Watch good Nature, observe her methods, try to imitate them by way of
experiment, and you will find that, as heretofore stated, there is a
_perfect way_ enfolded in all of Nature's problems and that man has
only to discover the way to have it freely accessible to him.
Watch a child take its nourishment in natural manner. The sucking
action is like the act of mastication in that it excites the glands
which supply fluids to the mouth. Whatever number of these fluids there
may be, I will class them all as saliva. Certainly in the case of milk
being taken into the stomach, saliva is not needed to lubricate it. It
is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that saliva is intended as a part
of the mixture necessary to digestion; that is, to the conversion of
the food into nutriment.
In the case of children nourished at the breast of the mother--the only
natural way--the food is already alkaline and ready for digestion in
the stomach and intestines as related previously.
Remember also that, in the case of invalids with very weak stomachs,
physicians recommend taking milk and broth through a straw or through
a glass tube. Taking fluid this way requires a sucking action of the
mouth and thereby induces a flow of saliva. _Of course_, the fluid is
better digested than when drunk because Nature's way has been followed,
and it is no wonder that milk and often soups of different kinds are
indigestible, if taken contrary to the natural way, except in digestive
systems which have not yet exhausted their ten-horse-power resistance
capacity.
I have tried milk and soups upon a stomach trained down so fine that
it was like a pair of apothecary's balances, sensitive to the least
inharmony, to find that if they are drunk there is a mild protest--a
sort of a shrug of the shoulders, as it were--and that when the same
liquids have been moved about in the mouth for the time necessary to
naturally excite the Swallowing Impulse, they have passed into the
stomach without the owner being conscious afterwards of their presence
except by feeling of complete satisfaction.
It would seem, therefore, that the perfection of nutrition requires
the proper mixture of saliva added to _all_ food substances, and that
mastication is not only a means of separation in order to give saliva
a chance but a valve opener for salivary glands in order to make the
proper solution for the stomach; and, that taste exists, in one of its
important functions, to indicate how long the process should continue
and when it has effected its healthful purpose.
Any one who tries it, no matter how perverted the taste has become by
abuse, will find that Nature is not only kind but alluring. Meat or
bread, without sauces or butter, are tasteless, in a degree, when first
taken into the mouth dry. It is for this reason that butter, sauces,
salt, sugar, etc., are used to make them what is called palatable. It
is the salt or the sugar or other spices in these which excites the
palate immediately when the dry morsel would not do so in such marked
degree.
If you take the meat or the dry bread and masticate sufficiently,
allowing the nutriment to become thoroughly solved by the saliva and
separated from the _dirt_,--the indigestible, tasteless remainder--the
taste will become more and more delicious as the saliva gets possession
of the solution, and will have a final delicacy which sauces cannot
equal, as a reward for pursuing Nature's invitation and rendering her
the appointed service.
An easy experiment that will prove the above statement to be correct is
to take a variety of breads, white and brown, toasted and untoasted,
crust and soft, and afterwards some of the same soaked in soup or milk,
or, in the juice of whatever meat you happen to have at your meal.
Taken dry, toast will only reduce and disappear, without effort of
swallowing, into the stomach, leaving no tasteless dregs behind, after
about thirty actions of the jaw. This is probably the reason why toast
is an invalid's best diet; because mastication is required to crush
it, saliva is liberated by the acts of mastication, less saliva is
required to prepare toast for the stomach than any other form of bread,
and therefore, the proper conditions are attained _perforce_, and easy
digestion is promoted. Crust of French bread will do the same by means
of about forty jets let loose by mastication; the soft inside of French
bread will require fifty, or more; crust and inside of biscuits and of
"home-made" bread somewhat more than the French bread; while "Boston
brown bread" requires as many as seventy to eighty jets turned on by
action of mastication to dissolve it.
The above refers to moderate mouthfuls. The process is incomplete until
all is dissolved, taste ceases, and natural swallowing occurs.
Will it not be observed that mastication, as far as crushing or
mangling is concerned, has small part in the reduction of "Boston
brown bread," and little seeming use except to turn on the jets of the
solving saliva, for the material itself is soft, and sometimes "mushy"?
Saliva has little use as a lubricant in this case, for the reason that
the brown bread experimented with can be easily swallowed when first
taken in the mouth. Abundant experiment has been made by those to whom
"Boston brown bread" was formerly little less than a poison, to prove
the assertion that, sufficiently mixed with saliva, it is perfectly
digestible and that the delicious taste of the bread after forty or
fifty bites (1/3 to 1/2 minute) gets sweeter and sweeter, and attains
its greatest sweetness and most delicate taste at the very last, when
it has dissolved into liquid form and most of it has escaped into the
stomach.
It will be noticed that the time, or attention, required to solve these
different problems of nutrition as embodied in different sorts of
breads is exactly proportionate to their recognised digestibility, and
explains the reason why hot and "soggy" biscuits, after the American
fashion, and "Boston brown bread" have been classed as not easily
digestible.
Still further proof of my contention in favour of the importance of
taste as a guide and guard in the process of nutrition is that, if you
soak soft bread, or even toast, in the juice or gravy of any meat, the
number of masticatory or tasting movements necessary to fit it for the
stomach and satisfy the taste will be about the number required to
masticate raw meat from which the juice has come and not such only as
would seem requisite on account of the softness of the substance when
made pulpy by soaking and which might be forcibly swallowed at once.
