Horace Fletcher in his Master of Arts Robes.
Horace Fletcher in his Master of Arts Robes.
The Fisher experiment worked with nine healthy undergraduates who were ambitious to take high scholastic honours, and who had little time for athletics or any form of physical exercise, they being types of the average University undergraduate.
A generous table was supplied them with meat and every variety of food that usually composed college fare. The only instructions were that thorough mastication and especial attention to the enjoyment of the food as recommended by me in my books should be faithfully performed. This course was pursued for half a year, and for the rest of the year, in addition to the careful headtreatment and enjoyment, preference was to be given to foods known to be low in nitrogen content; but not to the extent of suppressing any distinct call of appetite for them.
In the first half of the experiment the men held their own on about 40 per cent. less food, computed by cost, and increased their strength-endurance ability by something more than 100 per cent., with the added felicity of feeling unusually fit all of the time, entirely escaping the slack or sick spells they had been accustomed to, and improving greatly in their general studentability, that is: power of concentration, memory, mental comfort, profundity of sleep, etc.
During the second half of the experiment still more improvement was secured owing to the readiness of the body to accommodate itself to the wish by favouring the economies.
I have not a copy of the report at hand. It is included in the publications of Yale University about 1905.
The Author, on his Sixtieth Birthday, performing Feats of Agility and Strength which would be remarkable even in a Young Athlete.
The Author, on his Sixtieth Birthday, performing Feats of Agility and Strength which would be remarkable even in a Young Athlete.
While all of the abundance of confirmatory evidence which has accumulated since 1898 is valuable and gratifying, the verdict of the unremitting observation since then is that the problem of nutrition is always a personal one. After fifteen years of devotion to the study of the head-end question, with due attention to the tell-tale excreta and the product expressed in terms of energy and general comfort, I am unable to predict what my body is going to want to-morrow in the way of nutrition supply. I can say with some confidence that if I go on doing as I have been accustomed to doing daily, and no shock of grief or surprise intervenes to upset all calculations, I am likely to find nutritive satisfaction as expressed by appetite among the foods that are commonly agreeable to me.
If I am compelled or impelled to do a great stunt of walking or other unusual exertion, or receive crushing news, all my present predictions may be useless.The body itself, from the hair on the head to each finger or toe-nail will know what it wants and will have given to the caterer Appetite its requisition covering the need. In the meantime each brain cell and all of the bones have not been neglectful of their sustenance requirements, nor have they been backward in letting Appetite know.
It is fortunate that the common needs of digestion may be supplied from a limited range of food varieties. Milk is all-sufficient always for general supply of the nutritive requisites. In the plebeian potato, which has attained to royal rank as the result of the extensive experiments of Dr. Hindhede, of Denmark, in co-operation with Madsen the Faithful, has been found full nourishment for ten months, at least, when supplemented by butter or margarine to furnish the fuel supply. Even in this surprising revelation no academic prescription was infallible. Potatoes differ in nutritive value as much as 50 percent. Fresh-cooked and well-cooked ones alone fill the bill of sufficiency, and full head-work in assuring easy digestion was made the first rule of the test. For four months I served as a check test-subject and speak from experience.
Nothing is ever accomplished except by a division of labour and on the just division of responsibility depends the success of effort. Nature has given to us the head-end of responsibility.
QUESTION PRESCRIPTION AND PROSCRIPTION
The Protein Enthusiast—Doubting Thomases
The only completely accurate prescriber of nutrition for living creatures is Mother Nature herself, and if she does notprescribe anything by the undoubted approval of appetite sheproscribes it.
One of the rules which have governed my quest for optimum human nutrition in the midst of the twentieth century food supply and other conditions, has always been to go to Nature for final advice in the matter.
When I say "QuestionPrescription and Proscription" I mean that the most positive prescribers of food have something in the food line or advice to sell, and they proscribe as positively anythingthat competes with their commercial product.
My eyes were opened to this possible snare and delusion by a great doctor of medicine,[L]who is also one of the most ardent economists I have ever met—not a miser in any sense, but a religiously philosophical economist. He is almost as righteously indignant against any who use the trust which is placed in them by clients or patients for the selling of high-priced foods as he is at the makers, advertisers, retailers and prescribers of alcohol as a beverage. In his just opinion it is as wicked, or almost as wicked, to advise unprofitable extravagance of any sort as it is to prescribe poison.
To this discriminating philosopher food is the basis of health-wealth, and sacred to its divine usefulness.
The great harm that was done to the world by the academic prescription of excessive protein rations[M]was that itstarted a vicious circle of extravagances which led as surely to untimely death as murder. The perpetrators of this pernicious prescription were innocent of intention to do harm; in fact, they were full of the most generous of motives in issuing their poisonous advice, and one of the most prominent, at least, paid the penalty by dying miserably of his own fatal ignorance.
I may also say that it is "presumption," advisably, for almost all prescriptions of food which do not have their basis on the natural body calls are presumptuous. Nature knows! If given a chance to show her knowledge Nature prescribes rightly and delivers her message in the form of appetite and the other instincts. She will do this in the midst of the most complicated of artificial food mixtures, as I have reason to know from personal experience, confirmed by many others over and over again.
Therefore I may say more surelythan ever, that whateverNATURE PROVIDESandPERMITSasNOURISHMENT I HAVE NO RIGHT TOPROSCRIBE.
THE ONLYPRESCRIPTION
that Honesty approves is the Optimum Economic Nutrition; and my great preceptor, Dr. Hindhede, the ideally honest scientist and doctor, ventures to prescribe only the plainest of foods that are delicious to a true, keen appetite, and cost the least through being in season and so common and easy to grow as to be cheapest.
This good and superlatively honest doctor does notProscribe anything that Nature permits as food and he does not evenProscribe the transportation of grapes from Madeira to the North Cape of Norway for the enjoyment of those who can afford to pay for them.
