(At the first writing Dr. Dewey had had the method of treating food
commented on in his letters under trial for three years; it having
been communicated to him by the author among the first.)
"MEADVILLE, PENN., Nov. 17th, 1901.
"MY DEAR MR. FLETCHER:
"In the line of dietary form you have done better work than the entire
medical profession has done from the dawn of History. This matter
of eating the way you preach and practise, serves wonderfully to
save the waste of energy, which is a direct robbery of brain power,
in the stomach. It also saves an undue waste of food, the burden of
over-weight, and above all things, the _waste of disease_. You should
enlarge 'Glutton or Epicure' and push it. My allusion to this little
book in my last book has brought me many letters of inquiry, and I
always commend it as a work of the highest practical importance.
"I have received the article of Dr. Van Someren, and I wish I had
scores of them to send to my patients. I have read it with the
greatest interest, and shall keep it most of the time in the mail
pouches.
"In these latter times I am becoming more and more impressed with the
results of over-food even with the well, until now I feel that the
pussy belly is a matter so clearly attributable to gluttony as to be a
cause of shame, at least, in the physiological sense....
"I hope you will feel it a duty to enlarge and expand the usefulness
of 'Glutton or Epicure.' The people are ripe in this country for just
such a book.... I feel that you are doing the most important work in
physiological investigation of any living man, and we in this country,
especially, need all your new material as an addition to the book...."
(Two years later; after five years' test.)
July 20th, 1903.
"What you have done to unfold physiologic mastication means more for
human weal than all the mere medical prescribers have given the world
from Adam to the present moment. I have tested the method you advise
with the ailing, as you could not have had so large an opportunity to
do. I have been having the care of fasters for the past twenty-six
years, and now all of them, when they return to their healthy appetite
and feeding, have to 'Fletcherise' every morsel. Just now a man has
ended a thirty-two day fast under my care, and has begun taking food
again, with an appetite and a relish that his memory does not recall
having enjoyed before. He swallows nothing that is not reduced to
thin liquid. Only occasional abstinence from food for a time and such
attention to mastication, makes health possible with the majority
of people, tempted by quantities of soft and rich foods. No other
one has taught so wisely how available brain power can be saved from
wastage in the stomach, as have you--the value is beyond all estimate.
"It has been given to me to become a teacher among those who have
neither time nor means to cultivate health; mine to teach them how
to get all the health possible, without the use of any of the health
arts. In dispensing the new physiology of dietary rest I have had
need of all the time possible, with none left for the experiments
of science, hence I have done little or nothing to speak of in the
experiment way suggested in your letters.
"I am very glad to hear from you again, and shall be pleased to have
you indicate the number of the _Popular Science Monthly_, in which
Professor Chittenden's article on your work at Yale appeared, so
that I can send for it. Think of this, my dear Mr. Fletcher, what
a conservation there is of energy, brain-power-reserve and even
soul-force, in saving it from waste in worrying about and literally
pushing quantities of avoidable rubbish through thirty feet of the
alimentary canal; and this is just what is accomplished by your method
of making the jaw muscles and salivary glands do all their whole duty
in the matter of daily food."
September 3d, 1903.
"I send you a whole cargo of thanks for the fine book you sent me (Dr.
J. H. Kellogg's 'Living Temple') and the 'Chewing Song' (taught and
used as a reminder at the Battle Creek Sanitarium). The latter is the
most important kind of a song ever voiced during the age of man. I
have been trying to get time to write you some physiology, but am very
busy with my correspondence with distant patients. Will do so soon."
September 12th, 1903.
" ... What I would like best to express to you is my appreciation
of the exceeding good you have done me in teaching how to save
energy available for brain-power by 'Fletcherising' all foods before
swallowing. In the case of dropsy, I have previously written about,
I am confident the sole means of success that is being accomplished
now, is due to the 'Fletcherising' of all morsels. The patient spends
never less than an hour and a half over his one meal a day. At the
end of his former fast, with his weight of 250 lbs. cut down to 125
lbs., he was permitted to take six meals a day, and in a few weeks he
was nearly as bad as ever, with his weight raised to 180 lbs. Under
my care, and after only a seventeen-days' fast (dietary rest), he was
reduced again to 122-1/2 lbs. There has since been a month of feeding
one meal a day by your method, with weight restored to 156 lbs. and
no hint of returning dropsy--and you are guilty of this, for no other
than the practice of thorough mastication has been capable of such
curing work.
