Horace Fletcher

“ 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. ”

“ Indeed, it may truly be said that the average diet of man, that is to say, the absolute and relative amount of certain food-stuffs on which an average man should live, is at present, to a large extent, determined in an empirical manner. It is most necessary that this should be determined in an exact manner, since it is at least possible that a more complete knowledge may reveal that the good results thus obtained empirically are only reached by means of an excess of one element being counterbalanced by excess of another element, and thus open up a way to considerable economy. ”

“ It is on this ground, according to my opinion, that the whole battle must be fought out between the generally accepted view that every agency is capable of exciting the gastric mucous membrane and the theory that it is only excitable by specific and selected stimuli. If once the defenders of the old opinion are driven from their position and obliged to admit the inefficiency of mechanical stimulation, there would be nothing further left for them than to build up new theories and search out old facts concerning gland work which have hitherto been rigidly kept in the shade. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The stomach has been washed out half an hour ago, and since then not a drop of gastric juice has escaped. We begin to get ready a meal of flesh and sausage before the animal as if we meant to feed it. We take the pieces of flesh from one place, chop them up, and lay them in another, passing them in front of the dog’s nose, and so on. The animal, as you see, manifests the liveliest interest in our proceedings, stretches and distends itself, endeavours to get out of its cage and come to the food, chatters its teeth together, swallows saliva, and so on. ”

“ It is therefore clear that in sham feeding the psychic effect may readily become an absolute and independent factor. All the conditions which we enumerated above, and which are necessary for the successful production of the psychic effect, hold good in combined form for the sham feeding experiment. The dog eats with greed before one’s eyes; the food which it receives is pleasant; it not only imagines food but actually eats it, and has therefore no reason to feel offended, for naturally the idea does not occur to any of the dogs that all their trouble is in vain. ”

“ We may therefore take it that the satisfaction derived from eating is caused not only by stimulation of the mouth and throat, but also by impulses awakened by the passage of the food along the deeper portions of the œsophagus and by its entry into the stomach. In other words, food which merely passes through the mouth and throat produces less enjoyment and excites, therefore, a less feeling of appetite than the food which passes the whole way into the stomach. ”

“ I refer to the production of gastric juice in the empty stomach, as a result merely of the swallowing of food in the so-called sham feeding of an œsophagotomised dog. When one takes into consideration the absolute independence of this factor, and the intensity of the effect, which makes itself evident in the secretion of a large quantity of juice of high digestive power, the exciting agency which brings about such secretion must be recognised as one of the most important and effective processes in gastric digestion. ”

“ 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 ”

“ It is by the establishment of this passionate desire for eating that unerring and untiring nature has linked the seeking and finding of food with the commencement of the work of digestion. That this factor, which we have now carefully analysed, stands in closest connection with an every-day phenomenon of human life, namely, appetite, may easily be predicated. This agency, which is so important to life and so full of mystery to science, becomes here at length incorporated into flesh and blood, transformed from a subjective sensation into a concrete factor of the physiological laboratory. ”

“ I do not say that starch in the liquid and pappy form should find no place whatever in man’s dietary at the present day, for this would imply the prohibition of porridge, boiled potatoes, milk puddings, and the like. We cannot put back the hand of time and return to the food of our primitive ancestors, nor is it desirable that we should; but we can, at least, arrange matters so that a large proportion of the starch we consume shall be in a form inviting mastication, such as crusts, stale bread, stale cake, biscuits, and so forth. ”

“ The chief difficulty of the physician who wishes to regulate the diet of patients when they suffer from digestive disturbances consists in the fact that idiosyncrasy plays a very important rôle. In one and the same illness, different patients react to the same diet in wholly different ways. That which is agreeable to one, and is well borne and useful, may be rank poison to another. Consequently, the golden rule in dietetics is to give no directions with regard to food till one has made inquiries concerning the inclinations and habits of the patient. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thirst for water will assert itself for a moment, sometimes asking but for a drop and again for a full glass, and afterwards, when near the point of complete saturation, appetite will hesitate for a moment, as if searching around for some rare substance, and may find its final satisfaction in a single spoonful of a sweet or a sip of something in sight. ”

“ 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. ”

“ When food is filtered into the body after having become liquified and made alkaline, or, at least neutral, by saliva, the appetite is given a chance to measure the needs of the body and to discriminate against excess. As soon as the point of complete saturation of any one deficiency is reached, the appetite is cut off, as short as possible to imagine, with no indication of stomach fullness. It will welcome a little of proteid in beans, cheese, eggs, or in some other of its richer forms, and then turn to sugar or fat in some of their numerous forms. ”

“ 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. ”

“ You will thus learn how much nutrient material was contained in the food, but the question of its digestibility remains as obscure as before. In your experiment you do not know how great an effort it has cost the alimentary canal to extract all the nourishment from the food. Nor can artificial digestion experiments settle the question of digestibility, for experiments in which food is normally partaken of are quite different from those in the test-tube, where we have to deal with only one juice, and not with the interaction of different juices and different food constituents. ”

“ 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? ”