Would theProscribers of flesh food have denied Amundsen and his companions the flesh of their faithful dogs as a last resort in securing nourishment for the completion of their journey to the South Pole? It was their truly last resort in gaining the victory over the Ice God; and would to God that brave Captain Scott and his band of faithful ones had had such a last but saving resort to help them accomplish the eleven miles between them and rescue! But then, the world would have missed a model of altruism that is worth a million lives, and one of which million everybody would like to be, if their lives are worth the living.
THE PROTEIN ENTHUSIAST
While writing this chapter I have been forwarded material for indignation and a text for condemnation in the form of a book so full of food prescription that it is positively poisonous, as read with the intelligence of my own and current knowledge of the subject, that it ought to be pilloried as a "Horrible Example" of presumptuous prescription and proscription. It is anadvertisement pure and simple, but so prejudicial to the natural facts in the case that it again raises the question of the advisability of a Supreme Court of the Physiology of Nutrition, to try such nutrition perverters for high treason to Mother Nature.
I will not name the book or the author, to further the advertisement. I once stopped a controversy with the doctor-father of the author by offering to wager him one hundred pounds that I could beat him out on a ten mile go-as-you-please tramp, which he had mentioned as one of his stunts to prove his contentions. Our ages were nearly equal, and the difference of training consisted of his prescribing for himself over 100 grams of proteid daily (less by 20 per cent. than the vicious Voit[N]or Kœnig Standards, and less by 30 per cent. than the Standard that killed poor Professor Atwater), while I had subsisted for years on less than half his prescription. He warned me that I was courting death, but that he was providing for himself longevity by the mile. He got mad with me, and nearly fumed at the mouth, because I assumed to insist that only Mother Nature was a competent prescriber, intimating that he was not. I could not out-talk him, and so I sent him a challenge. He made the excuse that he was leaving for the Continent for a rest, but would talk further with me when he returned. His reputed forty-thousand-pound office practice of prescribing his favourite dietaries had worn him out and he was going for a rest. Later I heard of him in a sanatorium—surely disgraceful to a doctor to be compelled to go to such a place for "treatment."
The race, or contest, never took place, but since then I personally have several times broken records established by men one-half, and even one-third, of my age with progressive ease up to three years ago when last put to a test, and I have noted no letting-up of the progress of recuperation as judged by "feelings" or endurance when doing unusual stunts.
In this direction I now feel that I have done enough, and that it is not for age to tempt Providence by competing with the Prime of Muscularity in feats of strength and endurance. John L. Sullivan and Jeffries and many more went once too often into the ring, and Mother Nature, not Corbett or Jack Johnson, knocked them out for good and all. Fletcherizing does not includeeither imprudence or bluff. It merely trusts good Mother Nature for directions to accompany her nutriment-medicine. Whenever at any time I feel the impulse to turn somersaults from the lead platform of a man-of-war into good, clean salt-water—as I did a few years ago or so in the Philippines, as a demonstration to impress the natives—I will "up and do it, or die in the attempt." What I am doing now more than ever is keeping my ear to the mouth of Mother Nature, my finger on her pulse of command, and doing her biddings as well as I can interpret them. If a thing is not agreeable to do, I take it as a warningnotto do it. There are so many useful things to do that are pleasant, what is the use of going out of the way to do disagreeable things. There are some things that are natural and agreeable that we should do, and which we have got out of the habit of doing, physical exercise, for instance. We are dealing with cultivated abnormalities always in a cramped and complex civilisation. "We are constantly doing the things that we should not do, and leaving undone those things that we ought to do," as the Prayer Book tells us, including carelessness of eating, and shirking physical exercise.
To return to the callow book of the canny doctor-son of my antagonist of a dozen years ago. It isn't so callow as it is canny, and since the persons in the case are of the canniest of peoples, those who are so shrewd that Jewish merchants do not thrive among them, and the prescription results in thousands of pounds a year revenue, the game may be set down to ordinary commercial cupidity and popular gullibility. It is safe to always warn against Prescription for Revenue. Like patriotism or religion for revenue, it is questionable, if not surely selfishly prejudiced.
On the other hand, Mother Nature charges no fee for her advice. Shepays good coin as a premium for her patients in the same way that I bribed my first test subjects into eating right by paying them for eating in addition to furnishing the food.
DOUBTING THOMASES
who are too lazy, or incredulous, or careless, to take a month to try the Mother Nature Prescription as interpreted by me, are liable to say: "Appetite is abnormal. Taste is perverted, and the demands of the body are wholly unnatural."
True! But abnormality of that sort can be corrected in a very short time. A "poor chap" who is lucky enough to have to go without food long enough to "whinney like a horse" at the smell of fresh-baked bread and the thought of good Danish butter on it, is not going to "turn up his nose" at even a crisp baked potato; neither is he likely to require sweetbreads to coax himself to eat. Correcting perverted appetite islike purifying a stream which is being polluted at its source and runs muddy all the way to the sea. Stop the pollution, and the stream will purify itself as fast as ever it can by hurrying along with its impurities to the great ocean sewerage.
WHAT CONSTITUTES A FLETCHERITE
Fletcherism and Longevity—W. E. Gladstone, Fletcherite—Fletcherizing Liquids—Getting the Best out of Everything—The Study of Mother-Nature
Since the term "Fletcherite" is incorporated in some of the latest dictionaries, it is proper that the person whose name has been used for the designation should define what constitutes a Fletcherite.
Any person who eats in a healthy manner is a Fletcherite.
Any person who eats in a polite manner is a Fletcherite.
Any person who is faithful to his end of responsibility in securing healthy nutrition for himself is a respectable eater and a good Fletcherite.
WHAT IS NOT A FLETCHERITE
The above definitions are fully comprehensive, but sometimes it is more effective to describe a thing by telling what it is not, and leaving the remainder as an inferential description.
Following this suggestion, it is safe to say, that:
Any one who eats when he is not hungry or what his appetite does not approve, is not a Fletcherite.
