GOOD HEALTH AND
HOW WE WON IT
[Illustration: Fig. A. Fig. B.
“THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD”
Micro-photograph of leucocytes (white and grayish bodies) in conflict
with Germs (black dots and bodies). In Fig. A the germ is that of
influenza, in Fig. B that of plague.]
GOOD HEALTH
AND HOW WE WON IT
_WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE NEW HYGIENE_
BY
UPTON SINCLAIR
AND
MICHAEL WILLIAMS
_WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS_
NEW YORK
FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
PUBLISHERS
COPYRIGHT, 1909,
BY FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY
_All rights reserved_
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
INTRODUCTION 1
I. THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD 21
II. HOW TO EAT: THE GOSPEL OF DIETETICS
ACCORDING TO HORACE FLETCHER 41
III. THE YALE EXPERIMENTS 69
IV. HOW DIGESTION IS ACCOMPLISHED 95
V. HOW FOODS POISON THE BODY 113
VI. SOME IMPORTANT FOOD FACTS 127
VII. HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE EAT 145
VIII. HEALTH AND THE MIND 159
IX. THE CASE AS TO MEAT 173
X. THE CASE AGAINST STIMULANTS 193
XI. DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY 203
XII. BREATHING AND EXERCISE 219
XIII. BATHING AND CLEANLINESS 239
XIV. A UNIVERSITY OF HEALTH 258
XV. HEALTH REFORM AND THE COMMITTEE OF ONE HUNDRED 274
APPENDIX 287
ILLUSTRATIONS
“THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD” FRONTISPIECE
FACING PAGE
MR. UPTON SINCLAIR AND MR. MICHAEL WILLIAMS 16
MR. HORACE FLETCHER 42
MR. HORACE FLETCHER MAKING A WORLD’S RECORD 52
PROFESSOR RUSSELL H. CHITTENDEN, PH. D., LL.D., SC. D. 70
PROFESSOR IRVING FISHER, PH. D. 82
MR. JOHN E. GRANGER BREAKING THE WORLD’S RECORD
FOR DEEP-KNEE BENDING 88
M. ELIE METCHNIKOFF 114
PROFESSOR LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL, PH. D. 138
MR. UPTON SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN 146
MR. SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN 176
THE DAILY SWIM 206
FRESH AIR IN BERMUDA 220
OUTDOOR EXERCISE 236
DR. J. H. KELLOGG 258
A GROUP AT THE BATTLE CREEK SANITARIUM 270
INTRODUCTION
BY UPTON SINCLAIR
Ten years ago, when I was a student at college, I fell a victim to a
new and fashionable ailment called “la grippe.” I recollect the date
very well, because it was the first time I had been sick in fourteen
years—the last difficulty having been the whooping-cough.
I have many times had occasion to recall the interview with the last
physician I went to see. I made a proposition, which might have changed
the whole course of my future life, had he only been capable of
understanding it. I said: “Doctor, it has occurred to me that I would
like to have someone who knows about the body examine me thoroughly and
tell me how to live.”
I can recollect his look of perplexity. “Was there anything the matter
with you before this attack?” he asked.
“Nothing that I know of,” I answered; “but I have often reflected that
the way I am living cannot be perfect; and I want to get as much out of
my body and mind as I can. I should like to know, for instance, just
what are proper things for me to eat——”
“Nonsense,” he interrupted. “You go right on and live as you have been
living, and don’t get to thinking about your health.”
And so I went away and dismissed the idea. It was one that I had
broached with a great deal of diffidence; so far as I knew, it was
entirely original, and I was not sure how a doctor would receive it.
All doctors that I had ever heard of were people who cured you when you
were sick; to ask one to take you when you were well and help you to
stay well, was to take an unfair advantage of the profession.
So I went on to “live as I had been living.” I ate my food in cheap
restaurants and boarding-houses, or in hall bedrooms, as students will.
I invariably took a book to the table, and ate very rapidly, even then;
frequently I forgot to eat at all in the ardor of my work. I was a
worshiper of the ideal of health, and never used any sort of stimulant;
but I made it a practice to work sixteen hours a day, and quite often I
worked for long periods under very great nervous strain. And four years
later I went back to my friend the physician.
“You have indigestion,” he said, when I had told him my troubles. “I
will give you some medicine.”
So every day after meals I took a teaspoonful of some red liquor which
magically relieved the distressing symptoms incidental to doing hard
brain-work after eating. But only for a year or two more, for then I
found that the artificially digested food was not being eliminated from
my system as regularly as necessary, and I had to visit the doctor
again. He gave my ailment another name, and gave me another kind of
medicine; and I went on, working harder than ever—being just then at an
important crisis in my life.
Gradually, however, to my great annoyance, I was forced to realize that
I was losing that fine robustness which enabled me to say that I had
not had a day’s sickness in fourteen years. I found that I caught cold
very easily—though I always attributed it to some unwonted draught or
exposure. I found that I was in for tonsilitis once or twice every
winter. And now and then, after some particularly exhausting labor, I
would find it hard to get to sleep. Also I had to visit the dentist
more frequently, and I noticed, to my great perplexity, that my hair
was falling out. So I went on, until at last I was on the verge of a
nervous breakdown, and had to drop everything and go away and try to
rest.
