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THE SCIENCE OF EATING 
 ALFRED W. McCANN 
 
THE SCIENCE OF 
 EATING 
 
 HOW TO INSURE STAMINA, ENDURANCE, 
 
 1 VIGOR; STRENGTH AND HEALTH IN 
 
 INFANCY, YOUTH AND AGE 
 
 BY 
 
 ALFRED W. McCANN 
 
 AUTHOR OP 
 "TMRTY-CENT BREAD," "STARVING AMERICA," BTC. S 
 
 
 TRUTH PUBLISHING COMPANY' 
 NEW YORK 
 

 Copyright, 1918, 1919, 
 By George- H. Doran Company 
 
 84 \obh b 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 

 If =» 
 
 ft 
 
 j\^ Three men stood by unfalteringly when powerful and vin- 
 dictive interests threatened by open and covert attack, by arrest, 
 
 ! by civil and criminal action to destroy the writer. The courage 
 of these men during a long period of determined struggle against 
 wide-spread evils, before unexpected financial success had dulled 
 the edge of their valor and substituted a policy of prudent con- 
 servatism and compromise for the lofty public spirit that once 
 animated and dominated them, has made this book possible. 
 
 To the spirit of a past that still clings lovingly to hosts of 
 thrilling memories I dedicate it with an affection not unmixed 
 with sadness. There is something pathetic, something tragic in 
 the altered circumstances that now make it impossible for them 
 and me together to ever again pour into any one task in behalf 
 of humanity the sustained effort, the overflowing and unstinted 
 measure of energy and devotion, the solemnized and consecrated 
 will to be right at any cost that have resulted in this volume of 
 truths suppressed too long. 
 
 The dark and sinister shadows have been penetrated. They 
 lie behind. That we shall not enter them again is but a reminder 
 that all things pass. Our many battles in the courts and outside 
 of them have been won, but even in the hazards we escaped there 
 lurks a sense of loss. We are not to meet them again. 
 
PREFACE 
 
 The author has acquired his knowledge of food conditions in 
 America through years of service "on the inside," behind the 
 screens. For five years during the period of Dr. Harvey W. 
 Wiley's service as chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, Mr. Mc- 
 Cann's activities were largely confined to a laboratory under the 
 roof of a modern food factory. His constant daily associates 
 were federal, state and municipal food inspectors, chemists con- 
 nected with federal and state departments of agriculture, food 
 manufacturers, importers, jobbers and commission men. 
 
 As the advertising manager of a food business, handling pre- 
 pared foodstuffs to the extent of $12,000,000 a year, he learned 
 that no food reform can come through advertising as now con- 
 ducted. "The advertising manager," he declares, "cannot state 
 the whole truth in a food advertising campaign for the reason 
 that the manufacturers insist that their advertisements shall cen- 
 ter about the talking points that will sell their products, always 
 keeping clear of controversy. The chief function of the adver- 
 tising manager is not to educate the masses but to popularize the 
 product he is paid to exploit." 
 
 Following his graduation from the food industry, Mr. McCann 
 received the support of a New York newspaper, The Globe, 
 which equipped him with a laboratory and set him free to report 
 the results of his discoveries without regard to their influence 
 upon the Advertising Department. 
 
 Subsequently forty-one other newspapers in as many cities of 
 the United States took up his work, but so heavy was the pres- 
 sure applied by advertising agencies that the publishers of all 
 these papers, with one exception, the Chicago Daily News, 
 found themselves compelled to discontinue his exposures. In 
 this respect the photographs of original documents showing how 
 truth is suppressed in daily journals, weekly periodicals and 
 monthly magazines are in Mr. McCann's possession, a fitting 
 justification in these days of "regeneration" and "reconstruction" 
 
vi PREFACE 
 
 for a Congressional inquiry into the nature of the silent influences 
 at work to muzzle the press. 
 
 During Mr. McCann's service on the New York Globe he 
 has been made a deputy health commissioner by five municipali- 
 ties, has been employed by as many mayors and police commis- 
 sioners to make surveys of the food conditions obtaining in the 
 communities represented by them. He has led squads of plain 
 clothes men and trained field agents, including attorneys and 
 physicians, upon raids that have resulted in scores of indictments, 
 trials and convictions in municipal, state and federal district 
 courts. 
 
 He has been used as a witness by the U. S. Department of 
 Justice in interstate conspiracy prosecutions; by the Attorney 
 General of New York State; by the District Attorney of New 
 York County; by the Corporation Counsel of New York City; 
 and by other public prosecutors. 
 
 He has been arrested on charges of criminal assault and upon 
 trial in a hostile court has been acquitted. On numerous occa- 
 sions he has been tried on charges of criminal libel from which 
 he has always emerged the victor. He has been held for grand 
 juries on charges of criminal conspiracy but the cases against 
 him, when submitted to the grand jurors, have always been dis- 
 missed. He has initiated two hundred and six successful prose- 
 cutions of food adulterators and has never lost a case. 
 
 As a result of his vast experience he no longer looks to com- 
 mercial publicity or to legislation as a means through which to 
 bring about food reform in America. Most of the conditions 
 described in this work are now known to the various state legisla- 
 tive bodies but all efforts to influence the enactment of adequate 
 laws covering the abuses described have thus far been defeated. 
 In Mr. McCann's opinion, it will be a long time before Congress 
 will successfully grapple with the facts which he now outlines 
 in detail. It is his belief that the work must be done in the 
 schools, that our American children must be taught the meaning 
 of depraved foods, that they must learn how foods are processed, 
 bleached, colored, sifted, bolted, denatured, degerminated, demin- 
 eralized, chemically treated and refined ; that they must be taught 
 the relationship of foodless food to sickness and death ; that they 
 must be taught the relationship of natural food to health and life. 
 
PREFACE vii 
 
 In this revised and enlarged edition, the author has incor- 
 porated a schedule of ideal food combinations for children over 
 the age of three years. These suggestions may be used as meals 
 for the entire family with such additions or deductions as season 
 or inclination may decide. 
 
 He holds that the true conditions now so completely hidden 
 from the public view and so rarely referred to in the public press 
 must be exposed in order that the public, guided by the dictates 
 of common sense and an adequate realization of economic facts 
 concerning the food supply of America, may successfully wage 
 war against abuses which threaten the very foundations of na- 
 tional health and prosperity. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP IS PILING HIGHER 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 I God Has Prescribed . . . . ... . - .- . . is 
 
 II Food for Health or Disease? 17 
 
 III The World Faces a Rebirth /" 20 
 
 IV Meaningless Phrases 24 
 
 V Approaching Reform 28 
 
 VI Red Blood Depends on Food 31 
 
 VII Food Calcium and Tuberculosis ........ 34 
 
 VIII Denatured Foods Destroy Life .36 
 
 IX Human Variations of a Divine Theme 39 
 
 X Natural Immunity versus Business 42 
 
 XI The Neglected Child of 1912 the Soldier of 1918 . 45 
 
 XII What Our Teeth Disclose 48 
 
 XIII Why Have a Six- year Molar? 51 
 
 XIV "Dust Thou Art and Unto Dust Thou Shalt Re- 
 
 turn" 53 
 
 TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD— THE CONSTRUCTIVE— THE 
 DESTRUCTIVE 
 
 XV More Precious than Silver and Gold 61 
 
 XVI The Influence of Earth Salts on Life .... 64 
 
 XVII Old at Twenty-five, Young at Sixty . . . . . 67 
 
 XVIII The Human Body 72 
 
 ix 
 
x CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION TAGE 
 
 XIX Breaking It Down 74 
 
 XX Subtle Activity of Mineral Salts 79 
 
 XXI Construction Within, Destruction Without . . 81 
 
 XXII Food Minerals Essential to Life 83 
 
 XXIII The Thyroid Gland a Poison Destroyer ... 86 
 
 XXIV Commercialism Disarms Nature 88 
 
 XXV Wonders of Plant and Animal Life .... 91 
 
 XXVI The "Ash" of Food 94 
 
 XXVII Calcium in the Living Body 96 
 
 XXVIII Children Suffer, Prospective Mothers Decline 98 
 
 XXIX Add Art and Subtract Nature 101 
 
 XXX Walking with a Broken Staff 103 
 
 XXXI "Digestibility" and " Indigestibility " . . . 106 
 
 XXXII Constipation .... 109 
 
 XXXIII Suspected Causes of Cancer in 
 
 THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCESSES ARE MORE 
 DEADLY THAN WAR 
 
 XXXIV Corn Meal'or Cornless Meal 117 
 
 XXXV Anemia, Tuberculosis, Heart Disease . . . . 121 
 
 XXXVI Rejected Food Minerals a Mountain of Folly . 123 
 
 XXXVII Outer Parts of the Grains and the Nervous Sys- 
 tem 125 
 
 XXXVIII Stunting the Growth of the Young . . . . 127 
 
 XXXIX Increased Consumption of Meat . . . . . 13° 
 
 XL Rice, Scoured and Polished 132 
 
 XLI Natural Brown Rice .... , . . . . 134 
 
CONTENTS xi 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 XLII A Spoonful of Gravy 136 
 
 XLIII Medicines Added to Sugar and Starch . . . 139 
 
 XLIV Bases and Acids in Food 142 
 
 XLV Calories and "Science" „ . 144 
 
 XLVI Calories and Gasoline .149 
 
 XLVII Acid Formers and Females 153 
 
 XLVIII Salt Intake and Output 155 
 
 XLIX Maternity and Tuberculosis 156 
 
 L The Advertising Agency . 161 
 
 t LI Cow Feed, Horse Feed, and Food 164 
 
 FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT CRY FOR ACTION 
 
 LII The Madeira-?^ amqre Case 169 
 
 LIII Spurning Monkey Food 173 
 
 LIV Sherman, Forbes, Hart, Maxwell, Steinitz, Za- 
 dic, Leipziger, Rohman, Gumpert, Ehrstrom, 
 
 Mettler, Sinclair, Voit 178 
 
 LV Elizabeth County Jail 180 
 
 LVI The British Steamer "Dewa" 183 
 
 LVII The Mississippi Penitentiary Poison Squad . . 187 
 
 LVIII Watery Tissues of the Hog, Pasty Complexion 
 
 of the Human 190 
 
 LIX The "Kronprinz Wilhelm" Poison Squad ... 192 
 
 LX Two Hundred and Fifty-five Days! .... 196 
 
 LXI American Meals 201 
 
 LXII German Results 203 
 
 LXIII The "Kronprinz Wilhelm" Cure 209 
 
xii CONTENTS 
 
 .SECTION PAGE 
 
 LXIV The Height of Children Cut Down . . . . 215 
 
 LXV Donald B. McMillan's Food . . . v .fy^.-. 220 
 
 FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 
 
 LXVI Ignoring the Commonplace . . \ . ' . . .229 
 
 LXVII Hutchinson's Teaspoon . . , . , ; - -- 231 
 
 LXVIII Strange Conclusions of Lusk . . . _ v , •/ 233 
 
 LXIX Disease Germs Bad Where They Do Not Belong 236 
 
 LXX Ailing Instructors in "Isms" and "Ologies" . 237 
 
 LXXI Thin-haired Women and Bald-headed Men . . 239 
 
 LXXII A Pretty Test 241 
 
 LXXIII Experiments with Chickens for Boys and Girls 243 
 
 LXXIV What the Children Will Learn 244 
 
 SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 
 
 LXXV "Unsound Flour" Even Though White ... 251 
 
 LXXVI Bleached Flour ' ■'/'.• % 253 
 
 LXXVII The "Mixed Flour" Evil 255 
 
 LXXVIII The Devitalized Five-cent Loaf 257 
 
 LXXIX A Paid Advertisement 260 
 
 LXXX "The Lid Is Off" .262 
 
 LXXXI Imitation Graham 263 
 
 LXXXII Physicians Seek in Vain 265 
 
 LXXXIII Dollars Dictate to Science . . . . r . , . ' 267 
 
 LXXX1Y The Awakening of the Teacher . s ' .. t '■ 270 
 
 LXXXV More Testimony ..'.'.'•. 271 
 
CONTENTS xiii 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 *J LXXXVI Courage of Senior Surgeon Banks . . . . . 274 
 
 [LXXXVTI The Trade Challenge Trade Lies . . . . . 277 
 
 LXXXVIII Calcutta and the Rice Plague 279 
 
 LXXXIX A Paradox . . ".'" . . . 280 
 
 SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE USE OF ARTIFICIAL 
 
 SUGAR 
 
 XC Old Brown Sugar . . ■'-"". , . - . • . . . 285 
 
 XCI New White Sugar . . . . . . . . . . 288 
 
 XCII SUGARITIS . . . . •_ • • • • • • • • 2 9 x 
 
 XCIII The Honey Bee . ... . . . ,~ . . . 295 
 
 XCIV Honey. . . ... .... .. . . 298 
 
 XCV Glucose ....... . . . . . . 300 
 
 XCVI Glucositis . . . . . . \ ... . . 302 
 
 .XCVII Why the Excess .^. "'."".'". '^.^~. .~~. . . 304 
 
 XCVIII Can We Ignore This? .' \ .';/.*" V . ... 306 
 
 XCIX Infantile Paralysis ."H.^. ."~V~.~\ V. 309 
 
 £IGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF MILK AND MEAT 
 
 C Milk . ^ 315 
 
 CI Milk and Tuberculosis . . .'.'.. . . 317 
 
 CII Not Pasteurized . . 320 
 
 CIII "Plugging" the Cow . . '.7 ...-.• . . 321 
 
 CIV The Certified Herd . . .-.-•;. * . . . 324 
 
 CV Old Offenders . v » 326 
 
 CVI America's Kidneycides . . . .*..-;.'.'.' 329 
 
 CVII MeATOLOGY ..,.*„ < '-V > f ,$\* ■<. "• r . 332 
 
av CONTENTS 
 
 SECTION PAGE 
 
 CVIII Old when Tired 337 
 
 CIX Food and Fatigue 339 
 
 CX The End of Fatigue 341 
 
 NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW OF THE 
 MYSTERIES OF FOOD 
 
 CXI Iron and the Raisin . 347 
 
 CXII Cornell's O. K 348 
 
 CXIII Potatoes, Parsnips, Carrots and Turnips . . . 349 
 
 CXIV Fruit 352 
 
 CXV Sulphurous Acid 355 
 
 CXVI " Chops" Waste and Jelly 358 
 
 CXVII Molasses and Cane Syrup 359 
 
 CXVIII Rots and Spots 362 
 
 CXIX Bakery Wonders "'. 365 
 
 CXX Shortening with Petroleum 366 
 
 CXXI Labels and Standards 368 
 
 CXXII Standards and Labels 371 
 
 CXXIII Cheating Cattle 372 
 
 CXXIV Pasteur and God 375 
 
 CXXV Whence Came Life? 379 
 
 CXXVI Patriotism 382 
 
 TEN: IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 
 
 CXXVII Getting the Child Started 391 
 
 CXXVIII Observations on Breakfast Menus 393 
 
 CXXIX Dinner Menus 394 
 
 CXXX Observations on Dinner Menus 396 
 
 CXXXI The Evening Lunch or Supper 397 
 
 CXXXII The Grocery of the Future . . ' . • .... 398 
 
ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 
 IS PILING HIGHER 
 
ONE: THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP IS 
 PILING HIGHER 
 
 § 1 GOD HAS PRESCRIBED 
 
 Is there any evidence that will stand the scrutiny of modern 
 judge and jury, to indicate that God has prescribed a formula 
 for the nourishment of the human family? 
 
 There is. We shall see it in all its wonder. 
 
 Does this formula endow human nature with disease-resisting 
 vitality ? 
 
 Does it fortify the prospective mother against the ravages so 
 often suffered by her ? 
 
 Does it protect the infant and control the development of the 
 child? 
 
 Does it usher the adult uneventfully into the shadows of age? 
 
 Does it stand on guard to protect men of good-will, their 
 wives and children, against the assaults of those malign forces 
 which seemingly, as if man were completely abandoned to the 
 malicious whims of a superior but malevolent power, attack him 
 from all sides? 
 
 The imperious answer is "Yes." The Twentieth Century 
 laboratory, which has nothing to do with the spiritual nature of 
 man, is witness to the truth. 
 
 When man's house is built its wonderfully organised inmate is 
 constantly wearing and wasting away. Repair is necessary; in- 
 cessant, never-ending repair. 
 
 The repair materials are at hand. They are found nowhere 
 but in food, in food alone. 
 
 No officer tolerates an unfit soldier. No business man tolerates 
 an inefficient employe. No musician tolerates a jarring note. 
 No physician tolerates incompatibles in his prescriptions, but in 
 twenty-million homes in the United States to-day there is com- 
 placent toleration for food abuses that sap the stamina of the 
 race. 
 
 15 
 
16 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 These abuses, despite what is now known of them as a result 
 of government research, parade the signatures of learned author- 
 ities, who sell their testimony for a fee, so that, as if by necro- 
 mancy, the uninitiated may accept eminent names in lieu of miss- 
 ing elements in manipulated foods. Upon those missing elements 
 life itself depends. 
 
 To expose this disorder in all its deadly significance, specialized 
 effort has been made for years, but until 1912 little progress 
 was recorded. 
 
 Public utterances from the platform and through the press, 
 including at one time, 1916-1917, as many as forty-one newspapers 
 scattered throughout the largest cities of the country, were greeted 
 in high places with lofty sarcasm, and swept aside by the author- 
 ities as unworthy of consideration. 
 
 Finally with the aid of a great metropolitan journal came a 
 long period of dragging the truth into the courts. 
 
 During the years dating from January, 19 13, to the middle 
 of 191 8, in Municipal, State and Federal District Courts, that 
 journal, the New York Globe, was responsible for the conviction 
 of three hundred food sophisticators who, prior to their prosecu- 
 tion, had been able to hide behind the screens erected by the 
 authorities, all of whom denied that its "unsupported" charges 
 were true. 
 
 The court records of these cases, without an exception, have 
 withstood the scrutiny of judge and jury and the fruits of that 
 long and costly struggle are now passed to the people. 
 
 We know to-day, apart from the mere frauds that tax the 
 pocketbook but do not affect human health, that a hundred food 
 evils of grave significance constitute many of the building ma- 
 terials upon which young America, as well as stricken Europe, de- 
 pends for growth and sustenance, under the eyes of man-made law 
 that does not interfere. 
 
 Every pound of these food frauds is a pound of excess baggage 
 borne by the growing child, the expectant mother and the invalid. 
 
 Every pound of food juggled, changed, denatured or chemi- 
 cally treated is balanced by a pound of human flesh. 
 
 Every pound of such food defies nature's standards, so marvel- 
 lously formulated that each of them bears upon it the mark of 
 divine origin. Advancing this assertion I shall prove that it is 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 17 
 
 not tainted by mysticism or fervor; that it stands untrembling 
 under the coldest light of pagan science; that our own government 
 has helped to focus that light upon it. 
 
 Commercial wizardry attempting the impossible task of sup- 
 plying the human family with food that will not support the life 
 of animals, strives to maintain the dignity of its effort. Although 
 thus far successful in its purposes it cannot longer ignore the 
 truth, for from every laboratory in Europe and America are 
 handed down to meet it indictments of such gravity that they 
 can neither be disguised nor concealed. 
 
 Wondrous are the operations of Mother Nature, but she will 
 suffer no wilful abuse. Her laws were established by a Higher 
 Power, and man who feebly attempts to imitate them in his 
 construction of a flying machine or in the development of his 
 herds, turns his back upon that miracle of life, a growing child, 
 and disdains to believe, or pretends to doubt, that the child is 
 also subject to law. 
 
 § 2 — FOOD FOR HEALTH OR DISEASE? 
 
 Live stock and crops are fed according to fixed laws. Infants 
 and children, men and women, are fed in ignorance and caprice. 
 
 Our daily food, less understood after years of agitation than 
 the referendum or the fourth dimension, is so masked in mystery 
 that scarcely one in ten thousand can give a definition of the 
 phrase. 
 
 To the housewife and those dependent upon her judgment for 
 health and life nothing is more vital, yet few are the homes in 
 which the simple laws of nutrition are applied. The people no 
 longer know the origin of their food or how it is prepared. They 
 have lost control. 
 
 Babies are born every day, and every day children are fitted 
 for school. Though food is their first and most important neces- 
 sity, its knowledge is chiefly confined to owners of stock farms, 
 producers of prize sheep, horses, poultry, hogs and blue ribbon 
 cows. 
 
 Intelligent herdsmen apply their knowledge of its meaning and 
 
f 
 
 18 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 measure results according to fixed operations when not deceived 
 by the feed manufactures. They know the growth, development 
 and vigour of their animals depend upon the operation of clearly 
 defined and inviolable laws. 
 
 They make a business of feeding for certain desired ends. To 
 them pure food is not a mystery. It is the means whereby they 
 supply proper building materials to the physical needs of the 
 creatures in which their money is invested; the instrument with 
 which they prevent disorder and sickness among their herds, 
 flocks, kennels and litters. 
 
 The average farmer, as far as his soil is concerned, instinctively 
 recognizes the meaning of pure food. He knows if he does not 
 supply his vegetables and grains with the right kind of soil food 
 he will reap a stunted and a feeble crop, or suffer a crop failure. 
 
 The United States Government has developed around this 
 truth one of its costliest departments, the chief of which, in the 
 person of the Secretary of Agriculture, is a member of the Presi- 
 dent's cabinet. 
 
 That live stock and crops should receive the benefit of man's 
 interest in pure food, while thus far in the affairs of our national 
 development infants and children do not, is symbolic of the soul- 
 sickness of the world. 
 
 Woman's interest in pure food has not yet crystallised, though 
 she has love instead of commercial expediency to inspire her. Is 
 love less potent than profit? 
 
 Thousands of untimely deaths, the true causes of which are 
 rarely suspected, are occasioned by pitiable ignorance of the 
 simplest of God's laws, yet upon its serene though neglected 
 splendor beams the infinite love of the Creator. 
 
 The Journal of the American Medical Association declared, 
 July 20, 1 91 8, that when the announcement was made by the 
 Bureau of Child Hygiene of New York City that between 12 
 and 15 per cent, of its school children are underfed, it was re- 
 ceived with scepticism by some and with surprise by others. The 
 world refuses to believe. 
 
 F. A. Manny of the New York Association for Improving the 
 Condition of the Poor declares, as a result of systematic studies 
 made in New York City, that at least one-third of the school 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 19 
 
 children are so much below the standard of growth as to call for 
 special nutritional care. The world disregards the fact. 
 
 There are now in the public and parochial schools of Greater 
 New York more than 2,000,000 children. Of other children under 
 six years of age and between the ages of six and sixteen not in 
 school, either at home or at work, there are nearly 2,000,000 more. 
 
 New York City alone boasts of nearly 500,000 children in need 
 of nutritional attention, but the problem is not a New York prob- 
 lem or a Chicago problem or a San Francisco problem ; it is not 
 even an American problem. 
 
 Back in 1910 the chief medical officer of the English Board of 
 Education declared as a result of data collected by him that de- 
 fective nutrition stands in the foreground as the most important 
 of all physical defects from which school children suffer. 
 
 In 1906 Dr. W. R. P. Emerson collected into a class a number 
 of the weakest and most poorly nourished children from several 
 thousands of patients in the Boston Dispensary. These children 
 were "fed up." Their response was magic. 
 
 Dr. C. H. Smith duplicated this experiment in connection with 
 Bellevue Hospital, New York City, reporting it possible to make 
 57 per cent, of the under-nourished children gain nearly twice the 
 average rate for their ages, and 22 per cent, gain at about the 
 average rate, a total of 79 per cent, gaining at or better than the 
 average rate. 
 
 These results, obtained under most adverse circumstances, are 
 ignored where no problems make their application difficult. 
 
 Lack of food is not responsible for the tragedy. Rejection of 
 the right kind of food is behind it. 
 
 Ignorance in the home is not the only highway to physical 
 infirmity and death. The widest road, never marked with a sign 
 post, is the road that leads through commercial greed to the little 
 white casket. 
 