All this presupposes the ordinary opportunity for selection in civilized communities where this book is liable to be read and where its revelations and recommendations are most needed.
Any one who does not give his appetite a chance to guide him to healthy nutrition is not a Fletcherite.
Any one who does not extract all of the taste from his food, while it is in the region where taste is developed, is not a Fletcherite.
Any one who succumbs to greed of"getting the worth of his money," because he has paid for food, or can get food free of cost, or takes it on the insistence of Aggressive Hospitality, or to kill time, or for any purpose other than for the satisfaction of a real appetite, is not a Fletcherite.
FLETCHERISM AND LONGEVITY
Returning to positive definition of a Fletcherite: it is a good safe betting proposition that all persons who have passed the seventy year-mark in the life race are Fletcherites in the fundamental requirement of healthy eating. If they reach beyond the eighty year-mark it is certain that they have been fairly decent eaters for many years, even if they abused themselves earlier in life. For example:videthe autobiography of Luigi Cornaro, which was concluded only when he was nearly one hundred years old.Videalso, occasional newspaper statements attributed to centenarians or near centenarians who claimto have been Fletcherites before Fletcher was born. Some of them have had the "constitution" necessary to attain the respectable longevity and have used tobacco and alcohol at the same time, but there is no evidence that either tobacco or alcohol lengthened their lives. In the same category of questionably-profitable indulgences may be put any of the stimulants or narcotics which do not actually nourish the body.
W. E. GLADSTONE—FLETCHERITE
The Epicureans, who were true to the principles of Epicurus, were Fletcherites, before the name of Fletcher had evolved the occupation of arrow making and archery. Mr. Gladstone was a philosophical Fletcherite before Fletcher discovered that he had a mouth that was worth while studying and using, but the name did not get into the dictionary as describing his most statesman-like inspiration.
A Fletcherite does not confine his Fletcherizing to food. He is encouraged, by the beneficial results of careful eating, to try the same method of co-operating with Opportunity on anything that has good and bad possibilities in it.
FLETCHERIZING LIQUIDS
For example: careful tasting of food reveals felicities of taste which lead to seeking similar rewards wherever taste is to be found. Take liquids: The only liquid that does not invite Fletcherizing with some deliberation, but seems eager to get into the blood to quench thirst is Water. If it is not pure water, soft, cool as if from a spring, and delicious in its purity, it has an inclination to stop a little in the mouth and give taste a chance to investigate or to get something worth while out of it. Do not think that inanimate things have no sense of propriety! Everything natural is as fullof propriety as an "egg is full of meat." Nature is Propriety!
Mineral waters, lemonade, beer, wine, and even milk have delicate senses of propriety. They do not rush to be sucked up for the mere relief of thirst, like pure water, but they linger a bit in the domain of taste and inferentially say: "I am tasty; don't you want to taste me: When I am swallowed my gustatory charm is dead and gone forever; please let me leave my taste with you, good Mr. Taste."
Do not think this is a fanciful personification of the liquids which have taste. Don't take my word for it. I am only telling you what Taste has told me, and also told me to tell it to you. The next time you are thirsty and have a chance to get good pure water, note if it doesn't rush to swallow itself in about one-ounce swallows until the thirst is satisfied. If it is too cold it will want to wait a minute to get to the temperature of the body in the hot room of themouth, before rushing in to chill the stomach, and if it is too warm it will not give the full satisfaction that spring-cool water gives, showing that Taste has a wider usefulness than mere glorifying of sapid substances. Or: is it Feeling that assists Taste in expressing approval or disapproval of liquid as well as solid nutriment?
GETTING THE BEST OUT OF EVERYTHING
From Fletcherizing things which pass through the laboratory of the mouth, it is most natural to call on Mother Nature in her stately propriety to assist in getting the best and most out of everything from a kernel of corn to the World at Large.
In the personal equipment, muscular exercise, mental discipline, and habits of effectiveness come in at once for analysis and separation.
Outside the personality, companionship is of most vital concern, and thewonder will be how soon the Natural Appetite for profitable companionship will choose some dogs in preference to some human beings, for the qualities of sympathy, approval and faithfulness that every social being craves.
Of course, there are some companionable combinations among men that are more satisfactory and profitable than any dumb animal can possibly supply, but it is for the purpose of finding such combinations that the Fletcherizing of friends is useful. There is much good in every one, as there is in everything that Nature offers as nourishment for the body, but everything has its Appropriate place and time, its harmonious supplements and compliments, and this is true regarding companionships. "What is one man's food, is another man's poison," is a truism applicable alike to companionship and friendship. It is equally true regarding honesty and dishonesty; truth and deceit.
THE STUDY OF MOTHER NATURE
The foregoing constitutes a pretty stiff proposition for the measurement of ideal Fletcherism, but when you come to consider that the aim is nothing less than getting as close to Mother Nature as possible and listening to her orders relative to good team-work between us, the contract does not seem so impossible. It was close study of Mother Nature and her laws of gravity and resistance that led Lilienthal, the German, to try to glide on the "wings of the wind" with imitations of the wings of birds, and it was following Chanute's lead that led the Wright Brothers to develop the flying-machine. It was because of tutelage in the honest school of Mother Nature that the Wright Brothers prefaced their first account of their "invention" by giving the French aviator credit for the initial suggestion.
In similar manner, it was the close,objective study of the psychology of digestion under the honest direction of Mother Nature in a somewhat drastic form that led Pawlow, the Russian physiologist, to preface his account of his great achievement by calling up the memory of the French physiologist Blondlot, and telling that he had described the true process of digestion from logical deduction fifty years before.
In like manner, Professor Cannon, of Harvard University Medical School, insisted that dear Dr. Bowditch, his preceptor in Physiology, had laid out for him the line of X-ray studies of the "Mechanism of Digestion," which has given him distinguished research fame. Getting close to Mother Nature opens up infinite possibilities of enlightenment, and among them cultivation of the honesty and unselfishness which she herself typifies.