That was my situation when I stumbled upon an article in the
_Contemporary Review_, telling about the experiments of a gentleman
named Horace Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher’s idea was, in brief, that by
thorough and careful chewing of the food, one extracted from it the
maximum of nutriment, and could get along upon a much smaller quantity,
thus saving a great strain upon the bodily processes.
This article came to me as one of the great discoveries of my life.
Here was a man who was doing for himself exactly what I had asked my
physician to do for me so many years previously; who was working, not
to cure disease, but to live so that disease would be powerless to
attack him.
I went at the new problem in a fine glow of enthusiasm, but blindly,
and without guidance. I lived upon a few handfuls of rice and
fruit—with the result that I lost fourteen pounds in as many days. At
the same time I met a young writer, Michael Williams, and passed the
Fletcher books on to him—and with precisely the same results. He, like
myself, came near killing himself with the new weapon of health.
But in spite of discouragements and failures, we went on with our
experiments. We met Mr. Fletcher himself, and talked over our problems
with him. We followed the course of the experiments at Yale, in which
the soundness of his thorough mastication and “low proteid” arguments
were definitely proven. We read the books of Metchnikoff, Chittenden,
Haig and Kellogg, and followed the work of Pawlow of St. Petersburg,
Masson of Geneva, Fisher of Yale, and others of the pioneers of the
new hygiene. We went to Battle Creek, Michigan, where we found a
million-dollar institution, equipped with every resource of modern
science, and with more than a thousand nurses, physicians and helpers,
all devoting their time to the teaching of the new art of keeping well.
And thus, little by little, with backslidings, mistakes, and many
disappointments, we worked out our problems, and found the road to
permanent health. We do not say that we have entirely got over the ill
effects of a lifetime of bad living; but we do say that we are getting
rid of them very rapidly; we say that we have positive knowledge of the
principles of right living, and of the causes of our former ailments,
where before we had only ignorance.
In the beginning, all this was simply a matter of our own digestions,
and of the weal and woe of our immediate families. But as time went on
we began to realize the meaning of this new knowledge to all mankind.
We had found in our own persons freedom from pain and worry; we had
noticeably increased our powers of working, and our mastery over all
the circumstances of our lives. It seemed to us that we had come upon
the discovery of a new virtue—the virtue of good eating—fully as
important as any which moralists and prophets have ever preached. And
so our interest in these reforms became part of our dream of the new
humanity. It was not enough for us to have found the way to health for
ourselves and our families; it seemed to us that we ought not to drop
the subject until we had put into print the results of our experiments,
so that others might avoid our mistakes and profit by our successes.
Historians agree that all known civilizations, empire after empire,
republic after republic, from the dawn of recorded time down to the
present age, have decayed and died, through causes generated by
civilization itself. In each such case the current of human progress
has been restored by a fresh influx of savage peoples from beyond the
frontiers of civilization. So it was with Assyria, Egypt and Persia;
so Greece became the wellspring of art and the graces of life, and then
died out; so Rome conquered the world, built up a marvellous structure
of law, and then died out. As Edward Carpenter and others have shown
us, history can paint pictures of many races that have attained the
luxuries and seeming securities of civilization, but history has yet to
record for us the tale of a nation passing safely through civilization,
of a nation which has not been eventually destroyed by the civilization
it so arduously won.
And why? Because when ancient races emerged out of barbarism into
civilization, they changed all the habits of living of the human race.
They adopted new customs of eating; they clothed themselves; they
lived under roofs; they came together in towns; they devised ways of
avoiding exposure to the sun and wind and rain—but they never succeeded
in devising ways of living that would keep them in health in their new
environment.
The old struggle against the forces of nature once relaxed, men
grew effeminate and women weak; diseases increased; physical fibre
softened and atrophied and withered away; moral fibre went the same
path to destruction; dry rot attacked the foundations of society, and
eventually the whole fabric toppled over, or was swept aside, to be
built up again by some conquering horde of barbarians, which in its
turn grew civilized, and in its turn succumbed to the virulent poison
that seemed inherent in the very nature of civilization, and for which
there seemed to be no antidote.
So much for the past. As to the present, there do not lack learned
and authoritative observers and thinkers who declare that our own
civilization is also dying out. They point out that while in many
directions we have bettered our physical condition, improved our
surroundings, and stamped out many virulent diseases (smallpox, the
plague and yellow fever, for instance), and have reduced average
mortality, nevertheless we have but exchanged one set of evils for
another and perhaps more serious, because more debilitating and
degenerating set: namely, those manifold and race-destroying evils
known as nervous troubles, and those other evils resulting from
malnutrition, which are lumped together vaguely under the name of
dyspepsia, or indigestion—the peculiar curse of America, the land of
the frying-pan.