 We propose to take this road at whose every turn the laws of 
 God are deliberately broken, so that we may learn just how, 
 although so sacred when applied to animal life, they are out- 
 raged and debauched in the food factory. 
 
 Where the fault originates in the caprice of the housewife 
 herself, through thoughtlessness of her own or inheritance from 
 grandmother's superstitions, the picturesque, wonderfully inter- 
 
20 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 esting, though tragic results of such household sins, when ap- 
 plied to the diet of white mice, rabbits, guinea pigs, monkeys, 
 chickens and cows will be disclosed. 
 
 Where the abuse is purely commercial the mask will be torn 
 off, and in such instances as are borne in lust for gain at the ex- 
 pense of human life, the natural, obvious, practical reform will 
 be pointed out. 
 
 For the old abuses, for which politics, clever lawyers and com- 
 mercial scientists have succeeded in erecting a flimsy protection 
 in the defence of unnatural and Godless practices, there will be 
 no mercy. 
 
 The physician who follows these pages will come into posses- 
 sion of facts not to be obtained in the medical schools of Europe 
 or America. He will receive new information with regard to 
 many of the causes of malnutrition, anemia, neurasthenia, edema, 
 Bright's disease, diabetes, cancer, hardening of the arteries, 
 tuberculosis and other preventable diseases which, in the form of 
 needless pain, are so frequently visited upon the bodies of the 
 ignorant and unwary. 
 
 Whispering through the Twentieth Century laboratory the L 
 voice of God can be heard. It requires no strained ear to catch 
 its echoes as they come up centuries old from Genesis, Leviticus, | 
 and Deuteronomy in waves that roll from enamelled wall to 
 enamelled wall, protesting in the name of the cradle, the nursery, 
 the kindergarten, the school, the home and workshop against the \ 
 special privileges and follies that to-day as never before must 
 render their long overdue account to a grim jury of awakened , 
 mother love. Faith in the all-wise but unheeded provisions of the 
 Creator is the instant need. 
 
 § 3 — THE WORLD FACES A REBIRTH 
 
 The reconstruction following the war, in which for many years 
 not only the allies but also America will have to deal with the 
 hardest of hard conditions, has already begun its clamour for the 
 corporal as well as the spiritual reclamation of man. 
 
 The tearing down of the world is actually less visible in the 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 21 
 
 1 ' 
 devastated regions where cities, towns, villages and country sides 
 
 : are now but scorched and broken patches than in the physical 
 
 I ravages which all mankind dumbly suffered throughout the war, 
 
 and which for many years prior to the war had been eating into 
 
 the health of the white race of all lands. Are we civilised? Far 
 
 from it! 
 
 In May, 191 8, in New York City alone, Dr. S. Josephine Baker 
 reported 216,000 children suffering from malnutrition, with all 
 that malnutrition involves, as a direct result of the war, although 
 America had been in the war scarcely a year. The war has taught 
 us that our children do indeed constitute our second line of de- 
 fence, just as the Boer war opened the eyes of Great Britain to 
 the infirmities of its second line of defence. 
 
 During the Boer war so many men applying for service were 
 rejected because of physical defects which could have been 
 avoided or overcome that the whole British Empire, shocked 
 into a realisation of its neglect of the child, turned its belated 
 attention to the deficiencies thus so appallingly revealed. 
 
 In America's first draft 500,000 of our "best" young men in 
 the very flower of their manhood were rejected as physically unfit 
 for service. 
 
 After the long struggle our nation, for many years, will be 
 engaged in tabulating two kinds of men, those that helped and 
 those that did not; the fit and the unfit; the accepted and the 
 rejected. 
 
 The finest types of physical manhood entered the service, the 
 others were left at home, to father their kind. 
 
 In this single fact humanity faces a reaction against which, 
 if it would tune up the vigor and stamina of infants yet unborn, 
 must be thrown all its conscience, intelligence and energy. 
 
 We can no longer ignore our children as they have been ignored, 
 otherwise our inspiring accomplishments in organising all the 
 resources of America will degenerate into a mere expediency, 
 leaving behind a long trail of calamity and misery. By looking 
 squarely at the facts and acting upon them, our war energies, if 
 they are also applied to the child, will in the physical sense 
 literally regenerate America, while contributing at the same time 
 to the rebuilding of stricken Europe. 
 
 As a nation we were long content to ignore the Child in the 
 
22 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 presence of the Moneybag, giving to the dollar an artificial value 
 which war has taught us, to our amazement, it did not possess, j 
 even though we had been pouring all our foolish energies into it, i 
 permitting the Child, our second line of defence, to take care of 
 itself. 
 
 Even New Zealand, in spite of its boasted accomplishments, 
 found herself in the Moneybag class until she discovered the 
 lamentable deficiencies of the young men who applied and were 
 examined for her military service. 
 
 Dr. Truby King in February, 191 8, stopped off in New York on j 
 his way to England to reorganise child welfare work under the i; 
 British Government. Through him we learned that the young j 
 men of New Zealand who were supposed to be supremely fit for 
 military service were found by Major General Sir Frederic 
 Morris so lamentably unfit that 60 of every 100 examined had 
 to be rejected. 
 
 Tracing their unfitness to its cause, Dr. King was forced to 
 the conclusion that New Zealand's absurd food habits, quite 
 similar to our own, were responsible for the alarming evils re- 
 vealed by medical examination. 
 
 In 1917 New York City boasted that only 88 of its babies died 
 of every 1,000 born. This infant mortality record, compared with 
 the record of many other American cities, is on the surface worthy 
 of note, but Dr. King is responsible for the reduction of the infant 
 mortality rate of New Zealand not to 88 per thousand, but to 5 
 per thousand, the lowest rate in the world. 
 
 In accomplishing this extraordinary achievement which has re- 
 sulted in the British Government's recognition of the value of his 
 services, Dr. King openly admits that he has followed precedents 
 established here in America, even though they have been ignored 
 here, and that his success in lowering the infant death rate in 
 New Zealand is due to his having practiced principles developed 
 in the United States. 
 
 The shame of it ! 
 
 We gave our American invention, the submarine, to the Ger- 
 mans. We gave our American invention, the aeroplane, to the 
 Germans. 
 
 We have not applied to our own benefit the principles we gave 
 Dr. Truby King for the benefit of New Zealand. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 
 
 Yes, we have been asleep with the Moneybag under our pil- 
 low. We were gassed by its fumes. 
 
 What we might have spent to make America the most won- 
 derful human thing under God's heavens we did not spend for 
 that purpose, because in our blindness we could not see the 
 simplest, the most wonderful and the most inexorable of God's 
 laws, as it lay ignored, neglected and broken at our feet. 
 
 We are spending that money now. Never before were such 
 expenditures recorded in the history of the world ! 
 
 We are emptying the Moneybag, but little if any of its con- 
 tents is being applied to our second line of defence, the Child. 
 No wonder the bitter Bernard Shaw impotently raves over the 
 infant mortality of Ireland ! 
 
 Dr. Baker has told us of the handicap suffered by France 
 through her fallen birth rate, a tragedy which made it almost 
 impossible to maintain her army at its proper quota. 
 
 France recognises at last the importance of the child. Even 
 in England the decreasing birth rate is wholly responsible for 
 the loss of millions of potential lives. 
 
 At the Royal Institute of Public Health, June, 1918, Sir Ber- 
 nard Mallet declared to an audience of London physicians that 
 while the war has filled the graves it has emptied the cradles. 
 
 In England and Wales the births recorded for 1913 were 
 881,890. In 1917 they had fallen to 668,346, a decline of 24 per 
 cent. 
 
 Up to the beginning of 1918 England and Wales had lost on 
 the scale of potential lives 650,000 unborn infants. During the 
 same period Germany lost in potential lives the equivalent of 
 4.5 per cent, of her total pre-war population, Austria lost 5 per 
 cent, and Hungary 7 per cent. 
 
 The war up to June, 1918, had cost the belligerents not less 
 than 12,500,000 potential lives. These losses, added to the 20,- 
 000,000 casualties of battle, show that race suicide on a colossal 
 scale is but one of the outstanding results of German militarism. 
 
 Terrible as are these fruits of a Godless philosophy of life 
 and death, the infirmities needlessly visited upon the living are 
 incalculably more appalling, and the tragedy of it is that they are 
 wholly controllable and preventable. 
 
 The hour to face the truth has come. The world steeped in 
 
21 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 luxury and seeking only physical comforts, had shut its eyes too 
 long to the very means whereby comfort is attained. 
 
 Seeing but not comprehending, reading but not understanding, 
 mankind, chastened by suffering, is beginning again to look to 
 God for the pearls it had cast to swine in its hours of material 
 blindness. 
 
 Among those pearls one of great price proclaims its lustre out 
 of the darkness as if by its very beauty it would call all men into 
 the area of its radiance, where reverently they may behold under 
 the softness and sweetness of its light one of the many broken 
 laws under whose benevolent operations, when recognised and 
 applied, disease itself is banished, infirmities healed, health and 
 strength attained. 
 
 To the task of revealing the glory of this pearl and its mean- 
 ing to the reconstruction of civilization, these words and those 
 to follow are devoted. 
 
 § 4 — MEANINGLESS PHRASES 
 
 In the last four years 1,500,000 children under ten years of 
 age have died in the United States. With little knives and forks, 
 with little baby spoons, with chubby little hands manifesting many 
 of the outward signs of health, they dug their little graves. 
 
 Hundreds of thousands of adults hurrying to untimely graves 
 kept them company. Why? 
 
 As late as April, 1918, the United States Public Health Service 
 called attention to one of the many preventable ravages of food 
 folly. 
 
 'There may be plenty of milk or eggs or meat," said the gov- 
 ernment, "but if you prefer to live mainly on cereals, starchy 
 foods and sweets pellagra will result." 
 
 This warning will not be heeded because the people cannot 
 understand it. They do not know what the government means 
 by "cereals," for the reason that 90 per cent, of the cereals now 
 prepared for human consumption in no manner resemble phy- 
 siologically the cereals provided by Mother Nature. 
 
 The government's phrase "starchy foods and sweets" has no 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 25 
 
 meaning for the plain people who do not know that pure starch 
 cr pure sugar are not found in nature. 
 
 Pure starch and pure sugar are laboratory refinements from 
 which the ''impurities" essential to life have been removed. 
 
 The government's phrase "pellagra" has little significance for 
 the average man or woman because "only 150,000 cases" occur 
 every year in the United States, and until a few months ago the 
 entire medical world attributed its outbreak to every cause under 
 the sun except the right one. 
 
 The government now knows that pellagra is a food deficiency 
 disease, but there are a hundred stopping places this side of 
 pellagra, every one of which is a direct attack upon our second 
 line of defence. 
 
 Our Washington authorities, although they have occasionally 
 spoken in plain terms, do not now refer to the menace of "re- 
 fined" cereals, of "improved" starches, of "denatured" sweets 
 and fats, of "patent" wheat flour, of "degerminated" corn flour, of 
 "polished" rice, of "demineralised" corn starch and potato starch, 
 of "robbed" rye flour, of "pearled" barley, of "refined" sugar or 
 of any of the other manipulated foods sold in beautifully deco- 
 rated packages that attack the vitality of prospective mother, 
 nursing mother, child, soldier and civilian worker. 
 
 It is not enough that we heed these evils before they reach the 
 pellagra stage. 
 
 Where there are but 150,000 cases of pellagra there are mil- 
 lions of cases of malnutrition which, though they do not reach 
 the pellagra stage, are nevertheless symptoms of the great national 
 folly which commercial science encourages and defends. 
 
 "The increased price of food is responsible," says Dr. Baker, 
 "for the 216,000 children of New York City now suffering from 
 undernourishment." 
 
 "It is most important," says the United States Public Health 
 Service, "that at least three glasses (one and one-half pints) 
 and preferably more milk be taken daily." The irony of these 
 comments is solemn. 
 
 The importance of eggs, fresh vegetables and fresh fruits is 
 emphasised as in the past has been emphasised the importance of 
 whole grain foods, whole wheat bread, whole corn bread, natural 
 brown rice. But what are the facts ? 
 
26 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 High prices do not keep these "offsetting" foods out of the 
 hands of the poor. They are not offered to the poor at any price. 
 Yet the government itself tells us that among the poor the 
 symptoms of malnutrition are mostly prevalent. 
 
 On page 484, No. 14, Volume 33 of the Public Health Reports 
 issued by the United States Public Health Service, are found these 
 words : 
 
 "The unbalanced diet composed mainly of biscuits, corn bread, 
 grits, hominy, rice, gravy and syrup with only a few vegetables 
 develops disease." 
 
 Why such foods develop disease, and why all other similar 
 foods, of which these are but typical, develop disease, will be ex- 
 plained here in the government's own phrases, although they are 
 phrases rarely acted upon by the individual and never by the food 
 manufacturer. 
 
 We now know that our second line of defence is in danger. 
 A little later we shall clearly see why. 
 
 "The time par excellence," says Dr. Truby King, "for the 
 growth of the brain and nervous system is during the prenatal 
 period and the first two years of life. 
 
 "The whole future of the individual is determined for him 
 before he is four years old, just as that of a calf is determined by 
 the time it has reached the age of six months. 
 
 "That so many newly born infants survive in spite of the 
 heavy toll taken among them is due to the fact that nature safe- 
 guards the child even at the expense of the mother's health." 
 
 This is indeed true but the mother's health is also part of the 
 second line of defence, and proper food for her is just as im- 
 portant as proper food for the child; just as important as proper 
 food for the workman; just as important as proper food for the 
 boys in the trenches. 
 
 Our moneybags must be opened still wider. Their contents 
 pouring forth cannot longer ignore these facts. We must know 
 what proper food is ; we must deal with forces able thus far to 
 prevent the government's acting upon facts which the govern- 
 ment itself has succeeded in establishing. That they are pigeon- 
 holed in Washington makes the task less difficult. 
 
 At this trying period in our national life, when we are bearing 
 intense strains, the food of the plain people, measured by govern- 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 27 
 
 ment standards, is more impoverished than ever. The function 
 of the Food Administration as determined by itself was not to 
 educate the public. 
 
 High prices and restricted diet mean wealth for a few profiteers, 
 but such wealth does not flow into the war chest, nor into the re- 
 construction work that for many years must be done, nor does it 
 prepare America for the future she now faces. 
 
 All will accept the proposition that the stricken parents of 
 children who die before their time should move the world to avert 
 these preventable tragedies, but the impulse rarely asserts itself 
 until all is over. 
 
 The time to educate parents is not after the child is laid low. 
 All the food knowledge this side of heaven will not put life and 
 health into the tissues of a corpse. 
 
 Parents, clinging to old-fashioned traditions, knowing little of 
 what goes on behind factory walls, are prone to regard the work 
 of child conservation as a fad. 
 
 As a rule they refuse to accept the plainest facts unless proved 
 in picturesque fashion. Fortunately, such picturesque proofs are 
 at hand. 
 
 We shall peep behind traditions, if only for the purpose of 
 receiving a shock that will excite our curiosity. Such shock is 
 near. 
 
 Most of us will not stir from the beaten path tramped hard by 
 the millions of feet of little children unless we are pushed by 
 brute force. Brute force is happily available. 
 
 In the last four years in the United States 3,000,000 little 
 feet have ceased pattering. This is not an idle statement made 
 in a year of sensations. Its proof is found in the mortality 
 statistics prepared by the Bureau of Census, Department of Com- 
 merce, and submitted to the Secretary of Commerce by the 
 Director of the Census. 
 
 Gruesome ? Yes. 
 
 True? Yes. But what of it? unless we are ready to take 
 soundings, even though to do so means parting with much old- 
 fashioned indifference that sits on an eggshell of happiness, ever 
 ready to crack. 
 
THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 5 — APPROACHING REFORM 
 
 There is a peg in your shoe. It hurts your foot. It bruises 
 and cuts the flesh. It sets up an irritation. You consult a doctor. 
 He applies oils, lotions and germicides. He bandages the sore 
 Spot. Ybu continue his treatment but complain that your foot 
 will not heal. 
 
 Of course not. 
 
 Some day it may occur to you to remove the peg. Nature will 
 then do her own healing, but not until the cause of her woe has 
 been removed. 
 
 All the serums, antitoxins, tonics and therapeutic agents of 
 medical science will not heal our physical disorders while that peg 
 remains in the national shoe. It is the cause of baffling infirmi- 
 ties that defy the scalpel of the surgeon and the prescription of 
 the physician. 
 
 It is the unseen agent whose work laughs defiance at the sound- 
 est scientific revelations of the laboratory and clinic. 
 
 In Berlin, April, 191 3, at the Sixth International Conference 
 on Physio-Therapy, it was named in the following words : 
 
 "Natural immunity to disease is very closely allied to nutrition. 
 As soon as a slight disturbance of nutrition occurs the child loses 
 this natural immunity. 
 
 "An infection of the mouth with thrush is not possible in a 
 normal-born and breast-fed child. The bottle-fed child is at a 
 great disadvantage as compared with the breast-fed child. 
 
 "One-sided nutrition with carbohydrates (starches, sugars, 
 table syrups, candies, white breadstuff's, denatured breakfast 
 foods, refined cereals) injures the immunity of children. 
 
 "Tuberculous children nourished with such carbohydrate foods 
 succumb more easily than when nourished on natural foods. 
 
 "Idie water content of the body is inversely proportionate to 
 the natural immunity. Water-logged tissues lose their immunity. 
 Refined foods increase unnecessarily the amount of water in the 
 tissues, and promote a rapid rise in the body weight. 
 
 "Children fed on a carbohydrate diet become water-logged, 
 fat, and show slight resisting power against infection. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 29 
 
 "The lack of absorbable calcium salts in the diet favours the 
 water-logging." 
 
 These words, describing the peg, may mean little to you now, 
 but before we have proceeded far they will be repeated under 
 such clear white light that you will marvel over their wisdom 
 and simplicity, seeing that many of the miseries which we rashly 
 and presumptuously attribute to Divine Providence are visited 
 upon us not by God but by ourselves. 
 
 To understand the meaning of the phrase "our daily bread" 
 we must first discover how the food manufacturer operates ; what 
 he does to accomplish his purpose ; why he does it, and how to put 
 an end to his trickery without the necessity of invoking legisla- 
 tion. Legislation will not bring about reform. Politicians, food 
 industries and newspapers will not permit it. 
 
 We must first learn that the greatest temptation to juggle 
 with food products is inspired by the people themselves. 
 
 The subject of insufficient wage or industrial injustice is not 
 going to creep into this discussion, but in passing it must be said 
 that in scanty incomes is frequently born the false standard of 
 judgment which attributes an artificial value to "bulk," overlook- 
 ing substance and quality. 
 
 Competition, when based on quality of product and honesty of 
 workmanship, is the very life of trade decency, but in foolish 
 and desperate competition which inspires fraud, false standards 
 are imposed in all their evil influence upon society. 
 
 When the size and price satisfy the individual few questions are 
 asked. Most people are prone to accept even the shape of the 
 package or its colour as evidence that its contents are all they 
 ought to be. No questions are asked as to whether they will 
 support life or slowly, insidiously, stealthily burrow under the 
 foundation of the living temple to destroy it. 
 
 To gain a trade advantage over a competitor the food manu- 
 facturer makes his strongest appeal to the eye. Thus begins the 
 work of puffing, bulking, filling, extending. Then follows the 
 trick of conferring upon the bulk product that shadow of honesty 
 which masks it against discovery. 
 
 At this point deception is braced with added flavour, manufac- 
 tured in the laboratory. The "innocent" and "harmless" mass 
 
30 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 i- kepi from disintegrating by the use of legalised preservatives. 
 Food is embalmed ! 
 
 In addition to the filler evil the artificial colour evil, the flavour 
 evil and the preservative evil there is a fifth and still more in- 
 sidious evil responsible for tenfold, yes a hundredfold, more 
 miseries than all the other evils combined. 
 
 The filler evil is now regarded as a crime by all State Depart- 
 ments of Agriculture where poultry food, cattle food or fertiliser 
 is concerned. 
 
 The Federal government also recognises the filler evil when an 
 attempt is made to ship a sophisticated food from one state into 
 another, unless its manufacturer leaves in the form of small 
 print upon the label, some inconspicuous tell-tale evidence behind. 
 
 Foods consumed in the state in which they are manufactured, 
 not passing into any other state, need not declare this tell-tale 
 evidence except in a few communities where an alert commis- 
 sioner is active. 
 
 The experiment stations of nearly every state in the Union 
 have discussed the enormity of adulterating cow food and earth 
 food. These abuses have been followed occasionally by successful 
 prosecutions, never heard of by the plain people, although they 
 are based on no other ground than the evil so complacently 
 tolerated in the preparation of human food. 
 
 Cattle food and fertilizer are considered by the State and 
 Federal government of more importance than human food. 
 
 The reasons behind this inconsistency will be revealed in their 
 proper place. 
 
 Dr. Harvey W. Wiley's first work, back in 1882, was the ejec- 
 tion of worthless fillers from the earth-food fertilisers sold to 
 farmers for replenishing their soil with the food elements con- 
 sumed by last year's crop, that there might be no crop failure the 
 following year. 
 
 Commercial cow food, loaded with inert and foodless sub- 
 stances, was found, like commercial earth food, to fail utterly in 
 the work it was intended to accomplish. Now, after $7 years of 
 literally astonishing experiments with soil, plants and animals^ 
 and with an almost thorough knowledge of the cause of soil 
 starvation and the cause of animal disease, the human family still 
 iists in ignoring the meaning of pure food for its children. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 31 
 
 Those who manufacture foodless foods for human beings tell 
 us we have no constitutional right to interfere with their in- 
 dustries. Education of the masses, however, will bring about the 
 necessary reform. It can be brought about in no other way. 
 
 § 6 — RED BLOOD DEPENDS ON FOOD 
 
 In the vast mixture of greed, ignorance, selfishness, oppression, 
 sickness, darkness, vanity, sham, crime, love, compassion, justice, 
 charity and truth which we call civilisation, nothing but nation- 
 wide publicity will accomplish for pure food what legislation has 
 failed to do. Enlightened selfishness is not the noblest motive 
 but it frequently leads to noble ends. 
 
 Newspapers and magazines through which the public obtains 
 a large share of its canned information cannot now tell the truth 
 about foods because their principal sources of income are derived 
 through the advertisements of the very foods which truthful 
 columns would be forced to condemn if they referred to them 
 at all. 
 
 The publications which remain dumb to the most important 
 issue of the home fail to see that by exposing the truth they would 
 automatically develop advertisers to take the place of those whose 
 truth-suppressing policies have sealed their pages with unholy 
 silence. 
 
 The business managers of periodicals and dailies have said to 
 me in substance, "Eagles, crows, squirrels were never taught 
 anything of food ; see how they thrive, Why create a controversy 
 where there is none? 
 
 "In its home among the trees the monkey is ignorant of the 
 meaning of pure food. No hunter ever captured a monkey in its 
 schoolless habitat suffering from appendicitis, tuberculosis, 
 tumour or swollen glands. 
 
 "The angler catches his hundred fish ; the trawler's net catches 
 its millions. All are healthy, firm and fit for the frying pan and 
 grid. 
 
 "The horse is immune to tuberculosis. So is the sheep. 
 
 "Of every 10,000 sheep killed in the slaughter house the 
 
32 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 lesions of disease are found in only one, and sometimes not 
 even in that one. 
 
 "Our fathers and mothers were taught nothing of pure food, 
 yet millions of us are still alive. If pure food had been neces- 
 sary we would all be dead. 
 
 "This certainly proves that knowing nothing of the meaning 
 of carbohydrates, proteins, fats and ash, we do not need to know." 
 
 By such phrases the subject is dismissed, yet by such phrases do 
 they who oppose the truth stand convicted. 
 
 Remove the monkey from its natural home and its natural 
 food and the superintendent of the menagerie will bury it before 
 its time. 
 
 Come with me to the zoological gardens in Bronx Park and see 
 for yourself what happens to the chimpanzee in captivity. All the 
 primates die before their time. Tuberculosis, pneumonia, tumours, 
 kill them. 
 
 Later I shall tell you what they eat and why they die. 
 
