Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation and accents have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged.

The cover was prepared by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THE A. B.-Z.
OF
OUR OWN NUTRITION

HORACE FLETCHER’S WORKS

THE A. B.-Z. OF OUR OWN NUTRITION. 462 pp. Just issued.

THE NEW MENTICULTURE; or, The A-B-C of True Living. Fortieth thousand. 310 pp.

THE NEW GLUTTON OR EPICURE; or, Economic Nutrition. 324 pp. Just issued.

HAPPINESS as found in Forethought minus Fearthought. Tenth thousand. 251 pp.

THAT LAST WAIF; or, Social Quarantine. 270 pp.

The A. B.-Z.
of OUR OWN
NutritioN

By HORACE FLETCHER
Author of “Menticulture,” “Happiness,” “That
Last Waif,” “Glutton or Epicure,” Etc., Etc.

Experimentally Assisted by
DR. ERNEST VAN SOMEREN,
M. R. C. S., L. R. C. P., of Venice, Italy
& DR. HUBERT HIGGINS, M.A.,
M. R. C. S., L. R. C. P., of Cambridge, England

NEW YORK • FREDERICK A.
STOKES COMPANY • PUBLISHERS

COPYRIGHT, 1903
BY HORACE FLETCHER

Published November, 1903
Reprinted February, 1904, August, 1904
February, 1905, August, 1905

THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE U. S. A.

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

• DO WE EAT TOO MUCH?
• CAN WE LEARN TO EAT RIGHT?
• WITHOUT LOSS OF ENJOYMENT?
• WITHOUT CARE BEING A NUISANCE?
• WITHOUT SOCIAL INTERFERENCE?
• WITH ASSURANCE OF HEALTH?
• WITH INCREASE OF ENERGY?
• WITH INCREASE OF ENDURANCE?
• TO ALL THESE VITAL QUESTIONS,
• THIS BOOK ANSWERS ONLY “YES.”
• VERIFY THIS BY PERSONAL EXPERIMENT.
• IRRESISTIBLE DESIRE FOR PHYSICAL EXERCISE
• WILL FOLLOW, AS A MATTER OF COURSE,
• PROBABLY FRUITING IN USEFUL ACCOMPLISHMENT
• BY THE SAME INVITATION OF HEALTHY IMPULSE
• WHICH CAUSES CHILDREN TO PLAY TIRELESSLY.
• DO RIGHT YOUR FEEDING OF THE BODY.
• NATURE WILL DO ALL THE REST FOR YOU ARIGHT.

Introduction
DO WE EAT TOO MUCH?

(A propos of the Scientific-Military Experiments at Yale University)

Do we eat too much?

Nine out of every ten physicians tell us “Yes,” and tell us true!

How much too much?

Luigi Cornaro suggested that all persons in his time ate more than was necessary; most persons ate twice as much as was good for them; and some, who were extravagantly gluttonous, ate ten times as much as was their most economic need; and Cornaro, who was a dissipated wreck at forty, reformed his manner of eating and lived to be a hundred to prove his declaration.

Experiments carried on in this country and in Europe during the past five years confirm this estimate of habitual excess; but fortunately they have also revealed a natural protection, heretofore unappreciated, available to all, which can regulate the appetite to suit the real needs of nutrition and thus avoid the dangerous excess which predisposes to discomfort and disease.

Luigi Cornaro lived more than three hundred years ago. His charmingly frank and interesting autobiography has been published in English upwards of forty times in different new editions, and no one has disproved the possibility or probability of his claim. We all know that Cornaro was right. We know, in a general way, that the great Italian dietitian and philosopher was wise and uttered wisdom, and we are told that most, if not all, of the diseases which pain, worry, and afflict us are caused by indigestion or mal-assimilation of food, the result of some indiscretions of eating. The questions then are “What are our indiscretions?” “How can we avoid them?” and “What is the new discovery that will protect us and, at the same time, add to the pleasures of the palate and of living?”

The answers to all these queries will be found herein, as will also an explanation of the very active interest which is being taken just now in the problem of human nutrition by scientific and military authorities, as evidenced by the Yale investigation.

The author has, in collaboration with several others, found a way how not to eat too much while eating all that the appetite desires, and in a way that leads to a maximum of good taste and at a minimum of cost and waste, but it is necessary to test many persons of different physiques and varying temperaments, and also to test other methods of attainment of economy, to learn what is best for general application, and that is what is being done at Yale.

The cost to the pocket that is saved by economic nutrition is of little matter as compared with the saving of the waste of energy and the menace of disease.

Nature certainly never intended that we should weaken, depress, and distress ourselves in the way that is common to present-day living, as is made evident by the prevalence of discomfort and disease relative to our daily food. Nature’s plan of evolution does not work that way in general, does not retrograde in the progress of the improvement of plants and dumb animals, and certainly does not intend that Man, the First Assistant of Nature in the cultivation of things and in the domestication of the powerful natural forces, should suffer and become degenerate contrary to her general law.

If we are agreed upon the foregoing, let us ask ourselves a few questions.

Without any undue egotism, may it not be possible for a generation of human beings, who have progressed so far in intelligence as to be able to move things by steam, to communicate across the ocean even without wires to guide our messages, and to see clearly through objects that are as dark as night to the unassisted human eye with the aid of an artificial light, to learn the secret of right self-nutrition and practise it in a manner that will not deprive us of the maximum of pleasure which Nature invariably gives as a reward for conformity with her beneficent requirements? May we not assume that beings who have learned to breed and train horses to race with human intelligence, and to run, trot, or pace a mile in less than two minutes, may also train themselves to have the proportional relative speed, endurance, and longevity that has been attained by race horses through man’s care, and to enjoy the pleasure of living that is evident in these favoured animals, mere servitors of man though they be?

If this disparity of man is due to ignorance arising in self-neglect, which is the usual accompaniment of genius, may we not now, at the beginning of the pregnant twentieth century, rest for a moment from discovering, developing, and improving the world outside our personal selves and concentrate our attention for a while on learning to know and care for ourselves? May we not, at least, give “horse sense” attention to such a vital interest?

In the midst of the present confusion which exists among opinions as to the right conduct of life and activity, and the best manner and system of diet to be used to secure health and efficiency, it seems almost a vain appeal to call for concert of action in a matter of common and persistent neglect. Each person, as his own keeper, is careless, and in matters of bodily management no one feels called upon to be his brother’s keeper; but this is merely the lethargy of oversight and consequent ignorance, and this book is published to call attention to the oversight and to attempt to dispel the ignorance.

At the present moment of writing (October, 1903) there are quartered at New Haven, Connecticut, twenty privates of the Hospital Corps of the United States Army and three non-commissioned officers, under the command of Assistant Surgeon, Lieutenant Wallace DeWitt. These men and officers, while they are under regular army discipline and are performing duty in conformity with their oath of enlistment, are yet volunteers. They are from the same corps, if they are not the same men, which furnished volunteers to investigate the causes of yellow fever in Cuba, whose heroism resulted in stamping the fever out of the islands and in that more effectually protecting our coast states from its yearly incursions. These are the same men who generously refused to accept the offered bounty. This latter expression of exalted manhood is evidence of what humanity is whenever there is real need for heroes to serve the general good. They refused to sell themselves as risks for money, but they freely offered themselves as subjects of scientific investigation for the benefit of their fellows and of mankind at large.

The duty that the soldiers are engaged in at Yale has no element of risk, and need not have any feature of monotony or tediousness in it, much less has it the romance of sacrifice, for it deals with an attempt to restore normality and does not consort with disease. But the service being rendered by these guardians of our health, these soldiers of hygiene, is even more important than was the service rendered in stamping out yellow fever, for it deals with an enemy much more subtle, treacherous, common, and deadly than Yellow Jack. Yellow fever calls for a halt and an immediate attempt at cure, and further, for stringent defence to extermination; but indigestion and the American plague, dyspepsia, work their evils slowly but surely to cut off our best men and loveliest women in their prime and to rob us of their richest product and of their maturest wisdom.

The investigation at Yale is a link in a chain of effort that has developed in logical sequence and has been planned to effect a cure of the common ignorance and practice relative to right human nutrition in its relation to profitable thinking and doing; and to discourage the personal neglect which has been responsible for the existing ignorance, this book is issued to show what may easily be done and what has been done, so far, in this direction. It is a compilation of important knowledge which has been born of recent scientific research but which is hidden away from common comprehension in scientific publications; and it relates the story of the development of which this book is an exponent. Herein are given the reasons why the government and the most eminent scientists in the line of researches in nutrition are coöperating so earnestly and so unusually in a commonweal inquiry.

