Part 3

Psychic Environment } This Mental State } involves:

APPETITE (to select for) } ATTENTION (to prepare for) } DIGESTION 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.