It is also plain, say the critics of our civilization, that society
to-day cannot be regenerated by barbarians. To-day the whole world
is practically one great civilization, with a scattering of degraded
and dying little tribes here and there. Modern civilization seems to
have foreseen the danger of being overrun some day as the ancient
civilizations were, and to have forestalled the danger by the
inventions of gunpowder and rum, syphilis and tuberculosis.
Are these critics right? I believe that they are, as far as they go; I
believe that to-day our civilization is rapidly degenerating; but also
I believe that it contains within itself two forces of regeneration
which were lacking in old societies, and which are destined ultimately
to prevail in our own. The first of these forces is democracy, and the
second is science.
To whatever department of human activity one turns at the present
day, he finds men engaged in combating the age-long evils of human
life with the new weapon of exact knowledge; and their discoveries
no longer remain the secrets of a few—by the agencies of the public
school and the press they are spreading throughout the whole world.
Thus, a new science of economics having been worked out, and the
causes of poverty and exploitation set forth, we see a world-wide
and universal movement for the abolition of these evils. And hand in
hand with this goes a movement of moral regeneration, manifesting
itself in a thousand different forms, but all having for their aim the
teaching of self-mastery—the replacing of the old natural process of
the elimination of the unfit by a conscious effort on the part of each
individual to eliminate his own unfitness. We see this movement in
literature and art; we see it in the new religions which are springing
up—in Christian Science, and the so-called “New Thought” movements; we
see it in the great health movement which is the theme of this book,
and which claims for its leaders some of the finest spirits of our
times.
In the state of nature man had to hunt his own food, so he was hungry
when he sat down to eat. But having conquered nature, and accumulated
goods, he is able to think of enjoyments, and invents cooks and the
art of cookery—which is simply the tickling of his palate with all
kinds of stomach-destroying concoctions. And now the time has come when
he wishes to escape from the miseries thus brought upon him; and, as
before, the weapon is that of exact science. He must ascertain what
food elements his body needs, and in what form he may best take them;
and in accordance with this new knowledge he must shape his habits
of life. In the same way he has to examine and correct his habits of
sleeping and dressing and bathing and exercising, in accordance with
the real necessities of his body.
This is the work which the leaders of the new movement are engaged
upon. To quote a single instance: while I was “living as I had
been living” and eating the preparations of ignorant cooks in
boarding-houses and restaurants, Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek was
bringing all the resources of modern chemistry and bacteriology to
bear upon the problem of the nutrition of man; taking all the foods
used by human beings, and analyzing them and testing them in elaborate
experiments; determining the amount of their available nutriment
and their actual effect upon the system in all stages of sickness
and health; the various ways of preparing them and combining them,
and the effect of these processes upon their palatability and ease
of digestion. Every day for nine years, so Kellogg told me, he sat
down to an experimental meal designed by himself and prepared by his
wife; and the result is a new dietary—that in use at the Battle Creek
Sanitarium—which awaits only the spread of knowledge to change the ways
of eating of civilized man.
This new health knowledge has been amassed by many workers and, as
in all cases of new knowledge, there is much chaff with the grain.
There are faddists as well as scientists; there are traders as well as
humanitarians. It seemed to us that there was urgently needed a book
which should gather this new knowledge, and present it in a form in
which it could be used by the average man. There have been many books
written upon this; but they are either the work of propagandists with
one idea—containing, as we have proved to our cost, much dangerous
error; or else the work of physicians and specialists, whose vocabulary
is not easily to be comprehended by the average man or woman. What we
have tried to write is a book which sets forth what has been proved by
investigators in many and widely-scattered fields; which is simple,
so that a person of ordinary intelligence can comprehend it; which is
brief, so that a busy person may quickly get the gist of it; and which
is practical, giving its information from the point of view of the man
who wishes to apply these new ideas to his own case.
Michael Williams was recently persuaded to give a semi-public talk on
the subject before an audience of several hundred professional and
business people. He was compelled to spend the rest of the evening
in answering the questions of his audience; and listening to these
questions, I was made to realize the tremendous interest of the public
in the practical demonstration which Mr. Horace Fletcher has given of
the idea of Metchnikoff, that men and women to-day grow old before
they ought to do so, and that the prime of life should be from the age
of fifty to eighty. A broken-down invalid at forty-five, Mr. Fletcher
was at fifty-four a marvel of strength—and at fifty-eight he showed
an improvement of one hundred per cent. over his tests at the age of
fifty-four; thus proving that progressive recuperation in the so-called
“decline of life” might be effected by followers of the new art of
health.
As a result of this address, Williams was invited by the president of
one of the largest industrial concerns in the country to lecture to
his many thousands of employees on the new hygiene; his idea being to
place at their disposal the knowledge of this new method of increasing
their physical and mental efficiency.
For business men and women, indeed, for workers of all kinds, good
health is capital; and the story of the new hygiene is the story of
the throwing open of hitherto unsuspected reserve-stores of energy and
endurance for the use of all.
