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Title: Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

Author: Upton Sinclair
        Michael Williams

Release date: August 17, 2021 [eBook #66077]

Language: English

Credits: Tim Lindell, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOOD HEALTH AND HOW WE WON IT, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE NEW HYGIENE ***




                            GOOD HEALTH AND
                             HOW WE WON IT


  [Illustration: Fig. A. Fig. B.

  “THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD”

  Micro-photograph of leucocytes (white and grayish bodies) in conflict
  with Germs (black dots and bodies). In Fig. A the germ is that of
  influenza, in Fig. B that of plague.]


                              GOOD HEALTH
                           AND HOW WE WON IT

                 _WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE NEW HYGIENE_


                                  BY
                            UPTON SINCLAIR
                                  AND
                           MICHAEL WILLIAMS


                 _WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
                           FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_


                               NEW YORK
                      FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
                              PUBLISHERS




                           COPYRIGHT, 1909,
                    BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY

                         _All rights reserved_




                               CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                                           PAGE

  INTRODUCTION                                                         1

  I. THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD                                          21

  II. HOW TO EAT: THE GOSPEL OF DIETETICS
  ACCORDING TO HORACE FLETCHER                                        41

  III. THE YALE EXPERIMENTS                                           69

  IV. HOW DIGESTION IS ACCOMPLISHED                                   95

  V. HOW FOODS POISON THE BODY                                       113

  VI. SOME IMPORTANT FOOD FACTS                                      127

  VII. HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE EAT                                       145

  VIII. HEALTH AND THE MIND                                          159

  IX. THE CASE AS TO MEAT                                            173

  X. THE CASE AGAINST STIMULANTS                                     193

  XI. DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY                                      203

  XII. BREATHING AND EXERCISE                                        219

  XIII. BATHING AND CLEANLINESS                                      239

  XIV. A UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH                                        258

  XV. HEALTH REFORM AND THE COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED                 274

  APPENDIX                                                           287


                             ILLUSTRATIONS


  “THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD”                                 FRONTISPIECE

                                                             FACING PAGE
  MR. UPTON SINCLAIR AND MR. MICHAEL WILLIAMS                         16

  MR. HORACE FLETCHER                                                 42

  MR. HORACE FLETCHER MAKING A WORLD’S RECORD                         52

  PROFESSOR RUSSELL H. CHITTENDEN, PH. D., LL.D., SC. D.              70

  PROFESSOR IRVING FISHER, PH. D.                                     82

  MR. JOHN E. GRANGER BREAKING THE WORLD’S RECORD
  FOR DEEP-KNEE BENDING                                               88

  M. ELIE METCHNIKOFF                                                114

  PROFESSOR LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL, PH. D.                              138

  MR. UPTON SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN                                      146

  MR. SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN                                            176

  THE DAILY SWIM                                                     206

  FRESH AIR IN BERMUDA                                               220

  OUTDOOR EXERCISE                                                   236

  DR. J. H. KELLOGG                                                  258

  A GROUP AT THE BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM                             270




                             INTRODUCTION

                           BY UPTON SINCLAIR


Ten years ago, when I was a student at college, I fell a victim to a
new and fashionable ailment called “la grippe.” I recollect the date
very well, because it was the first time I had been sick in fourteen
years—the last difficulty having been the whooping-cough.

I have many times had occasion to recall the interview with the last
physician I went to see. I made a proposition, which might have changed
the whole course of my future life, had he only been capable of
understanding it. I said: “Doctor, it has occurred to me that I would
like to have someone who knows about the body examine me thoroughly and
tell me how to live.”

I can recollect his look of perplexity. “Was there anything the matter
with you before this attack?” he asked.

“Nothing that I know of,” I answered; “but I have often reflected that
the way I am living cannot be perfect; and I want to get as much out of
my body and mind as I can. I should like to know, for instance, just
what are proper things for me to eat——”

“Nonsense,” he interrupted. “You go right on and live as you have been
living, and don’t get to thinking about your health.”

And so I went away and dismissed the idea. It was one that I had
broached with a great deal of diffidence; so far as I knew, it was
entirely original, and I was not sure how a doctor would receive it.
All doctors that I had ever heard of were people who cured you when you
were sick; to ask one to take you when you were well and help you to
stay well, was to take an unfair advantage of the profession.

So I went on to “live as I had been living.” I ate my food in cheap
restaurants and boarding-houses, or in hall bedrooms, as students will.
I invariably took a book to the table, and ate very rapidly, even then;
frequently I forgot to eat at all in the ardor of my work. I was a
worshiper of the ideal of health, and never used any sort of stimulant;
but I made it a practice to work sixteen hours a day, and quite often I
worked for long periods under very great nervous strain. And four years
later I went back to my friend the physician.

“You have indigestion,” he said, when I had told him my troubles. “I
will give you some medicine.”

So every day after meals I took a teaspoonful of some red liquor which
magically relieved the distressing symptoms incidental to doing hard
brain-work after eating. But only for a year or two more, for then I
found that the artificially digested food was not being eliminated from
my system as regularly as necessary, and I had to visit the doctor
again. He gave my ailment another name, and gave me another kind of
medicine; and I went on, working harder than ever—being just then at an
important crisis in my life.

Gradually, however, to my great annoyance, I was forced to realize that
I was losing that fine robustness which enabled me to say that I had
not had a day’s sickness in fourteen years. I found that I caught cold
very easily—though I always attributed it to some unwonted draught or
exposure. I found that I was in for tonsilitis once or twice every
winter. And now and then, after some particularly exhausting labor, I
would find it hard to get to sleep. Also I had to visit the dentist
more frequently, and I noticed, to my great perplexity, that my hair
was falling out. So I went on, until at last I was on the verge of a
nervous breakdown, and had to drop everything and go away and try to
rest.

That was my situation when I stumbled upon an article in the
_Contemporary Review_, telling about the experiments of a gentleman
named Horace Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher’s idea was, in brief, that by
thorough and careful chewing of the food, one extracted from it the
maximum of nutriment, and could get along upon a much smaller quantity,
thus saving a great strain upon the bodily processes.

This article came to me as one of the great discoveries of my life.
Here was a man who was doing for himself exactly what I had asked my
physician to do for me so many years previously; who was working, not
to cure disease, but to live so that disease would be powerless to
attack him.

I went at the new problem in a fine glow of enthusiasm, but blindly,
and without guidance. I lived upon a few handfuls of rice and
fruit—with the result that I lost fourteen pounds in as many days. At
the same time I met a young writer, Michael Williams, and passed the
Fletcher books on to him—and with precisely the same results. He, like
myself, came near killing himself with the new weapon of health.

But in spite of discouragements and failures, we went on with our
experiments. We met Mr. Fletcher himself, and talked over our problems
with him. We followed the course of the experiments at Yale, in which
the soundness of his thorough mastication and “low proteid” arguments
were definitely proven. We read the books of Metchnikoff, Chittenden,
Haig and Kellogg, and followed the work of Pawlow of St. Petersburg,
Masson of Geneva, Fisher of Yale, and others of the pioneers of the
new hygiene. We went to Battle Creek, Michigan, where we found a
million-dollar institution, equipped with every resource of modern
science, and with more than a thousand nurses, physicians and helpers,
all devoting their time to the teaching of the new art of keeping well.
And thus, little by little, with backslidings, mistakes, and many
disappointments, we worked out our problems, and found the road to
permanent health. We do not say that we have entirely got over the ill
effects of a lifetime of bad living; but we do say that we are getting
rid of them very rapidly; we say that we have positive knowledge of the
principles of right living, and of the causes of our former ailments,
where before we had only ignorance.

In the beginning, all this was simply a matter of our own digestions,
and of the weal and woe of our immediate families. But as time went on
we began to realize the meaning of this new knowledge to all mankind.
We had found in our own persons freedom from pain and worry; we had
noticeably increased our powers of working, and our mastery over all
the circumstances of our lives. It seemed to us that we had come upon
the discovery of a new virtue—the virtue of good eating—fully as
important as any which moralists and prophets have ever preached. And
so our interest in these reforms became part of our dream of the new
humanity. It was not enough for us to have found the way to health for
ourselves and our families; it seemed to us that we ought not to drop
the subject until we had put into print the results of our experiments,
so that others might avoid our mistakes and profit by our successes.

Historians agree that all known civilizations, empire after empire,
republic after republic, from the dawn of recorded time down to the
present age, have decayed and died, through causes generated by
civilization itself. In each such case the current of human progress
has been restored by a fresh influx of savage peoples from beyond the
frontiers of civilization. So it was with Assyria, Egypt and Persia;
so Greece became the wellspring of art and the graces of life, and then
died out; so Rome conquered the world, built up a marvellous structure
of law, and then died out. As Edward Carpenter and others have shown
us, history can paint pictures of many races that have attained the
luxuries and seeming securities of civilization, but history has yet to
record for us the tale of a nation passing safely through civilization,
of a nation which has not been eventually destroyed by the civilization
it so arduously won.

And why? Because when ancient races emerged out of barbarism into
civilization, they changed all the habits of living of the human race.
They adopted new customs of eating; they clothed themselves; they
lived under roofs; they came together in towns; they devised ways of
avoiding exposure to the sun and wind and rain—but they never succeeded
in devising ways of living that would keep them in health in their new
environment.

The old struggle against the forces of nature once relaxed, men
grew effeminate and women weak; diseases increased; physical fibre
softened and atrophied and withered away; moral fibre went the same
path to destruction; dry rot attacked the foundations of society, and
eventually the whole fabric toppled over, or was swept aside, to be
built up again by some conquering horde of barbarians, which in its
turn grew civilized, and in its turn succumbed to the virulent poison
that seemed inherent in the very nature of civilization, and for which
there seemed to be no antidote.

So much for the past. As to the present, there do not lack learned
and authoritative observers and thinkers who declare that our own
civilization is also dying out. They point out that while in many
directions we have bettered our physical condition, improved our
surroundings, and stamped out many virulent diseases (smallpox, the
plague and yellow fever, for instance), and have reduced average
mortality, nevertheless we have but exchanged one set of evils for
another and perhaps more serious, because more debilitating and
degenerating set: namely, those manifold and race-destroying evils
known as nervous troubles, and those other evils resulting from
malnutrition, which are lumped together vaguely under the name of
dyspepsia, or indigestion—the peculiar curse of America, the land of
the frying-pan.

It is also plain, say the critics of our civilization, that society
to-day cannot be regenerated by barbarians. To-day the whole world
is practically one great civilization, with a scattering of degraded
and dying little tribes here and there. Modern civilization seems to
have foreseen the danger of being overrun some day as the ancient
civilizations were, and to have forestalled the danger by the
inventions of gunpowder and rum, syphilis and tuberculosis.

Are these critics right? I believe that they are, as far as they go; I
believe that to-day our civilization is rapidly degenerating; but also
I believe that it contains within itself two forces of regeneration
which were lacking in old societies, and which are destined ultimately
to prevail in our own. The first of these forces is democracy, and the
second is science.

To whatever department of human activity one turns at the present
day, he finds men engaged in combating the age-long evils of human
life with the new weapon of exact knowledge; and their discoveries
no longer remain the secrets of a few—by the agencies of the public
school and the press they are spreading throughout the whole world.
Thus, a new science of economics having been worked out, and the
causes of poverty and exploitation set forth, we see a world-wide
and universal movement for the abolition of these evils. And hand in
hand with this goes a movement of moral regeneration, manifesting
itself in a thousand different forms, but all having for their aim the
teaching of self-mastery—the replacing of the old natural process of
the elimination of the unfit by a conscious effort on the part of each
individual to eliminate his own unfitness. We see this movement in
literature and art; we see it in the new religions which are springing
up—in Christian Science, and the so-called “New Thought” movements; we
see it in the great health movement which is the theme of this book,
and which claims for its leaders some of the finest spirits of our
times.

In the state of nature man had to hunt his own food, so he was hungry
when he sat down to eat. But having conquered nature, and accumulated
goods, he is able to think of enjoyments, and invents cooks and the
art of cookery—which is simply the tickling of his palate with all
kinds of stomach-destroying concoctions. And now the time has come when
he wishes to escape from the miseries thus brought upon him; and, as
before, the weapon is that of exact science. He must ascertain what
food elements his body needs, and in what form he may best take them;
and in accordance with this new knowledge he must shape his habits
of life. In the same way he has to examine and correct his habits of
sleeping and dressing and bathing and exercising, in accordance with
the real necessities of his body.

This is the work which the leaders of the new movement are engaged
upon. To quote a single instance: while I was “living as I had
been living” and eating the preparations of ignorant cooks in
boarding-houses and restaurants, Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek was
bringing all the resources of modern chemistry and bacteriology to
bear upon the problem of the nutrition of man; taking all the foods
used by human beings, and analyzing them and testing them in elaborate
experiments; determining the amount of their available nutriment
and their actual effect upon the system in all stages of sickness
and health; the various ways of preparing them and combining them,
and the effect of these processes upon their palatability and ease
of digestion. Every day for nine years, so Kellogg told me, he sat
down to an experimental meal designed by himself and prepared by his
wife; and the result is a new dietary—that in use at the Battle Creek
Sanitarium—which awaits only the spread of knowledge to change the ways
of eating of civilized man.

This new health knowledge has been amassed by many workers and, as
in all cases of new knowledge, there is much chaff with the grain.
There are faddists as well as scientists; there are traders as well as
humanitarians. It seemed to us that there was urgently needed a book
which should gather this new knowledge, and present it in a form in
which it could be used by the average man. There have been many books
written upon this; but they are either the work of propagandists with
one idea—containing, as we have proved to our cost, much dangerous
error; or else the work of physicians and specialists, whose vocabulary
is not easily to be comprehended by the average man or woman. What we
have tried to write is a book which sets forth what has been proved by
investigators in many and widely-scattered fields; which is simple,
so that a person of ordinary intelligence can comprehend it; which is
brief, so that a busy person may quickly get the gist of it; and which
is practical, giving its information from the point of view of the man
who wishes to apply these new ideas to his own case.

Michael Williams was recently persuaded to give a semi-public talk on
the subject before an audience of several hundred professional and
business people. He was compelled to spend the rest of the evening
in answering the questions of his audience; and listening to these
questions, I was made to realize the tremendous interest of the public
in the practical demonstration which Mr. Horace Fletcher has given of
the idea of Metchnikoff, that men and women to-day grow old before
they ought to do so, and that the prime of life should be from the age
of fifty to eighty. A broken-down invalid at forty-five, Mr. Fletcher
was at fifty-four a marvel of strength—and at fifty-eight he showed
an improvement of one hundred per cent. over his tests at the age of
fifty-four; thus proving that progressive recuperation in the so-called
“decline of life” might be effected by followers of the new art of
health.

As a result of this address, Williams was invited by the president of
one of the largest industrial concerns in the country to lecture to
his many thousands of employees on the new hygiene; his idea being to
place at their disposal the knowledge of this new method of increasing
their physical and mental efficiency.

For business men and women, indeed, for workers of all kinds, good
health is capital; and the story of the new hygiene is the story of
the throwing open of hitherto unsuspected reserve-stores of energy and
endurance for the use of all.

In writing upon this subject, the experiences most prominent in
our minds have naturally been those of ourselves, of our wives and
children, and of friends who have followed in our path. As the setting
forth of an actual case is always more convincing than a general
statement, we have frequently referred to these experiences, and what
they have taught us. We have done this frankly and simply, and we trust
that the reader will not misinterpret the spirit in which we have done
it. Mr. Horace Fletcher has set the noble example in this matter, and
has been the means of helping tens of thousands of his fellow men and
women.

  [Illustration: MR. UPTON SINCLAIR AND MR. MICHAEL WILLIAMS
  Resting from their favorite exercise.]

I have sketched the path by which I was led into these studies; there
remains to outline the story of my collaborator. Williams is the son
of a line of sailors, and inherited a robust constitution; but as a
boy and youth he was employed in warehouses and department stores,
and when he was twenty he went to North Carolina as a tuberculosis
patient. Returning after two years, much benefited by outdoor life, he
entered newspaper work in Boston, New York, and elsewhere, and kept
at it until four years ago, when again he fled South to do battle
with tuberculosis, which had attacked a new place in his lungs. After
a second partial recuperation, he went to San Francisco. At the time
of the earthquake he held a responsible executive position, and his
health suffered from the worry and the labors of that period. A year
later there came the shock and exposure consequent upon the burning
of Helicon Hall. Williams found himself hovering upon the brink of
another breakdown, this time in nervous energy as well as in lung
power. A trip to sea failed to bring much benefit; and matters were
seeming pretty black to him, when it chanced that a leading magazine
sent him to New Haven to study the diet experiments being conducted at
Yale University by Professors Chittenden, Mendel and Fisher. He found
that these experiments were based upon the case of Horace Fletcher, and
had resulted in supporting his claims. This circumstance interested
him, suggesting as it did that he himself might have been to blame for
his failure with Mr. Fletcher’s system. So he renewed the study of
Fletcherism, and later on the same magazine sent him to Dr. Kellogg’s
institution at Battle Creek, with the result that he became a complete
convert to the new ideas. Like a great many newspaper men, he had been
a free user of coffee, and also of alcohol. As one of the results of
his adoption of the “low proteid” diet, and of the open-air life,
he was able to break off the use of all these things without grave
difficulty. A bacteriological examination recently disclosed the fact
that his lungs had entirely healed; while tests on the spirometer
showed that his breathing capacity was far beyond that of the average
man of his weight and size. In less than three months, while at the
Battle Creek Sanitarium, tests showed a great gain in the cell count
of his blood, and in its general quality. Also, his general physical
strength was increased from 4635 units to 5025, which latter figure is
well above the average for his height, 68.2 inches.

In conclusion, we wish jointly to express our obligation to Mr. Horace
Fletcher, to Dr. J. H. Kellogg, to Professor Russell H. Chittenden,
to Professor Lafayette B. Mendel, and to Professor Irving Fisher for
advice, criticism and generous help afforded in the preparation of
some of the chapters of this book. The authority of these scientists,
physicians and investigators, and of others like Metchnikoff,
Pawlow, Cannon, Curtis, Sager, Higgins and Gulick, whose works we
have studied, is the foundation upon which we rest on all questions
of fact or scientific statement. They are the pathbreakers and the
roadbuilders,—we claim to be simply guides and companions along the
journey to the fair land of health. The journey is not long, and the
road is a highway open to all.




                                   I

                        THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD


The new ideas of living which are the subject of this book have
proceeded from investigation of the human body with the high-power
microscope. The discoveries made, which have to do, not so much with
the body itself as with the countless billions of minute organisms
which inhabit the body, may be best set forth by a description of the
blood. “The blood is the life,” says Exodus, and modern science has
confirmed this statement. From the blood proceeds the life of all the
body, and in its health is the body’s health.

If you should prick your finger and extract a drop of your own blood,
and examine it under a microscope, you would make the fascinating
discovery that it is the home of living creatures, each having a
separate and independent existence of its own. In a single ounce of
blood there are more of these organisms than there are human beings
upon the face of the globe. These organisms are of many kinds, but they
divide themselves into two main groups, known as the red corpuscles and
the white.

The red corpuscles are the smaller of the two. The body of an average
man contains something like thirty million of millions of these
corpuscles; a number exceeding the population of New York and London
are born in the body every second. They are the oxygen conveyers of
the body; the process of life is one of chemical combustion, and these
corpuscles feed the fire. No remotest portion of the body escapes their
visitation. They carry oxygen from the lungs and they bring back the
carbon dioxide and other waste products of the body’s activities. They
have been compared to men who carry into a laundry buckets of pure
water, and carry out the dirty water resulting from the washing process.

The other variety of organisms are the white cells or leucocytes, and
it is concerning them that the most important discoveries of modern
investigators have been made. The leucocytes vary in number according
to the physical condition of the individual, and according to their
locality in the body. Their function is to defend the body against the
encroachments of hostile organisms.

We shall take it for granted that the reader does not require to have
proven to him the so-called “germ theory” of disease. The phrase, which
was once accurate, is now misleading, for the germ “theory” is part
of the definite achievement of science. Not only have we succeeded
in isolating the specific germ whose introduction into the body is
responsible for different diseases, but in many cases, by studying the
history and behavior of the germ, we have been able to find methods
of checking its inroads, and so have delivered men from scourges like
yellow fever and the bubonic plague.


                       THE DEFENSES OF THE BODY

An experiment that is often tried in operating rooms furnishes a vivid
illustration of the omnipresence of these invisible, yet potent, foes
of life. In order to impress upon young surgeons the importance of
maintaining antiseptic conditions, they are instructed to thoroughly
wash their hands and arms in antiseptic soap and water; then they are
told to leave their arms exposed for a few minutes, after which a
microscopic examination of the bared skin will result in exposing the
presence of myriads of germs. Many of these are, of course, harmless;
some are even “friendly”—since they make war upon the dangerous kinds.
But others are the deadly organisms which find lodgment in the lungs
and cause pneumonia and tuberculosis; or the thirty odd varieties of
bacilli which cause the various kinds of grippe and influenza and
“colds,” which plague the civilized man; or others which, finding
entrance into the digestive tract, are the cause of typhoid and other
deadly fevers.

So it appears that we live within our bodies somewhat in the same
fashion as isolated barons lived in their castles in the Dark Ages,
beleaguered constantly by hordes of enemies that are bent upon our
destruction—these being billions upon billions of disease germs. Every
portion of the body has its defenses to protect it against these
swarms. The skin is germ-tight in health; and each of the gateways
to the interior of the body has its own peculiar guard—tears, wax,
mucous membrane, etc. As Dr. Edward A. Ayers points out,—“Many of
these entrances are lined with out-sweeping brooms—fine hairs similar
to the ‘nap’ or ‘pile’ of carpet or plush—which constantly sweep back
and forth like wheat stalks waving in the breeze. You cannot see them
with the low-powered eye, but neither can you see the germs. They sweep
the mucous from lungs and throat, and try to keep the ventilators free
from dust and germs. Behind the scurf wall and the broom brigade of the
mucous membranes, the soldier corpuscles of the blood march around the
entire fortress every twenty-eight seconds” (the time occupied by the
blood in its circulation through the body).


                     HEALTHY BODIES ARE GERM-PROOF

And again (to quote another authority, Dr. Sadler), “All the fluids and
secretions of the body are more or less germicidal. The saliva, being
alkaline, discourages the growth of germs requiring an acid medium. The
normal gastric juice of a healthy stomach is a sure germ-killer. In the
early part of digestion, lactic acid is present, and there soon appears
the powerful hydrochloric acid, which is a most efficient germicide....

“The living, healthy tissues of the body are all more or less
germicidal; that is, they are endowed with certain protective
properties against germs and disease. This is true of many of the
other special secretions, like those found in the eye and elsewhere
in the body, when they are normal. The blood and lymph, the two great
circulating fluids of the body, are likewise germicidal. In some
conditions of disease, there may be found various substances in the
blood which can destroy germs.”


                       THE WHITE CELLS ON GUARD

And this definitely brings us to the other kind of inhabitants of the
human blood, the leucocytes, or white blood corpuscles,—and so to the
germ theory of health, which science is showing to be no less true
than the germ theory of disease. In their natural state these cells
are transparent, spherical forms of the consistency of jelly drops,
which float in the bloodstreams or creep along the inner surface of
the vessel. Their function was for a long time not understood; the
discovery of the real facts, perhaps the most epoch-making discovery
ever made concerning the human body, the world owes to the genius of
Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute of Paris. These cells
are the last reserves of the body in its defense against the assault of
disease. Whenever, in spite of all opposition, the hostile germs find
access either to the blood or to the tissue, the white cells rush to
the spot, and fall upon them and devour them.

In their fight against the hordes of evil bacteria that invade the
blood, where the battles are waged, the body’s defenders have four
main ways of battling. Again we quote from Dr. Ayers: “The blood covers
some germs with a sticky paste, and makes them adhere to one another,
thereby anchoring them so that they become as helpless as flies on
fly paper. The paste comes from the liquid of the blood, the plasma.
Another blood-weapon (the ‘lysins’) dissolves the germs as lye does. A
third means of defense is the ability of the white blood corpuscles to
envelop and digest the living germs. One white cell can digest dozens
of germs, but it may mean death to the devouring cells.

The fourth and recently discovered weapon, or ammunition, of the blood
is the opsonins. Wright and Douglas in London in 1903 coined the word,
which comes from the Latin _opsono_: “I cook for the table,” “I prepare
pabulum for.” This is precisely what the opsonins do in the blood. They
manifest this beneficial activity when invading disease germs appear.
They attract white blood cells to the germs and make the bacteria more
eatable for the cells. They are appetizers for the white blood cells;
or sauces, which help the white blood cells to eat more of the bacteria
than they could do without this spur to their hunger. Wright and
Douglas demonstrated beyond peradventure the ability of the white blood
cells to eat a larger number of bacteria when the latter are soaked in
opsonins. They also showed that this opsonic sauce, or appetizer, which
stimulates the blessed hunger of the white blood cells for disease
bacteria, could be artificially produced, and hypodermically introduced
into a patient’s blood, thus increasing that blood’s power of defense
by raising the quantity of opsonins. They also worked out a practical
laboratory technique by means of which the opsonins can be measured,
or counted, with a considerable degree of exactitude, thereby making
it possible to estimate within limits of accuracy any one’s ability to
resist bacterial invasions. If the blood is rich in opsonins, its power
to fight disease is strong. Opsonins are now inoculated into the blood
at several institutions, notably McGill University in Montreal, and at
the Battle Creek Sanitarium.


                   HOW THE WHITE CELLS DO THEIR WORK

The process by which the white cells fight for us may be watched in
the transparent tissue of a frog’s foot or the wing of a bat. If a few
disease germs are introduced into this tissue, the white cells may
be seen to accumulate on the wall of the blood vessel just opposite
where the germs have entered. “Each cell begins to push out a minute
thread of its tissue,” writes Dr. Kellogg, in describing the process,
“thrusting it through the wall of its own blood vessel. Little by
little the farther end of this delicate filament which has been pushed
through the wall grows larger and larger, while the portion of the
cell within the vessel lessens, and after a little time each cell is
found outside the vessel, and yet no openings are left behind. Just
how they accomplish this without leaving a gap behind them is one of
the mysteries for which Science has for many years in vain sought
a solution. The vessel wall remains as perfect as it was before.
Apparently, each cell has made a minute opening and has then tucked
itself through, as one might tuck a pocket handkerchief through a ring,
invisibly closing up behind itself the opening made. Once outside the
vessel, these wonderful body-defenders, moving here and there, quickly
discover the germs and proceed at once to swallow them. If the germs
are few in number, they may be in this way destroyed, for the white
cells not only swallow germs, but digest them. If the number is very
great, however, the cells sacrifice themselves in the effort to destroy
the germs, taking in a larger number than they are able to digest and
destroy. When this occurs, the germs continue to grow; more white
cells make their way out of the blood vessels, and a fierce and often
long-continued battle is waged between the living blood cells and the
invading germs.”

Now, it must be understood that this description is not the product
of any one’s imagination, but is a definitely established fact which
has been studied by scientists all over the world. Because of the
importance of the discovery, and of the new views of health to which
it leads, we have placed a picture of this “battle of the blood” at
the front of this book. It shows the leucocytes of the human body
in conflict with the germs of influenza: the black dots being the
germs, and the larger grayish bodies the leucocytes. We have chosen a
photograph rather than a drawing, so that the reader may realize that
he is seeing something which actually has existence. We request him
to study the picture and fix it upon his mind, for it is not too much
to say that from it is derived every principle of health which is set
forth in the course of this book.


                         THE PROBLEM OF HEALTH

The human body is a complex and intricate organism, in some wonderful
and entirely incomprehensible way integrating the activities of all
these billions of other living organisms. Each and every one of these
latter has its function to fulfill, and the life of the individual
body is a life of health so long as the unity of all its organisms
is maintained. Outside of the body are millions of hostile organisms
assaulting it continuously; and the problem of health is the problem of
enabling it to make headway against its enemies for as long a period as
possible. Every act of a human being has its effect upon this battle;
at every moment of your life you are either strengthening the power of
your own organism or strengthening your enemies. Once the organism is
unable to beat back its enemies, health begins to fail and death and
complete disintegration is the ultimate result.

It must be understood that the peril of these hostile germs is not
merely that they devour the substance upon which the body’s own
organisms have to be nourished. If that were all, they might remain
in the body as parasites, and by taking additional nourishment a man
might sustain life in spite of them. Nor is it even that they multiply
with such enormous rapidity; the peril is that they throw off as the
products of their own activity a number of poisons, which are as
deadly to the human body as any known. These poisons are produced much
more rapidly than they can be eliminated from the system, and so they
fill the blood, and death ensues.

Thus the problem becomes clear. In the first place, what can we do to
keep disease germs from securing entrance to the body; and second, what
can we do to strengthen the body’s army of defense so that the fate of
any which do find entrance may be immediate destruction?


                   HEALTH, LIKE DISEASE, IS CATCHING

In actual practice it is found that the second problem is by far
the more important one. Some germs we can avoid. If we boil all the
water that we drink we will not be very apt to have typhoid. If we
exterminate rats and mosquitoes and flies and fleas, we will not have
yellow fever, or malaria, or plague. But we cannot hope to do this at
present in the case of such diseases as, for instance, consumption,
grippe, and influenza. If we live in a city, we take into our lungs
and throat millions of the germs of these diseases every day. Therefore
the one hope that is left is to keep ourselves in such a condition
of health that the army of our bodies shall be able to destroy these
germs. When the blood is in a healthy condition, the white cells are
numerous, powerful, and active, but when the blood flows stagnantly, or
when it is impoverished, then the white cells are few and the forces of
disease obtain a foothold.

Healthy men can go through many epidemics with impunity. Because the
Japanese army was an army of healthy men, its death rate from those
diseases which usually follow in the wake of all armies was lower
than the world had ever known before. Robert Ingersoll once said that
if he had been God and had made the world, he would have made health
“catching,” and not disease. As a matter of fact, health is catching.
It abounds in the very air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the
movements of every muscle and the play of every fibre and nerve of
the body; it comes from and is nourished by each and every one of
the bodily actions and functions; while disease is only secured by
persistent transgressions of the proper way of living, and by injurious
habits and customs that result in lowering the “vital resistance.”

This vital resistance is the innate power of the body to keep itself
strong; its very lifeforce. This is what we mean when we say that this
or that person has “a good constitution,” or has “a weak constitution.”
This is the capital in the bank of each individual life, placed there
by Nature at the birth of that life, and increased or diminished
by each and every action of our bodies, and also of our minds. As
Rokitansky, the eminent German scientist, said, “Nature heals. This
is the first and greatest law of therapeutics—one which we must never
forget. Nature creates and maintains, therefore she must be able to
heal.”

