The questions of food and cooking need most careful consideration. In the affairs of the soul Christ taught “that which cometh out of the man, that defileth the man”; in the affairs of the body, that which goeth into a man, that defileth the man. Both teachings are true and both are purposeful exaggerations and in a sense untrue. Out of the same mouth proceed blessings and cursings and into the same mouth go good food and poisons. The sin lies sometimes in the nature, but more often perhaps in the excess. The word “temperance” has been made to apply far too much to the use of alcohol. As a fact, I believe, far more nowadays are intemperate in eating than in drinking. As the tale of our years increases and as our physical life gets less strenuous and active, we require less food, or at any rate a different kind of food; the strong nitrogenous foods, as meat, become less called for, and if taken beyond our needs become poisons. The imperfect products of assimilation have to be dealt with by our excretory organs, which become overworked and unable to meet the demands. The scavengers cannot clear the dust-heaps. Hence arise kidney disease, faulty liver action, and raised blood pressure. And yet, how many of us seek to restore failing strength by stronger food and more stimulation? In this futility, kind but ignorant friends aid and abet. Think on what a little food a baby lives and grows, and, at the other end of life, on what a simple frugal diet really old people thrive and work. It is all very well to lay down rules for food, calculated in calories for strong working men and athletes, but in approaching old age every one must become more or less a lawgiver to himself; this especially, if there is any tendency to hyperpiesis, for any food in excess of the body’s needs becomes for the time a poison. What we can digest easily and what with difficulty must be largely a personal question, but the direction should certainly be towards a non-meat regime. The difference of climate makes comparison between the vegetable feeders of the tropics and ourselves of uncertain value, but it is a lesson to see what the Scotch gillie can do on a diet that is mostly oatmeal, milk and cheese. The gluttonous man and the wine bibber seem to get a pleasure out of life that the sober men miss, but we doctors see the other side of the shield, the after-suffering and the failure: the broken law brings its own punishment and there is no escape.