In writing upon this subject, the experiences most prominent in
our minds have naturally been those of ourselves, of our wives and
children, and of friends who have followed in our path. As the setting
forth of an actual case is always more convincing than a general
statement, we have frequently referred to these experiences, and what
they have taught us. We have done this frankly and simply, and we trust
that the reader will not misinterpret the spirit in which we have done
it. Mr. Horace Fletcher has set the noble example in this matter, and
has been the means of helping tens of thousands of his fellow men and
women.
[Illustration: MR. UPTON SINCLAIR AND MR. MICHAEL WILLIAMS
Resting from their favorite exercise.]
I have sketched the path by which I was led into these studies; there
remains to outline the story of my collaborator. Williams is the son
of a line of sailors, and inherited a robust constitution; but as a
boy and youth he was employed in warehouses and department stores,
and when he was twenty he went to North Carolina as a tuberculosis
patient. Returning after two years, much benefited by outdoor life, he
entered newspaper work in Boston, New York, and elsewhere, and kept
at it until four years ago, when again he fled South to do battle
with tuberculosis, which had attacked a new place in his lungs. After
a second partial recuperation, he went to San Francisco. At the time
of the earthquake he held a responsible executive position, and his
health suffered from the worry and the labors of that period. A year
later there came the shock and exposure consequent upon the burning
of Helicon Hall. Williams found himself hovering upon the brink of
another breakdown, this time in nervous energy as well as in lung
power. A trip to sea failed to bring much benefit; and matters were
seeming pretty black to him, when it chanced that a leading magazine
sent him to New Haven to study the diet experiments being conducted at
Yale University by Professors Chittenden, Mendel and Fisher. He found
that these experiments were based upon the case of Horace Fletcher, and
had resulted in supporting his claims. This circumstance interested
him, suggesting as it did that he himself might have been to blame for
his failure with Mr. Fletcher’s system. So he renewed the study of
Fletcherism, and later on the same magazine sent him to Dr. Kellogg’s
institution at Battle Creek, with the result that he became a complete
convert to the new ideas. Like a great many newspaper men, he had been
a free user of coffee, and also of alcohol. As one of the results of
his adoption of the “low proteid” diet, and of the open-air life,
he was able to break off the use of all these things without grave
difficulty. A bacteriological examination recently disclosed the fact
that his lungs had entirely healed; while tests on the spirometer
showed that his breathing capacity was far beyond that of the average
man of his weight and size. In less than three months, while at the
Battle Creek Sanitarium, tests showed a great gain in the cell count
of his blood, and in its general quality. Also, his general physical
strength was increased from 4635 units to 5025, which latter figure is
well above the average for his height, 68.2 inches.
In conclusion, we wish jointly to express our obligation to Mr. Horace
Fletcher, to Dr. J. H. Kellogg, to Professor Russell H. Chittenden,
to Professor Lafayette B. Mendel, and to Professor Irving Fisher for
advice, criticism and generous help afforded in the preparation of
some of the chapters of this book. The authority of these scientists,
physicians and investigators, and of others like Metchnikoff,
Pawlow, Cannon, Curtis, Sager, Higgins and Gulick, whose works we
have studied, is the foundation upon which we rest on all questions
of fact or scientific statement. They are the pathbreakers and the
roadbuilders,—we claim to be simply guides and companions along the
journey to the fair land of health. The journey is not long, and the
road is a highway open to all.
I
THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD
The new ideas of living which are the subject of this book have
proceeded from investigation of the human body with the high-power
microscope. The discoveries made, which have to do, not so much with
the body itself as with the countless billions of minute organisms
which inhabit the body, may be best set forth by a description of the
blood. “The blood is the life,” says Exodus, and modern science has
confirmed this statement. From the blood proceeds the life of all the
body, and in its health is the body’s health.
If you should prick your finger and extract a drop of your own blood,
and examine it under a microscope, you would make the fascinating
discovery that it is the home of living creatures, each having a
separate and independent existence of its own. In a single ounce of
blood there are more of these organisms than there are human beings
upon the face of the globe. These organisms are of many kinds, but they
divide themselves into two main groups, known as the red corpuscles and
the white.
The red corpuscles are the smaller of the two. The body of an average
man contains something like thirty million of millions of these
corpuscles; a number exceeding the population of New York and London
are born in the body every second. They are the oxygen conveyers of
the body; the process of life is one of chemical combustion, and these
corpuscles feed the fire. No remotest portion of the body escapes their
visitation. They carry oxygen from the lungs and they bring back the
carbon dioxide and other waste products of the body’s activities. They
have been compared to men who carry into a laundry buckets of pure
water, and carry out the dirty water resulting from the washing process.
The other variety of organisms are the white cells or leucocytes, and
it is concerning them that the most important discoveries of modern
investigators have been made. The leucocytes vary in number according
to the physical condition of the individual, and according to their
locality in the body. Their function is to defend the body against the
encroachments of hostile organisms.