Many of the most notable discoveries and experiments of modern science
concur in demonstrating that the natural and innate healing power
of the body is man’s greatest resource in combating disease and
maintaining health. It is the body itself which cures the sick man; his
own vitality, and not the drug or medicants which he may take. These
may assist the healing process, but they do not set going the healing
processes themselves. More often, indeed, they are distinct detriments.
They stamp out or banish the distressing symptoms of ailments, and thus
in effect they silence the signal bells of danger which the body rings
at the approach of disease.

Modern science has turned its forces upon this question of maintaining
at its highest potentiality the ability of the body to resist disease.
All the habits of the human race have been investigated in the light of
this idea, and some have been found to be wise and others to be unwise.
These conclusions, with the evidence therefor, are the subjects of our
book.


                     OUR FOOD IS THE CHIEF FACTOR

It has been found that the most important problems connected with
health are those of nutrition—the questions of what and when and how
and how much food we ought to eat.

Every language under the sun contains a prayer somewhat similar to that
which we have in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, “Give us this day our daily
bread.” If we stop to think for a moment, we realize that next to the
air we breathe, and the water we drink, our food is the most important
consideration in the maintenance of life. All this is the veriest
commonplace; yet the fact remains that it is very rarely indeed that
we do stop to think upon the subject of our food. It is something that
we take for granted, like life itself. In the regular routine of our
days our meals become fixed habits, and the taking of food an almost
involuntary custom. It requires some extraordinary event to arouse us
to a just appreciation of the importance of knowledge on this subject.
Or else the coming of one of the myriad forms of digestive diseases
will serve the purpose of introducing the subject to our notice.

Our blood is made directly from what we eat, and that old Saxon
proverb is true which says that every man has lain in his own trencher.
Man is his food. Each human body is made by chemical action from its
food. All our actions and all our thoughts come from what we eat,
even as the movements of machinery proceed from the coal fed into the
boilers of the engine which operate the machine. If we eat the right
food, namely, the food which contains the elements our bodies require
in the proper proportions, we repair all waste, replace broken down
tissue and supply ourselves with physical and mental energy for our
toils and joys in life; while if we eat the wrong foods we quickly
injure our delicate though powerful physical and mental machinery.

All this would seem to be obvious; yet most people would grant that
they have still much to learn concerning what really constitutes the
best foods, and about the best ways of preparing, or making, or using
those foods. Few of us possess anything more definite to guide us in
our eating than the habits we acquired as children, or habits picked
up in later life from following the example of our friends, or the food
fashions of the day—for there are such things as fashions in foods and
in the eating of foods, even as there are fashions in clothes and the
making and wearing thereof. In this place it is proposed to study the
subject of food from one standpoint, namely, its effect upon the Battle
of the Blood; its relation to the vital resistance of the body whereby
health is maintained.




                                  II

   HOW TO EAT: THE GOSPEL OF DIETETICS ACCORDING TO HORACE FLETCHER


We shall first of all see what modern science has to tell us concerning
the question of _how_ we ought to eat.

It may not seem possible that anything essential remains to be said
at this late day on the subject of one of the commonest and decidedly
most necessary of all human acts. That there should be knowledge of the
utmost importance to learn regarding the actions and movements of the
tongue, the teeth, and the jaws, may come with as much surprise to the
majority of our readers as it did to us when we first hit upon this
disturbing, but illuminating, fact.

The act of eating is the starting point of the long series of processes
whereby our bodies are nourished. It is the only act of them all which
lies within our control. We can directly supervise the work of our
mouths; we can watch over the action of the teeth, and tongue, and
palate; but we can not supervise the work of the stomach, or of the
intestinal tube. Once we have swallowed our food, our mastery over it
has ceased—except for some hit-or-miss participation in the further
processes of its digestion by means of pills or potions. Realizing
this, we come to recognize the basic importance of knowing the right
way of eating.


                     THE STORY OF HORACE FLETCHER

This knowledge the world owes to Horace Fletcher, the American business
man who has made many of the greatest physiologists of our times embark
upon years-long series of experiments and inquiries into the problems
of man’s nutrition. As a result, the text-books of physiology are now
being rewritten; and as a further result, tens of thousands of men
and women, among them some of the best known authors, physicians,
clergymen, military men, and business men of both Europe and America,
have been restored to health by the knowledge of how to eat their food.

  [Illustration: MR. HORACE FLETCHER,
  Whose books on dietetics and good health were the forerunners of the
  present movement.]

This knowledge Mr. Fletcher gained at the very door of death, and in
no more interesting and striking fashion could the importance of it be
shown than by the relation of his remarkable case.

At the age of forty-five, after a varied and adventurous career, as
miner, and explorer, and sailor, and hunter, Mr. Fletcher had won
wealth, and retired from his business in order to devote himself
to long-cherished interests in art and philosophy. He was still
comparatively young, he was a member of many clubs, he had warm friends
in all the capitals and countrysides of the world (Mr. Fletcher being
one of the most untiring of globe-trotters), and in all ways except one
he was equipped and ready for a long life of ease and enjoyment.

The one way in which he was not equipped was—in health.


                      HOW A STRONG MAN BROKE DOWN

Once he had been a man of robust physique, a champion gymnast and
athlete; he had been president of the far-famed Olympic Club in San
Francisco (which he founded, and where the pugilist Corbett was
discovered), and had won plaudits even from famous professionals for
his prowess with the gloves.

But he had overdrawn his account at the bank of life. He had expended
more vital resistance than he had stored up; to such an extent, indeed,
that when Mr. Fletcher went to the insurance companies at the time he
retired from business he was rejected by them all; he was obese; he was
suffering from three chronic diseases, and he was dying fast. Such was
the verdict given by the skilled and experienced medical examiners of
the life insurance companies. And instead of entering upon a long life
of ease and enjoyment, he was thus condemned, seemingly, to a short
life of invalidism and suffering.


                           FIGHTING FOR LIFE

But Mr. Fletcher declined to accept any such decision as that. He
decided that he would regain his health—not that he would _try_ to
regain his health, but that he _would_ regain his health.

He first turned to the physicians. Possessed of wealth, he was able to
secure the services of many of the most able specialists of the world.
He visited the most celebrated “cures” and “springs” and sanitariums of
Europe and America. Nothing availed. He found passing relief now and
then, but no permanent good. He gained no health, in other words, but
obtained merely temporary abatement of this or of that disease.

Then he turned to himself. He began the study of his own case. As
he attributed most of his bodily woes to faulty habits of eating,
the subject of nutrition became uppermost in his studies. He was,
coincidentally, deeply immersed and interested in the study of
practical philosophy; and in a very remarkable fashion these two
subjects, these two interests, nutrition and practical philosophy,
became fused into one subject, supplementing and completing each other
and jointly forming the burden of the message of Hope, of the tidings
of great joy, which it became the mission of Horace Fletcher to deliver
to mankind.


                       MR. FLETCHER’S DISCOVERY

He discovered, or rather rediscovered, and applied, two great and
simple truths:

_First, that the complete chewing of all food, both liquid and solid,
whereby a process of involuntary swallowing is established, foods being
selected in accordance with individual tastes, is by far the most
important and most necessary part of human nutrition. It is the key
that unlocks the door of health, and opens the way to the real hygienic
life._

_Second, that nothing poisons the body, and aids the forces of disease,
more than worry—which Mr. Fletcher has named Fearthought. It is our
nature to look forward, to anticipate. We can anticipate in two
ways—anticipate evil, or anticipate good. The first way is to use
fearthought; the second way is to use forethought. Forethought will
produce cheerfulness and health, even as unspoiled rose seeds will
produce roses. Fearthought will produce disease and trouble, even as
the germs of putrefaction will produce sickness and death._

So great an authority in philosophy and psychology as William James has
given the sanction of his use to Mr. Fletcher’s phrases; and has also
named him as a shining example of those exceptional men who find in
some mental idea a key to unlock reservoirs of hidden and unsuspected
energy. While there is no doubting the fact that Horace Fletcher is
decidedly an exceptional man, yet the records prove that his key is
not merely for the use of exceptional people, but that it is one
susceptible of being used by everybody possessing willpower enough to
enable them to say “yes” when offered something good.

Like other great discoveries, Mr. Fletcher’s discovery of the right
way to eat came partly as an accident. Happening to be in Chicago at
a time when his friends were all away, and being forced to stay in the
city, he took to lingering over his meals in order to pass away the
time. He began to taste every spoonful of soup, to sip every mouthful
of anything liquid, with great deliberation, noting the different
tastes and searching out new flavors.

He chewed each morsel of meat or bread or fruit or vegetable until,
instead of being gulped down, it was drawn in easily by the throat. And
in this manner did he stumble upon his pathway to deliverance. He had
not been “toying” with his food—as he then considered he was doing—for
more than a few weeks before he noticed that he was losing a great
deal of superfluous fat, that he was eating less, but with far greater
enjoyment, than ever before in his life, that his taste for simpler
foods increased as his taste for highly seasoned and complex dishes
decreased, and that he was feeling better both physically and mentally
than he had felt in many years.


                       THE MAGIC OF MASTICATION

What did these things mean? Some hidden virtue in the food he was
eating? Some hitherto quite unsuspected tonic in the smoke of
Chicago? Or a lesson in health furnished by the “how” of his eating?
At this point there flashed through Mr. Fletcher’s memory the
story of Gladstone’s advice to his children to chew each morsel of
food thirty-two times (once for each tooth in their heads) if they
would preserve their health. In that moment, Mr. Fletcher began his
investigation of the many processes that go to make up the simple act
of mastication, an investigation which has now been going on for more
than ten years, and which has resulted in directing public attention
to the supremely important subject of nutrition with more emphasis,
and in the arousing of more general interest and the production of
more telling effect than any other circumstance or event has done in
the history of physiologic science. The word “Fletcherizing” was first
applied by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, after the analogy of
“pasteurizing,” in describing the act of mastication as recommended by
Mr. Fletcher. “Fletcherism,” as Mr. Fletcher’s system of mental science
and of physical culture through mastication has come to be known, after
first being for years a stock jest of the newspaper funnyman, has now
been recognized, even by those scientists who detest all “isms,” as a
most valuable bridge from the land of bad food habits and disease to
the land of good food habits and health.

The bridge certainly afforded its builder a passage from one region to
the other. Following a constant improvement in his general condition,
beginning almost simultaneously with the adoption of his new way of
life, Mr. Fletcher is to-day one of the strongest and most enduring men
alive. Tests of his strength and endurance made at the Yale gymnasium
at different times prove beyond a doubt that this is so. The following
is a quotation from the report of Dr. William G. Anderson, director of
the Yale Gymnasium:


                         DR. ANDERSON’S REPORT

“In February, 1903, I gave to Mr. Horace Fletcher the exercises used
by the ‘Varsity’ crew. He went through these movements with ease and
showed no ill effects afterwards. At that time Mr. Fletcher weighed
157½ pounds, and was in his fifty-fifth year. On June 11, 1907,
Mr. Fletcher again visited the Yale Gymnasium and underwent a test
on Professor Fisher’s dynamometer. This device is made to test the
endurance of the calf muscles.

“The subject makes a dead lift of a prescribed weight as many times
as possible. In order to select a definite weight, the subject first
ascertains his strength on the Kellogg mercurial dynamometer by one
strong, steady contraction of the muscles named—and then he finds
his endurance by lifting three-fourths of this weight on the Fisher
dynamometer as many times as possible at two or three second intervals.
One leg only is used in the lift, and as indicated, the right is
usually chosen.

“Mr. Fletcher’s actual strength as indicated on the Kellogg machine
was not quite four hundred pounds, ascertained by three trials. In his
endurance test on the Fisher machine he raised three hundred pounds
three hundred and fifty times and then did not reach the limit of his
power.

“Previous to this time, Dr. Frank Born, the medical assistant at the
Gymnasium, had collected data from eighteen Yale students, most of whom
were trained athletes or gymnasts. The average record of these men was
87.4 lifts, the extremes being 33 and 175 lifts.

  [Illustration: MR. HORACE FLETCHER
  Making a World’s Record on the Dynamometer without previous training.
  Dr. William G. Anderson, Director of the Yale Gymnasium, in the
  Background.]

“You will notice that Mr. Fletcher _doubled_ the best record made
previous to his feat, and numerous subsequent tests failed to increase
the average of Mr. Fletcher’s competitors. Mr. Fletcher informs me
that he had done no training nor had he taken any strenuous exercise
since February, 1907. On two occasions only during the past year he
reports having done hard work in emergencies; once while following
Major-General Wood in the Philippines in climbing a volcanic mountain
through a tropical jungle on an island near Mindanao for nine hours;
and once wading through deep snow in the Himalayan Mountains, some
three miles one day and seven miles the next day, in about as many
hours. This last emergency experience came through being caught in a
blizzard near Murree, in Northern India, at 8500 feet elevation, on
the way to the vale of Kashmir. These two trials represented climatic
extremes, and Mr. Fletcher states that neither the heat nor the
cold gave him discomfort, a significant fact in estimating physical
condition.

“Before the trial on the Fisher machine, the subject’s pulse was normal
(about 72); afterwards it ran 120 beats to the minute. Five minutes
later it had fallen to 112. No later reading was taken that day.

“The hands did not tremble more than usual under resting conditions,
as Mr. Fletcher was able to hold in either hand immediately after the
test a glass brimming with water without spilling a drop. The face was
flushed, perspiration moderate, heart action regular and control of
the right foot and leg used in the test normal immediately following
the feat. I consider this a remarkable showing for a man in his
fifty-ninth year; 5 feet, 6½ inches in height, weighing 177½ pounds and
not in training.”

In order to make a more thorough test of Mr. Fletcher’s power of
endurance under varying degrees of physical strain, he underwent on
the 17th, 18th, 19th, 21st and 22nd of June, 1907, a number of other
exceedingly severe tests, of which Dr. Anderson says: “After each test
the respiration and heart action, while active, were healthy, and,
under such conditions, normal.

“There was not the slightest evidence of soreness, stiffness or
muscular fatigue either during or after the six days of the trials. Mr.
Fletcher made no apparent effort to conceal any evidence of strain or
overwork and did not show any. He informs me that he felt no distress
whatever at any time. Should any one wish to become more familiar with
the strenuousness of the movements selected, let him try them. The
effort will be more convincing than any report.

“During the thirty-five years of my own experience in physical training
and teaching, I have never tested a man who equalled Mr. Fletcher’s
record.

“The later tests, given in June, 1907, were more taxing than those
given in 1903, but Mr. Fletcher underwent the trials with more apparent
ease than he did four years ago.

“What seems to me to be the most remarkable feature of Mr. Fletcher’s
test is that a man nearing sixty years of age should show progressive
improvement of muscular quality merely as the result of dietetic care
and with no systematic physical training. The method of dietetic care,
too, as given by Mr. Fletcher, is so unusual that the results seem all
the more extraordinary. He tells me that during the four and a half
years intervening between the first and the recent examinations he has
been guided in his choice of foods and in the quality also, entirely
by his appetite, avoiding as much as possible any preconceived ideas
as to the values of different foods or the proportions of the chemical
constituents of the nourishment taken.

“During this four year period he has more than ever catered to his
body nourishment in subservience to instinctive demand. He has
especially avoided eating until appetite has strongly demanded food,
and has abstained from eating whenever he could not do so in comfort
and enjoyment. Mastication of solid food and sipping of liquids
having taste to the point of involuntary swallowing, according to
his well-known theory of thoroughness in this regard, has also been
faithfully followed.

“There is a pretty good evidence that taking food as Mr. Fletcher
practices and recommends limits the amount ingested to the bodily need
of the moment and of the day, leaving little or no excess material to
be disposed of by bacterial agency. This might account for the absence
of toxic products in the circulation to depress the tissue.

“The possible immunity from lasting fatigue and from any muscular
soreness, resulting from the unaccustomed use, and even the severe use,
of untrained muscles is of utmost importance to physical efficiency.

“My own personal observance and trial of Mr. Fletcher’s method of
attaining his surprising efficiency, strengthened by my observation of
the test-subjects of Professors Chittenden and Fisher who have come
under my care meantime, lead me to endorse the method as not only
practical but agreeable. As Mr. Fletcher states, both the mental and
mechanical factors in selecting and ingesting food are important, the
natural result of the care being a wealth of energy for expression in
physical exercise.”


                              FLETCHERISM

So much for Horace Fletcher’s own case.

Yet when he first announced his discovery, his own family laughed
at him, and the medical world called him crank. But by quiet, sane,
persistent work—by applying to the propaganda of his idea the same
methods that had brought him success in business, he succeeded in
impressing the scientific world with the value of his method.

An extensive literature has grown up around Mr. Fletcher’s own books.
The most important medical bodies in Europe and America have invited
him to lecture before them. Hospitals in larger cities have printed his
own code of the rules of mastication for distribution. And no large
sheet of paper was required, for the whole system could be printed on a
postal card, and room would be left for a picture of its author.

Why is complete mastication the best way of eating? Why does its
practice lead to recovery of lost health, or increase of health; to
increase of strength, to increase of endurance. Is it not a very
tedious method, and thus of more trouble than its promised benefits are
worth? Does it not waste time? Does it not lead to loss of enjoyment of
food?

These are a few of the questions which a discussion of Fletcherism
invariably arouses. We speak with a deep conviction of truth when we
say that Fletcherism leads to saving of time, instead of loss of
time; that it brings increase of sensuous enjoyment of food instead
of decrease of it; and that if it is tedious or a bore, then it is
not Fletcherizing. The very essence of Fletcherism is the dropping of
worry, the elimination of stress and strain. If you do as Fletcher
says, instead of doing as somebody says that Fletcher says, you will
chew for taste, and not for time; you will take a crust of bread, or a
morsel of potato, for instance, into your mouth and roll it with your
tongue, and press it against the roof of your mouth, and pass it to
and fro, and crunch it, and crush it; and all the while you will not
be counting the chews, nor even thinking about chewing, but on the
contrary you will be thinking of the taste of the morsel, and seeking
that taste—and finding it.

Yes, finding it, even in a crust of bread or in a morsel of potato, in
those humble foods which the most of us seem to take more as matters of
habit; for by giving the saliva in the mouth a chance to fulfill the
work for which it is put in our mouths by nature, we find that the
starch in the bread and in the potato is turned into a sweet, toothsome
and partly digested morsel of sugar.

Here is a point that answers another of the questions which arose a
paragraph or so back. This turning of the starch in bread into sugar
by the action of saliva is only one of the numerous acts of digestion
which is accomplished in the mouth by the teeth, the tongue, the
palate, and the various kinds of juices, or saliva, which are in the
mouth. Horace Fletcher pointed out, and medical science now confirms
his assertions, that many of the most important parts of the digestive
process are meant by nature to be carried out in the first three inches
of the alimentary canal. And this is the only place in all the thirty
feet or so of the alimentary canal where digestion is in our own
control. If we bolt or insufficiently masticate our food, these mouth
processes of digestion are simply not accomplished; and for this the
whole system suffers sooner or later. The stomach and the intestines
are called on to do a great deal of extra work, and much of this
extra work is of a kind which they are unable to do. Consequently,
what food can not be digested must decompose in the intestines, with
the consequent production of poisonous fluids and gases which permeate
the body. The whole machinery of digestion is thrown out of gear. All
the various germs of disease race to be first to enter the disarranged
mechanism, as criminals rush to a city that is in disorder. The blood
not being as well nourished as it should be, the white army of the
soldiers of the body begin to weaken and to die, and the forces of
disease penetrate through their warding lines and attack the fort of
life from many sides, or else concentrate their strength in the form of
some virulent sickness.

Thorough mastication, on the other hand, means the reverse of these
conditions. Almost incredible seem the hundreds of stories which
we personally know to be true of men and women who have used Mr.
Fletcher’s method as a means to enter the land of good health. In
the opinion of Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek, “There is no doubt that
thorough mastication of food solves more therapeutic problems than any
other thing that can be mentioned. It solves the whole question of
the right combination of foods; solves the question of the quantity
of foods, and the quality of foods, after one has got his appetite
trained, his natural instinct trained; and when it comes to certain
diseases like acidity of the stomach, hyper-acidity or hypo-acidity,
dilation of the stomach or cirrhosis of the liver, or any other trouble
with the digestive organs, if it does not effect a radical cure it
makes it possible to tolerate a condition which otherwise would be
deadly in a short time. It makes it possible for a patient to live a
long time, enjoying comfortable health, where otherwise he would be
crippled so that he could not live long at all.”

Although we insist upon the fact that Fletcherism is simple, and easy,
too, once you have really begun its proper use, yet we also know that
there are many difficulties which the average man or woman has to face
at the outset. Professor Fisher encountered these difficulties when
experimenting with his students at Yale, and we are indebted to him for
enumerating some of them. And these difficulties, like the habit of
hasty eating itself, are products of our civilization.

We mean such difficulties as, first, _conventionality_, or the desire
to eat what others eat, and the unwillingness to appear different;
_politeness_, the desire to please one’s host, or hostess, and eat
“what’s set before you,” or to eat something which you know you don’t
want or which you know is bad for you, because you fear to offend
somebody or other who has cooked it, or bought it for you; _food
notions_, or the opinion that certain foods are “wholesome,” and that
certain foods should be avoided as injurious even if delicious to the
taste; _narrowness of choice_, as at a boarding house table (and a
great number of home tables!) which often supplies what is not wanted
and withholds what is; and, lastly, habit, by which the particular
kinds and amounts of food which have become customary through the
action and interaction of the causes previously named, are repeated
day after day, without thought.

“Habit hunger” is another of our handicaps. Habit hunger is said by Mr.
Fletcher to be responsible for a vast deal of overeating. He refers
to the fact that when we are children we eat at least one-third more
proteid or tissue-building foods, in proportion to our size, than we
require as adults, for the reason that our growing frames must then be
nourished and upbuilt; but when we reach the adult stage we are apt to
maintain this excessive consumption of proteid food—and proteid, as we
shall see later on, is the chief source of dietary ills.

These are some of the difficulties to be encountered by the person who
sets out upon the road to health. But they are very slight barriers,
indeed, to the person possessed of willpower, and when the benefits
and pleasures to be gained are so enormously in excess of the few
initiatory troubles, it is not to be wondered at that more than a
million persons in England and America are already following Horace
Fletcher’s system in whole or in part.


                   HOW CHEWING STIMULATES DIGESTION

Certain remarkable experiments conducted by Rogers, Metchnikoff, and
Pawlow in Europe, and by Cannon and Kellogg in America, have thrown a
new and interesting light upon the ideas of Fletcher; proving that the
act of chewing the food gives to the nerves that control the digestive
fluids an opportunity to assay the food, to test it and select for
it the particular kind of digestive fluid which that particular kind
of food requires. It appears that there are many different kinds of
saliva, and each one of these kinds has a particular kind of work to
do, which no other kind is able to do. Metchnikoff has shown that if
one takes cane sugar into the mouth with or without other food, there
is manufactured by the salivary glands a certain peculiar fluid which
digests cane sugar. If the cane sugar is not taken into the mouth, then
that substance is not made. The saliva that flows into the mouth when
there is food there but no cane sugar with the food, will not digest
cane sugar. So it readily can be seen that if cane sugar should be
hastily swallowed, it is much less likely to be properly digested. And
this holds good with nearly all other kinds of food.


                           THE “FOOD FILTER”

“But how is a person to know when he has chewed a mouthful long
enough?” the reader asks. Mr. Fletcher answers that nature has provided
us with a food filter—an automatic safety device. Professor Hubert
Higgins, formerly demonstrator of anatomy at Cambridge University
in England, and Professor Hasheby of Brussels, Belgium, have lately
conducted a series of experiments which throw light on this question on
its scientific side. At the back of the tongue there are a number of
little knobs, which are really taste buds, or apparatus for the tasting
of food. During the time that mastication is going on, the mouth is
closed and is completely air tight, and germproof. This fact one can
readily demonstrate by filling out the lips with air. The mouth is
full of air, yet one can breathe behind this curtain of air, showing
that the mouth is thoroughly cut off. This is what happens during
mastication, for of course one should masticate with the lips closed.
Now, when the food has become sufficiently ensalivated, or mixed up,
the circumvallate papillæ at the back of the throat, where the taste
buds are, relax, and behind that the soft palate forms a negative
pressure. This soft palate is muscled just as it is in the horse—which
is an animal that masticates, but is not found in the dog, which is an
animal that bolts its food. Whenever the food is ready for the body,
the soft palate relaxes, and is sucked back, and the swallowing of a
mouthful of the prepared food takes place involuntarily.

The body is thus supplied with as perfect a protection as could be
devised, and perfectly automatic; all that is necessary being that one
should masticate the food until it naturally disappears. One must not
attempt to keep the food too long in the mouth, but let it have its own
course. There are some sorts of food which, when one has chewed them
three or four times, are sucked up, showing that they have received
all the mouth treatment that nature requires they should. With other
foods one can masticate up to one hundred and fifty times, and still
they are not sucked up.

This food filter is a perfectly instinctive apparatus; but as people
have acquired the habit of flavoring foods with artificial sauces and
relishes, most of them have spoiled this protective device. In the
words of Mr. Fletcher himself: “This is a gift of Nature to man which
we have been neglecting. It is not a gift which has been given to me
and a few others alone. I think everybody could acquire the use of it
if they would give Nature a chance by eating slowly, by eating with
a sense of enjoyment, and by never eating save when they are really
hungry and in a mood to enjoy the food.”




                                  III

                         THE YALE EXPERIMENTS


At Yale University, Professor Russell H. Chittenden, Director of
the Sheffield Scientific School, Lafayette B. Mendel, Professor of
Physiological Chemistry, and Irving Fisher, Professor of Political
Economy, have carried on a long series of experiments, begun six years
ago as a test of the claims made by Fletcher. The net results of these
experiments up to date (for they are still in progress) may be put into
a nutshell. The following statement was drawn up by one of the writers
of this book and submitted to Professors Chittenden and Fisher, who
have accepted it as a summary of their present views:

“The commonly accepted standards which claim to tell the quantity of
food needed each day by the average man are based upon many careful
observations of what men actually do eat.

“We challenge these standards, however, as the exact science of to-day
cannot accept as authority common customs and habits in any attempt to
ascertain the right principles of man’s nutrition, since experiments
have demonstrated how readily one set of habits may be substituted for
another and how easily wrong habits become hardened into laws. The
evidence presented by observers of common customs, while they must be
duly considered, cannot, therefore, be taken as proof that these habits
and customs are in accord with the true physiological needs of the body.

“We believe that the following propositions have been demonstrated as
truths by the experiments we have made at Yale.

“People in general eat and drink too much.

“Especially do they eat too much meat, fish and eggs.

“This is so because meat, fish and eggs are the principal
proteid-containing foodstuffs.

  [Illustration: PROF. RUSSELL H. CHITTENDEN, PH.D., LL.D., SC.D.,
  Director Sheffield Scientific School, Yale University. He has
  conducted many dietary experiments from the physiologist’s point
  of view.]

“Proteid is an essential food element, absolutely necessary for the
upbuilding of tissue, for the maintenance of life. It is one of three
main elements into which all foodstuffs may be divided—the others
being Carbohydrates (the sugars and starches) and Fat. While it is
indispensable, it is also the element which the body machinery finds
most difficult to dispose of. Proteid is ‘nitrogenous.’ Nitrogen is
never wholly consumed in the body furnace as fats, sugars and starches
are. There is always solid matter left unconsumed, like clinkers in a
furnace; which clinkers the kidneys and liver have to labor to dispose
of. If the clinkers are produced in excess of the ability of these
organs to handle them without undue wear and tear, damage of a serious,
and sometimes permanent, nature follows. The ideal amount of proteid
is the amount which will give the body all of that substance which it
needs without entailing excessive work upon the body machinery.

“Excessive consumption of proteid foodstuffs—like meat, fish and
eggs—is the greatest evil affecting man’s nutrition. The excess of
proteid not only remains unburned in the bodily furnace, but this
waste matter very often decays in the body, forming a culture bed
for germs which effect the whole system, a condition scientifically
known as autointoxication, or self-poisoning of the body through the
action of the germs of putrefaction, and of other germs, which are
bred in the colon, or large intestine. The researches of Metchnikoff,
Bouchard, Tissier, Combe, and other eminent scientists, have shown that
autointoxication is the source of a great number of the most serious
chronic diseases which afflict mankind.

“We say, then, that the existing dietary standards place in all
cases the minimum of proteid necessary for the average man’s daily
consumption at far too high a figure. It may be safely said that it is
placed twice as high as careful and repeated experiments show to be
really necessary.

“There can be little doubt that the habit of excessive eating and
drinking, combined with the habit of too hasty eating and drinking,
especially of meat, fish and eggs, are probably the most prolific
sources of many bodily disabilities affecting men and women, and are
consequently the greatest deterrents to the attaining by men and women
of a high grade of efficiency in work, of better health, of greater
happiness, and of longer life.

“We believe that it has been demonstrated as a fact that health can be
bettered, endurance increased, and life lengthened, by cutting down
the commonly accepted standards of how much meat, eggs, fish and other
proteid food we should eat and drink by about one-half.”

       *       *       *       *       *

After Horace Fletcher had attracted the notice of the scientific world
in 1902, Professor Chittenden invited him to become the subject of a
series of experiments at Yale, where the Sheffield Scientific School
possessed an equipment suitable for an elaborate inquiry of this kind
much superior to any to be found in Europe.


                      FLETCHER’S CLAIMS SUPPORTED

Professor Chittenden first made certain, by experiments which precluded
any chance of error, that Horace Fletcher’s claims were justified so
far as Horace Fletcher himself was concerned. But this, of course,
by no means solved the problem. Mr. Fletcher might simply be a
physiological curiosity—a digestive freak—of whom there are many known
cases. He lived and thrived on an amount of proteid food startlingly
less than was deemed necessary by all existing standards, but this
could not be taken as proof that people in general could do likewise.
Only an exhaustive series of tests on a large number of people of
varying ages and conditions of life could prove this. Professor
Chittenden resolved to make these tests.

At the very outset, however, he faced this difficulty. If Mr.
Fletcher’s was merely a freak case, there would be a grave danger in
putting other men upon his dietary. Mr. Fletcher was flourishing on
a daily consumption of proteid foodstuffs amounting to an average of
only 45 grams, and the fat, sugar and starch consumed by him were
in quantities only sufficient to bring the total food value of the
daily food up to a little more than 1600 “calories,” or units of
fuel energy. The Voit standard—which is the typical one, the one most
commonly accepted, and which is based upon thousands of studies of
what men and women actually eat—demands that the average man shall eat
at least 118 grams of proteid, with a total fuel value of 3000 large
“calories” for the daily ration.