“ The pre-cooking human stage extends from the time man’s ancestors first assumed the human form till they learned to apply fire in the preparation of their food. During all this period the jaws and teeth were probably used as much, or almost as much, for mastication as during the anthropoid stage; raw animal food had to be torn from the bones, the latter had to be crunched, while the bulk of the raw vegetable food needed then no less than it needs now prolonged and vigorous mastication in order to liberate the starch and other nutritive ingredients from their undigestible cellulose envelopes. ”

“ This kind of saving, however, is purely a question of economy, and in some strata of society would be objected to as indicative of a condition of sordidness. It has come to be a part of our personal pride to have a well-supplied table, and to eat largely and freely of the good things provided. The poorer man takes pride in furnishing his family with a diet rich in expensive articles of food, and imagines that by so doing he is inciting them to heartier consumption and to increased health and strength. ”

“ If one dispassionately regards this question, and if any of our methods for the study of gastric secretion are reliable, one must be convinced step by step in the laboratory of the uselessness of mechanical stimulation. In the case of dogs with an ordinary gastric fistula, and failing some special reason, not a drop of gastric juice ever escapes from the stomach other than during the digestive period. How could this be the case if the mechanical stimulus were effective, since the inner rim of the fistula-tube is continuously in contact with the gastric mucous membrane? ”

“ Further, it must be remembered that lack of a proper physiological condition of the body is more broadly responsible for moral, social, mental, and physical ills than any other factor that can be named. Poverty and vice on ultimate analysis may often be traced to a perversion of nutrition. A healthy state of the body is a necessary concomitant of mental and moral vigour, as well as of physical strength. Abnormal methods of living are often the accompaniment or forerunner of vicious tastes that might never have been developed under more strictly physiological conditions. ”

“ An attempt is therefore made in two ways to secure a free secretion of gastric juice to act on the chief food; first, in the excitement of the appetite juice by the hors d’œuvre, and secondly, in the promotion of the flow by the action of the meat broth. It is in this way that [Pg 267] human instinct has made provisions for the digestion of the chief meal. A good meat broth can only be afforded by well-to-do people, and consequently with the poorer classes a less expensive, and, indeed, also a less effective, chemical excitant is used for awakening the early secretion. ”

“ To a certain degree we can understand—and this contributes to an explanation of matters—how medical science of our time has come to regard so lightly the loss of appetite as a special object for treatment. Now, however, the experimental method has penetrated more and more into medical science, with the result that many pathological factors and therapeutic agents are judged of according to whether they hold good in the laboratory or not—that is to say, they are valued only in so far as they can be verified by laboratory experiments. ”

“ Rinsing the mouth.—The mouth should be rinsed out as a matter of routine after each meal and on rising, and care should be taken to do this before the early cup of tea, so as not to contaminate the stomach with the buccal secretions which have accumulated during the night. Inasmuch as raw vegetable food has a cleansing effect on the teeth, it is often a wise plan, especially in the case of children, to finish a meal with some kind of fruit, such as an apple or an orange. It hardly seems necessary to insist upon the necessity for keeping all artificial dentures thoroughly clean. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It would seem a considerable departure from the study of menticulture as advised in the author’s book, “Menticulture,” to jump at once to an investigation of the physiology and psychology of nutrition of the body and then over to the department of infant and child care and education as pursued in the crêche and in the kindergarden; but as a matter of fact, if study of the causation of human disabilities and misfortunes is attempted at all, the quest leads naturally into all the departments of human interest, and first into these primary departments. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Mastication promotes the flow of saliva and the insalivation of the food.—The more efficiently food is masticated the greater is the salivary flow, and the more intimately is it mixed with the saliva, or, as we say, insalivated. The saliva has apparently no effect on fats; whether it acts on proteids seems more doubtful, though by some authorities the penetration of these by the alkali of this fluid is said to aid in their subsequent digestion; on starch, however, the saliva acts very potently, and hence mastication plays a special part in promoting the digestion of starchy foods. ”

“ This short discussion as to how different people behave with regard to the act of eating is of itself testimony that care should ever be taken to keep alive the attention and interest for food and to promote enjoyment of the repast—that is to say, that care should be taken of the appetite. ”

“ To employ a remedy the mode of action of which is not clear is quite a different thing from knowing precisely what we are doing. In the latter case the treatment of the diseased organ will be more effective because it will be better adapted to the special needs of the case. It is thus that medicine, being daily enriched by new physiological facts, will at length grow into what it ideally must become; namely, the art of repairing the damaged machinery of the human body, based upon exact knowledge, or, in other words, applied physiology. ”

“ We need a far more complete knowledge than we possess at present of the laws governing nutrition; we need fuller knowledge of the methods by which the most complete, satisfactory, and economical utilisation of the diet can be obtained; we need to know more concerning the minimum diet and the minimum amount of proteid or albuminous foods on which health, mental and physical vigour can be permanently maintained ”

“ Our explanation becomes still more convincing when we take into consideration the effects of other foods. If you give the dog, for example, something else to eat which does not interest it to the same degree as flesh or bread, [Pg 216] you will find the initial increase in quantity and strength of juice does not appear. Offer the animal milk, for example, which in sham feeding, especially if it does not last long, calls forth, as a rule, no secretion, or at all events only very little, and the rapid flow of the commencement—the already-mentioned initial rise—absolutely fails to appear. ”