same time doing damage to the body. For these wandering cells are more
hardy and vigorous than the higher cells by which the bodily functions
are performed, and which they attack, so whatever might be done to
weaken the attack of the wandering cells would to a greater degree
damage the higher cells of the body. The conclusion that Metchnikoff
reached was that the only direction in which we can hope for success
in the attempt to prolong human life, lies in giving attention to the
predisposing causes which weaken the vitality of the higher body cells
and thus expose them to the successful attacks of the scavenger cells.
In other words, if we are to prolong human life, we must make the
conditions of life such that the premature accumulation of body wastes
or poisons shall be prevented.
One of the first steps to take to affect that end is, obviously, the
avoidance of the introduction of poisons, and poison-forming foods,
into the body. Out of all proportion to all other causes which lead
to the formation of body poisons, is the production of toxins in the
colon or large intestine. Metchnikoff’s studies show beyond a doubt
that there is a close connection between the size of the colon and the
duration of life in various birds and animals. Where the colon is used,
and has attained large proportions, as in man, in the horse, and many
other animals, life is comparatively short, and death is premature.
Where the colon is rudimentary, or where only such foods are eaten as
do not decay or ferment in the colon, then life is long.
Thus the most important problem, according to Metchnikoff, is how to
prevent the development of poisons in the colon. He believes that the
colon, indeed, is quite superfluous, and that man would be better off
without it. He quotes several curious cases in which the colon has
been removed from the body, and the subjects of the operations have
recovered impaired health and lived for long periods afterwards. Since
the colon cannot be generally removed from the body, however, the
practical problem comes down to this: How may we avoid the evils which
result from the fermentative and putrefactive processes which go on in
this organ?
If the large intestine is kept clean, if only those foods which are
antitoxic are eaten, then there will be very few poisons generated in
the colon, and the health of the body will be maintained in a higher
degree and for a much longer period than can be possible when toxic
foods are freely partaken of. It is here that the great argument for
vegetarianism on its scientific side arises. All meats and fish are not
only “toxic” foods in themselves, but they are quite likely to contain
parasites of various kinds.
Ordinary bread has been shown to contain a sufficient amount of
proteid to supply all the body needs, as do also rice and other
cereals and potatoes. Nuts and dried peas and beans are exceedingly
rich in proteid, like meat, and therefore should be eaten sparingly.
The best foods in the order of excellence are given by Dr. Kellogg,
as follows—the antitoxic foods being in italics: _fresh ripe fruits_,
_cooked fresh fruits_, _cooked dried fruits_, nuts, cooked cereals,
_rice_, _zweibach_, _toasted corn flakes_, _potato_, _cauliflower_,
_and other fresh vegetables_, _honey_, _malted nuts_, _yogurt_, _or
buttermilk_, sterilized _milk_, and cream, peas, beans, lentils,
_raised bread_, and sterilized butter.
HOW TO ENLIST THE SERVICES OF FRIENDLY GERMS
Since the poisons which are produced in the colon are due to the growth
and cultivation of germs, the remedy which naturally suggested itself
to a bacteriological specialist like Metchnikoff was to find some
harmless or comparatively harmless germ with which the poison-forming
germs might be fought—or, in other words, to introduce into the body an
extra battalion of soldiers to assist the warrior cells in the battle
of the blood.
After years of study and research, Metchnikoff found this beneficient
germ in various lactic acid forming microbes, particularly an especial
microbe known by the name of Bulgarian bacillus, or Yogurt. This
bacillus grows in milk, and in growing it produces large quantities
of pure lactic acid. It does not decompose fats, nor does it produce
alcohol, as do other lactic forming germs, such as those found in
kumyss, matzoon, and kephir.
Milk is first sterilized by boiling for a few minutes, then allowed
to cool and a quantity of the ferment is added. In a few hours a sour
taste which is pleasant to all whose palates relish mild buttermilk, is
developed. Metchnikoff advises that a pint or a pint and a half of this
sour milk be taken daily. By this means large quantities of the acid
forming and beneficient germs are taken into the intestine, and by
degrees the poison producing germs are killed or driven out. Thus the
work required of the kidneys, the liver, the skin, and other excretory
organs is lessened, and the vigor of the living cells is maintained so
that the macrophages do not attack and destroy them.