To make clear to the non-scientific reader just what quantity of
foodstuffs is represented by 50 grams of proteid, which is 5 grams
more than that consumed daily by Mr. Fletcher in his tests, and is
approximately the amount consumed daily by other men in the Yale
experiments, it may be said that 50 grams is about equal to 772 grains,
which are equal to about 1¾ ounces. This quantity would be represented
by the proteid contents of 9½ ounces of lean meat, or 7 eggs, or
27 ounces of white bread. Nine and one-half ounces of meat (using
comparisons furnished by Dr. Edward Curtis) is about the weight of a
slice measuring 7 by 3 inches and cut ¼ of an inch thick. Twenty-seven
ounces of bread represent somewhat less than two loaves, the standard
loaf weighing one pound (16 ounces). Of course, few people ever eat 7
eggs, or 2 loaves of bread in a day; but the vast majority of people in
America do eat a great deal more proteid than would be represented by 7
eggs, or 2 loaves of bread or a slice of meat of the size named, since
proteid is found in a great number of other foodstuffs besides those
mentioned.


                  CHITTENDEN’S EXPERIMENTS ON HIMSELF

Professor Chittenden realized that to ask a number of men to subsist on
a ration similar to that which nourished Mr. Fletcher might possibly
result in seriously weakening their constitutions. This is the problem
which has often confronted other scientists, and Professor Chittenden
solved it in a way characteristic of the true scientist—the devoted
warrior in humanity’s cause who wages warfare against the forces of
evil. He began his experiments upon himself.

The result rewarded his self-sacrificing spirit; for within a few
months a severe case of muscular rheumatism (which had plagued him for
years, refusing to yield to treatment) disappeared; and with it went
a recurrent bilious headache. And it may be stated that these have
never returned. Professor Chittenden has adopted as a habit of life the
dietary which he began as an experiment five years ago. At that time he
was a hearty eater of three meals a day, meals rich in meat and other
proteid foodstuffs.


                      THE OTHER CHITTENDEN TESTS

Professor Chittenden then began experiments with a group of university
professors and instructors, with a group of thirteen enlisted men
of the army, and a group of eight college athletes in training. All
three of these groups of men were subjected to careful laboratory
observations for continuous periods of many months, during which
the proteid ration was reduced from one-half to one-third what had
been customary. The professors and athletes followed their customary
vocations during the period of observations, while to the ordinary
drills of the soldiers were added severe gymnasium work under the
supervision of Dr. Anderson.

Results were as follows: The subjects usually lost some weight,
especially such as were fat. But it was found that having got down to a
new standard, they held this steadily. They all maintained muscular and
nervous vigor. Careful tests determined that the soldiers and athletes
positively gained in muscular strength. All kept in good health; and
many got rid of illnesses with which they had been suffering in the
beginning. Appetite was thoroughly satisfied; and quite a number of
the subjects permanently adopted the new method of living. Nine of
the soldiers went in a body to a new station, and from thence they
afterwards wrote, through one of their number, to Professor Chittenden,
saying: “The men are in first-class condition as regards their physical
condition, and all of them feeling well. We eat little meat now as a
rule and would willingly go on another test.”

At the beginning of the experiments these soldiers were subsisting on
a daily ration which allows one and one-quarter pounds of meat per day
apiece; and toward the end of the experiments they were subsisting and
increasing their strength on a daily ration of meat equivalent to about
one small chop or less!

These experiments constituted the first series made by Professor
Chittenden. He later carried through a series with dogs: prior
experiments having supported the view that the dog, a typical high
proteid-consuming animal, declined or died when forced to subsist
on quantities of proteid less than the amount ordinarily consumed.
Professor Chittenden, however, challenged here the methods, as well as
the results, of previous investigators. In previous experiments with
dogs the animals had been invariably handicapped by being confined
in dark and dismal quarters, too cramped to permit of exercise, and
at times unsanitary in condition. He reversed these conditions—and
reversed the results. His dogs lived and thrived on a diet far less
rich in proteid than former investigators deemed necessary.


                  PROFESSOR CHITTENDEN’S CONCLUSIONS

Summing up the conclusions reached by him after arduous years of
experiment and study, Professor Chittenden declares that 60 grams of
proteid (about the quantity which a single small chop would supply) are
all that are required by the average man of 150 pounds body weight.
This is one-half the Voit standard, and far below the common practices
of the majority of mankind in Europe and America.

“But there should be no practical use of the terms ‘standard diets’ and
‘normal diets’ by people in general,” says Professor Chittenden. “What
is needed to-day is not so much an acceptance of the view that man
needs so many grams of proteid per kilogram of body weight, as a full
appreciation of the general principle that the requirements of the body
for proteid food are far less than the common customs of mankind, and
that there are both economy and gain in following this principle in
practice.”


                       HOW TO INCREASE ENDURANCE

The most broadly interesting of these Yale food experiments are those
having to do with the question of endurance. The vast majority of
people are not ambitious to excel as athletes; they find better and
more enjoyable forms of work in life than putting up big dumb-bells,
or breaking records on the athletic field. Of course, everybody
wants to be strong, and to have well-trained and active muscles;
but on the whole, what the majority of people need is physical and
mental stick-to-itiveness—the ability to work without deterioration,
without running down like worn-out machinery. Professional men, day
laborers, students and athletes, all need this invaluable quality of
endurance—this quality that is the true capital in the bank of life
to be at their command day in and day out, with a reserve ready to be
drawn upon whenever an emergency arises. And it is precisely here that
the new art of health bestows its benefits upon those who follow it.

It was to ascertain the relation between diet and endurance in
the light of the new knowledge shed upon the subject by Professor
Chittenden’s experiments, that Professor Irving Fisher inaugurated his
own experiments at Yale University. He conducted two series of tests,
as follows:

First, to ascertain the effect of thorough mastication on endurance,
following the rules laid down by Horace Fletcher, with the help of nine
healthy students.

Second, to ascertain the influence of flesh eating on endurance as
compared with the effect of abstinence from flesh, with a group of
forty-nine persons, splitting the group as follows,—first, athletes
accustomed to a flesh, or high proteid dietary; second, athletes
accustomed to a low proteid, or non-flesh dietary; third, sedentary
persons accustomed to a low proteid, or non-flesh dietary.

  [Illustration: PROF. IRVING FISHER, PH.D.,
  Professor of Economics at Yale University. His investigations have
  had to do largely with the cost of necessary food.]

The flesh-eaters were Yale men, including some of the best known
athletes of the university. The abstainers were nurses and physicians
attached to the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Professor Fisher’s interest in the subject was that of a political
economist. Meats, as a general rule, are the most expensive part of the
national diet, and it is apparent that if a fleshless, or low proteid,
diet will increase endurance, it will also increase the national
earning capacity, and thus add to the national wealth. When Professor
Fisher began his experiments he encountered a singular fact, which was
that the science of physiology had given very little attention to the
study of endurance. “That strength and endurance are not identical,
is only partly recognized,” he writes. “The strength of the muscle is
measured by the utmost force that it can exert once; its endurance, by
the number of times it can repeat any exertion within its strength.
The repetition of such exertion, if not stopped by the refusal of the
will, is finally stopped by the reduction of the strength of the muscle
till it is unable to perform further. Thus endurance may be expressed
in terms of loss of strength. It is related to fatigue, and it is only
through the study of fatigue and fatigue poisons, made by Mosso and
others, that light has been thrown on the nature of endurance.”

When these tests were held Professor Fisher had not then invented the
machine for registering endurance which is now in use in the Yale
gymnasium; therefore, three simple tests were employed: first, holding
the arms horizontal as long as possible; second, deep knee bending;
third, leg raising with the subject lying on his back.


                   VICTORY FOR THE LOW PROTEID DIET

The results of the competitive tests were all in favor of the
flesh-abstaining athletes. In the first test, which was holding the
arms horizontal, only two of the fifteen flesh-eaters succeeded in
holding their arms out over a quarter of an hour; whereas twenty-two
of the thirty-two abstainers surpassed that limit. None of the
flesh-eaters reached half an hour, but fifteen of the thirty-two
abstainers exceeded that limit. Of these, nine exceeded one hour, four
exceeded two hours, and one exceeded three hours, the last going
exactly two hundred minutes, or three hours and twenty minutes.

In the leg raising test the record showed little difference. None
of the abstainers reached their absolute limits. The highest record
for the abstainers was one thousand times. A flesh-eater reached one
thousand, three hundred and two, but did so after the one-thousand mark
had already been set for him by an abstainer, and he went into the test
with the expressed intention of defeating his rival. Professor Fisher
states that it was evident from his fatigue at the end of the test that
he could not have repeated the performance on the next day, as did his
flesh-abstaining rival.

In respect to deep-knee bending, Professor Fisher pointed out that
of the nine flesh-eaters who went into this contest, only three went
above three hundred and twenty-five times, while of the abstainers,
seventeen surpassed this figure. Only nine of the flesh-eaters reached
one thousand, as against six of the twenty-two abstainers. None of
the flesh-eaters surpassed two thousand, while two of the abstainers
did. One abstainer, an athlete, S. A. Oberg, did two thousand and four
hundred dips or deep knee bends, almost doubling the highest figure set
by the flesh-eating athlete, which was one thousand, two hundred and
ninety-two. Most of the Yale flesh-eating athletes were so severely
crippled by their efforts in this particular set of movements that
Professor Fisher resolved not to employ them again, and went to work
on his device for mechanically registering endurance. One of the Yale
athletes, who in the deep-knee bending test had reached five hundred
times, fainted. Several had to be carried down the gymnasium stairs,
and others were made so stiff and sore that for days they could
not walk up and down stairs with comfort, while in the case of the
abstainers from flesh foods there were comparatively little painful
after-effects. Two of the abstainers, one a Yale athlete, were almost
free from physical after-effects. The Yale man ran on the track of
the gymnasium after his performance, and took a long walk afterward;
while the other athlete, Oberg, a Sanitarium nurse, who made the
highest record of all, two thousand four hundred times, continued his
duties and found little annoyance from stiffness or soreness. (Another
flesh-abstaining athlete, John E. Granger, of Battle Creek Sanitarium,
has since made a new record of five thousand and two dips in two hours
and nineteen minutes.)

Professor Fisher tried many means to stimulate the flesh-eating
athletes to do their very best. He called upon their “Yale spirit” to
rally to their aid, and he states that the advantage of rivalry as
between the flesh-eaters and the abstainers was decidedly upon the
side of the flesh-eaters, for their tests, with two exceptions, came
after all the records of the abstainers had been completed. The Yale
men felt that their tests would go on record as tests of Yale athletes,
and Professor Fisher states that the “Yale spirit” which aided them
appeared to be as great a stimulus as any “vegetarian” spirit could
possibly be.


                  THE RESULT OF THE MASTICATION TEST

As to the experiment with the nine healthy students, Professor Fisher
says:

“The results of the experiment demonstrated so great an increase
of endurance as to seem at first incredible. It certainly was a
surprise, both to the men and to me. But statistics which I have been
collecting during the last two years have prepared me to find great
differences and changes in endurance. The special result of the present
experiment is to show that diet is an important factor in producing
such alterations. The fact that endurance, even among persons free
from disease, is one of the most variable of human faculties—far
more variable than strength, for instance—is evident to any one who
has made even a superficial examination. Some persons are tired by
climbing a flight of stairs, whereas the Swiss guides, throughout the
summer season, day after day spend their entire time in climbing the
Matterhorn and other peaks; some persons are “winded” by running a
block for a street car, whereas a Chinese coolie will run for hours on
end; in mental work, some persons are unable to apply themselves more
than an hour at a time, whereas others, like Humboldt, can work almost
continuously through eighteen hours of the day.

  [Illustration: MR. JOHN E. GRANGER BREAKING THE WORLD’S RECORD FOR
  DEEP KNEE BENDING.
  The spectator at the extreme right is Mr. Alonzo A. Stagg, coach
  of the Chicago University football team. Mr. Michael Williams is
  between the two.]

“It is, to say the least, remarkable that hitherto so little effort
has been directed toward discovering the factors which explain such
differences in endurance. That exercise is one of the most and perhaps
the most important factor has long been recognized. A correspondent
assures me that by means of moderate _regular_ exercise he succeeded
in increasing his endurance between 100 and 200% in three weeks as
measured by leg-raising and “dipping.” The influence of diet has always
been regarded as small or negligible, and the opinion has almost
been universal, until recently, that a diet rich in proteid promotes
endurance. Even among those whose researches have led them to the
opposite conclusion, there is very little conception of the extent to
which diet is correlated with endurance. Such a person, a medical
friend of the writer, stated, when the present experiment was planned,
that he did not think the dietetic factor strong enough compared with
others to produce any marked effect. We have all heard, of course,
of the enthusiastic reports of vegetarians as to their increased
endurance, but these we have discounted as exaggerations. The result
of the present experiment, however, would seem to indicate that one’s
improvement in endurance is usually not less, but greater, than he
himself is aware of. Probably it is also true that we may lose a large
fraction of our working power before we are distinctly conscious of the
fact.

“While the results of the present experiment lean toward
‘vegetarianism,’ they are only incidentally related to that propaganda.
Meat was by no means excluded; on the contrary, the subjects were urged
to eat it if their appetite distinctly preferred it to other foods.

“The sudden and complete exclusion of meat is not always desirable,
unless more skill and knowledge in food matters are employed than most
persons possess. On the contrary, disaster has repeatedly overtaken
many who have made this attempt. Pawlow has shown that meat is one of
the most, and perhaps the most, ‘peptogenic’ of foods. Whether the
stimulus it gives to the stomach is natural, or in the nature of an
improper goad or whip, certain it is that stomachs which are accustomed
to this daily whip have failed, for a time at least, to act when it was
withdrawn.

“Nor is it necessary that meat should be permanently abjured, even when
it ceases to become a daily necessity. The safer course, at least, is
to indulge the craving whenever one is ‘meat hungry,’ even if, as in
many cases, this be not oftener than once in several months. The rule
of selection employed in the experiment was merely to _give the benefit
of the doubt_ to the non-flesh food; but even a _slight_ preference for
flesh foods was to be followed.

“Under flesh foods are included all meat and ‘stock’ soups. It has
been shown that although these extracts of meat contain a large amount
of nitrogen, it is not in the form of proteid which can be utilized,
but only of waste nitrogen which must be excreted. Apparently the sole
virtue of such soups is that they supply the ‘peptogenic’ stimulus
above referred to.


                  ANYBODY CAN APPLY THE NEW KNOWLEDGE

“The practical value of the experiment consists in the fact that any
layman can apply it, with or without a knowledge of food values, though
with more advantage if he possess than if he lack such knowledge.
If the dietetic rules of the present experiment are followed, no
self-denial as to foods is required. It is, however, absolutely
necessary that there should be _self-control_ enough to break up the
habit of hurried eating to which modern civilization has brought
us—habituating us, as it were, to eat against time.

“Experience indicates that appetite does not lead to a diet fixed in
amount or constituents, but moves in undulating waves or cycles. The
men who took part in the experiment were encouraged, after any of
the symptoms which seemed to be associated with high proteid (such
as heaviness, sleepiness, stiffness, or soreness after exercise,
or catching cold), to cut down on their proteid and substitute fat
to restrain the gastric juice. This advice was intended to make
application of the theories of Folin that we usually carry a reservoir
of proteid, enough to supply our needs for body-building for a
fortnight. If this reservoir is exhausted, proteid starvation occurs
and the body feeds on itself; if it is filled too far it overflows and
causes the evils of excessive proteid. If this theory is correct, the
art of eating may consist largely in maintaining a golden mean, such
that the proteid reservoir is neither empty nor overflowing much. Many
persons fear to reduce their proteid to the Chittenden minimum for fear
of proteid starvation; but the experience of those who have tried it
would seem to show that this fear is groundless, _provided_ no violence
is done to natural appetite. This may be trusted, so it would appear,
to raise a warning in the form of ‘nitrogen hunger,’ before the danger
point is reached.” In other words, the body will ask in the language
of hunger for proteid food, if you are not eating as much as you
should. Professor Fisher considers that an amount of meat equivalent to
about one small chop will supply all the proteid necessary in the daily
ration, since proteid is also consumed in bread, potatoes and nearly
all other foods.

It might be added that one of the writers has found the remedy for
continual bilious headaches in the rigid exclusion from his diet of
all foods that are rich in proteids, including meat, fish, eggs, milk,
cheese, peas and beans; and maintains weight and working efficiency
upon such amount of proteid as he derives from ordinary breadstuffs.
He has found that the craving for high proteid foods soon disappears
if it is not gratified; and that the quantity of bread, potatoes,
etc., which the average person would eat at dinner and supper supplies
all the nitrogen which his system needs, without leaving any to cause
autointoxication.




                                  IV

                     HOW DIGESTION IS ACCOMPLISHED


In order not to interrupt the narrative of the Yale experiments,
we have foregone defining certain of the technical terms which it
was necessary to use. It will be well, before going further, to
give a simple description of the manner in which the food we eat is
transformed in the body into tissue building material and energy: a
process the many parts of which are grouped by physiologists under the
name of Metabolism.

When you take a mouthful of food it enters on a journey through the
body in which it traverses more than thirty feet of the intestinal
tube before that part of it which the body cannot use is ejected; the
process of metabolism begins the moment the lips touch it. The six
salivary glands which are located in the mouth manufacture saliva,
which flows out through numerous openings, and mixes with food as it
is chewed. The saliva not only moistens the food, thus allowing it to
be more easily swallowed, but it also has a most important chemical
office, converting all starchy food matter into sugar, and thus
performing the first and one of the most essential steps in the process
of digestion.

After the food has been masticated and saturated with saliva, it passes
down the throat through the gullet, which performs a peculiar muscular
contraction, thrusting downward the particles of food. The conversion
of the starch in food into sugar, or glucose, which is begun by the
saliva in the mouth, is continued as the food passes into and down the
gullet, but stops almost completely when the food once reaches the
stomach.


                        THE WORK OF THE STOMACH

It is in the stomach, on the other hand, that most of the work of
digesting the albuminoids, or proteids, of food is performed by the
gastric juice. The stomach is a pear-shaped bag, that holds about three
pints of material, or three-quarters of an ounce for every inch of the
individual’s height. Food enters it through the gullet on the upper
left hand side, just below the heart. Myriads of glands in the walls of
the stomach are active in the formation of either pepsin, or an acid
fluid which, when combined with pepsin, forms the gastric juice.

At the back of the stomach, partly overlapping it, lies the liver,
which discharges a liquid called the bile into the alimentary canal
just below the stomach. Behind the stomach, lies a large gland called
the pancreas, which discharges a remarkable fluid, named pancreatic
juice, into the intestine through the same opening which the liver uses
for its bile. Connected with the stomach is the small intestine, which
is the narrow portion of the alimentary canal, and the largest and most
important of all the digestive organs. It is some twenty-five feet in
length, and its walls are everywhere covered with glands which secrete
and exude mucous and other fluids.

At the lower end of the intestine is the colon or large intestine which
is not a digestive organ in itself, but is a reservoir in which the
food is stored up for a short time, to allow opportunity for complete
absorption of the digested portions.


                         THE ELEMENTS OF FOOD

Although there may be thousands of different dishes, and combinations
of foodstuffs, fundamentally they are all closely akin, and can be all
resolved into a few quite simple elements: Proteid, Carbohydrate, Fat
or Mineral Salts, or combinations of these; the Proteid class having
many subdivisions, and the Carbohydrates being made up of the various
sugars and starches.

We also know definitely just what use the body makes of these various
substances. The Proteid is the up-builder of tissue, the essential
foodstuff without which life cannot exist. If we compare the human body
to an engine, as nearly all physiologists seem bound to do, we may say
that Proteid is like the brass, or other metal, of which the structure
is composed. The various Carbohydrates and the Fats are the fuels from
which are derived the energy which animates and operates the mechanism.
The Mineral Salts are used to supply various important bodily needs,
such as elements required by the bones, or the delicate tissue in the
eyes, the enamel for the teeth, and so forth.


                   THE WORK OF THE DIGESTIVE JUICES

As there are five main food elements, namely, proteid, starch, sugars,
fats, and salts, so also there are five main digestive fluids, the
saliva, the gastric juice, the bile, the pancreatic juice, and the
intestinal juice.

The saliva is an alkaline fluid that digests starch. Its work is
checked by the presence of acid substances; which explains why the
digestive action of saliva ceases soon after it enters the stomach.
Hence the importance of giving the saliva ample opportunity to perform
its function, by complete mastication, is obvious.

The gastric juice, of which about seventy ounces is formed by the
stomach daily, contains in addition to hydrochloric acid, a quantity
of pepsin, which with the acid dissolves all sorts of proteids or
albuminous substances, like meat and eggs; and it also contains rennet,
which coagulates milk. The gastric juice digests proteids by converting
them into pepsin, an exceedingly soluble substance which passes readily
into the blood.

The bile manufactured by the liver has the function of digesting fats.
Fats are not changed chemically, as are starches and proteids. They are
only broken up into particles so small that the cells of the mucous
membrane can take them up and effect their removal into the blood
stream.

The pancreatic juice is able to perform the work of all the three
digestive fluids which we have already named. In fact, it is even more
powerful than saliva in the digestion of starch, since it is able to
digest raw as well as cooked starch, which the saliva cannot do. It is
also able to convert proteid into peptone, as does the gastric juice;
and it emulsifies fats, as does the bile.

The intestinal juice digests cane sugar, and is supposed to have a
digestive influence upon all the other food elements.

The mineral salts which are taken into the body are dissolved by all
the digestive fluids which we have named, some by the saliva and the
juices of the intestinal tube, and others, which require acids for
their solution, by the gastric juice.

Nearly all these digestive fluids are also powerful antiseptics and are
able to destroy germs when the health of the body as a whole is good.
The gastric juice, for instance, acts as an antiseptic, preserving the
stomach contents from putrefaction during the digestive process. It is
a remarkable fact that the gastric juice, although it is so essential
to life, is a deadly poison, which, when introduced into the blood
produces insensibility and death.

These digestive juices and organs are able completely to dispose of
all the food elements which are introduced into the body, save proteid
alone. The sugars and starches are either completely absorbed and
oxidized, or stored up in the form of surplus fat. The oxidation or
burning up of proteid, however, is never complete. There is always a
certain amount of unburnable substance left behind from the processes
of metabolism, which the liver and kidneys of the body have to dispose
of. If only as much proteid as is needed by the body for the upbuilding
of its tissue, and the repair of waste, is taken, the body can very
readily handle it; but an excess of proteid is highly disadvantageous.
Professor Chittenden, in his great work, “The Nutrition of Man,” has
set forth in elaborate detail the process of the assimilation of
proteid. It appears that there are many kinds of proteid; the proteid
of eggs is different from that of meat, and that again from the
proteid of beans, and so on; and human proteid is different from all.
Consequently, the body is obliged to transform every kind of proteid
which is brought to it. This proteid is then absorbed by the blood, and
carried to the tissues, which are kept perpetually bathed in a supply
of nutritive material. The taking of more proteid than is needed would
not be so dangerous if it were simply passed on without being digested;
nor even if it were digested and transformed, and then promptly
eliminated. But what actually happens is that the new proteid taken in
is passed through all the stages of assimilation, and drives out in
front of it, so to speak, the proteid which has already been prepared,
but has not yet been used. And the result is, of course, to throw a
double strain upon the liver and the kidneys, the organs of elimination.

Professor Chittenden also points out the common blunder which is made
in assuming that persons who are doing hard work need an additional
amount of proteid substance. One commonly hears the phrase that
laborers and athletes can eat meat in large quantities, and “work it
off.” As we have seen, one can “work off” sugars and starches and fats
completely; but one cannot “work off” proteid completely. Professor
Chittenden is now recognized as the leading authority of the world upon
this particular question; and he sets forth clearly in his book the
fact that the quantity of proteid needed is not increased by muscular
activity. One may work as hard as he pleases, but his body will use
no more nitrogen, save only in the case where a sufficiency of other
food elements is not supplied. Only as a last resort will the system
undertake the labor of burning up proteid to make energy.


                        HOW MUCH SHOULD WE EAT

When foodstuffs are taken into the body, digested, assimilated, and
used up, they produce the same amount of heat and other forms of energy
as if burned outside of the body; and hence it follows that the number
of calories, or units of heat, represented in a given foodstuff, is
taken by scientists as a common measure of its food value.

A calory is a heat unit, which has been adopted as a means of
estimating the nutritive value of foodstuffs. It represents the amount
of energy required to raise the temperature of four pounds of water one
degree Fahrenheit. The number of calories contained in food is obtained
by burning the food and measuring the heat produced by means of a
calorimeter.

It has been calculated that the normal, average person needs from one
hundred and sixty to two hundred and forty calories of proteids every
day, in order to build blood and tissues. He needs daily from five
hundred to nine hundred calories of fats, which supply heat.

He needs of carbohydrates, which are the starches and sugars, and which
the body uses to produce energy for work and heat, from one thousand to
one thousand four hundred calories daily. It is declared by Chittenden
and Kellogg, whose work has overset the old notions, that the total
number of calories, or food units, should rarely exceed two thousand.

Two thousand calories are furnished respectively by twenty-eight
ounces of bread, or ninety-six ounces of milk, or sixty-two ounces of
potatoes, or nine ounces of butter. One quarter of each of these, or
any other fractions which together equal unity, will make up a ration
containing two thousand calories.

It is quite impossible, however, to make a hard and fast rule in this
matter. Every individual differs from others in his requirements.
Moreover, the weather, the season of the year, the amount and kind
of work done, are all factors in the situation. Hard physical work
and exposure to cold demands the largest food supply. A person who
naturally perspires freely needs more food than a person who does
not, because of the large amount of heat carried off from his body by
the evaporation of sweat from the skin. Adults require food chiefly
to repair waste and losses. Growing children require in addition
to food to repair waste and losses, material for tissue building.
According to the best authorities upon the diet of children, a
growing infant utilizes fully one-third of its total intake of food
in tissue building. When an adult becomes emaciated he requires more
tissue building material than the normal adult, his need for it being
practically the same as that of a growing child.

We give below a table showing the average number of food units or
calories required daily by people of various heights and weights. This
table is one drawn up by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, Superintendent of the
Battle Creek Sanitarium. In calculating the number of calories required
in a given case, the estimate should be based not upon the actual
weight of the individual, but upon the weight of the average person of
his height.

“Persons who are in good health,” says Dr. Kellogg, “and find their
weight somewhat greater than the figures given in the table, should
not necessarily consider themselves obese. While above the average in
weight, their condition is probably natural, and no attempt should be
made to reduce the weight to any considerable amount, as injury may
result. The average for adults applies especially to healthy adults
between twenty and thirty years of age. Most people who are above
forty years of age have a natural tendency to increase of flesh, which
requires no attention unless it becomes excessive. Any reduction in
foods made by an obese person should be in carbohydrates rather than
in proteids or fats, unless these latter have been taken in excess.”


                              TABLE NO. 1

 Showing for different ages the average height, weight, and the number
 of food units or calories required daily.

                                _Boys_

       Height in  Weight in  Calories or
  Age  Inches     Pounds     Food Units
  5    41.57      41.09      816.2
  7    45.74      49.07      912.4
  9    49.69      59.23      1,043.7
  11   53.33      70.18      1,178.2
  13   57.21      84.85      1,352.6

                                _Girls_

      Height in  Weight in  Calories or
  Age Inches     Pounds     Food Units
  5   41.29      39.66      784.5
  7   45.52      47.46      881.7
  9   49.37      57.07      1,018.5
  11  53.42      68.84      1,148.5

                                 _Men_

                            Calories or Food Units
  Height in  Weight in
  Inches      Pounds   Proteids  Fats  Carbohydrates  Total
  62           110.0    165       495    890           1650
  64           121.0    181       543    1086          1810
  66           132.0    198       594    1188          1980
  68           143.0    215       645    1290          2150
  70           154.0    231       693    1386          2310
  72           165.0    247       741    1482          2470
  74           176.0    264       792    1584          2640

                                _Women_

                            Calories or Food Units
  Height in  Weight in
  Inches      Pounds   Proteids  Fats  Carbohydrates  Total
  57            78.4    118       344    688           1180
  59            88.8    132       396    792           1320
  61            99.2    149       447    894           1490
  63           109.3    163       489    978           1630
  65           120.2    180       540   1080           1800
  67           130.7    195       585   1170           1950
  69           143.0    215       645   1290           2150
  71           155.0    232       696   1392           2320


                PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF DIETARY RULES

While dieticians have ascertained the number of food units daily
required by the average person, yet on no point do they reach more
thorough agreement than in saying that the average person should not
establish any hard and fast rules as to the quantity and kinds of food
he consumes. It is really only an invalid, one who is in a physician’s
care, who needs to have his food regulated in this precise fashion. The
average person should be careful to practice thorough mastication, and
should see to it that the proteid part of his meals is not excessive,
but he should avoid worrying about his food habits. Any person who
fusses and fumes about the kind of foodstuffs and the number of
calories they contain, will be apt to cause himself harm; for science
has proved by laboratory experiments, which we shall describe later
on, that worry, in fact any of the unpleasant emotions, exercises a
prohibitive effect upon the flow of digestive juices.

The really important thing to do is to follow a simple dietary,
which at the same time is well balanced in its food elements, well
cooked, and tastefully served. The housewife will see to it that the
foodstuffs she chooses represent more of carbohydrates and fats than of
proteids; her guiding rule in this matter being that _the proportion
of proteids to the other food elements be ten per cent._ The United
States Department of Agriculture has prepared a list of foodstuffs,
comprising all those in common use, which shows the proportion of their
constituents, and their total energy value, in calories, per pound of
material.

This is “Bulletin No. 28, Revised Edition,” the work of two of the
leading physiological chemists of America, W. O. Atwater and A. P.
Bryant; and may be had on sending five cents to the Department. We have
inserted in the Appendix a selected list of foodstuffs taken from this
publication; and we give here a rough classification of foods, from
which one can see at a glance their leading elements:


FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN PROTEIDS

  Eggs
  White of Egg
  Skimmed Milk
  Buttermilk
  Yogurt
  Cottage Cheese
  Nut Products


FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN FATS

  Butter
  Nut Oils
  Olive Oil
  Cream
  Olives
  Nuts (except chestnuts)
  Egg Yolks


FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN CARBOHYDRATES

  Potato
  Rice
  Breads
  Cereal Preparations

PURE CARBOHYDRATES

  Fruits (raw and cooked)
  Fruit Juices
  Fruit Jellies
  Honey
  Malt Honey
  Marmalades


FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN PROTEIDS AND FATS

  Nuts
  Nut Butters
  Eggs
  Cheese
  Nut Products


FOODSTUFFS WHICH ARE RICH IN PROTEIDS AND CARBOHYDRATES

  Peas
  Beans
  Lentils
  Chestnuts
  Skimmed Milk
  Gluten Preparations.


