Some people tend to grow stout on deficient proteid, and then the fact
that some of the essential tissues of the body (the muscles, the heart
and the blood) are being dangerously impoverished is very likely to be
overlooked. In the case last mentioned the loss of weight was put down
to the dyspepsia, whereas the real fact was that the "dyspepsia" and
loss of weight were both results of a chronic deficiency in food.

It is evident that some care about food quantities must be taken by
all those who do not live on natural foods. For physiologists there is
no difficulty in settling the question of quantity in accordance with
the signs of the physiology of a normal body. That all, even
physiologists, may run into danger if, while living on unnatural or
partly unnatural foods, or while making any change of food, they do
not consider the question of quantity with sufficient care.

That the question of nutrition should be considered in relation to
_every illness_ even though it may appear on the surface to have no
direct connection with foods or quantities. As a matter of fact, the
nature of the food and its quantity controls all the phenomena of
life. Some twenty years ago most people lived fairly close to the old
physiological quantities, now they have been cut adrift from these and
completely unsettled and are floundering out of their depth. A most
unsatisfactory, even dangerous, condition of affairs.

For the public it will now probably suffice if they insist on raising
the question of quantity whenever they suffer in any way. If they are
unable to answer the question themselves let them go to a trained
physiologist who can do so, and not to a diet quack. But muscular
strength, endurance, mental and bodily energy, skin circulation,
temperature and blood colour are all things which the public can see