About ten years ago, at the critical age of forty-four, the author was fast becoming a physical wreck in the midst of a business, club, and social tempest. Although he was trained as an athlete in his youth and had lived an active and most agreeable life, he had contracted a degree of physical disorder that made him ineligible as an insurance risk. This unexpected disability, with such unmistakable warning, was so much a shock to his hopes of a long life that it led to his making a strong personal effort to save himself. The study was taken up in systematic manner, account of which is too long to relate here; but the eager auto-reformer soon learned that his troubles came from too much of many things, among them too much food and too much needless worry; and realising the danger ahead, he sought a way to cure himself of his disabilities by the help of an economic food supply, as did Luigi Cornaro; but what is even more important, he found a way to enjoy the smaller quantity of food much more than any plethoric luxury can give, and arrived at the method by a route that showed a means of conserving a healthy economy and an increased pleasure of eating, at the same time, in quite a simple and scientific manner, that any one may learn and practise without any ascetic deprivation whatever. Cornaro buried the real clew to his economic and pleasurable success with his body, owing to his vague generality of description of his method. The author is determined not to make the same mistake, and thereby bury his key to a happy and easy life.

The secret of the method is all told in this book and is confirmed herein by both theoretically scientific and scientifically practical authority; but the experiments which are being conducted at Yale by Professor Chittenden, in coöperation with Surgeon-General O’Reilly of the army, of which the Daily Press has given notice, together with experiments which are in progress in many university laboratories in this country and in Europe, are for the purpose of explaining the “reasons for things” by complete scientific reasoning, so that none may doubt the disadvantage and sin of dietic ignorance and carelessness.

The acceptance of the theory and method of the author at the great Battle Creek Sanitarium, after more than a year’s trial, and elsewhere among curative agencies, and their adoption and use as the first requisite of treatment, of which the public have not so generally heard, are indorsements coming from practical, intelligent, and expert sources of experience and judgment, and hence they are of the utmost value and significance.

This introductory chapter is being written after the “clippings” of newspaper comment relative to the presence of the soldiers at Yale have begun to come in. The majority of comments are generous in spirit, but indicate a lack of complete understanding which this “Introduction” is intended to correct.

Some of the comments are couched in ridicule, and express pity for the poor soldiers who are being “misused” as subjects of starvation in an investigation which promises to make starvation a rule in the army. To the writers of such trifling and unfair paragraphs let me, one of the fraternity in an amateurish way, beg consideration of the following.

The campaign that has been started is against a common enemy of mankind, and of the American and English nations in particular. In our successes in agriculture, manufacture, and commerce we have cultivated insidious, luxurious temptations which bring all of us some ill and many of us, or our loved ones, fatal disease and premature death. The advance agent of these enemies of ours is Eating-and-drinking-too-much.

The officers and men of the army and the eminent scientists of our country and those of all nationalities who have entered into the campaign with us, and the great power of the sanitaria joining as practical nurses, demonstrators, and exponents of the reform, are all working for you and for everybody. It is voluntary service and has already cost some of the volunteers much time and patience and also a considerable sum in money.

You, gentlemen of the Press, wielders of the helpful or careless pen, have a conspicuous pulpit and a far-reaching influence. No one can escape you. In the search for the news of the day you are encountered at every turn in your editorials or your paragraphs. In this campaign we need your assistance to make the coöperation between the army and science easy and effective. They are too busy working for you and your best interest to stop to argue to correct your misunderstanding, but the cause will feel the benefit of your assistance.

Encouragement has powerful influence in stimulating effort and also in creating and conserving conditions in which men may “do their best.” What we are trying to learn is, what man may do, under favourable conditions of knowledge and confidence, to relieve his body of the strain of energy-taxing labour in disposing of the waste which any excess of food imposes. It is a constructive experiment and not a mere statistical measurement. Appreciation and applause assist; doubt and ridicule obstruct.

The soldiers and physiologists are too busy studying indigestion and possible proteid poisoning and what-not-other causes of intemperance, disease, and suffering to ask you to assist in spreading only serious report and right suggestion relative to the importance and purport of the investigation, but it is my privilege to ask it for the general good.

Just another word of introduction and then will follow some postintroductory coincidences relative to the work in hand, and then an attempt to lay out a ten-page chart of the personal responsibility in the care of the body and the nourishment of the mind by aid of an economic and most satisfactory nutrition, so as to make conservation of energy as easy as possible and life well worth the living. The scientific support from the pens of professional observers is, however, the real meat of the book, for which compiler and reader alike are and should be grateful.

In serving in the humanitarian ranks in a commonweal campaign one should not need to use the concealment of modesty, nor should he fail to speak with all frankness. What are the motives behind all this energy to reform the eating habits of the people? The question has been so often asked that it is better thus publicly answered.

No one concerned in the campaign has any personal monetary interest in any kind of food, prepared or otherwise. The movement began in a suggestion carried by an accidental word given to the author by a friend, an old-time friend in Japan, and a friendship never to be forgotten, as related in the author’s book “Menticulture.” Pursuit of menticulture led further to the discovery that the best mental results could not be accomplished in a body weakened by any indigestion, any mal-assimilation of nutriment, any excess of the waste of indigestion. Then came the quest for the causes of mal-nutrition, which were soon found, by study of the natural sequences and by going behind the hypotheses of text-book authority, to arise in the careless ingestion of food, its neglect in the mouth, and the consequent glut of unassimilable excess within the body, necessitating enormous expense of brain and body energy to get rid of the excess.

When the secret of the potency for good of a rationally economic alimentation was revealed to the author, was confirmed by several colleagues of different ages and both sexes, and was tested by work and endurance measurement, and also by the test time, it became necessary to have given to it the indorsement of highest authority in order to have the information credited. The new rediscovery was a simple matter, something everybody thought they knew all about because it had been under their nose all their life and was one of the commonplaces of every-day living, but for that very reason it failed to receive credence, and the backbone of the doubt was habit—lifelong habit—and this was hard to break even in those who accepted the theory of economic nutrition as a logical conviction. It was also necessary to prove that it was not personal idiosyncrasy that favoured us, its advocates.

It is in pursuit of the latter desideratum that the officers of the army, the scientists, and the great humanitarian health-restoring institutions have entered upon conclusive investigations, each in their own way, to chart out a law of economy that will be generally applicable and which, it is hoped, can be understood by kindergartners and mothers for the benefit of the present and of coming generations.

It was just stated that no one concerned in the inquiry was interested in any food product or in any personally profitable business concern, and mention of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, so widely known as the pioneer in fostering the pure food and prepared-cereal manufacture, may cast a doubt upon the matter in the minds of those who do not know that the Sanitarium organisation, in its every department, is a philanthropic, humanitarian institution. It is the parent and feeder of the American Medical Missionary Cause, which already has established branches in something over sixty localities situated in or near large cities in different parts of the world, chiefly America. By perpetual charter all the profits revert to the spread of the work and the employees serve for a mere pittance, deriving their major compensation from enjoyment of the altruistic work.

The old prejudice against the human race which declared that “everybody had an axe to grind,” that there was “a nigger in every woodpile,” and such like slanders, must be modified in the light of recent altruistic development. Altruism has always been existent and had a great new birth with the beginning of our era, but it was never before so frankly put upon a business basis as it is now, and this is fast being applied to every department of business activity. It is now done, not in the name of any particular creed or cult, or for future reward, but because it pays—first, last, and all the time.

In the study and pursuit of menticulture the author has found that working for the common good is as necessary to happiness as working for self, and that the retroactivity and reciprocity of the idea multiplies the profits indefinitely.

The sequence of profitable, altruistic interrelation is stated in the “Explanation” of the chain of the A. B. C. Life Series, of which this book is one of the links.

Aside from those actively engaged in the several investigations to whom reference is often made, the author wishes to express special gratitude to Sir Michael Foster and to Professor Henry Pickering Bowditch of the Board of Scientific Assessors. Unselfish and unremitting in their assistance and encouragement, the author’s work has been made easy since their interest was enlisted.

Sir Michael, as Member of Parliament in England, and as a physiological savant, knows that economic nutrition is the key to England’s welfare, as well as the basic necessity of temperance, morality, health, and efficiency, as is expressed in the two documents from him reproduced in the “Report of a Plan for an International Investigation into the Subject of Human Nutrition” and in his “Note” on the Cambridge examination of the author and Dr. Van Someren at Cambridge University laboratories, given herein.