FOODSTUFFS WHICH CONTAIN ALL THE FOOD ELEMENTS IN FAIRLY GOOD PROPORTION

  Crackers
  Batter Breads
  Pastry
  Malted Nuts
  Custards
  Puddings
  Salads
  Sandwiches
  Soups (other than meat or fish soups).




                                   V

                       HOW FOODS POISON THE BODY


In our survey of the processes and organs of digestion, we saw that
after food has traversed the stomach and small intestine it passes into
the colon, where it must remain for some considerable time, while the
absorption of its digested elements is completed. And this brings us to
the most important of the discoveries of the new hygiene. It has been
found that some of the foods which human beings eat are loaded with
injurious bacteria, and with the poisons which these bacteria produce.
And others of them are indigestible, and when they reach the colon,
become a source of incubation for countless billions of other bacteria.
It was demonstrated by Metchnikoff that these poisons are absorbed into
the system, and are the cause of manifold evils. This is the process
which is called “autointoxication.”

It would not be regarded as an exaggeration by the leading
physiologists of the world to-day to speak of autointoxication as the
primary source of nine-tenths of the afflictions from which humanity
suffers. Any one would be prepared to admit that the banquet he had
attended on the previous night was responsible for the headache
which he has on the present morning; but the investigations of
bacteriologists have revealed that the food habits of which banquets
are typical are responsible for a chronic ailment, of which such
diseases as gout, rheumatism, Bright’s disease, consumption, and
pneumonia are merely symptoms.


                   THE INVESTIGATIONS OF METCHNIKOFF

Elie Metchnikoff, sub-director of the Pasteur Institute of Paris, is
a philosopher, as well as a physiologist; a philosopher who brings to
the support of his speculations the exact methods of the laboratory.
He, with the other great leaders of the new art of health, is at last
removing from science the reproach leveled at it by Metchnikoff’s great
fellow-country-man and friend, Tolstoi, who said that science was
useless to man, since it did not direct its attention to the problems
which mean most to humanity, such as the great questions of life and
death, but confined its efforts to investigating useless birds and
butterflies.

  [Illustration: M. ELIE METCHNIKOFF, OF THE PASTEUR INSTITUTE OF
  PARIS.
  His researches have thrown great light on autointoxication. He
  believes that the normal life should be over 125 years long.]

The books in which Metchnikoff has recorded the results of the
investigations which for many years he has been making into the
problems of old age and death, have caused a profound sensation in the
scientific world. In these books, the great Russian emphatically and
definitely ranks himself with the optimists. He states that scientific
study of the constitution of man, and of the workings of man’s nature,
and of his environment in the world, do not support the view that
man is born unto sorrow as the sparks fly upward—to quote the words
of the Psalmist—but can really be fitted to live a useful and happy
life, ending in a calm and peaceful old age—if man will but turn his
attention to the knowledge by which he can really live in harmony with
his environment. Metchnikoff has arrived at the conclusions that man
and woman would live to be at least one hundred years old, if they
could enable their bodies to eliminate those deadly toxins which are
the product of the activities of the bacteria which inhabit the human
body, as well as of the body’s own organic processes.

Age is not always to be computed in years. As a common saying puts the
case, “A man is as old as he feels, a woman as old as she looks.” A
famous French physiologist has altered this to read, “A man is as old
as his arteries.” The primary change produced by the coming of old age
is the hardening and withering of the arteries. As the result of this
withering process, a large number of the smaller arteries disappear, so
that the blood supply of the muscles, brain, heart, and other important
organs, is cut off. This is the change that is technically known as
“arterio-sclerosis.” It is quite often found in persons of less than
fifty years of age. On the other hand, Harvey, the famous discoverer
of the circulation of the blood, declared that in the post-mortem
examination made of Old Parr, the celebrated Englishman who died at the
age of one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months, he found not a
trace of this degenerative change.

In the United States the average length of life is about forty-two
years; but a large and growing school of modern scientists (comparative
anatomists) declare that the natural age of the human family cannot
be much less than from one hundred, to one hundred and twenty-five
years. Any death that comes at least before one hundred years, is not
a natural death but accidental or violent. From the point of view of
science, death through disease is just as accidental and violent as
the extinguishment of life in a railway wreck or by drowning in the
sea; and the fact that the average life of man is to-day only about
one-third of that which nature designed for him is due to the operation
of autointoxication more than to any other cause.

Natural death in man is therefore more a possibility than an actual
occurrence. Nevertheless, instances have been recorded of the actual
appearance of the instinct in aged people, where the wished-for
death came not because life was burdensome, not because of poverty,
disease, or loneliness, but seemed to arrive as naturally as sleep to
a younger person, or the wish for more extended life which all of us
possess. Metchnikoff states that instances of veritable cases showing
an instinct of death are extremely rare, yet this instinct really
does seem to lie deep in the constitution of man. And if the cycle of
human life followed an ideal course, he concluded men and women after
living a healthy and useful life extending over at least a century,
with their usefulness and satisfaction in life at maximum during the
latter portion of that period, would then give themselves up calmly and
gracefully to the arms of death, as to the arms of a friend laying them
down to earned and wished-for rest. Old age would have no terrors, and
death no victory.

It has been, perhaps, Metchnikoff’s crowning discovery, that the
immediate cause of old age is not merely the accumulation of poisonous
wastes, but is due to a destruction of the tiny cells which make
up the tissues by certain cells of the body, which he describes as
macrophages. These are of an especial kind, which wander through the
body and devote their energies to the destruction of waste particles
and organic débris—particles of material which are not used in the
building up of tissue, just as particles of brick and wood might be
left on the ground after the erection of a house. These macrophages
enact the part of scavengers, very much like the turkey buzzards, which
in southern cities eat up the refuse from the back alleys. Just so
long as these wandering cells confine themselves to this useful and
necessary work, all goes well; but when the vigor of the body cells has
been lowered by the accumulation of tissue poisons, these scavenger
cells turn traitor to the cause of the body and attack the very cells
which they formerly guarded. They have been photographed in the very
act of devouring nerve cells in the brains of old people.


                 HOW TO PREVENT DEGENERATION OF TISSUE

It can readily be seen that if the pernicious activity of these
macrophages can be prevented, the coming on of degenerative changes in
the body tissue will be much delayed. The practical question, which
Metchnikoff therefore asked himself was, How may this revolt of the
macrophages, this rebellion of the body’s army, be prevented?

It is not possible to attack the macrophages themselves without at the
same time doing damage to the body. For these wandering cells are more
hardy and vigorous than the higher cells by which the bodily functions
are performed, and which they attack, so whatever might be done to
weaken the attack of the wandering cells would to a greater degree
damage the higher cells of the body. The conclusion that Metchnikoff
reached was that the only direction in which we can hope for success
in the attempt to prolong human life, lies in giving attention to the
predisposing causes which weaken the vitality of the higher body cells
and thus expose them to the successful attacks of the scavenger cells.
In other words, if we are to prolong human life, we must make the
conditions of life such that the premature accumulation of body wastes
or poisons shall be prevented.

One of the first steps to take to affect that end is, obviously, the
avoidance of the introduction of poisons, and poison-forming foods,
into the body. Out of all proportion to all other causes which lead
to the formation of body poisons, is the production of toxins in the
colon or large intestine. Metchnikoff’s studies show beyond a doubt
that there is a close connection between the size of the colon and the
duration of life in various birds and animals. Where the colon is used,
and has attained large proportions, as in man, in the horse, and many
other animals, life is comparatively short, and death is premature.
Where the colon is rudimentary, or where only such foods are eaten as
do not decay or ferment in the colon, then life is long.

Thus the most important problem, according to Metchnikoff, is how to
prevent the development of poisons in the colon. He believes that the
colon, indeed, is quite superfluous, and that man would be better off
without it. He quotes several curious cases in which the colon has
been removed from the body, and the subjects of the operations have
recovered impaired health and lived for long periods afterwards. Since
the colon cannot be generally removed from the body, however, the
practical problem comes down to this: How may we avoid the evils which
result from the fermentative and putrefactive processes which go on in
this organ?

If the large intestine is kept clean, if only those foods which are
antitoxic are eaten, then there will be very few poisons generated in
the colon, and the health of the body will be maintained in a higher
degree and for a much longer period than can be possible when toxic
foods are freely partaken of. It is here that the great argument for
vegetarianism on its scientific side arises. All meats and fish are not
only “toxic” foods in themselves, but they are quite likely to contain
parasites of various kinds.

Ordinary bread has been shown to contain a sufficient amount of
proteid to supply all the body needs, as do also rice and other
cereals and potatoes. Nuts and dried peas and beans are exceedingly
rich in proteid, like meat, and therefore should be eaten sparingly.
The best foods in the order of excellence are given by Dr. Kellogg,
as follows—the antitoxic foods being in italics: _fresh ripe fruits_,
_cooked fresh fruits_, _cooked dried fruits_, nuts, cooked cereals,
_rice_, _zweibach_, _toasted corn flakes_, _potato_, _cauliflower_,
_and other fresh vegetables_, _honey_, _malted nuts_, _yogurt_, _or
buttermilk_, sterilized _milk_, and cream, peas, beans, lentils,
_raised bread_, and sterilized butter.


             HOW TO ENLIST THE SERVICES OF FRIENDLY GERMS

Since the poisons which are produced in the colon are due to the growth
and cultivation of germs, the remedy which naturally suggested itself
to a bacteriological specialist like Metchnikoff was to find some
harmless or comparatively harmless germ with which the poison-forming
germs might be fought—or, in other words, to introduce into the body an
extra battalion of soldiers to assist the warrior cells in the battle
of the blood.

After years of study and research, Metchnikoff found this beneficient
germ in various lactic acid forming microbes, particularly an especial
microbe known by the name of Bulgarian bacillus, or Yogurt. This
bacillus grows in milk, and in growing it produces large quantities
of pure lactic acid. It does not decompose fats, nor does it produce
alcohol, as do other lactic forming germs, such as those found in
kumyss, matzoon, and kephir.

Milk is first sterilized by boiling for a few minutes, then allowed
to cool and a quantity of the ferment is added. In a few hours a sour
taste which is pleasant to all whose palates relish mild buttermilk, is
developed. Metchnikoff advises that a pint or a pint and a half of this
sour milk be taken daily. By this means large quantities of the acid
forming and beneficient germs are taken into the intestine, and by
degrees the poison producing germs are killed or driven out. Thus the
work required of the kidneys, the liver, the skin, and other excretory
organs is lessened, and the vigor of the living cells is maintained so
that the macrophages do not attack and destroy them.

In Bulgaria where Yogurt is a staple article of food, there are more
centenarians, and more vigorous old people to be found than anywhere
else on earth. Not only are the Bulgarians and the Hungarians the
longest lived races in Europe, but they show a remarkable freedom from
appendicitis, colitis, and other diseases due to intestinal infections,
circumstances which called the attention of European physicians to
a study of the milk ferment which produced Yogurt, and led to the
scientific investigations, first by Masson of Geneva and later and more
completely by Metchnikoff and Kellogg, which have placed its use both
as a curative and a preventive agent upon a thoroughly scientific basis.

Its use is bound to supersede that of kumyss, kephir, matzoon,
and other lactic acid ferments on account of the fact that these
ferments are able to live only in the small intestine, while Yogurt
bacillus thrives in the colon, where it may be found weeks after the
administration of Yogurt has ceased. The importance of this fact will
be seen at once when it is recalled that the colon is the chief seat
of the anaerobic infection and poison production which are the causes
of intestinal autointoxication. Thus the last word of modern science
on this subject would seem after all to be but the confirmation of a
means for reaching natural old age which has been known for hundreds of
years. But to-day we are learning to use means for the prolongation of
life by the light of knowledge; no longer blunderingly, handicapped by
evil habits which nullify the value of the small fraction of hygienic
truth which we possess. To-day, Hygeia, while it holds out to our lips
an elixir of life, insists that if it is to have its maximum power, we
must also breathe rightly, sleep rightly, and eat and drink rightly.




                                  VI

                       SOME IMPORTANT FOOD FACTS


The importance of avoiding constipation will be obvious to those who
have followed this account of the process of autointoxication; one
should see that his daily bill of fare contains a generous supply
of laxative foodstuffs, such as sweet fruits, ripe figs and prunes,
acid fruits and fruits juices, fresh vegetables, fats and all grain
preparations. It is of the utmost importance that the bowels should
move regularly once a day. There is another reason for eating food
in the shape of fruits or salads, which is that the body may have a
sufficient supply of mineral salts.

Nuts and fruits are a splendid combination, since the fat of the nuts
and the sugar of the fruits supply the energy and heat producing
substances. Fruit sugar indeed is merely a digested form of starch—the
digestive process having been accomplished by the heat of the sun
in the ripening of the fruit. Fruits contain no fat and practically
no starch, and with the exception of the fig, the banana, and a few
others, they contain so small an amount of proteid that that element
may be considered practically missing. Fruits are used for the sugar,
the acids, and the water they contain. Nuts and fruits may be eaten and
digested raw by persons who have sound teeth, and who will thoroughly
masticate these foods.

Bananas should never be eaten until they are completely ripe, this
condition being shown by the appearance of black or dark brown spots
on the skin. When in this condition they are usually thrown into the
garbage can by the fruit dealer.

Before eating them, one should scrape off the outside fluff, which
is next to the skin, as experiments have shown this to be highly
indigestible. Eaten when ripe no fruit is more nutritious or delightful
than the banana. The only way in which unripe bananas should be used is
baked, the same as apples, when they make a succulent and nutritious
dish.

Sweet apples will digest more quickly than any other raw fruit
substance; but if eaten raw, apples should be thoroughly ripened, and
most thoroughly masticated, else hard pieces of apple will enter the
stomach and give rise to fermentation. A mealy apple is considered by
physiologists as a food substance almost completely predigested, and
ready for absorption. If such an apple is reduced to a smooth pulp by
chewing, it will pass out of the stomach within an hour. Baked, sweet
apples are digested by persons whose stomachs will not tolerate any
other fruit.

The acid of sour apples is an excellent corrective for foul conditions
of the stomach, such as exist in biliousness. The germs of typhoid, of
cholera, and others likely to produce acute disease, are quickly killed
by solutions of citric and malic acids, the acids of the lemon or the
apple. The juice of a lemon added to an ounce of water will render that
water sterile within half an hour, even though it may contain the germs
of typhoid fever and cholera. The antiseptic properties of fruit juice
render it exceedingly valuable as a means of killing the germs in the
stomach and the alimentary canal; a fact which explains the benefits
derived from various “fruit cures,” which have been for many years
practiced in Europe, and more recently have been employed in various
parts of the United States.

The indigestion which many people complain of as arising from the
use of fruit comes not from fruit in itself, but from its improper
use in combination with other foods with which it does not agree. It
is sometimes supposed, for instance, that fruits conduce to bowel
disorders; but the truth is that an exclusive diet of fruit is one of
the best known remedies for chronic bowel disorders. Care should be
taken, however, to avoid fruit juices which contain a large amount of
cane sugar; only the juices of sweet fruits should be employed, or else
a mixture of sour and sweet fruit juices without sugar. Raisins, figs,
prunes, sweet apples and sweet pears may be mixed with sour fruits.
Fruit that is sweetened with sugar to a large extent is indigestible,
since cane sugar often proves an irritant: while the combination of
cream and sugar which is so often used with many fruits is a very bad
one. Fruits should be eaten with vegetables only if both are thoroughly
masticated, for the reason that the cellulose in vegetables takes a
long time to digest, while fruit takes a very short time, and is held
in the stomach and ferments. Fruit combines well with cereal foods,
breads, and the like, and with nuts.


                     WHAT COOKING DOES FOR GRAINS

Cooking does for grains what the sun does for fruit; it performs a
preliminary digestion. In undergoing digestion the starch in food
passes through five stages: first, it is converted into amylodextrin,
or soluble starch; second, erythrod extrin; third, achroödextrin;
fourth, maltose; and fifth, levulose, or fruit sugar. Cooking can
carry the starch through the first three of these processes, rendering
it ready for almost instant conversion into maltose, on coming into
contact with the saliva in mouth and stomach. In the intestine
maltose is converted into levulose or fruit sugar and the process of
digestion is completed. Modern science has shown by experiments that
the preliminary digestive work done by cooking varies greatly with the
method of cooking adopted. There are practically three methods used in
the cooking of cereals, kettle cooking (that is, boiling and steaming),
over cooking, or roasting, and toasting, or dry cooking. Kettle
cooking changes the raw starch into soluble starch; in other words, it
carries the starch through the first step of the digestive process.
Baking, or very prolonged kettle cooking, will convert the starch into
erythrodextrin, the second stage of starch digestion. Toasting, or dry
cooking, in which the starch is exposed to a temperature of about 300
Fahrenheit, advances the starch one step farther, yet.


                        ABOLISH THE FRYING PAN!

One important thing to remember in connection with cooking is that
fried foods, the use of which is so prevalent in America is an
unmitigated evil. “Of all dietic abominations for which bad cooking is
responsible, fried dishes are the most pernicious,” says Dr. Kellogg.
“Meat fried, fricasseed, or otherwise cooked in fat, fried bread, fried
vegetables, doughnuts, griddle cakes, and all similar combinations
of melted fat or other elements of food are most difficult articles
of digestion. None but the most stalwart stomach can master such
indigestibles. The gastric juice has little more action upon fats than
water. Hence a portion of meat or other food saturated with fat is as
completely protected from the action of gastric juice as is a foot
within a well-oiled boot from the snow and water outside.”

This same reason explains why rich cake, shortened pie crust and
pastry generally, as well as warm bread and butter disagree with
sick stomachs and are the cause of many diseases. Not only does the
interfering with the digestion of the food by its covering of fat set
up fermentation, but the chemical changes occasioned in the fat itself
develop exceedingly injurious acids which irritate the mucous membrane
of the stomach, causing congestion and sometimes even inflammation. The
frying-pan is an implement that should be banished from every kitchen
in the land.

For many years past America has been deluged with various breakfast
foods, the virtues of which have been loudly trumpeted. Yet in the
ordinary process of cooking these breakfast foods, oatmeal, cracked
wheat, etc., it is seldom that more than half the starch completes
even the first stage of conversion. Hence it cannot be acted upon
at all by the saliva, which does not begin the process of digestion
with raw starch. The use of imperfectly cooked cereals is without
doubt responsible for a great share of the dyspepsia prevailing among
Americans. Oatmeal porridge, and similar preparations, unless most
thoroughly cooked, are not wholesome foods, and when cream and sugar
are added, there is a combination calculated to create a marked form of
dyspepsia. Cereals must be cooked dry in order to be thoroughly cooked,
and when prepared by dry cooking or toasting, they are well adapted to
the human stomach, are easily digested and in combination with fruits
and nuts, constitute a good dietary. Cereals must not only be cooked
dry in order to be promptly digested, but they should also be eaten
dry. Experiments show that an ounce of dry, well cooked cereal food
when well masticated will produce two ounces of saliva; whereas mush,
gruel, and other moist cereal foods cause the secretion of only a very
small quantity of saliva, less than one quarter of the amount produced
by the same food in a dry state.

In connection with the cooking of cereals, it is well to remember
that the chief vegetable proteid, gluten, is also rendered very much
more easily digested by thorough cooking. On the other hand, the
digestibility of animal proteids, in the form of both meat and eggs, is
greatly diminished by cooking.

The potato is another important foodstuff; when it is well cooked it
is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of all foods. The starch
of the potato is more easily digested than that of cereals, as has
been shown by numerous experiments conducted of late in Germany and
in America. A good way of preparing potatoes so as to increase their
digestibility is to cut them into slices after cooking and then place
in an oven until slightly browned; but the admixture of fat of any sort
should be avoided.

On the other hand, cabbage is one of those vegetables which is less
likely to create stomach trouble when eaten raw than if cooked. The
food value of cabbage, however, is so small that it is hardly worth
eating, save as a relish. The same remark may be made as to such other
foods as celery, spinach, and greens of all sorts. They are only
valuable for the sake of the small quantity of mineral salts they
contain, and for the sake of adding another taste to the bill of fare.
Onions have a higher nutritive value, but this is offset by their
containing an irritating volatile oil, which when onions are used too
freely may harm the mucous membrane. The onion plays its best part in
cookery when used as a flavoring substance.

The mushroom is another article of food, popular among those who can
afford it, which modern science shows to be practically unfit for human
use. Paradoxically enough, although chemical analysis of mushrooms
show them to be so rich in proteids as to earn for them the name of
vegetable beefsteak, yet researches have shown that these proteids are
not available by the body, and hence that mushrooms have no nutritive
value whatsoever.


                     DAIRY PRODUCTS NEED ATTENTION

Milk is commonly considered a wholesome and easily digested food,
but this is true only in a modified sense. Thousands of infants die
annually because of indigestion set up by the use of cows’ milk, and
hundreds of adults are more or less injured by the too free use of
unsterilized cows’ milk, which produces biliousness, sick headache,
inactive bowels and a variety of other disturbances. These are not
alone due to the toughness of the curds which are formed by milk, and
which set up fermentative and putrefactive processes in the stomach
unless the milk is thoroughly cooked beforehand.

Federal departments at Washington were, not long ago, almost crippled
by the prevalence of typhoid fever among the employees; and the public
health service under Surgeon-General Walter Wyman traced more than
ten per cent. of the cases to the milk supply. Professor Lafayette B.
Mendel of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, told one
of the writers of this book that he went to a certain city that had
suffered an epidemic of typhoid, and made a map showing each house that
had contained a case of typhoid fever. He made a similar map showing
the houses where certain milkmen stopped—and the two maps were almost
completely identical. It has also been established beyond a doubt that
tuberculosis is communicated from the cow to the human being, and in
certain sections of the world it is believed that milk from tubercular
cows is the chief channel of infection. It has been shown that even
if the udder of a cow be healthy, a tubercular cow may give infected
milk, and that the presence of a single tubercular cow in a herd may be
responsible for the infection of the milk of healthy animals. Several
international medical congresses have lately declared that all milk
should be boiled in order to kill the germs.

  [Illustration: PROF. LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL, PH.D., YALE UNIVERSITY,
  Who has carried on researches in conjunction with Prof. Chittenden.]

The United States Department of Agriculture issued in Circular No.
111 of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and in Circular No. 114, the
recommendations made by a conference of some twenty of the foremost
scientists of the United States, and few more important documents
concerning the public health have ever been issued by a government. In
brief, these recommendations may be thus stated: Raw milk is highly
dangerous. Boiling or pasteurizing kills the disease germs and makes
the milk safe without seriously impairing the taste or digestibility.
Milk produced under the most ideal conditions, such as “certified”
milk, is only relatively safe. Pasteurization, when properly done,
makes the milk absolutely safe.

Butter, of course, is subject to all the arguments that can be advanced
against milk, with the additional one that it is even more subject
to infection with germs than milk itself, since the time that elapses
between its manufacture and its consumption is usually far longer than
the time that elapses between the drawing of milk from the cow and its
use. Only butter that is made from sterilized cream should be used.

Cheese, of course, is open to all the objections urged against
unsterilized milk and butter, and in addition has a disagreeable
quality all its own. The cheese eater may at any time swallow a serious
or even a fatal dose of “cheese poisons,” which are substances produced
in cheese by the action of germs. These are not ordinarily present in
sufficient quantity to render their presence apparent; nevertheless,
a great number of cases of cheese poisoning are annually reported
by various boards of health all over the country. Cheese made from
sterilized milk is less open to these objections. A delicious cottage
cheese may be made from Yogurt milk.

The too free use of sugar at the table and in cooking, not only in its
pure form, but in the shape of preserves, syrups and sweet beverages,
has been shown to be a most prolific source of injury to the stomach.
Sorghum, maple sugar, and maple syrup are essentially the same as cane
sugar and molasses. It has been shown that if we eat freely of fruits
we will obtain all the sugar our system requires in a form that is
easily digestible.

The constitution needs quite a good deal of fat; wholesome fats are
contained in nuts, and in cereals, and are also provided liberally
by ripe olives and olive oil. Emulsified fats are those in which the
minute particles are broken up; and these are far more readily absorbed
by the tissues of the body. The fat in ripe olives is emulsified fat—as
likewise is olive oil when used in mayonnaise dressing. It should not
be mixed with vinegar, however, as vinegar is an irritating substance
that works harm, when used freely, to the mucous membrane of the
stomach. Lemon juice is not only much safer, but makes a much more
delicious dressing.

The objection which applies to vinegar, applies also to pepper,
mustard, and other condiments and spices.

The too free use of salt, of which nearly everyone is guilty, is
another habit upon which modern physiologists frown. While salt is
essential, it is contained as an element in many foods, and there is no
more reason why it should be sprinkled upon each and every article of
food that is taken than we should have castors containing all the other
kinds of inorganic salts, that the system needs, and which are supplied
to it in fresh foods. Salt using is merely a habit, and a disastrous
one, since it has been shown to be one of the factors in the causation
of kidney troubles, such as Bright’s disease.

The large use of glucose in the form of candy, syrups, adulterated
honey, and various sweets which are in common use, is said by
physiologists to be responsible for a large number of cases of
diabetes, a disease which is rapidly increasing in America. There is
now produced a malt sugar, called malt honey or “meltose,” which can
be used freely for all the purposes that cane sugar is used.

The case of food reform against fish would merely lead to the relating
of the arguments against meat. Fish contains nearly seven per cent. of
uric acid. It is exposed like meat to the presence of tape worms and
other parasites. Even when fresh out of the water its flesh is filled
with fatigue poisons, the result of its struggles to escape from the
net or the hook; and Mosso of Turin and other authorities have shown
that these fatigue toxins have a bad effect upon the body. No food will
so quickly decompose and putrefy as fish, and unless perfectly fresh it
will always be found full of the putrefactive bacteria which are the
active agents in causing autointoxication.

It may be stated, however, that the person who follows that careful
and helpful mode of eating recommended and practiced with such marked
benefits by Horace Fletcher and his converts, will assuredly minimize
the dangers that lurk unsuspected by the uninformed in many of our
commonly used foods, and will derive a greater benefit from all food
than it is possible for those to gain who eat in the hasty and careless
fashion characteristic of most Americans.




                                  VII

                       HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE EAT?


WE have discussed the question how to eat and what to eat; there
remains the question of when to eat. English people, as a rule, eat
four meals a day. The French are practically a two meal a day nation,
eating a very light breakfast.

Of late years there has been a strong tendency on the part of American
dieticians to advocate a reduction in the number of daily meals, the
ideal aimed at being the establishing of the custom of two meals a day,
with at least six hours intervening between them.

It may be asked whether appetite is not a safe guide to follow, and
whether it is not the part of wisdom to follow personal inclination
in the choice and quantity and number of meals. Does not a study of
dietetic customs and habits definitely decide the essential rules of
dietetics? While it is true that habits and customs are very strong
factors in everybody’s life, yet it is also true that they are
very unreliable guides. We are constantly acquiring new habits, and
sloughing off old ones; and even the most deeply impressed of habits
may be changed for others. And while the common customs of mankind
would seem to indicate that three or four meals a day is the rule,
at least among civilized nations, yet the facts are that the most
primitive people take one meal a day, and the great majority of people
in the world, as a rule, eat certainly less than three.


                       TWO MEALS A DAY THE BEST

Physiological facts argue for the two meal plan, or else for very light
and easily digested food, if an extra meal be taken.

Healthy digestion requires at least five hours for its completion,
and one hour for rest before another meal is taken. This makes six
hours necessary for the disposal of each meal. If food is taken at
shorter intervals than this, when ordinary food is eaten, the stomach
will be allowed no time for rest. Again, if a meal is taken before
the preceding meal has been digested and has left the stomach, a
portion remaining, one is likely to undergo fermentation, in spite of
the preserving influence of the gastric juice; thus the whole mass
of food will be rendered less fit for the nutrition of the body, and
the stomach itself will be likely to suffer injury from the acids
developed.

  [Illustration: MR. UPTON SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN,
  Well nourished on two meals a day.]

These facts make it plain why eating between meals is a gross breach
of the requirements of good digestion. The habit of nibbling at
confectionery, fruit, nuts, and other things between meals, is a
positive cause of dyspepsia. No stomach can long endure such usage.
There is a continual irritation of the mucous membrane of the stomach,
and a continual excitation of the glands, which, in the long run, work
great harm.

The same reasons which are advanced against the habit of eating between
meals fit the case of irregularity of meals. Those who have regular
duties, regular hours of work, should have regular meal hours. The
human system is continually forming habits, and seems in a great degree
dependent upon the performance of its functions in accordance with the
habits that are formed. This fact is especially observed in respect to
digestion. When meals are taken at regular times the stomach becomes
accustomed to receiving food at those times, and is prepared for it. If
meals are taken irregularly, the stomach is taken by surprise, so to
speak, and is never in that state of rest in which it should be for the
prompt and perfect performance of its functions. The habit which many
business and professional men form, in the stress of their occupations,
of allowing their meal hours to be intruded upon, at times depriving
themselves of a meal, will undermine the best digestion in the long
run. There is no physiologist who would not endorse the following words
of Kellogg: “Every individual ought to consider the hour for meals a
sacred one, not to be intruded upon under any ordinary circumstances.
Eating is a matter of too momentous importance to be interrupted or
delayed by ordinary matters of business or convenience. The habit of
regularity in eating should be cultivated.”


                       DON’T EAT BEFORE SLEEPING

The meal which most people would find it advantageous either to drop
altogether, or to reduce in quantity, is supper. The physiological
law which is now come to be recognized is, that the brain must be
active to insure good digestion; and that the stomach must be empty
to insure good sleep. That sense of drowsiness which so often follows
a hearty meal is not a physiological condition; it is not evidence of
a naturally sedative effect in eating; but is really an evidence of
indigestion. Those who practice eating before retiring often sleep
soundly until an hour or two after midnight, then awake, and find
difficulty in getting to sleep again. This is due to irritation of
the solar plexus set up by the labor of digesting under unfavorable
conditions. The lack of appetite for breakfast after a late supper is
evidence of the exhausted state of the stomach. Fruits and cereals are
the ideal supper rather than the ideal breakfast—though good at any
time!


