because all who are to be convinced that these are the true ways in
health culture will begin at once to enlighten their ailing friends, and
will, therefore, encounter the same opposition. "Sir, you have not had
enough opposition," said bluff, old Samuel Johnson. There will be no
need to complain of any lack of this kind in the efforts to render
suffering friends the only aid possible, that will be in persistent
efforts of Nature.
My medical brethren considered the scheme only as they would consider an
invasion of smallpox or a heresy whose methods were a danger to life.
One physician, a woman specialist, informed me that she was continually
importuned as to her professional opinion of the new craze that had
invaded the city. That all other physicians were equally called upon,
that they would condemn, was inevitable; and I permitted them the
largest liberty without the least resentment; but there was the
sustaining cheer of seeing the happiest faces that only increased as the
heresy spread.
My attendance upon the severely sick became more taxing because of the
exceeding concern in the immediate environment, that the pangs of
starvation were being added to the pangs of disease.
As none of my professional brethren ever manifested any desire to be
enlightened on this subject, I did not volunteer, since I felt the wiser
way would be to wait an adequate amount of evidence before making any
public announcements of presumed important discoveries in practical
hygiene.
My experiences in the rooms of the sick had convinced me, long before I
gave up my morning meal, that death from starvation was so remote as
practically to exclude it from consideration; hence with the great
improvement that was the immediate result in my own case I could from
the first speak with a "thus saith the Lord" emphasis on the safety of
going through a forenoon "on an empty stomach."
As no one could come into my office without my being able to give the
assurance of at least some relief that would be immediately realized,
that would be felt even to the finger-ends, my office became more and
more a lecture-room, a school of health culture for the education of
missionaries, for a friend-to-friend uplifting into higher life.
All I needed for my own sake was that missing link to clothe my words
with all the desired power. With so much to enliven, to encourage, it
was as if I were sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her
wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the storm of
ridicule and epithet to which I was subjected.
Once in a while Nature would favor me with a miracle in the way of an
inspiring change. A man in the early prime of life had reached a
condition in which he habitually rejected every breakfast. Two trips to
Europe and a year in the hands of a Berlin specialist for the stomach
failed to relieve; and yet he was not so disabled as to prevent him
attending to his ordinary business affairs; the stomach seemed to be
eccentric in being merely irritable without structural disease.
I asked him if he felt that the breakfasts which would not stay down
were doing him any good. To this he had to assent that they were not. I
told him if the breakfast only to result in a heave-offering were
omitted he would be better able for his duties of the forenoon. He began
at once to raise his brows.
It was not difficult for him to see that if no breakfasts were put into
his stomach none would have to be thrown up with sickening effort, and
hence he could not but be better for the forenoon services if the sick
spell were omitted. The fact was, the breakfast would soon be rejected,
and then the hours of rest would enable the stomach to handle the dinner
without the repetition of the morning sickness.
Only a few words from me of this kind, and thence on there were no
breakfasts; and from the first all the complaints from the stomach
ceased, and he used to remark that he began to get well as soon as I
began to talk to him.
Now this man with his family was a recent arrival in this city, and his
first intimate acquaintance was one who had been relieved of weekly
headaches of a skull-bursting kind through the no-breakfast plan--thus
the missionary contagion.
For many years I was content to allow people to have the morning coffee
or tea as desired, with the largest liberty of dinner gluttony; and this
was really the only means possible for the introduction of an innovation
so radical. To have given nothing to relieve the morning want for
something in the stomach to set the wheels of life in motion would have
been a failure from the first. With all the coffee break of the fast was
attended by so marked an increase of cheer and general strength, and the
enjoyment of the general meal at or before noon was so immeasurably
increased, that the method spread as a contagion against which
professional denouncement and ridicule were in vain.
And with all converts I found that the experiences in the penalties of
gluttony were so enlightening, so restraining, that there was apparently
little need to say much more as to the quantity or quality of food, what
and how to eat.
The enthusiasm of all over the forenoons of power and comfort, to be
followed by a luxury of meals never before realized, fully satisfied my
pride in professional success; and all the more because the penalties of
gluttony were seldom charged to my account.
It was only after the missing link was found and added to the chain that
I could fully realize the enormous waste of strength and the mental and
moral degradation from eating food in excess, because the enticements of
relish are taken for the actual needs of the body. Think of it! Actual
soul power involved in ridding the stomach and bowels of the foul sewage
of _food in excess_, _food_ in a state of decomposition, to be forced
through nearly two rods of bowels and largely at the expense of the soul
itself!!
Oh, gluttony, with its jaws of death, its throat an ever-open gate to
the stomach of torment!
VII.
