In order to realize the necessity of thorough mastication, and the proper combinations of food, one must be familiar with the general chemical changes that take place in the digestive system where the different products are prepared to be converted into blood.

The influence of different attitudes of mind, and degrees of health, to effect chemical changes, must also be understood, else the secretions and life forces necessary for assimilation of food, reconstruction of body cells, and the protection of the system from invasion by disease germs, may be ignorantly kept below normal, fostering old age and death instead of strength and long life.

The first important change in food is effected in the mouth where the active principle of the saliva - ptyaline - converts starch into grape sugar, thus potatoes, rice, cereals, bananas, bread, etc., should be thoroughly masticated, as starch is not acted upon again, except by the saliva that passes into the stomach with the food, until after it leaves the stomach and reaches the pancreatic juice. When food is eaten rapidly, leaving most of the starch to be changed in the intestines, constipation, or the opposite weakness of laxativeness, is cultivated. Food should not be too soft else it fails to arouse sufficient saliva for the required chemical action.

The ptyaline being alkaline in nature extreme acids should not be taken into the mouth at the same time as starchy products, as the acid attacks the alkaline properties hindering the action upon starch. Potatoes, or other starch foods, should not be mixed with acid sauces or vinegar dressings.

The gastric juice of the stomach is an acid fluid, but its vital principle is pepsin, an organic substance - living organisms or formless ferment - which acts only upon the tissue building foods. These minute living cells of the pepsin liberate the precious living cells of food from all the other elements, preparing them for absorption by the lacteals.

Dr. Prout and others discovered long ago that chemical action alone would not produce digestion, but that to the chemical acids must be added some of the living cells, or organic matter - pepsin - from the mucous membrane of the stomach, and the temperature maintained at about 100 degrees, or about the same as that of the stomach, for artificial digestion.

The formless ferments can be killed by high degrees of heat, rendered inactive by cold, or be made sick by poisons in the test tube, the same as in the system. The yeast germ represents a more highly organized form of ferment than that of the digestive fluids.

Notwithstanding the almost universal belief that the stomach is for the purpose of general digestion, all of the best observers agree that the gastric juice effects no change in fats, or carbohydrates, except to dissolve them in freeing tissue building cells. It is no wonder that so many stomachs, after the labor of tearing the complicated mixtures within them into particles, and finding only dead and useless cells, or a few lonely ones that have accidentally escaped death, for the rebuilding of their own tissues and those of the bodies for which they are responsible, cry out for stimulants to help them forget their troubles.

When the stomach is supplied food containing living cells - eggs, beans, peas, cheese, nuts, bread, cereals, milk, bananas, etc., it is contented, restful and free from cravings, providing it is not overworked.

The remaining contents of the stomach, comprising the bulk, mineral substance, water, and heat and energy elements pass on to the intestines in a semi-fluid mass known as chyme, which is acted upon by the bile, pancreatic juice and intestinal juices, until the nutritive part, or milky white chyle, is absorbed by the lacteals, which already have taken up the tissue building cells, and the refuse is rejected as excretia. The chyle is incipient blood, but in the lympathic glands it becomes still more highly organized, or prepared for use, before it is poured into the blood at the arch of the great aorta. The blood then passes through every part of the body furnishing living cells to replace exhausted ones, heat for energy and minerals and chemicals from which the cells construct the intercellular tissue, as well as collecting poisons, dead cells and waste tissue from which it frees itself as it returns to the lungs. The quality of the blood determines the quality of the man and it is within the power of all to have good blood by scientific living and noble thinking.

Many of the changes of natural growth are only vaguely known, but all scientific experiments prove that living substance is essential for vital action, whether to sustain or to generate life. This fundamental substance may be revivified under proper conditions, or it may even be fertilized by chemicals, as Professor Loeb has demonstrated by producing what is called "artificial life" - individual life without the male element for fertilization - from the eggs of the sea urchins, with chemical salts, yet the origin of life, the source of the fountain of life latent in the substance quickened, is always "just beyond," and will be, even though the minute "electrical unit" - imagined to be the source of material life - may be reduced to a finer and finer essence each succeeding generation, as new and wonderful chemical discoveries are made. Human research ever approaches Infinite mind, but its depths cannot be fathomed.

Atomic life, or that of the still smaller "corpuscle," being universal, its organization is effected through chemical or electrical action - the lower forms being sexless. After differentiation into male and female, propagation throughout nature is effected by means of one organized cell being quickened by another cell already organized. As already stated plant cells have the power to construct living protoplasm, or the proteid element, from inorganic substances by chemical action, but the animal cell does not possess this power, neither can it use unorganized chemicals. Because of this the cells already organized in food should be carefully protected as they are ready for use. The only other way living cells can be procured for use in the building of tissue is from the constructive ferments of the digestive fluids. The formless ferment, or plant-animal substance, has the power in all of its varieties to construct living proteid from unorganized material, but if it must do all the work of nature over again it is soon exhausted.

Because of the action of the constructive ferments, much of the process of nature's changes being influenced by them, as well as by the destructive ferments, the chemist says confidently: "Life is a series of fermentations," yet he admits that he knows nothing of the origin of the life of the ferments, however, his familiarity with this mysterious process of nature makes him an ardent believer in the possibilitiy of prolonging human life.

Carl Snyder in "The Latest Conceptions of Science," in referring to the discovery of Croft Hill, "that the formless ferments can build up by different chemicals what has been torn down," suggests that cessation in growth, or old age, is a lapse in activity of these special constructive ferments, growing old being a series of destructive ferments; the latter becoming more active as the former cease to construct, resulting in death. He also perceives that the reversibility of the ferments may prolong life.

It is upon this idea of aiding the constructive ferments that chemistry seeks to restore youth, and many prominent scientists endeavor to discover serums to counteract disease and old age.

As the serums used in medical practice are deadly poisons, they are very dangerous to introduce into the human system. They cannot be produced in the laboratory but are generated in the system of an animal by nature, or the dominance of the subjective force, in a natural effort to counteract a disease. This same force is latent in the human body, and can be aroused to much greater action by the proper attitude of thought, and efforts for normal living, hence there is no need to resort to an animal serum, at any time, with the risk of it producing instant death, if administered for the wrong disease.

Nature produces, in the human system, under proper use and nourishment, every chemical change needed for normal growth. It also generates the anti-toxins to counteract a reasonable amount of poison and disease. The purpose of this wise provision of nature is to give man a chance to redeem and revivify himself, even after making many mistakes.

The right attitude of mind should be maintained with every kind of treatment to overcome disease as well as to sustain health. Morbid chemical changes of a poisonous nature, that may even interfere with the natural action of other remedies, are produced by thoughts of fear and worry. This tendency of nature to generate dangerous poison from morbid conditions or a true anti-toxin to counteract poison from disease germs or from food, when the poison is in small quantities, as in a little tea, coffee, tobacco, ash of browned food, ash of cereal coffee, baking powder, etc., as well as the tendency of the mind, or quality of thought, to raise or lower the vital forces should be taken into consideration by hy-gienists and by "poison squads" in testing poison in foods. A daring, fearless mind will nullify a large amount of poison, while one who is overcome by fear may generate poison even from pure food by imagining it to be injurious.

The chemist's idea of "aiding the constructive" ferments may be realized only through scientific living.

When the body cells are entirely rebuilt from vital food, leaving the constructive ferments always dominant, or holding their own with the destructive ferments, the normal action is continued indefinitely. The natural protective power generated within, and dominant under normal living, is the only elixir of life, and is not a myth. Perpetual youth is a possibility, as generation after generation seeks to maintain the innate constructive forces.