Professor Bowditch, as a distinguished physiologist, publicist, and especially as the President of the Children’s Aid Society, of Boston, Massachusetts, often mentioned as the model institution of its kind in the world, realises that the effort of the author to secure basic knowledge relative to right nutrition, adaptable to kindergarten teaching and home training during the impressionable period of youth, is of the greatest importance in social reform.

A trial suggestion relative to ways and means of beginning right with all the children and thus insuring a regeneration of the classes most in need of reform, in not longer than two decades, is outlined in the author’s appeal for the waifs of society, entitled “That Last Waif; or Social Quarantine.”

Whenever there is any disposition to slack up in patience or enthusiasm to accomplish the ultimate end aimed at, the picture of the waif in that story is flashed back by memory, and there can be neither forgetfulness, indifference, nor repose until “that last waif” has been given at least a chance of choosing between the right and the wrong, the good and the bad.

POSTINTRODUCTORY

[Just before “going to press” the author has received a letter from his esteemed colleague, Dr. Hubert Higgins, giving the gist of interviews with an eminent European physiologist and with a famous American chemist and dietitian, which so well describes the attitude of the scientific mind towards the problem of human nutrition that the scientific mentor of the writer advises its addition to the book.

By the same post there arrived a letter from Dr. J. H. Kellogg, the life and director of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, expressing practical appreciation, the result of demonstration, of what is being done to solve the problem.

Eliminating the personal element and keeping the ultimate object in view, these communications are coincidentally a propos and intimate to our “Introduction”; hence their reproduction here.

Numerous other letters and extracts from communications received by the writer, bearing upon this subject, from the above and other sympathetic friends are reproduced in “The New Glutton or Epicure,” a free and easy companion of this book, intended to appeal to a variety of readers.

When it is known that the proceeds of all the publications of the author are dedicated to the promotion of the objects they advocate, reference to them or advertisement of them cannot be considered inappropriate.—Horace Fletcher.]

Extracts from Dr. Higgins’ Letter

Palazzina Tasso,
Campo S. Polo,
Venezia.

October 3, 1903.

Dear Mr. Fletcher,—A. appears to me to have an exceedingly broad and philosophic grasp of the problem of nutrition.

He recognises that all present data are subject to criticism, and that there are no scientifically accurate data available because

(a) Observations are taken over too short a period.

(b) They have mainly dealt with one side of the problem,—the output of muscular work.

(c) The observations are not sufficiently complete.

He acknowledges that cleavage products from food broken down in the intestines by bacteria are the cause of

• (a) Inefficiency
• (b) Diseases
• (c) Mental derangements.
• (See Mott’s work.)

He recognises that the majority of people eat far too much. He puts this in the following way. If a “mediæval devil” had wished to discover the most subtle and most effective way to destroy mankind mentally, morally, and physically, he would have arranged for them to be supplied with tasty, well-cooked foods, wines, etc.; in short, he would have used every means to tempt, confuse, and pervert their appetite. He would also have arranged every possible means to prevent their being in the fresh air and taking exercise. He thinks one has here the picture of modern civilisation.

He talked in a very interesting and instructive manner about the necessity and value of exercise and a muscular body for the maintenance of good health. He has evidently worked at and thought a good deal about this side of the subject.

He regrets that there are not more people who realise the huge importance of understanding the nutrition problem for the sake of the progress of humanity. He would like to join all those who are interested in forming an international society, as far as I understood him.

He is most keen on getting subjects, such as myself, for study over a very long period of time,—two to three years,—as he very justly observed “Muscular output is a very small part of the measure of a man’s efficiency. Mental efficiency, manual dexterity, and other psychological tests are necessary.” He seemed very much interested in my idea of making a large number of curves of daily observations. He said that it appeared to him to offer the best means of ultimately measuring the degree of deviation from the subject’s optimum state of health.

He argues the necessity of getting some scientific definition of health.

The phrase that reduces all these people to contemplative silence is this.

“You acknowledge that the state of knowledge is insufficient to prescribe a diet for any individual that he should take daily; or in other words, that there is very little accurate knowledge of the nutrition problem.”

Reply. “Yes. I do not feel I could prescribe a diet for any one with any degree of confidence.”

“Very well, then. Why should not the body have or acquire the quality that all animals have, in a free, natural state, of knowing what their body wants by appetite and taste?”

This is more or less how you put it to me when I first met you at Cambridge. Its full significance did not dawn on me till much later; till, in short, I commenced the study of my desires at Cambridge.

Now this point of view is the rock on which we stand, and is the cause of H.’s and A.’s interest, and as H. said, is the “most fascinating idea” he ever heard.

It had very much the same effect on A. He was reduced to silence. The more you think of it the more you see there is no answer that could contradict it.

He then admits that

(a) The food should be finely divided.

(b) That it should be thoroughly insalivated.

(c) That in all probability most diseases are caused by dietetic error.

(d) That we have still to find the optimum health and the optimum diet.

He only kicks at the low proteid. Now I don’t care a “kuss” for the low proteid, as such, or high proteid. Proteid like everything else will be demanded by the appetite when it is wanted.

Our great danger, to my mind, is the tendency so strongly exemplified by some of prescribing diets and quantities and the length of time food should be chewed.[1] Now the very errors we are fighting against are the prescription of methods on insufficient information or knowledge. You have gone straight back to Nature. There is your strength in convincing the scientific world, and we must study the problem from that point of view if we are to get any great degree of success.

A. had nothing to say when I told him that I did not hold by either high or low proteid but only by my appetite and taste, developed by ample mouth opportunity to discriminate, which I hoped, in time, to understand more thoroughly than I do now. He told me that he feared that there would be great physical deterioration after a long period of low proteid. I said that I did not believe it would be the case by your method. For instance, right in the midst of a long period of most satisfactory low-proteid supply, I once ate nearly a whole chicken with some ham at Penegal. I could not get saliva for anything else.[2] In short, then, I insisted only on thorough mastication to protect taste and appetite, and had no other theories. I was only concerned in observing the factors determining my taste and appetite. I would be more than contented to leave the question of minimum and maximum quantity of proteid to be settled in the future after normality had been established by practical demonstration.

Yours faithfully,

Hubert Higgins.

Extracts from Dr. Kellogg’s Letter

Battle Creek, Mich.
October 7, 1903.

Mr. Horace Fletcher.

Dear Friend,—Yours of September 30th just reached my hands and I hasten to reply.

I saw a newspaper note in reference to the soldiers which the government has selected for the dietetic experiments, and also read an interesting article in the Popular Science Monthly. You have accomplished a great good thing in enlisting these scientific and military men and interesting them in the investigation of this wonderful reform. The marvellous thing about it is that these busy men of science should have so readily undertaken an investigation which involves so much surrender and self-denial, at least, at the start. I know you are absolutely right. My personal experiences and observations confirm me. In the experiments you mention, which I made in reference to the daily ration for ordinary persons, I simply sought to ascertain, as have others, how much and what kinds of food people are in the habit of using, taking no account of the possible excess or the careless manner in which they eat. The figures I got were sixteen ounces of starch; 1.2 ounces fat, and three ounces proteids,—approximately 2,500 calories. In observation of patients I have seldom found one able to eat this amount. Personally, I habitually eat scarcely half as much. My breakfast to-day was the yolks of two eggs, two or three tablespoonfuls of corn flakes, a moderate-sized potato, and a couple of peaches. At dinner I shall take a little more.

I have been so busy with my patients and the new building, getting things organised, that I have not done as much as I ought to in the way of promoting your splendid reform; but I am going at it now in good earnest. I feel it is one of the greatest things in sight, and it fits right in to all the other things I am trying to do. I feel that I owe you continually a great debt for the efforts you have made and the splendid work you are doing, which will accomplish more for the uplifting of humanity than all that Carnegie and Rockefeller are doing with their millions. What they are doing is mainly to perpetuate old errors, while you are bringing out new truth of basic importance, and a kind Providence has certainly inspired you to do this grand work.

I thank you for all your good thoughts towards us, and assure you the loving encouragement your letters always contain is very much appreciated, and sometimes it gives us a mental uplift just when we need it. The road we are travelling over is not altogether free from thorns. All your suggestions are gratefully received. I remain,

Faithfully yours,

J. H. Kellogg.

A. B.-Z. PRIMER

EXPLANATION

This is a condensed presentment of a subject of basic importance to everyone, supported by numerous appendices of great scientific weight.