In Bulgaria where Yogurt is a staple article of food, there are more
centenarians, and more vigorous old people to be found than anywhere
else on earth. Not only are the Bulgarians and the Hungarians the
longest lived races in Europe, but they show a remarkable freedom from
appendicitis, colitis, and other diseases due to intestinal infections,
circumstances which called the attention of European physicians to
a study of the milk ferment which produced Yogurt, and led to the
scientific investigations, first by Masson of Geneva and later and more
completely by Metchnikoff and Kellogg, which have placed its use both
as a curative and a preventive agent upon a thoroughly scientific basis.
Its use is bound to supersede that of kumyss, kephir, matzoon,
and other lactic acid ferments on account of the fact that these
ferments are able to live only in the small intestine, while Yogurt
bacillus thrives in the colon, where it may be found weeks after the
administration of Yogurt has ceased. The importance of this fact will
be seen at once when it is recalled that the colon is the chief seat
of the anaerobic infection and poison production which are the causes
of intestinal autointoxication. Thus the last word of modern science
on this subject would seem after all to be but the confirmation of a
means for reaching natural old age which has been known for hundreds of
years. But to-day we are learning to use means for the prolongation of
life by the light of knowledge; no longer blunderingly, handicapped by
evil habits which nullify the value of the small fraction of hygienic
truth which we possess. To-day, Hygeia, while it holds out to our lips
an elixir of life, insists that if it is to have its maximum power, we
must also breathe rightly, sleep rightly, and eat and drink rightly.
VI
SOME IMPORTANT FOOD FACTS
The importance of avoiding constipation will be obvious to those who
have followed this account of the process of autointoxication; one
should see that his daily bill of fare contains a generous supply
of laxative foodstuffs, such as sweet fruits, ripe figs and prunes,
acid fruits and fruits juices, fresh vegetables, fats and all grain
preparations. It is of the utmost importance that the bowels should
move regularly once a day. There is another reason for eating food
in the shape of fruits or salads, which is that the body may have a
sufficient supply of mineral salts.
Nuts and fruits are a splendid combination, since the fat of the nuts
and the sugar of the fruits supply the energy and heat producing
substances. Fruit sugar indeed is merely a digested form of starch—the
digestive process having been accomplished by the heat of the sun
in the ripening of the fruit. Fruits contain no fat and practically
no starch, and with the exception of the fig, the banana, and a few
others, they contain so small an amount of proteid that that element
may be considered practically missing. Fruits are used for the sugar,
the acids, and the water they contain. Nuts and fruits may be eaten and
digested raw by persons who have sound teeth, and who will thoroughly
masticate these foods.
Bananas should never be eaten until they are completely ripe, this
condition being shown by the appearance of black or dark brown spots
on the skin. When in this condition they are usually thrown into the
garbage can by the fruit dealer.
Before eating them, one should scrape off the outside fluff, which
is next to the skin, as experiments have shown this to be highly
indigestible. Eaten when ripe no fruit is more nutritious or delightful
than the banana. The only way in which unripe bananas should be used is
baked, the same as apples, when they make a succulent and nutritious
dish.
Sweet apples will digest more quickly than any other raw fruit
substance; but if eaten raw, apples should be thoroughly ripened, and
most thoroughly masticated, else hard pieces of apple will enter the
stomach and give rise to fermentation. A mealy apple is considered by
physiologists as a food substance almost completely predigested, and
ready for absorption. If such an apple is reduced to a smooth pulp by
chewing, it will pass out of the stomach within an hour. Baked, sweet
apples are digested by persons whose stomachs will not tolerate any
other fruit.
