The selection of food only one element in sound digestion--Other conditions essential--Times of eating--No stated hours for eating--Five or six hours of interval between meals generally sufficient--But must vary according to circumstances--Habit has much influence--Proper time for breakfast depends on constitution, health, and mode of life--Interval required between breakfast and dinner--Best time for dinner--Circumstances in which lunch is proper--Late dinners considered--Their propriety dependent on mode of life--Tea and coffee as a third meal, useful in certain circumstances--Supper considered--General rule as to meals--Nature admits of variety--illustrations--but requires the observance of principle in our rules, 187–217 CHAPTER II. ON THE PROPER QUANTITY OF FOOD. Quantity to be proportioned to the wants of the system--Appetite indicates these--Cautions in trusting to appetite--General error in eating too much--Illustrations from Beaumont, Caldwell, Head, and Abercrombie--Mixtures of food hurtful chiefly as tempting to excess in quantity--Examples of disease from excess in servant-girls from the country, dressmakers, &c.--Mischief from excessive feeding in infancy--Rules for preventing this--Remarks on the consequences of excess in grown persons--Causes of confined bowels explained--And necessity of fulfilling the laws which God has appointed for the regulation of the animal economy inculcated, 218–250 CHAPTER III. OF THE KINDS OF FOOD. What is the proper food of man?--Food to be adapted to constitution and circumstances--Diet must vary with time of life--Diet in infancy--The mother’s milk the best--Substitutes for it--Over-feeding a prevalent error--Causes which vitiate the quality of the milk--Regimen of nurses--Weaning--Diet after weaning--Too early use of animal food hurtful--Diet of children in the higher classes too exciting--and produces scrofula--Mild food best for children--Incessant eating very injurious--Proper diet from childhood to puberty--It ought to be full and nourishing but not stimulating--Often insufficient in boarding-schools--Diet best adapted for different constitutions in mature age--Regimen powerful in modifying the constitution, mental as well as physical--Farther investigation required, 251–287 CHAPTER IV. CONDITIONS TO BE OBSERVED BEFORE AND AFTER EATING.