Food-stuffs containing lime salts may be classed in three groups: (1) Those which contain over 2 parts per 1,000, e.g., eggs, cheese, cow's milk, green cabbage; (2) those which contain between 1 and 2 parts per 1,000, e.g., peas, lentils, cauliflower, haricot beans; (3) those which contain less than 1 part per 1,000, e.g., bread, meat, fish, potato, apples, pears, plums, etc. Loeper and Gouraud suggest that those who suffer from atheroma or in whom it may be impending should diminish their intake of foods containing lime salts and at the same time adopt means for increasing their elimination from the body. This should be effected by purgatives and diuretics, lime, as we know, being excreted by the bowels and kidneys. An average of 20 centigrams should appear every twenty-four hours in the urine, but an acalcic diet will reduce this by half, while the administration of milk will double, or even treble, the quantity.

Iodide of potassium in large doses is said to bring into solution all the salts of lime, even those fixed in bones. Its exhibition is consequently rather dangerous, because something untimely may occasion their precipitation in the soft tissues. Bicarbonate of sodium, on the other hand, has no power over the fixed lime salts, but aids in the solution and excretion of those in the soft tissues. An eminent American scientist told me that when his wife was threatened with blindness from increasing cataract, he put her upon a stringent acalcic and dechlorinated diet, with massage and manipulations in the cervical region, with the result that at the end of two years her vision had immensely improved, and practically all sign of cataract had disappeared.