When I finally arrived at a point of vision where I could see the
stomach as a mere machine, that it could no more act without brain-power
than brawny arms with their nerves severed could wield a sledge, I began
a study of digestion with new interest, with a view to save power from
undue waste.
It is the _sense of relish_, of flavor, that is behind all the woes of
indigestion, and not the sense of hunger. The sweetened foods; the pies,
cakes, puddings, etc., that are eaten merely from a sense of relish
after the sense of hunger has become fully sated, and generally by far
more of the plainer foods than waste demands, is the wrecking sin at all
but the humblest tables.
_Rapid eating_, by which there is imperfect solution of the tougher
solids and a filling of the stomach before the hunger sense can
naturally be appeased, is the additional evil to insure serious
consequences to the stomach and brain.
For merely _practical purposes_, all that is necessary to know about the
digestive process is that by a peculiar arrangement of the muscle forces
of the stomach the food is made to revolve in such a way as to wipe the
exuding digestive juice from the walls; that, therefore, the finer the
division of the solids by mastication the more rapid the solution to the
absorbing condition. That meat in finer particles will sooner dissolve
than meat in large, solid masses is clearly seen.
It will be recalled that digestive conditions are really soul
conditions, as if there were actual wires extending from the very depths
of the soul itself to each individual gland, with power to ebb and flow
as the mental condition shall determine.
It may be presumed that _power_ to digest is the power to revolve food
in the stomach and the power to generate the gastric juice as determined
by the power of the brain, the glands themselves not holding their juice
in mere reserve, but power to generate in reserve. Thus it is seen that
food in excess is in every way exhaustive as the immediate result.
These may be called the subjective conditions of digestion. Now let us
consider some of the objective conditions from the standpoint of moral
science. What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing things on the
earth, so is that shining seen in other faces that reaches the depths of
the human soul with brightness and life.
_Overeating_ is so universal from the general ignorance of practical
physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the
needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore
a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost
possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in
other souls with whom relations are intimate.
As a matter of extraneous _digestive aid_, a cheerful soul in a family
is an abiding source of digestive energy to all in social contact. It
affects the digestive energy of all, as the breeze the fire, as the
clearing sky the low spirits from the gloom of chill and fogs. The eyes
that do not glisten with higher life, the lines upon the face that are
not alive with cheerful, kindly emotions, the frowning look, the word
that cuts deeply, have their repressive effects upon digestive energy
within their remorseless reach.
The _moral science_ of digestive energy is a new study; it is not known
as a factor in the process of digestion; but the time is coming when
cheer of soul will become a study as of one of the finer arts, and then
human homes will not be so much like lesser lunatic asylums without the
restraining hands of a wise superintendent.
Life will be different in homes when all within the age of reason shall
realize that their words without kindness, their looks without cheer,
are forces that tend to physical and moral degradation, really nothing
less than death-dealing energies upon all lives within their reach. The
power of human kindness has ever been a favorite theme with the
moralist, but it has not been considered with reference to its power
upon digestion.
_Anger_ is mental and moral chaos; it is insanity; it is revenge in the
fury of a hurricane; and sensitive natures have the greatest need for
the largest measure of health in order that these human tempests shall
be under larger restraint.
The gloomy, the irritable, the dyspeptic Christian is a dispenser of
death and not of the higher life, and his religious faith does not
spread by the contagiousness of example: and because of the solemnity,
of the exceeding importance of his sense of the possibilities of the
life beyond death he has all the more need to have that physical and
moral strength that his daily walk, conversation, and mien may be
consistent, forceful, and uplifting.
To this great end study, study to see _cheer_ everywhere, and above all
things to possess it. Good health is also contagious, and, no less than
disease, has a reflex impression. Only above the chill dampness, the
fogs, and clouds is the clear sky with the blazing sun. There are
undreamed-of possibilities of getting above the worriments of life
through an intelligent understanding and application of the physiology
of cheer as the chief force in the life of the body, mind, and soul.
VIII.
Having finally arrived at the conviction that from the first wink in the
morning until the last at night strength departs, not in any way to be
kept up by food, that from the last wink at night until the first in the
morning strength returns, I became fully endowed to tell all the sick
and afflicted in the most forceful way that with the strength of the
brain recharged by sleep is all the labor of the day performed, and that
no labor is so taxing upon human muscles that it cannot be performed
longer without fatigue when the breakfast is omitted.
That this is possible came to me as a great surprise and in this way: a
farmer with a large assortment of ailments came to me for relief through
drugs. He was simply advised to take coffee mornings, rest mainly during
forenoons, and when a normal appetite and power to digest would come he
would be able to work after resuming his breakfasts. This man, who was
more than fifty years old, was the first manual laborer to be advised to
observe a morning fast.
