr. Dewey advised "no." "Don't you do it," said he, "you are doing good work as it is; you will be more or less influenced by existing standards which may be errors, and you may get switched off the natural track. Study your physiology _after_ you have made your observations." Dr. Dewey has forgotten his advice of five years ago, but it was followed. Living almost constantly in an open-air and open-mind atmosphere of research in alimentary physiology ever since, thanks to Dr. Dewey's suggestion, the author has escaped the abnormal physiology which medicine deals with, and he is more and more thankful for the escape as time reveals that open-air and open-mindedness are good, both for the soul and for bodily comfort and health.] "Here is the physiology involved, as I find the effect of it in the sick-room. Theoretically, digestion may take place far down in the digestive tract, but it is practically found that when this possibility is resorted to, by reason of neglect of the earlier buccal or gastric digestion, trouble soon happens, and we doctors are called in to try to effect cures by medicine or otherwise. For every one horse-power of work, as it were, that is slighted in the mouth, it requires perhaps ten horse-power of energy to repair the neglect further on, and all of this waste of energy is charged against the brain-power, pleasure-power reserve on storage. "As I read the account of Mr. Fletcher's showing of heat-economy, reported by Professor Chittenden in his _Popular Science Monthly_ article, and which was verified in the calorimeter measurement at Middletown, I see at once, from my own observations, that half the heat commonly used in the human engine is occupied in forcing the unnecessary waste through thirty feet of intestinal folds and convolutions." The author feels very grateful to Dr. Dewey, not alone for his encouragement, but for the service he has rendered humanity by his heroic stand for temperance in feeding. He is one of the sturdy Esculapian Luthers, whose cry of reform comes from the impulse of an inborn Christian Altruism.