                           DRINKING AT MEALS

It is nearly always the case that a hasty or over-hearty eater is also
in the habit of drinking copiously of water or other fluids at his
meals. He “washes his food down” instead of legitimately drinking.
The body, of course, needs liquid, but, as a rule, meal times are not
the times for the taking of this liquid supply; except for what is
contained in the food itself. The hasty eater thus associates two great
evils.

Liquid of any kind in large quantity is inimical to digestion, because
it delays the action of the gastric juice, and weakens its digestive
qualities, and also checks the secretion of saliva. In case the fluid
taken is very hot, as tea, coffee, cocoa, or a considerable quantity
of soup—it relaxes and weakens the stomach. On the other hand if it is
very cold, it checks digestion by cooling the contents of the stomach,
and reducing its temperature to a degree at which digestion cannot
proceed. Even a small quantity of cold water, ice cream, or other
very cold substance will create a serious disturbance if taken into a
stomach where food is undergoing digestion. The process of digestion
cannot be carried on at a temperature that is less than the body, which
is about one hundred.

The old notions about the processes of digestion were chiefly drawn
from the experiments of Dr. Beaumont made nearly a hundred years ago up
in Northern Michigan, around Mackinac; with a Canadian hunter, Alexis
St. Martin, as the subject. Most people have probably read of St.
Martin and Beaumont in the physiologies they studied in their school
days. Beaumont was a very capable physician, and a man of the truest
scientific spirit. It happened that through an accident he was given an
opportunity to make the most valuable contribution to the study of the
stomach of man that so far had been furnished by any investigator. The
hunter, St. Martin, had suffered a gunshot wound in his stomach, and
Beaumont kept him alive for years with the wound open so that he might
study the movements of the man’s interior organs. For the first time,
here was a human body with a window in it, so to speak, and through
this window the scientist patiently watched and studied for years.
Of course, however, the window gave only a limited view of what was
going on inside this particular house of life, and a great number of
Beaumont’s ideas and theories have been proven erroneous; nevertheless,
he obtained much important knowledge. When Dr. Beaumont peered through
that curious window which he made in the stomach of Alexis St. Martin,
he noticed that when the latter drank a glassful of water at the usual
temperature of freshly drawn well water, the temperature of the food
undergoing digestion fell immediately to 70. The process of digestion
was checked absolutely and did not resume until the body had regained
its proper temperature, which it did not do for more than half an hour.

Another way in which drinking at meals proves harmful is because of the
fact that particles of food not thoroughly masticated are washed from
the mouth into the stomach. If any drink at meals is taken at all, it
should be a few minutes before eating. Of course, sipping of a little
water will not be harmful, if care is taken not to sip at the time
when food is in the mouth. It will be found, however, that unless the
meal is composed of very dry foods, there will be little inclination
to drink at meals. When, however, the food is rendered either fiery or
irritating with spices, and other stimulating condiments, it is small
wonder that there is an imperious demand for water or liquid of any
kind to allay the irritation.


                HOW THE BODY PRODUCES “APPETITE JUICE”

He who is really hungry, however, has no need of condiments, and
usually small relish for them.

The old saying that hunger is the best sauce is one of those proverbs
of the people which modern science is proving to be firmly established
on truth. No sauce can equal appetite. Experiments by Professor Pawlow
of St. Petersburg, Director of Department of Experimental Physiology
in the Imperial Literary School of Medicine, have shown that there is a
real “appetite juice” formed by the body when it is hungry.

Appetite, and hunger, are not synonymous terms with the mere
habit-craving for food which most people consider to be either appetite
or hunger. Real hunger, or appetite, only comes to the body when the
body has earned it. There must be an expenditure of tissue, which
the body requires to be repaired; or there must be a real need for
energy to carry on work before the body will manifest its need for
energy-supplying material. In other words, the body cares nothing
about our likes or dislikes, our whims or our fancies, in the nature
of food, save when it has a real need for food. Professor Chittenden
demonstrated that most people simply eat the entire round of meals from
mere habit. The disturbance when for any reason they miss one or two
meals from the accustomed routine is simply the outcry of a habit and
not the outcry of a real need. While Dr. Kellogg advises that no meal
be missed, yet he also strongly advises us not to eat unless really
hungry, merely drinking a little fruit juice or something of the kind
at the meal hour in order to keep up the normal action of the digestive
organs.

The digestive juice which is manufactured by the body when it is really
hungry and food has been given to it has been shown by Pawlow and
Hanecke to be the most important element in digestion. The chemical
juices produced in the stomach and intestines while food is in them is
of small importance and value compared with the juices that are formed
while food is being chewed when the body has a good appetite or is
really hungry.

This juice begins to flow at the very sight of food, and continues to
from three to five minutes after beginning mastication. The production
of juice in the stomach is stimulated by the contact of food with the
mouth, and only during that contact; so it is obvious that the longer
the food is held in the mouth, if it is held there in enjoyment, and
the more completely it is chewed, so long as chewing is accompanied
by taste, the more thoroughly are the flavors set free by the act of
chewing, and the higher becomes the stimulating effect of these flavors
upon the psychic centers which cause the appetite juice to flow into
the stomach.

These facts prove the dependence of gastric digestion, or stomach
digestion, upon mastication. Pawlow was experimenting with gastric
juice when he hit upon this demonstration; and he has concluded that
we cannot have gastric digestion at all well without thorough mouth
digestion; that the complete mastication of food, in other words, is
the thing necessary to prepare the stomach to receive the food. Thus,
if you chew your food well, the food will be predigested in the mouth,
and when it enters the stomach it will find already there waiting for
it not only enough gastric juice to digest it, but just the particular
kind of gastric juice that is needed.

Pawlow turned this discovery of his to a very practical use. He has
a dozen or more healthy dogs which he calls his Dog Dairy. From these
dogs he collects daily a quart or more of gastric juice, or appetite
juice; and the dogs produce this large quantity without taking a
particle of food into their stomachs. The juice is carefully filtered,
and bottled and shipped all over the world to those physicians who
are in touch with Pawlow and his work, and by them are administered
to human patients. It is given to those patients who are deficient in
gastric juice, and is used in very obstinate cases of indigestion.

Pawlow collects his juice by having openings made in the throat and
in the stomachs of the dogs. When the dogs are hungry they are given
food of kinds which they particularly like, and they are allowed to
smell the odor and to become excited over the prospect of eating it
before they are actually allowed to have it. With the first sight
and odor of this food, the dogs begin to secrete the appetite juice,
which flows from the opening made in their stomachs through tubes into
receptacles. Then when they begin to eat their food, the food does
not reach the stomach at all, but simply passes through the openings
in the throat into a receptacle before the dog, and the dog can go on
eating the same meal over and over again. They thus enjoy themselves
thoroughly for a long time. When the appetite juice ceases to flow, the
process of feeding them in this manner stops, and they are given a real
meal.




                                 VIII

                          HEALTH AND THE MIND


This account of Professor Pawlow’s experiment leads directly to the
all important subject of the influence of mental states upon digestion
and assimilation. Dr. Saleeby has published a book called “Worry,
the Disease of the Age”—the very title of which shows the attitude
of physicians upon this question; and the bad opinion which mankind
has always entertained of such states of mind as “the blues” has
now been scientifically justified. The effects of pain and pleasure
upon digestion have been demonstrated by actual experiments in the
laboratory of the St. Petersburg professor.

A vivid account of these experiments has been given to the writers by
Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who witnessed them about a year ago. Dr. Kellogg
writes:

“Professor Pawlow took Professor Benedict and myself into a quiet
corner of his laboratory, and there we found a dog that had his
salivary glands or ducts arranged so that by means of little tubes
passing through the skin all the saliva, instead of passing down his
throat, passed out through the tubes and could be collected in small
glass bottles suspended beside his neck.

“The dog had been prepared beforehand by the attendant. Little empty
bottles were attached to the collecting tubes, and as soon as the dog
saw Pawlow, he seemed to be very happy, and wagged his tail, and his
eyes gave evidence of satisfaction; but there was no flow of saliva
until Professor Pawlow brought near to his nose a bottle containing
some powdered meat. He took out the cork in the presence of the dog,
turned out a little of it in his hand, shook it in the bottle and
brought it near to the dog’s nose. The dog began to sniff it, licked
his chops, snapped his jaws, reached out after it, and in less than two
minutes the saliva began to flow very profusely, and it was not more
than fifteen or twenty seconds before the saliva was pouring down into
the bottles.

“Professor Pawlow, then, after holding the bottle out before the dog
for about thirty seconds, put the stopper into it, and put it behind
him out of sight, and in a very few seconds the saliva ceased to flow.
Then he brought it back again, showed it to the dog, brought it near
his nose, allowed him to smell it but kept it just out of his reach all
the time, and the saliva poured out again freely. He continued this
until the dog finally made up his mind he was not going to get any
meat, and when the powder was brought near to him he paid no attention
to it, but turned his head around and looked very disappointed and very
ugly, and at that point, the saliva ceased to flow.

“That was a very remarkable thing to me. The meat was right there,
he could smell it, but he knew he was not going to get it, so he was
angry, and as his state of mind changed, the secretion of saliva was
wholly arrested. I was very much surprised. Of course, I believe
thoroughly in the importance of being in a happy state of mind when
eating, but I really did not appreciate thoroughly the importance of
those things; I did not fully appreciate how positive an inhibitor of
the activity of the salivary glands an unhappy state might be.

“But a common experiment made in India shows the same idea. When an
Anglo-Indian has lost anything of value, he has his whole family of
servants brought to him to find out which one has stolen it. A common
test is to stand them all up in a row, and then to give each one a
morsel of dry rice to chew. They must chew this rice for five minutes,
and then the master goes around and examines each man’s mouth. The
mouth which is dry is the mouth of the culprit, and the state of that
man’s mind has the effect of arresting the flow of saliva. Pawlow has
shown that this is a positive physiologic law and operates upon the
dogs as well as upon human beings.

“Another experiment astonished me even more than this. We followed
Pawlow down through a long narrow hall and upstairs into a room which
was small and secluded, in a very quiet part of the laboratory, remote
from any noisy occupation, and there we found a brown dog standing on a
high table. It was a delicate and very intelligent looking animal. The
attendant sat near by, and the dog was prepared as the other had been.
As we came in, the Professor beckoned to us to sit down on a little
bench beside the wall and indicated that we should be quiet. He stepped
up to the dog, looked at him, and the dog recognized him with a smile
in the dog’s way of smiling!—and presently the saliva began to flow.

“Professor Pawlow was very much surprised. We had come into the room
and he had offered the dog nothing, but the saliva was flowing.
That was contrary to his expectation. He looked with considerable
astonishment at the attendant. The attendant quietly said, ‘You have
been feeding meat to the other dog, and he smells the meat on your
hands.’

“The dog had such a keen sense of smell that the odor of meat on
Pawlow’s hands even at a distance of several feet was sufficient to
cause the saliva to flow. So he went out, washed his hands and came
back. At this time, not a drop of saliva was flowing. The arrangement
was such that every particle secreted must come outside of the mouth
into these bottles. While we were waiting in silence, watching the dog
quietly, suddenly the attendant pressed his foot without making any
motion of the body at all, upon a little lever beneath his toe and the
result was the causing of a high musical note to be sounded, a very
high pitched tone.

“Instantly, in less than three seconds, the saliva was flowing into the
tube. We waited a little while until the saliva ceased to flow, then
the note was sounded again. Instantly the saliva began to flow.

“Professor Pawlow has been experimenting upon this line for a long
time. Other experiments were made. One interesting experiment was with
a large number of dogs. He had upon one counter a long row of dogs,
about a dozen, which had their stomachs fixed in such a way, and their
throats fixed also in such a way, that upon the secretion of the
gastric juice in the stomach the juice would flow out into a flask.

“The dogs were suspended in a sort of harness. They had had their
throats fixed so that food instead of going into the stomach came out
at the throat. So as the dog ate the food, the food fell back into the
plate and the dog continued eating the same breakfast over and over.
These dogs had been eating the same breakfast for four hours, from six
to ten o’clock in the morning, and they were still eating, and just
as hungry as ever because there was no food entering their stomachs
at all and their appetites were growing keener every moment, and they
were having a wonderfully good time. I thought that some people I have
met might enjoy such an arrangement. This really has the same effect
without having your throat cut.

“I noticed that if these dogs got disgruntled, or tired, or
dissatisfied, then the gastric juice would cease to flow. Sometimes the
food, having been chewed a very long time, lost its flavor, and the
dogs secreted no more juice; then the attendant would come along and
put a little fresh food into the plate and the dogs would seize this
with great avidity, and the gastric juice would begin to flow again in
a perfect stream.

“These experiments have demonstrated in the most positive manner the
definite connection there is between psychic conditions and the process
of digestion, and have shown us that the food must be palatable, that
it must address the olfactory sense agreeably, and that the mind must
be in a happy state in order that the digestive process may proceed.”

And then Dr. Kellogg goes on to tell of the work of Professor Cannon,
of Harvard University, who actually has made visible the digestive
processes in the stomach by means of the X-ray. By feeding cats food
colored with certain substances which are impervious to the X-rays,
he was enabled to photograph all the actual movements of the organs
concerned in the acts of digestion. It was demonstrated that certain
emotions, such as anger and fear, positively stopped the whole process
of digestion.

Depressing thought will affect injuriously the circulation of the
blood; it will also affect the breathing. The mere attitude of the body
assumed by the despondent person has its bad influence. The head droops
in a melancholy fashion—and this very attitude prevents normal action
of the lungs and the blood veins. Depressing thoughts destroy the
appetite; and when the body does not receive its proper nourishment,
the blood becomes impoverished.

“Any severe anger or grief is almost certain to be succeeded by fever
in certain parts of Africa,” says Sir Samuel Baker, in the British and
Foreign Medico Chirurgical Review. “In many cases, I have seen reasons
for believing that cancer had its origin in prolonged anxiety,” says
Sir George Paget, in his “Lectures.” “The vast majority of the cases
of cancer, especially of breast or uterine cancer, are probably due
to mental anxiety,” says Dr. Snow, in the London _Lancet_. “Diabetes
from a sudden mental shock is a true, pure type of physical malady of
mental origin,” says Sir B. W. Richardson in “Discourses.” “I have been
surprised how often patients with primary cancer of the liver lay the
cause of this ill health to protracted grief or anxiety. The cases have
been far too numerous to be accounted for as mere coincidences,” says
Murchison.

“Eruptions on the skin will follow excessive mental strain. In all
these and in cancer, epilepsy and mania from mental causes there is a
predisposition. It is remarkable how little the question of physical
disease from mental influence has been studied,” says Sir B. W.
Richardson.

“My experiments show that irascible, malevolent and depressing emotions
generate in the system injurious compounds, some of which are extremely
poisonous; also that agreeable, happy emotions generate chemical
compounds of nutritious value, which stimulate the cells to manufacture
energy,” says Elmer Gates, the celebrated American scientist. Gates’
experiments show with minute exactitude just how it is that one’s
impalpable thoughts and emotions affect the battle of the blood, and
his work makes it easier for one to understand and appreciate the
portion of truth underlying such manifestations as the New Thought and
Christian Science movement. There can be no doubt that men and women
have practically remolded their bodies and changed the whole course of
their lives by using the impalpable yet potent force of their wills.
Sometimes these have been men and women seemingly without a vestige of
will; and yet, by comprehending the necessity for will, they took the
first steps towards attaining possession of it. Many very remarkable
stories could be told illustrating this point. Professor William
James, of Harvard, introduced one of the writers to a man who had been
afflicted with what had seemed a helpless case of mental trouble,
accompanied by physical ailments which were rapidly breaking him down;
and this man had affected a complete cure through his own unaided
efforts. He resolved that he could be cured, and cured he was.

We remember another instance; this time of a consumptive; a man who
was so far gone that all the physicians gave up his case as hopeless.
To all intents and purposes he was already a dead man, when there came
to him the light of a new hope. He had spent a great deal of money
in taking various “treatments” for tuberculosis, without deriving
permanent benefit, and then had come to believe utterly that in only
one way was there hope for the consumptive, namely, by living entirely
in the open air. When seemingly at his last gasp he arrived at a branch
of the Battle Creek Sanitarium at Boulder Creek, Colorado. In certain
photographs of this establishment you may see on a bare hillside that
stands back of the building, a narrow foot-path. This path has many
turnings and windings in its lower course, but towards the top of the
hill it aspires upward in a straight line. That trail was made by the
consumptive who had determined that he would live, crawling on his
hands and knees up the side of the hill. He positively refused to go
under a roof for any consideration whatsoever. His meals were brought
to him where he lay on the road side. At first he was so weak that
he could only go a few feet in the course of a day, and had to drag
himself along in a wavering line. But he began to improve—he went on
improving—until, finally, along the track on which he had crawled he
was running at top speed.

And a little while ago this man was one of the athletes who took part
in Professor Irving Fisher’s endurance competition between flesh-eating
athletes and vegetarians; and he proved to be best of them all! He
doubled the best record made by any Yale man in the deep-knee bending
contest. The most enduring Yale man was able to make the deep-knee
bend—which is a very severe test of physical endurance—twelve hundred
times. The consumptive who had cured himself went twenty-four hundred
times. He thinks nothing of a ten or fifteen mile ran before breakfast
in the morning.

It is important to apply these truths to the question of nutrition. It
is positively harmful to eat food when one is gloomy or low spirited or
worried or angry.

You may object to this that you cannot at will make an optimist of
yourself at meal times, and turn on a flow of good humor as you draw
water from a tap. But you can at least refrain from eating, and if you
do you will discover that the real hunger which is bound to develop is
a very strong emotion. It will drive away any ordinary attack of the
blues very quickly; and will call up pleasant anticipations of the joy
of food to assist the digestive processes.




                                  IX

                          THE CASE AS TO MEAT


“I wish there was a science of nutrition worthy of the name,” writes
Bernard Shaw in a private letter. “The mass of special pleading on
behalf of meat eating on the one side and vegetarianism on the other,
which calls itself the science of metabolism to-day, seems to me to
be so corrupt as to be worthless.” The fact that Shaw himself is a
perfervid vegetarian lends additional significance to this statement.
Until quite recently the advocacy of either dietary has been based upon
considerations the opposite of physiologic. It has been the sentimental
aspects of the controversy—vegetable versus animal foods—which have
received most emphasis. The vegetarian supported his position on the
ethical ground that the eating of animal food, involving as it does
the taking of life, is wrong. On the other hand, the advocate of meat
eating based his arguments on the support given to it by common
custom, and a belief that a meat diet is that which supplies vigor
and manly force. As Dr. Woods Hutchinson, the most prominent of the
champions of meat eating, puts the case: “Vegetarianism is the diet of
the enslaved, stagnant, and conquered races, and a diet rich in meat
is that of the progressing, the dominant and the conquering strains.
The rise of any nation in civilization is invariably accompanied by an
increasing abundance in food supplies from all possible sources, both
vegetable and animal.”

At the same time, even Dr. Hutchinson admits that human life can be
maintained upon a vegetarian diet. “Nearly one-half of the human
race,” he writes, “has been compelled from sheer necessity to prove
that thesis in its actual experience; but we find absolutely no jot of
evidence in support of the contention that there is any advantage or
superiority in the vegetable diet as such—no more than that there is
any inherent superiority in a pure animal diet as such.... There is no
valid or necessary ground, so far as we have been able to discover,
for the exclusion of any known article of food, whether vegetable or
animal, from our diet list in health.”

Dr. Hutchinson’s views were printed in a popular magazine, and have
been very widely quoted, but he seems to have written without paying
attention to a number of scientific investigations which suggest
ample grounds for the radical reduction of the meat portion of the
ordinary diet. Among these are the experiments of Dr. Horter of New
York, Professors Mendel, Chittenden and Fisher of Yale, Dr. Fenton B.
Turck, and such world-known physiologists as Combe of Lausanne, and
Metchnikoff, Gautier, and Tissier of Paris. The elaborate researches
of Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek are dismissed by Woods Hutchinson,
because of the fact that Dr. Kellogg not only upholds the exclusion of
meat from the diet for purely scientific reasons, but also on ethical
grounds. The writers of this book, however, have discarded meat from
their dietary for scientific reasons, paying as little attention to
the ethical side of the question as Dr. Hutchinson could desire. They
will give in this place a brief summary of these scientific reasons.


                        THE BELGIAN EXPERIMENTS

We have already told of the experiments whereby Professor Fisher of
Yale proved the superior endurance of vegetarians over meat-eaters. It
happens that experiments of the same nature were carried on at about
the same time by two women scientists in Belgium, Dr. J. Ioteyko,
head of the laboratory at the University of Brussels, and Mlle. Varia
Kipiani. They studied the question of vegetarianism by several methods,
and became convinced that the vegetarian régime is a more rational one.

Their experiments were for the most part comparisons of strength and
endurance between men and women subsisting on the usual high proteid,
or flesh diet, and men and women who for longer or shorter periods had
abstained entirely from meat. The results tally remarkably with those
obtained by Professor Fisher. So far as strength was concerned, very
little difference was discovered between vegetarians and “carnivores.”
In endurance, on the other hand (and it is endurance that most
people need) a very remarkable difference was found, the vegetarians
surpassing the carnivores from 50 to 200%. The Brussels investigators
found also that the vegetarians recuperated from fatigue far more
quickly than the meat eaters, a discovery which was one of the most
remarkable features of the Yale experiments.

  [Illustration: MR. SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN,
  Brought up according to good health principles.]

In commenting upon the Belgian experiments, Professor Fisher writes:


                      DR. TURCK’S INVESTIGATIONS

It is possible that flesh-eating, as ordinarily practiced, is injurious
both because of excessive proteid and because meat, as such, contains
poisonous elements. It is well known that Liebig came to repudiate
the idea that the extractives of meat were nutritious, and that
investigation has shown them to be poisonous. Professor Fisher also
points out that Dr. F. B. Turck has found that dogs, mice, and rats
fed on meat extractives exhibit symptoms of poisoning and often die.
The poisonous effect is aggravated by intestinal bacteria, which find
in these extractives an excellent culture medium. Dr. Turck concludes:

“(1) It is clearly evident from these experiments, which correspond to
the investigations of others, that the injurious effects of meat are
due not so much to the muscle proteid, myosin, as to the extractives.

“(2) That the injurious effects of the extractives are increased
through the action of intestinal bacteria.”

Dr. Turck does not find any evidence that the extractives in small
quantities are injurious.

Dr. Turck therefore concludes that the “high liver” who uses much
flesh and also an excess of starch and sugar is a “bad risk” for life
insurance companies. He recommends, if meat is to be used, that the
extractives first be removed by special processes, which he explains.

These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne, Metchnikoff and
Tissier, of Paris, as well as Herter and others in the United States,
seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat
is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion. The “beef and
ale of England” are largely sources of weakness, not strength.


                   THE DANGER OF INFECTION FROM MEAT

It has always been conceded that by eating raw or underdone beef or
pork one may acquire tape worms; and that in eating raw or underdone
pork one runs the same risk of contracting that uncurable malady,
trichinosis. The danger from these sources, however, is comparatively
slight, since most people eat their meat well cooked; but in the view
of many modern scientists all meat eaters are open to a particular form
of germ infection which involves all kinds of meat, fish, flesh and
fowl, cooked as well as uncooked.

Everybody knows how readily meats of all kinds, and particularly
seafood, such as fish, oysters and clams, undergo putrefaction. The
processes of decay in fish and animals begin within an hour or two
after death, under the influence of putrefactive bacteria, which are
always present in the colon, or large intestine of animals, upon
the skin and in the atmosphere about them. Ordinary cooking does
not destroy them, for they are able to stand the ordinary cooking
temperature. Salt and smoked fish, and other meats have these germs
present in vast multitudes; and beef and game that is “hung” for a long
time in order to become “tender,” are so far advanced in decay before
they are brought to the table that every minute particle of them is
alive with these germs.

These facts are granted by all; but the physiologist who favors the
use of meat, says that unless excessive quantities are consumed, the
healthy person undergoes little risk. The argument is, that when the
germs are swallowed into the stomach they are there destroyed by the
action of the gastric juice, which is germicidal; but experiments have
lately proved that some of these germs escape destruction by the
gastric juice, and find their way to the colon, where they continue
to multiply in the mucous which covers the intestinal wall, and thus
maintain constant and active putrefactive processes in that part of the
body.


                      THE NUMBER OF GERMS WE EAT

Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek has lately made public the results of
a carefully conducted series of observations made by Dr. A. W.
Nelson, bacteriologist of the clinical laboratory of the Battle Creek
Sanitarium. Various specimens of meat were purchased in the ordinary
way in the market, wrapped in clean paper, and immediately taken to
the laboratory, where samples were removed for observation under the
microscope. The meat was then taken to the diet kitchen and well
cooked, after which cultures were again made.

The germs found in meat are classed as aerobes and anaerobes. The
aerobes are for the most part acid-forming germs, and comparatively
harmless. But the anaerobes are poison-forming germs, and are the
agents of putrefaction and of various diseases. They are to-day
considered as the most potent causes of many chronic maladies, and
especially of that most common of diseases, intestinal autointoxication.

Dr. Nelson found that in one specimen of raw beef, there were present
per moist gram of material 105,000 aerobes and 90,000 anaerobes. On
the outside of the beef after it had been fried, there were no germs
present, but on the inside of the fried beef, he found 3000 aerobes
and 2000 anaerobes per gram. With three other specimens of beef, that
were broiled, and boiled, and roasted, respectively, the results were
generally similar. Of all modes of cooking, roasting seems to have
least effect upon the bacteria, for in specimen No. 3, while there were
fewer bacteria than in specimen No. 1 before cooking, there were found
after it had been well roasted 150,000 aerobes and 160,000 anaerobes.

In fresh fish raw there were found 870,000 anaerobes per gram; in
sardines in oil, 14,000,000; while in codfish that had been soaked to
remove the salt, there were found 47,600,000. In another experiment
specimens of meat were secured such as were served on the dining
tables of one of the prominent city hotels, and taken at once to
the laboratory, where without delay bacterial cultures were made. A
specimen of sirloin steak was found to contain 378,000,000 anaerobes
per gram of moist material.

An interesting experiment which showed the increase of anaerobes or
poison-forming germs in dead flesh, was that made with two chickens of
equal size, one of which was drawn, and the other undrawn. Both were
placed under the same conditions in a room the temperature of which was
maintained at 70° Fahrenheit. Bacterial cultures were made at frequent
intervals, with results as given in the following table, the figures
showing the number of bacteria per gram of moist material.

                       No. 11   Drawn    No. 12  Not Drawn
                      Aerobes  Anaerobes Aerobes Anaerobes

  3 hrs after death     4,500   5,650     5,000   6,500
  2d day                8,500   9,000    10,000  12,000
  3d day               17,000  16,000    60,000  20,000

It must be remembered that these chickens were freshly killed, and
that the anaerobes had no such opportunity to increase as in ordinary
market beefs.

Specimens of several other kinds of meat were purchased in the market,
and at once taken to the laboratory for study. Cultures were made
immediately on reaching the laboratory, and again after the meat had
been allowed to stand (covered) at room temperature for twenty hours.
The following table shows the results of the bacterial counts:


                       BACTERIA PER GRAM (MOIST)

_Immediately after purchase_

  Specimen                   Aerobes       Anaerobes
  No. 13 Large sausage      560,000,000   420,000,000
  No. 14 Small sausage      834,400,000   663,000,000
  No. 15 Round steak        420,000,000   560,000,000
  No. 16 Roast beef         252,000,000   560,000,000
  No. 17 Smoked ham          47,320,000    43,120,000
  No. 18 Hamburger steak    138,000,000   129,000,000
  No. 19 Pork               635,600,000   126,040,000
  No. 20 Porterhouse steak   31,920,000    30,800,000

_After being kept at room temperature for twenty hours._

      Specimen               Aerobes       Anaerobes

  No. 13 Large sausage     770,000,000    490,000,000
  No. 14 Small sausage     770,000,000    640,400,000
  No. 15 Round steak       750,000,000    840,000,000
  No. 16 Roast beef        728,000,000    750,000,000
  No. 17 Smoked ham        616,000,000    750,000,000
  No. 18 Hamburger steak   784,000,000    700,000,000
  No. 19 Pork              952,000,000  1,036,000,000
  No. 20 Porterhouse steak 336,000,000    700,000,000

These experiments were made in the winter time, when, because of
the diminished amount of dust in the air, germs are less abundant.
Even in the winter time, however, certain meat products simply swarm
with germs. A specimen of raw liver examined in January was found to
contain 269,800,000 bacteria per ounce or gram. Raw sausage contained
48,280,000 bacteria per ounce or gram.

“A food which introduces these deadly organisms, the anaerobes, at the
rate of ten to twenty-five billions to the ounce, as do pork, beef and
sausage, must certainly be classed as unclean,” said Dr. Kellogg, in
summing up the report on his experiments. “When thousands are daily
indulging themselves in this dietary, what wonder that Bright’s
disease, enteritis, and other maladies due to germs and germ poisons
are so rife and so rapidly increasing? It is quite as important to keep
the inside of the body in a sweet, clean and wholesome condition as to
maintain a wholesome state of the external portion of the body.”


                        CANCER AND MEAT EATING

That nothing could seem more definite than the connection between
cancer and the practice of eating inferior meat, is the conclusion
reached by Dr. G. Cook Adams, who made a series of statistical studies
under the direction of the Chicago Board of Health. “There cannot be
the slightest doubt,” says this expert, “that the great increase in
cancer among the foreign born of Chicago over the prevalence of that
disease in their native countries, is due to the increased consumption
of animal foods, particularly those derived from diseased animals.”
This conclusion substantiates the original deductions made by Dr.
Adams from investigations carried on over a number of years in
Australia and London.

Dr. Woods Hutchinson stated that the rise of any nation in civilization
is invariably accompanied by an increased abundance in food supply; and
the rise of these foreign born in Chicago in civilization substantiates
Dr. Woods Hutchinson’s views. Receiving more wages than in their native
homes, where their diet was simple, they are enabled to indulge in a
meat diet denied them in Europe. The result is an increase in the death
rate from cancer between the years 1856 and 1866 of 680%, while from
1866 to 1905 the increase was 232%.

In 1905 cancer was responsible for one in every twenty-three deaths,
while in 1906 one death in every 21.8 was due to this horrible
disease. The Italians and the Chinese were the only two of all the
races represented in Chicago that do not show a far greater death rate
from cancer than in their own homes. The Italians keep up the use of
macaroni and spaghetti, while the Chinese adhere to their native
diet of rice. The nations showing the higher mortality consume large
quantities of canned, preserved, dried and pickled meats, sausages,
etc. It was also shown that the bulk of the fresh meat prepared at
the plant of a slaughtering company was stock condemned by official
inspectors, and this was the meat eaten by the poor.


