The a.b.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition

Lecture Viii.: Physiological Action and the Teaching

of Instinct: Experiences of the Physician 247

Introduction to Dr. Cannon’s Papers on Movements in the Alimentary Canal studied by Means of the Röntgen Rays.H.F. 284

Swallowing and Movements of the Stomach and Intestines, by W.B. Cannon, M.D. 285

The Movements of the Food in the Œsophagus, by W.B. Cannon and A. Moser 285

The Movements of the Stomach, by W.B. Cannon 301

The Movements of the Intestines, by W.B. Cannon 342

The Battle Creek Laboratories.H.F. 389

Experimental Investigation of the Influence of Mastication and Cooking of Food, etc., in the Laboratories of the Battle Creek, Michigan, Sanitarium, under the direction of Dr.J.H. Kellogg 391

Dr. Edward Hooker Dewey and the “No Breakfast Plan.” H.F. 396

Professor Jaffa and the Fruitarians.H.F. 397

Dr.H.P. Armsby.H.F. 397

Explanation of the A.B.C. Series.H.F. 399

INDEX 409

INTRODUCTION

DO WE EAT TOO MUCH? CAN WE LEARN TO EAT RIGHT? WITHOUT LOSS OF ENJOYMENT? WITHOUT CARE BEING A NUISANCE? WITHOUT SOCIAL INTERFERENCE? WITH ASSURANCE OF HEALTH? WITH INCREASE OF ENERGY? WITH INCREASE OF ENDURANCE?

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TO ALL THESE VITAL QUESTIONS, THIS BOOK ANSWERS ONLY “YES.”

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VERIFY THIS BY PERSONAL EXPERIMENT. IRRESISTIBLE DESIRE FOR PHYSICAL EXERCISE WILL FOLLOW, AS A MATTER OF COURSE, PROBABLY FRUITING IN USEFUL ACCOMPLISHMENT BY THE SAME INVITATION OF HEALTHY IMPULSE WHICH CAUSES CHILDREN TO PLAY TIRELESSLY. DO RIGHT YOUR FEEDING OF THE BODY. NATURE WILL DO ALL THE REST FOR YOU ARIGHT.

Introduction

DO WE EAT TOO MUCH?

(A propos of the Scientific-Military Experiments at Yale University)

Do we eat too much?

Nine out of every ten physicians tell us “Yes,” and tell us true!

How much too much?

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Luigi Cornaro suggested that all persons in his time ate more than was necessary; most persons ate twice as much as was good for them; and some, who were extravagantly gluttonous, ate ten times as much as was their most economic need; and Cornaro, who was a dissipated wreck at forty, reformed his manner of eating and lived to be a hundred to prove his declaration.

Experiments carried on in this country and in Europe during the past five years confirm this estimate of habitual excess; but fortunately they have also revealed a natural protection, heretofore unappreciated, available to all, which can regulate the appetite to suit the real needs of nutrition and thus avoid the dangerous excess which predisposes to discomfort and disease.

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Luigi Cornaro lived more than three hundred years ago. His charmingly frank and interesting autobiography has been published in English upwards of forty times in different new editions, and no one has disproved the possibility or probability of his claim. We all know that Cornaro was right. We know, in a general way, that the great Italian dietitian and philosopher was wise and uttered wisdom, and we are told that most, if not all, of the diseases which pain, worry, and afflict us are caused by indigestion or mal-assimilation of food, the result of some indiscretions of eating. The questions then are “What are our indiscretions?” “How can we avoid them?” and “What is the new discovery that will protect us and, at the same time, add to the pleasures of the palate and of living?”

The answers to all these queries will be found herein, as will also an explanation of the very active interest which is being taken just now in the problem of human nutrition by scientific and military authorities, as evidenced by the Yale investigation.

