Page:A hundred years hence - the expectations of an optimist (IA hundredyearshenc00russrich).pdf/135

 port nothing into the human organism, but only exclude what ought to be kept out, and modify into innocuousness what has found its way in.

A great part of the disease we call constitutional, as distinguished from infective, arises from food, either because the food itself is not free from disease, or because, from excess in quantity or error in choice, the food we take sets up the production of poisons in the course of digestion, and by yielding, for instance, lactic or uric acid to the blood causes rheumatism or gout, or by introducing into the stomach matter in a state of incipient decay, favours typhoid and other fevers.

When, for reasons already indicated, animal food has been eliminated from the menu one great source of disease will have been got rid of.

When we completely understand the nature of the infective and contagious diseases it seems well within the bounds of possibility that the systematic destruction of their germs may be carried far enough to remove them altogether from the planet. We have now, even by the