ALL DECENT EATERS ARE FLETCHERITES
Dietetic Righteousness—The Disgrace of Sickness—The Optimism of the Fletcherite
In order that there shall be no misunderstanding let us agree upon the dictionary definition of "Decent." It is "Having propriety of conduct."
Let us also take the dictionary definition of Fletcherite, as an agreed meaning. It is: "One who practises Fletcherism."
Fletcherism, in turn, is defined as "A method of thorough mastication recommended by Horace Fletcher."
No self-respecting person wishes to be indecent about anything, and especially about things that are sacred.
I use the term "Indecent" because it has an ugly look and sound. It is morethan thoughtless or careless. It is positively indecent and nothing less. So is ugly and irreverential eating more culpable than mere heedlessness when we come to consider what it means in the way of consequences. It spells Indecency from the beginning to the end of the process involved in the act.
You may have a very poor opinion of the namesake in the case, but you must be glad that he discovered for himself that decent eating means recuperation of health if it has been shaken: preservation of health if it is a fortunate possession: and epicurean enjoyment that cannot be realized in full without it.
I repeat that the term Fletcherite is not a personal monopoly but a popular and dictionary creation. I am selfish enough to be glad that Gladstone escaped the distinction of having his great name used as a designation of decent eating.
DIETETIC RIGHTEOUSNESS
When I was called upon to deliver an address before the New York Academy of Medicine on "Possibilities of Recuperation after Fifty," I used a phrase of my own coining, "Dietetic Righteousness," and was later called to account for having been irreverent in using sacred terms in connection with food and eating. "By George!" I replied, in righteous indignation, "Is there anything more sacred than serving faithfully at the altar of our Holy Efficiency?" "Is there any righteousness more respectable than that which furnishes fuel for healthy efficiency and moral stability?" And the question may now be repeated, "Is there?"
As for indecency: Is there any conduct having less propriety than regarding our wonderful mouth, with its prodigious potency for protection and pleasure, as a mere food and drink hopper for good material, which becomesreally swill in the alimentary canal if it is not properly treated in the mouth? Can any one think of anything more indecent than offensive odours which are the inevitable tell-tale of indecent eating, and which are eliminated from possibility of development if eating has been decently performed? The penance, or even pleasure, of frequent bathing, in order that the tell-tales of indecency may not become public, does not atone for the sinning in the beginning. The real damage has been done in the, and to the, delicate alimentary canal, with consequences to be realized later on in terms of odious disease or premature death. These are the inside facts in the case made bare by frank presentation.
THE DISGRACE OF SICKNESS
I believe it was the great American philosopher, Emerson, who said that it is "A greater disgrace to be sick than to be in the penitentiary. When youare arrested it is because you have broken a man-made statute, but when you are ill, it is because you have disobeyed one of God's laws." As elsewhere remarked, it is almost impossible in civilized surroundings not to disobey some of the natural laws: body-ventilation, first of all; but no sinning is so dreadfully punished as indecent eating persistently practised.
Some of the ancients believed that the mysterious Something that they called the Soul was located in the stomach and not in the heart or brain. There was reason for thus placing the location, because the bad effect of unhappy thought or anything that "touches the heart" is first felt in the stomach if it has any troubles of its own at the moment to worry about, due to indecent haste or carelessness in eating. To the habitual Fletcherite such double disaster does not come. Easy digestion has been assured by beginning it in the manner required byMother Nature, and to arrest it by unfavourable psychic influence for a little time does not result in the production of those poisons which wear out the body faster than any other cause. The worst of news may be sprung on one as a terrible surprise, and cloud the happiness for a time without causing damage to the delicate vital organs. Thus the misfortune, or its opposite in disguise, as the case may be, does not set up a vicious circle of accumulating fad effects. The thorough Fletcherite is a philosopher, with a solid foundation for his or her faith in the Good that may be lodged in even seeming misfortune, and the recovery from the shock of disappointment, in order to discover the Good at next hand, is as speedy as desired. The faithful one is ever ready to go before the bar of Death's Tribunal for the approving judgment his dietetic righteousness is sure to secure. Good circles of healthy cause and effect have been swirling about in the organism as the result of faithful decent eating, and Nature or Nature's God never fail to perpetuate the evolution of the Good.
THE OPTIMISM OF THE FLETCHERITE
Fairness or politeness to the part of the wonderful alimentary canal which Mother Nature has assigned to herself to manage is nothing more than common decency; and no privacy of privilege can ever excuse any indecent eating. Just think of all the latitude Mother Nature has given her favourite child man in the way of easy convenience in doing the right thing in eating. He is not compelled to eat every few minutes to keep himself alive, as he is compelled to do in breathing: or every few days, as in hydrating his internal economy with moisture. Never is he caught with his bunkers empty of food for fuel or repair material. Be he as thin as a hatpin, comparatively, he has stored under his skin enough nourishment to last him comfortably for a month. Neither is he terrorised by the conventional gnawing of hunger. He isper forcewise as to the physiology of nourishment and his stored resources within, and turns any impatience for his habitual rhythm of feeding into a savings bank fund for use when convenient. He is not frightened to death, as indecent thinkers or eaters are, by the prospect of a fast lasting a few hours or days. He knows that he has on him and in him enough reserve supply of nourishment in the form of visible or interstitial fat, and other necessary supply, to last for a long time, forty or fifty days, at least, and there is plenty of time for expected or unexpected relief to happen. He comes to know the value of his mechanism, and the mental and soul essence it produces and supports. His knowledge of his own resourcefulness is sufficient to enable him to conserve all vital strength until hoped for relief comes. Or, being intune with the good intentions of the Universal Life of which he is a part, he never dreads the promotion we call death. It is merely a station on the road of evolution, and just as sure as we are of death and taxes, so is a faithful Fletcherite certain that he is travelling the road of natural evolution. He has not only eaten decently in the way of fulfilling the natural mechanical and chemical requirements in the mouth, but he has abstained from eating when the mental state was not favourable, and has refrained from worry when the prospect of a meal was deferred for a little while or indefinitely. He may have been whinnying like a healthy horse in anticipation of revelling in the delights of delicious taste, and yet is not filled with disappointment at the postponement of the expected pleasure if the dinner appointment is upset or delayed.
