Part 6

“In February, 1903, I gave to Mr. Horace Fletcher the exercises used by the ‘Varsity’ crew. He went through these movements with ease and showed no ill effects afterwards. At that time Mr. Fletcher weighed 157½ pounds, and was in his fifty-fifth year. On June 11, 1907, Mr. Fletcher again visited the Yale Gymnasium and underwent a test on Professor Fisher’s dynamometer. This device is made to test the endurance of the calf muscles.

“The subject makes a dead lift of a prescribed weight as many times as possible. In order to select a definite weight, the subject first ascertains his strength on the Kellogg mercurial dynamometer by one strong, steady contraction of the muscles named—and then he finds his endurance by lifting three-fourths of this weight on the Fisher dynamometer as many times as possible at two or three second intervals. One leg only is used in the lift, and as indicated, the right is usually chosen.

“Mr. Fletcher’s actual strength as indicated on the Kellogg machine was not quite four hundred pounds, ascertained by three trials. In his endurance test on the Fisher machine he raised three hundred pounds three hundred and fifty times and then did not reach the limit of his power.

“Previous to this time, Dr. Frank Born, the medical assistant at the Gymnasium, had collected data from eighteen Yale students, most of whom were trained athletes or gymnasts. The average record of these men was 87.4 lifts, the extremes being 33 and 175 lifts.

“You will notice that Mr. Fletcher doubled the best record made previous to his feat, and numerous subsequent tests failed to increase the average of Mr. Fletcher’s competitors. Mr. Fletcher informs me that he had done no training nor had he taken any strenuous exercise since February, 1907. On two occasions only during the past year he reports having done hard work in emergencies; once while following Major-General Wood in the Philippines in climbing a volcanic mountain through a tropical jungle on an island near Mindanao for nine hours; and once wading through deep snow in the Himalayan Mountains, some three miles one day and seven miles the next day, in about as many hours. This last emergency experience came through being caught in a blizzard near Murree, in Northern India, at 8500 feet elevation, on the way to the vale of Kashmir. These two trials represented climatic extremes, and Mr. Fletcher states that neither the heat nor the cold gave him discomfort, a significant fact in estimating physical condition.

“Before the trial on the Fisher machine, the subject’s pulse was normal (about 72); afterwards it ran 120 beats to the minute. Five minutes later it had fallen to 112. No later reading was taken that day.

“The hands did not tremble more than usual under resting conditions, as Mr. Fletcher was able to hold in either hand immediately after the test a glass brimming with water without spilling a drop. The face was flushed, perspiration moderate, heart action regular and control of the right foot and leg used in the test normal immediately following the feat. I consider this a remarkable showing for a man in his fifty-ninth year; 5 feet, 6½ inches in height, weighing 177½ pounds and not in training.”

In order to make a more thorough test of Mr. Fletcher’s power of endurance under varying degrees of physical strain, he underwent on the 17th, 18th, 19th, 21st and 22nd of June, 1907, a number of other exceedingly severe tests, of which Dr. Anderson says: “After each test the respiration and heart action, while active, were healthy, and, under such conditions, normal.

“There was not the slightest evidence of soreness, stiffness or muscular fatigue either during or after the six days of the trials. Mr. Fletcher made no apparent effort to conceal any evidence of strain or overwork and did not show any. He informs me that he felt no distress whatever at any time. Should any one wish to become more familiar with the strenuousness of the movements selected, let him try them. The effort will be more convincing than any report.

“During the thirty-five years of my own experience in physical training and teaching, I have never tested a man who equalled Mr. Fletcher’s record.

“The later tests, given in June, 1907, were more taxing than those given in 1903, but Mr. Fletcher underwent the trials with more apparent ease than he did four years ago.

“What seems to me to be the most remarkable feature of Mr. Fletcher’s test is that a man nearing sixty years of age should show progressive improvement of muscular quality merely as the result of dietetic care and with no systematic physical training. The method of dietetic care, too, as given by Mr. Fletcher, is so unusual that the results seem all the more extraordinary. He tells me that during the four and a half years intervening between the first and the recent examinations he has been guided in his choice of foods and in the quality also, entirely by his appetite, avoiding as much as possible any preconceived ideas as to the values of different foods or the proportions of the chemical constituents of the nourishment taken.

“During this four year period he has more than ever catered to his body nourishment in subservience to instinctive demand. He has especially avoided eating until appetite has strongly demanded food, and has abstained from eating whenever he could not do so in comfort and enjoyment. Mastication of solid food and sipping of liquids having taste to the point of involuntary swallowing, according to his well-known theory of thoroughness in this regard, has also been faithfully followed.

“There is a pretty good evidence that taking food as Mr. Fletcher practices and recommends limits the amount ingested to the bodily need of the moment and of the day, leaving little or no excess material to be disposed of by bacterial agency. This might account for the absence of toxic products in the circulation to depress the tissue.

“The possible immunity from lasting fatigue and from any muscular soreness, resulting from the unaccustomed use, and even the severe use, of untrained muscles is of utmost importance to physical efficiency.

“My own personal observance and trial of Mr. Fletcher’s method of attaining his surprising efficiency, strengthened by my observation of the test-subjects of Professors Chittenden and Fisher who have come under my care meantime, lead me to endorse the method as not only practical but agreeable. As Mr. Fletcher states, both the mental and mechanical factors in selecting and ingesting food are important, the natural result of the care being a wealth of energy for expression in physical exercise.”

FLETCHERISM

So much for Horace Fletcher’s own case.