 Nature's formula and man's "improvements" upon it have noth- 
 ing in common. Pollute the streams and change thereby the char- 
 acter of the food upon which fish subsist and they are no longer 
 fit for the dinner table. 
 
 Debase the food of the horse and sheep as we debase the food 
 of the milch cow and they, too, like the cow, are cursed with 
 disease. 
 
 Our government is responsible for the assertion that scarcely 
 a single herd of dairy cows in a thousand is free from disease. 
 No tuberculin test of any herd in New York, including the so- 
 called "certified" herds, has failed for eight years to find tubercu- 
 lous cows. They are in every herd, and in many herds every cow 
 is affected. 
 
 All animals have natural instincts to guide them in their selec- 
 tion of food until they are caged, harnessed or put into a stall. 
 
 The human animal possesses intelligence rather than instinct. 
 His failure to exercise this intelligence is responsible for the 
 thousand ills which his ignorance imposes upon innocent children. 
 
 The divinely constituted truths, with which man should be fa- 
 miliar, reveal to him, if he has the heart to face them, why some 
 plumD children are pale, why some pale children are thin, why 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 3S 
 
 some children with normal red blood haven't an ounce of useless 
 fat upon their bodies. 
 
 The weight of the child has little to do with its morals, but 
 the poorly nourished child manifests many abnormal character- 
 istics which wise people tell Us are "evil." 
 
 Many a little heart pumping impoverished blood to hungry 
 tissues, feeding starved nerves with an unhealthy stream, nourish- 
 ing a tired little body and a wearied little brain with debased foods 
 goes for correction to the Children's Court, or is "punished" for 
 the pranks over which it has no control. 
 
 You have seen "bad" children, "cranky" children, "peevish" 
 children, "cruel" children, "reckless" children, "nervous" children 
 and "delinquent" children. Many of them, after a diet of six 
 months on the food God intended they should eat, can preach ser- 
 mons to their elders. 
 
 The angels — perhaps they can weep — know this, yet the world 
 disregards the most beautiful of nature's laws in its consumption 
 of degraded, debased, denatured foods, and then murmurs against 
 God, blaming Him for the prevalence of disease upon the earth. 
 
 Food, of course, has nothing to do with man's natural in- 
 clination to evil ; nothing to do with the weakness of his will. 
 Food will not confirm him in grace, but it will irritate and kill 
 him, and before the end it will make those about him miserable, 
 affording them ample opportunity to practise the heroic virtues 
 of fortitude and patience. 
 
 In the creation of our esthetic dishes there are constant wander- 
 ings into fields far from nature's own. 
 
 We need not consider the normal fish, the healthy monkey or 
 the disease-resisting sheep. Let us consider instead the hundreds 
 of thousands of cases of cured tuberculosis among men, women 
 and children. Hope and faith are carried again on joyful backs, 
 when victims of this preventable affliction return to nature, eat- 
 ing the foods that re-create normal blood, providing anew re- 
 sistance to disease, and vigour that had been lost. 
 
 New red blood arrests disease, walls up tuberculous lesions, 
 and the patient, if not in the very shadow of death, is reclaimed. 
 
 New red blood depends on food, on food alone. 
 
34 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 7 — FOOD CALCIUM AND TUBERCULOSIS 
 
 The worn out body suffering from low resistance and tubercu- 
 losis can be cured. 
 
 What, then, is society's justification for permitting tuberculosis 
 to develop in a healthy body? 
 
 Go to the morgue ; witness the autopsies ; ask a surgeon what 
 causes the scars in the lungs and glands before you. 
 
 He will tell you the scar is a healed wound, a calcified lesion. 
 
 That dead body, while living, suffered tubercles to feed upon it, 
 yet never suspecting their existence threw them off and was cured. 
 
 Thousands of cases of accidentally renewed vitality overcoming 
 the ravages of tuberculosis are on record. 
 
 Physicians report their continued surprise in the number of 
 instances of cured tuberculosis, evidence of which they find in 
 operations or in post mortems among adults and children. 
 
 Calcified lesions, completely walled off from the rest of the 
 body, are common. They show how nature, when given an oppor- 
 tunity to thwart the advance of the disease, performs her pro- 
 tecting task without exciting the faintest suspicion that the disease 
 is present. 
 
 There is no combination of foods, if consumed as nature gives 
 them to us, which can fail to fortify the growing child against the 
 ravages of tuberculosis. All food, if unrefined, is good food. Let 
 there be no mystery about that. Food, unprocessed by man, con- 
 tains all the elements necessary to a successful journey through 
 the human body. That God put them there for a purpose we shall 
 prove. 
 
 In nature there are no irritating tables of proteins, carbo- 
 hydrates, fats or ash to vex the child. It is the breaking down of 
 nature's schemes which over-emphasises the importance of these 
 curious subdivisions into which man has learnedly split his dietary. 
 
 Any combination of natural foods, unrefined, which you can 
 think of, will place at her disposal the raw materials needed by 
 Mother Nature not only in her process of curing tuberculosis, 
 but in her function of protecting the body against it. 
 
 In an earlier chapter we heard the Sixth International Con- 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 35 
 
 gress of Physio-Therapy tell us that the lack of absorbable calcium 
 salts in the diet favours loss of resisting power against infection. 
 
 Remember those words, for as they zigzag their course through 
 what is to follow they will gather many new meanings, every 
 one of which will be as transparent to you as distilled water. 
 
 Absorbable calcium salts (organic lime) constitute the build- 
 ing materials employed by the body in plugging the tuberculous 
 gap. With organic lime and its accompanying salts, furnished 
 only through food and never through medicine, the body builds 
 its fortification against tuberculosis. 
 
 When the surgeon's knife cuts through a healed tuberculous 
 area the effect is exactly like that which follows an attempt to 
 cut sand. 
 
 These calcified lesions complain of our folly in remaining deaf 
 to the beautiful rhythms playing everywhere about us, reminding 
 us constantly that in creating earth for man God in His wisdom 
 neglected nothing, left nothing to chance, but rather from His 
 infinite Providence provided for every human need, heeding not 
 alone the requirements of the new born infant at its mother's 
 breast, but also the requirements of the adult, if the adult will but 
 bend his knee and bow his head, accepting without question the- 
 dispensations of his Creator's love instead of capriciously breaking 
 in upon them, disordering, changing, improving, refining, destroy- 
 ing them. 
 
 Pure food not only endows the child with disease-resisting 
 vitality, but it promotes and controls its normal growth and de- 
 velopment, and fortifies maternity against the many preventable 
 evils that beset the sublimest episode of life. 
 
 Pure food is designed to keep the cradle filled and to stand the 
 grave off to its proper time. 
 
 It is designed to carry its lesson to stricken Europe, whose 
 under-nourished children, like our own, now need more attention 
 than ever. 
 
 It is designed to erase the horrible records of childhood mortal- 
 ity and to substitute for them the cheering fruits of decent and 
 humane consideration for the physically defective so frequently 
 condemned to meaningless misery, and premature death. 
 
 These chapters will trace the fortunate accident that even in 
 ignorance sometimes removes the peg. 
 
3fi THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 They will locate that peg. They will reveal the operation of 
 a beautiful and harmonious law. They will make plain the natural 
 processes which, when applied, can be substituted for the accident 
 that sometimes intercepts the journey of a useful creature on his 
 way to untimely death. 
 
 The proper place to teach the mysteries of food is in the 
 school, but even we who were not taught there can begin now to 
 learn with inevitable increase in the number of our days, and 
 blessings untold to our children. 
 
 The most indifferent of us know that chicken food must be 
 food that will make chickens grow and keep them well. There is 
 such food upon the market. 
 
 Children's food must perform the same service for children, 
 but there are hundreds of foods now on the market which chil- 
 dren eat every day. These foods in six weeks will destroy the 
 health of chickens, and in three months kill them. 
 
 They do not cause children to topple over on the streets in 
 paroxysms of pain. They do not bring about sudden death. They 
 rob the child a little at a time, slowly but surely undermining its 
 vitality and lowering its resistance until eventually it becomes 
 the ready victim of any disease organism that may take up resi- 
 dence in its tissues. 
 
 The same law of building with building materials operates for 
 children and chickens. 
 
 Universities have not yet been able to suspend the law, though 
 some of them have sought to change our notions regarding its 
 divine origin. 
 
 § 8 — DENATURED FOODS DESTROY LIFE 
 
 Animals, human or dumb brutes, die when their food is de- 
 based, but the very number of such foods makes it impossible 
 for an individual to go before a grand jury with the charge: 
 "This food killed my little girl/' 
 
 For months, perhaps for years, one juggled food brought sub- 
 stances to her diet which her little body could not use. Her 
 vitality in throwing off the excess baggage was slowly sapped. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 37 
 
 She was not poisoned by any particular food. A combination 
 of inadequate foods merely robbed her tissues of their tone. 
 
 Another food from another source had been processed in a 
 manner that removed some or all of its most indispensable ele- 
 ments. In its refinement it withheld from her little frame the very 
 materials she required for growth, materials that God had 
 elaborated for her, but which unnatural practices had withdrawn 
 from her reach on the vain assumption that it is not necessary to 
 credit the Creator with a profoundly conceived and marvellously 
 executed scheme of biochemic balances and harmonies. 
 
 Persistently, month after month, the disordered combination 
 of artificial foods sallied to the dinner table, where all the forces 
 of outraged nature were called into battle with the unseen enemy 
 of health and life. 
 
 Commercial expediency looked on as the fight was waged with 
 nature but nature had been equipped with poor fighting materials 
 and the child's resistance, broken at last by the combined attack 
 of unsuspected enemies, buckled, snapped and was gone. 
 
 There is no pathologist, no public prosecutor, no father or 
 mother who can accuse the food industry of her death. Let this 
 be fully understood. 
 
 Before we can correct a single refined food abuse, by law, we 
 must produce in court the body of a dead child, and prove that' 
 life was destroyed by a particular food. 
 
 Scientists will be on hand to testify in behalf of the defendant. 
 Food manufacturers have been paying scientists for twenty-five 
 years to testify in their defence. 
 
 I have listened on hundreds of occasions to their testimony in 
 adulterated food cases, and in many instances I have seen their 
 sophistries fail, but the facts have rarely been reported to the 
 public. 
 
 The fear of advertising losses, as we have seen, has closed the 
 columns of most newspapers and magazines to the truth. 
 
 Judges, confused by the conflicting testimony of experts, have 
 in numerous instances imposed fines of $5 upon wretches for pre- 
 serving milk with formaldehyde ; for salvaging the flesh of dis- 
 eased animals for human food. 
 
 Not a word of these heinous crimes or the travesty of justice 
 which flows from them filters out to the public. 
 
88 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Cases in which deadly wood alcohol has formed the base of 
 vanilla, lemon and other flavouring extracts have been dismissed 
 with a suspended sentence, not a soul outside the court room hear- 
 ing an echo of the facts. 
 
 Confectioners who have used arsenical preparations in the 
 glaze with which their penny candies were weather-proofed have 
 been let oft" with trifling rebukes, and the public has been none the 
 wiser. 
 
 Foods that kill mice, rabbits and guinea pigs are not "harmful" 
 to the child in the law's eyes, for the reason that nobody is will- 
 ing to feed a child on an exclusive diet of such things until it dies, 
 in order thereby to produce, as evidence, a dead body in court. 
 
 Fortunately, when it is argued that chickens or other experi- 
 mental animals are not human beings, and that therefore any 
 deduction based on barnyard phenomena are unwarranted when 
 applied to humanity, we are not confined to animal experimenta- 
 tion for our facts. 
 
 The same facts have been established in the most startling and 
 dramatic fashion, hundreds of times, upon human beings. The 
 fascinating narratives which these human poison squad experi- 
 ences provide for our enlightenment and use will be related here 
 in all their significances. Dramatists and novelists have strangely 
 overlooked the intense human interest with which these weird 
 episodes literally scintillate and thus the general public has never 
 heard of them. 
 
 In Billibid Prison, Philippine Islands, 1912, twenty-nine crim- 
 inals under sentence of death were fed exclusively on refined 
 and denatured foods of the kind most common in America for the 
 purpose of determining the effect of such diet. 
 
 Their chief food consisted of polished rice. In six weeks the 
 condemned men became anemic. Their first symptom was slight 
 edema (water-logging or swelling) of the feet and ankles which 
 disappeared after lying down. Pufrmess beneath the eyes, with 
 general weakness and pains in the legs, soon followed. 
 
 Later the edema became massive, involving even the thighs. 
 Then came marked apathy with muscular wasting and extreme 
 pallor. Finally, an enlargement of the heart with feeble heart 
 action. 
 
 It is noteworthy that the symptoms of war edema reported 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 39 
 
 among German, French and British soldiers, 1916-1918, are 
 identical with these. 
 
 Commenting on the Billibid experiments, Drs. R. P. Strong 
 and R. C. Crowell stated : "These diseases developed owing to 
 the absence of some substance or substances in the diet necessary 
 for the normal physiological processes of the body. Without a 
 supply of such substances in the food sickness results." This 
 comment in all its vagueness disclosed the poverty of food knowl- 
 edge possessed by the medical profession six years ago. 
 
 The prisoners fed on the denatured diet mingled freely with 
 the other prisoners but there was no tendency of the disease to 
 spread outside the group fed on the polished rice. 
 
 When this denatured food was removed from their diet atfd 
 whole natural brown rice restored to them, they recovered 
 promptly. 
 
 These are the brief outlines of facts of which you will leam 
 much in striking detail before we have proceeded far. They are 
 cited here only for the purpose of emphasising the ignorance 
 existing as late as 19 12 among men who although devoting their 
 lives to the cure of disease did not suspect its cause. 
 
 In the near future, depending upon the rapidity with which 
 the truth is spread, it will not be so difficult to bring the body of a 
 dead child into the court room to prove with evidence that can- 
 not be controverted that the murder was committed by depraved 
 food. 
 
 § 9 — HUMAN VARIATIONS OF A DIVINE THEME 
 
 Perhaps you have heard of the little girl who caught cold 
 easily, and whose mother for that reason kept her home from 
 school on rainy days. 
 
 From the pages of "Starving America" published, 1913, by 
 George H. Doran Company, of which work this is an elaborate 
 extension, I again present her to you for the reason that she 
 symbolises millions of her kind. 
 
 She went one day to a playmate's birthday party at a neighbour's 
 home. Set before the children was a great frosted cake with 
 lighted candles; ice cream bricks striped with red, white, green 
 
40 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 and brown ; candies of seven hues, and a riotous assortment of 
 goodies that struggled with each other in a debauch of colour to 
 catch the attention of greedy little eyes. 
 
 The little merry-makers were transported by the rainbow 
 sweets before them. Angel cake and wafers were consumed with- 
 out end. 
 
 That night the tired but happy little darling was tucked away in 
 her warm little bed by little mother, who was happy too. 
 
 In her sleep she fretted and tossed a bit. The next day she 
 did not seem well enough to be sent to school. Toward evening 
 a slight fever had developed. 
 
 Her mother called it an "upset." 
 
 The fever continued into the second day and the doctor was 
 called. He felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and asked what 
 she had been eating. 
 
 When the party was described he smiled and said: "She has. 
 eaten too much." 
 
 He gave her medicine and in a few days she was "well." 
 
 The doctor had not taken into consideration the fact that the 
 milk of which that richly decorated ice cream had been made was 
 raw milk; he did not know that a microscopical examination of 
 it would have revealed millions of organisms to the cubic centi- 
 meter, much less than a teaspoonful. 
 
 He did not attach much importance to the fact that many of 
 those organisms were of the pathogenic or disease-producing type, 
 and that the simple but effective remedy against them, pasteurisa- 
 tion, had not been applied. 
 
 He little heeded the fact that once infected, neither milk 
 nor its products, ice cream and butter, are made safe by anything 
 but pasteurisation or sterilisation. 
 
 He did not recall that low temperature or even freezing has 
 no effect on the disease germs of milk, and does not destroy the 
 tuberculosis, typhoid and diphtheria bacilli, the highest exponents 
 of milk-borne infection. 
 
 He did not know that the ice cream, sent in from a store, was 
 stiffened with a bodifier made of commercial gelatine, more truth- 
 fully classified as carpenters' glue, which the Bureau of Chemistry 
 at Washington has found to contain as many as 6,000,000,000 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 41 
 
 organisms to the gram, of which there are twenty-nine in a 
 single ounce. 
 
 He did not know that glue, containing sulphites, copper and 
 arsenic was originally intended as wall paper sizing, or for use 
 in the paper box factory or furniture shop, but that through the 
 cupidity of the wholesale bakers' supply houses it had been ap- 
 propriated for use in confectionery, ice cream and cake. 
 
 He did not know that the marshmallows consumed by the child 
 consisted of glue, sugar and a coal tar dye. 
 
 He did not know that the coloured candies were made chiefly 
 of glucose, sweetened with 10 or 15 per cent, of sugar, flavoured 
 with ethereal extracts and ornamented with ribbon dyes. 
 
 He did not know that the soft drinks, pop, consumed by the 
 child were sweetened with saccharine, contained soap bark for 
 "suds/' were coloured with dye, preserved with salicylic acid, 
 benzoic acid or formic acid, and flavoured with esters, ethers and 
 aldehydes. 
 
 He did not know that small town "pop," as well as big city 
 "pop," contains as a rule not a single ingredient recognised as 
 food. 
 
 He did not know the destructive action of refined glucose and 
 refined sugars when excessively consumed. 
 
 He did not know that on such a diet bees are quickly killed, 
 though it has been generally supposed that an abundance of 
 table syrup and granulated sugar is good food for the child. 
 
 He had read something of the high calorie value of sugar, and 
 glucose, but had not stopped to consider that alcohol and gasoline 
 have a much higher calorie value. 
 
 He did not know, as we are going to discover a little later, 
 that "high calories" although a scientific phrase, is not only mean- 
 ingless but dangerous when applied to food as it is being applied 
 to-day. 
 
 The little party as a single instance of childhood dissipation 
 did no particular harm to its victim except perhaps to infect her 
 through the ice cream with the germ of bovine tuberculosis, 
 although every time she consumed a glass of raw milk of un- 
 known origin at home she encountered the same danger. 
 
 The significance of the little birthday party lay in the fact that 
 all the delicacies served to the romping children were merely 
 
42~~ THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 typical, under other forms, of the refined foods so generously in- 
 corporated in the every day diet of the American people. 
 
 We are to learn why our little girl caught cold so easily, and 
 why it seemed difficult to cure those colds, and why she had so 
 many periodical "upsets." 
 
 Of what did her breakfast consist? 
 
 There was, of course, the usual coffee, which no child should 
 ever consume, and the usual rolls, toast or pancakes with glucose 
 syrup, with one of the many popular breakfast foods served with 
 milk produced by cows fed on brewers' grain, beet pulp, distillery 
 waste, cotton seed meal and gluten feed, a by-product of the 
 glucose factory, compounded black strap feeds, containing ground 
 corn cob, oat hulls, peanut shells, buckwheat hulls, cottonseed 
 hulls, rice hulls, cocoa shells, chaff, elevator screenings, shredded 
 straw, plant refuse, dirt and sand. 
 
 "Is this not the breakfast of millions?" you ask. 
 
 Of what did the "breakfast-food" consist? 
 
 Breakfast foods made of wheat, corn, barley and rice must 
 ''keep"; they must "look nice." 
 
 The corn flakes, the farina served under trade names in fancy 
 packages at high prices but purchasable in bulk without the fancy 
 names at half the price, and the puffed rice are merely other 
 forms of angel cake and wafer without the sugar and eggs. 
 
 They represent but the starchy part of the grain from which 
 the many wonderful substances we are about to describe have 
 been removed for commercial reasons. 
 
 At noon, as father did not come home for lunch, mother fried 
 the potatoes from last evening's meal, and perhaps added a bit 
 of bologna in which in the uninspected establishments, of which 
 there are thousands in the United States, the raw flesh of the re- 
 jected dairy culls (old and diseased cows) is utilised. 
 
 White bread and margarine, with syrup, were present in 
 abundance. They were always present! 
 
 § 10 — NATURAL IMMUNITY VERSUS BUSINESS 
 
 Our little girl liked white bread or biscuits, deluged with 
 table syrup, for lunch. Her mother did not know what life-sus- 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 4S 
 
 taining substances had been removed from the bread and the 
 biscuits, or what had been taken out of the hydrolised corn starch 
 that produced the syrup. 
 
 She also liked jam purchased from the store, with its 10 per 
 cent, of fruit and its 10 per cent, of apple juice, made from the 
 sulphured skins and cores of the dried apple industry; with its 
 70 per cent, of glucose, sweetened with 10 per cent, of sugar, 
 held together with sufficient phosphoric acid to supply the jelly- 
 ing quality, and preserved with the classic one-tenth of 1 per cent, 
 of benzoate of soda to prevent the mass from disintegrating. 
 
 You did not think such jam as this is to be found in America. 
 
 Examine the fine print on the labels of the jars sold in the 
 stores; examine the fine print on the labels of the thirty-pound 
 pails sold as "pie filler" and "cake filler" to the baker. More than 
 70 per cent, of all the commercial jam consumed is exactly like 
 this. 
 
 Our little victim liked the bright strawberry hue of the sweetish 
 stuff. This hue had been contributed through the legal use of a 
 coal tar dye known as amranth. 
 
 Only one-tenth of 1 per cent, of benzoate of soda was declared 
 in fine print on the label, and her mother had never noticed even 
 that. 
 
 Before the war, when benzoate of soda did not cost $5 a pound, 
 the presence of as much as five-tenths of 1 per cent, in many foods 
 was determined by the Commissioner of Agriculture of the State 
 of Georgia. The facts were reported to the state chemist in 
 serial No. 56. 
 
 To-day formic acid and other preservatives less costly are 
 secretly employed. 
 
 The little girl's doctor did not know this ; moreover he was not 
 worried by the presence of a little benzoate in her jam. 
 
 She was also fond of pickles, hardened in a bath of alum, the 
 astringency of which prevents the softening of their tissues. 
 
 Her father and mother had not been taught the chemistry of 
 food in the schools, nor the relationship which refined food, 
 juggled food, and drugged food might some day bear to their 
 anemic child. 
 
 The evening meal was well suited to the father's needs. It con- 
 sisted of chops or pot roast or sausages or baked beans and ham, 
 
44 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 or liver and bacon, or kidney stew, with vegetables and a bakery 
 pie, or a home-made pudding, white with corn starch and milk or 
 brown with corn starch and chocolate, or pink with ribbon dye. 
 
 The ever-present white bread and something that resembled 
 butter was, of course, consumed in abundance. It was the aver- 
 age American meal as you shall see from authority much higher 
 than mine, government authority, and it is the average American 
 meal with which we are concerned. 
 
 During the afternoon a candy shop down the street received 
 many of the pennies of the little girl. It had existence for the 
 purpose of attracting those pennies. At least twenty-million such 
 pennies are spent each day in the United States by school chil- 
 dren. 
 
 Thus she feasted between meals on dyed glucose and chemical 
 flavours, with an occasional ice cream soda to add romance to her 
 little life. 
 
 Delicate always, anemic and "nervous," she had been treated 
 by the family physician for tonsillitis, acute chorea and anemia. 
 At the age of six she underwent an operation for adenoids. 
 Every year among children there are more than 200,000 such 
 operations in the United States. 
 
 She had also taken a tonic of iron and manganese. Remember 
 these words, "iron" and "manganese." 
 
 On other occasions tonics of strychnia were prescribed. 
 
 Her teeth, like those of millions of children, were decayed. 
 Mother was anxious about her, and at times would say, "I won- 
 der if we feed Helen properly?" But Aunt Jennie always 
 answered, "Her ills are natural to childhood, and are to be ex- 
 pected. The sooner she has them all the sooner she will be done 
 with them." 
 
 Moreover, the neighbours told mother that the less attention 
 she paid to her child's food the better, because people who were 
 always worrying about food had the toughest luck. Here and 
 there a "plump" child was pointed out as a model of what eating 
 "anything and everything " would produce. 
 
