In recent years, however, new and surprising relations between food and health have become apparent. The relation between polished rice and beri-beri has been brought to light. Observations on the sequence of events as famine conditions are approached, have established the fact that as the last reserves of food are drawn upon epidemics of dropsy, cholera, pellagra, etc., develop and carry off the semi-starved population before they have time to die of starvation. The greatly increased sickness and mortality rates among civilians in warring countries has often been attributed to under-nutrition or to faulty diet, but the causes which brought about these conditions were understood only in a vague way. The debilitating influence of lack of sufficient food is easy for anyone to appreciate, but an understanding of the gravity of restriction to diets which are faulty in their chemical composition only in minor degrees is less easily acquired. Many well informed people who are accustomed to the critical examination of data have not infrequently shown a lamentably superficial conception of the relation of the character of the diet to health conditions.