The Healthy Life, Vol. V, Nos. 24-28 | Page 6

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 for themselves and from which they should in all cases be able to get sufficient warning to save them from the worst forms of disaster.
Some people imagine that they eat very little, when as a matter of fact they have good healthy appetites. Others again think they are eating a great deal, when as a matter of fact they take very little. In both cases a physiological test of the excreta will give accurate information. I once had a medical patient who imagined that he produced great amounts of force and performed feats of endurance on wonderfully small quantities of food. His excreta showed, however, that he was merely under-estimating the food he took. A fat man may seem to be living on very little, but fat does not require to be fed, and his real bone and muscle weight is not large. A thin man may seem to require a large quantity of food, but he is really very heavy in bone and muscle, the tissues that have to be nourished. In all these ways appearances are apt to be deceptive for those who are ignorant of science and who do not go down to the root of the matter.
It is not necessary to follow the given quantity of grains per pound slavishly and without regard to consequences. It is necessary to see that the required physiological results are obtained.
If a patient says he can live on less than I ordered for him and if he can pass the physiological tests satisfactorily I know that his bone and muscle weight has been over-estimated. On the other hand, if a patient falls below the physiological tests, though taking and digesting the quantities ordered for him, I conclude that his bone and muscle weight has been under-estimated.
In all cases it is possible to obtain the best physiological results and to say when quantities are just right, neither too much nor too little.
The evil effects of too much are not serious; they entail perhaps a little "gout" or some temporary loss of freedom from waste products.
The evil effects of too little, if persevered in and continued, especially if some of these effects are attributed to causes which have no real existence, are deadly and dangerous, for they bring on an insidious deterioration both of function and structure which leads by several avenues, often miscalled "diseases," to death itself.
M.D.

HEALTHY BRAINS.
_Comparatively few health enthusiasts or food reformers realise the necessity for mental, as distinct from bodily, hygiene, yet all real health has its roots in the mind. Moreover, it is only by studying the hygiene of mind that we are enabled to do work in greater quantity and of better quality than we should otherwise be capable of, and to do this without risk of strain on the nerves or injury to health. The articles under this heading put forward some of the elementary laws of mental hygiene._--[EDS.]
IMAGINATION IN USE.
To some people any talk about the importance of training the imagination of children through their toys, games and studies seems fantastic and trivial. They compare it to feeding them on sweetmeats; they think it means substituting story books for real life and encouraging the easy exercise of fancy for the careful study of fact.
But imagination is not a mere ornament to a life-work; it is rather one of its most valuable and necessary tools. If it did no more than sweeten and adorn the world, it would be well worth having, well worth making considerable sacrifices to attain. But it does more than this. It bears much fruit as well as flowers; fruit that, if it ripens in suitable weather, endures and can be used for the service of man.
There is a wonderful palm-tree, called the Tal or Palmyra palm, which in India and Ceylon supports six or seven millions of people, and "works" also in West Africa, where it is probably native. It gives its young shoots and unripe seeds as food; its trunk makes a whole boat, or a drum or a walking-stick, according to size; hats, mats, thread and baskets--in fact, almost all kinds of clothing and utensils--are made from the split and plaited leaves; gum comes from it, and certain medicines, jaggery sugar too and an intoxicating drink for those who desire it. In one of the museums at Kew--a wet day brings always something besides disappointment--there is a book made up of the very leaves of the palm, containing a Tamil poem enumerating more than eight hundred human uses to which this marvellous single plant can be put.
Now the imagination is like a Palmyra