This quite Utopian possibility of stable equanimity is the assured resultof consistent decent eating, and thinking relative to nutrition. It is the constitution and bye-laws of Fletcherism.
As a natural presumption, when decency in one direction leads to such delightful fruition, the opposite of it, indecency, must swing its pendulum to the extent of its full scope in the contrary direction, and it does, for compensation is one of the laws of Nature that must be fulfilled. It is true that Nature is always trying to accommodate herself to any abuse. She may permit being so much accustomed to it that the punishment of it at the moment is not noticed. She even encourages the acceleration of the vicious circle that leads to momentary bankruptcy of resistance, penitence, and reform, as in the case of "bilious attacks." The man who takes his daily or hourly prescription of alcoholic stimulant is permitted to believe that if a little seems good, more should be better until he is landed under the table. Hebecomes more and more efficient in "standing" the abuse until "under the table" means "under the sod." The abuses have, however, been just as disagreeable to Normality all the way along as the first drop of alcohol was distasteful to the infant in arms. So, too, with tobacco, in a less violent form.
Faithful practice of decent eating reverses the order of progress. Normality of taste is the new direction taken. Appetite is given a chance to discriminate, and it chooses simple food, having the chemical constituents required by the body at the moment. It accommodates itself to the daily activity, and can be trusted as the only completely-wise prescriber of what food to take, and how much of it the body can utilize just then.
Herein lies the value of decent respect for Appetite in securing optimum digestion and nutrition. It does not treat all persons alike because no two persons can be alike. Infinite varietyis the fundamental law of Nature. Some persons are born to carry more fat than others. To try to keep them thin is a sin against the natural intention. To allow them to become too fat is also a sin. Strictly decent eating settles this question in conjunction with the sort and amount of activity that the particular person is intended by his or her "Hereditary Tendency" to exert.
FLETCHERIZING AS A TEMPERANCE EXPEDIENT
Tramp Reform—A Remarkable Man—How to Enjoy Wine—Fletcherism as a Cure for Morbid Cravings—A Trial of Fletcherism and its Results—Fletcherism as First Aid
Now we come to a phase of the merits of Fletcherism which has already furnished an abundance of evidence to its credit. In my first experiment, not yet under academic supervision, with no laboratory measurements wherewith to describe the results in chemical terms, I was dealing with a company of ordinary tramps picked up in the streets of Chicago. They simply ate what they chose to order from the bill of fare of a cheap restaurant, but were told to chew everything for all it was worth,which they made no objection to doing. Time was of no value to them, and they really discovered new delights of gustatory pleasure which they had not known before. Tramps are generally persons of resourcefulness and have a cultivated appreciation. Their resourcefulness consists chiefly of being able to live without working, and their appreciation is made keen by the lottery of chance in seeking to get something for which they give nothing.
My tramps were beery and bleery as tramps generally are, but not so dirty; for I paid for baths, washing, and in some instances furnished clothing. Besides supplying these luxuries, I gave them occasionally a big silver dollar which they called a "cart wheel."
It was surprising to see these degenerates freshen up in appearance and lose their blotchiness and greasiness of facial appearance. I knew how to talk to them to get their confidence, and they looked on me as just another "freak"like themselves, but with some kind of a money "pull."
There were fat and thin among them, and it was a matter of surprise that after a little some of the thin got stouter and the fat fell off in weight at the same time. One of them was a belligerent socialist and the author of a well-known book which had quite a vogue in the earlier history of present-day socialism.
Up to the time I began my own experiment, I had been a social drinker of alcohol in all forms to the full extent of "gentlemanly decency," with occasional slips when near the outer edge that made me ashamed of myself after I got sober again. I am now more ashamed than ever when I am reminded of my early foolishness, but since my experiences are being turned to good account I forgive myself. Not only were social occasions an excuse, but I often ordered the social occasions to serve as an excuse. I had never resorted to snake-bites to give legitimate excuses, but I so crowded my resources in this direction that at one time I held the "record," for the community in which I lived, for what was called "hollowness of legs and steadiness of head," and so much was this "strength of character" valued in that community in America, that one was supposed to take pride in holding the record.
The result of my own pursuit of thorough tasting of my food had been that my own ponderosity of front weight fell off, and at the same time I had no desire for wine or beer. It was all a surprise to me, but it was not an amazing surprise until one day one of my tramp guests came to me and said: "Boss, this eatin' game is great; think of me with a dollar in my pocket and not wantin' beer."
In a short time I forgot that I had ever liked wine or beer. It never occurred to me to order it except for a guest, and then I took it with him, or,rather them, for there were usually several or many at my eating parties, but in the Fletcherian manner which is so eminently Epicurean that a few sips went as far as a half-bottle used to do. Here is an important point in profitable economics that any one can demonstrate for himself at once and not rely on my sayso, or that of any one else. Later on I will tell how to do it. The secret is worth its weight in gold as an Epicurean prize as well as a money-saver. I have to tell, a little further on, of a very large experiment which came as a surprise also. It was in a section of country, and among a class of people, where to escape from the toils of the drink demon is nothing short of a miracle.
A REMARKABLE MAN
But before I relate this climaxic experience I will once more refer to one of the most remarkable men I have had the pleasure of meeting. His casecovers more sides of healthy variety than that of almost any one, but he has even a better showing in some respects than any. He is an M.D.; a Ph.D.; an Sc.D.; an A.M.; and a P.H.D.; which last is the "stiffest exam." of them all. He is a champion athlete; the father of an all-round college champion; and as graceful a gymnast as any one ever saw do the "Giant Swing" on the horizontal bar. He is also a grandfather and now past fifty.