The special object of such brevity and elementary treatment of the subject is:

1. To accentuate the facts showing how little we really have to know and do in connection with our sustenance in order to have the Natural Automatic Processes done rightly and healthfully.

2. To permit busy persons who will take our dictum as gospel and our advice as sound to learn their necessary share in their own nutrition in the least possible time, leaving the less credulous and more curious to study the appendices at leisure and at will.

3. For some ten years it has been the ambition and the aim of the older and non-professional author to embody the fundamental essentials of human responsibility in self-understanding and self-management in not more than ten pages of coarse print that a child could understand and that mothers and teachers might commit to memory and never forget.

This is only a first trial-attempt to fulfil the ambition and the aim; but the appendices show the assembling and concentration of scientific and militant forces which will not allow this subject of primal human interest to remain longer the most neglected of educational departments.

SOME PERTINENT QUESTIONS

Will the reader not ask himself the following questions?

1. How much do I know about my own nutrition?

2. Do I know the particular need and purpose of my last meal and what it is likely to accomplish?

3. Considering my body as an engine, would I accept myself as a competent engineer on my own examination and confession?

4. Were I an iron and steel automobile, instead of a flesh and blood automobile, which I really am, could I get a license for myself, as a chauffeur, to run myself with safety, based upon my knowledge of my own mechanism and the theory and development of my power?

5. Were I an owner of valuable live-stock, would I employ a farm-hand or a stable man, even at so low a wage as fifteen dollars a month, who knew as little about the proper feeding of my animals as I know about the proper feeding of myself and my children?

6. Should I employ such an ignorant attendant for my live-stock, and catch him worrying them during their feeding, and hurrying them away from their fodder to hitch them up for work, would I not have the man arrested for cruelty to animals? And yet this is what is habitually done to children!

7. Do I appreciate how important it is to learn sufficient of the requirements of economic and healthy nutrition to enable me to escape the depressing and debilitating effects of a faulty nutrition.

8. How can I religiously “ask a blessing” upon food and then immediately sin by treating it in a manner abhorrent to the natural requirements?

9. If “cleanliness is next to godliness” is it respectable for me to slight my proper feeding in a manner that I know may induce putridity of excreta through indigestion and that may produce fatal disease?

10. With All Eternity ahead of me, cannot I afford at least 1/48[3] of my time for careful feeding of my body in a manner known to favour physical health; mental keenness; firmness of character; enjoyable temperance; sexual vigour without morbidity. In fact, general respectability and efficiency?

Having duly reasoned out logical answers to the questions, may they not seem sufficiently important to be remembered and respected as a Dietary Ten Commandments?

Appetite is the most important factor in digestion (vide Pawlow).

Normal Appetite is indicated by a desire for some particular simple food accompanied by a “watering of the mouth.”

False Appetite is a general discontent of the body, indefinite of description. It is often expressed by “all gone-ness,” or stomach craving, and calls for something, Anything! to smother the discomfort of present or recent indigestion. It is like the thirst which follows a debauch.

Ignore False Appetite, and Wait for a Return of Normal Appetite. It will come as soon as body repairs have been effected by natural agencies and more material is required. No one was ever injured by intelligently and calmly waiting for an appetite. No one ever starved to death for lack of appetite. Most human ills come from forcing appetite, anticipating appetite, abuse of appetite in some form.

Appetite is the most important factor in nutrition. This estimation is based upon evidence given more fully in the various appendices, but the measure of its importance may be briefly stated, as follows:—

First

In its normal state, Appetite is a perfect indicator of the bodily need of nutriment and moisture, both as to quantity and as to the chemical elements required at the moment.

Second

Appetite is a creature of the mind and does not attach to a tissue. It can be as easily changed, from abnormal to normal, by suggestion, as can the mind itself, and is not like a solid, the form or habit of which has been set in a mould. Whoever has once experienced a bad oyster and has abhorred oysters ever after will substantiate this claim regarding the caprices of appetite.

Third

Appetite can be easily comprehended and read and the degrees of its satisfaction understood by simple attention and study for a brief period (vide Van Someren).

Fourth

Attention is necessary to create Appreciation, and appreciation is absolutely necessary to stimulate the secretion and flow of gastric and other digestive juices (vide Pawlow).

Fifth

Anger, or shock of any kind, and Worry, or any of the pessimistic depressants, stop digestive activity and cause indigestion (vide Cannon).

Sixth

Menticulture should begin with its application to selection (through a normalised appetite) of nutriment for the body, and continue to aid digestion by right thinking.

It is very easy to cultivate calm and fortify against surprise, shock, and anger if the nutrition of the body is carefully attended to. The physical and the mental equipments are beautifully reciprocal and necessary to each other in promoting Menticulture.

BUCCAL DIGESTION
THROUGH
MOUTH THOROUGHNESS

Mouth treatment of food, which permits, aids, and includes insalivation (mixing with saliva), and which is both actively digestive in its functions and preparatory to final digestion, is the only actual mechanical responsibility we have in our nutrition; and, in connection with favourable A conditions, insures perfect digestion. It has been so fully and clearly explained in some recent articles, “Observations on Mastication,” by Dr. Harry Campbell, F.R.C.P., physician to the Northwest London Hospital, printed in the “Lancet” of July 11th, 18th, 25th, and August 8th, 1903, that reference to the articles, reprinted herewith, is all that is necessary here.

In giving attention to careful mouth-treatment of soft or liquid foods until they are absorbed by the Swallowing Impulse the best health and economic results are obtained. It should, at least, be tried.

This will not be found to be a tedious operation after a little practice, when the habit of attention and care has been formed. On the contrary, a new appreciation and enjoyment of taste will be acquired, the delight of which has to be experienced to be understood.

Some hints on learning how to read the appetite, command the attention, and masticate and swallow food material properly follow.

METHOD

First; Last; and All the Time

Be sure that you are really hungry and are not pampering False Appetite. If true appetite that will relish plain bread alone is not present, wait for it. Especially beware of the early-morning habit-craving. Wait for an earned appetite, if you have to wait till noon. Then: “Chew,” “Masticate,” “Munch,” “Bite,” “Taste” everything you take in your mouth (except water, which has no taste), until it is not only thoroughly liquefied and made neutral or alkaline by saliva, but until the reduced substance all settles back in the (glosso-epiglottidean) folds at the back of the mouth and excites the Swallowing Impulse into a strong inclination to swallow. Then swallow what has collected and has excited the impulse, and continue to chew at the remainder, liquid though it be, until the last morsel disappears in response to the Swallowing Impulse. Never forcibly swallow anything that the instincts connected with the mouth show any disposition to reject. It is safer to get rid of it beforehand than to risk putting it into the stomach.

Sip and taste milk and all liquids that have taste as the wine-tasters do. They never drink wine and yet they get all the enjoyment there is in it and waste none. In a very short time sipping and tasting liquids and masticating and tasting solid food for “all they are worth” will become an agreeable and profitable fixed habit.

Whether We “Eat To Live or Live to Eat,” why not do as Above?

THE DIGESTION-ASH WHAT IT
SHOULD BE LIKE WHEN
IT IS NORMAL

First

In adults; or, in children after the eruption of teeth and the ingestion of solid food: The non-liquid and non-gaseous waste of the human body, which, in its normal state, is not offensive, should be very small, in quantity, should be pillular in form, either separate or massed together; should have no odour when released, should take on no odour on standing, should be entirely aseptic (non-poisonous); should drop freely from the exit, leaving nothing behind to wash or wipe away. It may not be collected in the intestines of full-grown and elderly persons, when normal, as above, in sufficient quantity to require or necessitate emptying oftener than from twice a week to once in two weeks; according to age, activity, etc.; and should neither invite nor justify the description “it is not that which goeth into a man that defileth him but that which cometh out.”

Second

Economic Digestion-Ash (solid excreta), as a daily average for an adult of 140 lbs. (10 stone; 63.5 kilos), including moisture, when released, should not weigh more than two ounces (56.70 grams). An average of less than one half this amount of waste has been secured in test experiments.

Third

The true test of healthy Z is absence of odour and completeness, ease and cleanliness of delivery. Frequency or otherwise, does not so much matter. Quantity too, is not so important; but with foul odour there is disturbance, strain and danger.

The normal man is a cleanly being with all excreta inoffensive; and by these tokens he may be his own private judge.