 The neighbours did not know that water-logged tissues are 
 frequently mistaken for plumpness, or that plumpness has nothing 
 to do with muscle tone, with normal functioning of the glands, 
 with vitality or resistance to disease. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 45 
 
 The neighbours did not know that the "plump" child, fed on 
 "anything and everything," succumbs more quickly than the well- 
 fed, muscular but thin child. 
 
 Grandmothers and mothers had fed children for ages, and 
 surely they must know a little about their business, so after all 
 little Helen's mother felt that the child would eventually outgrow 
 her poor health. "She just wasn't strong" but "would get strong." 
 It was a comforting thought. 
 
 A few weeks after the little party, as Helen was going home 
 from school, she was caught in a rainstorm. Mother changed 
 her clothes promptly upon her arrival and gave her hot lemonade. 
 
 There was another fever and the doctor was called. When he 
 came he uttered one word, "pneumonia." 
 
 We now know, for the Census Director at Washington has told 
 us, that every year in the United States 400,000 children under 
 ten years of age are buried, as little Helen was buried. 
 
 Such are the facts. They cannot be disputed. 
 
 The apparent cause of the child's death was pneumonia; the 
 real cause was malnutrition, followed by low resistance and in- 
 ability to fight off the pneumococci. 
 
 Man's methods of endowing his children with natural immunity 
 unfortunately involve a side issue of "business expediency." 
 God's methods disclose no such taint. By following the divine 
 hints that lie at his feet man can still have his business without the 
 tragedy on which it is built. 
 
 § 11 — THE NEGLECTED CHILD OF 1912 — THE SOLDIER OF 
 
 1918 
 
 We have learned with shocking surprise that in the last mortal- 
 ity statistics issued by the Census Director at Washington, there 
 were reported in the United States for one year the deaths of 
 400,000 children under ten years of age. 
 
 The record of these deaths was compiled in what is known as 
 the "registration area," which included only about 65 per cent, of 
 the total population of the United States. 
 
 The total deaths in the "registration area" the year before the 
 
46 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 war. 1913, were 890,848, of which all but 70,644 were of white 
 persons. 
 
 The "registration area" covered few Southern states in which 
 the negro population is large. It is thus seen that the high mortal- 
 ity record of the negroes has in no manner affected these figures, 
 which would be still larger if the negro population were taken 
 into consideration, or if the entire country were reported upon 
 instead of but two-thirds of it. 
 
 Lamenting the fatalities of war we are unmindful that during 
 the past four years, while men on the battle-fields of Europe were 
 being killed by fire and gas, 1,500,000 children under ten years of 
 age were dying here at home in the United States. 
 
 Because they did not die in a massacre, their deaths failed to 
 rouse the nation. 
 
 When the Titanic and the Lusitania went down with a few more 
 than 2,000 souls aboard, the cities of civilization put on the cloak 
 of grief. A few thousand perished, but they perished in a heap. 
 
 In one instance a block of ice, in another an enemy was re- 
 sponsible. 
 
 Following both catastrophes every newspaper in the United 
 States poured into the streets millions of first page lamentations. 
 Men were dazed because these tragedies came quick and sudden. 
 
 The slow-moving, deadlier peril that walks among their chil- 
 dren by day and lies with them at night arouses no man. 
 
 As long ago as 1912 the United States Bureau of Education 
 prepared a bulletin warning us that here in our own peaceful cities 
 of America 
 
 400,000 children had organic heart disease. 
 
 1,000,000 children had tuberculosis. 
 
 1,000,000 children had spinal curvature. 
 
 1,000,000 children had defective hearing. 
 
 4,000,000 children were suffering from malnutrition. 
 
 6,000,000 children had enlarged tonsils or other gland diseases. 
 
 10,000,000 children had defective teeth. 
 
 15,000,000 children needed attention for physical defects pre- 
 judicial to health. 
 
 Many of those children were then boys of fifteen. Since then 
 they have passed through the medical examination of the draft 
 of 1918. The defects of 1912 had become intensified during the 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 47 
 
 interim. The re-examination of 1918 disclosed the nation's crime 
 of neglect. 
 
 Yes, the neglected child of 1912 presented himself for efficient 
 military service in 19 18. The nation that had ignored his perils in 
 peace expected him in war to step into line with a whole body. 
 
 Do you not think it time to ask the reason why these figures 
 are on the books against us ? 
 
 Do you not think it our duty to heed the truth and apply it ? 
 
 To all who think so these words are addressed. 
 
 We know in the last year reported by the Census Directory 
 at Washington, 159,435 infants under one year of age perished 
 in the United States. 
 
 This sacrifice of infant life indicates that nearly 200,000 Ameri- 
 can women annually enter the shadows of motherhood unfit to 
 bring their children into the world. The facts are brutal, but 
 by ignoring them or by refusing to look into them because of 
 the grim depression which accompanies the contemplation of such 
 a holocaust, we betray our unworthiness of the sacrifice made 
 by our sons and brothers on the fields of France. 
 
 They struggled and died to make the world a better place to 
 live in. Shall we hesitate to match our living efforts against their 
 blood? 
 
 By seeking the cause of America's slaughter of the innocents, 
 in order to act upon it, we prove that in some measure at least we 
 are worthy to account for our stewardship of the lives submitted 
 to our care. 
 
 If, in 1918, a hostile army had invaded our shores to put to 
 death 400,000 of our children as the Turks put to death the Ar- 
 menians, as the Prussians put to death the Belgians, there would 
 have been cause indeed for weeping and wailing and gnashing of 
 teeth. 
 
 That hostile army has invaded our shores, and is now ruthlessly 
 destroying our children. It is the army of ignorance, indiffer- 
 ence, complacency, selfishness, greed, materialism. 
 
 The crowds in the market places, in the cars, on the streets, in 
 the theatres ; the crowds scanning the casualty lists, hoping that 
 the names of their loved ones would not be there, gave no thought 
 even in the year of salvage, 1918, to the waste of life going on 
 around them. 
 
48 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 "With desolation is the earth made desolate, because no man 
 thinketh in his heart." 
 
 Therefore we experience little indignation when self-appointed 
 leaders declare an intolerance for what they describe as "mis- 
 taken regard for what are believed to be divine laws and a senti- 
 mental belief in the sanctity of human life. Such is the phi- 
 losophy of Madison Grant who holds that slaves are more fortu- 
 nate than free men and the subjects of an aristocracy happier and 
 better than the citizens of a democracy. 
 
 These anti-American doctrines are advanced boldly by the 
 councillor of the American Geographical Society and a trustee of 
 the American Museum of Natural History in his "The Passing of 
 the Great Race," published, 1916. 
 
 From such doctrines what shall America expect? 
 
 § 12 — WHAT OUR TEETH DISCLOSE 
 
 Although more than 100,000 deaths from tuberculosis are 
 reported in the United States every year, these figures represent 
 only the number who perish, not the number afflicted or incapaci- 
 tated. 
 
 In the last year reported, covering but two-thirds of the popu- 
 lation, 58,973 died of diarrhoea. This number does not include 
 those who were stricken during the year and recovered. 
 
 Indicating fatal cases it also discloses the wide prevalence of 
 dietetic folly in non-fatal cases. 
 
 Cancer, rapidly increasing, was responsible for 49,928 deaths. 
 The American Society for the Control of Cancer through Dr. 
 Charles E. Lakeman, reported in 1915 that we then had 80,000 
 new cases each year in the United States. 
 
 Bright's disease, also increasing, with acute nephritis, was re- 
 sponsible for 65,106 deaths. 
 
 Cancer and Bright's disease, both of which are now being 
 traced to food abuses, in one year were responsible for 135,034 
 deaths, leaving hundreds of thousands of victims in the valley 
 straddled by lingering death. 
 
 Diabetes also is on the increase. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 49 
 
 Before abandoning these facts established by the Census Di- 
 rector at Washington, let us consider two diseases — cancer of 
 the stomach and heart disease — both of which take a progressively 
 heavier toll every year. 
 
 The rate for 19 13 was the highest for any year during the 
 period dating from 1900, just as the rate for 19 12 was the highest 
 shown for any previous year. The rate for 1917 shows a steady 
 and continuous climb, and thus far in the mortality statistics kept 
 by the City of New York for 1918, the increase actually smudges 
 the chart on which it is recorded. 
 
 The Census Director declares: "It is probable that many 
 deaths reported as due to 'tumour' are in reality caused by cancer,, 
 but as far as the cancer total is concerned they are not included." 
 
 When this fact is considered with the fact that the "registration 
 area" comprises only 65.1 per cent, of the total population, it is 
 evident that we have in the United States a great many more 
 cases of fatal cancer than are disclosed. 
 
 The Census Director continues : "Approximately 40 per 
 cent, of all deaths from this disease were returned as cancer of 
 the stomach and liver." 
 
 These facts tend strongly to support the convictions of PackarC 
 to the effect that refined and demineralised foodstuffs are di- 
 rectly responsible for the prevalence of cancer. 
 
 Of the 87,755 deaths charged to organic diseases of the heart, 
 the Census Director states : "The tendency has been toward in- 
 crease in the death rates from heart disease from year to year, 
 and the rates for the latter years are well in excess of those of 
 earlier years." 
 
 It will be well to remember that in all disorders of nutrition 
 involvement of the heart is among the first symptoms. Acidosis 
 and anemia which are widespread but notoriously neglected food 
 deficiency diseases, are always accompanied by abnormal heart 
 action, the true cause of which is rarely suspected, and still more 
 rarely reckoned with. 
 
 The extraordinary facts about to be presented all tend to prove 
 that cancer, Bright's disease, acute nephritis, diabetes, tuberculosis 
 and organic diseases of the heart are directly attributable to food 
 deficiencies in a land that literally overflows with an abundance 
 of food of a kind that supplies all these deficiencies. 
 
50 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Of course, when 400,000 children under ten years of age die 
 in their American homes every year there is an involvement of the 
 living who still maintain that minimum of vitality necessary to 
 hold them this side the dead line. 
 
 We need not speculate as to the prevalence of disease and 
 pain. All over America and Europe public school children are 
 being examined by physicians in search of disease. 
 
 Half the children in a school in Leeds were found by Dr. Hull 
 suffering from mineral starvation. Their food had been refined. 
 
 Before the war 40 per cent, of the children in the Edinburgh 
 schools were found suffering from diseases of the ear. 
 
 Of 10,500 school children examined, the British Dental Associa- 
 tion found 86 per cent, suffering from defective teeth, the result 
 of a diet lacking in the mineral substances upon which bones, 
 teeth and tissues depend. 
 
 Those who refuse to accept this fact must deal with the re- 
 sults of the experiments of Dr. Geis of Columbia University in 
 his analysis of the mineral content of defective teeth. 
 
 In the Dundee school 50 per cent, of the children were found 
 suffering from defective vision. Of 42,750 children examined 
 in 191 1 by Dr. William J. Galvin, chief of the Division of Child 
 Hygiene of the Boston Board of Health, 27,795 were described 
 as "defective." 
 
 Of 1,694 children examined in six clinics, 1913, by Dr. A. 
 Freedman Foot, eleven were found to possess normal teeth. Dr. 
 Foot, in reporting to the Second District Dental Society of New 
 York, declares : "The six-year molars of nearly every child were 
 broken down wholly or in part. In many instances the molars 
 were decayed through the gums. So extensive and far advanced 
 were the defects that corrective treatment, even if it were applied, 
 would have been of little value.'' 
 
 The New York Department of Health through Dr. T. Van 
 Wincke examining the teeth of 231,081 school children of New 
 York City, outside the dental clinics, found 131,747 defective. 
 
 What are the future health chances of these children? Are 
 they to be useful to society or a drag upon the race? Will we 
 need them for war in 1925 ? 
 
 If they really constitute our second line of defence, what are 
 we doing to protect that line? 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 51 
 
 Full proof is at hand establishing the incontrovertible propo- 
 sition that defective teeth or sound teeth may be had at will, de- 
 pending entirely upon the character of food consumed prior to 
 and during the entire period of dentition. 
 
 The same character of proof is at hand determining the fact 
 that defective teeth constitute but one of the many symptoms 
 of the grave systemic disorders traceable to refined food. 
 
 The American teeth of to-day are among the poorest on earth 
 in spite of the great variety of foods which the American people 
 enjoy. 
 
 "No nation was ever so well fed as America." 
 
 Alas ! such flattery does not compensate for the infirmities so 
 wilfully ignored. Flattery is a poor substitute for the riches God 
 has provided for His children. Those riches are within reach. 
 They are abundant. Our hands will soon be upon them. 
 
 | 13 — WHY HAVE A SIX- YEAR MOLAR? 
 
 Sound teeth are the foundation of health building. The six- 
 year molar is the corner-stone. The school children of America 
 are building upon defective corner-stones or without corner- 
 stones at all. 
 
 Why should God provide the six-year molar if He did not in- 
 tend His creature to use it? 
 
 A hundred eminent authorities whose brilliant demonstrations 
 have never been heard of by the plain people now stand on record 
 with these statements : "Defective teeth are symptoms of mal- 
 nutrition. They indicate that something is wrong with the food 
 supply. The normally nourished possess sound teeth." 
 
 Notwithstanding the profound truth nested in this little cluster 
 of words, no symptom of the national health is so grossly 
 neglected as the symptom revealed by defective teeth, even in 
 the face of overwhelming evidence of the soundness of the 
 prophecy that if we persist in ignoring the underlying causes 
 of these defects, America, in spite of the magnificence of her 1918 
 performances, is destined in 1948 to become a decadent nation. 
 
 In June, 1914, Dr. S. S. Goldwater, Commissioner of Health 
 
52 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of New York City, ordered a physical examination of the em- 
 ployes of the Health Department. 
 
 Between June and October 240 men and 456 women employes 
 were examined. These 696 individuals represented the average 
 standard of American citizenship. Perhaps because of their edu- 
 cation and environment they represented a standard a little higher 
 than the average. At least they should have. 
 
 They were specialists in the kind of health-education which the 
 American people now enjoy. As such they should have known 
 something about their own health. 
 
 The average age of the men examined was thirty-three and 
 one-half years; the average age of the women thirty-two years. 
 
 From the Department labourer to the highest executive officer, 
 a variety of indoor, outdoor and mixed employment was repre- 
 sented. 
 
 The report of the examination declares : "One hundred and 
 twenty-three were found to have defective digestion. Habitual 
 constipation was found in the majority of these. 
 
 "A great number of young men (notwithstanding their highly 
 polished shoes, carefully creased trousers, bright neckties and 
 clean-shaven faces) suffered from this condition, which if allowed 
 to go uninterrupted has baneful ultimate effects upon the blood 
 vessels, kidneys, heart and nervous system." 
 
 In addition to constipation the cause of a hundred other pre- 
 ventable ills, 417 of the entire number suffered from defective 
 vision, defective hearing and defective teeth. Ninety-two had 
 heart disease. Many of these had valvular leakage of which they 
 were entirely ignorant. 
 
 They had not died as infants, and they looked like healthy 
 creatures, but within them the forces of destruction were work- 
 ing unseen and unsuspected. 
 
 Others, especially very young men with constipation and nerv- 
 ousness, had dilated left ventricles with unstable and rapid heart 
 action. They were a fine, healthy, average looking lot, judged 
 from the outside, and would seem to justify the comforting flat- 
 tery of the average commentator upon the glory of American 
 public health: "We are the best fed nation in the world." 
 
 Just such deceptive judgment calculating from the exterior 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 53 
 
 only has inspired many American editors to idealise the "superb 
 health" of their fellows. 
 
 Were it not for this dangerous attitude toward truth these 
 symptoms would long ago have been interpreted in their true 
 significance, and an honest effort might have been made to provide 
 against them. 
 
 Self-flattery has blinded the nation, but the hundreds of thou- 
 sands of "rejects" cast aside as "physically unfit" in the medical 
 examination of our first draft of 1918 have opened the nation's 
 eyes. 
 
 Of our 696 Health Department employes, 232 or exactly one- 
 third were in obvious need of medical treatment, and 327—44 
 per cent. — were in need of medical advice. 
 
 Their diet had not saved them from the infirmities with which 
 they were specialising, even though they had not been included 
 among the 400,000 who as little children succumb every year 
 in the United States to an untimely death. 
 
 Commenting on the Goldwater report, Dr. Charles D. Slade, 
 who made the examinations, stated: "Forty-four per cent, of 
 those examined had without their knowledge some vital physical 
 defect which might have shortened their life by a number of years 
 if undetected. 
 
 "Those in whom were discovered actual evidence of disease 
 numbered 213 or nearly one-third the entire number." 
 
 There was not much self-justification for self-flattery there. 
 
 As we advance we shall discover less, but always shall we keep 
 in mind the simple, acceptable, never-failing and truly divine 
 formula, the abandonment of which is responsible for so much 
 human infirmity, and the return to which means so much not only 
 to America, but to that great part of the civilised world which 
 believes in God and trusts Him. 
 
 § 14 — "dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt 
 
 return" 
 
 "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return" is a law of 
 life, not a symbol of death. 
 
 Dr. Slade, continuing his comments upon the disquieting results 
 
54 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of the examination of the health of the employes of the New 
 York Department of Health, said : "The last ten years have 
 recorded a general reduction in the general death rate in all ages 
 under forty years, but there has been a simultaneous surprising 
 increase in the death rate between forty and sixty years, due 
 largely to digestive, circulatory and kidney diseases." 
 
 Back in 1898 New York City had an infant death rate, under 
 one year of age, of 203 for every thousand born. 
 
 Heroic efforts to save these lives through the establishment of 
 pasteurisation of milk, infant feeding stations and the work of 
 visiting nurses had succeeded in reducing this death rate at the 
 beginning of 1918 to 89 per thousand, a saving of 114 infant lives 
 in every thousand born. 
 
 In 1917 the metropolis reported 141,564 births. In that year 
 16,139 baby lives were prolonged beyond the first year stage, 
 after which little, if anything, was done for them. 
 
 The city "saved" them, glorified its records accordingly, and 
 went about its business, giving no thought to their second year, 
 their fifth year, their tenth year. Now it is focusing attention 
 upon their fortieth year. 
 
 What kind of a system is it that will prolong the misery of frail 
 little lives for a year and then pause in its work of redemption ? 
 It were better, perhaps, if the babies were allowed to die than to 
 extend their miseries into unknown regions out of which they 
 finally emerge with infirmities that cause them to curse the day 
 they were snatched from the "infant mortality" class and flung 
 into the "physically defective" class. 
 
 It were better far for us in our relations with God that we 
 make no attempt to drag out the infirm lives of these weaklings 
 of society unless we continue our work of restoring them to 
 healthy, fruitful life. 
 
 Something of the truly inspiring experiences I have had in 
 the physical redemption of broken boys who had been rescued 
 from the "infant mortality" class will be related here in good 
 season. 
 
 Certain it is that all childhood infirmities lower efficiency, for 
 "which reason public school boards are ordering operations upon 
 children's throats, removing adenoids, correcting defective vision, 
 doing dental work, providing nurses, furnishing meals at cost, 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 55 
 
 sending "cards of instruction" on hygiene and diet to parents. 
 
 The charge for these services is borne by the community. 
 
 Apparently if the work were not done under school direction 
 it would not be done at all. 
 
 The state exercises vast and elastic powers in the regulation of 
 public health and education. Why does the state make no at- 
 tempt to search out the cause of the diseases with which it deals? 
 Why does the state not warn the people against the hidden enemy 
 that attacks them ? 
 
 Let me again repeat : the politicians, the food industries and the 
 newspapers will not permit it. 
 
 Wherefore, it is the purpose of these words to set down a 
 record of those common but deadly sins of diet which end in- 
 evitably in disease. 
 
 We shall have to review the nation's crimes against its wheat, 
 corn, rye, rice and barley; against its bread, biscuits, crackers, 
 cakes, rolls, rings, buns, wafers, doughnuts, crullers, pastry, pies, 
 pancakes, puddings, sugars and starches ; against its milk, butter, 
 eggs, meat products, fish, poultry; against its molasses, dried 
 fruits, condiments, candies, ice cream, jam, jellies and preserves. 
 All of these foods could be and would be what they ought to be 
 if we refused to tolerate the manipulation of the substitutes that 
 go into them. 
 
 We shall tear down nothing without building up. When we 
 are through it will be impossible to go astray in the selection and 
 preparation of the most delicious, appetising and nutritious of 
 foods for our families unless we wilfully decide to do so. 
 
 "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return." 
 
 If we take a handful of fertile earth into the laboratory and 
 split it into its component parts we find it composed chiefly of 
 some sixteen elements. 
 
 If we take a measure of milk, an egg, z. handful of wheat or 
 corn, barley, oats or rye, again we find the same sixteen elements, 
 plus at least two marvellous compounds elaborated by the plant, 
 though not in the soil. 
 
 These compounds were not known in the modern laboratory 
 until a few years ago, yet Moses proved by his instructions to the 
 Jews that he was familiar with them. 
 
 They are called "fat soluble A" and "water soluble B." With- 
 
56 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 out them man cannot live, yet he makes an almost fanatical effort, 
 for business reasons, to keep them out of his diet, and succeeds 
 in doing so in at least 80 per cent, of all the foods he eats. From 
 his bread he succeeds in removing them entirely, depending 
 solely upon benevolent chance to obtain them from "offsetting" 
 foods about which he hears so much when he reads the reports 
 of commercial scientists. 
 
 When we analyse the body of man we find that it, too, is made 
 up principally of the same sixteen elements found in the soil 
 and the plant. There is no creature alive on the face of this 
 planet whose body does not contain these sixteen elements. 
 
 The constancy with which they appear in the soil, in the tissues 
 of the plant and in man's own tissues, and the consistency with 
 which they are found in all unrefined foods reveal the operation 
 of a fixed and inviolable law. 
 
 The beauty of this law, as we are about to see, is almost as 
 infinite as the Creator who set its processes in motion. The 
 lore of the libraries contains nothing so bewildering in its fasci- 
 nation, and yet one may consult a million volumes and find n© 
 hint of its glory upon their pages. 
 
 The elements which operate under this law and which persist 
 through fertile soil, healthy plants and man are oxygen, nitrogen, 
 hydrogen, carbon, chlorine, fluorine, iron, phosphorus, calcium, 
 potassium, magnesium, manganese, sodium, sulphur, silicon, 
 iodine. There are nearly a hundred from which nature might 
 choose but she clings tenaciously to these. 
 
 The human body obtains them through the medium of food, 
 and through food alone. 
 
 From all the food refined for the use of the human body at 
 least eight of them are removed entirely, and four others are re- 
 moved to the extent of 75 per cent. 
 
 In this clash with God and in all the miseries that flow from 
 it we shall find the very heart of the marvels about to be un- 
 folded. 
 
 Penetrating the circles of elemental nature for a few brief 
 hours even the indifferent and the sceptical will behold an invin- 
 cible defence against the deaths of the 400,000 children under ten 
 years of age who perish in the United States every year ; against 
 the nameless pain that remains behind. 
 
THE HUMAN SCRAP HEAP 5T 
 
 The disclosures of the War Department, July 27th, 1918, by 
 Provost Marshal General E. H. Crowder are to be remembered 
 as we enter the depths. The War Department's estimate of 
 effectives obtainable by extending the draft ages from 18 to 45 
 confirm in startling figures all the facts thus far presented as 
 to the number of physical defectives in the United States. 
 
 Of the 1,366,142 men available between the ages of 32 and 45 
 nearly 450,000 (435,378) are grouped as "physical rejects," leav- 
 ing 601,236 men fit for service. 
 
 Of the 2,568,012 men available between the ages of 18 and 22 
 nearly 800,000 (770,403) are grouped as "physical rejects," leav- 
 ing 1,797,609 men fit for service. 
 
 Here, then, are 2,568,012 mere boys of whom nearly a third 
 have been broken on the wheel of infirmity, a number agreeing 
 in depressing consistency with the averages adduced in all the 
 other instances cited here. 
 
 Why should such appalling numbers of American youth, under 
 standards of living for which so much is claimed, fall at their 
 tender age into the "physically unfit" class ? 
 