The author has, in collaboration with several others, found a way how not to eat too much while eating all that the appetite desires, and in a way that leads to a maximum of good taste and at a minimum of cost and waste, but it is necessary to test many persons of different physiques and varying temperaments, and also to test other methods of attainment of economy, to learn what is best for general application, and that is what is being done at Yale.

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The cost to the pocket that is saved by economic nutrition is of little matter as compared with the saving of the waste of energy and the menace of disease.

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Nature certainly never intended that we should weaken, depress, and distress ourselves in the way that is common to present-day living, as is made evident by the prevalence of discomfort and disease relative to our daily food. Nature’s plan of evolution does not work that way in general, does not retrograde in the progress of the improvement of plants and dumb animals, and certainly does not intend that Man, the First Assistant of Nature in the cultivation of things and in the domestication of the powerful natural forces, should suffer and become degenerate contrary to her general law.

If we are agreed upon the foregoing, let us ask ourselves a few questions.

Without any undue egotism, may it not be possible for a generation of human beings, who have progressed so far in intelligence as to be able to move things by steam, to communicate across the ocean even without wires to guide our messages, and to see clearly through objects that are as dark as night to the unassisted human eye with the aid of an artificial light, to learn the secret of right self-nutrition and practise it in a manner that will not deprive us of the maximum of pleasure which Nature invariably gives as a reward for conformity with her beneficent requirements? May we not assume that beings who have learned to breed and train horses to race with human intelligence, and to run, trot, or pace a mile in less than two minutes, may also train themselves to have the proportional relative speed, endurance, and longevity that has been attained by race horses through man’s care, and to enjoy the pleasure of living that is evident in these favoured animals, mere servitors of man though they be?

If this disparity of man is due to ignorance arising in self-neglect, which is the usual accompaniment of genius, may we not now, at the beginning of the pregnant twentieth century, rest for a moment from discovering, developing, and improving the world outside our personal selves and concentrate our attention for a while on learning to know and care for ourselves? May we not, at least, give “horse sense” attention to such a vital interest?

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In the midst of the present confusion which exists among opinions as to the right conduct of life and activity, and the best manner and system of diet to be used to secure health and efficiency, it seems almost a vain appeal to call for concert of action in a matter of common and persistent neglect. Each person, as his own keeper, is careless, and in matters of bodily management no one feels called upon to be his brother’s keeper; but this is merely the lethargy of oversight and consequent ignorance, and this book is published to call attention to the oversight and to attempt to dispel the ignorance.

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At the present moment of writing (October, 1903) there are quartered at New Haven, Connecticut, twenty privates of the Hospital Corps of the United States Army and three non-commissioned officers, under the command of Assistant Surgeon, Lieutenant Wallace DeWitt. These men and officers, while they are under regular army discipline and are performing duty in conformity with their oath of enlistment, are yet volunteers. They are from the same corps, if they are not the same men, which furnished volunteers to investigate the causes of yellow fever in Cuba, whose heroism resulted in stamping the fever out of the islands and in that more effectually protecting our coast states from its yearly incursions. These are the same men who generously refused to accept the offered bounty. This latter expression of exalted manhood is evidence of what humanity is whenever there is real need for heroes to serve the general good. They refused to sell themselves as risks for money, but they freely offered themselves as subjects of scientific investigation for the benefit of their fellows and of mankind at large.

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The duty that the soldiers are engaged in at Yale has no element of risk, and need not have any feature of monotony or tediousness in it, much less has it the romance of sacrifice, for it deals with an attempt to restore normality and does not consort with disease. But the service being rendered by these guardians of our health, these soldiers of hygiene, is even more important than was the service rendered in stamping out yellow fever, for it deals with an enemy much more subtle, treacherous, common, and deadly than Yellow Jack. Yellow fever calls for a halt and an immediate attempt at cure, and further, for stringent defence to extermination; but indigestion and the American plague, dyspepsia, work their evils slowly but surely to cut off our best men and loveliest women in their prime and to rob us of their richest product and of their maturest wisdom.

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