Yet when he first announced his discovery, his own family laughed at him, and the medical world called him crank. But by quiet, sane, persistent work—by applying to the propaganda of his idea the same methods that had brought him success in business, he succeeded in impressing the scientific world with the value of his method.

An extensive literature has grown up around Mr. Fletcher’s own books. The most important medical bodies in Europe and America have invited him to lecture before them. Hospitals in larger cities have printed his own code of the rules of mastication for distribution. And no large sheet of paper was required, for the whole system could be printed on a postal card, and room would be left for a picture of its author.

Why is complete mastication the best way of eating? Why does its practice lead to recovery of lost health, or increase of health; to increase of strength, to increase of endurance. Is it not a very tedious method, and thus of more trouble than its promised benefits are worth? Does it not waste time? Does it not lead to loss of enjoyment of food?

These are a few of the questions which a discussion of Fletcherism invariably arouses. We speak with a deep conviction of truth when we say that Fletcherism leads to saving of time, instead of loss of time; that it brings increase of sensuous enjoyment of food instead of decrease of it; and that if it is tedious or a bore, then it is not Fletcherizing. The very essence of Fletcherism is the dropping of worry, the elimination of stress and strain. If you do as Fletcher says, instead of doing as somebody says that Fletcher says, you will chew for taste, and not for time; you will take a crust of bread, or a morsel of potato, for instance, into your mouth and roll it with your tongue, and press it against the roof of your mouth, and pass it to and fro, and crunch it, and crush it; and all the while you will not be counting the chews, nor even thinking about chewing, but on the contrary you will be thinking of the taste of the morsel, and seeking that taste—and finding it.

Yes, finding it, even in a crust of bread or in a morsel of potato, in those humble foods which the most of us seem to take more as matters of habit; for by giving the saliva in the mouth a chance to fulfill the work for which it is put in our mouths by nature, we find that the starch in the bread and in the potato is turned into a sweet, toothsome and partly digested morsel of sugar.

Here is a point that answers another of the questions which arose a paragraph or so back. This turning of the starch in bread into sugar by the action of saliva is only one of the numerous acts of digestion which is accomplished in the mouth by the teeth, the tongue, the palate, and the various kinds of juices, or saliva, which are in the mouth. Horace Fletcher pointed out, and medical science now confirms his assertions, that many of the most important parts of the digestive process are meant by nature to be carried out in the first three inches of the alimentary canal. And this is the only place in all the thirty feet or so of the alimentary canal where digestion is in our own control. If we bolt or insufficiently masticate our food, these mouth processes of digestion are simply not accomplished; and for this the whole system suffers sooner or later. The stomach and the intestines are called on to do a great deal of extra work, and much of this extra work is of a kind which they are unable to do. Consequently, what food can not be digested must decompose in the intestines, with the consequent production of poisonous fluids and gases which permeate the body. The whole machinery of digestion is thrown out of gear. All the various germs of disease race to be first to enter the disarranged mechanism, as criminals rush to a city that is in disorder. The blood not being as well nourished as it should be, the white army of the soldiers of the body begin to weaken and to die, and the forces of disease penetrate through their warding lines and attack the fort of life from many sides, or else concentrate their strength in the form of some virulent sickness.

Thorough mastication, on the other hand, means the reverse of these conditions. Almost incredible seem the hundreds of stories which we personally know to be true of men and women who have used Mr. Fletcher’s method as a means to enter the land of good health. In the opinion of Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek, “There is no doubt that thorough mastication of food solves more therapeutic problems than any other thing that can be mentioned. It solves the whole question of the right combination of foods; solves the question of the quantity of foods, and the quality of foods, after one has got his appetite trained, his natural instinct trained; and when it comes to certain diseases like acidity of the stomach, hyper-acidity or hypo-acidity, dilation of the stomach or cirrhosis of the liver, or any other trouble with the digestive organs, if it does not effect a radical cure it makes it possible to tolerate a condition which otherwise would be deadly in a short time. It makes it possible for a patient to live a long time, enjoying comfortable health, where otherwise he would be crippled so that he could not live long at all.”

Although we insist upon the fact that Fletcherism is simple, and easy, too, once you have really begun its proper use, yet we also know that there are many difficulties which the average man or woman has to face at the outset. Professor Fisher encountered these difficulties when experimenting with his students at Yale, and we are indebted to him for enumerating some of them. And these difficulties, like the habit of hasty eating itself, are products of our civilization.

We mean such difficulties as, first, conventionality, or the desire to eat what others eat, and the unwillingness to appear different; politeness, the desire to please one’s host, or hostess, and eat “what’s set before you,” or to eat something which you know you don’t want or which you know is bad for you, because you fear to offend somebody or other who has cooked it, or bought it for you; food notions, or the opinion that certain foods are “wholesome,” and that certain foods should be avoided as injurious even if delicious to the taste; narrowness of choice, as at a boarding house table (and a great number of home tables!) which often supplies what is not wanted and withholds what is; and, lastly, habit, by which the particular kinds and amounts of food which have become customary through the action and interaction of the causes previously named, are repeated day after day, without thought.

“Habit hunger” is another of our handicaps. Habit hunger is said by Mr. Fletcher to be responsible for a vast deal of overeating. He refers to the fact that when we are children we eat at least one-third more proteid or tissue-building foods, in proportion to our size, than we require as adults, for the reason that our growing frames must then be nourished and upbuilt; but when we reach the adult stage we are apt to maintain this excessive consumption of proteid food—and proteid, as we shall see later on, is the chief source of dietary ills.