"Your experiences, as detailed in the _Popular Science Monthly_ (June,
1903), were read with absorbing interest. There is no more important
work for man to do than that which you are doing. I have not the
patience for details, and since the 'No Breakfast Plan' has become
somewhat known to the world, I have been too busy; but the more I
study, and study you in particular, the more I see and realise what of
crimes and of evil desires are due to over-food--to bolting food.
"Now for something new! In an article on 'The Mystery of Migrations'
in the _Saturday Evening Post_ of August 22d (1903), it is given out
that all migrating birds let their last meal get thoroughly digested,
that they may start on their long flight with empty stomachs; that no
power may be diverted to the digesting machinery of their stomach.
What is the significance of this in relation to the 'No Breakfast
Plan?' It is the true physiology of Instinct!"
(In response to a request for permission to quote his appreciation.)
September 17th, 1903.
"DEAR MR. FLETCHER:
"You may freely state my views of the value of the work you have done
for humanity better than I have done. Know this; I am not able to
adequately express my own appreciation of it, as revealed in the rooms
of the ailing throughout several years of experience, by any language
at my command. Here is something formal, if you like to use it.
"Yours with admiration and gratitude,
"E. H. DEWEY."
"P. S. The matter of thorough mastication, as unfolded and insisted
on by Horace Fletcher, is the greatest practical physiology that a
dyspeptic, gluttonous world ever has received. The mouth-work, in
saving the strain of overwork in the stomach and in the intestines,
will do more to prevent disease than all other precautions. This is
all the more wonderful when it is considered that Mr. Fletcher is a
layman.[4]
[Footnote 4: Dr. Dewey's expression of surprise at the lay
incompetence of the author is interesting in view of the fact that he
himself is responsible for the untitled, unprofessional deficiency
at which he wonders. When the author met Dr. Dewey, in Dayton, Ohio,
where he was conducting some experiments, in 1898, he was then on the
point of taking up a complete medical course with a post-graduate
course of research-physiology in order to give character to his
authority in advancing the cause of his amateurish discovery, as
related in this book. There were the time, the energy, the means and
the inclination of a student's craving inviting him to take the whole
course to M.D. degree; but Dr. Dewey advised "no." "Don't you do it,"
said he, "you are doing good work as it is; you will be more or less
influenced by existing standards which may be errors, and you may get
switched off the natural track. Study your physiology _after_ you
have made your observations." Dr. Dewey has forgotten his advice of
five years ago, but it was followed. Living almost constantly in an
open-air and open-mind atmosphere of research in alimentary physiology
ever since, thanks to Dr. Dewey's suggestion, the author has escaped
the abnormal physiology which medicine deals with, and he is more
and more thankful for the escape as time reveals that open-air and
open-mindedness are good, both for the soul and for bodily comfort and
health.]
"Here is the physiology involved, as I find the effect of it in
the sick-room. Theoretically, digestion may take place far down in
the digestive tract, but it is practically found that when this
possibility is resorted to, by reason of neglect of the earlier
buccal or gastric digestion, trouble soon happens, and we doctors are
called in to try to effect cures by medicine or otherwise. For every
one horse-power of work, as it were, that is slighted in the mouth,
it requires perhaps ten horse-power of energy to repair the neglect
further on, and all of this waste of energy is charged against the
brain-power, pleasure-power reserve on storage.
"As I read the account of Mr. Fletcher's showing of heat-economy,
reported by Professor Chittenden in his _Popular Science Monthly_
article, and which was verified in the calorimeter measurement at
Middletown, I see at once, from my own observations, that half the
heat commonly used in the human engine is occupied in forcing the
unnecessary waste through thirty feet of intestinal folds and
convolutions."
The author feels very grateful to Dr. Dewey, not alone for his
encouragement, but for the service he has rendered humanity by his
heroic stand for temperance in feeding. He is one of the sturdy
Esculapian Luthers, whose cry of reform comes from the impulse of an
inborn Christian Altruism.
When it becomes generally known, as it some day will be, that
overeating and wrong-eating are the prime causes of temptation to
intemperance in drinking, the measure of Dr. Dewey's service to the
Temperance Cause will be better appreciated.