Several months after, he came to me with news that his ailing had all
departed, and that he had been able to do harder work on his coffee
breakfasts than ever before with breakfasts of solids. And if he so
worked with power during forenoons, why not others? Why not all?
This no-breakfast plan was so contagious that I was not long in finding
that farmers in all directions were beginning to go to their labors with
much less food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and in all
cases with added power of muscle.
Only recently three farmers went into the field one hot morning to
cradle oats, the most trying of all work on the farm; two of them had
their stomachs well filled with hearty foods. With profuse sweating and
water by the quart because of the chemical heat arising from both
digestion and decomposition, these toiled through the long hours with
much weariness. The third man had all his strength for the swinging of
the cradle, the empty stomach not even calling for water; with the
greatest ease he kept his laboring friends in close company and when the
noon hour came he was not nearly so tired as they.
A man who had been a great sufferer from indigestion, a farmer, found
such an increase of health and strength from omitting the morning meal
that he became able to cradle rye, a much heavier grain than oats,
during an entire forenoon "on an empty stomach." Later he went from one
December to the following April on one daily meal, and not only with
ease, but with a gain in weight in addition. During these months this
man did all the work usual in farm-houses, besides riding several hours
over a milk route during the forenoons.
In this city resides a carpenter, formerly subject to frequent
sicknesses, who for the past five years has walked nearly a mile to the
shop where he is employed without even as much as a drink of water for
breakfast; and this not only without any sicknesses, but with an
increase in weight of fifteen pounds also.
More than a dozen years ago a farmer who was not diseased in any way,
but who had been in the habit of eating three times a day at a
well-spread table, and at mid-forenoon taking a small luncheon for
hunger-faintness, omitted his breakfast and morning luncheon, and has
been richly rewarded since then in escaping severe colds and other
ailings. He conclusively felt that his forenoon was the better half of
the day for clear-headedness and hard labor; he has added nearly a score
of pounds to his weight, and his case has been a wonder to all his
farmer friends, who see only starvation in cutting down brain and
needless stomach taxing.
I must now ask the reader to bear with me while I apply the principles
of this new hygiene with a good deal of reiteration, trying to vary them
in utterance as far as possible. The need of daily food is primarily a
matter of waste and supply, the waste always depending upon the amount
of loss through the general activities, manual labor being the most
destructive.
Across the street from where I live a new house is being built: for
many days during the chilly, windy month of March several men have been
engaged high in the air, handling green boards, studs, and joists for
ten hours each day; and yet these men are not eating more food daily
than hundreds of brain-workers who never have general exercise. The
workmen across the street eat to satisfy hunger; the brain-workers, to
satisfy the sense of relish; and the meals of the latter are habitually
in excess of the real demands because of wasted bodies.
In spite of the apparent overeating of the brain-worker, I believe the
farmer and the manual laborer break down at an earlier age, for the
reason that they overwork and generally eat when too tired to digest
fully: the farmer is rarely content to do one day's work in one day when
the crop season invites him to make the most of fair days.
With successes rapidly multiplying in all directions within my circuit,
the desire became urgent for some way to make my new hygiene known to
the public. My first thought was to get some eminent divine interested
through a cure that would compel him to a continual talk as to how he
became saved.
At a great denominational meeting in Chicago I chanced to hear a
splendid address from a sallow-faced professor of a divinity school, the
Rev. Dr. G. W. N.; and after a great deal of reflection I resolved,
without consulting him, to write him a series of letters on health
culture, hoping that he would become so immediately interested as to
permit me a complete unfolding of my theory and practice.
I began the series, taking all the chances to be considered a crank;
they were continued until the end without response, when later I
received a brief note with sarcasm in every line. At least my letters
had been read; for he informed me that he had no confidence in my
theory, giving me a final summing up with his estimate that there were
more "cranks" in the medical profession than in any other. I was not in
the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I had become
quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.
There was before me the unknown time when a still more eminent D. D.
would both accept and practise my theory, and also give the world his
estimate in an elaborate preface to a book that in the fulness of time
the ways opened to me to write and have published.
I was sent for by a man who had become a moral and physical wreck, his
body being reduced to nearly a skeleton condition from consumption. As
he was taking an average of two quarts of whiskey per week, I accepted
the charge of his case with reluctance.
I was not able in any way to change his symptoms for the better; there
had been no hint of hunger for many weeks, and the mere effort to
swallow or even taste the most tempting dainties was painful to witness.
He was taken with a severe pain in his side, which was fully relieved
with the hypodermic needle, and there followed several hours of general
comfort and no desire for the alcoholic. Seeing this I was strongly
impressed that by continuing the dosings for a time the seared stomach
might get into a better condition and the fast be followed by a natural
hunger.