We shall take it for granted that the reader does not require to have
proven to him the so-called “germ theory” of disease. The phrase, which
was once accurate, is now misleading, for the germ “theory” is part
of the definite achievement of science. Not only have we succeeded
in isolating the specific germ whose introduction into the body is
responsible for different diseases, but in many cases, by studying the
history and behavior of the germ, we have been able to find methods
of checking its inroads, and so have delivered men from scourges like
yellow fever and the bubonic plague.
THE DEFENSES OF THE BODY
An experiment that is often tried in operating rooms furnishes a vivid
illustration of the omnipresence of these invisible, yet potent, foes
of life. In order to impress upon young surgeons the importance of
maintaining antiseptic conditions, they are instructed to thoroughly
wash their hands and arms in antiseptic soap and water; then they are
told to leave their arms exposed for a few minutes, after which a
microscopic examination of the bared skin will result in exposing the
presence of myriads of germs. Many of these are, of course, harmless;
some are even “friendly”—since they make war upon the dangerous kinds.
But others are the deadly organisms which find lodgment in the lungs
and cause pneumonia and tuberculosis; or the thirty odd varieties of
bacilli which cause the various kinds of grippe and influenza and
“colds,” which plague the civilized man; or others which, finding
entrance into the digestive tract, are the cause of typhoid and other
deadly fevers.
So it appears that we live within our bodies somewhat in the same
fashion as isolated barons lived in their castles in the Dark Ages,
beleaguered constantly by hordes of enemies that are bent upon our
destruction—these being billions upon billions of disease germs. Every
portion of the body has its defenses to protect it against these
swarms. The skin is germ-tight in health; and each of the gateways
to the interior of the body has its own peculiar guard—tears, wax,
mucous membrane, etc. As Dr. Edward A. Ayers points out,—“Many of
these entrances are lined with out-sweeping brooms—fine hairs similar
to the ‘nap’ or ‘pile’ of carpet or plush—which constantly sweep back
and forth like wheat stalks waving in the breeze. You cannot see them
with the low-powered eye, but neither can you see the germs. They sweep
the mucous from lungs and throat, and try to keep the ventilators free
from dust and germs. Behind the scurf wall and the broom brigade of the
mucous membranes, the soldier corpuscles of the blood march around the
entire fortress every twenty-eight seconds” (the time occupied by the
blood in its circulation through the body).
HEALTHY BODIES ARE GERM-PROOF
And again (to quote another authority, Dr. Sadler), “All the fluids and
secretions of the body are more or less germicidal. The saliva, being
alkaline, discourages the growth of germs requiring an acid medium. The
normal gastric juice of a healthy stomach is a sure germ-killer. In the
early part of digestion, lactic acid is present, and there soon appears
the powerful hydrochloric acid, which is a most efficient germicide....
“The living, healthy tissues of the body are all more or less
germicidal; that is, they are endowed with certain protective
properties against germs and disease. This is true of many of the
other special secretions, like those found in the eye and elsewhere
in the body, when they are normal. The blood and lymph, the two great
circulating fluids of the body, are likewise germicidal. In some
conditions of disease, there may be found various substances in the
blood which can destroy germs.”
THE WHITE CELLS ON GUARD
And this definitely brings us to the other kind of inhabitants of the
human blood, the leucocytes, or white blood corpuscles,—and so to the
germ theory of health, which science is showing to be no less true
than the germ theory of disease. In their natural state these cells
are transparent, spherical forms of the consistency of jelly drops,
which float in the bloodstreams or creep along the inner surface of
the vessel. Their function was for a long time not understood; the
discovery of the real facts, perhaps the most epoch-making discovery
ever made concerning the human body, the world owes to the genius of
Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute of Paris. These cells
are the last reserves of the body in its defense against the assault of
disease. Whenever, in spite of all opposition, the hostile germs find
access either to the blood or to the tissue, the white cells rush to
the spot, and fall upon them and devour them.
In their fight against the hordes of evil bacteria that invade the
blood, where the battles are waged, the body’s defenders have four
main ways of battling. Again we quote from Dr. Ayers: “The blood covers
some germs with a sticky paste, and makes them adhere to one another,
thereby anchoring them so that they become as helpless as flies on
fly paper. The paste comes from the liquid of the blood, the plasma.
Another blood-weapon (the ‘lysins’) dissolves the germs as lye does. A
third means of defense is the ability of the white blood corpuscles to
envelop and digest the living germs. One white cell can digest dozens
of germs, but it may mean death to the devouring cells.
The fourth and recently discovered weapon, or ammunition, of the blood
is the opsonins. Wright and Douglas in London in 1903 coined the word,
which comes from the Latin _opsono_: “I cook for the table,” “I prepare
pabulum for.” This is precisely what the opsonins do in the blood. They
manifest this beneficial activity when invading disease germs appear.