This was his experience in 1902 or 1903, in connection with my being called to New Haven to submit to examination under the supervision of Professor Chittenden. It is Dr. Anderson to whom I refer, and he permits my stating his experience as often as I like for the good it will do. My expression of appreciation of his academic and athletic accomplishments is all my own and not authorized.
When I was turned over to Dr. Anderson for physical examination inthe Yale gymnasium, my fitness was surprising to him as he has stated in his reports. He was also ripe for the reasonableness of my revelations. He seemed to me to be in the "pink of condition" himself, and he was so, as "pink" was judged at the time, for a man of his age.
Dr. Anderson tried more careful mastication than usual, and paid more attention to the thorough enjoyment of his food with the same pleasant results that come to everybody when making the trial, no matter how moderate and temperate they have been before. It is equivalent to putting a little keener edge on appetite than usual. Children and even fine ladies will perk up a little when they are conscious of being noticed, and the human senses are human in more ways than one.
Dr. Anderson was pleased with the revelation as a pleasure promoter, but did not notice that he was forgetting totake his daily prescription of stimulant. He was a medical man, past forty, beginning to slack up a little in his elasticity and strength. He was reaching that age when even the most temperate and careful begin to be a little lenient with themselves. His doctor friends were in the habit of prescribing a little stimulant to counter-balance this expected decline in energy and he took their advice. It was the medical fad of the period.
At first, Dr. Anderson ordered for himself one small drink of good medicinal whisky a day, and the effect was as expected. By and bye, however, a little more was needed, and this increasing demand continued its insistence until three drinks were no more efficacious than one had been at first. When I was introduced to him he had begun on his fourth drink daily, and yet burned it up in his exercise without feeling it much.
A couple of weeks after he began to check up my test by personal experience, which is the only scientific way, he all at once remembered, one day, that he had forgotten to take his whisky, and yet he was fitter than usual. I had not mentioned my own experience in this regard to him, I believe, as when we were together he kept me busy with the exercises of the 'Varsity crew, and I had little chance to give him accounts of my full experience. Besides, it did not occur to me that it would interest him who seemed to be moderation and temperance personified. And so he was, according to the scientific estimate of the time, but Nature has another standard of temperance, and under her strict guidance very little but good spring water is needed or desired.
HOW TO ENJOY WINE
To illustrate this and also suggest a way of letting Mother Nature prove that I represent her correctly in thisimportant matter, I will give an account of an actual happening.
I was lecturing in Buffalo, New York, in America, and was invited to address the members of the sumptuous Buffalo Club. I dwelt especially on Fletcherizing as a means of getting the good and the best out of food and drink, and yet for little cost, and at the close of the lecture a dozen or more of the audience asked me to demonstrate my point as above. I was happy to do this, and called for a pint of the choicest still wine, with cordial glasses. The request caused a smile among some of my hosts who were proud of being "one bottle" consumers.
When the wine came I poured out half a cordial glass as the portion I selected for myself and recommended the same prescription for the others, as a "starter." Then I breathed and sipped my delicious grape-juice, as I had learned to do from the professional wine-tasters on the Rhine, in Germany,and in the Burgundy region, in France. The others did the same, and seemed to get unusual satisfaction from both thebouquetand the taste.
What happens is this: You sense the wine by means of the olfactories as you would breathe in the odour of a delicately perfumed flower. Taste is excited and becomes jealous of Smell. You give Taste a taste. Something more subtle than taste; a sort of aroma, so to speak, spreads over the head. You feel the taste of the delicacy up around the temples, and the sensation is delightful in the extreme, fading slowly away but leaving a lovely memory impression.
Then you take another sip, and the sensation is about the same, and so on for a sip or two more, when the supremest delicacy of the wine ceases to express itself. Two or three sips more, and the wine no longer tastes good. Carried further, in this appetite-respecting manner, there will be a desire to spit out the sips, and there is no temptation to drink them.
Professional wine-tasters are supposed never todrinkwine. After tasting it they spit out the remnant from which the taste has been exhausted. Tea tasters and beer tasters and special food tasters do the same in order to preserve their keen taste discrimination.
There is just as definite Swallowing Sense and Expectorating Sense as there is Taste Sense. There is just as strong Appetite Sense for proteid, when the body is short of it, as there is thirst-demand for water for the rehydration of the body. The Senses have sense!
Returning to the Buffalo Club experiment in demonstrating Epicurean Temperance: The half-bottle of wine gave more satisfaction to the dozen or more members of the Club who participated in the experiment than any of them knew was possible.
FLETCHERISM AS A CURE FOR MORBID CRAVINGS
It is not necessary to supply expensive wine for the complete satisfaction of the most delicate epicureanism if Fletcherizing is employed as an habitual cream-separating means. The cream of common wheat bread, and of anything that the normalized appetite favours, is as satisfying when the body is in need of what it contains as are drops of the most costly Johannisberger of the rarest vintages, and nothing but water thoroughly quenches real thirst.
The "testimonials" of one sort and another, including letters and verbal account, attesting to the effect of natural eating on abnormal desires or cravings, number thousands. The reform has not been the result of suggestion, although in some cases suggestion has assisted the cure of intemperate yearnings. Not alone has craving for alcoholic stimulant been abated, but in otherways morbidity has been corrected, and I as well as some medical men I know, have received grateful acknowledgment of the happiness secured by the natural sloughing off of weaknesses or passions which had been a source of self-hatred. Think what immunity from such baneful possibilities means to youth of both sexes!
A TRIAL OF FLETCHERISM AND ITS RESULTS
The very large test of Fletcherism as a temperance expedient hereinbefore referred to was entirely accidental. It occurred in a community of students of a missionary college in Tennessee.