Why is it that barn-yards are tolerable to the human senses while open dépôts of human excreta are fever-breeding nuisances and intolerable to beasts and humans alike?

This curse of putrid excreta caused more deaths from enteric fever during the Boer War in South Africa than all other causes. It is equally a menace to health and even to life while being formed and carried in the body.

Fourth

Offensive excreta are quite certain evidence of neglect of the self-controllable parts of our own nutrition. They are the tell-tale condemnation of ignorance or carelessness. Each person should learn to read the true bulletins of his health conditions in his waste-products of digestion.

Z

is the form the body must assume to render emptying of the digestion-ash natural and easy. Man was built to squat on his heels in defecating, and sitting erect on a modern seat is like trying to force a semi-solid through a kinked hose. Healthy Human Excreta are no more Offensive than Moist Clay and have no more Odour than a Hot Biscuit.

A. B.-Z. FIGURE
TO ILLUSTRATE THE “DIVISION OF LABOUR”

First. A	Psychic Environment		This
	Mental State		involves:
Appetite (to select for)			DIGESTION
Attention (to prepare for)
Appreciation (to assist in)

(Absolutely necessary to secure secretion and flow of the digestive juices: Vide Pawlow and Cannon.)

Second. B	BUCCAL-DIGESTION		This
	MOUTH-TREATMENT		involves:
Mechanical (teeth)			THOROUGHNESS
Chemical (salival)

(Absolutely necessary to secure complete digestion and avoid the putridity incident to bacterial decomposition: Vide Campbell and Van Someren.)

INTERMEDIATE

The twenty-three letters between “B” and “Z” represent but an inadequate proportion for the spelling of the enormous share Nature assumes in our welfare, marvellously performing her forty-seven forty-eighths share in the secret laboratory of the alimentary canal.

Third. Z

The true chemical end-point of digestion, by which each self-respecter may know how well he has respected his “A” and his “B,” and how faithfully he has performed his one forty-eighth share in the promotion of his own most fundamental interest.

PREFACE TO 1906 EDITIONS

Since the former introductions were written much success has been attained in further advancing the reforms advocated in the A. B. C. Life Series. Professor Chittenden has published his report on the Yale experiments in book form in both America[4] and England,[5] and his results have been accepted in scientific circles the world over as authoritatively conclusive.

At the present writing the most important Health Boards of Europe[6] are planning to put the new standards of dietary economy into practical use among public charges in a manner that can only result in benefit to the wards of the nations as well as make an important saving to the tax-payers. In the most important of these foreign public health departments the Health Officer of the Board has himself practised the newly established economy for two years, and his plans are formulated on personal experience which fully confirms Professor Chittenden’s report and that of the author as herein related.

At a missionary agricultural college, situated near Nashville, Tenn., where the students earn their tuition and their board while pursuing their studies, a six months’ test of what is termed “Fletcherism” resulted in a saving of about one half of the drafts on the commissary, immunity from illness, increased energy, strength and endurance, and general adoption of the suggestions published in the several books of the author included in the A. B. C. Life Series.

In the various departments and branches of the Battle Creek Sanitarium in America, and widely scattered over the world, some eight hundred employees and thousands of patients have been accumulating evidence of the efficacy of “Fletcherism” for more than three years, and scarce a month passes without a letter from Dr. Kellogg to the author containing new testimony confirming the A. B. C. selections and suggestions.

The author has received within the past two years more than a thousand letters bearing the approval of the writers with report of benefits received which seem almost miraculous, and these include the leaders in many branches of human occupation—physiologists, surgeons, medical practitioners, artists, business men, literary workers, athletes, working men and women, and almost every degree of mental and physical activity.

One of the medical advisers of King Edward, of whom the King once said: “He is a splendid doctor but a poor courtier,” follows the suggestions of these books in prescribing to his sumptuous clients.

HISTORY OF DEVELOPMENT
AND
SUPPORTING EVIDENCE

SUMMARY OF THE FOREGOING PAGES BY AN EXPERIMENTER OF ONE MONTH’S EXPERIENCE
(Requested and given as a test of effectiveness)

The entire principle of economic nutrition is simple and practical. It does not prescribe that we shall follow any special diet nor do away with any of our meals. It simply requires you to throw present habits and conventions to the winds, and for a little time try the experiment of giving the matter of your every-day living honest, intelligent thought.

Eat all you crave, but do not eat more than this simply because you have been in the habit of doing so. See to it that each morsel put into your mouth is thoroughly masticated and mixed with the saliva before going down into the stomach, which is not equipped to perform the work which the teeth and salivary glands were given you for. The stomach will struggle bravely to overcome the abuse which you heap upon it, but in spite of all it can do to manage hastily chewed food, undigested portions remain which clog the intestines and interfere with the healthy conditions which Nature intended.

The appetite is given as an indicator of what the body requires. If you crave potato, the system needs starch, which the saliva makes digestible, but which the acids of the stomach cannot dissolve. Other needs of the system are similarly indicated. Take the trouble of asking your appetite the question, instead of accepting the conventional number of courses simply because they are set before you. The appetite will close the valve when you have eaten enough, if you will give it a chance.

Suppose your time for eating is limited; in twenty minutes you could not eat slowly the luncheon which you usually select. Then eat that much less. The amount of food which you can eat and thoroughly masticate in twenty minutes will give you more nourishment and will sustain you better than twice the amount thrown into the stomach in the same manner in which a man usually packs a trunk.

Why is it that so many men require a “bracer” at eleven o’clock? Because they have loaded their stomachs with a heavy breakfast, and instead of gaining nourishment from it, the smothered organ is doing its best to tear the undigested morsels to pieces, that they may pass into the intestines and prevent sickness, or even death. The time finally arrives when it finds itself unable to do this, and then comes acute indigestion, or something worse, and the system becomes run down, ready to receive typhoid, or any other germs which happen to come along.

Do you know why griddle-cakes hurt you? Because the syrup, which is cane-sugar,—and as such is indigestible,—is allowed to pass through the mouth and down into the stomach, without being properly mixed with the saliva, which makes it digestible. As soon as it enters the stomach it becomes acid and interferes with everything it meets. Had the cakes been properly masticated and mixed with the saliva, the cane-sugar would have become grape-sugar, and in this form it is easily digested.

Why is it that stout people are advised to avoid starchy foods? Economic nutrition does not advise this. Potatoes, eaten too hastily, when not craved by the appetite, supply the system with a superabundance of starch, and this is fat-inducing. Potatoes are supposed to produce fat; but if your appetite craves potato, and you properly masticate it, eating only as much of it as satisfies your appetite, the system absorbs it all, leaving nothing to produce fat. On this same principle economic nutrition assures that the same food, taken in accordance with its requirements, will add to one man’s weight and decrease another’s, simply because proper care of the stomach supplies the vital organs with the necessary materials to form each individual person after the model which Nature intended for him. If Nature intended him to be slight, economic nutrition will not make him heavy; if Nature intended him to be muscularly strong and heavy, economic nutrition will not reduce his weight. In each case he will enjoy that perfect condition which Nature intended him to possess without fat encumbrance.

Did you ever try to reason out why it is necessary for athletes to go into training? Simply because, in order to get the best use of their strength, they are obliged to spend some number of weeks or months in overcoming false conditions which they have brought upon themselves. Any person who lives in accordance with the simple requirements of economic nutrition has nothing of this kind to overcome, but is in perfect condition all the time.

The requirements of economic nutrition are not hardships but pleasures. Proper mastication and insalivation (mixing with saliva), give your sense of taste far greater gastronomic enjoyment than you have ever before had. If you are a wine drinker, try insalivating a little port wine; but it must be good wine, for this is a severe test. A sip will quench your immediate desire and give you more pleasure than a whole glass gulped down. The professional tea-taster does this in tasting tea; he never allows himself to drink any tea at all, for drinking anything that has taste destroys the delicacy of the sense of taste. But he will tell you that he gets more real enjoyment out of the little he takes than he previously gained from drinking a larger amount. The same thing applies to the professional wine-tasters; they never drink any wine, and yet they enjoy the taste of wine as drinkers never can do. These men adopt this method as a business; is their commercial advantage of greater importance than your health and happiness, and even life itself?

