From the great height of its source, there are many rapids and falls on its course to sea level. These have been utilized as water power for varied manufacturing industries and the Merrimack furnishes the power for more invested manufacturing capital than any other stream in the world. To mention the cotton and woolen manufacturing enterprises established at Manchester in 1809, in Lowell in 1832, and in Lawrence in 1846, now capitalized by many millions and employing help that would make a cosmopolitan nation of itself, would be rehearsing a story already well known.

Although not so extensive as a century ago, the iron mined in several of the northern hill towns was made into various articles, which was quite an industry. The screw auger, now in general use, was invented by Nathaniel Weed, a hill town native, and the first cut nails headed by machinery were made here, the Merrimack water furnishing the power that made both machines and inventions.

This river has also been a great water thoroughfare for the lumber trade. Its channel has been dredged, its rocky sides blasted so that large

liver cells, which lie along the capillaries, absorb several substances, among them, sugar. Another important function of the liver has to do with the proteins. While these are practically unchanged in their passage through the liver, when they come back from active tissues, particularly from the muscle tissues, partly oxidized and broken up into simpler mid-products, the liver cells absorb these mid-products of protein calabolism, and further oxidize and combine them with the nitrogenous excreta, which will be later thrown out of the body by the way of the kidneys. Incidental to the oxidation of alcohol into the liver two things happen that have been

misunderstood by clinicians. In the first place, oxidation naturally and necessarily liberates that energy, increasing the sum total of body heat. Second, oxidation of the carbonaceous substances increases the output of carbon-dioxide gas.

Oxidation is easily and naturally assumed to be analogous, if not actually equivalent, to the oxidation of fats, or sugar, or starches. This being admitted, alcohol was naturally looked upon as a food. Recent

researches on the action of alcohol in the liver show that results, which were so plausible a decade ago, are subject to a very different interpretation that heat resulting from this protective oxidation is not available for the maintenance of body temperature. It is generally admitted and universally known that alcohol in any quantity, small or great, not only fails to protect the system from extreme temperature, but actually makes the system less resistant to low temperature.

THE WORK OF THE LUNGS

The lungs are the respiratory organs and perform a double function: First, to take the oxygen from the air, which is absorbed through the moist thin membrane of the air sacs into the blood of the capillaries. Second, to exhale the carbon-dioxide into the air. This is carried from the active tissues of the body in the venous blood to the lungs and diffused through the capillary walls into the air contained in the air cells. Incidentally the lungs give up a certain amount of water and minute quantities of organic material.

THE WORK OF THE KIDNEYS

The work of the kidneys is solely excretious. The blood passes through them from a short transverse branch on the abdominal aorla, in far greater

quantities than would be necessary to supply the kidneys with nourishment and oxygen. The blood is sent to the kidneys, not for the kidneys' sake alone, but for the blood. It is sent to the kidneys to be purified.

THE WORK OF THE SKIN

The skin is usually named among the excretory organs. It secretes oil from its sebaceous glands. It has a part in the protective function in regulating body temperature, including the excretion of water from the sweat glands of the skin. Certain salts are also excreted, and these salts are practically the same as those excreted by the kidneys, including urates in traces.

THE WORK OF THE INTESTINES

A very great part of the waste matter passes away from the intestines, daily, known as feces. The fecal matter represents the indigestible and undigested food material that has passed through the whole length of the alimentary canal. Of the mass of material that makes up the feces, only a very small amount is real excretion, because an excretion is a substance which has been within the tissues. Even the mucus, poured out of the wall of the large intestine to facilitate the movement of its contents, would be called an excretion, though it is part of the feces.

DIET

There are some first principles which should govern the physician, the nurse, and the mother, in considering a diet for those under his or her care. Having decided upon the amount of protein which the diet represents, one must next consider the form in which the protein is to be given. Next to decide is the amount and source of carbonaceous foods. These foods include starches, sugars and fats. Carbonaceous foods must be made up largely from the carbohydrates. For a person using

the brain in study, etc., the proper diet if of good, physical, growth would be: Breakfast: Oatmeal (sugar and cream), dry toast, cup cereal coffee, grapes.

Lunch: Cream soup (potato, tomato, celery), bread, butter, fruit, (stewed), glass of milk, cake.

Dinner: Roast beef, gravy, potatoes, vegetables (fresh), bread, butter, fruit (apple sauce, rhubarb, rice pudding.) Menu for a growing child:

Breakfast: Glass milk, thoroughly cooked oatmeal and cream, baked apple, buttered toast.

Lunch (10 o'clock): Graham crackers, milk or water (preferably water). Lunch (1 o'clock): Bread and butter, creamed potatoes, fruit (stewed or fresh).

Lunch (4 o'clock): Graham crackers, milk.

Supper: Glass of milk, soft boiled eggs, shredded wheat biscuit, fruit (apples).

Menu for the constipated-Constipation is a condition brought on less by the diet than any other condition, usually departure from hygiene. If the habit is begun in childhood, it is easy to get a confirmed constipation habit, which would be acquired before the twentieth year. Bodily exercise is most effectual, before breakfast, in the regulations of the bowel movement-that which takes in flexion and torsion of the trunk.

Breakfast: Cereal, oatmeal, corn meal or wheat, sugar and cream, fresh fruit, coffee, dry toast.

Lunch: Soup, bread (whole wheat or graham), fresh fruit.

Dinner: Soup, meat-any kind, potatoes (any way except fried), vegetables (prepared any way), fruit, rhubarb sauce, desert, custards, simple pudding.

Bed-time: Four figs, or six prunes, or two apples.

Unless the alimentary canal is completely demoralized, it is hardly conceivable that it should not respond to this sort of treatment by a regular

movement of the bowels, at least once a day. Try to cultivate the habit of going to the closet at a regular hour a day, the best time immediately after breakfast. If this regularity is kept up, week after week, continuously and conscientiously, there will be a normal response at a regular hour every day. Children should be taught to go to the closet every morning after breakfast, that being their first duty every day, thus saving annoyance and inconvenience in their later life. The medical profession has given much study to drugs, and knows the kinds to use, and the exact amount for a given result, but foods

are so common they have neglected them. The amount of food is just as important as the kind, and by amount we do not mean simply the number of ounces, or pounds, but the number of food units or calories. One is bulk, the other is value; one fills, the other nourishes. We must be able to reduce foods to their simplest terms. But mistakes are made in the use of foods. In some groups of cases such as malnutrition, fevers, diabetes, obesity, and renal and gastrointestinal cases, the patient's health or life, even, depend upon how he is fed, what kind of food, and how much he is given.