The institution is conducted under religious auspices, the sect supporting it being that called "Seventh-Day Adventists." The buildings are on a large farm, and most of the students earn their board and tuition by doing farm work. Many subsist by what is called "boarding themselves," that is: purchasing raw food and doing their own cooking. To assist in this independence there is a commissary where everything needed is bartered or sold.
One of the prominent persons in the Adventist denomination is Dr. Kellog, Superintendent of the Battle Creek Sanatorium, who from the beginning has been one of the most ardent advocates and teachers of Fletcherism, and to whom is largely due the permanency of its designation as "Fletcherism."
During a visit to the Tennessee institution, Dr. Kellog so successfully preached the merits of natural eating, that all the students were induced to give it a trial as a health and economic measure.
The trial was conducted under observation for six months, when an accounting was made. During the six months the drafts on the commissary had been a trifle less than half what they formerly had been, and at the same time the community had been free from theusual "seasonable" and bilious complaints or illnesses. No one had been cured of a craving for alcohol, for the reason that all were teetotalers on principle, but the sheer economy and healthfulness of the results obtained were of prodigious importance to young persons "working their way through college." The amount of the benefit can be imagined when it is considered that they needed to work less on the farm to earn their food because the food-bill was much reduced. The time saved from work was available for study, and the increase of energy and immunity from sickness added enormously to the average student ability.
One day there was brought to the institution on a stretcher a poor chap of the neighbourhood, crazy with delirium tremens. In the infirmary of the college emergency patients were received, as part of the missionary training is medical.
The sorry dipsomaniac was sobered-up in the usual way and instructed in the process of Fletcherizing. He took kindly to it, as all do who have been dietetic sinners, and the result was the same as with the beery and bleery tramp mentioned in the early part of this chapter. He lost his "taste" for "booze" and continued the incident by becoming a worker on the place and a sound temperance example.
Here is a revelation worth while to the missionary workers. Their field of service was the mountain districts of their State and the neighbouring State of North Carolina, which are famous for their moonshine whisky stills. The whisky distilled in the mountains does not pay any Internal Revenue tax if it can be avoided, and hence the stills are hidden in deep forests and operated by the light of the moon. The inhabitants of these lawless regions are the poorest of the poor and call down the contempt of the negroes. They are called "poor white trash," and moonshinewhisky that will kill at fifty yards is responsible for much of the poverty and trashiness. They are as good marks for missionary sympathy as any "heathen" the world can produce anywhere. I have been among them all and I assure you, these listless and luckless inebriates of the poor white trash regions are the most pitiable.
FLETCHERISM AS FIRST AID
As soon as the incident of the victim of delirium tremens had been measured at its full significance, it dawned upon the missionaries that Fletcherism was to be their most potent assistant in curing the mountaineers of their vices and preparing them for religious instruction. They were won over to the ideal of Dietetic Corpoculture as "First Aid to the Injured" in establishing Temperance on a sound basis.
Thus it was that the graduated missionaries introduced themselves to their charges by building simple ovens ofroad-side stones in rail-fence corners, as field surveyors might do, and invited those who came along to feed with them.
There is never any trouble in securing guests at a feed anywhere, and it is extremely easy among the poor to whom free food means less work and more leisure. It is easy, too, to get the ears and attention of guests at meals who would like to be invited again. It is also easy to teach Fletcherizing to youthful dinner-guests, as Madame La Marquise de Chamberay and I found out in connection with our East Side investigation in New York.[O]
The result of this strategy on the part of the Tennessee missionaries was reported to a meeting at the Battle Creek Sanatorium, and the summary of the good attained up to that time wasas follows: More than a thousand persons were saving an average of $3.00 a month on the cost of their sustenance, and were temperance converts through the sloughing off of all desire for their moonshine product. Think of a saving from sheer waste of $3,000 a month ($36,000 a year) to a community where $1,000 is considered to be a princely fortune, and a saving of a thousand human units from the scrap-heap of worse than death!
THE MENACE OF MODERN MIXED MENUS
Gluttony and Avoirdupois—Contentment—Fletcherism and Political Economy
While it is true that "Variety is the spice of life," and that an appetising variety of plain food is more tempting than a monotony of the most highly-spiced dishes, every tendency of modern menus is a menace to health, and the only way to counteract the menace is to be especially careful in observing the rules of Epicurean Economy.
If the soup is particularly good, there is a temptation to go on and completely satisfy the appetite on it. It requires the restraint of civilized suppression to keep from following the example of Oliver Twist, calling for more and more till the supply or appetite is exhausted.
Then comes the fish: Who can resist accepting a generous helping of this course, served in any one of the dozens of styles that are familiar to the patrons of French restaurants? And how hard it is to refrain from cleaning up the plate in a hurry so that none of it will be whisked away by the waiter to make room for course number three.
Nothing has been said of the Hors d'œuvres of the French menu, or the Ris Tavel of the Dutch East Indian gorge, or the Smoer Gose of a Scandinavian "Spread." A fairly ravenous person, given time enough, and with no one looking, can be counted on to make a "square meal" on these "appetizers" alone before the soup is announced.
Mention of the "Roast," the "Entrées," the "Légumes," the "Dessert," and a bewildering variety of cheeses to be followed by fruit, nuts and raisins, with several different wines, cordials,coffee, and cigars or cigarettes on the side. Even mention of them is likely to cause psychic indigestion.
If one goes to a restaurant with a quarto, gilt-top appetite, and scans one of the monster, modern, mixed menus for a suggestion of what he shall order, he will, undoubtedly, see five or six items that will appeal to his imagination as "just the thing"; and if the cost is no special reason for restraint, he will put down on his order list twice or three times as much as he can possibly eat in order to be as many kinds of afam doolas he can be at the moment.
