In treating diabetes, foods containing starch and sugar should not be wholly eliminated from the diet, but should be administered in limited proportions, or such quantities as the body could use. Starches and sugars contained in cereals and legumes, however, should in extreme cases be omitted because they are difficult to digest and to assimilate. If the digestion is impaired, the body is likely to cast out these valuable nutrients through the kidneys, rather than labor to digest and to assimilate them. The starches and sugars found in fresh vegetables (See table, Vol. III, p. 614), are easily digested and assimilated, therefore in cases of diabetes the body will use or appropriate them, as this entails less energy than that required to cast them out.
CONSUMPTION
For many centuries chemists, scientists, and medical men generally have been vainly battling with this dis-ease. It is only within the past decade that it has been understood or successfully treated.
Consumption is an infection of the lungs by the bacteria called bacillus tuberculosis. The local inflammation produces lesions, and the formation of small growths (nodules) of gray, white, or yellowish tubercles.
Authorities differ concerning the bacillus
It is yet an open question and a matter of grave doubt in the minds of various authorities on this subject as to whether the bacilli is the real cause, or the result of the dis-ease. The fact that a person or an animal afflicted with tuberculosis was in "susceptible condition" is much emphasized by all authorities.
Predisposing conditions and occupations
Such disorders as catarrh, influenza, chronic colds, etc., are all predisposing conditions. Such trades as metal grinding, spinning, weaving, cleaning grain, street sweeping, or any vocation necessitating the breathing of large quantities of dust, are termed predisposing occupations, which show very clearly that all writers are practically agreed that the real cause is undoubtedly due to imperfect oxidation or impaired use of the lungs.
The above conditions may be brought on from two specific causes—
1 By the habitual overingestion of food, and the consequent congestion of effete matter in the lungs, brought thither by the circulation in its effort to dispose of the waste-products by burning them with oxygen.
2 Through the agency of foreign substances breathed in, which gradually congest, and prevent thorough oxidation and normal activity of the excretory function of the lungs.