Every would-be diet-reformer, and we doctors are almost as bad as any of them, is absolutely certain that what nine-tenths of humanity find to be their food is a deadly poison. One philosopher is sure that animal food of every description, especially the kind that involves the shedding of blood, is not only absolutely unfit for human food, but is the cause of half the suffering and wickedness in the world. Another gravely declares that the only thing which, above all things, is injurious is salt. Another takes up his parable against pork. Still another is convinced that half the misery of the world is due to the use of spices; and one dietetic Rousseau proclaims a return to very first principles by the abolition of cooking. Another attacks the harmless and blushing tomato, and lays at its door the modern increase of cancer, insanity, and a hundred kindred evils; while Mrs. Rohrer has gently but firmly to be restrained whenever she hears the mild-eyed potato mentioned. There is almost an equally astonishing Babel when one comes to listen to the various opinions as to the amount of food required. Eighteen grave and reverend doctors assure us that overeating is the prevalent dietetic sin of the century, while the remainder of the two dozen are equally positive that the vast majority of their patients are underfed. One man preaches the gospel of dignified simplicity on one meal a day and one clean collar a week, while the lean and learned Fletcher declares that if we only keep on masticating our one mouthful of food long enough we shall delude the stomach into magnifying it into ten, and can dine sumptuously on a menu-card and a biscuit. Fortunately, when it comes to practise, philosophers, reformers, and doctors alike have about as much influence here as they have over conduct in other realms--and that is next to none at all. The man in the street follows his God-given instincts and plods peacefully along to his three square meals a day, consisting of anything he can find in the market, and just as much of it as he can afford, with special preference for rich meats, fats, and sugars. Instinct Far Superior to Reason. Here, as everywhere, instinct is far superior to reason, and a breakfast diet of sausage and buckwheat cakes with maple syrup and strong coffee has carried the white man half around the world; while one of salads and cereals, washed down with a post-prandial subterfuge, would leave him stranded, gasping, in the first ditch he came to. All the basal problems of dietetics were, by the mercy of Heaven, settled long ago in the farmhouse kitchen, in the commissary department of the army in the field, in the cook's galley amidships, and in the laboratory.