 And here are 1,036,614 men in their very prime, in the very 
 flower of ripening manhood, of whom 42 per cent., nearly half, 
 have been blasted at the core. 
 
 In these two classes alone our War Department from a total of 
 3,604,626 weeds out at a time when stern necessity inspires less 
 rigid physical examination, a full third (1,205,781) and casts them 
 off. Most of these rejected men were ready to die if need be 
 for the land they love, but a loved land has little use in time of 
 war for the mere readiness of her sons. In peace they may 
 decay and still be classified as men, but when the cannon roars 
 it is not readiness, but fitness, that makes a man. 
 
TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD: 
 THE CONSTRUCTIVE— THE DESTRUCTIVE 
 
TWO: TWO KINDS OF FOOD: THE CONSTRUCTIVE— 
 THE DESTRUCTIVE 
 
 § 15 — MORE PRECIOUS THAN SILVER AND GOLD 
 
 The despised minerals of the soil with their mysterious com- 
 panions, the "vitamines," which are always automatically re- 
 moved from food when the minerals are removed, control all 
 vegetable and animal life. More precious than silver and gold, 
 these commonplace constituents of food are rejected. 
 
 Notwithstanding the formidable names by which they are 
 known, they are found in the commonest of earth that will pro- 
 duce vegetation; in the grasses and seeds of grasses that spring 
 from that earth; in the most familiar living things that feed 
 upon those grasses and their seeds. 
 
 As we consume them every day and are not disturbed by 
 their presence or absence in the dining room, we shall have 
 little difficulty in following them in spite of their awe-inspiring 
 names. What we want to know is just how they affect our lives, 
 and how our interference with them results in disease and death. 
 
 All the mineral salts work in beautiful co-operation with each 
 other. They teach us that in nature nothing is independent. 
 They reveal the essential interdependence existing among all God's 
 creatures, among even the inert elements that have sprung from 
 His hands. 
 
 Without phosphorus, for instance, all the other soil elements are 
 worthless, even though present in abundance. 
 
 The science that treats of the life and health of the soil is 
 so conscious of this phenomenon that it has influenced legislation, 
 requiring the fertiliser manufacturer to state in specific terms 
 the exact quantity of the available phosphorus which his com- 
 merical product contains. 
 
 The soil obtains nitrogen, hydrogen, oxygen and carbon from 
 the air and the rain. 
 
 It finds its potassium and other mineral elements through the 
 
 61 
 
62 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 erosion of rock, but the quantity of phosphorus in the mines 
 and in the land is so easily estimated and so very limited, be- 
 cause there is no known substitute for it, that man is ever on 
 the alert for a new supply. 
 
 The upper crust of the earth, known as soil, averages from six to 
 twelve inches in depth. This thin film of earth containing the 
 vitalising mineral elements that give us all our vegetation is 
 the cradle of the world. It is the dust from which the bodies 
 of men are organised. 
 
 The first seven or eight inches of the virgin top soil of an acre 
 of land weigh about 2,000,000 pounds. In this top soil there 
 are only about 2,000 pounds of phosphorus. 
 
 Thus we glimpse a little of the wonderful function it performs 
 in combining with the other elements that support and control 
 life. One little part of phosphorus in a thousand parts of earth. 
 Think of it ! 
 
 Nature's most profound laws are qualitative, not quantitative. 
 Phosphorus, in harmonious activity with all the other mineral 
 salts of the soil, means normal crops, means health, buoyancy 
 and vigour in the animal life that feeds upon those crops. 
 
 Absence of phosphorus means soil starvation, loss of vegetable 
 and animal vitality. 
 
 Agricultural science knows that this subtle substance must 
 not be removed from the soil if we do not wish the end to come. 
 
 All the gold and silver and precious stones of the mines, all 
 the piteous cries of starving multitudes cannot re-create this 
 mysterious compounder of life. So science warns us against 
 our prodigality and tells us that if we wantonly destroy it or 
 remove it from the earth or take it out of our food we must 
 pay the price in disaster. That, nevertheless, is exactly what 
 we do. 
 
 Yet we must remember that phosphorus is only one of the 
 mineral elements without which life on the surface of the earth 
 would become extinct. 
 
 It is only because the available supply of phosphorus is so 
 small that it possesses picturesque significance as an illustration 
 of the necessity of minerals not only in the land, in the vege- 
 table, fruit and grain which the land yields, but also in the life 
 processes of man and animal. 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 63 
 
 Iron, potassium, calcium, magnesium, manganese, sulphur, 
 silicon, chlorine, fluorine and iodine are just as important as 
 phosphorus, no more so, no less so. 
 
 When we remove any one of them from the earth we produce 
 soil sickness, and the fruits of that soil are correspondingly 
 dwarfed, enfeebled, or do not appear at all. 
 
 "Dust thou art and unto dust thou shalt return," is indeed 
 a profound utterance, containing many lessons which the Twen- 
 tieth Century has been too busy, too materialistic, to heed. 
 
 That grim annual parade of 400,000 children under ten years 
 of age, with which the "four-foot graves" of the United States 
 are filled, would not be possible if human intelligence, guided 
 by faith in the benevolent dispensations of God's providence, 
 were to heed for one serious hour, on a nation-wide scale, the 
 gravity of its slothful indifference to the laws of life. 
 
 We are now about to see why whole grains, finely ground, 
 containing all the mineral salts and vitamines with which God 
 has endowed them, should replace in our diet not only for their 
 superior flavour, but for what they mean to life and health, the 
 refined, sifted and bolted cereals and breadstuffs upon which we 
 feed; why every ripe fruit that grows should be popularised 
 in the home ; why vegetables and greens should receive ten- fold 
 the attention they now enjoy; why the waters in which vegetables 
 are cooked should not be discarded, but rather why they should be 
 served in the form of soups or sauces ; why less meat and more 
 milk should be consumed; why all meat should be sterilised 
 and all milk pasteurised ; why butter is superior to all other forms 
 of vegetable or animal fats and why it too, as well as ice cream, 
 should be pasteurised; why milk and meat should not be con- 
 sumed at the same meal, and why young children should not 
 eat meat at all; why meat should always be accompanied by an 
 abundance of vegetables, and why no child or adult should pass 
 a single day without consuming fruit in some form, even though 
 it be but dried fruit such as raisins, dates, figs, prunes, dried 
 apples, apricots or peaches, and why sun-dried fruits should 
 replace the sulphur-dried product of the market place; what 
 eggs mean to the diet, and how to prepare for home use the 
 unrefined grains in all their delicious combinations of whole 
 meal breads, muffins, biscuits, cakes, porridges and puddings 
 
64 TUTS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 to which they so marvellously lend themselves not only at home, 
 but in the restaurant; why refined sugars such as granulated 
 cane sugar and beet sugar, glucose syrups and candies should 
 be consumed in ever lessening quantities ; why the natural sugars 
 such as unsulphured brown sugar, old-fashioned cane syrup, 
 molasses, old-fashioned sorghum, old-fashioned maple syrup 
 and honey should be consumed instead ; why baking powders 
 should be sparingly used ; why artificial colours, chemical preser- 
 vatives and chemical adjuncts such as sulphites, alum, saccharine, 
 sodium benzoate and the whole coal tar scheme should be rejected. 
 Behind this general proposition rests a structure of corporal 
 and spiritual beauty, the form and substance of which although 
 bequeathed to us through the wisdom of Moses, would still have 
 to be accepted on faith, were it not for the revelations of modern 
 science itself. 
 
 § 16 — THE INFLUENCE OF EARTH SALTS ON LIFE 
 
 Dr. J. Reynolds Green, Cambridge, has demonstrated that 
 even in the life of the plant the mineral salts play many parts, 
 and are necessary for the assimilation of the food of protoplasm. 
 
 Protoplasm is the soul and essence, the vital, growth-control- 
 ling, life-maintaining material of the vegetable and animal cell. 
 
 A new school of scientific experts has juggled with proto- 
 plasm, and from it coined the mystifying phrase "vitamines," 
 subordinating, even dismissing, under the one-sided enthusiasm 
 of its erudition, the simpler but none the less indispensable 
 elements without which protoplasm, vitamines, the "fat soluble 
 A," the "water soluble B," or any other component of life-sup- 
 porting food cannot exist. 
 
 The purpose of these words is not to clutter up the mind of 
 the reader with a hodge-podge of scientific terms, but rather 
 to demonstrate the exquisite simplicity of what now, to the plain 
 people, appears to be the most baffling and perplexing of riddles. 
 
 Here and there the employment of scientific terms becomes 
 essential. However, we need not be afrighted in their presence, 
 for they are the crutches upon which we shall hobble into light 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 60 
 
 and our journey without them would be slow indeed. So much 
 for that. 
 
 Now for the work we have undertaken. 
 
 Pfeffer, in his many experiments, demonstrated the impor- 
 tance of mineral salts to the growth of plants which, unlike the 
 animal, have the power of utilising mineral food as it exists 
 in the ground. The plant can make its own vitamines. Man 
 cannot. 
 
 We shall make no statements without fortifying them by facts, 
 hence the reference to Pfeffer and others who shall step on our 
 little stage hereafter. 
 
 Pfefler made a solution of water, iron oxide, calcium nitrate, 
 potassium nitrate, magnesium sulphate, potassium acid phos- 
 phate and potassium chloride. Into this solution he put buck- 
 wheat to grow. He also made other solutions from each of which 
 he omitted one or more of the mineral salts, in order to determine 
 what effect such omission would have upon the development 
 of the plant. 
 
 Through these experiments he proved that the plant, deprived 
 of any of the minerals mentioned, is affected at once injuriously. 
 He proved that in the absence of iron the development of chlo- 
 rophyl does not take place. 
 
 Chlorophyl is the green colouring matter of the plant, and 
 corresponds with hemoglobin, the red colouring matter of the 
 blood. Without chlorophyl there can be no vegetable life, as 
 without hemoglobin there can be no animal life. Both depend 
 on iron for their existence. 
 
 He proved conclusively that in the absence of iron faulty 
 nutrition is at once set up. 
 
 In five glass jars employed by him it was easily seen just how 
 the growth of the plants is affected by depriving them of any 
 of the mineral salts so necessary to their existence. 
 
 These food minerals of plants can be divided into four groups, 
 each of which serves a different purpose. 
 
 In the first group are found sulphur and phosphorus. All 
 analyses of proteins, the fibre of meat, the albumen of egg, the 
 gluten of wheat, the casein of milk, show that sulphur and phos- 
 phorus are essential constituents of them. As proteins are im- 
 mediately utilised in the construction of protoplasm, it can be 
 
66 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 seen that these salts are contained in every living substance. 
 
 The second group comprises potassium, magnesium, calcium 
 and iron, all of which have been conclusively demonstrated to 
 be essential to the development of the plant. 
 
 The third group consists of sodium, silicon, manganese, chlo- 
 rine and iodine, without which no plant can grow. 
 
 In the fourth group is found fluorine, which performs a won- 
 derful function in all plant and animal life. 
 
 In plant life it has been shown that potassium is directly con- 
 nected with the construction of sugars and starches, but in just 
 what way is not clearly known. 
 
 Potassium occurs most frequently in the organs in which the 
 formation and storage of sugars and starches are most actively 
 carried on, such as in the leaves and tubers. 
 
 It has been shown that magnesium has a distribution much 
 like that of potassium, and that calcium is essential to the health 
 of all green plants. One of its functions clearly established is 
 its activity in neutralising oxalic acid, a poison elaborated in 
 the nutritional processes of vegetables, and therefore finding its 
 way into animal life. 
 
 When we compare the influence of potassium, sodium and 
 calcium on the development and growth of plants we find the 
 presence of potassium leads to the development of stems, flowers 
 and fruits, or to what may be regarded as the maturing of the 
 plant, while in the absence of potassium the growth of the leaves 
 is more directly favoured, the crop remaining backward and im- 
 mature. The fruit does not develop! 
 
 It has also been established that the nitrogen so essential to 
 the life of animal and plant is combined with the mineral salts 
 of the soil in the form of nitric acid. 
 
 The minerals are thus taken up from the soil not only for 
 their own sake in the performing of many functions in life's 
 processes, but also for the sake of the nitrogen which they 
 carry to the plant. In other words, they are nitrogen carriers 
 as well as oxygen and carbon carriers. 
 
 Oats mature less fully and completely in the absence of sili- 
 con, thus establishing evidence of its aid in the metabolism of 
 the plant. 
 
 Until quite recently little was known of manganese as a con*- 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 67 
 
 stituent of many plants, but it has now been determined that 
 manganese exerts a powerful influence on various oxidative pro- 
 cesses carried out by a somewhat widely spread enzyme known as 
 laccase. 
 
 A curious phenomenon connected with these facts stands 
 forth when we consider that many of the food minerals even in 
 moderately dilute solutions are extremely poisonous, yet when 
 nature finishes her mysterious work of manipulating, combining 
 and compounding them, they are not only not poisonous, but 
 actually benevolent in their effect upon plant and animal. 
 
 Potassium in its pure state is a deadly poison, yet in its ab- 
 sence the degree of development of the plant is limited. 
 
 When the effects of such deficiency are so well marked even 
 in the case of plants, how reckless is man when he permits the 
 food of his children through entirely unnecessary, useless and 
 vainglorious processes to be deprived not only of their potas- 
 sium salts, but also of every one of the other mineral salts which 
 we are beginning now to see in their true significance! What 
 effect upon the vigour of American childhood and manhood, con- 
 sidered apart from the deaths every year of 400,000 children 
 under ten years of age, is exerted by the removal of these food 
 minerals from our national diet? 
 
 We shall see. 
 
 § 17 — OLD AT TWENTY-FIVE — YOUNG AT SIXTY 
 
 When sufficient potassium is present in the food of the plant 
 its sugars and starches are produced in greater quantities. The 
 plant itself moves on normally to maturing and the formation 
 of its flowers, and subsequently of its seeds, follows without 
 interruption. 
 
 The composition of the soil determines largely the character 
 of the development of the plant, exerting a vast influence upon 
 the variety of the species, the different individuals of which are 
 influenced accordingly. The same food influence is seen in 
 operation in the development of the heavy bones of the truck 
 
68 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 horse and the fine bones of the race horse, in the development of 
 the queen bee and the worker bee. 
 
 Ethnologists who write so dogmatically upon the creation of 
 man, drawing preposterous conclusions from the long heads 
 and long bodies of the Nordics, the round heads and sturdy 
 bodies of the Alpines, and the "disharmonic combinations" of 
 Nordic and Mediterranean mixtures would be less aggressive in 
 their journeys into the blurred and misty past, less sure of their 
 assumptions if they included food in their tortuous speculations. 
 
 Their sneering references to Genesis and their contemptuous 
 disposition of Adam, mask, in the name of wisdom, a depth of 
 ignorance which only the highest arts of camouflage can conceal. 
 The composition of the food of man largely determines the 
 character of the development of himself and his children, exer- 
 cising the same vast influence upon the physical characteristics 
 of his offspring as are exercised by soil food on the plant, and 
 by plant food on the horse. 
 
 The ethnologist who laughs at this has never bred, broke nor 
 trained a race horse, nor has he ever heard of the influence of 
 pellagra, a food deficiency disease, upon "the poor white trash" 
 of the South, nor has he ever fed four generations of chickens 
 on meat, but more of this later. 
 
 It has been conclusively established that in the absence or 
 through the deficiency of this or that food mineral others may 
 be absorbed in unnatural proportions and combinations. This is 
 one of the most alarming arguments against manipulation of 
 these minerals, whereby some are removed entirely, leaving 
 others in proportions altogether out of harmony with nature's 
 formula. 
 
 We do not know in what manner certain minerals are de- 
 posited in the arteries, but we do know that the hardening of 
 the arteries, brought about by these deposits, is the chief cause 
 of old age. A man may be old at twenty-five or young at sixty, 
 depending upon the condition of his arteries. Over this phe- 
 nomenon the ethnologist blindly leaps. 
 
 There is much evidence of which the ethnologist has never 
 heard, to support the belief that man's disregard of the mean- 
 ing and significance of the natural proportions of food minerals 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 69 
 
 as they are elaborated by Mother Nature is responsible for the 
 abnormal growth of many organs and glands; responsible in 
 a particular manner for the growth of morbid cells found in 
 all tumours and cancers. 
 
 Packard's illumination of this subject is destined to shine 
 through the centuries. 
 
 We know what happens, for instance, when the thyroid gland 
 is deprived of its iodine, and we know how the enfeebled thyroid 
 affects the rest of the body. Just as a handful of fertile earth, 
 a measure of wheat, a pint of milk, and the flesh of an animal 
 each contain the salts of the earth, so the blood, the gastric 
 juice, the pancreatic juice, the saliva, the bile and all the other 
 internal secretions of the body are composed chiefly of mineral 
 salts in solution. 
 
 We need only glance over the following analyses made many 
 years ago, but to-day as true as when they first came from the 
 laboratory, in order to see how these internal secretions con- 
 tain a constant minimum of these salts. 
 
 Analysis of saliva by Frerichs, Berzelius, and Hammerbacher, 
 calculated for 1,000 parts by weight of mineral salts. 
 
 Frerichs 
 
 Water 994.1 
 
 Total solids 5-9 
 
 Minerals 2.19 
 
 Potassium 457-2 
 
 Sodium 95-9 
 
 Iron oxide 50.11 
 
 Magnesium oxide 1-55 
 
 Sulphur 63.8 
 
 Phosphorus 188.48 
 
 Chlorine 183.52 
 
 Analysis of mineral salts of blood serum by Cavazzani calcu- 
 lated on 100 parts of fluid. 
 
 Potassium oxide 0.387 
 
 Sodium oxide ' 4.290 
 
 Chlorine 3-565 
 
 Calcium oxide 0.155 
 
 Magnesium oxide o.ioj 
 
 Berzelius 
 
 Hammerbacher 
 
 992.9 
 
 994.2 
 
 7-1 
 
 5-8 
 
 1.9 
 
 2.2 
 
70 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Analysis of mineral salts of red corpuscles by C. Schmidt 
 calculated on ioo parts of the moist corpuscles. 
 
 Potassium chloride 3-68 
 
 Sodium chloride Traces 
 
 Potassium phosphate 2.34 
 
 Sodium phosphate • 0.63 
 
 Calcium phosphate o.og 
 
 Magnesium phosphate 0.06 
 
 Iron oxide 0.47 
 
 Potassium sulphate 0.13 
 
 Analysis of pancreatic fluid calculated on 1,000 parts, by 
 Schmidt and Kruger. 
 
 C. Schmidt Kruger 
 
 Water 900.8 980.44 
 
 Solids 99.2 19.60 
 
 Mineral salts 8.3 3.57 
 
 Sodium chloride 7.35 0.93 
 
 Potassium chloride 0.02 0.07 
 
 Calcium phosphate 0.41 0.01 
 
 Magnesium phosphate 0.12 0.02 
 
 Analysis of bile minerals by Jacobsen and Hoppe-Sayler based 
 on 100 parts by weight of salts. 
 
 Sodium chloride 65.16 
 
 Potassium chloride • • 3.39 
 
 Sodium carbonate 11. 16 
 
 Trisodium phosphate 15.90 
 
 Tricalcium phosphate 4.44 
 
 Calcium carbonate Traces 
 
 Potassium sulphate Traces 
 
 Sodium sulphate Traces 
 
 Iron, silica Traces 
 
 Magnesium Traces 
 
 Analysis of gastric juice by C. Schmidt. 
 
 Human Dog 
 
 Water 994-40 973-0 
 
 Total solids 5.60 27.0 
 
 Mineral salts 2. 19 6.7 
 
 Sodium chloride 1.4S 2.5 
 
 Calcium chloride 0.06 0.6 
 
 Potassium chloride 0.55 1.1 
 
 Magnesium phosphate — 0.2 
 
 Iron O.12 0.1 
 
 Calcium phosphate — 1.7 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 71 
 
 In all of these analyses it must be remembered that the chemist, 
 handicapped as he is when working in the organic field, has not 
 determined the form under which, in their highly organised 
 states, the various minerals found in the laboratory previously 
 existed in the internal secretions of the living animal. 
 
 In reducing the organic mineral salts and colloids to "ash" 
 their form is completely changed so that all the chemist can say 
 for the result of his analysis is that the minerals are really 
 there, and that they are always there, regardless of the propor- 
 tions in which they are found by this or that investigator. 
 
 We must not assume because the chemist has calculated the 
 iron of the red corpuscles as "iron oxide" that it would be a 
 good thing, therefore, to go to the drug store and purchase a 
 dose of iron oxide. The iron in the blood does not exist in 
 such form. The chemist has to reduce it to such form before 
 he can recover it from the organic compound in which it is 
 found in life. 
 
 Herein lies the error made by the patent medicine manufac- 
 turer who tries to make the people believe that because certain 
 salts are found in the human body therefore medicines contain- 
 ing them are good for the human body. 
 
 To assume that because "calcium oxide" appears in an analysis 
 of blood serum it must therefore appear in the blood serum 
 itself as calcium oxide is a childish error. 
 
 The calcium, iron and other mineral salts as they appear in 
 the blood and internal secretions are present in such wonderfully 
 complex forms that they cannot be reproduced in the drug store 
 or laboratory. 
 
 The dumb grasses of the field possess the power to organise 
 these salts of the earth into forms in which they can be assim- 
 ilated by the animal. Man with all his intelligence and all his 
 laboratory apparatus cannot do this, yet man is presumptuous 
 enough to offer excuse, even justification, for his work of jug- 
 gling, manipulating, refining and destroying them before he sells 
 his finished product to his neighbour. 
 
THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 18 — THE HUMAN BODY 
 
 The mineral salts present in the internal secretions of the 
 human body are not present through the operation of blind acci- 
 dent. Selective action picks and chooses, accepts and rejects, 
 absorbs and discards them in a manner so astonishingly intri- 
 cate and so exquisite in its rhythmical waves that those who 
 study the very majesty of these phenomena are compelled to 
 see in them a Supreme Intelligence regulating all their orderly 
 activities. 
 
 In the clearly disclosed evidences of that intelligence we be- 
 hold the workmanship of God. 
 
 Water forms about three-fourths of the weight of the adult 
 body, and is the medium in which its biochemic activities are 
 carried on. Even the child knows that without water no plant 
 life could exist. 
 
 Plants that have but a single cell, which are not actually im- 
 mersed in water, are generally found in more or less moist situ- 
 ations where they continually get their supply of water from 
 dew or rain. In times of drought they are seriously injured. 
 
 The young cell which is enclosed with a cell membrane 
 speedily shows a tendency to accumulate water in its interior. 
 Gradually traces of water appear until ultimately a vacuole, 
 which is always full of liquid, is formed. 
 
 In the plant which consists of a number of cells such a vacuole 
 is found in every adult cell as long as it is living. In other words, 
 healthy protoplasm must always be in direct contact with water. 
 It is only while saturated with water that the active life of 
 protoplasm can continue. 
 
 A few "scientists," taken of! their guard in public debate, 
 have asserted that the removal of minerals from man's food 
 through refining processes can do no particular harm because 
 the body contains a store of minerals which do not require to 
 be replenished. 
 
 The same preposterous argument would indicate that because 
 man's body contains an enormous store of water (three-fourths 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 73 
 
 his weight) it is not necessary for him to replenish that store 
 daily. More of this later. 
 
 We now know that with very rare exceptions if a cell is once 
 completely dried, even at a low temperature, its life is gone, 
 and restoration of water fails to enable it to recover. 
 
 The life of a plant is intimately connected with the renewal 
 of the water which its cells contain. Fresh liquid must be con- 
 stantly taken in, just as a new supply of mineral salts must be 
 taken in. The water which is already there must, to a certain 
 extent, be removed. 
 
 The plant depends in fact upon a certain circulation of water, 
 and this becomes the more imperative as its growth increases. 
 
 It has been proved that protoplasm, which, as we have seen, 
 is the active substance found in every living cell of plant or 
 animal, draws its nutriment eventually from the salt solutions 
 which come to it. 
 