This is what actually followed: in about a week the dosings were reduced
to mere hints, and without any desire for stimulants there came a desire
for broiled steak and baked potatoes, which were taken with great
relish. Thence on this was mainly the bill of fare, and the half-filled
bottle remained on his table _untouched_, undesired; and in time there
were added more than a score of pounds to his wasted body.
Now it chanced that this regenerative work was seen day after day by his
friend, who was badly in need of an all-round treatment to meet the
needs of his case; he was a man of keen intellect, of real ability of
both mind and muscle. Becoming deeply interested in the theory behind
the miracle he saw unfolding day after day, and all the more because of
a total extinction of the drink-habit that was deep seated through long
duration, he began to omit his morning meals.
He saw more than his own case. He had been a manager of book agencies,
and when he found also his desire for the cigar undergoing a rapid
decline, he became possessed with the idea that a book might be written
on the subject. The time came when he could sit down in the office of
the Henry Bill Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., a picture of health,
to interview Mr. Charles C. Haskell on the subject of publishing a
book. Mr. Haskell had known him in less healthful years, and he
marvelled at the change.
I had duly suggested, and with great emphasis, that no publisher would
listen to him unless he were sick enough to be interested in the theory
and would give a test by actual trial. He found Mr. Haskell in very low
health. Experts had sent him on a tour through Europe in search of that
health he failed to find; his body was starving on three meals a day
that were not digested, and he began to arrange his affairs with
reference to a near-at-hand breakdown.
To this man was made such an appeal as men are rarely able to make,
because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle
seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a
reprieve from a death seemingly inevitable.
As there was no disease of the stomach, it required only a few days for
Mr. Haskell to acquire so much of new life that he felt as one born
again, and a week had not passed before I had his earnest request to put
my hygiene into a book, he taking all chances of failure.
He began to advise all ailing friends to give up their breakfasts or to
fast until natural hunger came, getting many marvellous results. One of
his first thoughts was to have the forthcoming book introduced by some
eminent divine who could write through the inspiration of experience.
In a visit to Norwich of that evangelist of world-wide eminence, George
F. Pentecost, D. D., then of London, Eng., the opportunity came, and
for a case of "special conversion" he was made the guest of Mr. Haskell.
He was easily persuaded to the system, and his need is expressed in the
following from the introduction of _The True Science of Living_, which
was actually written without his having read a single line of the
manuscript.
"Taking the theory upon which this system of living is based into
account--and even to my lay mind it seemed most reasonable--and the
testimony which I personally received from both men and women, delicate
and biliously strong, workingmen, merchants, doctors, and preachers,
delicate ladies for years invalided and in a state of collapse, and some
who had never been ill, but were a hundred per cent. better for living
without breakfast, _I resolved to give up my breakfast_. I pleaded at
first that it might be my luncheon instead, for I have all my life
enjoyed my breakfast more than any other meal. But no! it was the
breakfast that must go. So on a certain fine Monday morning I bade
farewell to the breakfast-room. For a day or two I suffered slight
headaches from what seemed to me was the want of food; but I soon found
that they were just _the dying pains of a bad habit_. After a week had
passed I never thought of wanting breakfast; and though I was often
present in the breakfast-rooms of friends whom I was visiting, and every
tempting luxury of the breakfast was spread before me, I did not desire
food at all, feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a few
months, the thought of breakfast never occurs to me. I am ready for my
luncheon (or breakfast if you please) at one o'clock, but am never
hungry before that hour.
"As for the results of this method of living, I can only relate them as
I have personally experienced them:
"1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick headache since I gave
up my breakfast. From my earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having
gone a whole month without being down with one of these attacks, and for
thirty years, during the most active part of my life, I have suffered
with them oftentimes, more or less, every day for a month or six weeks
at a time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without an acute
attack that has sent me to bed or at least left me to drag through the
day with intense bodily suffering and mental discouragement.
"2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my surplus fat, my weight
having gone down some twenty pounds, and my size being reduced by
several inches at the point where corpulency was the most prominent; and
I am still losing weight and decreasing in size.
"3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, becoming softer, finer,
and more closely knit than heretofore. My complexion and eyes have
cleared, and all fulness of the face and the tendency to flushness in
the head have disappeared.
"4. I experience no fulness and unpleasantness after eating, as I so
often did before. As a matter of fact, though I enjoy my meals (and I
eat everything my appetite and taste call for) as never before, eating
with zest, I do not think I eat as much as I used to do; but I am
conscious of better digestion; my food does not lie so long in my
stomach, and that useful organ seems to have gone out of the
gas-producing business.