They attract white blood cells to the germs and make the bacteria more
eatable for the cells. They are appetizers for the white blood cells;
or sauces, which help the white blood cells to eat more of the bacteria
than they could do without this spur to their hunger. Wright and
Douglas demonstrated beyond peradventure the ability of the white blood
cells to eat a larger number of bacteria when the latter are soaked in
opsonins. They also showed that this opsonic sauce, or appetizer, which
stimulates the blessed hunger of the white blood cells for disease
bacteria, could be artificially produced, and hypodermically introduced
into a patient’s blood, thus increasing that blood’s power of defense
by raising the quantity of opsonins. They also worked out a practical
laboratory technique by means of which the opsonins can be measured,
or counted, with a considerable degree of exactitude, thereby making
it possible to estimate within limits of accuracy any one’s ability to
resist bacterial invasions. If the blood is rich in opsonins, its power
to fight disease is strong. Opsonins are now inoculated into the blood
at several institutions, notably McGill University in Montreal, and at
the Battle Creek Sanitarium.
HOW THE WHITE CELLS DO THEIR WORK
The process by which the white cells fight for us may be watched in
the transparent tissue of a frog’s foot or the wing of a bat. If a few
disease germs are introduced into this tissue, the white cells may
be seen to accumulate on the wall of the blood vessel just opposite
where the germs have entered. “Each cell begins to push out a minute
thread of its tissue,” writes Dr. Kellogg, in describing the process,
“thrusting it through the wall of its own blood vessel. Little by
little the farther end of this delicate filament which has been pushed
through the wall grows larger and larger, while the portion of the
cell within the vessel lessens, and after a little time each cell is
found outside the vessel, and yet no openings are left behind. Just
how they accomplish this without leaving a gap behind them is one of
the mysteries for which Science has for many years in vain sought
a solution. The vessel wall remains as perfect as it was before.
Apparently, each cell has made a minute opening and has then tucked
itself through, as one might tuck a pocket handkerchief through a ring,
invisibly closing up behind itself the opening made. Once outside the
vessel, these wonderful body-defenders, moving here and there, quickly
discover the germs and proceed at once to swallow them. If the germs
are few in number, they may be in this way destroyed, for the white
cells not only swallow germs, but digest them. If the number is very
great, however, the cells sacrifice themselves in the effort to destroy
the germs, taking in a larger number than they are able to digest and
destroy. When this occurs, the germs continue to grow; more white
cells make their way out of the blood vessels, and a fierce and often
long-continued battle is waged between the living blood cells and the
invading germs.”
Now, it must be understood that this description is not the product
of any one’s imagination, but is a definitely established fact which
has been studied by scientists all over the world. Because of the
importance of the discovery, and of the new views of health to which
it leads, we have placed a picture of this “battle of the blood” at
the front of this book. It shows the leucocytes of the human body
in conflict with the germs of influenza: the black dots being the
germs, and the larger grayish bodies the leucocytes. We have chosen a
photograph rather than a drawing, so that the reader may realize that
he is seeing something which actually has existence. We request him
to study the picture and fix it upon his mind, for it is not too much
to say that from it is derived every principle of health which is set
forth in the course of this book.
THE PROBLEM OF HEALTH
The human body is a complex and intricate organism, in some wonderful
and entirely incomprehensible way integrating the activities of all
these billions of other living organisms. Each and every one of these
latter has its function to fulfill, and the life of the individual
body is a life of health so long as the unity of all its organisms
is maintained. Outside of the body are millions of hostile organisms
assaulting it continuously; and the problem of health is the problem of
enabling it to make headway against its enemies for as long a period as
possible. Every act of a human being has its effect upon this battle;
at every moment of your life you are either strengthening the power of
your own organism or strengthening your enemies. Once the organism is
unable to beat back its enemies, health begins to fail and death and
complete disintegration is the ultimate result.
It must be understood that the peril of these hostile germs is not
merely that they devour the substance upon which the body’s own
organisms have to be nourished. If that were all, they might remain
in the body as parasites, and by taking additional nourishment a man
might sustain life in spite of them. Nor is it even that they multiply
with such enormous rapidity; the peril is that they throw off as the
products of their own activity a number of poisons, which are as
deadly to the human body as any known. These poisons are produced much
more rapidly than they can be eliminated from the system, and so they
fill the blood, and death ensues.
Thus the problem becomes clear. In the first place, what can we do to
keep disease germs from securing entrance to the body; and second, what
can we do to strengthen the body’s army of defense so that the fate of
any which do find entrance may be immediate destruction?
HEALTH, LIKE DISEASE, IS CATCHING
In actual practice it is found that the second problem is by far
the more important one. Some germs we can avoid. If we boil all the
water that we drink we will not be very apt to have typhoid. If we
exterminate rats and mosquitoes and flies and fleas, we will not have
yellow fever, or malaria, or plague. But we cannot hope to do this at
present in the case of such diseases as, for instance, consumption,
grippe, and influenza. If we live in a city, we take into our lungs
and throat millions of the germs of these diseases every day. Therefore
the one hope that is left is to keep ourselves in such a condition
of health that the army of our bodies shall be able to destroy these
germs. When the blood is in a healthy condition, the white cells are
numerous, powerful, and active, but when the blood flows stagnantly, or
when it is impoverished, then the white cells are few and the forces of
disease obtain a foothold.
