through medicine, and a man may discover too late that he is doomed.

Chemists testify that most medicines which go by the name of "tonics," "bitters," and relievers of pain of different kinds contain a large per cent of alcohol. Often as much as one quarter of the entire liquid in the bottle is alcohol.

In view of their disclosures these men and others have insisted that innocent people should not be cheated into the use of any poison through ignorance of what they are buying. These scientists have indeed been so much in earnest and so active in their agitation of the subject that at last the United States government has passed a law which helps the case greatly. It demands that the names of every poison in a bottle of patent medicine shall be printed plainly on a label and pasted on the bottle. The amount of alcohol must also be stated on the same label.

If a bottle of patent medicine bears no such label it is evident that its contents hide neither alcohol nor poison; it has no confession to make. If there is a label, remember that as a rule each name on it stands for a poison.

He who is unwise enough to buy patent medicine should balance his mistake by being wise enough to study the label before he uses the contents of the bottle.

CHAPTER XX

EXPERIMENTS IN EATING

It was a novel thing in the history of the world for men who were connected with a national army to serve their country by being used as a sort of laboratory for food experiments. But this was done by certain soldiers of the United States army in the year 1903.

SOLDIERS WHO SERVED ON THE EATING EXPERIMENTS

Professor Chittenden of Yale University had decided to conduct some scientific experiments on a rather large scale. He began with himself, enlisted the help of others, and finally had in hand thirteen soldiers whose ages ranged from twenty-two years and six months to forty-three years.

Close attention was given to the men in several ways. At quarter of seven each morning they were weighed.

This was necessary, for they were eating about half as much meat as usual, with somewhat less of other kinds of food, and it was important to know each day whether they were gaining or losing by the new course of diet.

At seven came breakfast. Here each separate kind of food was weighed before it was given to the man who was to eat it. What he did not eat was also weighed, that Dr. Chittenden might know just how much had been used. Moreover, these men were allowed to eat only such food as was served to them. In other words, for each meal they were told when to eat, what to eat, and how much to eat. All eating between meals was strictly forbidden.

Aside from this close care about their food the men were not hampered in many ways. They went to the theater sometimes, worked in the Yale gymnasium an hour a day, had regular drill under their officers, and went to bed at ten o'clock.

No doubt the whole affair grew monotonous at times, and it has been said that a few of the men were inclined to protest against it. On the whole, however, they went through it without hesitation, and when they left New Haven at the end of six months Dr. Anderson, director of the gymnasium, wrote about them as follows:

The men were not above the average standard physically when they began their work, this standard being set by applicants for positions as firemen and policemen, not by college students. At the end of the

training they were much above the same standard, while the strength tests were far greater than the averages made by college men.

These tests did not settle all food questions, but they seemed to make it clear that even soldiers may gain strength on much less meat than they have been in the

TEN OF THE SOLDIERS TAKING EXERCISE IN THE GYMNASIUM

habit of eating. As for the rest of us, science has proved that the work of the body is closely related to the food we give it, that the kind of food makes a difference in the quality of the work, that he who works little harms himself when he eats much, and that growing children need much more food than their inactive elders,

All scientists agree that food does two things for the body:

1. Food builds tissue; that is, it makes the body grow by adding fresh tissue, and it keeps the body new by replacing all tissues as fast as they wear out.

2. Food produces energy by which the body does work and keeps itself warm. Food so used is the fuel for our engines.

We eat, then, for the purpose of meeting one or the other of these two great demands of the body, and our success or failure in life may easily turn on what we know or do not know about the value of our food.

When Professor Chittenden planned meals for his soldiers his main thought was not as to whether he should give them beefsteak, mutton chops, fish, eggs, bread, or vegetables, but whether or not he was giving them the right proportions of certain substances which living bodies need if they are to do good work. This would be easier to understand if our bodies were blocked off in patches, with each separate substance firmly held in a special district of its own. In point of fact, however, the few general materials out of which our bodies are built are so closely intermixed with each other in blood and tissue that only the chemist can separate them. The next page shows his work in a table which is made up from the reports of the United States Department of Agriculture. It shows how the materials which the body