Is it not ridiculous that the average man is so ignorant of the engine which supplies him with all his activity and upon which depends every action of his life? Could you tell, were you asked, the particular need and purpose of your last meal and what it is likely to accomplish? Consider your body as an engine: would you accept yourself as a competent engineer on your own examination and confession? Would you employ a chauffeur to run your automobile who knew as little about its mechanism and requirements as you do about your own stomach? Yet which is of greater importance? Were you the owner of valuable live-stock, would you dare entrust their care to a farm-hand or stableman who knew as little about their proper feeding as you know about your own proper feeding or that of your children?

Have you ever stopped to think why the excrements are foul and odorous? Simply because undigested food, which should have been so masticated as to give the body nourishment, is thrown off by the stomach into the intestines, there to decay and produce this unclean condition. If the dead carcass of a cow is lying in the road, it is removed before it has an opportunity to decay and thus become filthy and dangerous. Yet how much more safe it would be for the carcass to lie where it was than for you to take portions of it into your intestines and allow it to decay there instead of in the road? In other words, food is intended to be eaten that nourishment may be gained from it, and when you only gain a part of the nourishment, you prostitute your stomach and take tremendous risks of germ diseases in your body.

These facts are set forward thus simply in the hope that they may impress the reader as they have impressed the writer. Economic nutrition is not a joke, is not a fad; it is solely an appeal to self-examination and self-instruction in the most vital question of all the world, since upon perfect nutrition depends not only health, but strength, mental acuteness, moral tendencies, attractability to others, happiness, and, in fact, life itself.

FIRST SCIENTIFIC RECOGNITION OF THE PRINCIPLES OF ECONOMIC NUTRITION OUTLINED IN “GLUTTON OR EPICURE”

[With the exception of a brief review of Glutton or Epicure, by Dr. Joseph Blumfield, of London, published in The Lancet, no scientific or professional recognition of the principles of an economic nutrition attained by means of thorough buccal digestion was gained until issue of the following paper by Dr. Ernest Van Someren, of Venice, Italy.

The previous autumn and winter had been devoted to experiments by Dr. Van Someren and the writer, in co-operation with Dr. Professor Leonardi, for twelve years Professor of Chemistry in the University of Pavia, Italy. In the spring and summer of 1901 the field of experiments was changed to Mendel Pass, bei Bozen, Süd Tirol, Austria, and related to endurance work in climbing mountains and bicycle runs among the Dolomites.

Dr. Van Someren’s paper attracted the attention of Sir Michael Foster, Professor of Physiology at the University of Cambridge, England, and Permanent Honorary President of the International Congress of Physiologists.

Professor Foster entered into correspondence with Dr. Van Someren, and this was followed by an invitation to Dr. Van Someren and the writer to attend the Congress which was to convene in Turin, Italy, during the month of September following. At the Congress Dr. Van Someren presented a technical thesis on the probable causes of the economy attained, and gave a demonstration of the movement of his Swallowing Reflex in relation to food in the process of liquefaction and preliminary digestion in the mouth.

Following the Congress we received an invitation to visit Cambridge, England, and submit to tests of nitrogenous measurements in the Physiological Laboratory of the University, under the direction of Dr. F. Gowland Hopkins; and also to an examination of the bacterial flora incident to the nitrogenous estimations, under the direction of Dr. George H. F. Nuttall.

The report of the experiments in the Chemical-Physiological Department is given in the “Note” of Sir Michael Foster, which follows Dr. Van Someren’s paper, but the bacterial examination was not carried far enough to warrant a scientific report, owing to difficulty of obtaining, at the time, sufficient data.—Horace Fletcher.]

WAS LUIGI CORNARO RIGHT?

A Paper read before the Physiological Section of the British Medical Association, August, 1901, by Ernest Van Someren

Mr. President and Gentlemen:

Being a general practitioner, it is with some trepidation and an apology that I present myself before this section. The reasons for my doing so are: First, that I believe that a hitherto unsuspected reflex in deglutition has come to light which has an important bearing on health, the prevention of disease and on metabolism. Second, that any theory whatever, based on a possible physiological function, claiming to diminish, as this does, the amount of sickness and suffering now existent, should have serious investigation. Third, that I desire to enlist your skilled help in the consideration of the theories I have doubtless crudely erected on my premise.

According to the “Encyclopædia Britannica,” “Luigi Cornaro (1467-1566) was a Venetian nobleman, famous for his treatises on a temperate life. From some dishonesty on the part of his relatives, he was deprived of his rank and induced to retire to Padua, where he acquired the experience in regard to food and regimen which he has detailed in his work. In his youth he lived freely, but after a severe illness at the age of forty, he began under medical advice gradually to reduce his diet. For some time he restricted himself to a daily allowance of 12 ozs. of solid food and 14 ozs. of wine. Later in life he still farther reduced his bill of fare, and he found that he could support his life and strength with no more solid meat than an egg a day. So much habituated did he become to this simple diet that when he was about seventy years of age the addition, by way of experiment, of 2 ozs. a day had nearly proved fatal. At the age of eighty-three he wrote his treatise on the ‘Sure and Certain Method of Attaining a Long and Healthful Life.’ And this work was followed by three others on the same subject, composed at the ages of eighty-six, ninety-one, and ninety-five, respectively. ‘They are written,’ says Addison (‘Spectator,’ No. 195), ‘with such a spirit of cheerfulness, religion, and good sense, as are the natural concomitants of temperance and sobriety.’ He died at the age of ninety-eight. Some say of 103!

Now, was Luigi Cornaro right? Did he make use of a physiological process unknown to us of the value of which he was not cognisant? To live to an advanced age, must we be as temperate as he, reducing the quantity of our food to a minimum required by Nature?

That we all eat more than we can assimilate is unquestionable. How can we determine the right quantity? Instinct should guide us, but an abnormal appetite often leads us astray. Nature’s plans are perfect if her laws are obeyed. Disease follows disobedience. Wherein do we disobey?

We live not upon what we eat, but upon what we digest; then why should undigested food, recognisable as such, be deemed a normal constituent of our solid egesta?

Something like the following must be a common experience to general practitioners, especially to those practising on the Continent. The patient comes to see us and volunteers the information that he or she has the “gout,” “rheumatic gout,” or “dyspepsia.” Symptoms are asked for. The case is gone into carefully for causation. An appropriate diet and an appropriate bottle of medicine prescribed. As the patient leaves the room, we may, or may not, call attention to the fact that both teeth and saliva are meant to be used. The patient returns, better, in statu quo, or worse. If better, he remains so while under treatment, and relapses when he returns to ordinary habits. If unaffected, or worse, we try again and again, until we despair, then take or send him to a consultant. Temporary benefit, possibly owing to renewed hope, results; but finally the unfortunate gets used to his sufferings and, if he can afford it, is sent to join the innumerable hosts that wander from one Bad to another, all Europe over, trying, praising, and damning each in turn. Their manner of living is, of course, at fault. Nature never intended that man should be perpetually on a special diet and hugging a bottle of medicine, nor did she ordain that he should go wandering over the map of Europe drinking purgative and other waters.

Though early yet to speak with certain voice, it would seem that we are provided with a Guard, reliance on which protects us from the results of mal-nutrition. There seems to be placed in the fauces and the back of the mouth a Monitor to warn us what we ought to swallow and when we ought to swallow it. The good offices of this Monitor we have suppressed by habits of too rapid eating, acquired in infancy or youth.

Last November my attention was called by Mr. Horace Fletcher, an American author living in Venice, to the discovery in himself of a curious inability to swallow, and a closing of the throat against food, unless it had been completely masticated. My informant stated that he noticed this peculiarity after he had begun to excessively insalivate his food, both liquid and solid, until all its original taste had been removed from it. Any tasteless residue in the mouth, being refused by the fauces, required a forced muscular effort to swallow. He further told me that since adopting this method of eating he had been cured of two maladies, adjudged chronic, the suffering from which rendered him ineligible for Life Insurance. His weight now became reduced from 205 lbs. to 165 lbs. He had practised no abstemiousness, had indulged his appetite, both as to selection and to quantity, without restraint, and for the last three years had enjoyed perfect health.

After his cure, he was accepted without difficulty for insurance, the last examination finding him an unusually healthy subject for his age. Having leisure, he had spent three years in investigating the cause of his cure, had pursued experiments upon others, and had extended his inquiries, both in America and Europe, until our meeting in Venice. He had also published a statement and inquiry in book form, entitled “Glutton or Epicure,” which had been reviewed by the “Lancet.”