                      INVESTIGATIONS IN NEW YORK

Dr. W. H. Guilfoy, of the New York Health Department, recently
published the results of investigations of the death rate among
foreigners in New York, and showed that cancer, heart disease and
chronic Bright’s disease have increased alarmingly in recent years,
and his statistics show that foreigners of flesh eating nations reveal
the highest rates for the three diseases mentioned, in marked contrast
with nations that consume from 50 to 400% less meat per capita. The
following list shows the exact comparison:

           DEATHS PER 100,000 AMONG FLESH-EATING FOREIGNERS

                                  Chronic
                       Heart      Bright’s
            Cancer.    Disease.   Disease.

  Irish      166.6      381.2      410
  German     151.9      231.5      212
  English    140        207        209
  Bohemian   246        237.4      255.7

 DEATHS PER 100,000 AMONG NATIONALITIES NOTED FOR SMALL CONSUMPTION OF
                                 MEAT

                                          Chronic
                            Heart         Bright’s
                   Cancer.  Disease.      Disease.

  Austro-Hungarian  151.5   190.7         131.2
  Swedish            84.7    69.7          99.6
  Polish            130     170           121
  Italian            63.7   161           107.7

Another argument which the opponents of meat-eating bring forward,
is based upon the fact that in eating flesh which contains blood,
we consume a great deal of waste material and poisons from the body
of the animal. When the blood flows from the heart outward to each
organ of the body it is a life-stream containing life-giving oxygen
and particles of fresh food material for the use of the tissues, but
when it flows back it is freighted with the elements of disease and
death, with poisonous substances which are the bi-products of organic
activity, and which, if retained in the body for any length of time
invariably cause disease. The rapidity with which the blood becomes
impure and poisonous may be easily noted by winding a string about the
finger, when the flesh will quickly turn a blue color. Animals die as
men and women die, with their ailments within them, and if you eat of
them you eat the products of their disease process. Tuberculosis is
known to be one of the maladies sometimes transmitted by the use of
flesh. Numerous epidemics of typhoid fever have been traced to the use
of oysters.


                         THE PROTEID ARGUMENT

It had generally been assumed by physiologists that the great virtue
of meat lay in the greater digestibility of its proteid matter. Recent
experiment investigations, however, have shown that the vegetable
proteids are as a rule not less digestible than those from animal
sources. The vegetable proteids are often packed away and enveloped in
cellulose or other material difficult of digestion, or are permeated
with fats, as in some of the nuts; but modern methods of preparing
grains for the market, and also the thorough cooking of them, remove
this difficulty.

The deficiency of ordinary vegetable dietaries in proteids has been a
ground for criticism by the opponents of this regimen. Since, however,
the researches of Chittenden, Mendel, Metchnikoff, Dr. Folin, and
others have shown us that we need much less proteid than the elder
school of physiologists so long supposed, this objection loses its
weight. And, furthermore, there are many nut foods which are even
richer in proteids than cooked meats. Cooked meat contains 25% of
proteids, while peanut butter contains 29%. The edible portion of
walnuts contains 27%, and the edible portion of pine nuts 35%.

To sum up the argument in this matter it is our belief that modern
science has demonstrated that excessive meat eating is dangerous,
because of its high proteid content and its liability to germ
infection; and, also, that we can obtain all the elements which meat
contains from other kinds of food which are not open to the objections
fairly to be made against the use of meat. Nevertheless, here, as
elsewhere, it may be said that “Fletcherism,”—complete mastication—is
again the key that unlocks the solution of this problem for many.
Thorough mastication leads to the use of less meat; it also gives
the germicidal saliva a chance to kill harmful germs; and it aids
the digestive organs very materially. Eat meat—says the rational
physiologist—if you feel you must, or if it is difficult to abandon its
use, but be careful to chew it well.

It is true, to be sure, that the digestion of proteid is accomplished
not by saliva, but by stomach juices, which would seem to be an
argument in favor of bolting meat (as the dog does), but the mere
maceration of the meat by the teeth, if nothing more, is a help to the
stomach in its work of digestion.




                                   X

                      THE CASE AGAINST STIMULANTS


The dominant note of the discussion that for years has been waged in
scientific and medical circles as to the effect of alcohol on the
human constitution has been, to the puzzled layman at any rate, the
insistent, reiterated cry of the fundamental “mystery” of alcohol.
Alcohol is poison! cries one school. It is not anything of the sort,
being, as a matter of fact, a food! retorts the opposing school. Its
use in health or its administration to patients sick of any ailment
is hardly short of a crime, declares one leading physician. Tut!
tut! alcohol in moderation does no harm, and it is invaluable in the
treatment of many diseases! replies another. And so the arguments
proceeded.

Summing up his views of the deliberations of the British Association
for the Advancement of Science, recently held at Leicester, England,
and which formed a storm center for the great alcohol debate, a noted
chemist in London “Science,” said that we know how far the sun is, and
can tell the weight of the earth, predict when the next comet may be
expected, and give true answers to many other important questions, but
we do not know “anything to speak of” on the subject of alcohol. As
to the discussions that have waged at Leicester and elsewhere on the
question of the medical use of alcohol, the general impression left on
the world of laymen is that they all (the noted authorities) disagreed
with one another more or less, and that nobody can declare with any
scientific authority whether alcoholic liquor is good for us or bad for
us.

We propose here to describe the work of one scientist who has made
experiments which enable him to declare with authority that alcohol
is injurious. This investigator is Charles E. Stewart, M. D., of the
Battle Creek Sanitarium. He has closely studied the work of Sir Edward
Wright, London, the discoverer of “Opsonins”; and his experiments were
suggested by those of Wright. They led him to the discovery that
alcohol has a harmful effect on the blood by lowering its supply of
opsonins.

It has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of most students of Wright
and Metchnikoff, and their allies, that the opsonins form one of the
most valuable of the body’s defences against disease. And if Dr.
Stewart has demonstrated that alcohol poisons the opsonins, it must be
admitted that at last a positive and tangible proof has been brought
forward of alcohol’s harmful qualities. What nourishes and strengthens
the blood, helps the lifeforce within us; what weakens or poisons the
blood, is an attack upon the very citadel of vitality. Alcohol, says
Dr. Stewart, is such an enemy.

In such diseases as pneumonia and tuberculosis, the white cells,
according to Wright, cannot effectually combat the germs unless there
are plenty of opsonins present to aid them. Now, in treating pneumonia
and tuberculosis, many practitioners encourage the use of alcohol. Dr.
Stewart believed that alcohol was injurious. Having heard Sir W. Edward
Wright’s lectures, he asked himself the question:

“Can the evil effects of alcohol be due to its lowering of the opsonic
power of the blood?”

He instituted a series of experiments to determine, if possible, the
facts in the case. He first of all administered to four persons who
all their lives had been total abstainers, two ounces each of port
wine. The normal opsonic power of each of these individuals had been
determined as being 75 or above—that is to say, it was well above the
point at which the opsonic power must be maintained in order that the
white cell may do effective fighting. At the time when the subjects
took the port wine, the first subject had a normal amount of opsonic
power to resist the germ of tuberculosis which may be expressed by the
term 1.13., and a normal power of resistance to the pus germ, which
infects wounds, of 1.06. After drinking the wine, both those powers of
resistance were lowered most perceptibly; the first to .85, and the
second to .67. Similar results, in greater or less degree, followed in
all other cases. The port wine decreased the power of the blood to make
opsonic sauce for the white cells.

In a second series of experiments, two ounces of Scotch whisky
were taken an hour apart; that is, the normal index was taken, and
immediately afterwards an ounce of the Scotch whisky was taken, an
hour later another ounce, and an hour after this the index was taken
again. The results here were similar. For the germs of tuberculosis
it was discovered that the opsonic power had dropped 10% and for the
streptococci (or pus-forming) germs about 8%.

In another experiment where two ounces of sherry wine were used, the
opsonic power for the germs of tuberculosis dropped 11% and for the
streptococci 5%.

In another experiment where four ounces of champagne were taken, the
opsonic power dropped 9% for the germs of tuberculosis and 19% for the
streptococci germ. Many other experiments were performed, but they gave
practically the same results. The opsonic power decreased in proportion
to the amount of alcohol contained in the liquor.

Dr. Stewart carried on his experiments in the laboratory of the Battle
Creek Sanitarium, with the assistance of Dr. A. W. Nelson. He reported
his results to the American Society for the Study of Alcohol and Drug
Neuroses:

“I realize that there are a great number of factors which influence the
opsonic power of the blood, and that there is considerable variation in
even what may be considered normal cases, but, notwithstanding these
variations, there is a sufficient uniformity to enable us to make
some very valuable deductions. I feel justified in concluding that
alcohol has a marked influence in reducing the vital forces of the
body, thereby greatly interfering with the natural power of the body
to remedy ailments. Since Wright has shown that out of all comparison
the most valuable asset in medicine lies in raising the anti-bacterial
power of the blood, the adminstration of alcohol, which according to
these experiments, is pro-bacterial, and as such a strong liability
instead of an asset, should be eliminated from our therapeutics, at
least so far as internal administration in infectious diseases is
concerned.

“While only a comparatively few experiments have been made, the results
obtained have been uniform, and justify, I believe, the preliminary
report of it given to the medical profession and the public with the
hope that it may encourage others to pursue the work further in this
direction.

“Heretofore, when any statement was made to the effect that alcohol
caused this or the other disease, or ailment, or harmful effect of any
sort on the human constitution, the reply could be and was made that
the case could not be proven; that there were always circumstances
which might be construed as showing that other factors besides alcohol
influenced the situation. Now, however, I believe that we have opened
up a line of investigation which will place the proofs against alcohol
on a solid scientific basis by demonstrating its injurious effect on
the blood, which is the life.”


                            TEA AND COFFEE

In the same laboratory where Dr. Stewart placed his case against
alcohol, experiments are being made which show in the same direct way
that such drinks as tea and coffee also lower the opsonic power of
the blood. Into the United States alone are imported more than one
billion pounds, or five hundred thousand tons of tea and coffee each
year. It is estimated that tea and coffee contain from three to six
per cent. of poison. Therefore, more than fifteen thousand tons of
poison, “so deadly that twenty grains might produce fatal results if
administered to a full-grown man in a single dose”—in all more than
ten billion deadly doses of poison, or, “fully six times as much as
would be required to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the
earth,” are brought into this country every year, as component parts of
substances which are commonly regarded as pleasant foodstuffs.

This is the case stated against coffee and tea in its broadest and
most emphatic form. The opponents of the use of tea drinking term both
tea and coffee “drugs.” What is commonly thought to be the pleasantest
property of both tea and coffee, namely, their ability to banish one’s
sense of fatigue, is regarded by the critics of the tea and coffee
drinking habits as perhaps the most sufficient evidence of their
poisonous character.

“No one would doubt for a moment,” says one such critic, “the poisonous
nature of a drug capable of producing irresistible drowsiness in a
person who is not weary, as morphine would, for instance. Vice versa,
the power of a drug to produce wakefulness in a person strongly
inclined to sleep as the result of fatigue is equal evidence of its
poisonous character. The sallow complexion common among women of the
higher classes who have reached middle life, the almost universal
nervousness among American women, and many common digestive disorders,
and the increasing prevalence of nervous or sick headaches, afford
to the experienced physician ample evidence of the toxic or poisonous
character of tea and coffee.”

Tea and coffee contain (in addition to caffeine) tannic acid, and
various other volatile poisons, each of which produces characteristic
harmful effects. The volatile oils give rise to nervous excitability,
and after a time provoke serious nervous disorders. Caffeine is a
narcotic, which has been shown to diminish the activity of the peptic
glands—and thus seriously to interfere with the normal operation of
the organs of digestion. The eminent physiologist, Wolfe, showed by
experiments that three grains of caffeine—an amount that might easily
be imbibed in an ordinary cup of tea or coffee—very substantially
impairs the quality of the gastric juices, lessening their total
acidity. Roberts’ experiments showed that tea and coffee interfere with
the action of the saliva upon the starch of the food, and at times may
even wholly destroy its effect.




                                  XI

                       DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY


The reader is now familiar with the new ideas upon the subject of human
nutrition. It is obvious, of course, that if these ideas should ever
come into general acceptance, there would be enormous changes in the
every-day habits of human beings. And we can well imagine that a person
might be fully convinced of the soundness of all the arguments which
have been advanced in this book, and yet shrink in dismay from the
complications incidental to applying them.

We ourselves have faced these difficulties in many forms. We have
wished to have two meals, and yet felt obliged to have three, because
all our friends had them, and we did not wish to be hermits. We have
wished to avoid meat, and yet have eaten it, because it was on the
table, and we did not like to startle our hostess—and perhaps find
ourselves involved in an argument about vegetarianism, in the course
of which we had either to permit a good cause to go down into defeat,
or else to tell facts about meat which would take away every one’s
appetite for meat, and for vegetables as well. But in the end, the
desire for health has conquered all other motives with us, and we have
broken with every trace of the old ways. It seemed to us that we would
help and interest others if we gave some account of how the new ideas
have worked out in practice, and the daily regimen of a family which
adopts them.

This book is written in Bermuda, where the writers have been living in
co-operation, along the lines worked out at Helicon Hall, only upon
a much smaller scale. Their party consists of eight adults and three
children—this including two governesses, a secretary, and a servant.
They live in an isolated neighborhood, upon the waterfront. Most of the
party sleep out of doors on the broad verandas of the house, while the
wide doors and windows of the other rooms afford ample ventilation.
Daily sea-bathing is the habit of all of the group.

The married women of the party assume in turn the direction of our
dietaries; that is to say, they choose the menus, and attend to the
ordering of the food supplies. We eat but twice a day, and the menus
are made up entirely of fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables, with the
occasional use of eggs. We obtain from the Battle Creek Sanitarium a
great number of the foods we use, availing ourselves of its splendidly
managed food-department. The children eat three times a day, but
their breakfasts are very light, consisting of orange juice and a fig
or two, or perhaps a banana. The children have this light breakfast
immediately after arising. At ten o’clock comes the principal meal of
the day for the whole household. An effort is made to make this meal
“well balanced”; that is to say, to have the proportion of proteids,
carbohydrates and fats. There are usually not more than two, or at the
most, three cooked dishes. Sometimes the main dish is a soup; sometimes
it is baked or boiled macaroni with tomato dressing; sometimes it is
bean or pea croquettes; sometimes it is scrambled eggs, or the yolks of
hard boiled eggs.

We have a constant supply of fresh vegetables, the justly celebrated
Bermuda onion; beets, turnips, egg plant, raw cabbage, potatoes, white
and sweet, rice, hominy, green peas, tomatoes, and lettuce.

We have corn pones, corn bread, brown bread containing oatmeal,
ordinary white bread, and oven toast—that is to say, slices of bread
baked in the oven until it is brown all the way through. From Battle
Creek we have malt honey, malted nuts, ripe olives, olive oil, fig
and prune marmalades made without cane sugar, various crackers and
grain preparations, and several other nut products. The Sanitarium
health-chocolate, a sweet made without the use of cane sugar, and with
chocolate divested of its caffeine, also appears on our table. We
have eliminated dessert at dinner, having learned not only at Battle
Creek, but in the sore school of experience, that the heterogeneous
mixtures of cream or milk and cane sugar and various mushy stuffs,
along with butter or lard, in the shape of pies and puddings and cakes,
are extremely undesirable foods. We find the sweet, pure taste of malt
honey an adequate and highly satisfactory substitute.

  [Illustration: The Daily Swim]

Fruits rarely appear on the table at dinner, since we do not wish to
mix them with vegetables. They make their appearance in great abundance
at supper, which we have at five o’clock. At this meal we have various
cooked fruits, such as prunes or apricots or baked or stewed apples;
and of uncooked fruits, oranges, apples, figs, bananas, grapes, and
whatever else the market affords. With these we have zweibach and
common bread or crackers. At both meals appears Yogurt, an acidulous
and agreeable beverage which gratefully checks thirst and in itself
nourishes, and is also the vehicle whereby millions of beneficial germs
are introduced into the body.

The work of preparing and serving these two meals is done by one
person—and that person has time left to play tennis and go in swimming
with the rest of us. The total cost of the food is less than thirty
dollars a week; cooked and served, its cost is about three dollars and
a quarter a week per person. In this connection it should be explained
that Bermuda prices, for even the commonest things, are in excess of
prices in New York. We pay five cents each for eggs and twelve cents
a quart for milk. We have oranges by the barrel, but they come from
California, or from Jamaica by way of New York. We have olive oil at
four dollars a gallon, and sterilized butter at fifty cents a pound.
And in addition the figures quoted include expressage and steamer
charges, and ten per cent. duty as well. We mention these things for
the light they throw upon the relative costs of the vegetarian and
carnivorous life.

The reader will also wish to know about the health of a family living
in this manner. When we came here all our children were half-sick from
too long contact with cities, and we were not used to the climate, and
so one of them caught a severe cold. With this exception there has not
been a day’s sickness among them, nor the remotest trace of an ailment.
If we were to describe their looks the reader might attribute it to
parental blindness, and so the proper plan seems to us to insert a
picture of them, and let the reader come to his own conclusions.

For the guidance of any housewife who may wish to try our regimen, we
give a few typical menus, and also recipes for some of the favorite
dishes of our family. We are all hungry when mealtime comes in our
household, and we enjoy the surprises of the menu with all the zest
that we ever welcomed roast turkey and pumpkin pies in the old days.
And this seems in some magical way to be true, not only of ourselves,
but also of such guests as happen along. It is worth noting that three
different persons, who have never before known or thought anything
about vegetarianism, have stayed with us for periods of several months;
and all of them have fallen into the ways of our household, have been
well and strong, and untroubled by craving for meat—and in two cases
have found, to their great dismay, that they were gaining in weight
upon two “low proteid” meals a day!

The first of the tables which follow contains a typical menu for a
week; and the second gives an extra list of dinners. The third shows
what we do upon some special occasion; it was the banquet which we
prepared for Mark Twain—only, alas, his physician had ordered him to be
home by sundown, and he couldn’t stay to partake of it.

Inasmuch as all people cannot change their meal hours in accordance
with those we have suggested, we give these menus upon the basis of
three meals a day, with the various food elements properly balanced.
We have also included simple desserts, for the benefit of those who
do not care to dispense with this feature. The menus in our own home
are similar to these, with the exclusion of the breakfasts and the
dessert.[1]

 [1] Very good vegetarian cook books are those entitled “Science in the
 Kitchen,” and “Healthful Cookery,” both of them by Mrs. E. E. Kellogg,
 the wife of the superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Some
 of the books which are listed in another place as being those which
 a student of the new art of health may read will also furnish many
 good recipes. The “Art of Living in Good Health,” by Dr. Daniel S.
 Sager, will be found especially helpful in this regard. We give in
 the Appendix three simple menus of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. These
 menus have the food values indicated, and will be found very useful in
 giving a rough idea of the number of calories contained in ordinary
 foods.

  MONDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Oranges
  Poached eggs
  Graham gems

  _Dinner_

  Lima beans, dried or fresh
  Baked potatoes
  Mixed nuts
  Whole wheat bread
  Lettuce salad
  Tapioca pudding

  _Supper_

  Oven toast brown bread
  Cottage cheese
  Apple sauce
  Almond cream
  Figs
  Bananas

  TUESDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Grape fruit
  Corn meal mush with cream
  Buttered toast

  _Dinner_

  Baked macaroni
  Mixed nuts
  Brown bread
  Tomato salad with mayonnaise dressing
  Indian meal pudding

  _Supper_

  Zweibach
  Brown bread
  Ripe olives
  Stewed prunes
  Dates
  Bananas
  Hot malted nuts

  WEDNESDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Baked apples and cream
  Omelet
  Pop overs

  _Dinner_

  Peas patties with tomato sauce
  Baked sweet potatoes
  White bread
  Boiled onions
  Baked custard

  _Supper_

  Oven toast
  Whole wheat bread
  Nut butter
  Stewed fruit
  Cottage cheese
  Apples
  Bananas

  THURSDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Oranges
  Hominy with cream
  Currant puffs

  _Dinner_

  Bean and nut croquettes with cream sauce
  Baked egg plant
  Graham bread
  Boiled rice
  Dates with whipped cream

  _Supper_

  Oven toast
  Graham bread
  Honey
  Ripe olives
  Apple sauce
  Grapes
  Bananas

  FRIDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Grapes
  Scrambled eggs
  Whole wheat gems

  _Dinner_

  Vegetable soup
  Assorted nuts
  Beet and lettuce salad with mayonnaise dressing
  Corn pones
  Cottage pudding

  _Supper_

  Golden maize crackers
  Graham bread
  Nut butter
  Canned fruit
  Bananas and apples

  SATURDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Grape fruit
  Toasted corn flakes with cream
  Buttered toast
  Marmalade

  _Dinner_

  Baked beans
  Cabbage slaw
  Baked potatoes
  Mashed turnips
  Brown bread
  Baked apples with cream

  _Supper_

  Oven toast
  Brown bread
  Cottage cheese
  Sliced pineapple
  Bananas
  Figs

  SUNDAY

  _Breakfast_

  Grapes
  Soft boiled eggs
  Corn meal gems
  Orange marmalade

  _Dinner_

  Pea and tomato soup
  Succotash
  Corn bread
  Potato salad
  Baked bananas
  Mixed nuts and raisins

  _Supper_

  Zweibach
  Oatmeal bread
  Malted nuts
  Ripe olives
  Canned fruits
  Bananas
  Dates

  EXTRA DINNERS

  Yolks hard boiled eggs
  Baked potatoes
  Beets
  Prune pudding
  Vegetable soup
  Cabbage salad
  Corn bread
  Baked custard

  Scrambled eggs
  Baked lyonnaise potatoes
  Beet and lettuce salad
  Dates with whipped cream

  Macaroni with tomato sauce
  Whole wheat gems
  Egg salad
  Apple tapioca pudding

  Baked beans
  Tomato, chili sauce
  Mashed turnips
  Lettuce with French dressing
  Lemon jelly

  Pea soup
  Corn pones
  Potato and onion salad
  Cabinet pudding

  Peas patties with tomato sauce
  Mashed potatoes
  Carrots with butter sauce

  Baked nuttolene with cream sauce
  Baked sweet potatoes
  Stewed tomatoes
  Baked apples and cream
  Lima beans (fresh or dried)
  Baked sweet potatoes
  Lettuce
  Corn pones
  Stuffed dates

  Baked beans
  Lettuce
  Corn (canned or sweet)
  Nuts and raisins


                                RECIPES

 Vegetable soup: Cut in dice three turnips, three carrots, three
 onions, three potatoes. Cover with water and simmer for thirty
 minutes. Cook one can of tomatoes, or one quart of fresh tomatoes,
 strain and thicken a little with flour. Add to vegetables and cook
 thirty minutes. Add butter and sprinkle with parsley.

 Corn pones: Three cups corn meal, 1 heaping teaspoon salt, 1
 tablespoon sugar, 1 heaping tablespoon butter. Add boiling water until
 meal is scalded, pat it into flat, thin cakes and bake three-quarters
 of an hour.

 Mayonnaise dressing: Yolk of egg; add 1½ cups olive oil, drop by drop,
 stirring in one direction. Juice of two small lemons, 1 teaspoon salt.

 Macaroni with tomatoes: Half package macaroni; drop into a kettle of
 boiling water. Boil vigorously for thirty minutes. To one can tomatoes
 add two onions chopped fine. Simmer until onions are done, then
 strain and thicken with flour. Put macaroni into colander and rinse
 with cold water. Add the tomato sauce and simmer gently for fifteen
 minutes. It is well to do this in double boiler to prevent burning.

 Bean or pea soup without meat or pork: Soak two cups of split peas
 over night. In the morning slice and add two large onions and simmer
 for several hours. Strain.

 Beans baked without pork: Use butter or nut butter instead.

 Bean and nut croquettes: Cook dried beans until soft. Strain through
 colander to remove all skins. Add equal parts of walnut meat ground
 in chopper; season with salt and a little sage. Mix with beaten egg.
 Form into croquettes and bake until dry and nicely browned. Serve with
 tomato or cream sauce.

 Baked egg plant: Boil egg plant until tender; pare and mash; mix with
 bread crumbs and eggs, and bake until nicely browned. A little finely
 chopped onions may be added if desired.

 Peas cutlets: One cup pea pulp, one cup steamed rice, one grated
 onion, one-half teaspoon sage, one-half cup tomato juice, one-third
 cup browned flour. Mix together and mold in cakes two-thirds of an
 inch thick. Bake half an hour. Serve with tomato or cream sauce.




                                  XII

                        BREATHING AND EXERCISE


We have devoted most of our space to the problems of nutrition, since
nutrition is the most important factor in the question of how to keep
in health. We wish now to speak of other matters, of great importance
in the art of keeping well; these are breathing, bathing, and exercise.

Many people have lived for more than a month without food. You can go
for days without water. But if you are deprived of air for but a few
minutes, your death is certain. Sixteen to eighteen times a minute the
normal person respires, one breath being taken for every four beats
of the heart, the central engine of life. Each time you breathe, the
amount of air which passes into the lungs is about twenty-five cubic
inches; which represent, however, but a small part of the actual
capacity of the lungs. The average man can take into the lungs with
an ordinary inspiration one hundred or more cubic inches, and is able
to force out an equal amount with an ordinary expiration. If you have
striven your utmost to expel all the air possible from your lungs,
there will still remain about one hundred cubic inches of air within
them. The total lung capacity of the average man is about three hundred
and twenty-five cubic inches, or nearly one and a half gallons of air.


                    THE INDISPENSABILITY OF OXYGEN

Sunlight is the basis of all life. It is sunlight which plants absorb,
and which they transform into materials which go to make up the living
tissues of all things. The place of breathing in the process of life is
manifold. But its primary function is to make available for the body’s
uses the sunlight, or energy, which is stored up in the food we eat.
It does this by means of the oxygen which it contains, and the purpose
of breathing is to obtain from the air an adequate supply of oxygen.
Oxygen is one of the essential materials required for the support of
life. Without oxygen the whole life process would come to an end. From
every breath that is taken into the body, about one and a quarter cubic
inches of oxygen must be obtained by the body, to keep up the fire of
life within us. You cannot burn a match, or your reading lamp in the
evening, unless there is an adequate supply of oxygen; and even so does
the body require this indispensable and all powerful element in order
to maintain itself.

  [Illustration: FRESH AIR IN BERMUDA]

We have noted the fact that of the myriads upon myriads of swarming
cells which the blood contains, a large proportion are the
oxygen-conveyers. When you take air into your lungs, these cells absorb
the precious element, and rush with it to all parts of the body. After
distributing the oxygen wherever it is needed, they pick up for the
return journey to the lungs all manner of débris and gases—the poisons
which are produced by the organs of the body as they carry on their
work. As Metchnikoff has shown us, it is the accumulation of poisons
produced by the activity of our various organs which, unless properly
disposed of, or kept below excessive quantities, bring about premature
old age, the majority of all diseases, and early death. The amount
of poisons which the average person throws off from the body with a
single breath, as has been shown by delicate laboratory experiments, is
enough to contaminate and render unfit for breathing three cubic feet
or three-quarters of a barrel of air. Assuming an average of twenty
breaths per minute, which is the normal rate for breathing for adults,
the amount of air each person contaminates per minute will be sixty
cubic feet, or one cubic foot a second.

If you hold your breath for a minute, you will be conscious of an
extremely unpleasant feeling, which is the way in which the body
manifests its urgent need for oxygen. The need of ventilation is not
merely the need of oxygen, however. There may be plenty of oxygen in
the air of a room which has been closed for some time, and which has
been breathed in and out of the lungs of the people in the room; the
trouble is that this oxygen is unfit for breathing, being full of
impurities thrown off by the bodies of these people.


                   HOW TO CALCULATE ROOM VENTILATION

Dr. Kellogg has supplied some exceedingly useful calculations of the
degree of ventilation needed in rooms of various sizes. “Every one,”
he says, “should become intelligent in relation to the matter of
ventilation, and should appreciate its importance. Vast and sometimes
irreparable injury frequently results from the confinement of several
scores or hundreds of people in a school room, church or lecture room,
without adequate means of removing the impurities thrown off from their
lungs and bodies. The same air being breathed over and over becomes
intensely charged with poisons which render the blood impure, lessen
resistance and induce susceptibility to taking cold and to infection
with germs of pneumonia, consumption and other infectious diseases
which are always present in a very crowded audience room.

“Suppose, for example, a thousand persons are seated in a room forty
feet in width, sixty in length, and fifteen in height; how long a
time would elapse before the air of such a room would become unfit
for further respiration? Remembering that each person spoils one foot
of air every second, it is clear that one thousand cubic feet of air
will be contaminated for every second that the room is occupied. To
ascertain the number of seconds which would elapse before the entire
air contained in the room will be contaminated, so that it is unfit
for further breathing, we have only to divide the cubic contents of
the room by one thousand. Multiplying, we have 60 × 40 × 15 equals
36,000, the number of cubic feet. This, divided by one thousand, gives
thirty-six as the number of seconds. Thus it appears that with closed
doors and windows breath poisoning of the audience would begin at the
end of thirty-six seconds, or less than one minute. The condition of
the air in such a room at the end of an hour cannot be adequately
pictured in words, and yet hundreds of audiences are daily subjected
to just such inhumane treatment through the ignorance or stupidity of
architects, or the carelessness of janitors, or the criminal negligence
of both.”


                     TUBERCULOSIS POINTS THE MORAL

No circumstance has been more successful in impressing the great
importance of fresh air and adequate ventilation upon the public mind
than the success which has attended the open air cure for consumption.
This is a mode of treatment of comparatively recent adoption in
America, but it is by this time generally recognized as really the
only possible cure for tuberculosis. The mortality from this disease
is greater than any except pneumonia; another disease that proper
breathing habits will do much to avert. In America one person in every
nine dies of tuberculosis; and of the deaths which occur between the
ages of fifteen and thirty-five, one-third are due to the great white
plague. We give these figures on the authority of Professor Irving
Fisher of Yale, who is Secretary of the New Haven AntiTuberculosis
Association. His interest in this disease is that of one who has had
it, and who has cured it by the open air treatment. Of the authors of
this book, one has had an experience similar to Professor Fisher. There
is nothing academic about this insistence on the need of fresh air and
proper breathing habits; literally, and in the fullest degree, it is a
question of life and death whether you shall breathe properly, and have
good air to breathe, or whether you shall not.