The acid of sour apples is an excellent corrective for foul conditions
of the stomach, such as exist in biliousness. The germs of typhoid, of
cholera, and others likely to produce acute disease, are quickly killed
by solutions of citric and malic acids, the acids of the lemon or the
apple. The juice of a lemon added to an ounce of water will render that
water sterile within half an hour, even though it may contain the germs
of typhoid fever and cholera. The antiseptic properties of fruit juice
render it exceedingly valuable as a means of killing the germs in the
stomach and the alimentary canal; a fact which explains the benefits
derived from various “fruit cures,” which have been for many years
practiced in Europe, and more recently have been employed in various
parts of the United States.
The indigestion which many people complain of as arising from the
use of fruit comes not from fruit in itself, but from its improper
use in combination with other foods with which it does not agree. It
is sometimes supposed, for instance, that fruits conduce to bowel
disorders; but the truth is that an exclusive diet of fruit is one of
the best known remedies for chronic bowel disorders. Care should be
taken, however, to avoid fruit juices which contain a large amount of
cane sugar; only the juices of sweet fruits should be employed, or else
a mixture of sour and sweet fruit juices without sugar. Raisins, figs,
prunes, sweet apples and sweet pears may be mixed with sour fruits.
Fruit that is sweetened with sugar to a large extent is indigestible,
since cane sugar often proves an irritant: while the combination of
cream and sugar which is so often used with many fruits is a very bad
one. Fruits should be eaten with vegetables only if both are thoroughly
masticated, for the reason that the cellulose in vegetables takes a
long time to digest, while fruit takes a very short time, and is held
in the stomach and ferments. Fruit combines well with cereal foods,
breads, and the like, and with nuts.
WHAT COOKING DOES FOR GRAINS
Cooking does for grains what the sun does for fruit; it performs a
preliminary digestion. In undergoing digestion the starch in food
passes through five stages: first, it is converted into amylodextrin,
or soluble starch; second, erythrod extrin; third, achroödextrin;
fourth, maltose; and fifth, levulose, or fruit sugar. Cooking can
carry the starch through the first three of these processes, rendering
it ready for almost instant conversion into maltose, on coming into
contact with the saliva in mouth and stomach. In the intestine
maltose is converted into levulose or fruit sugar and the process of
digestion is completed. Modern science has shown by experiments that
the preliminary digestive work done by cooking varies greatly with the
method of cooking adopted. There are practically three methods used in
the cooking of cereals, kettle cooking (that is, boiling and steaming),
over cooking, or roasting, and toasting, or dry cooking. Kettle
cooking changes the raw starch into soluble starch; in other words, it
carries the starch through the first step of the digestive process.
Baking, or very prolonged kettle cooking, will convert the starch into
erythrodextrin, the second stage of starch digestion. Toasting, or dry
cooking, in which the starch is exposed to a temperature of about 300
Fahrenheit, advances the starch one step farther, yet.
ABOLISH THE FRYING PAN!
One important thing to remember in connection with cooking is that
fried foods, the use of which is so prevalent in America is an
unmitigated evil. “Of all dietic abominations for which bad cooking is
responsible, fried dishes are the most pernicious,” says Dr. Kellogg.
“Meat fried, fricasseed, or otherwise cooked in fat, fried bread, fried
vegetables, doughnuts, griddle cakes, and all similar combinations
of melted fat or other elements of food are most difficult articles
of digestion. None but the most stalwart stomach can master such
indigestibles. The gastric juice has little more action upon fats than
water. Hence a portion of meat or other food saturated with fat is as
completely protected from the action of gastric juice as is a foot
within a well-oiled boot from the snow and water outside.”
This same reason explains why rich cake, shortened pie crust and
pastry generally, as well as warm bread and butter disagree with
sick stomachs and are the cause of many diseases. Not only does the
interfering with the digestion of the food by its covering of fat set
up fermentation, but the chemical changes occasioned in the fat itself
develop exceedingly injurious acids which irritate the mucous membrane
of the stomach, causing congestion and sometimes even inflammation. The
frying-pan is an implement that should be banished from every kitchen
in the land.