For nearly a year I also had been experimenting on myself and others with various diets, and was ready to believe that in the manner of taking food and not altogether in its varying matter lay perhaps its protean effects on our system. I at once adopted the same method of eating. At the end of six weeks, I noticed that not only did the fauces refuse to allow of the passage of imperfectly prepared food, but that such food was returned from the back to the front of the mouth by an involuntary, though eventually controllable, muscular effort taking place in the reverse direction to that occurring at the inception of deglutition.

What actually happens is this: Food, as it is masticated, slowly passes to the back of the mouth, and collects in the glosso-epiglottidean folds, where it remains in contact with the mucous membrane containing the sensory end-organs of taste. If it be properly reduced by the saliva it is allowed to pass the fauces,—a truly involuntary act of deglutition occurring. Let the food, however, be too rapidly passed back to these folds, i.e., before complete reduction takes place, and the reflex muscular movement above referred to occurs. The process of this reflex is as follows: The tip of the tongue is involuntarily fixed at the backs and bases of the lower central incisor teeth by the anterior fibres of the geniohyoglossi muscles. With this fixed point as fulcrum, the lower and middle fibres of these muscles, aided by those of the stylohyoid and styloglossi muscles raise the hyoid bone, straighten out the glosso-epiglottidean folds, passing their contents forward, by the fauces, the opening of which is closed by approximation of its pillars and contraction of the superior constrictor. The tongue, arched postero-anteriorly by the geniohyoglossi, palato, and styloglossi muscles, laterally, by its own intrinsic muscles, is approximated to the fauces, soft and hard palates in turn, and thus, the late contents of the glosso-epiglottidean folds are returned to the front of the mouth for further reduction by the saliva preparatory to deglutition.

The word reduction is used for the reason that all foods tested, without exception, give an acid reaction to litmus, when served at table. The reflex muscular movement occurs in the writer’s case from five to ten times during the mastication of each mouthful of food, according to its quantity and its degree of sapidity. As often as it recurs, the returned food continues to give an acid reaction, while food allowed to pass the fauces is alkaline.

Saliva, flowing in response to the stimulation of taste, seems more alkaline than that secreted in answer to mechanical tasteless stimulation. It is found that the removal of original taste from any given bolus of food coincides with cessation of salivary flow and complete alkaline reduction. The fibre of meat, gristle, connective tissue, the husk of coarse bread and cellulose of vegetables are carefully separated by the tongue and buccal muscles and rejected by the fauces. To swallow any of these necessitates a forced muscular effort, which is abnormal.

Adult man was not originally intended to take his nourishment in a liquid form, consequently all liquids having taste, such as soup, milk, tea, coffee, cocoa, and the various forms of alcohol, must be treated as sapid solids and insalivated by holding them in the mouth, moving the tongue gently, with straight up and down masticatory movements, until their taste be removed. Water, not having taste, needs no insalivation and is readily accepted by the fauces.

In explanation of the phenomenon described, the following theory is advanced: The fauces, back of the tongue, epiglottis, in short, those mucous surfaces in which are placed the sensory end-organs of taste and “taste-buds” (the distribution of which, by the way, has yet to be explained), that these surfaces, readily becoming accustomed to an alkaline contact by excessive insalivation and consequent complete alkaline reduction of the food, afterwards resent an acid contact and express their resentment by throwing off the cause of offence by the muscles underlying them.

This phenomenon must not be confused with the cases of rumination and regurgitation, which from time to time are recorded. The food in this case is not swallowed, nor does it pass any point from which it can be regurgitated. Eighty-one individuals of different nationalities and from several classes of society whom we have studied are now in conscious possession of their reflexes. These seem readily educated back to normal functions by all who seriously and patiently adopt the habit of what seems only at first to be excessive insalivation.

The dictum “bite your food well” that we so often use, has no meaning to those suffering from the results of mal-assimilation and mal-nutrition, especially should they have few or no teeth of their own. I make so bold as to state that dyspepsia et morbi hujus generis omnis will cease to exist if patients be persuaded to bite their food until its original taste disappears, and it is carried away by involuntary deglutition.

The important point of the whole question seems to be this alkaline reduction of acid food before it passes on to meet subsequent digestive processes elsewhere, which then become alternately acid and alkaline.

In the first few months of infant life, when saliva is not secreted, Nature ordains that mammary secretion be alkaline. With the eruption of teeth come an abundant flow of saliva and a synchronous infantile capacity for managing other foods. This flow of saliva depends on a thorough demand and use to maintain its generous supply. It is just at this time that children learn to bolt their food,—the demand fails, with a consequent detriment to the salivary glands, digestive processes, and the system generally.

A, B, C, and D were placed on an absolute milk diet. A drank his milk in the ordinary way, and at the end of three days begged to discontinue the experiment owing to disgust at the monotony of the diet. B, C, and D continued the experiment for seventeen days, insalivating the milk, but to a varying extent, B the least and D the most. Though D took most milk, he excreted least solid egesta, C excreting less than B. Can one infer that increased insalivation of a non-starchy food insured its better digestion and assimilation? Each subject took as much milk only as his appetite demanded, D taking the most, which never exceeded two litres daily. The weights of the subjects after the usual sudden drop of the first three days remained remarkably even until the end of the experiment. B, C, and D all relished the diet, and it satisfied the requirements of their appetites, but they experienced an increasing monotony.

As long ago as the seventeenth century, before the transformation of matter into energy by the animal organism, known as Metabolism, was understood, the fact was recognised that by the lungs, kidneys, skin, and intestines, substances no longer useful to the organism were eliminated, the retention of which proved harmful. The nature of these substances was unknown, but it was noted that however much the food was increased the weight of the body remained the same. In other words, a state of complete nutritive equilibrium was maintained.

The following table contains the résumé of two experiments in which a state of complete nutritive equilibrium was maintained by individuals of about the same weight, on widely different quantities of food similar in quality. The subjects of the experiments were a laboratory assistant of Dr. Snyder, of the U. S. Department of Agriculture, and the writer. The experiment of the former was made primarily to show the relative digestibility of the several articles of Writer’s Experiment. diet, potatoes, eggs, milk, and cream:

The daily diet of Dr. Snyder’s subject consisted of three and one-half pounds of potatoes, eight eggs, a pint and a half of milk, and half a pint of cream. The writer’s diet of twelve ounces of solid food (like Luigi Cornaro) consisted of three eggs, the remainder of the twelve ounces in potatoes, and an equal quantity of similar liquid food to that taken by Dr. Snyder’s subject. The exercise of the laboratory assistant comprised his daily routine of laboratory work, while that of the writer consisted of six sets of tennis, or an hour and a half on horseback, with an hour to an hour and a half’s walk or climb daily, in addition to much reading and writing.

In each case complete nutritive equilibrium was maintained, although the author subsisted on three-seventeenths of the solid food taken by the other subject.

Again, cannot one infer that better assimilation and less waste resulted from the better preparation of the smaller quantity of food by insalivation? Surely, too, there must be less daily strain on the intestinal canal, and body generally, in getting rid of 18.9 grammes of inoffensive dry waste, than in getting rid of 204 grammes of humid, decomposing, and offensive matter.

“Considerable importance has been attached to the normal action of the bacteria in the intestines; and it has even been supposed that the presence of bacteria is essential to life. Such a view has recently been shown to be erroneous by an elaborate and painstaking research carried out by Nuttall and Thierfelder, who obtained ripe foetal guinea-pigs by means of Caesarean section carried out under strict antiseptic precautions. They introduced the animals immediately into an aseptic chamber through which a current of filtered air was aspirated, and fed them hourly on sterilised milk day and night for over eight days.

“The animals lived, and throve, and increased as much in weight as healthy normal animals subjected to a similar diet for the purpose of controlling the results. Microscopic examination at the end of the experiment showed that the alimentary canal contained no bacteria of any kind, nor could cultures of any kind be obtained from it.

“The same authors, in a subsequent paper, described the extension of their research to vegetable food. This was also digested in the absence of bacteria. Under such conditions cellulose was not attacked. Hence they consider that the chief function of this material is to give bulk and proper consistency to the food so as to suit the conditions of herbivorous digestion.” (Schäfer’s “Text-Book of Physiology,” vol i. p. 465.)

Now, inasmuch as bacterial digestion has no place in the animal economy, surely it can only occur at the expense of the organism?

Can micro-organic action take place in the intestines without the production of toxins and the consequent absorption of these toxins into the blood?

We know that the metabolism of a cell is determined by the general physical environment of the whole organism, by supplies of oxygen and water, on nervous impulses, and, what chiefly concerns this argument, on the nature and amount of the pabulum supplied to it. This pabulum is derived from the alimentary canal.