 It has also been established that protoplasm in plant and ani- 
 mal must return to these solutions such waste products as it 
 gives off. It must obtain its oxygen for instance from water, 
 for this element can only pass into the interior of a cell through 
 the liquid which enters that cell. 
 
 Thus we see that water is a wonderful medium through which 
 the forces of life are conveyed. It is not difficult to believe, 
 therefore, that the body of a man weighing 160 pounds contains 
 more than ioo pounds of water, not as the result of accident, 
 but as the result of a fixed law. 
 
 Of the solid matter found in the human body about one-fifth 
 is made up of the minerals — iron, calcium, phosphorus, potassium, 
 magnesium, manganese, sodium, sulphur, silicon, fluorine, iodine 
 and chlorine. 
 
 Chlorides and phosphates with carbonates and sulphates form 
 the chief of these mineral salts as far as weight is concerned, 
 but some of the salts which appear in mere traces, such as 
 fluorine and iodine, have essential functions to perform, and 
 without them we now know that human life as it now exists would 
 not be possible. 
 
 One of humanity's most conspicuous sins of . omission has 
 been its failure to consider reverently the dignity and the com-, 
 plexity of the human body, which, considered apart from the 
 
74 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 human soul, is the most majestic work of creation. Let us ex- 
 amine a single detail of its marvellous composition. 
 
 If we place a trace of fresh blood under the microscope an 
 astonishing picture is presented to the eye. Hundreds of little 
 corpuscles are seen floating about in the blood serum; most of 
 them are red, but a considerable number are white. 
 
 A single drop of blood contains so many millions of corpuscles, 
 far more than all the visible stars in the sky, that less than 
 a hundreth part of a drop, the merest trace, must be used on 
 the field under the lens in order that the eye may see anything 
 at all. 
 
 These red and white corpuscles are in themselves alone suf- 
 ficient to confound all the wisdom of the universities, but they 
 are not the only substances discoverable in that fragment of 
 a drop of blood. 
 
 Moving about with them as part of their structure, or in the 
 fluid in which they circulate, we find, as we have seen, the salts 
 of iron, calcium, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, magnesium, 
 manganese, sulphur, chlorine and many other compounds which 
 we shall not consider here. 
 
 These substances are always found when pure and normal 
 blood is examined. It is evident they must find their way through 
 some definite channel, and in obedience to some well-defined law. 
 
 It has been established on many occasions that the red and 
 white corpuscles each have certain well-defined work to do. 
 It has also been established that any foreign agency that inter- 
 feres with their work or keeps them from getting into the blood 
 is an enemy of life. 
 
 In order to compound that marvellously complex solution 
 which we call blood, Mother Nature obtains her building ma- 
 terials from food, just as she obtains food from earth. Let 
 us emphasise this impalpable and imponderable truth over and 
 over again. We can never attach to it too great or too sub- 
 lime an importance. 
 
 The whole character of the blood depends upon the character 
 of the food supplied to the digestive organs. 
 
 What kind of blood is supplied to the 400,000 children under 
 ten years of age who die every year in the United States? 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 75 
 
 What kind of blood was supplied to the "rejects" of the 
 army of 1918? 
 
 What kind of food is supplied to both? We shall soon know. 
 
 § 19 — BREAKING IT DOWN 
 
 The food-minerals and vitamines upon which life depends 
 must be in the food man eats, that his body may take them 
 from that food. 
 
 All food contains them until man removes them. Consumed 
 for a few months, food deficient in some of these building ma- 
 terials gradually affects health. 
 
 If we are partial to a particular food from which a consider- 
 able portion of nature's building materials has been abstracted, 
 disorder is bound to develop. 
 
 Nature, handicapped by the deficiency, will set up warning 
 before fatal damage has been done, but if we do not under- 
 stand her warning, or if we disregard it, we head straight for 
 destruction, unless in the meantime an accidental change of 
 diet provides the offsetting substances essential to life. 
 
 Accident and chance are the elusive forces that temporarily 
 bar the doors against destruction. 
 
 With the army of the dead, augmented in the United States 
 every year by 400,000 children under ten years of age, no happy 
 accident ever interfered. 
 
 Surely man should make an effort to locate the law upon 
 which so much physical integrity depends. 
 
 Each drop of blood is but an expression of that law. Any- 
 thing that interferes with the purity of blood is hostile to life. 
 "The blood is the life/' 
 
 Because man leaves so much to chance he sends a call into 
 darkness, summoning hundreds of diseases to assist him in 
 mismanaging the world in its sad sum total of misery and pain. 
 
 The removal of one substance essential to life marks the 
 beginning of disorder in the body. If two substances are re- 
 moved the body may make use of the others until the handicap 
 asserts itself. Then confusion must ensue. 
 
76 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 If three, four or five substances are removed the inevitable 
 collapse will take place a little sooner. 
 
 If seven or eight substances are removed destruction gallops 
 to the end. When all sixteen substances and their compounds 
 are removed starvation itself begins. 
 
 If we believe that God has elaborated these substances for 
 our benefit it is little short of sacrilege to disregard them, or 
 to trifle with them, because by doing so we assert our inde- 
 pendence of His designs. 
 
 If God is rejected entirely from the scheme of the universe 
 the extraordinary phenomena which spring from food, nutri- 
 tion, health and life must sooner or later overpower the spirit. 
 In the presence of miracles of life, too profound to be com- 
 prehended by the human intellect, the knee must bend. 
 
 But whether man be a fervent believer or a scoffing atheist, 
 he must see that breakfast, dinner and supper are not matters 
 to be left to accident or the designs of a food factory con- 
 cerned chiefly in the profit of its products. 
 
 If he is pale or anemic, if his energy is quickly exhausted, 
 if he feels "all run down" and little like undertaking the 
 commonplace duties of the day, if his children have lustreless 
 eyes, pallid complexions, undeveloped bodies or manifest ab- 
 normal tendencies, let him look to his food. 
 
 If they are bright, sturdy and resist illness, which he wrong- 
 fully and cruelly assumes must come to all children, let him con- 
 gratulate himself that an accident has brought them immunity. 
 
 In congratulating himself let him not ignore the truth. An 
 apple falls from the tree in obedience to a fixed law. If his 
 children are in health to-day as the result of another fixed law, 
 concerning which he knows nothing, let him know that they may 
 be protected to-morrow. 
 
 Our sixteen food minerals and the vitamines associated with 
 them are no part of chance. They are the law. 
 
 The body derives them, and the resistance they bestow, from 
 food and from no other sourcei To take them from his food 
 man must find them there. He cannot find them in food from 
 which they have been removed. With their loss he loses his 
 resistance. 
 
 If God had not endowed man with this extraordinary resis- 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 77 
 
 tance, the human family would have to keep itself hermetically 
 sealed in tin cans or glass jars. 
 
 The salmon is canned because dead flesh offers no resistance 
 to germs. A tin shell acts as a substitute in keeping the germs 
 off. Open the can and let them in for twelve hours. The results 
 will speak even in that short time. Let them in for twelve 
 days and the neighbours will retreat. Keep them out and the 
 salmon will stay sweet for a century. 
 
 There is nothing quite so marvellous as the power of healthy 
 living tissue to hold germ life in contempt. It is quite as ef- 
 fective as a hermetically sealed can. Death and putrefaction 
 are synonymous. 
 
 Putrefaction simply means the splitting up of tissue com- 
 pounds into their simple elements. Bacteria are the instruments 
 employed by nature to get rid of the dead. Without germs 
 nothing would rot. When a body is embalmed the germs are 
 simply held back a little while. 
 
 Bacteria convert dead flesh into gases and dust. On healthy 
 living flesh they have no effect. On living flesh that has lost 
 its resistance they feed even in life, but they do not convert 
 such flesh into gas and dust. They convert it into poison. 
 
 One kind of germ poison produces typhoid, another diphtheria, 
 a third syphilis, a fourth pneumonia, a fifth tuberculosis. 
 
 Some germs, invited deliberately into the living temple, are 
 not included in God's plan of protecting humanity from their 
 assaults, and the body, even when healthy, offers feeble re- 
 sistance to them. 
 
 The result is disease, loathsome and unnatural, involving not 
 only the bones, nerves, blood and brain, but even the soul. 
 The flesh disintegrates and reason itself totters as the germ 
 of syphilis cavorts across the human highway in its dance of death. 
 
 But — with respect to the many germs that have their own 
 proper functions to perform outside the body, and which there- 
 fore in their wide distribution through nature are taken into 
 the system almost hourly through food, drink and air, the living 
 flesh in health laughs at them all. 
 
 They may approach in battalions only to be overcome as 
 rapidly as they advance, whereas a solitary organism entering 
 life through the channels of vice becomes venomous, malignant,^ 
 
78 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 powerful. After taking up its residence in the blood it begins 
 a blighting reign so imperious and dominating that its evil in- 
 fluence passes on to innocent children yet unborn as if to em- 
 phasise the truth of the prophecy, "The sins of the father shall 
 be visited upon his children even unto the fourth generation." 
 
 Potent poisons such as arsenic, mercury and the iodides may 
 retard for a while the catastrophic activity of these avenging 
 organisms, but there is no evidence to prove that even when 
 these "curatives" are most skilfully administered the forces of 
 degeneration are not passed on in some measure from generation 
 to generation in accordance with the formula laid down in the 
 scriptures. 
 
 Man, surrounded by the artificial protection of modern medi- 
 cine, defies, or thinks he defies, the inexorable laws of nature, 
 but ever is he confronted by disclosures that above him and be- 
 yond him in unseen realms which only the microscope may 
 feebly penetrate, are powers so small the naked eye has never 
 beheld them, but which in irresistible energy are mightier in 
 the number of their victims than earthquake, fire and flood. 
 
 Contemplating this Nemesis of evil, man is consoled by the 
 knowledge that it is within his lot to regulate his conduct in 
 the flesh so that without the aid of art or science he may rely 
 with sublime confidence upon other forces as benign as they 
 are beautiful. 
 
 Because he is a free agent he may choose for himself between 
 good and evil, knowing that even germs are divided into good 
 and bad and that most of them are good. Well may he doubt 
 the conclusions of his own arrogance in dismissing the ancient 
 doctrine concerning good and evil spirits. 
 
 The folly of rejecting what he cannot see or understand is 
 nowhere more visible than in his attitude toward those purely 
 material forces of life and death which, prior to fifty years ago, 
 were neither seen nor understood by mortal, but which now 
 exhibit themselves to reverent eyes in grandure that moves to awe. 
 
 What the ubiquitous tin can, hermetically sealed under the 
 laws of sterilisation, is to salmon, natural resistance, safeguarded 
 by well-disposed intelligence, under the natural law, is to man 
 and his children. 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 79 
 
 Why does he persist in his refusal to see the beauty, the 
 benevolence and the consolation of this parallel? 
 
 § 20 SUBTLE ACTIVITY OF MINEKAL SALTS 
 
 This little experiment can be performed in the laboratory of 
 any high school to help us grasp an idea of the remarkable con- 
 duct of the minerals in the human body. 
 
 First eat a tablet of citrate of lithium. Then take a clean 
 platinum wire. Hold the wire in a blue Bunsen flame. It will 
 give no colouration to the flame. 
 
 Now pass the platinum wire along the skin of the forehead 
 or across the palm ; return it to the flame and note the beautiful 
 yellow fir-e of sodium, showing this mineral at work in the 
 elimination processes of the body. 
 
 Without sodium to take up the carbonic acid, evolved tnrough 
 the digestion of sugars and starches, as a poisonous waste product 
 that must be removed from the body, this acid, better known as 
 carbon dioxide, would accumulate in the tissues and destroy 
 them. This is why the excessive use ot denatured sugars, table 
 syrups, and starches in the diet of America is followed by many 
 serious diseases. 
 
 Sodium is one of the food minerals indispensable to health. 
 The little platinum wire and the Bunsen flame reveal it in the 
 performance of one of its many functions. 
 
 Now take a blue glass, which will filter out some of the light 
 rays that interfere with vision. Look through it at the platinum 
 wire in the flame. Note the beautiful lilac flame of potassium, 
 showing this mineral also in the elimination processes of the 
 body. The sodium and potassium have been taken up from the 
 human skin. 
 
 Potassium helps to keep the tissues flexible and active while 
 assisting the sodium to carry of! the carbonic acid manufactured 
 as one of the end-products of combustion in the furnaces of 
 life. 
 
 We shall assume now that a half hour has elapsed since the 
 tablet of ckrate of lithium was consumed. 
 
80 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Again clean the platinum wire thoroughly. Pass it over the 
 forehead or across the palm of the hand. Place it in the flame. 
 It is coloured a vivid red. This is the flame of lithium. In one 
 short half hour the lithium, taken through the mouth, has cir- 
 culated through all the avenues, highways, and by-ways of the 
 human body and has appeared after its marvellous journey upon 
 the surface of the skin. 
 
 Through this simple experiment we obtain a crude idea of some 
 of the hidden forces at work in our bodies. 
 
 There is much evidence that potassium gives life to the 
 nervous system and assists the heart to beat by influencing the 
 relaxability of the heart muscles. • If the heart did not send 
 the blood into the lungs the body could not and would not 
 obtain the oxygen necessary to its life, nor could it, through those 
 delicate tissues, made up of millions of little valves or filters, dis- 
 pose of the waste gases which would otherwise ppison all its 
 organs and glands. 
 
 Many discoveries of science justify the conclusion that potas- 
 sium interferes with the hardening influences that menace muscle, 
 joint, and artery, making the tissues soft and pliable. 
 
 It has been noted that linen, made from flax grown on granite 
 soil, rich in potassium, is noted for its suppleness and softness, 
 whereas linen produced from flax grown on calcareous soil is 
 hard, brittle, and of little strength. 
 
 In the month of October, 19 15, potassium sulphate was worth 
 about $200 a ton, as produced from alunite by the United States 
 Smelting Company of Utah. At this price the Armour Fertiliser 
 Company purchased its entire year's potash production. In spite 
 of the value of potassium salts and the necessity of their presence 
 in fertiliser, 106 tons of potassium salts were wasted daily in 
 191 5 by the twenty-five distilleries in the United States that sub- 
 jected molasses to fermentation. 
 
 The farmer has been taught, through various federal and 
 state bulletins, to appreciate the necessity of potassium to the 
 health and vigour of his plants, yet school children have never 
 been taught that when the body cannot secure the quantity neces- 
 sary to carry on its wonderfully complex duties the heart ceases to 
 serve its master and the body dies. 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 81 
 
 § 21 CONSTRUCTION WITHIN ; DESTRUCTION WITHOUT 
 
 Those little soldiers of life called corpuscles are never out of 
 the presence of iron. Containing no iron themselves, they never- 
 theless swim about in a fluid which does contain iron. If that iron 
 were not present the little soldiers would die. 
 
 Iron combines with oxygen in the presence of water, no matter 
 where it is found. The blade of a pocketknife, the hinge of a 
 barn door, the barrel of a rifle, the spring of a farm wagon, 
 become "rusty." Rust is simply a combination of iron and 
 oxygen. The chemist calls it "ferrous oxide." 
 
 The wonderful affinity of oxygen for iron is an expression of 
 the law under whose operation oxygen finds its way into the body. 
 Without the iron in the red colouring matter of the blood the body 
 could not appropriate the oxygen from the surrounding air and 
 in a few minutes it would perish. 
 
 We need only choke a human creature two minutes to be 
 guilty of murder. To choke means to shut off oxygen. The 
 carburetor of an automobile engine is equipped with a "choker." 
 To stall ^the engine it is only necessary to resort to this choker, 
 which, by cutting off the oxygen, makes combustion in the 
 cylinders impossible. 
 
 In exactly the same way combustion, supported by oxygen, is 
 necessary to the fires of life. 
 
 If the blood contains only half the iron necessary to bring into 
 the body the oxygen it requires it will grow pale and sicken. 
 Iron is indispensable. It is part of the law. 
 
 The waste matter accumulating in the human tissues during 
 every second of existence would destroy life in twenty-four hours 
 if not rendered harmless and carried off. When these waste 
 products are only partially removed the result is autointoxication, 
 self -poisoning. 
 
 The iron in the blood, uniting in the lungs with the oxygen 
 of the air, carries its life-supporting freight to the tissues, where 
 it oxidises or burns up the waste substances so dangerous to 
 life. 
 
82 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 If the iron is not present in sufficient quantity to keep up 
 with the demand of the body the oxygen that ought to be inside 
 performing its work remains outside ready and willing but unable 
 to enter. 
 
 When fire, through the influence of oxygen, attacks a piece 
 of wood it produces smoke and ashes. Just as the smoke of the 
 fire has to be carried off through the chimney and the ashes 
 raked through the bars of the grate, so do the oxygen-burned 
 waste products of the body have to be eliminated. 
 
 This oxidising process going on in the human tissues pro- 
 duces the carbonic gas which we have seen taken up by the 
 sodium in the blood and discharged through the lungs as carbon 
 dioxide. 
 
 The sodium, having work of its own to perform, has to help 
 the oxygen and the oxygen in turn has to be helped by the iron. 
 Thus we obtain a vague idea of how these food minerals and the 
 other elements necessary to the support of life operate, not 
 singly and alone, but in beautiful harmony with each other, in 
 unswerving obedience to a fixed law. 
 
 Calcium, commonly known as lime, combines with phosphorus, 
 magnesium, silicon, and fluorine in the development of the bones 
 and teeth. If the quantity of calcium required by the body in 
 the construction of its bones and teeth is reduced the bones and 
 teeth suffer. 
 
 We have seen that millions of children in the United States 
 are suffering with defective teeth. These defective teeth are the 
 direct result of the inability of the body to obtain, in their proper 
 form and in their proper combination, the calcium, magnesium, 
 phosphorus, and fluorine necessary to the construction of normal 
 teeth, either because these mineral substances have been removed 
 from the food of the children or because they have been con- 
 sumed with other foods that destroy them and remove them from 
 the body. 
 
 Chickens obtain the fluorine required for the production of 
 their eggs, if they have a chance to pick up a few specks of 
 granite. When confined in a wooden henhouse and fed on food 
 containing no fluorine they easily develop chicken cholera and 
 chicken diphtheria. 
 
 The yolk of the egg requires fluorine. The protective enamel 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 83 
 
 of the teeth requires fluorine. The bones of the spine require 
 fluorine. The pupils of the eye require fluorine. 
 
 Silicon possesses powerful antiseptic properties. There is 
 good reason to believe that in the establishment of normal resist- 
 ance to disease it assists the body to defend itself against the 
 invasion of many of the organisms which cause disease. 
 
 Silicon influences the nervous system to perform its functions 
 normally. In combination with sulphur it is necessary to the 
 development and health of the hair and nails. Bears, bison, 
 foxes, sheep, have luxuriant hair, fur, or wool. There are no 
 bald or thin-haired squirrels. They consume all the silicon 
 nature provides for them. Their hair food and nail food are 
 normal. 
 
 Animals fed upon food from which any of the food minerals 
 are artificially removed perish. 
 
 Experiments on animals in captivity have proved this. White 
 mice, rabbits, guineapigs, hogs, and poultry develop the same 
 diseases as those which kill 400,000 children under ten years of 
 age in the United States every year, when these animals are fed 
 on the same foods so freely consumed by children. 
 
 Food minerals not only themselves engage in the construc- 
 tion processes going on constantly within the body but they also 
 exercise a controlling influence over the destructive forces that 
 threaten the body from without. 
 
 We are now beginning to appreciate the fact that food min- 
 erals are precious substances. Yet not a single one of the states 
 prevents the adulteration of food through the abstraction or 
 removal of them. 
 
 § 22 — FOOD MINERALS ESSENTIAL TO LIFE 
 
 The smallest boy in the laboratory can be made to understand 
 the wonderful oxidising property of sulphuric acid. When this 
 acid is generated in the human body, as it is generated every day, 
 it is immediately neutralised by the alkaline bases which nature, 
 under normal conditions, never fails to provide for that pur- 
 pose. 
 
84 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Phosphoric acid is also generated in the body and neutralised 
 in the same manner. Calcium, magnesium, and potassium are 
 among the alkaline bases provided by natural foods. If they are 
 not present to do their work within a short time the destruc- 
 tive action of the sulphuric and phosphoric acids can end only 
 in disaster. 
 
 A few drops of sulphuric acid taken into the body from a 
 bottle w:ll produce death, by attacking the tissues, oxidising and 
 destroying them. 
 
 When food from which the minerals have been removed by 
 commercial processes or by foolish methods of cookery is 
 introduced into the body, it results in the formation of free 
 sulphuric acid from the albumenoid sulphur and of free phos- 
 phoric acid from the many complex phosphorus compounds found 
 normally in meat, cheese, eggs and other articles of diet. 
 
 These acids, in the absence of the alkaline bases that ought 
 to be present, and which in normal, natural foods always are 
 present, must be neutralised as rapidly as they are evolved. It is 
 because they are neutralised that we find them in the urine as 
 discarded waste products in the form of sulphates and phos- 
 phates. 
 
 When the neutralising bases have been removed from food 
 before it is consumed these acids abstract basic elements from 
 the living tissues, thereby impairing or destroying them. 
 
 Meat which is minced and immersed for a few hours in 
 distilled water loses its potassium, magnesium, and calcium salts. 
 It also loses its colour. If cooked in this condition it will be 
 found to be tasteless. If fed to dogs and cats or other animals 
 these animals will eat a little, then refuse to take more, and if fed 
 on nothing else will actually die more quickly than animals not 
 fed at all. 
 
 This can be accounted for not only through the generation of 
 free sulphuric and phosphoric acids in the bodies of the animals 
 but also by another fact. 
 
 The animals fed on the demineralised meat, in addition to 
 being deprived of the food minerals indispensable to life's proc- 
 esses, are also obliged to dissipate their reserve vitality at a rapid 
 rate through the efforts of their organs to throw off the useless 
 and dangerous food elements imposed upon them; whereas the 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 85 
 
 animal starved outright is not called upon to expend its strength 
 faster than the laws of starvation demand. 
 
 One feature of the laws of nutrition we are endeavouring to 
 emphasize, is that these food minerals are so essential to the life 
 and health of the body that when the body is deprived of them 
 disease must follow. 
 
 Certain experts have gone so far as to declare that all human 
 food contains an excess of mineral salts. 
 
 Where natural foods are considered the statement made by 
 these experts is never true. On the contrary, it has been con- 
 clusively proved in many instances, particularly where refined 
 foods are consumed, mineral salts are carried out of the body in 
 life's processes faster than they are taken in. 
 
 This is notably the case in tuberculosis and wasting diseases, in 
 which the calcium content of the feces invariably exceeds the 
 calcium content of the food consumed. It was the case among 
 thousands of the children who, under the age of ten years, died 
 last year in the United States. 
 
 Nature does provide a reserve from which, in emergencies, for 
 a short time, the body may find the elements it requires. But if 
 the diet is of such a refined character that it exhausts nature's 
 storehouse, destructive consequences inevitably follow. 
 
 This fact must be remembered in the feeding of children, be- 
 cause when the food of the infant is changed from a purely milk 
 diet to a mixed diet great injury may result from a deficiency 
 of lime and other salts. This injury manifests itself on the 
 surface in the form of defective teeth, but defective teeth con- 
 stitute only a symptom of much deeper ravages within. 
 
 An exclusive flesh diet is poor in lime and many foods on 
 which children are fed have as much as 75 per cent, of the lime 
 natural to them removed before they are put upon the table. This 
 is one of the reasons why the excessive consumption of meat 
 is a curse. Meat is deficient in the mineral salts required by 
 the body unless consumed as the tiger and the leopard consume 
 it, lapping up the blood and gnawing the bones/ 
 
 In consequence, the excessive meat-eater is plagued with 
 rheumatism, asthma, and many other diseases in the alleviation 
 of which he is sent to the mineral springs to drink water con- 
 taining calcium, magnesium, and sodium sulphate. 
 
86 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 These waters, however large the quantity in which they may 
 be consumed, are useless unless the offending diet is first cor- 
 rected, the peg removed. 
 
 In its proper place, baby's diet, based on the importance of its 
 mineral contents, will be carefully outlined and of even greater 
 importance and significance the diet of baby's mother before 
 baby is born will receive the same attention. 
 