              HOW BREATHING AIDS THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD

To return for a moment to the processes of breathing, we find that
the act of inflating the lungs is a blood-pumping process as well.
This blood-pumping process has a great effect upon the struggle of the
white soldiers of the blood to maintain the body against the inroads
of disease. Each time that the wall of the chest is elevated after the
lungs have been emptied, a suction force is exerted upon the large
veins which enter the chest, especially those which come in through
the abdominal cavity. “At the same moment,” to quote Dr. Kellogg again,
“the downward pressure of the diaphragm by which the liver, stomach,
and other abdominal organs are compressed against the muscular walls
of the abdomen, serves to force the blood from below upward, emptying
the venous blood of the abdominal cavity into the chest, thus helping
it toward the heart. The more tense and well developed the muscles of
the abdominal wall and the stronger the muscles of respiration, the
stronger will be this upward movement of the blood. When the abdominal
muscles are weakened by improper dress, by corsets, tight lacing, or by
wearing of belts or bands or by sedentary habits, especially sitting in
a stooped position, the weakened muscles yield to the downward pressure
of the diaphragm, thus neutralizing to a large degree the beneficial
influence of this action. This condition is unquestionably a cause of
chronic disease of the liver and stomach, inactive bowels, and possibly
lays the foundation of cirrhosis of the liver, spleen, and other grave
disorders of the abdominal region.”

It is very obvious how deep breathing will thus influence the vigor
of the blood’s army of cells. Deep breathing forces the blood to rush
into the lungs, there to be charged with oxygen. Without this oxygen
the white cells die. Vigorous breathing also directly aids digestion,
and promotes the absorption of food materials. Those who have slow
digestion will find that breathing exercises will be of especial
benefit. In ordinary breathing of a quiet person, the movements of the
chest are so slight as to be scarcely noticeable, but when vigorous
breathing is indulged in, the diaphragm as it moves up and down
kneads the stomach and its contents and, very materially, assists the
digestive organs.


                        HAVE FRESH AIR AT NIGHT

During sleeping hours the breathing movements are slighter and slower
than when one is awake and active. It is necessary that the activity
of the body should be lessened in order that rest may be secured;
and yet the work of the liver, kidneys, and other organs which are
engaged in throwing off poisons goes on continually; as does also the
repairing work of the living cells, which are forever building up the
parts of the body broken down by work or sickness. For some six to nine
hours the body is thus occupied in resting and repairing itself, in
order that on the next day it may respond like a living machine to the
demand of the conscious mind. We should do all in our power to help on
this recuperative process; and no way will be more effective than to
sleep, out of doors, or with the head at a window, or at least in a
well-ventilated room.

There are a great number of breathing exercises described in various
books on the subject, but the best breathing exercise is natural
breathing. If the head is kept erect, and the shoulders low so that
the chest is upright; if breathing is carried on through the nostrils,
and the habit of deep breathing carefully cultivated—there will be no
need for special exercises, save in the case of invalids. The most
effective of all breathing exercises is to run or walk rapidly, or walk
up a hill, or up stairs, if these be in the open air, with the head
well back. This exercise heightens the action of the lungs, and all
parts of the body are flooded with fresh air.


               HOW EXERCISE AIDS THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD

The question of breathing properly is intimately bound up with the
question of exercise. The best of all exercise is play. All games
in the open air which a person takes part in for the love of them
far surpass the cleverest and most scientific sets of rules which
physiologists have ever evolved. Unconscious performance of all the
functions of the body is the ideal of hygiene. Exercise aids the
battle of life within us in a direct manner. Exercise breaks down worn
out tissue, making room for new and healthy tissue. It increases the
rate of oxidation or burning up of fuel within us, and this in its
turn enables the body to get rid of waste of material. Exercise also
increases the strength and endurance of the muscles and fibres.

When muscles become weak, they relax and allow various portions of the
body to drop into positions which are not only ungraceful, but are
decidedly injurious. When the muscles are not used and become flabby,
the shoulders get rounded and drop forward through the weakness of the
muscles which are intended to hold them back in position. The ribs
which form the framework of the chest not being properly sustained by
the muscles attached to them, gradually fall inward, thus flattening
the chest, and compressing the lungs. There is a very close connection
between gracefulness of carriage and sound bodily health.

The person who lounges, or slouches, be it ever so picturesquely, does
so at the expense of the body. Proper exercise will prevent these
physical defects, and will remedy them in most persons who have not yet
attained middle age. Even in advanced years, say the physiologists,
much may be done to correct these physical deformities by properly
directed and systematic exercises.


                       EXERCISES MAKE NEW BLOOD

Exercise has another most important task in supplying an adequate
amount of blood to the bones of the body, in order that these bones may
carry on their work of manufacturing fresh blood for the use of the
body. Unless these bones are bathed with the already existing blood of
the body, which carries to them oxygen and nourishment, the process of
manufacturing new blood, which goes on within the marrow of the bones,
would quickly cease. It has been demonstrated by science that muscular
activity increases the blood flow through the muscles as many as six
times.

Here, then, lies perhaps the first hope for supplying new blood to any
body which has begun to deteriorate through the accumulation of poisons
emanating from the large intestine, or from the other organs. Exercise
will supply the blood-producing bone marrow with six times as much raw
material to make new blood as a sedentary mode of life would produce,
and at the same time this six-times-strengthened flood will wash out
of the crevices of the bones and muscles and fibres the stored up
poisons. For these purposes, the exercises which move the large muscle
masses are the most helpful. Dr. Benton A. Colver, of the Battle Creek
Sanitarium, to whom we are indebted for assistance in preparing this
chapter, names the following exercises as being beneficial for this
purpose:

Low knee bending, stretching and heel sinking, and heel raising; lying
on the floor with the weight supported by toes and hands, and lowering
and raising the body; raising the body by the arms, holding to a
bar above the head; walking with a vigorous stride, and running and
swimming.

Of all these exercises, swimming is theoretically the best, for the
reason that it exercises equally all the muscle masses in the body,
and requires the best balanced of all movements. Walking and running
come next in the order of excellence, simply for the reason that they
can be carried on best in the open air and without the bother that may
accompany the performance of more formal exercises.


               EXERCISES WHICH RETARD AUTO-INTOXICATION

Another way in which exercise directly helps the battle of the blood
within us, is by assisting such organs of body-poison elimination as
the spleen, the liver, and the portal system of veins. It is in these
organs that the exhausted blood is broken up and cast off. The blood in
these organs is loaded with broken down tissue and other waste material
from the body, and is contaminated with gases and poisons. In the
body of the person who leads a sedentary life a great volume of blood
settles in these organs and is prematurely put out of use.

Proper exercises will empty this great tank of stagnant blood as easily
as a sponge is emptied by the pressure of the hand. This passive blood,
having access to all the organs of digestion, is largely responsible
for the supply of inferior digestive juices, and thus is a leading
factor in indigestion, loss of appetite, and such diseases as catarrh
of the stomach and bowels. If, however, this blood is pumped on as it
should be to the heart and lungs, there to be cleansed, the fresh blood
rushes in to fill its place, armed by the activity of the lungs with
its life-giving ammunition of oxygen.

By persistently keeping up this emptying and filling of the portal
veins, and of the spleen and liver, the old cinders left from the
oxidation of food are washed away, new digestive juices are formed,
and the whole tone of the body is improved. For such purposes such
exercises as the following are extremely valuable:

Stand erect and, with the hands on hips, bend the trunk forward,
backward, and sideward, keeping the legs stiff. Trunk rotation,
performed by bending forward and then describing as large a circle as
possible with the head thrown first to the right and then to the left,
and bending the trunk backward as far as possible when that segment
of the arc is reached; lying on the back and raising first the head,
second the feet, with bent knees, and third, the feet with straight
legs. These exercises stretch the diaphragm against the liver and
portal vein, and thus squeeze out the blood from these organs and send
it back to the heart and lungs.


                EXERCISES WHICH PROMOTE DEEP BREATHING

A third manner in which exercise directly assists the battle of the
blood is by increasing heart action and deep breathing. Exercises which
accomplish these functions insure an abundant supply of oxygen to the
blood and the tissues. In this manner, more heat will be produced in
the active tissues, and the blood current will carry this beneficial
glow of heat to the most distant parts. This toning up of the “heating
system” will be evidenced by the appearance of perspiration. When skin
and lung activity are thus increased, the accumulated wastes of the
body are quickly eliminated.

  [Illustration: OUTDOOR EXERCISE.]

The person who takes vigorous exercise in the open air such as playing
games like tennis or golf, or who walks vigorously, will have no
need for formal breathing exercises. For those, however, who cannot
readily obtain outdoor exercises the natural way, the following chest
movements and breathing exercises are recommended. They should be taken
with the body free from tight clothing, and either in the open air
or a well-ventilated room. First, raise the hands above the head as
far as they can reach, and then bring them forward and upward several
times, and then upward and downward on the side of the head, inhaling
on the uplifting of the arms, exhaling on the sinking of the arms.
When the arms are lifted above the head, opportunity is given for the
air inhaled to reach the upper part of the lungs, parts which in the
sedentary person are very rarely used, and where usually the germs of
tuberculosis begin their evil work. Arm extension forward, breathing
deeply with arms carried sideward and backward, at shoulder height.
If those who exercise in their rooms will be careful to breathe only
through the nose and will keep the head erect, they will find that the
performance of almost any set of exercises will serve also as breathing
exercises, since they will increase lung activity.




                                 XIII

                        BATHING AND CLEANLINESS


The soldiers of the body which carry on for us the battle against
disease, old age, and death, have as great and as constant a need of
water as do the human soldiers, part of whose equipment is always the
indispensable canteen. Water is needed by the body in many ways, but
it is especially required by the blood. Water is the solvent in which
float the white and red corpuscles of the blood, and the many nutritive
elements which the blood carries through the body, and the particles of
waste material which it bears to the lungs to be burnt up, or to the
other excretory organs to be ejected. By the aid of water, the minute
particles of food which are broken up and transformed by the chemical
processes of the body are conveyed to the most distant fibre of the
intricate human mechanism, wherever repair or new growth is required.
No other element of nature could so well carry on this function as
water. It is so limpid and mobile that it can move through the most
delicate and intricate network of veins, and can find its way by
osmosis or percolation into such parts as are inaccessible by openings.

The human body is constantly throwing off water. A large portion is
lost by evaporation from the skin, upon which it is poured out by
millions of what might be termed little sewer pipes or sweat ducts, for
the purpose of washing away impurities from the system. The kidneys
remove a considerable quantity, bearing with it poisonous elements
in solution, the product of various vital activities. In other ways
water is removed from the body, to the amount of about five pints
in twenty-four hours. This loss must be made good in order that the
requisite fluidity of the blood shall be maintained; and the need
of the body is expressed by thirst. Beverages which contain other
substances, as flavor, or as part of some mixed drink, are useful as
thirst quenchers just in proportion to the amount of water which they
contain.

Physiologists point to the evaporation of water from the surface of
the human body as being one of the most perfect adaptations of means
to ends exhibited in the whole circle of life. The vital activities of
the body occasion the constant production of heat. At times the heat
is greater than is needed, and would destroy the vitality of certain
tissues if it were not speedily conducted away, just as too much heat
in a stove would melt the iron of the stove. The evaporation of water
from the skin accomplishes this heat dispersal. When external heat
is great, perspiration in the normal, healthy person is more active
than when external heat is less than that in the body, and, by this
provision of Nature, the temperature of the body is maintained at about
100° Fahrenheit under all circumstances, and thus man is enabled to
exist under such great extremes of heat and cold as are found in nature.

There are numerous other ways in which water is essential to the
process of life within us. The free drinking of water greatly favors
the elimination from the system of the products of waste. It hastens
tissue change, and encourages the assimilation of food. And apart
from its use internally, it has also a very great value as a means
of applying heat to or abstracting it from the body for remedial
purposes, to say nothing of the functions it performs as a cleansing
agent. Of late years the value of water in therapeutics has become
generally recognized by the medical profession, and all over the
world its use as an active agent has increased. Indeed, in the view
of some physiologists, ordinary pure cold water is by far the most
powerful and useful of all known healing agencies. It heals not by any
strange or occult power, but by co-operating with the natural forces
of the body, by aiding to the utmost those physiological processes by
means of which the body sustains itself in health, and resists the
encroachments of disease by the means of its bodyguard of blood cells,
and by maintaining at its high pitch its innate vital resistance. When
the Austrian Priessnitz first began the use of water in his mountain
village a century ago, the world believed that the wonderful cures
he wrought were accomplished by mystical charms or incantations by
which he was supposed to communicate to the water its healing power.
Modern science, however, has revealed the secret of water’s potency as
a curative agent, and hydrotherapy, or curing by water, is now as well
recognized as almost any other branch of medical science.


                         THE VALUE OF BATHING

The daily cold bath is one of the best ways of keeping the doctor at a
distance. Cold water has the property of increasing vital work of all
kinds. When it is applied to the skin “impulses are sent inward that
awaken every organ of the body,” says Kellogg. Let us see what takes
place: when a person dips his body into cold water, as in sea bathing,
or when he steps into the bath at home, the first thing he does, which
in fact he finds himself doing involuntarily, is to draw in a deep
breath.

“Oooh-h-h!” he says, but he says it with an indrawing breath. The
lungs swell out, the heart begins to pound away with unusually
increased vigor and strength, and every part of the system is
stimulated. Cold bathing and deep breathing are two valuable things
which go inseparably together. The deep breathing increases lung
activity, and the lungs bring in more oxygen; the heart circulates the
blood with greater force, and hence more and better blood is carried
to every tissue of the body. The result is a stirring up of the bodily
forces, and a distribution throughout the system of a larger amount of
highly vitalized and oxygenated blood.

It has been shown definitely that cold bathing increases enormously
the number of white blood corpuscles in the blood. Whether this result
is accomplished by the birth of new cells, or by the calling forward
of cells from remote parts of the body into the general stream of the
blood, is not generally known; but the fact remains that counts of
the blood cells taken just before and just after the body has been
stimulated by cold water show a decided increase in the army of the
warrior cells.

The benefit of sea bathing comes not from the salt in the air or in
the water, as some people suppose, but simply from the cold water.
The reaction from the dip into the cold water, which is brought about
by the blood rushing to the surface to supply the heat which has been
taken from it by the application of the water, is one of the most
valuable of all curative processes. It is this reaction that sends the
blood cells scurrying actively throughout the whole fortress of the
body.


                    HOW COLD BATHING AIDS NUTRITION

Another way in which the application of cold water promotes the
functions of life is by the stimulation of the secretion of gastric
juice which it accomplishes. It thus helps on actively the digestive
processes by which food is absorbed and taken into the blood. The liver
and the salivary glands are stimulated in the same way.

When applied to the face, cold water stirs up the flagging energies
of the brain, by invigorating the blood. A dash of cold water upon the
chest produces a stimulation of all the bodily forces, which a tired
person will find more valuable than any pick-me-up or tonic or cup
of tea, or nip of whisky or other alleged stimulant could possibly
be. Applied over the heart, this organ is made to beat with greater
steadiness and vigor. Application to the stomach causes increased
production of pepsin and acid or gastric juices. Over the bowels it
stimulates intestinal activity; over the loins it increases the action
of the kidneys. A cold compress, or a douch over the liver will cause
increased liver activity. Every organ in the interior of the body may
be thus aroused to increased activity by a simple application of cold
water upon the skin overlying the organ, for thus a rush of blood
will be caused to that particular portion. It is necessary that the
application should be brief, three or four seconds to as many minutes.
These short cold applications of water to the skin will increase
immediately the activity of any sluggish part, or of any organ whose
function we wish to increase as a means of aiding the body in its
battle against the causes of disease.

The whole nervous system derives benefit from the stimulation of brief
cold baths. This is one of the most valuable functions of water.
Hydrotherapy has come to be a most valuable adjunct to the treatment
of all nervous diseases. A slow stomach may be wakened up and set to
doing effective work by a general cold bath taken daily, or by a local
application of cold water. A cold water bag over the stomach for half
an hour just before meal time is a wonderful appetite awakener, which
may be used by persons whose circumstances preclude them from the
general cold bath and the exercises which cause a natural desire for
food.

The best of all prescriptions for cold feet is to stand in very cold
water a half inch deep and rub one foot with the other in alternation
for five minutes. Hydrotherapy is the principal curative agent employed
in the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, and its branches throughout
the world, and in his book “Rational Hydrotherapy,” Dr. Kellogg has
presented in a shape that makes the knowledge available to everybody
the modes of treatment which may be employed at home. “A good way,”
says Dr. Kellogg, upon whom we draw for information in the preparation
of this chapter, “is to stand in the bath tub with the cold water
faucet open and the plug out.” It will not be long before the feet will
be red and will fairly burn with the afflux of fresh, warm blood which
will rush to the feet.

Hot water can be used in conjunction with cold water, since heat tends
to lessen vital work, and so heat may be employed when it is desired
to diminish organic activity. Pain is one direct evidence of excessive
activity. Heat is nature’s great remedy for internal pain. Heat cuts
off the influence of cold and at the same time diverts the blood to
the surface of the body. Cold, on the contrary, usually increases pain
when the seat of it is some internal organ. Sometimes heat and cold
are applied at the same time, as for a toothache, for instance, when
a hot fomentation is applied to the cheek and an ice bag to the neck
under the jaw. Pain in the pelvis is almost always relieved by a very
hot foot bath or leg bath, which relieves the congestion by diverting
the blood into the legs, and thus removes the condition which was
responsible for the pain.


                         THE CARE OF THE TEETH

It appears to be a fact that in the United States the profession
of dentistry, both mechanical and medical, has been carried to its
highest point. No doubt Americans will cheerfully assure themselves
that American brains and “bustle” are responsible for this condition.
But the truth can not be quite so comforting; the great development of
dentistry in this country must be due to the demand for it; and the
demand for it evidences a state of affairs that is far from reassuring.

So rapid has been the increase of degeneration of the teeth in modern
times, that many physiologists have seriously asked the question, “Will
the American race become toothless?” To-day, while artificial teeth
are manufactured from such a variety of substances and sold at such a
variety of prices, it would seem that Americans are becoming a race of
“store teeth” men and women.

As with all other branches of hygiene, dentistry is now beginning to
discover the ideal of _prevention_; recognizing that the sanitary care
of the mouth is a more important object that the most cunning imitation
of teeth, or the most ingenious masterpieces in bridge and crown work.
Under the leadership of a man who will be recognized in the future as
a pioneer in the cause of health, Dr. D. D. Smith, of Philadelphia,
a large and rapidly growing body of dentists have formed what is
termed the Prophylactic School, the development of which will result
not merely in the prevention of a great deal of disease of the teeth
and mouth, but of all the body. Physicians in general, and even most
dentists, have only begun to recognize the part which the mouth plays
in the causation of diseases.

At the present time, there are, roughly speaking, about 14,000
dentists in the United States, who annually extract twenty million
teeth, manufacture and insert three million artificial teeth, and
hammer into the cavities of diseased teeth at least three tons of pure
gold, to say nothing about the many tons of mercury, tin, and other
metals employed in fillings. When the principles of the Prophylactic
School spread, it is safe to say that while the importance of the
dentist will become even more generally recognized than it is to-day,
nevertheless he will pull fewer teeth, and use less gold and other
metals. The principle upon which Dr. Smith, and his rapidly growing
band of followers, build their work, is an intelligent recognition of
the fact that there are in the human mouth to-day, as has been the
condition through all the centuries, highly malignant features of
general infection and causes of numerous diseases which until now have
been wholly unperceived and neglected. The ordinary physician tells
his patient to poke out his tongue, when he looks for an index to that
patient’s general condition of health, but he does not look above or
below or around or about the tongue, where, in a great number of cases
he might find not merely the symptoms but the cause of his patient’s
ailment.


                        “THE VESTIBULE OF LIFE”

To show some of the common mouth conditions that make it almost an
ideal medium for bacterial culture, we quote the following paragraph
from Dr. Smith, adding the fact that his statement is one with which
all up-to-date physicians concur:

“The mouth, with its large extent of dentate surface, becomes quickly
infested and infected with all manner of bacterial formations,
decomposing particles of food, stagnant, septic matter from saliva,
mucous and sputum, not infrequently with pus exudations from irritated
and inflamed gum margins, gaseous emanations from decaying teeth
and putrescent pulp tissue, salivary calculus (tartar), nicotine,
and the chemical toxins, or poisons, of decomposition which result
from a mixing of mouth secretions, excretions and food remains in a
temperature constantly maintained at the high normal of ninety-eight
degrees Fahrenheit. While this may seem a formidable array, it fails to
prevent any of the sources of infection connected with untreated teeth;
and incredible as it may appear, these conditions are found not in the
lower classes alone, but in general mouth conditions in high and low
born, fastidious and boor, king and peasant.”

“Try to estimate the amount of poisonous products that would be
generated if such a surface were smeared over with the various foods
from the dining table, and these allowed to decompose,” says Dr.
Alfred C. Fones,[2] “and a fair idea may be obtained of the amount of
decomposition that is taking place in unsanitary mouths. Nor is this
simile forceful enough, for the food in the mouth is in one of the most
favorable environments known for the activity and virulency of germ
life, so that the products generated would be far more numerous, more
poisonous and irritating in every action, than such products from food
decomposing in the open air.”

 [2] In his essay “Clean Methods, The First Law of Hygiene.”


                      HOW MOUTH INFECTION SPREADS

Mouth infection, due to the teeth, sees its most critical period
during that of childhood and early youth, a period in which the mouth
under present conditions is almost entirely without intelligent care.
Children’s mouths, says Dr. Smith, are frequently veritable crucibles
in which are generated chemical agents and compounds highly detrimental
to the teeth themselves, and not less to the general health of the
child. The poisons arising from decaying food particles and decaying
teeth themselves, vitiated salivary and mucous secretions, germ life
upon the teeth and gums, and breaths loaded with emanations from
stagnant septic material, all with the high temperature of ninety-eight
degrees, insinuate into the general circulation of the blood a
constantly increasing infection, which will later on find expression in
many diseased conditions, and often in chronic and fatal disorders.
It may appear, as it commonly does, in stomach or kidneys, in lungs
or nervous system, in heart, brain, or skin, in any organ or tissue,
indeed, to which mouth toxins are directly or indirectly conveyed.
Experience has shown that it is not only possible, but entirely
practicable to arrest and prevent teeth diseases in the mouths of
children, and at the same time to keep the mouth aseptic or free from
germ life.

Not only does an infected mouth work havoc to the body of which it
is the vestibule, but it spreads disease about it. The original
experiments of Koninger have shown that in a room where there is no
current of air perceptible, a person coughing or sneezing can scatter
germs to a distance of more than twenty-two feet. They are conveyed
through the air by means of little droplets of saliva. These globules
are microscopic balloons, having a bubble of air in the center,
and remain in suspension but a short time. Ordinary breathing will
scatter these droplets to a considerable distance, but, of course,
their germ-carrying capabilities are most marked during coughing
and sneezing. The more microbes the mouth contains the greater the
danger of infection. Washing the mouth has the effect of decreasing
the microbes of such diseases as diphtheria and consumption, and
other bacilli susceptible of being scattered abroad in these salivary
droplets. Placing the hand or a handkerchief over the mouth prevents
the emanation of droplets charged with bacilli. So well is this
fact of droplet germ infection recognized, that in many operating
rooms no one present is allowed to speak during operations. Chronic
headaches, neurasthenia, constipation, coughs and colds, and many other
grave troubles, have all been helped and many times cured by “oral
prophylaxsis” or proper mouth treatment.

The practical application of the discoveries and recommendations of
the new school of dentists can be expressed very simply and briefly,
and if followed out, will undoubtedly prove of tremendous service to
the white cells in the battle of the blood. It must be remembered
that proper mastication of food, which we have seen to be a leading
principle of the new hygiene, cannot be carried out unless you have a
good and healthy mouth. Five brushings a day at home is the ideal and
proper care for every mouth, for those who eat through the ordinary
routine of three meals a day. The first thing in the morning the teeth
should be thoroughly brushed with tepid water to remove the decomposed
mucous and saliva produced in the mouth during sleep. After eating the
teeth should be cleansed with the help of a dentifrice. The thorough
removal of grease is a chemical process, not to be accomplished by mere
brushing, and therefore requires a solvent such as is contained in a
good dentifrice. Such duties soon become habits; and if they are based
upon common-sense, the health which they will bring will more than
compensate for the trouble involved.




                                  XIV

                        A UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH


There have been frequent references in this book to the Battle Creek
Sanitarium, and to Dr. J. H. Kellogg, its superintendent. We have
written here of the art of staying well, but many people are sick, and
are in need of special advice and assistance; to such we believe that
we can do no greater service than to tell them of this Sanitarium and
its work.

The institution is not a commercial one; its founder is one of
the great humanitarians of the time, as well as one of the great
scientists. None of its thousand odd men and women workers receive
more than a bare living for their services, and the institution is
legally so constituted that all its profits must be turned into the
work. Therefore, we hold it to be a public duty to spread as widely
as possible the facts relating to it. Mr. Horace Fletcher has called
Battle Creek the “Mecca of Health.” More aptly still, the Sanitarium
has been named a “University of Health”; and no image could be more
essentially true.

  [Illustration: DR. J. H. KELLOGG,
  Of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.]

For, while the people at Battle Creek realize that the record of the
institution for more than forty years in curing sick people is one
to which they may point with pride, yet in their view this good work
is but a trivial thing in comparison with their principal object,
which is the conversion of those who come to them to be cured, into
home teachers and missionaries of the truths of right living. It
is wonderful to observe to what a great extent success has already
rewarded their efforts, to see the signs which indicate the growth of
public interest in their work.

Dr. Kellogg took charge of the institution which is now known as The
Battle Creek Sanitarium thirty-two years ago. The institution at that
time was a small two-story building, known as a water-cure or health
institute, with three or four cottages and twelve patients. With the
changing of the name and management, and the application of scientific
methods, a new era of prosperity began, and the work has steadily
progressed ever since.

The Battle Creek Sanitarium was the first attempt to assemble in one
place all rational means of treating disease in combination with the
regulation of diet and habits of life, and giving special emphasis to
physiologic or natural methods of cure. The institution has for many
years been recognized as the leading establishment of the sort in the
world.

From the beginning, the Sanitarium has been non-sectarian in character.
Although a deeply religious spirit pervades the place, the institution
is not and never has been under the control of any denomination. For
many years it was closely affiliated with the Seventh-day Adventist
denomination, because of the preponderance of persons belonging to this
denomination among its managers and employees. For years, however, this
affiliation has ceased to exist.

The institution is non-dividend paying. That is, it is a strictly
altruistic or philanthropic enterprise. The charter which it received
from the State requires that its earnings shall be devoted to the
development of the enterprise and the maintenance of its charities.
Dr. Kellogg receives no compensation for his labors in connection
with the institution, and the thirty or forty physicians and business
managers who are associated with him in his work likewise accept very
meager compensation for their labors. Dr. Kellogg has for many years
received a liberal income from the sale of his books, foods, and from
his various inventions, but the income from these sources, as well as
from the institution itself, has been devoted to the carrying forward
of the humanitarian work to which he has devoted his life. The Haskell
Home for Orphans, The Bethesda Rescue Home, the Life Boat Mission in
Chicago, The American Medical Missionary College, and other charitable
and philanthropic enterprises are allied enterprises which have grown
out of the work which began at the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

The institution has never been endowed, and therefore, if the work was
to grow, it was necessary to make money. The authors of this book have
seen and read the legal documents by which Dr. Kellogg turned over to
the American Missionary Association nearly everything of which he was
possessed. The value of his work as a surgeon, estimated at prevailing
rates for such work, would be at least fifty to sixty thousand dollars
yearly. He touches not a cent of this money, nor does he touch his
salary as superintendent—which he himself placed at the figure of
twelve hundred dollars. There are many other physicians connected with
the institution who, as specialists in New York or Chicago, would be in
receipt of large incomes, but they are as content as is Dr. Kellogg to
accept a bare pittance, finding their joy in the work they are doing.[3]

  [3] The reader must be warned that there are many charlatans and
  shrewd business men who have taken advantage of the work of Dr.
  Kellogg and of the prestige of the name “Battle Creek.”

The energy displayed by the faculty and staff of the University of
Health in carrying on their work is nothing less than astonishing.
During one week when the writers were at the Sanitarium, there were
more than a thousand patients all told, including the non-paying ones.
There are many days when Dr. Kellogg operates from early in the morning
until late at night, having very many highly difficult and dangerous
operations to perform, for he is well known as a surgeon. After such
a long day in the operating room, without a break for food or rest,
he will give one of his lectures to the patients, or go the rounds of
the wards, winding up the day by attending to a mass of business or
writing or studying in his laboratories. He works continually, day
in and day out, for eighteen hours a day; and this he has done for
the past thirty-five years or so. He wrote one bulky book containing
much technical and scientific matter in ten days, using three or four
stenographers, and working in stretches of twenty hours at a time. He
has never taken a holiday. All of his many journeys abroad or in this
country are on matters connected with his mission in life; and while on
his journeys he is continually writing or studying, and carrying on
the direction of his multitudinous affairs by letter or telegraph. Yet
to-day, at the age of fifty-five, he shows no signs of diminution of
energy; no signs of nervous breakdown, or of the ailments which bring
thousands of business men and women to him for treatment.

He himself thinks that there is nothing very remarkable in all this. He
attributes it to his abstention from meat, from tea and coffee, alcohol
and tobacco. He never eats more than one “hearty” meal a day; his
second meal, when he takes one, consisting of a little fruit. His sole
regret is that during the first fourteen or fifteen years of his life
he ate meat. He believes that any child, if it begin right, can, when
it grows up, do all that he is doing.

“I was,” he said to a friend, “a puny, undersized, ailing child; born
when my father was more than fifty. It was the accepted opinion that I
would not live to be a man which I fully believed. I had an appetite
for knowledge and resolved that since I was to die early I must study
and work very hard in order to accomplish a little something before I
died. So I would study until one to three o’clock in the morning; then
rise at six. From the age of ten I have fully supported myself. All
this deliberate stealing of time from sleep resulted in a permanent
stunting of my growth. And as I went on in life, I kept up the same
habits of night work. And yet, I have only once been troubled by an
illness; which came upon me a few years ago as a result of overwork.
But which I got rid of; and now I am in better bodily condition than I
was twenty-five years ago. But I was not handicapped by a great number
of things that are bars to other workers, over which they stumble.
I have slept when I could in the open air; I have drawn from air,
water, light, heat, and proper exercise, the benefits that inhere
in them; and I have nourished my body on wholesome foods. I mention
these points with insistence—these points that seem so freakish to
many people—simply because to me they are fundamental points in the
physiologic, or natural, way of healing and of living.”