For many years past America has been deluged with various breakfast
foods, the virtues of which have been loudly trumpeted. Yet in the
ordinary process of cooking these breakfast foods, oatmeal, cracked
wheat, etc., it is seldom that more than half the starch completes
even the first stage of conversion. Hence it cannot be acted upon
at all by the saliva, which does not begin the process of digestion
with raw starch. The use of imperfectly cooked cereals is without
doubt responsible for a great share of the dyspepsia prevailing among
Americans. Oatmeal porridge, and similar preparations, unless most
thoroughly cooked, are not wholesome foods, and when cream and sugar
are added, there is a combination calculated to create a marked form of
dyspepsia. Cereals must be cooked dry in order to be thoroughly cooked,
and when prepared by dry cooking or toasting, they are well adapted to
the human stomach, are easily digested and in combination with fruits
and nuts, constitute a good dietary. Cereals must not only be cooked
dry in order to be promptly digested, but they should also be eaten
dry. Experiments show that an ounce of dry, well cooked cereal food
when well masticated will produce two ounces of saliva; whereas mush,
gruel, and other moist cereal foods cause the secretion of only a very
small quantity of saliva, less than one quarter of the amount produced
by the same food in a dry state.
In connection with the cooking of cereals, it is well to remember
that the chief vegetable proteid, gluten, is also rendered very much
more easily digested by thorough cooking. On the other hand, the
digestibility of animal proteids, in the form of both meat and eggs, is
greatly diminished by cooking.
The potato is another important foodstuff; when it is well cooked it
is one of the most nutritious and wholesome of all foods. The starch
of the potato is more easily digested than that of cereals, as has
been shown by numerous experiments conducted of late in Germany and
in America. A good way of preparing potatoes so as to increase their
digestibility is to cut them into slices after cooking and then place
in an oven until slightly browned; but the admixture of fat of any sort
should be avoided.
On the other hand, cabbage is one of those vegetables which is less
likely to create stomach trouble when eaten raw than if cooked. The
food value of cabbage, however, is so small that it is hardly worth
eating, save as a relish. The same remark may be made as to such other
foods as celery, spinach, and greens of all sorts. They are only
valuable for the sake of the small quantity of mineral salts they
contain, and for the sake of adding another taste to the bill of fare.
Onions have a higher nutritive value, but this is offset by their
containing an irritating volatile oil, which when onions are used too
freely may harm the mucous membrane. The onion plays its best part in
cookery when used as a flavoring substance.
The mushroom is another article of food, popular among those who can
afford it, which modern science shows to be practically unfit for human
use. Paradoxically enough, although chemical analysis of mushrooms
show them to be so rich in proteids as to earn for them the name of
vegetable beefsteak, yet researches have shown that these proteids are
not available by the body, and hence that mushrooms have no nutritive
value whatsoever.
DAIRY PRODUCTS NEED ATTENTION
Milk is commonly considered a wholesome and easily digested food,
but this is true only in a modified sense. Thousands of infants die
annually because of indigestion set up by the use of cows’ milk, and
hundreds of adults are more or less injured by the too free use of
unsterilized cows’ milk, which produces biliousness, sick headache,
inactive bowels and a variety of other disturbances. These are not
alone due to the toughness of the curds which are formed by milk, and
which set up fermentative and putrefactive processes in the stomach
unless the milk is thoroughly cooked beforehand.
Federal departments at Washington were, not long ago, almost crippled
by the prevalence of typhoid fever among the employees; and the public
health service under Surgeon-General Walter Wyman traced more than
ten per cent. of the cases to the milk supply. Professor Lafayette B.
Mendel of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, told one
of the writers of this book that he went to a certain city that had
suffered an epidemic of typhoid, and made a map showing each house that
had contained a case of typhoid fever. He made a similar map showing
the houses where certain milkmen stopped—and the two maps were almost
completely identical. It has also been established beyond a doubt that
tuberculosis is communicated from the cow to the human being, and in
certain sections of the world it is believed that milk from tubercular
cows is the chief channel of infection. It has been shown that even
if the udder of a cow be healthy, a tubercular cow may give infected
milk, and that the presence of a single tubercular cow in a herd may be
responsible for the infection of the milk of healthy animals. Several
international medical congresses have lately declared that all milk
should be boiled in order to kill the germs.