Are not even those of us who may be enjoying seemingly the best of health supplying to our tissues pabulum containing mild toxins, thus causing an increased katabolic action to occur in each individual cell of our bodies?

Are not the blood elements, floating in a plasma containing such toxins, rendered resistant, weaker, less capable of fulfilling their functions as carriers and combatants of disease?

Are not their and our lives, in consequence, more painful and shorter than they need be?

Would not the elimination of these toxins render us less liable to disease? And is not their presence an important element in predisposition to disease?

When this reflex is restored micro-organisms get no further than the stomach. They are destroyed there by the acid gastric juices, then only stimulated to their full and normal secretion by the presence of a sufficiency of alkaline substance. Undigested matter having been eliminated, micro-organisms, still existing in the intestines, deprived of their means of subsistence, decrease, and, in time, may cease to exist. The body no longer absorbs the toxins these produced. To this fact may be ascribed the increase of mental energy, the general physical betterment, the cessation of morbid cravings for food and drink and of those of a sexual nature, which are noticed and experienced.

What has just been stated is based not entirely on experimental evidence but somewhat upon inference. The inference seems justified because the excreta, more especially of the intestines, but also of the kidneys and skin, become almost odourless and entirely inoffensive. The solid egesta are voided thickly covered with mucus, leaving the end of the bowel dry and clean. The sense of cleanliness can only then be appreciated to the full, for it is internal as well external. Flatus is no longer produced. The urine is inoffensive and seems to be materially changed in quality, as shown by chemical analysis. Uric acid, the chlorides, and, more markedly, aromatic sulphates are reduced in quantity.

Owing to deliberation in eating, necessitated by this new habit, satiety occurs on the ingestion of considerably less food. By carefully studying one’s self I believe it possible to cultivate an instinct which will regulate not only the quantity but the quality of food that the body may need, and that in the normal health of a full-grown body, no more food either in quantity or quality should be supplied than suffices to supply diurnal waste. Any excess must result in pathological processes.

Although there results enhanced pleasure in the taking of all foods, rich and simple, and especially in the appreciation of good wines, the quantities of these foods and beverages that suffice to fully satisfy the appetite are much smaller than before, while there is a marked preference for the simpler kinds of food. The writer now can imagine no more pleasurable meal than one consisting of good brown bread, eggs, butter, cheese, and cream. These, with fresh vegetables and a very little fruit, form his staple diet. This tendency and preference for simple foods is the general experience among those who have recovered their reflexes of deglutition.

Following on the ingestion of a lessened quantity of food and on its better assimilation, there is less waste, the egesta are voided less frequently, sometimes only once in five to eight days.

The lower bowel is not the reservoir it formerly was. So hæmorrhoids cease from troubling and constipation cannot exist. For this same reason the body, at the beginning of the practice, commences to approximate to its normal weight, increasing or decreasing as the individual’s environment demands.

A few more words only need be said. It has been easy to state the results of experiments and observations: but the acquiring of this new reflex, while pursuing daily occupations, is not easy, and needs more than a little patience and much serious thought. The habits of a lifetime cannot be changed in a few days or weeks. The shortest time in which the reflex has been re-established is four weeks, and this only by avoiding conversation at meal-time and concentrating the attention on keeping the food in the mouth until complete alkaline reduction has taken place and sapidity has disappeared.

In closing I wish to maintain as a fact, gentlemen, of the truth of which you will only be convinced by actual experience, that by the restoration of this reflex and in complete dependence on its use, there lies true health, the establishment of a condition of stable nutrition and the possible abrogation of two great predisposing factors of disease, mal-assimilation and mal-nutrition. Unless there be among you, as in the “Cities of the Plain,” a parlous minority who possess this reflex and take your food as you ought, none of you are in the enjoyment of such health as you might have. A like punishment will be meted out to you as was visited on those cities, for you will all be consumed long before your day by the unnecessary combustion in your bodies caused by the circulation in them of toxins, the product of undigested and decomposing food.

The writer, bearing in mind the warning suggested by the Frenchman whose donkey died as soon as he had reduced his food to a single wisp of straw, finds that he is taking less and less food. While his mind is open as to his arriving at the final diet of Luigi Cornaro, yet it is easily conceivable that living a similar life of retirement in a placid environment, it would be quite possible to do as he did. Hence the title of this paper and the queries at the commencement.

The objects in publishing and distributing this paper are twofold: to make the subject as widely known as possible, and to solicit the aid of colleagues in investigating it more fully.

There is ready at the service of the general practitioner an important and potential therapeutic agent in the saliva of his patients and in the use ad finem of their salivary digestions.

By any chance should readers of this paper wish to ask any questions, the writer will be happy to communicate with them.

183, Calle del Capello Nero,
Piazza San Marco,
Venice, Italy.

Editor’s notes. (1) Confirmatory evidence of the correctness of the deductions made in this paper has begun to come in from many professional sources and notably from a famous child specialist who avers that children would follow the natural requirements in eating were it not for artificial food, bad example, and bad teaching.

(2) In a report of a paper read before the Société de Biologie, Paris, France, March 15th, 1902, by M. Max Marckwald, of Kreuznach, “On Digestion of Milk in the Stomach Of Full-grown Dogs,” the following appears: “Hence these experiments confirm those of Horace Fletcher and Ernest H. Van Someren on the importance of prolonged mastication” (translation). Referring, as the latter statement does, to mastication (insalivation) of liquid, it gives an important suggestion relative to some probable causes of uncertain or defective digestion in human nutrition.

THE CAMBRIDGE TESTS

[In connection with a report of the Cambridge Examination the writer wishes to acknowledge the interest and assistance of Dr. Francis Gowland Hopkins, head of the Physiological-Chemical Department of the Physiological Laboratory of the University; Dr. George H. F. Nuttall, in charge of the Bacteriological Section of the Pathological Laboratory; Mr. Sidney W. Cole, Mr. Robert Barrett, and Dr. Hubert Higgins, both for practical work in the laboratory and in serving as test-subjects. To Dr. Higgins so much is due that it is difficult to measure. Since our first meeting in Cambridge, Dr. Higgins has been unremitting in his study of the subject and in consideration of its application to human betterment. Having the altruistic temperament inborn and not yet smothered by disappointment, the good doctor has consecrated himself to the service of poorer humanity, and his inspiration in so good a cause is wonderful motive power behind the native desire to do good. The statement of Dr. Higgins’ experiences in pursuit of an Economic Nutrition is given in his own manner in the new edition of Glutton or Epicure, which is being published coincidently with this volume in the A. B. C. Life Series.

At the time we were in Cambridge, Dr. Hopkins and Mr. Cole had just published their paper in the Journal of Physiology (English), describing their isolation of the tryptophane element of the proteid molecule which had eluded chemists from the beginning. In tryptophane they found embodied the odourous indol and skatol which appear so offensively in the putrid decomposition of proteid. In the excreta of the test-subjects in our Economic-Nutrition-Inquiry these malodorous substances did not appear, and hence another question is opened up to investigation relative to the putridity of human excrement under ordinary conditions of carelessness, and the absence of putridity in the case of nutrition accomplished by aid of thorough buccal treatment of food preparatory to digestion.

It is a matter of interest, relative to the patience required in science, to state that Dr. Hopkins and Mr. Cole were fourteen months searching for the fugitive tryptophane element after they received their first clew to its whereabouts. When isolated, tryptophane masses in a substance having the appearance of silver, but not the solidity of that metal.—Horace Fletcher.]

EXPERIMENTS UPON HUMAN NUTRITION
Note by Sir Michael Foster, K.C.B., M.P., F.R.S.

In 1901 Dr. Ernest Van Someren submitted to the British Medical Association, and afterwards to the Congress of Physiologists at Turin, an account of some experiments initiated by Mr. Horace Fletcher. These experiments went to show that the processes of bodily nutrition are very profoundly affected by the preliminary treatment of the food-stuffs in the mouth, and indicated that great advantages follow from the adoption of certain methods in eating. The essentials of these special methods, stated briefly and without regard to certain important theoretical considerations discussed by Dr. Van Someren, consist of a specially prolonged mastication which is necessarily associated with an insalivation of the food-stuffs much more thorough than is obtained with ordinary habits.

The results brought to light by the preliminary experimental trials went to show that such treatment of the food has a most important effect upon the economy of the body, involving, in the first place, a very notable reduction in the amount of food—and especially of proteid food—necessary to maintain complete efficiency.