Healthy men can go through many epidemics with impunity. Because the
Japanese army was an army of healthy men, its death rate from those
diseases which usually follow in the wake of all armies was lower
than the world had ever known before. Robert Ingersoll once said that
if he had been God and had made the world, he would have made health
“catching,” and not disease. As a matter of fact, health is catching.
It abounds in the very air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the
movements of every muscle and the play of every fibre and nerve of
the body; it comes from and is nourished by each and every one of
the bodily actions and functions; while disease is only secured by
persistent transgressions of the proper way of living, and by injurious
habits and customs that result in lowering the “vital resistance.”
This vital resistance is the innate power of the body to keep itself
strong; its very lifeforce. This is what we mean when we say that this
or that person has “a good constitution,” or has “a weak constitution.”
This is the capital in the bank of each individual life, placed there
by Nature at the birth of that life, and increased or diminished
by each and every action of our bodies, and also of our minds. As
Rokitansky, the eminent German scientist, said, “Nature heals. This
is the first and greatest law of therapeutics—one which we must never
forget. Nature creates and maintains, therefore she must be able to
heal.”
Many of the most notable discoveries and experiments of modern science
concur in demonstrating that the natural and innate healing power
of the body is man’s greatest resource in combating disease and
maintaining health. It is the body itself which cures the sick man; his
own vitality, and not the drug or medicants which he may take. These
may assist the healing process, but they do not set going the healing
processes themselves. More often, indeed, they are distinct detriments.
They stamp out or banish the distressing symptoms of ailments, and thus
in effect they silence the signal bells of danger which the body rings
at the approach of disease.
Modern science has turned its forces upon this question of maintaining
at its highest potentiality the ability of the body to resist disease.
All the habits of the human race have been investigated in the light of
this idea, and some have been found to be wise and others to be unwise.
These conclusions, with the evidence therefor, are the subjects of our
book.
OUR FOOD IS THE CHIEF FACTOR
It has been found that the most important problems connected with
health are those of nutrition—the questions of what and when and how
and how much food we ought to eat.
Every language under the sun contains a prayer somewhat similar to that
which we have in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, “Give us this day our daily
bread.” If we stop to think for a moment, we realize that next to the
air we breathe, and the water we drink, our food is the most important
consideration in the maintenance of life. All this is the veriest
commonplace; yet the fact remains that it is very rarely indeed that
we do stop to think upon the subject of our food. It is something that
we take for granted, like life itself. In the regular routine of our
days our meals become fixed habits, and the taking of food an almost
involuntary custom. It requires some extraordinary event to arouse us
to a just appreciation of the importance of knowledge on this subject.
Or else the coming of one of the myriad forms of digestive diseases
will serve the purpose of introducing the subject to our notice.
Our blood is made directly from what we eat, and that old Saxon
proverb is true which says that every man has lain in his own trencher.
Man is his food. Each human body is made by chemical action from its
food. All our actions and all our thoughts come from what we eat,
even as the movements of machinery proceed from the coal fed into the
boilers of the engine which operate the machine. If we eat the right
food, namely, the food which contains the elements our bodies require
in the proper proportions, we repair all waste, replace broken down
tissue and supply ourselves with physical and mental energy for our
toils and joys in life; while if we eat the wrong foods we quickly
injure our delicate though powerful physical and mental machinery.
All this would seem to be obvious; yet most people would grant that
they have still much to learn concerning what really constitutes the
best foods, and about the best ways of preparing, or making, or using
those foods. Few of us possess anything more definite to guide us in
our eating than the habits we acquired as children, or habits picked
up in later life from following the example of our friends, or the food
fashions of the day—for there are such things as fashions in foods and
in the eating of foods, even as there are fashions in clothes and the
making and wearing thereof. In this place it is proposed to study the
subject of food from one standpoint, namely, its effect upon the Battle
of the Blood; its relation to the vital resistance of the body whereby
health is maintained.
II
HOW TO EAT: THE GOSPEL OF DIETETICS ACCORDING TO HORACE FLETCHER
We shall first of all see what modern science has to tell us concerning
the question of _how_ we ought to eat.
It may not seem possible that anything essential remains to be said
at this late day on the subject of one of the commonest and decidedly
most necessary of all human acts. That there should be knowledge of the
utmost importance to learn regarding the actions and movements of the
tongue, the teeth, and the jaws, may come with as much surprise to the
majority of our readers as it did to us when we first hit upon this
disturbing, but illuminating, fact.
The act of eating is the starting point of the long series of processes
whereby our bodies are nourished. It is the only act of them all which
lies within our control. We can directly supervise the work of our
mouths; we can watch over the action of the teeth, and tongue, and
palate; but we can not supervise the work of the stomach, or of the
intestinal tube. Once we have swallowed our food, our mastery over it
has ceased—except for some hit-or-miss participation in the further
processes of its digestion by means of pills or potions. Realizing
this, we come to recognize the basic importance of knowing the right
way of eating.