This is not an unreasonable or fantastic illustration of the menace of a multiple menu and a colossal appetite in convenient conjunction. It is said that an amorous lover has neither conscience nor discretion. This may sometimes be the case; but it is always a sure betting proposition that an opulent, ravenously-hungry person will measure offwith his eager eyes much more than his tummy can possibly hold.
Then follows the inclination of the average human being to "get his money's worth," even if he "must die for it." This is not alone a human characteristic exaggerated in sumptuously-civilized communities, but it is an animal trait as well. If a racehorse is turned out in a field of clover that stands as high as his neck, he will very likely eat himself to death. Likewise, if a little child, with the animal characteristics uppermost, is given a bag of sweets, he will be sure to want to put himself securely outside of the whole bag-full in the shortest time possible, so that he will make certain that no one will take it away from him.
GLUTTONY AND AVOIRDUPOIS
The menace of the munificent menu also leads to the uncomfortable acquisition of surplus avoirdupois. Onsome persons it has quite the opposite effect, however. The writer remembers that it was a tradition in his college that the thinnest man of a class was always the biggest glutton. Each year, a prize of a combination knife, fork, and spoon, was given to the grossest eater of the junior class. Within my memory the recipient was always a very thin and cadaverous fellow.
As a matter of fact, the hardest work done by the body is performed within the body. It is the work of digestion, general metabolism, and the constant and never-ceasing pumping of the blood through hundreds of miles of veins and arteries. If this work is measured in terms of heat units thrown off (calories) the internal activity of the body is as two to three parts of the whole heat energy released into the surrounding air.
It is quite possible to increase this heat expense by 20 to 50 per cent. by merely overloading the stomach a little,and crowding the mechanism of metabolism to its utmost. Sometimes the crowding is carried so far that the organism cannot stand it; sometimes bursts; and, there you are—dead.
CONTENTMENT
The supremest felicity is not wanting anything. If one cannot think of a single thing in the wide, wide world, not even oblivion, that they would have in addition to what they are enjoying at the moment, their cup of contentment is full.
In regard to eating, to have Fletcherized a few morsels of the finest food that anyone's mother ever made, until there is no desire for more, and yet the contentment is of that calm sort that indicates that there is no overloading of the stomach, is gastronomic Heaven, and it carries with it a blanket of general contentment that covers the universe.
On the other hand, to have eaten unwisely, as the result of animal voracity, over-estimate of capacity, and greed of getting outside of all that must be paid for, or, in slavish deference to aggressive hospitality, is Hell from the finish of the meal until the finish of the "spell of sickness" that may follow the gorge. It were almost possible to sink into the depths of such gluttony on any one, two or three of the best dishes possible to imagine; only a modern multiple mixed menu is liable to bring this degradation, and hence the menace of it.
Suppose, again, you are framing up a business deal, and have a customer "on the string." The best way to get at his heart and pocket-book is through the sociability accompanying a sumptuous meal.
You seek a Princess' Restaurant, a Ritz-Carlton or a Waldorf, and make a spread of your Epicurean generosity, your bank account, and your business web or net. If you insist on filling your guests full of everything, you must setthe example. Results: Similar in all cases.
Science is not even secure against the temptation of the monumental menu. The writer has known the citadel of scientific conservatism to be captured by five-dollar still-wine and fifty-cent cigars, as accompaniments of six-course dinner-dreams. This, too, in the interest of an Epicurean Economy that put all of the academic teachings in the back-number list, and favored fifty-cent banquets with nary a cigar to top off the feast.
FLETCHERISM AND POLITICAL ECONOMY
It may be argued that the waste attendant on sumptuous living is the most prolific means of keeping money in circulation: of putting bread into the mouth of the servant class: and that Spartan simplicity would throw the world back two thousand years in the civilized progress it has made.
That might be true of some formsof sumptuousness, but not as to the wanton waste of food through the temptations of magnificent menus. Food is the realest of all forms of wealth. Scarce ever a grain of wheat or kernel of corn is wasted. The story of the Englishman who visited Kansas, and from there took home to London a colossal joke at the expense of corn and Kansas, illustrates the permanence and indestructibility of food wealth.
Riding through the State, with a native Kansan, an English globe-trotter wondered at the endless fields of yellow "maize." He called it maize, but the Kansan called it "corn."
"What in the world do you do with all this maize?" said the mobilized Cockney. "Oh, that is easy," replied the native: "We eat what we can and wecanwhat we can't."
In due season this strange answer was interpreted to the visitor and he determined to can the joke for serving up at his club in London.
Arriving in England, the joker made deliberate preparations to open his can of Kansas corn to the best effect. He invited a set of chappies to dine with him and thepièce de résistancewas Kansas canned corn.
Having engineered the matter to the right point of curiosity, the host told the story of his visit to Kansas and finally exploded hisfinalein this wise: "Do you know, these Americans out in the West are a jolly lot. They have a dry sort of wit, too. I was travelling in company with one of them through the State of Kansas, which is the great maize State of the country. They don't call it maize, however, they call it corn, and what we call corn they call wheat. Well, I was amazed at the miles and miles of maize—no pun intended and no apology needed—and asked my companion whatever in the world they did with it all. And what do you think he said: He said, 'Weeat what we can and the rest we put up in tins!'"
It took the perpetrator of the joke another week to find out why no one laughed, and spoiled everything by still waiting for the point after the real explosion took place: and no international incident is recorded in the history of that day.
Yes, the really most vital wealth is stored in the food treasuries. Profusion of it carries down the prices and this raises wages by comparison. There is always a spot-cash market for food at some price, which is not the case with many other forms of property.
But the waste of the food material itself is insignificant compared to the waste of energy that must take place to get rid of it, the moment it is swallowed and beyond personal responsibility. The transportation of a carload of wheat by rail from Saskatchewan to the Atlantic seaboard by rail andacross the ocean by steamer is small as compared with the expense of getting a mouthful of bolted bread through an alimentary canal that is congested with indigestion.