 § 23 — THE THYROID GLAND, A POISON DESTROYER 
 
 We shall now consider one more instance of the subtle relation- 
 ship between the food minerals and the health of the body. There 
 are glands in the neck called the thyroids, the importance of 
 which, in the economy of life's processes, was never suspected 
 until Breisacher, Plum, Kishi, and Bryce made it clear that the 
 thyroids, like every other organ or gland of the human body, 
 were really created by God for a special purpose. 
 
 Sometimes when the thyroid becomes diseased it attains an 
 abnormal size, swelling out in the form of a great lump (goitre). 
 At other times when even more seriously diseased its enlargement 
 may be almost unnoticeable, except to the touch. 
 
 It has been conclusively established that in its proper func- 
 tioning the thyroid depends upon the compounds of food iodine. 
 
 We have seen how the food minerals help to build up the body. 
 We have also seen how they help to tear down the tissues. In 
 the processes of assimilation and elimination they are equally 
 important. 
 
 In this work of elimination the food mineral iodine and the 
 thyroid gland, which iodine affects profoundly, are actively 
 engaged, thus helping to rid the body of many of its enemies and 
 defending it against the assault of disease. 
 
 Alexander Bryce proved that the intestinal decomposition of 
 meat produces poisonous products of putrefaction which are 
 absorbed by the walls of the bowel and which, having thus 
 entered the system, become powerful irritants. They thus pro- 
 duce an increase in the connective tissues of the organs and blood 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 87 
 
 vessels, hardening of the arteries, senile decay, tumours, and can- 
 cers. 
 
 Metchnikoff suggested that to aid the body in its effort to 
 protect itself against these poisonous products nature has pro- 
 vided poison-destroying organs, among which is the thyroid 
 gland. 
 
 Breisacher proved the poisonous products of meat digestion 
 will quickly kill a dog if the thyroid gland is removed, although 
 after its removal the life of the animal can be indefinitely pro- 
 longed if fed on bread and milk. 
 
 His experiment established the function of the thyroid as a 
 poison destroyer. 
 
 Both Plum and Kishi were brought to the conviction after a 
 series of experiments that the function of the thyroid gland is to 
 neutralise the poisons derived from the putrefaction of albumen 
 in the intestines. 
 
 An exclusive diet of eggs causes a condition among children 
 which their parents term "biliousness." This so-called "bilious- 
 ness" is simply the result of self-poisoning through the imperfect 
 elimination of the protein poison. 
 
 In children some glands do not develop until their twelfth, 
 thirteenth, or fourteenth year. The thyroid gland does not begin 
 to develop until the third or fourth year of life. Hence the child 
 lacks its assistance in taking care of these poisons and eliminat- 
 ing them from the system. 
 
 For this reason beef extracts, which contain alkaloids that 
 no infant or invalid should be permitted to swallow, become dan- 
 gerous food. 
 
 People in feeble health, put on a beef tea diet, are frequently 
 made worse because of the imperfect functioning of the thyroid 
 and other glands. These alkaloids stimulate and bring about a 
 state of functional excitement. Functional excitement does not 
 mean invigouration. 
 
 Neither beef nor beef extract contains the merest trace of 
 iodine, yet the thyroid depends for its activity, upon the presence 
 of iodine compounds abstracted from food. 
 
 It has been further established that animals, during the period 
 when they feed on fresh grasses and the seeds of grasses, in 
 
88 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 accordance with the dictates of the Book of Genesis, have much 
 more active thyroid glands. 
 
 The Chicago packers have taken advantage of this phenomenon 
 to manufacture the thyroid extracts advertised in the medical 
 journals. 
 
 The investigations of Seidell and Fenger on animals shipped 
 to the Union Stockyards, in Chicago, from all parts of the United 
 States led to a surprising discovery. It was shown by these 
 experimenters that the percentage of iodine found in the healthy 
 thyroid glands of sheep and hogs was about three times as much 
 between June and November, when the animals were allowed to 
 feed naturally on green pasture, as that found between December 
 and May, when they were fed on impoverished commercial by- 
 product foods. 
 
 It was also curiously noted that the thyroid glands became 
 larger during the months in which their low iodine content was 
 observed, indicating some relationship between the iodine and 
 the swelling of the glands. 
 
 What effect had the removal of the iodine from the food of 
 the 1,500,000 children under ten years of age who have died in 
 the United States during the last four years upon the health of 
 those children prior to their deaths? 
 
 § 24 COMMERCIALISM DISARMS NATURE 
 
 Babies and small children are handicapped if their parents or 
 nurses ignore the meaning of the thyroid gland. Animals can- 
 not live without the thyroid under certain conditions, yet one 
 of the elements necessary to the normal, healthy thyroid is de- 
 liberately removed from the diet every day. 
 
 The grains of the field, barley, rice, wheat, corn and rye, con- 
 tain normal traces of iodine before they are refined, but there 
 is not a chemist in the country who can discover a trace of this 
 indispensable food mineral in a ton of refined white bread, bis- 
 cuits, crackers, cakes, table syrups, cornstarch, tapioca, glucose, 
 or sugar candy or in any of the other denatured foods upon 
 
TWO KINDS OF JFOOD 89 
 
 which man is now striving to sustain a normal body under dread- 
 ful handicaps. 
 
 The thyroid gland is a protecting policeman on guard in the 
 human body. The young child eating food unnatural to its 
 requirements possesses no such police protection. It lives in a 
 state of physiological anarchy. Excess meat in the diet affects 
 not only the thyroid but the liver as well. 
 
 In the ingenious experiment conducted by Eck a ligature was 
 applied to the portal vein close to the liver, thus cutting out the 
 liver from the portal circuit of a dog. It was found that a dog 
 thus treated died in three days when fed upon meat, whereas 
 another when fed upon bread and milk lived in excellent health 
 for an indefinite length of time, notwithstanding the cutting off of 
 its liver functions. 
 
 Pavlov showed that the liver has three times as much work 
 to do on a meat diet as on a meatless diet. 
 
 According to Bryce, flesh foods, at the time they are con- 
 sumed, contain on an average of 200,000,000 putrefactive bacteria 
 in every gram. But he shows that nature has not left us to the 
 tender mercies of these poison-producers. This is proved by the 
 fact that auto-intoxication does not disturb people in normal 
 health, all of whose organs and glands, including the thyroid, 
 either by good fortune or by the exercise of intelligent discretion 
 are normally nourished, thereby enabling them to carry on their 
 functioning. 
 
 The people of America are consuming more meat than any 
 other nation of the world and whether they know it or not they 
 are consuming meat and meat products that have entered into 
 advanced stages of putrefaction. 
 
 Frequently they attribute cases of ptomaine poisoning to 
 canned tomatoes, condensed milk, huckleberry pie, cheese sand- 
 wiches, and other foods. The real truth is never suspected. 
 
 In twenty-six months I was able to obtain forty-seven con- 
 victions in the courts against meat packers, sausage manufac- 
 turers, and wholesale provision merchants for selling deodorised 
 rotten meats and meat products, chemically treated, so as to 
 disguise from the unsuspecting purchaser their true condition. 
 
 I have also obtained the removal from office of veterinarians 
 and inspectors in the employ of health departments and of the 
 
90 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Bureau of Animal Industry for the assistance given by them 
 to influential but conscienceless food panderers who have not 
 heeded these laws of life in their pursuit of dollars. 
 
 The details of these convictions are a matter of court record. 
 In the meantime, even when meat is honest, fresh, wholesome, 
 and cut from carcasses of animals free from infectious and con- 
 tagious diseases at the time of slaughter, it requires normal organs 
 to dispose of it properly. 
 
 These normal organs require the elements found in natural 
 food to keep them normal. Modern commercialism helps to put 
 putrefactive products into the human body and then by refining 
 food takes away many of the tools with which nature fights 
 these putrefactions. 
 
 The thyroid gland, through the many serious diseases which 
 follow a disturbance of its functions, helps to emphasise the 
 necessity in the diet of every individual, adult or child, of the 
 food minerals which are squandered by modern civilisation with 
 reckless abandon. 
 
 Spring time is the season of high spirits in nature. Man alone 
 in the spring complains of lassitude. All around him under the 
 action of nature's unmolested law he witnesses the miracle of 
 rising sap, the quickening strength that swells the bud, the im- 
 pelling energy that forces the spear of grass to lift itself upward 
 through the lately frozen clod. 
 
 Man contrasts his weariness with the power and mastery, the 
 sparkle and glow, the warmth and buoyancy of spring, yet just as 
 the earth has the green grass in its depths so has he the freshness 
 of nature in his heart. He is just as much a part of nature; 
 nature's law grips him just as tightly in its grasp. He needs his 
 "tonic," or thinks he does, because he does not follow the laws 
 of life, but closes his eyes upon them and sets up standards of his 
 own. Unhappily his standards are at war with heaven, and so 
 he pays his price in death. 
 
 The time has come when we must teach the child that if he 
 wishes to live and grow strong and be useful he must eat the 
 food God has made necessary to the growth of his body. We 
 shall soon learn how to select that food. 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 91 
 
 § 25 — WONDERS OF PLANT AND ANIMAL LITE ! 
 
 In the bodies of animals and plants the twelve food minerals 
 are built up into many highly complex combinations, and as they 
 are being built up they are also being broken down. In disease 
 they break down faster than in health. 
 
 As the tissue is destroyed by daily wear and tear it is trans- 
 formed into simpler chemical compounds and passed out of the 
 body. In order that the living body may replace its broken 
 down cells it must find a constant new supply of the elements 
 from which those cells are evolved. 
 
 These elements, as we find them in the soil, can be called non- 
 living matter. The chemical processes which transform this non- 
 living matter into living tissues are the same in plant and animal 
 with this one difference : 
 
 Plants are capable of taking the non-living matter from the 
 earth, compounding or organizing it into the wonderfully complex 
 substances which form their structure. 
 
 Animals do not possess this power. Animals depend for their 
 existence upon foodstuffs prepared from the non-living matter of 
 earth by the plants that have the power to prepare them. Other- 
 wise man could eat earth, stone, or clay and thus obtain all the 
 elements necessary to his existence. We have seen why he cannot 
 do this. 
 
 Plants obtain the energy which enables them to perform their 
 mysterious work of organising the non-living matter of earth 
 from the sun. Only in the presence of sunlight can they carry 
 on the upbuilding processes which give them their tissues. Green 
 grass will not grow in the dark. 
 
 We know under the influence of sunlight plants are capable 
 of combining the carbonic gas and nitrogen of the air with water 
 and the mineral salts of the soil into such substances as starch, 
 fat, and albumen. They always do this in the presence of the 
 food minerals. 
 
 Their ability to bring about these changes depends upon the 
 presence of a chemical substance found in their green part which 
 is called chlorophyl. We know that chlorophyl requires exposure 
 
92 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 to the sun's rays in order that it may be able to perform its 
 serious work, but of the processes by which it does that work 
 we know little. 
 
 We know various parts of the plant and various organs of the 
 body contain substances that can be extracted. These substances 
 are called enzymes or ferments or vitamines. Some of them are 
 pepsin, trypsin, ptyalin. There are many others which need not 
 be mentioned here. 
 
 These ferments and vitamines are found in the germ and bran 
 of grains, in the marrow of bones, in egg yolk, in leaves, fruit 
 juices, whole milk and greens, and are just as indispensable to the 
 health of the body as the food minerals. 
 
 We now know positively that in the human body they serve 
 the purpose of changing the various foodstuffs which are fur- 
 nished to the animal by the plant into substances that can be 
 absorbed and built up into animal tissues. 
 
 Ordinary bakers' yeast is a ferment having the power to trans- 
 form starch and sugar into alcohol and carbonic gas. It pos- 
 sesses the power to rearrange the molecular composition of sugar 
 and starch. 
 
 It is a strange but interesting fact that formaldehyde and wood 
 alcohol, which are deadly poisons, contain exactly the same ele- 
 ments as those which make up the composition of grain alcohol, 
 and acetic acid, whiskey, and vinegar. 
 
 Starch, cane sugar, glucose, lactic acid, and carbolic acid also 
 contain the same elements exactly — carbon, hydrogen, and 
 oxygen. The only difference among them is in proportion and 
 arrangement. It is this arrangement which makes some of them 
 beneficial foods and some of them deadly poisons. 
 
 Ordinary starch can be converted into sugar by the action of 
 ferments. Sugar can then be converted by the action of other 
 ferments into lactic acid, alcohol, and acetic acid, depending 
 entirely upon the character of the ferment employed. 
 
 In other words, there are good and bad ferments. That we 
 sometimes allow the bad ferments to develop and kill off the 
 good ones with so-called "harmless" preservatives will be shown 
 ; ? we proceed. 
 
 was thought at one time that the ferments found in the 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 93 
 
 digestive glands were the only ferments to be found in the 
 animal body. Accordingly our knowledge of their conduct in the 
 processes of digestion was limited and in the treatment of many 
 diseases the symptoms alone were treated for the reason that the 
 cause was never suspected. 
 
 It has been determined in recent years that ferments are of 
 many kinds, are present in every cell and are intimately con- 
 cerned in all the manifestations of life. 
 
 As many as a dozen different ferments have been found, for 
 example, in the liver cells. 
 
 It has also been demonstrated that for the maintenance of life 
 in the case of the higher plants the organised ferments are of 
 profound importance. Through them the higher plants obtain 
 their nitrogen from the air in a form which they can utilise. 
 
 So it is seen that even in the presence of all the necessary food 
 minerals, if the ferments be absent or destroyed or decomposed, 
 vegetable or animal life cannot be normal. 
 
 Each of these ferments has a special function to perform. In 
 the animal body, for instance, some of them, such as pepsin, 
 can act to advantage only under acid condition. Others, such 
 as ptyalin, require an alkaline condition. Still others can act 
 under acid, alkaline, or neutral conditions. Fixed laws control 
 them. 
 
 Certain ferments will act only upon certain definite substances 
 and under the proper conditions. 
 
 Fat-splitting ferments, for instance, act only upon lard, butter, 
 cream, oil; diastase ferments act only upon starch and sugar; 
 proteolytic ferments act only upon albumen. 
 
 Of their chemical composition little is known that is definite 
 and just as little is known of the equally important vitamines. 
 We do know, however, that food of the wrong kind, food badly 
 prepared, food which has suffered an unnatural loss of some 
 of its elements, can set up conditions hostile to the action of these 
 ferments, and that in setting up these conditions we invite 
 physiological discord, disease. 
 
94 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 26 — THE "ash" of FOOD 
 
 We know that human gastric juice is acid in action, that it 
 contains sodium, calcium, potassium, magnesium, phosphorus, 
 iron, and chlorine, and depends upon these elements for its 
 physiological activities. 
 
 We know if we remove any of these elements or change any 
 of them or prevent the body from finding any of them, by remov- 
 ing them from our food, we thereby establish unnatural condi- 
 tions in the gastric juice and inevitably bring about disorder. 
 
 We know that pancreatic juice, unlike gastric juice, is alkaline 
 in action and contains sodium, potassium, phosphorus, magne- 
 sium, and lime. 
 
 From this fact we learn that one part of the digestion is car- 
 ried on in an acid medium while another part is carried on in an 
 alkaline medium, and our conception of the intricacies of the 
 human laboratory increases in admiration and amazement. 
 
 In our continued contemplation of these mysteries it becomes 
 more and more evident that man has no right to ignore the 
 wonderfully complicated structure of the human body when he 
 decides to go into business and manufacture for profit the hun- 
 dred foodless foods which have become so popular on the break- 
 fast, dinner, and supper tables of unsuspecting Americans. 
 
 The enzymes, ferments, and vitamines exert such a profound 
 influence upon digestion and assimilation that we receive a shock 
 when we learn that in the preparation of many of our most com- 
 monplace foods we destroy them or so completely change their 
 nature that the functions which they are expected to perform are 
 so modified as to make them useless. 
 
 The mineral salts that we have described; the ferments, 
 enzymes, and vitamines — let us put it bluntly — are removed from 
 our daily food by commercial practices that pander to false 
 taste standards. The industries that remove them have suc- 
 ceeded, to some extent at least, in establishing high-sounding jus- 
 tification for their work and up to this stage of the world's 
 enlightenment have been equal to the task of fogging the atmo- 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 95 
 
 sphere sufficiently to cloud any attempted work of reform under 
 the darkness of controversy. 
 
 Chemists and pathologists are found willing to go on record 
 with some such statements as these: "Of the metabolism of 
 foods, of chemical change, of the exact action of enzymes and 
 bacteria, we are profoundly ignorant, therefore we should not 
 give consideration to the mineral contents of our diet. 
 
 "We derive so many minerals from so many articles of food 
 that we can afford to remove most of them from our diet; and, 
 furthermore, so little is known about the conduct of these min- 
 erals when ingested with food that the subject is at least not im- 
 portant enough to occasion grave alarm. 
 
 "There are so many offsetting foods which completely replace 
 the mineral salts and vitamines lost through commercial methods 
 of food refinement that we need not worry about the presence of 
 these substances in our food supply." 
 
 Signed statements and magazine articles appearing regularly 
 in the magazines of uplift, the purpose of which is everlastingly 
 to quiet natural anxieties concerning commercial foodstuffs, in 
 spite of the death of 400,000 children under ten years of age in 
 the United States every year, constitute the defence of those 
 whose food industries would suffer if the people enacted state 
 and national laws that would forbid them to denature their food 
 supply. 
 
 For reasons of their own these men tell us we have sufficient 
 carbohydrates, proteins, and fats (bread, meat, and butter), so we 
 need not bother about the minerals or ferments of our food. 
 
 Yet they admit they know nothing about the food minerals. 
 Prior to 1912 the only thing the public ever heard of in connection 
 with a description of food was the academic division made by 
 dietitians. This division consisted of three groups — carbohy- 
 drates, proteins, and fats. There was another division to which 
 some of them, on rare occasions, slurringly referred. They called 
 this fourth division "ash." 
 
 The division of ash was always exasperatingly ignored and 
 apparently had little if any meanin & for dietitians and was not 
 considered by them as significant or important. 
 
 As it began to dawn upon various investigators working at dif- 
 ferent places in Europe and America that a diet of pure carbohy- 
 
96 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 drates, pure proteins, and pure fats would not support life, the 
 subject of "ash" grew more formidable and more fascinating. 
 
 Physicians and chemists everywhere admitted that personally 
 they knew nothing about ash in relationship to food and did not 
 know where to obtain information. 
 
 It is the ash of food that contains the mineral salts of that food. 
 When the mineral salts are removed they take the vitamines with 
 them. 
 
 Tons of ashless food, denatured food, demineralised food, de- 
 based, impoverished, foodless food, were consumed along with 
 good and adequate food by the 400,000 children under ten years 
 of age who died in the United States last year. 
 
 How many of them would be alive and well to-day if none 
 of their foods had been denatured, if all of it had been good 
 and adequate ? That is the question we must answer here. 
 
 § 27 — CALCIUM IN THE LIVING BODY 
 
 The history of life on this earth, including the history of micro- 
 organisms, or germs, as they are popularly called, is the history of 
 food. 
 
 As the bodies of men are built from the building materials 
 found in food, so the bodies of bacteria are also built from the 
 building materials found in their food. 
 
 Bacteria may become violently active, or feeble to the point of 
 exhaustion, in accordance with the kind of food offered them. 
 Man is affected by his food in the same way. 
 
 The blushing maiden of sixteen and the trained athlete of 
 thirty are physically but the sum-total ,of the food they have 
 assimilated. 
 
 The old man, normally approaching the hour of dissolution, 
 represents all that is left of the processes of assimilation and 
 elimination which, even prior to birth, were carried on only by 
 virtue of the food energies presented to the embryo from which 
 he came. 
 
 The new-born babe, in all the pink freshness of its little sleepy 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 97 
 
 life, represents only that fragment of the food appropriated by 
 its bones and tissues during its embryonic existence. 
 
 The bacteria that convert milk, eggs, meat, fish, and other 
 foods into poisons, represent, according to their activity, the ease 
 with which they are able to find the kind of food necessary to 
 their rapid growth or the difficulty placed in the way of their 
 normal nutrition and reproduction. 
 
 Bacteria, with a significance worthy of noting here, depend 
 upon the mineral salts and colloids precisely in the same manner 
 as that in which the bodies of men depend upon them. 
 
 As we go along we shall encounter many interesting, not to 
 say fascinating, proofs of this statement. 
 
 For the present we have learned that a certain combination of 
 some twelve mineral elements is surrendered by our food for 
 the building processes of our bodies. 
 
 All foods contain some of these building materials; other foods 
 contain all of them. 
 
 Many foods, for instance, contain calcium in the highly organ- 
 ised combinations which are acceptable to the needs of the human 
 body. Commercial methods of manufacture remove this cal- 
 cium from their products. 
 
 Absurd methods of home-cooking also remove them. That 
 such calcium loss should not be tolerated is disclosed by a study 
 of the functions performed in the body by calcium. 
 
 Calcium assists the digestive ferments to perform their duties. 
 When food is robbed of its calcium normal digestion does not 
 progress. This influence on ferments is not confined to the 
 digestive tract. In the laboratory and the food factory also we 
 see it at work. 
 
 Rennet, for instance, is a ferment. It is used to make curd 
 from milk. Curd is the first step in the manufacture of cheese. 
 That the rennet may perform its duties in the manner expected 
 by the cheese-maker it is necessary that the calcium natural 
 to all normal milk be perfectly soluble. To make sure of this 
 solubility the cheese-maker adds hydrochloric acid to the milk. 
 He knows that if the calcium is thrown out of solution the curd 
 will never become cheese. 
 
 Oxalic acid would throw the calcium out of solution. So would 
 sterilisation at the boiling point. In any mixture of milk so 
 
98 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 treated the ferment rennet, thus deprived of the influence of 
 calcium, refuses to operate and the cheese maker makes no cheese. 
 
 If, while in a state of health, you should cut your finger, the 
 soluble calcium in your blood would cause it to coagulate at the 
 surface of the wound and you would not bleed to death, as you 
 would if it were not for the interference of the calcium at the 
 disposal of nature. 
 
 In certain diseases where the normal content of calcium is no 
 longer present in the blood the wound refuses to heal. One of the 
 commonest symptoms of anaemia, acidosis, nervous prostration, 
 etc., is the refusal of even the slightest wounds to heal promptly. 
 
 Surgeons, realising the importance of this function performed 
 by calcium, frequently attempt to introduce it into the blood 
 before serious operations in the form of calcium lactate. They do 
 this in order to prevent hemorrhage following the use of the knife. 
 
 No hint of the function performed by calcium is ever found 
 on a bill of fare in a restaurant or hotel. 
 
 No placard hangs on the wall in the office of the food factory 
 cautioning the factory manager against the toleration of any 
 process of refinement through which calcium or any of the other 
 mineral elements of prepared food are removed and lost to the 
 human family. 
 
 Yet when we diminish the proper quantity of calcium in our 
 blood we correspondingly lower our vitality and reduce our re- 
 sistance to disease. 
 
 § 28 CHILDREN SUFFER, PROSPECTIVE MOTHERS DECLINE 
 
 In every kitchen, restaurant, hotel, boarding house, hospital, or- 
 phan asylum and commissary food, through ignorant methods of 
 cookery, is not only robbed of its calcium but it is also robbed of 
 many of its other mineral salts and colloids. Before food reaches 
 the kitchen the manufacturer robs it of a large percentage of 
 these priceless mineral elements. 
 
 Dr. James R. Mitchell, while lecturer of chemistry at Fort 
 Worth University Medical College, supplemented the work of 
 other investigators by a study which showed 86 per cent, of the 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 99 
 
 school children of Louisville were suffering from defective teeth, 
 in spite of the fact that they live in the "limestone" state. 
 
 It has been said that Kentucky is a veritable quarry of cal- 
 cium. Yet, in the presence of millions of tons of bone and tooth- 
 building material the children of this calcium kingdom had so 
 much difficulty in finding sufficient calcium for their needs that 
 86 per cent, of them, in the calcium capital itself, manifested 
 the most conspicuous symptoms of calcium starvation. 
 