Tests like these alone are sufficient to prove my contention, but,
when the result of the experiments is so immediate for good in every
direction, as it has proved itself to be in all cases tried, there is
no longer doubt but that Nature's most important secret relative to
human alimentation has been heretofore practically undiscovered; that
is, as far as any inquiry I have been able to make sheds light upon the
subject.
The result, in all the cases of my observation, has been an immediate
response of naturally increased energy; approach of weight toward the
normal, whether the subject was over-weight or under-weight; a great
falling off of the waste to be discharged by the avenue of the lower
intestines and also through the kidneys; relief of bleeding hemorrhoids
and catarrh--the diseases suffered by the patients; emancipation from
headaches; clearing of the tongue of the yellow deposit--usually called
fur--that is an indication of rotten conditions in the stomach; and
return of the energy for work which all men and women should have, and
which finds expression in healthy children in the form of great energy
for play.
The tax upon the lower intestines has been, in my experiments, reduced
so that there was no invitation to relief more frequently than once
in four or five days, and the quantity of the deposit was less than
half the quantity of a usual daily contribution to waste under former
methods of taking in nourishment, thereby proving the fact that
appetite and taste, when given full chance to serve, serve us well.
This feature (quantity of waste) differed in the cases of the different
persons experimented with according to the carefulness with which
they obeyed the test injunctions. In some, greed abnormality could
not quickly be overcome, but, as the subjects were selected in part
from the stratum of society where want is the constant dread, it is
not to be wondered at that a lifetime habit of tremor and greed should
resist even the dictates of their reason. But it was in these that
the revelation excited the highest appreciation at last when they were
put in possession of faculties and strength that they had supposed the
Creator had denied them in a world of suffering.
There is no doubt but that it is possible to introduce nutrition into
the system wherein, or rather wherewith, there is little or no waste
material.
One physician, to whom I applied for information, suggested that too
fine an application of my method might finally do away with the lower
intestines altogether from the same cause that any unused member of the
body, and also unnourished members, shrivel and disappear in time.
While this is possible, the means taken towards it are productive
of marvellous good results; and, if there were no further use, what
purpose would they serve?[14]
[Footnote 14: Dr. George Monks of Boston, Massachusetts, has recently
called the attention of the author to the fact that the length of the
intestines in man have been known to vary from nine feet to twenty-nine
feet.
In the longer ones the _papillæ convenenti_ which serve for absorption
and which line the inside of the intestines extended only part way down
the channel, but in the shorter ones they lined the channel throughout
its entire length, giving inferential evidence that the strain of
continued excess of waste material had lengthened the intestines for
the sole purpose of providing storage room for the waste. Metchnikoff,
the head of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, has even proposed removing
some eighteen feet of intestine by surgical operation, including the
troublesome vermiform appendix, as being unnecessary in connection with
cooking and the prevalence of partly predigested foods.]
Think of the number of separate complaints that are attributable to
trouble of the lower intestines, and think of the relief coming with
their return to normal conditions in performing infrequent service with
the ease of rejuvenated strength! Such was the case with all of the
subjects under test, and it was a revelation which was as the opening
of a new life to even those who had suffered least, and had thought
themselves fortunate as to health conditions.
I hope I will be excused for using the terms "dirt," "rotten,"
"glutton," etc. I know they will give a shock to sensitive
conventionality, but is it not better to shock conventionality with a
proscribed term, if it means just what it says, and nothing else, than
to shock the delicate organism of our machinery of life by throwing
dirt into its furnace with good fuel, and thereby allowing the glut of
ashes therefrom to encumber the journals of our mechanism, to the waste
of our power and to the wearing out of our machinery?
* * * * *
Disease is nothing but dirt in the system and the result of dirt. It is
our own dirt at that, having been introduced by our own carelessness or
as the result of combined ignorance and greed.
Ignorance has excused and does excuse the responsibility; but, when we
have providentially been provided a way by Nature to select and sift
and prepare perfect fuel for the furnace of our Life-Power-Plant, there
can be no further excuse for not following the teaching to the extreme
of the last possible refinement.
* * * * *
I will not presume to say what and whom good Doctor Appetite, with
the assistance of Doctor Taste, can cure. They have both cured and
greatly relieved rheumatism, gout, eczema, obesity, under-weight,
bleeding-piles, blotches and pimples, catarrh, "that tired feeling,"
muddy complexion, indigestion, and yellow-tongue, within four months.
It has been revealed that attention to their invitation and warning
cures unnatural craving and beautifully appeases appetite desires
with one-third the usual food; and, at the same time, they teach an
appreciation and enjoyment of food quite new even to _bon vivants_.
Any person can employ Dr. Normal Appetite and consult Dr. Good Taste
_free of all charge_, and make endless discoveries in the possibility
of delightful and healthfully economic nutrition.
The suggestion was originally given by the author in crudest form with
the assurance of physiologists that trial of it involved no risk, but,
on the contrary, that it led in the right direction toward preventing
disease. I felt that it was too important to be withheld from those who
do not know the existence of Nature's _perfect way_ provided by the
Senses of Appetite and Taste.
Record of careful tests and results will probably follow in another
volume. The author has entered the field of investigation to find
deterrents to Nature's perfect development and will not rest while any
remain.[15]
[Footnote 15: At the present time, five years after this promise was
made, the author is happy to say that it has been faithfully kept and
with important results steadily accruing.]
With even the crude hint, _that health can be secured and maintained
by consulting and respecting Appetite and Taste_, each person having
either can assist in the investigation.