Part 5

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.

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.

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.

He chewed each morsel of meat or bread or fruit or vegetable until, instead of being gulped down, it was drawn in easily by the throat. And in this manner did he stumble upon his pathway to deliverance. He had not been “toying” with his food—as he then considered he was doing—for more than a few weeks before he noticed that he was losing a great deal of superfluous fat, that he was eating less, but with far greater enjoyment, than ever before in his life, that his taste for simpler foods increased as his taste for highly seasoned and complex dishes decreased, and that he was feeling better both physically and mentally than he had felt in many years.

THE MAGIC OF MASTICATION

What did these things mean? Some hidden virtue in the food he was eating? Some hitherto quite unsuspected tonic in the smoke of Chicago? Or a lesson in health furnished by the “how” of his eating? At this point there flashed through Mr. Fletcher’s memory the story of Gladstone’s advice to his children to chew each morsel of food thirty-two times (once for each tooth in their heads) if they would preserve their health. In that moment, Mr. Fletcher began his investigation of the many processes that go to make up the simple act of mastication, an investigation which has now been going on for more than ten years, and which has resulted in directing public attention to the supremely important subject of nutrition with more emphasis, and in the arousing of more general interest and the production of more telling effect than any other circumstance or event has done in the history of physiologic science. The word “Fletcherizing” was first applied by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, of Battle Creek, after the analogy of “pasteurizing,” in describing the act of mastication as recommended by Mr. Fletcher. “Fletcherism,” as Mr. Fletcher’s system of mental science and of physical culture through mastication has come to be known, after first being for years a stock jest of the newspaper funnyman, has now been recognized, even by those scientists who detest all “isms,” as a most valuable bridge from the land of bad food habits and disease to the land of good food habits and health.

The bridge certainly afforded its builder a passage from one region to the other. Following a constant improvement in his general condition, beginning almost simultaneously with the adoption of his new way of life, Mr. Fletcher is to-day one of the strongest and most enduring men alive. Tests of his strength and endurance made at the Yale gymnasium at different times prove beyond a doubt that this is so. The following is a quotation from the report of Dr. William G. Anderson, director of the Yale Gymnasium:

DR. ANDERSON’S REPORT