Dr. Kellogg publishes a big magazine of large circulation named _Good
Health_; and in this he teaches that health is not a mere negation of
ailments—a state of being free from rheumatism, or consumption, or
biliousness, or any other of the “thousand natural shocks that flesh
is heir to”—but that it is being wholesome, happy, sane, complete,
a unit—a man or woman eating, drinking, sleeping, working, playing,
functioning in all parts as naturally, as inevitably, as easily and as
unconsciously, as a flower grows.

One of the writers has told of his experience many years ago, when he
went to a physician and requested to be helped in keeping well. He went
to Battle Creek Sanitarium on account of the illness of his wife, and
when one of the physicians proposed to him that he himself undergo the
treatments, he answered (having in mind this earlier experience, and of
the doubts it had bred in him), “There is nothing the matter with me at
present that I know of.” The answer of the Sanitarium physician was,
“The less there is the matter with you the better, from our point of
view.” And so he realized that at last he had found a place where his
own idea of health-preservation was understood.

He accepted joyfully the offer to assist him in getting a scientific
understanding of his own bodily condition. A drop of his blood was
taken and analyzed, microscopically and chemically. He went to the
diet table, and for three days ate precisely measured quantities of
specified foods; during the period all his excretions were weighed
and analyzed and examined under the microscope. A thorough physical
examination was made, and also a series of tests, upon a machine
invented by Dr. Kellogg, to register the strength of each group of
muscles of the body. The results of all these examinations were
presented to him in an elaborate set of reports and charts, together
with a prescription for treatments, diet and exercise. He had stated
that there was nothing the matter with him, so far as he knew. He found
that anaerobes—the dangerous bacterial inhabitants of the intestinal
tract—numbered something over four billion to the gram of intestinal
contents—a gram being about a thirtieth part of an ounce. During the
six weeks of his stay at the Sanitarium the more important of these
tests were repeated weekly; and when he left, the number of anaerobes
had been reduced nearly ninety per cent.

Dr. Kellogg terms the system of treatment employed by the Sanitarium
the Physiologic Method, and he writes of it as follows:

“The Physiologic Method consists in the treatment of the sick by
natural, physical, or physiologic means scientifically applied.

“The haphazard or empirical use of water, electricity, Swedish
movements, and allied measures is not the Physiologic Method. It is no
method at all. It is empiricism, at best; at its worst, it is quackery.
The application of the Physiologic Method requires much more than
simply a knowledge of the technique of baths, electricity, movements,
etc. It requires a thorough knowledge of physiology, and an intelligent
grasp of all the resources of modern medical science. For, while the
Physiologic Method depends for its curative effects upon those natural
agencies which are the means of preserving health, and which may be
relied upon to prevent disease as well as to cure, it recognizes and
employs as supplementary remedies, all rational means which have by
experience been proved to be effective.

“The Physiologic Method concerns itself first of all with causes.
In the case of chronic maladies, these will generally be found in
erroneous habits of life, which, through long operation, have resulted
in depreciating the vital forces of the body and so deranging the
bodily functions that the natural defenses have been finally broken
down and morbid conditions have been established.

“Chronic disease is like a fire in the walls of a house which has
slowly worked its way from the foundation upward, until the flames have
burst out through the roof. The appearance of the flame is the first
outward indication of the mischief which has been going on; but it is
not the beginning. It is rather the end of the destructive process.

“The Physiologic Method does not undertake to cure disease, but people
who are diseased. It recognizes the disease process as an effort on the
part of the body to recover normal conditions,—a struggle on the part
of the vital forces to maintain life under abnormal conditions and to
restore vital equilibrium.

“At the outset of his course of treatment, the patient is instructed
that his recovery will depend very largely upon himself; that the
curative power does not reside in the doctor or in the treatment, but
is a vital force operating within the patient himself. The Physiologic
Method is based upon this fact.
[Illustration: A GROUP AT THE BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM (DR. KELLOGG ON
THE RIGHT).]

“So the treatment of a patient consists, first of all, in the
exact regulation of all his habits of life, and the establishment
of wholesome conditions. The simple life and return to Nature are
the ideals constantly held up before him. He must work out his own
salvation; he must ‘cease to do evil and learn to do well’; he must
cease to sow seeds of disease, and by every means in his power
cultivate health.”




                                  XV

            HEALTH REFORM AND THE COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED


We have set forth the underlying principles of the new art of health;
and we have shown how these principles may be applied by individuals,
and how they have been formulated and taught at the great University
of Health at Battle Creek. It remains to give an account of a great
national movement which has for its aim the spreading of a knowledge
of the new hygiene in a semi-political way, a circumstance which to
our minds proves that not only this nation but the whole of modern
civilization is on the eve of a great revolution in its habits of
living, and that this revolution will have for its rallying cry the
word “Knowledge.” And more especially, “Knowledge of Our Bodies, and of
How to Care for Them.”

The state of ignorance of the majority of people concerning the
workings of their own bodies and the way to take care of them is
to-day one of the greatest barriers to human progress. Few people
realize that they ought to care for their bodies; or that they ought
to know about their bodies until they are actually broken down. Men
use their intelligence more aptly elsewhere; but all progress in other
directions, in the arts and crafts and the labors of modern industry,
will go for nothing if we do not learn to apply our intelligence to the
matter of health.

More and more does the need for knowledge press home upon us. It is
impossible for the race to survive unless that knowledge is spread. Our
ancestors, it is true, knew less of their bodily make-up and bodily
care than we do, but our ancestors did not need it so much. They were
country dwellers, and people of the open air; they were not slaves of
machinery and of office routine.

Dr. J. Pease Norton, Assistant Professor of Political Economy at Yale
University, recently read before the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, a paper which vividly summed up the situation
which confronts us. He said:

“There are four great wastes to-day, the more lamentable because they
are unnecessary. They are preventable death, preventable sickness,
preventable conditions of low physical and mental efficiency, and
preventable ignorance. The magnitude of these wastes is testified to by
experts competent to judge. They fall like the shades of night over the
whole human race, blotting out its fairest years of happiness.

“The facts are cold and bare—one million, five hundred thousand persons
must die in the United States during the next twelve months; equivalent
to four million, two hundred thousand persons will be constantly sick;
over five million homes, consisting of twenty-five million persons,
will be made more or less wretched by mortality and morbidity.

“We look with horror on the black pages of the Middle Ages. The black
waste was but a passing cloud compared with the white waste visitation.
Of people living to-day, over eight million will die of tuberculosis,
and the federal government does not raise a hand to help them.


                “THE NEGLECT OF HEALTH A NATIONAL EVIL”

“The Department of Agriculture spends seven million dollars on plant
health and animal health every year, but, with the exception of the
splendid work done by Doctors Wiley, Atwater, and Benedict, Congress
does not directly appropriate one cent for promoting the physical
well-being of babies. Thousands have been expended in stamping out
cholera among swine, but not one dollar was ever voted for eradicating
pneumonia among human beings. Hundreds of thousands are consumed
in saving the lives of elm trees from the attacks of beetles; in
warning farmers against blights affecting potato plants; the importing
Sicilian bugs to fertilize fig blossoms in California; in ostracizing
various species of weeds from the ranks of the useful plants, and in
exterminating parasitic growths that prey on fruit trees. In fact,
the Department of Agriculture has expended during the last ten years
over forty-sixmillions of dollars. But not a wheel of the official
machinery at Washington was ever set in motion for the alleviation or
cure of diseases of the heart or kidneys, which will carry off over
six millions of our entire population. Eight millions will perish of
pneumonia, and the entire event is accepted by the American people
with a resignation equal to that of the Hindoo, who, in the midst of
indescribable filth, calmly awaits the day of cholera.

“During the next census period more than six million infants under two
years of age will end their little spans of life while mothers sit by
and watch in utter helplessness. And yet this number could probably be
decreased by as much as half. But nothing is done.

“In the United States alone, of the eighty millions living to-day, all
must die, after having lived, say a little more than three billion,
two hundred million years of life, on the average slightly more than
twoscore years. Of these years, one billion, six hundred million,
represent the unproductive years of childhood and training.

“Consider that the burden of the unproductive years on the productive
years is 20-20, or say 100 per cent. Could the average length of life
be increased to sixty years, say to forty-eight billion years lived by
eighty millions of people, the burden of the unproductive years would
fall to 50 per cent. In the judgment of men competent to hold opinions,
this is not impossible.”

It was the reading of this paper, which led to the formation of the
Committee of One Hundred on National Health, of which Professor Irving
Fisher of Yale is president, and which includes among its members such
men and women as Ex-President Eliot of Harvard, Dr. Lyman Abbott, Miss
Jane Addams, Luther Burbank, Horace Fletcher, Professor Chittenden, Dr.
Kellogg, and Dr. Trudeau.

The primary and immediate purpose of the Committee’s work is to promote
the idea of a national Bureau of Health; but the field open to the
committee includes the whole subject of public sanitation and hygiene.
President Roosevelt has formally endorsed the work, in a letter from
which the following is an extract: “Our national health is physically
our greatest national asset. To prevent any possible deterioration
of the American stock should be a national ambition. We cannot too
strongly insist on the necessity of proper ideals for the family, for
simple life and for those habits and tastes which produce vigor and
make more capable of strenuous service to our country. The preservation
of national vigor should be a matter of patriotism.... Federal activity
in these matters has already developed greatly, until it now includes
quarantine, meat inspection, pure food administration, and federal
investigation of the conditions of child labor. It is my hope that
these important activities may be still further developed.”

And in his notable message to the country, rather than to Congress,
which he issued in December, 1907, President Roosevelt wrote: “There
is a constantly growing interest in this country in the question of
public health. At least, the public mind is awake to the fact that
many diseases, notably tuberculosis, are national scourges. The work
of the State and City Boards of Health should be supplemented by the
constantly increasing interest on the part of the national government.
The Congress has already provided a Bureau of Public Health, and has
provided for an hygienic report. There are other valuable laws relating
to the public health connected with the various departments. This whole
branch of the government should be strengthened and aided in every way.”

As somebody said before, these things are no more true because a
President has said them; but the fact that President Roosevelt has said
them, has given wide publicity to them, and impressed them upon the
public consciousness.

The knowledge that economic conditions;—the way in which men and women
live because they have to so live in order to earn a living, is the
fundamental factor in the case of public health, is something that is
bound to become recognized as the growth of knowledge goes on. It will
only be a question of time before men and women will see that in order
to have health, it will be necessary to organize all the affairs of
life with a view to the well-being of humanity as a whole.

In order to make effective the work of the Committee of One Hundred,
its President, Irving Fisher, assisted by Professor Norton, organized
the American Health League, which has absorbed the Public Health
Defense League, an organization formed for the purpose of fighting
the patent medicine evil, and awakening public interest in matters
of hygiene. The Health League already numbers nine or ten thousand
citizens, who are pledged to give financial and moral support to the
work of the Committee of One Hundred in its efforts to establish
a national Bureau of Health. The League is rapidly increasing in
membership, for a spirit of interest in hygiene is abroad in the land.
Local advisory committees have already been formed in more than two
hundred cities and towns, and it is planned to prosecute the work of
multiplying these branch committees until every town in the United
States shall be represented in the membership. The Committee of One
Hundred publishes the magazine _American Health_ as its official organ,
and all American men and women who are interested in the spread of
the new hygiene are invited by the Committee to correspond with its
Executive Secretary, Drawer 30, New Haven, Conn.

Connected with the advisory and other subcommittees, are committees
of writers, editors, and newspaper men, numbering many of our most
prominent penmen and pressmen, and the power of molding public opinion
through this channel alone is very great. There is now being organized
a Council on Co-operation, to consist of the leading officers of
American religions, fraternal, learned, secret, and educational
organizations; and also a Council of Research, to consist of leading
investigators interested in original research along public health lines.

In other words, the Committee of One Hundred has grown to a compact,
well-organized, rapidly-spreading, national Army of Health. It has
grown within a wonderfully short period, simply because there was a
great and pressing _need_ for it.

Professor William H. Welch, a member of the Committee of One Hundred,
and Professor of Pathology at Johns Hopkins University, has put himself
on record as saying that if the nation were to apply in practice the
existing knowledge of hygiene, the nation’s death rate would be cut in
two. In commenting on this statement, Irving Fisher said:

“The greatest asset of all, the physical health of our citizens, is
still neglected. Professor Nicholson, an economist of Scotland, has
estimated that the living capital of Great Britain is worth five times
the physical capital. That is, if we capitalize each man’s working
capacity and add together this capitalization throughout the whole
realm of Great Britain, the value of the population so obtained is
five times the value of all the land and all the railroads and all
the buildings, and all the iron mines and all the other capital which
is ordinarily called wealth. If we could make this human capital
within the United States double its present worth (it is already five
times that of the inanimate capital), it is evident what an enormous
improvement would ensue as compared with the possible improvements in
saving arid lands, and other physical resources. Our health has much
more than a money value. But these calculations show that even on the
most materialistic method of reckoning, there is truth in Emerson’s
statement, “the first wealth is health.”




                               APPENDIX

                               DIET LIST


                     Proteid   Carbo   Fat %  Water %   Mineral  Food Value
                        %     hydrate                   Matter   per pound
                                 %                        %      calories

  Broiled tenderloin
  steak                23.5      0      20.4    54.8      1.2    1300
  Lamb chops,
  broiled              21.7      0      29.9    47.6      1.3    1665
  Smoked ham,
  fat, edible portion  14.3      0      52.3    27.9      3.7    2485
  Roast turkey,
  edible portion       27.3      0      18.4    52.0      1.2    1295
  Fricasseed chicken,
  edible portion       17.6      2.4    11.5    67.5      1.0     855
  Cooked bluefish,
  edible portion       26.1      0       4.5    68.2      1.2     670
  Canned salmon,
  edible portion       21.8      0      12.1    63.5      2.6     915
  Fresh oysters,
  solid                 6.0      3.3     1.3    88.3      1.1     230
  Boiled hen’s
  eggs                 13.2      0      12.0    73.2      0.8     765
  Butter                1.0      0      85.0    11.0      3.0    3605
  Full cream
  cheese               25.9      2.4    33.7    34.2      3.8    1950
  Whole cow’s
  milk                  3.3      5.0     4.0    87.0      0.7     325
  Wheat flour, entire
  wheat                13.8     71.9     1.9    11.4      1.0    1675
  Boiled rice           2.8     24.4     0.1    72.5      0.2     525
  Shredded wheat       10.5     77.9     1.4     8.1      2.1    1700
  Macaroni             13.4     74.1     0.9    10.3      1.3    1665
  Brown bread           5.4     47.1     1.8    43.6      2.1    1050
  Wheat bread or
  rolls                 8.9     56.7     4.1    29.2      1.1    1395
  Whole wheat
  bread                 9.4     49.7     0.9    38.4      1.3    1140
  Soda crackers         9.8     73.1     9.1     5.9      2.1    1925
  Ginger bread          5.8     63.5     9.0    18.8      2.9    1670
  Sponge cake           6.3     65.9    10.7    15.3      1.8    1795
  Apple pie             3.1     42.8     9.8    42.5      1.8    1270
  Custard pie           4.2     26.1     6.3    62.4      1.0     830
  Indian Meal
  pudding               5.5     27.5     4.8    60.7      1.5     815
  Fresh asparagus       1.8      3.3     0.2    94.0      0.7     105
  Fresh lima beans      7.1     22.0     0.7    68.5      1.7     570
  Dried lima beans     18.1     65.9     1.5    10.4      4.1    1625
  Cooked beets          2.3      7.4     0.1    88.6      1.6     185
  Fresh cabbage,
  edible portion        1.6      5.6     0.3    91.5      1.0     145
  Dried peas           24.6     62.0     1.0     9.5      2.9    1655
  Green peas            7.7     16.9     O.5    74.6      1.0     465
  Boiled potatoes       2.5     20.9     0.1    75.5      1.0     440
  Fresh tomatoes        0.9      3.9     0.4    94.3      0.5     105
  Baked beans,
  canned                6.9     19.6     2.5    68.9      2.1     600
  Apples, edible
  portion               0.4     14.2     0.5    84.6      3.0     290
  Bananas, yellow,
  edible portion        1.3     22.0     0.6    75.3      0.8     460
  Oranges, edible
  portion               0.8     11.6     0.2    86.9      0.5     240
  Peaches, edible
  portion               0.7      9.4     0.1    89.4      0.4     190
  Fresh strawberries    1.0      7.4     0.6    90.4      0.6     180
  Dried prunes,
  edible portion        2.1     73.3     0.0    22.3      2.3    1400
  Almonds, edible
  portion              21.0     13.3    54.9     4.8      2.0    3030
  Peanuts, edible
  portion              25.8     24.4    38.6     9.2      2.0    2560
  Pine nuts, edible
  portion              33.9      6.9    49.4     6.4      3.4    2845
  Brazil nuts, edible
  portion              17.0      7.0    66.8     5.3      3.9    3265
  Soft-shell walnuts,
  edible portion       16.6     16.1    63.4     2.5      1.4    3285




                                 INDEX


  A

  Abbott, Dr. Lyman, 277

  Achroödextrin, 131

  Adams, Dr. G. Cook, 186

  Addams, Miss Jane, 277

  Aerobes, 181

  Albumenoids, 96

  Alcohol, 193-199

  Ali—mentary canal, 97

  _American Health_, 281

  American Medical Missionary College, 261

  Amylodextrin, 131

  Anderson, Dr. William G., 50

  Anaerobic infection, 126

  Antiseptics, 101

  Antitoxic foods, 123

  Appendicitis, 125

  Appetite, 153

  Apples, 129
    sweet, 130

  Arms, holding horizontal, 84

  Arterio-sclerosis, 116

  Atwater, Dr., 275

  Autointoxication, 72, 113, 117, 126

  Ayers, Dr. Edward A., 25


  B

  Bacillus, Bulgarian, 124

  Bacteria, putrefactive, 180

  Baker, Sir Samuel, 167

  Bananas, 128

  Bath, daily cold, 243

  Bathing, sea, 245

  Battle Creek Sanitarium, 6, 30, 170, 205, 247, 258-266

  Beans, 123

  Beaumont, Dr., 151

  Beef, 182
    roast, 184

  Benedict, Prof., 159, 275

  Bethesda Rescue Home, 261

  Bile, 97, 99, 100

  Blood, 26
    battle of, 21
    -pumping process, 226

  Boiling, 132, 139

  Bones, 99

  Born, Dr. Frank, 52

  Bouchard, 72

  Bowels, catarrh of, 235
    inactive, 227

  Bread, raised, 123
    warm, 133

  Breathing, 219

  Bright’s disease, 114, 142, 185, 188

  Bubonic plague, 24

  Buds, taste, 66

  Bulgarians, 125

  Burbank, Luther, 277

  Butter, 139
    sterilized, 123

  Buttermilk, 123


  C

  Cabbage, 136

  Caffeine, 202

  Cake, 133

  Calories, 75
    in food, 105

  Calory, 104

  Canal, alimentary, 97

  Cancer, 167-168, 186, 188

  Candy, 142

  Cannon, Prof., 19, 65, 166

  Carbohydrate, 98, 105

  Carbohydrates, 71
    foodstuffs rich in, 111

  Carbon dioxide, 22

  Carnivores, 177

  Cauliflower, 123

  Cells, white, 22 (see leucocytes)

  Cellulose, 190

  Cereals, 141
    cooked, 123
    cooking of, 132
    eating of, 135
    prepared, 263

  Cheese, 140
    poisons, 140

  Chewing, complete, 46

  Chickens, 183

  Chittenden, Prof. Russell H., 5, 18, 19, 57, 69, 73, 80, 102, 154,
                               175, 191, 277

  Christian Science, 11, 169

  Coffee, 200

  Cold, taking, 223

  Colds, 24

  Colon, 97, 113, 121

  Colver, Dr. Benton A., 233

  Combe, 72, 175

  Compress, cold, 246

  Complete chewing, 46

  Constipation, 127

  Consumption, 114, 223, 256
    air cure for, 225

  Cooking, dry, 132
    kettle, 132
    over, 132

  Corn flakes, toasted, 123

  Corpuscles, 25
    red, 22
    white, 22, 27

  Coughing, 255

  Council on Co-operation, 281
    of Research, 281

  Cow, tubercular, 138

  Cream, 123

  Curtis, 19


  D

  Deaths, ratio of among flesh-eaters, 188
    ratio of among those eating little meat, 189

  Deep-knee bending, 85

  Degeneration of tissue, 120

  Dentistry, 249

  Diabetes, 142, 167

  Diet and endurance, relation between, 82
    list, 287
    reform, 203

  Disease, Bright’s, 114, 142, 185, 188
    germ theory of, 23
    heart, 188

  Diphtheria, 256

  Dog-dairy, 154

  Douglas, 28

  Dynamometer (Prof. Fisher’s), 51
    (Kellogg mercurial), 51


  E

  Eating between meals, 147

  Eliot, President, 277

  Enamel, 99

  Endurance, 81

  Enteritis, 185

  Epilepsy, 168

  Erythrodextrin, 131


  Exercise, 230
    regular, 89, 219

  Exercises, 233
    retarding autointoxication, 24

  Eye, 26, 99


  F

  Fat, 71, 98, 105
    emulsified, 141
    foodstuffs rich in, 111, 127

  Fatigue poisons, 34, 143

  Fearthought, 46

  Feet, cold, 247

  Fever, yellow, 23

  Figs, 127, 130

  Fish, 143, 182

  Fisher, Prof. Irving, 6, 18, 19, 57, 62, 69, 85-94, 175, 225, 277

  Fletcher, Horace, 4, 15, 18, 19, 42-64, 73, 74, 143, 277

  Fletcherism, 50, 57, 191

  Fletcherizing, 49

  Folin, Dr., 93, 191

  Food-filter, 66
    -units required daily, 108

  Foods, antitoxic, 123
    breakfast, 134
    fried, 132
    toxic, 122

  Foodstuffs, laxative, 127
    rich in various elements, 112

  Fruit juices, 130

  Fruits, 123, 127


  G

  Gastric juice, 97, 99, 165

  Gates, Elmer, 168

  Gautier, 175

  Germ theory of disease, 23

  Gladstone’s advice as to chewing, 49

  Glucose, 96

  Gluten, 135

  Gout, 114

  Grain preparations, 127

  Grains, cooking of, 131

  Granger, J. E., 87

  Grippe, 24

  Guilfoy, Dr. W. H., 188

  Gulick, 19

  Gullet, 96


  H

  Habit hunger, 64

  Haig, 5

  Ham, smoked, 184

  Hanecke, 155

  Haskell Home for Orphans, 261

  Health, Defense League, Public, 280
    League, American, 280
    National Bureau of, 277
    National Committee of One Hundred on, 277

  Health-chocolate, 206

  “Healthful Cookery,” 210

  Heart disease, 188

  Heat, 248

  Helicon Hall, 204

  Higgins, Prof. Hubert, 19, 66

  Holding the arms horizontal, 84

  Honey, 123
    adulterated, 142
    malt, 142

  Horter, Dr., 175

  Hunger, habit, 64

  Hutchinson, Dr. Woods, 174, 186

  Hydrochloric acid, 100

  Hydrotherapy, 243, 247

  Hyperacidity, 62

  Hypoacidity, 62


  I

  Infection, anaerobic, 126

  Influenza, 24, 32

  Ingersoll, Robert, 35

  Intestinal juice, 99, 101

  Intestine, large, see colon
    small, 97

  Intestines, 60

  Ioteyko, Dr. J., 176


  J

  James, William, 7, 169

  Juice, gastric, 97, 99, 165
    intestinal, 99, 101
    lemon, 141
    pancreating, 97, 99, 100

  Juices, fruit, 130


  K

  Kellogg, Dr. J. H., 5, 13, 18, 19, 30, 61, 65, 107, 123, 125,
                     133, 148, 155, 159, 175, 181, 243, 258, 277

  Kephyr, 124

  Kidney troubles, 142

  Kidneys, 102

  Kipiani, Mlle. Varia, 176

  Knee bending, deep, 85

  Koninger, 255

  Kumyss, 124


  L

  Leg-raising, 85

  Lemon juice, 141

  Lentils, 123

  Leucocytes, 22, 27, 32

  Levulose, 131

  Liebig, 177

  Life Boat Mission, 261

  Liver, 102
    chronic disease of, 227
    cirrhosis of, 62, 227

  Lung capacity, 220

  Lymph, 26

  Lysins, 28


  M

  Macaroni, 187

  Macrophages, 120

  Maltose, 131

  Mania, 168

  Maple sugar, 141
    syrup, 141

  Mason, 6

  Masson, 125

  Mastication, 49, 58, 61

  Matzoon, 124

  McGill University, 29

  Meals, drinking at, 150
    eating between, 147
    irregularity of, 147

  Meat, case as to, 173
    cooked, 191
    digestibility of proteid in, 190
    extracts of, 177

  Meltose, 143

  Mendel, Prof. Lafayette B., 19, 69, 138, 191

  Menus, 211-217

  Metabolism, 95, 101, 173

  Metchnikoff, Elie, 5, 15, 19, 27, 65, 72, 113-126, 175, 191, 195, 221

  Milk, 137

  Mineral salts, 98, 101, 127

  Morphine, 201

  Mosso, 84, 143

  Mouth, infection of, 254

  Mucous, 25, 97
    membrane, 25

  Murchison, 168

  Mushroom, 137

  Mustard, 142

  Myosin, 178


  N

  Nelson, Dr. A. W., 181, 198

  “New Thought,” 11, 169

  Nicholson, Prof., 282

  Nitrogen, 71

  Norton, Dr. J. Pease, 273

  Nuts, 123, 141
    malted, 123


  O

  Oatmeal, 134

  Oberg, S. A., 86, 87

  Olive oil, 141

  Olives, 141

  Olympic Club, 44

  Onions, 136

  Opsonins, 28

  Osmosis, 240

  Oxygen, 22, 220

  Oysters, 190


  P

  Paget, Sir George, 167

  Pain, 248

  Palate, soft, 67

  Pancreas, 97

  Pancreatic juice, 97, 99, 100

  Papillae, circumvallate, 67

  Pasteur Institute of Paris, 27

  Pasteurization, 139

  Pastry, 133

  Pawlow, 6, 19, 65, 91, 153, 155-166

  Pears, sweet, 130

  Pelvis, pain in the, 249

  Pepper, 142

  Pepsin, 97, 100

  Peptic glands, 202

  Peptogenic food, 91

  Perspiration, 241

  Physiologic method, 270

  Pie-crust, 133

  Plague, bubonic, 24

  Plasma, 28

  Play, 230

  Pneumonia, 24, 114, 195, 223, 225

  Poisons, cheese, 140
    fatigue, 34, 143
    volatile, 202

  Pork, 184

  Potato, 123, 135

  Priessintz, 242

  Prophylactic School (of dentistry), 250

  Prophylaxsis, oral, 256

  Proteid, 70-73, 98, 103, 123
    animal, 135
    equivalents, 75
    food, 64, 105
    muscle, 178
    vegetable, 135, 190

  Proteids, foodstuffs rich in, 111
    in cooked meat, 191
    in peanut butter, 191
    in pine nuts, 191
    in walnuts, 191
    proportion of to other food elements, 109

  Prunes, 127, 130

  Pus germ, 196

  Putrefactive bacteria, 180


  R

  Recipes, 217

  Rennet, 100

  Resistance, vital, 36

  Rheumatism, 114

  Rice, 123

  Richardson, Sir B. W., 5

  Roasting, 132

  Robert, 202

  Rogers, 65

  Roosevelt, President, 277

  Rositansky, 36


  S

  Sadler, Dr., 26

  Sager, 19

  St. Martin, Alexis, 151

  Salads, 127

  Saleeby, Dr., 19, 159

  Saliva, 26, 59, 65, 95, 99, 160

  Salivary glands, 95

  Salts, mineral, 98, 101, 127

  Sardines, 182

  Sausage, large, 184
    raw, 185
    small, 184

  Science, Christian, 11, 169

  “Science in the Kitchen,” 210

  Self-poisoning, 72 (see autointoxication)

  Shaw, Bernard, 173

  Skin (germ tight), 25

  Smith, Dr. D. D., 250-254

  Sneezing, 255

  Snow, Dr., 167

  Solar plexus, 149

  Spaghetti, 187

  Spleen, 227

  Standard, voit, 75

  Starch, 60

  Steak, hamburger, 184
    porterhouse, 184
    round, 184

  Steaming, 132

  Stewart, Dr. Charles E., 194

  Stimulants, 193

  Stomach, acidity of, 62
    catarrh of, 235
    chronic disease of, 227
    dilation of, 62

  Streptococci, 197

  Sugar, 60, 96
    cane, 65, 130
    malt, 142
    maple, 141

  Supper, 149

  Syrup, maple, 141

  Syrups, 142


  T

  Table, showing for different ages the average height, weight,
         and No. of food units required daily, 108

  Tape worms, 143, 179

  Taste, 59

  Taste buds, 66

  Tea, 200

  Tears, 25

  Teeth, care of the, 249

  Therapeutics, physiological, 268

  Therapy, physical, 266

  Tissier, 72, 175

  Tissue, degeneration of, 120

  Toasting, 132

  Tolstoi, 115

  Tongue, 66

  Toxic foods, 122

  Trichinosis, 179

  Trudeau, Dr., 277

  Tuberculosis, 24, 170, 190, 195
    deaths from, 225

  Turck, Dr. F. B., 175, 177

  Twain, Mark, 210

  Typhoid, 24, 138


  U

  Uric acid, 143


  V

  Vegetables, 123, 127

  Vegetarianism, 122, 174, 176

  Ventilation, 223

  Vinegar, 141

  Vital resistance, 36

  Voit standard, 75


  W

  Water, cold, 248
    hot, 248

  Water bag, cold, 247

  Wax, 25

  Welch, Prof. William H., 282

  When to eat, 145

  Whisky, Scotch, 197

  White cells, 22 (see leucocytes)

  Wiley, Dr., 275

  Williams, Michael, 15, 16

  Wine, port, 196

  Wolfe, 202

  Wood, Maj. Gen., 52

  Wright, Sir Edward, 28, 198

  Wyman, Gen. Walter, 138


  X

  X-ray, 166


  Y

  Yale University, experiments at, 69

  Yellow fever, 23

  Yogurt, 124-126, 207


  Z

  Zweibach, 123



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