[Illustration: PROF. LAFAYETTE B. MENDEL, PH.D., YALE UNIVERSITY,
Who has carried on researches in conjunction with Prof. Chittenden.]
The United States Department of Agriculture issued in Circular No.
111 of the Bureau of Animal Industry, and in Circular No. 114, the
recommendations made by a conference of some twenty of the foremost
scientists of the United States, and few more important documents
concerning the public health have ever been issued by a government. In
brief, these recommendations may be thus stated: Raw milk is highly
dangerous. Boiling or pasteurizing kills the disease germs and makes
the milk safe without seriously impairing the taste or digestibility.
Milk produced under the most ideal conditions, such as “certified”
milk, is only relatively safe. Pasteurization, when properly done,
makes the milk absolutely safe.
Butter, of course, is subject to all the arguments that can be advanced
against milk, with the additional one that it is even more subject
to infection with germs than milk itself, since the time that elapses
between its manufacture and its consumption is usually far longer than
the time that elapses between the drawing of milk from the cow and its
use. Only butter that is made from sterilized cream should be used.
Cheese, of course, is open to all the objections urged against
unsterilized milk and butter, and in addition has a disagreeable
quality all its own. The cheese eater may at any time swallow a serious
or even a fatal dose of “cheese poisons,” which are substances produced
in cheese by the action of germs. These are not ordinarily present in
sufficient quantity to render their presence apparent; nevertheless,
a great number of cases of cheese poisoning are annually reported
by various boards of health all over the country. Cheese made from
sterilized milk is less open to these objections. A delicious cottage
cheese may be made from Yogurt milk.
The too free use of sugar at the table and in cooking, not only in its
pure form, but in the shape of preserves, syrups and sweet beverages,
has been shown to be a most prolific source of injury to the stomach.
Sorghum, maple sugar, and maple syrup are essentially the same as cane
sugar and molasses. It has been shown that if we eat freely of fruits
we will obtain all the sugar our system requires in a form that is
easily digestible.
The constitution needs quite a good deal of fat; wholesome fats are
contained in nuts, and in cereals, and are also provided liberally
by ripe olives and olive oil. Emulsified fats are those in which the
minute particles are broken up; and these are far more readily absorbed
by the tissues of the body. The fat in ripe olives is emulsified fat—as
likewise is olive oil when used in mayonnaise dressing. It should not
be mixed with vinegar, however, as vinegar is an irritating substance
that works harm, when used freely, to the mucous membrane of the
stomach. Lemon juice is not only much safer, but makes a much more
delicious dressing.
The objection which applies to vinegar, applies also to pepper,
mustard, and other condiments and spices.
The too free use of salt, of which nearly everyone is guilty, is
another habit upon which modern physiologists frown. While salt is
essential, it is contained as an element in many foods, and there is no
more reason why it should be sprinkled upon each and every article of
food that is taken than we should have castors containing all the other
kinds of inorganic salts, that the system needs, and which are supplied
to it in fresh foods. Salt using is merely a habit, and a disastrous
one, since it has been shown to be one of the factors in the causation
of kidney troubles, such as Bright’s disease.
The large use of glucose in the form of candy, syrups, adulterated
honey, and various sweets which are in common use, is said by
physiologists to be responsible for a large number of cases of
diabetes, a disease which is rapidly increasing in America. There is
now produced a malt sugar, called malt honey or “meltose,” which can
be used freely for all the purposes that cane sugar is used.
The case of food reform against fish would merely lead to the relating
of the arguments against meat. Fish contains nearly seven per cent. of
uric acid. It is exposed like meat to the presence of tape worms and
other parasites. Even when fresh out of the water its flesh is filled
with fatigue poisons, the result of its struggles to escape from the
net or the hook; and Mosso of Turin and other authorities have shown
that these fatigue toxins have a bad effect upon the body. No food will
so quickly decompose and putrefy as fish, and unless perfectly fresh it
will always be found full of the putrefactive bacteria which are the
active agents in causing autointoxication.