THE STORY OF HORACE FLETCHER
This knowledge the world owes to Horace Fletcher, the American business
man who has made many of the greatest physiologists of our times embark
upon years-long series of experiments and inquiries into the problems
of man’s nutrition. As a result, the text-books of physiology are now
being rewritten; and as a further result, tens of thousands of men
and women, among them some of the best known authors, physicians,
clergymen, military men, and business men of both Europe and America,
have been restored to health by the knowledge of how to eat their food.
[Illustration: MR. HORACE FLETCHER,
Whose books on dietetics and good health were the forerunners of the
present movement.]
This knowledge Mr. Fletcher gained at the very door of death, and in
no more interesting and striking fashion could the importance of it be
shown than by the relation of his remarkable case.
At the age of forty-five, after a varied and adventurous career, as
miner, and explorer, and sailor, and hunter, Mr. Fletcher had won
wealth, and retired from his business in order to devote himself
to long-cherished interests in art and philosophy. He was still
comparatively young, he was a member of many clubs, he had warm friends
in all the capitals and countrysides of the world (Mr. Fletcher being
one of the most untiring of globe-trotters), and in all ways except one
he was equipped and ready for a long life of ease and enjoyment.
The one way in which he was not equipped was—in health.
HOW A STRONG MAN BROKE DOWN
Once he had been a man of robust physique, a champion gymnast and
athlete; he had been president of the far-famed Olympic Club in San
Francisco (which he founded, and where the pugilist Corbett was
discovered), and had won plaudits even from famous professionals for
his prowess with the gloves.
But he had overdrawn his account at the bank of life. He had expended
more vital resistance than he had stored up; to such an extent, indeed,
that when Mr. Fletcher went to the insurance companies at the time he
retired from business he was rejected by them all; he was obese; he was
suffering from three chronic diseases, and he was dying fast. Such was
the verdict given by the skilled and experienced medical examiners of
the life insurance companies. And instead of entering upon a long life
of ease and enjoyment, he was thus condemned, seemingly, to a short
life of invalidism and suffering.
FIGHTING FOR LIFE
But Mr. Fletcher declined to accept any such decision as that. He
decided that he would regain his health—not that he would _try_ to
regain his health, but that he _would_ regain his health.
He first turned to the physicians. Possessed of wealth, he was able to
secure the services of many of the most able specialists of the world.
He visited the most celebrated “cures” and “springs” and sanitariums of
Europe and America. Nothing availed. He found passing relief now and
then, but no permanent good. He gained no health, in other words, but
obtained merely temporary abatement of this or of that disease.
Then he turned to himself. He began the study of his own case. As
he attributed most of his bodily woes to faulty habits of eating,
the subject of nutrition became uppermost in his studies. He was,
coincidentally, deeply immersed and interested in the study of
practical philosophy; and in a very remarkable fashion these two
subjects, these two interests, nutrition and practical philosophy,
became fused into one subject, supplementing and completing each other
and jointly forming the burden of the message of Hope, of the tidings
of great joy, which it became the mission of Horace Fletcher to deliver
to mankind.
MR. FLETCHER’S DISCOVERY
He discovered, or rather rediscovered, and applied, two great and
simple truths:
_First, that the complete chewing of all food, both liquid and solid,
whereby a process of involuntary swallowing is established, foods being
selected in accordance with individual tastes, is by far the most
important and most necessary part of human nutrition. It is the key
that unlocks the door of health, and opens the way to the real hygienic
life._
_Second, that nothing poisons the body, and aids the forces of disease,
more than worry—which Mr. Fletcher has named Fearthought. It is our
nature to look forward, to anticipate. We can anticipate in two
ways—anticipate evil, or anticipate good. The first way is to use
fearthought; the second way is to use forethought. Forethought will
produce cheerfulness and health, even as unspoiled rose seeds will
produce roses. Fearthought will produce disease and trouble, even as
the germs of putrefaction will produce sickness and death._
So great an authority in philosophy and psychology as William James has
given the sanction of his use to Mr. Fletcher’s phrases; and has also
named him as a shining example of those exceptional men who find in
some mental idea a key to unlock reservoirs of hidden and unsuspected
energy. While there is no doubting the fact that Horace Fletcher is
decidedly an exceptional man, yet the records prove that his key is
not merely for the use of exceptional people, but that it is one
susceptible of being used by everybody possessing willpower enough to
enable them to say “yes” when offered something good.
Like other great discoveries, Mr. Fletcher’s discovery of the right
way to eat came partly as an accident. Happening to be in Chicago at
a time when his friends were all away, and being forced to stay in the
city, he took to lingering over his meals in order to pass away the
time. He began to taste every spoonful of soup, to sip every mouthful
of anything liquid, with great deliberation, noting the different
tastes and searching out new flavors.