Any attempt to follow a daily routine which accords with the true needs of the body leads necessarily toward foods derived from the plant kingdom, with the adoption of simple dietary habits, and with greater freedom from the exciting influence of the richer animal foods. There is, however, virtue in a simple dietary that appeals and satisfies, and in so doing testifies to the completeness with which it meets the physiological requirements of the body. A physician,[80] writing in the “British Medical Journal,” says: “I determined to give the minimum-of-proteid diet a fair trial in my own case. The result was that I was relieved of a life-long tendency to acid dyspepsia and occasional sick headache; my fitness for work, my appetite and relish for food, were increased, without any diminution, but rather a slight increase, in my weight. My practice extends over a wide area of rough mountainous country involving long journeys on cycle, on foot, driving, and in open boats, in fair and foul weather. The muscular exertion and endurance necessary for the work would seem to require a large proportion of proteid and a generous diet altogether, but since I began to experiment I have suffered less than formerly from fatigue, and seem to eat in all a smaller quantity of food. My diet consists of: [80] Aran Coirce: British Medical Journal, April 7, 1906, p. 829. Breakfast, 8.30 A.M.--Oatmeal cakes, bread and butter, about 1 cubic inch of cheese or bloater paste, marmalade, and one breakfast cup of tea. Lunch, 1.30 P.M.--Same as breakfast, with occasionally a boiled egg, and sometimes coffee instead of tea. Dinner, 7 P.M.--Thick soup containing vegetables, with bread, followed by suet pudding or fruit tart; or vegetable stew, containing 2 or 3 ounces of meat, with boiled potatoes, followed by milk pudding and jam, and occasionally a cup of black coffee.” This statement of personal experience is in close accord with statements that have come to the writer in hundreds of letters during the past two or three years, from persons who have for some reason chosen to follow a more abstemious mode of life. Such testimony has a certain measure of value in that it offers corroborative evidence of the beneficial effects of a moderate diet, more closely in accord with the actual demands of the body for food. It does not, however, carry quite that degree of assurance that scientific evidence, gathered by careful observers and controlled by weights and measures that hold the imagination in check, affords; and so we may turn to a different type of testimony, presented in an elaborate research by Dr. Neumann,[81] of the Hygienic Institute at Kiel, an experiment on himself extending through a total of 746 days. [81] Dr. med. et phil. R. O. Neumann: Experimentelle Beiträge zur Lehre von dem täglichen Nahrungsbedarf des Menschen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der notwendigen Eiweissmenge. Archiv für Hygiene, Band 45, p. 1, 1902.