 With a zeal born of indignation, and therefore, because of its 
 ardor, considered in high places unethical, Mitchell pointed out 
 how dentists prescribe tooth washes and tooth-pastes; how they 
 advocate oral hygiene ; how they fill cavities and fit bridges, while 
 all the time the primary cause of tooth-destruction remains 
 ignored. 
 
 We know if there is a deficiency of calcium salts in the food 
 the body will actually tear down its own structure in order to 
 obtain the calcium necessary to maintain the integrity of its in- 
 ternal secretions. 
 
 In the case of a calcium deficiency in the food the body goes 
 to the only available source of calcium supply, the lime of the 
 teeth and bones. That lime is gradually consumed until, weaken- 
 ing the structure of the teeth, it finally leaves but a shell of flu- 
 oride enamel over a honey-combed structure. 
 
 In Ireland, where calcium deficiency is conspicuous, there is an 
 old saying among the peasantry. "With every child goes a tooth," 
 runs this adage. The fact that maternity is so frequently followed 
 by tooth troubles, a result of the demand of the unborn upon the 
 mother's tissue for bone-building calcium, has been noted by many 
 observers and probably accounts for the quotation credited to 
 Irish women. 
 
 Where calcium is abstracted from the tooth under-structure, 
 the thin enamel, made thinner by fluorine starvation, sooner or 
 later cracks or breaks under pressure, thereby opening an avenue 
 for the entrance of putrefactive bacteria, which begin the work of 
 true decay. The ruin is really accomplished long before any 
 evidence of decay is disclosed. 
 
 Sugar and fruit acids have no effect on the enamel of normal 
 teeth. Sound teeth can be immersed in a solution of sugar or 
 
100 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 fruit acids for months and suffer no erosion. The experiments 
 of E. Howard Tunison and others have proved this. 
 
 Sugar does not act directly on the teeth at all, and the dentist 
 treats the symptom, not the cause, of bone destruction when he 
 plugs up cavities and fits bridges. 
 
 This observation is not intended to minimise in any manner 
 the importance of skilful dental treatment, keen appreciation 
 of which is not wanting by the writer. 
 
 Sugar and calcium possess a remarkable affinity for each 
 other. When refined sugar or glucose, both of which are mineral- 
 free and, therefore, like distilled water mineral-hungry, are con- 
 sumed in generous quantities they attack the soluble calcium of 
 the tissues. 
 
 The tissues retaliate in turn by sapping the calcium of the 
 blood. The blood, which demands a minimum calcium content, 
 with never relaxing energy steals calcium from the teeth and 
 bones. The experiments of Voit and others prove this. 
 
 Druggists know how wonderfully calcium combines with sugar. 
 Accordingly they manufacture what is known as syrup of lime^ 
 One thousand parts of water will take up approximately one part 
 of calcium. When sugar is added the water will take up ap- 
 proximately thirty-five times as much calcium. 
 
 Children will suffer and prospective mothers decline as long \ 
 as they consume an excess of refined or denatured, mineral-free 
 sugar, glucose and starch in their diet or as long as food industries ! 
 continue to remove the soluble mineral elements from the chief 
 sources of their food supply. 
 
 As we advance step by step in our study of the indispensable j 
 food minerals we shall approach one of the prolific causes of in- | 
 fant mortality; one of the prolific causes of pallor and anaemia \ 
 among women and, as shall be conclusively proved in its proper 
 place, one of the greatest single causes behind the difficulties of 
 maternity as well as one of the greatest single causes of many pre- j 
 ventable ills which attack child and adult alike. 
 
 Butcher shops grind the bones of the ox, sheep, and hog into 
 what they call "chicken bone." It has been noted by poultry and 
 egg producers that if hens are not fed a plentiful supply of cal- 
 cium in the form of such "chicken bones" or in the form of ! 
 cracked oyster shells or other similar calcium food, they will lay 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 101 
 
 soft-shelled eggs for a while, then cease to lay eggs of any kind. 
 
 The dog which on a meat diet is not also fed bone will, like the 
 human, suffer tooth decay. His skin will be tettered ; his hair will 
 fall out, his disposition will be mean. 
 
 The lioness of the circus cage fed with meat alone brings forth 
 cubs with cleft palates. Meat does not provide the calcium 
 necessary to the formation of the bones of her cubs. 
 
 Caged mice fed with distilled water and processed corn meal, 
 such as is purchasable in every grocery store in the United States, 
 develop "nerves" just as men and women robbed of their calcium 
 also develop "nerves." As the calcium-free diet is continued the 
 mice are stricken with convulsions, passing in the meantime 
 through all the symptoms of pellagra, beri-beri, acidosis, and 
 general prostration. 
 
 What are the effects of the removal of the calcium from the 
 food consumed by the large army of adults afflicted at the age of 
 forty and beyond with hardening of the arteries, heart disease, 
 Bright's disease, diabetes, cancer, etc. ? 
 
 § 29 — ADD ARTIFICE AND SUBTRACT NATURE 
 
 In the laboratory when pneumonia germs are studied it is found 
 that a little sprinkle of calcium will revive a culture in a stationary 
 state. 
 
 Calcium is necessary for the strength of the bones, for the 
 hardness of the teeth, for the firmness of the muscles, for the 
 tone of the nerves, for the coagulation of the blood on demand, 
 for every pulsation of the heart, for the digestion of the food, 
 for the functioning of the kidneys and other vital organs, for the 
 health of the body. 
 
 When a baby is deprived of its necessary calcium its bones are 
 softened. The muscle deprived of its calcium quivers and 
 twitches. The nerves under such deprivation act in similar man- 
 ner. 
 
 We know how oxalic acid acts on the body when introduced 
 with food. We do not know how other chemicals act upon tissue 
 calcium, yet the food manufacturer who employs other chemicals 
 
102 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 gives no thought to the manner in which his germicidal agents 
 may interfere with the integrity of life's processes. 
 
 Food manufacturers declare their chemical preservatives are I 
 "harmless." Scientists are found to agree with them. Thus 
 they set up arguments of such plausible and convincing character 
 that the government has been prevailed upon to permit them to 
 employ chemicals in the manufacture of a hundred food products. \ 
 
 One thing is certain. There is premature and untimely death 
 everywhere. Men and women suffer out fifty years of more or , 
 less misery instead of living the same fifty years in a state of 
 bounding, buoyant energy and health. Yet eminent professors i 
 declare it is unscientific to connect untimely death and prevent 
 able ills with the follies of our diet system. 
 
 We shall see as we progress whether it is unscientific to estab- [ 
 lish such a connection between food folly and disease or whether 
 it is the refusal to admit such connection which is unscientific. 
 
 This we know. Some dozen drugs can now be legally put into . 
 food intended for interstate commerce and another dozen are 
 permitted by various state governments in the manufacture of j 
 foods not intended for interstate commerce. 
 
 At least twelve necessary mineral elements can be legally taken 
 out of foods intended for interstate commerce. Thus the manu- 
 facturer is permitted to add to nature's formula or subtract 
 from it at will, depending entirely upon what he considers neces- 
 sary in attaining the commercial results desired. 
 
 The 400,000 children under ten years of age who died last year lt; 
 loved their "innocent" cakes, cookies, crackers and biscuits ; their j! 
 "innocent" white bread smeared with syrup and factory jam ; 
 their "innocent" gorgeously coloured candies. 
 
 We smile at the very thought of the farmer mixing with his f 
 carefully and scientifically prepared food the red, blue, green, \ 
 yellow, brown and purple ribbon dyes of the coal tar family 
 which the law permits the manufacturer of foods intended for 
 human consumption to use. 
 
 We smile at the thought of his adding to his cattle food borax, 
 sulphurous acid, saccharine, sodium benzoate, copper sulphate, 
 aluminum sulphate, anhydrous sodium sulphite, butyric ether, 
 amyl ether, cenanthic ether, ethel ether, valarienate ether, formic \ 
 ether, benzoic ether, acetic ether, esters, aldehydes, coumarin, ] 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 103 
 
 vanillin, pyrolygneus acid, soap bark, furniture glue, lamp black, 
 shellac, gum benzoin, paraffine, stearic acid, hydrogenated fats, 
 hydrolised starch and other foodless substances so frequently 
 mixed with the food of the growing child and the nursing mother. 
 
 All these substances at this hour are now in use in the United 
 States. With the exception of borax and copper sulphate they are 
 all legal. 
 
 Little pigs are tenderly cared for; the young colt, the baby 
 calf, the wee chicks, are watched with a solicitous eye. Caution, 
 vigilance, common-sense, scientific knowledge, are exercised to 
 produce stock that will yield a profit. In consequence, when 
 money is invested in animals they are fed on a diet carefully ar- 
 ranged and their young do not die untimely deaths when their 
 food is of a proper kind. 
 
 But human beings ! That is another matter. The law says, 
 "You shall not consume carbolic acid, arsenic, opium, cocaine, 
 morphine or heroin, nor shall you purchase them under any cir- 
 cumstances whatsoever unless the law's restrictions are removed 
 by trained and licensed physicians." 
 
 The law also says in substance: "The food of your children 
 may be whatsoever the food manufacturer sees fit to sell you." 
 
 You are now prepared for the long neglected truths concern- 
 ing that great human destroyer — the white bread of America. 
 You will now learn exactly how your daily bread is robbed of 
 its vitalising mineral elements, not its calcium alone but its iron, 
 potassium, magnesium, silicon, phosphorus, iodine, its ferments, 
 enzymes and vitamines. 
 
 You will now learn how to go about the work of getting your 
 share of straightforward, honest food such as nature provides 
 for you and desires your children to consume. 
 
 § 30 — WALKING WITH A BROKEN STAFF 
 
 Three times each day for three hundred and sixty-five days each 
 year a table is spread in each of twenty million households in the 
 United States. This means that sixty million meals, however sim- 
 
104 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 \ 
 
 pie, are served for the pleasure and nutrition of the family be 
 tween the rising and setting of every sun. 
 
 At each of these annual billions of occasions — the exceptions I 
 are too few to count — 21,900,000,000, to be exact, the housewife 
 places one article of food on the table. Whether that table be set 
 in a mansion or in a hovel, whether it be loaded with an abundance 
 of the luxuries of life or whether its contents be confined to one 
 or two simple articles of food, there is one food always present. 
 
 Is it to be wondered at, therefore, that bread is called the "staff 
 of life"? 
 
 What then if the staff on which humanity leans so trustingly 
 be broken ? 
 
 The flour advertisements with which the magazines are crowded - 
 tell us peculiar and wonderful things about flour. Millions of l £ 
 dollars are spent annually to inform us that our flour is washed, J 
 brushed, scoured, screened, and sifted through grits gauze and 
 silk bolting cloth until nothing leaves the mill but utterly perfect 
 flour! As late as August, 1918, The Saturday Evening Post pub- ;: 
 lished an advertisement of the Quaker Oats Company, frankly 
 telling the public that "Quaker Best Corn Meal" contains none : 
 of the fibrous outer coat, none of the oily germ, nothing but the 
 Uinty starchy part. ' 
 
 Millions of dollars are spent annually to exploit the virtues of 
 anemic crackers, denatured biscuits, and foodless cakes. Devoted ' 
 mothers, believing the statements made to them through the i: 
 highly coloured printed page and the gaudily decorated bill-board, ! ] 
 rely with a profound faith upon the demineralised nutriment j 
 which advertising art extols. Their babes, from the very begin- 
 cing, are taught with a broken staff to walk. 
 
 Thus is reared a race of such vigour that it sends in one year f 
 nearly 400,000 children under ten years of age where white bread f 
 and starchy biscuits are no longer needed. 
 
 Nature never made a white grain of wheat and man never 
 knew the meaning of white flour until he -conceived the fetching 
 idea of startling his guests with bread as white and lifeless as ' 
 the aristocratic napery on which it is served. 
 
 The unrefined grain of wheat as it comes from the field con- 
 tains in organic form the twelve mineral substances needed for 
 the health, growth and life of the animal body. Chickens, guinea 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 105 
 
 pigs, white mice, or monkeys fed on bread made from the unre- 
 fined wheat thrive indefinitely, but chickens, guinea pigs, white 
 mice, or monkeys fed on an exclusive white bread diet perish in 
 from five to seven weeks. 
 
 Wherefore the whiteness of white bread ? How is this white- 
 ness obtained? These are questions which we have set out to 
 answer. 
 
 White bread becomes white because from the ground grain of 
 wheat three-fourths of the mineral salts and colloids, including 
 the salts of calcium, phosphorus, iron, potassium, chlorine, fluo- 
 rine, sulphur, magnesium, manganese, etc., are removed. These 
 mineral substances are contained in the brown outer skin, the 
 cells underneath this skin and the germ of the wheat berry. They 
 are sifted and bolted out of the ground meal leaving behind the 
 white starchy cells and the refined gluten of the interior part of 
 the berry. 
 
 Nature, in her most benevolent efforts to teach man that he 
 cannot trespass with impunity against the laws of life, through 
 thousands of years of agricultural experience, has failed to im- 
 press him with the priceless value of these subtle substances in 
 the assembling of which for his needs she travels through so many 
 subtle and divers paths. 
 
 In the whitening of flour not only are the mineral salts and col- 
 loids removed from the wheat, but its ferments or vitamines, one 
 of which was discovered by M. Mege Mouries in the inner cortical 
 part of the wheat, are rejected. 
 
 The millers who make our flour and our corn meal assure us 
 that they are conferring a great blessing upon humanity in pre- 
 paring a refined white product. To obtain a still whiter whiteness 
 they even go so far as to bleach by an electro-chemical process the 
 demineralised flour which passes through their silk bolting cloths. 
 
 To confront them with 400,000 children under ten years of age 
 who died in the Umted States last year, notwithstanding the daily 
 familiarity with white breadstuffs which these children suffered 
 without resistance, is but to provoke a smile fortified by "proofs" 
 of the benevolence of their conduct. These "proofs" usually bear 
 the signature of scientists. 
 
 What scient : sts' signatures can open up those little graves and 
 deliver back to the fond and empty arms of grieving parents the 
 
106 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 million five hundred thousand children that have died in this 
 country during the past four years ? 
 
 What will scientists' signatures do for the enfeebled soldiers 
 who survive the European war or for their half-fed widows and 
 orphans during the reconstruction period that faces them ? 
 
 In the many public controversies which I have had with the 
 millers they have frankly admitted that they do not give the people 
 white flour or white bread products through their own choice. 
 They say that because the people think they want white flour and 
 white bread they are obliged to cater to such wants. These admis- 
 sions are nevertheless usually accompanied by a statement that 
 white bread as contrasted with bread made from the whole grain 
 possesses "superior digestibility." 
 
 Nothing is said of the alarming increase of cancer, diabetes, 
 Bright's disease, heart disease and hardening of the arteries now 
 causing so much concern among life insurance companies on ac- 
 count of th^s fact that their chief victims are found in middle age. 
 
 Nothing is said about the fact that at the age of forty, when 
 man should be at his best, and continuing until his fiftieth year 
 the increase in these diseases is at its height. 
 
 There is much evidence to indicate that middle-age mortality is 
 directly associated with denatured food. All of such evidence 
 will be submitted here in its proper place. 
 
 Of course there are other causes also at work in the production 
 of some of these increasingly prevalent middle-age diseases but 
 the facts which will be treated with sufficient detail, indicate con- 
 clusively that demineralised and refined food is chief among these j 
 causes. 
 
 § 31 — "digestibility" and "indigestibility" 
 
 There are many prejudices to overcome before whole wheat 
 bread, whole wheat cakes, whole wheat biscuits, whole wheat | 
 muffins, whole wheat waffles and other whole wheat breadstuff's, 
 with all their wealth of vitality, can be restored to the people. 
 
 Some of the millers declare the bran of wheat is a powerful 
 irritant and, therefore, people not in normal health cannot use it 
 without injury. 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 107 
 
 They say whereas bran in whole wheat might be advantageous 
 in special cases — an admission suggested by the recent appearance 
 on the market of numerous brands of bran — it is an undesirable 
 element in bread because it is "indigestible/' 
 
 Pepper is "indigestible," so is nutmeg, cinnamon, ginger, mus- 
 tard, mace, allspice, , cloves. The fibre of orange, pineapple, 
 celery, string beans, asparagus, canteloupe, is "indigestible." The 
 seeds of' strawberries, raspberries, figs, grapes, are "indigestible," 
 just as the bran of wheat is "indigestible" and for the same rea- 
 son, if the word "indigestible" is assumed to mean that in their 
 journey through the body none of these substances is taken up 
 by the body and transformed into tissue. 
 
 None of such substances is actually indigestible. In its course 
 through the body the bran surrenders its soluble extractives 
 which are taken up by the tissues and the residue which remains 
 behind is a water absorber. As such it performs a most important 
 and necessary function in the intestines. 
 
 Every time we eat a roasted or boiled ear of corn we eat the 
 bran. Every time we eat Boston baked beans or fresh peas we 
 eat the bran of these legumes. It is well that we eat these things 
 because, while they are not digested in themselves in the sense 
 of being taken up and oxidised in the production of heat or 
 energy, they nevertheless contribute to the body the soluble salts 
 and colloids which they contain and without which energy-pro- 
 ducing foods are useless to the living body. 
 
 Let us take an animal membrane such as a bladder and fill it 
 with a solution of any of the food minerals and hang it on a nail, 
 against the wall. It. will hang there for days, weeks, or months, 
 and there will be no leakage of its contents through the skin. Not 
 a drop will ooze through the membrane to appear on the outside. 
 We see that it guards its contents as faithfully as would a glass 
 bottle properly corked. 
 
 If we now take the filled bladder and immerse it in a tub con- 
 taining another solution of different density a remarkable phe- 
 nomenon will be observed. The contents of the bladder will begin 
 to pass out through the membrane into the solution on the outside, 
 and the solution on the outside will begin to pass through the 
 membrane to the inside, so that eventually the solution on the 
 
108 THIS FAMISHING WORLD ^^^ 
 
 outside and the solution on the inside will be identical in char- 
 acter. 
 
 The dissimilar liquids will be thoroughly diffused. The process 
 by which this diffusion is brought about is called osmosis. Osmosis 
 is going on in the body all the time. 
 
 We create and thus change the mineral constituency of the 
 internal secretions every time we eat. We thereby continue to 
 change the character and density of the fluids in which the cells 
 are bathed. Thus do the cells obtain their nutriment. As long 
 as life continues osmosis does not cease. Protoplasm derives its 
 nutriment through this process of osmosis. 
 
 In fevers or wasting diseases accompanied by extreme exhaus- 
 tion as the result of inability to consume food, or in cases of star- 
 vation, the fluids inside the cells gradually become identical in 
 specific gravity with the fluids in which they are bathed so that 
 osmosis becomes very feeble. When it ceases altogether death 
 ensues. 
 
 The minerals nature has put into wheat and the other grains 
 and man so deliberately removes from his diet are lost to all his 
 needs and the vitalising mission they are designed to perform 
 are not performed. 
 
 Just as chopped meat surrenders its mineral salts to the water 
 in which it is immersed so also does the bran of the grain sur- 
 render its minerals to the internal secretions of the body. 
 
 But bran not only furnishes indispensable mineral salts to the 
 body. It also acts as a regulator of the peristaltic action of the 
 alimentary tract by which the contents of the intestines are kept 
 moving onward and downward. 
 
 One of the curses white bread and refined grain foods impose 
 upon humanity is constipation. A thousand ills are traceable to 
 this disorder. Patent medicines by the hundreds have been mar- 
 keted in order to help pill-consumers bridge over the misery 
 their white bread inflicts upon them. 
 
 Constipation is the malevolent origin of the woes of many 
 American women who, through the congestion set up by inhibited 
 per'stalsis, are afflicted with uterine and ovarian disease that make 
 their lives miserable. 
 
 Constipation is not the trifling disorder the public foolishly be- 
 lieves it to be. We are about to see how grave it really is and to 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 109 
 
 what extent it undermines the health and vitality of America. A 
 proper understanding of the significance of constipation will 
 destroy the white bread superstition. 
 
 § 32 — CONSTIPATION 
 
 The world little suspects the gravity of constipation, or the 
 readiness with which it submits to correction. Even the physician 
 needs to be reminded of the serious nature of this preventable and 
 entirely unnecessary evil. 
 
 Listen to what Drs. John H. Musser and George Morris Piersoi 
 of the University of Pennsylvania have to say to their brother 
 physicians throughout the United States if you would appreciate 
 the folly of looking upon constipation as a trifling disease. Here 
 are their words : 
 
 "No clinical symptom is more frequently encountered in the 
 practice of medicine than constipation. The commonplace and 
 obstinate character of the affection is perhaps responsible for the 
 prevalence of the idea that constipation is a necessary evil rarely 
 capable of permanent cure. 
 
 "As a result of this false and dangerous attitude the people 
 are prone to look upon the condition with indifference, which 
 allows them to be content with a certain degree of temporary 
 relief, too often brought about by the easiest means at their dis- 
 posal, namely, the use of purgative drugs. 
 
 "This attitude is not only erroneous, it is harmful. Constipation 
 is but a symptomatic expression of some underlying disorder, and 
 any treatment to be efficient must be directed, not to the temporary 
 removal of the symptom, but at the cause. 
 
 "Dietetic errors are among the most frequent general causes of 
 constipation. These consist in food which is deficient in residue 
 (bran) by reason of which the bowel is deprived of the mechani- 
 cal and chemical stimuli necessary to promote proper intestinal 
 activity. 
 
 "A diet suitable for constipation must be one which will furnish 
 adequate stimuli to the intestinal mucosa by means of undeposited 
 
110 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 residue and the various chemical substances elaborated during its 
 digestion." 
 
 Do these words of Drs. Musser and Piersol, directed in such 
 serious 'manner to the medical profession, clash with the phi- 
 losophy of ridicule preached by the millers? To the victims of 
 constipation who are so easily influenced by plausible assertions 
 I leave the answer. 
 
 "Be careful," say the millers, "on your journey, John, not to 
 eat any white bread. If you do your teeth will fall out. Be sure 
 somewhere to get a spoonful of bran in your grub or you will 
 become a victim of the Philippine itch. Keep a sharp lookout for 
 that brown, brindled, spotted rough stuff known as whole wheat 
 bread or you will surely perish." 
 
 In the face of this sort of attack, aimed at the weakness of 
 human nature to withstand the assaults of ridicule, however far- 
 fetched, great truths are content to be smothered and old evils 
 abide with us unmolested. 
 
 Drs. Musser and Piersol are explicit in their advice to their 
 fellow-physicians. Here are their plain statements : 
 
 "Whole wheat bread, whole rye bread, or pumpernickel should 
 be used in preference to white bread. 
 
 "Whole oatmeal and the coarser cereals, such as whole corn- 
 meal, are important adjuncts." 
 
 The scoffers must surely experience difficulty in dismissing such 
 statements when they emanate from recognised authorities. 
 
 What we want, however, are not statements, but proofs. This 
 is why we began at the beginning, why we are content to make 
 progress step by step, why we are dealing only in established 
 facts. 
 
 The references of Musser and Piersol to whole oatmeal, whole 
 corn meal, and the coarser cereals will, in their proper places, 
 release a volley of proofs, each one of them sufficiently startling 
 in itself to provoke a panic among the commercial beneficiaries of 
 denatured breakfast-foods and breadstuff's. 
 
 It has been conclusively established that bread made of the 
 whole wheat, just as it comes through the cleaning machines from 
 the field, together with the other unrefined foods to which these 
 words are dedicated, will save our daughters and our daughters' 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD Ill- 
 
 children from the hundred evils which food follies have imposed, 
 upon them. ' 
 
 Dr. Albert Westlake, in his paper on "Babies' Teeth to the 
 Twelfth Year," says : 
 
 "Babies' teeth should receive consideration at least six months 
 before the child is born. Necessary elements in their building are 
 furnished at this period by the mother's blood. 
 
 "Teeth require more organic phosphates, particularly the phos- 
 phates of calcium, and more calcium carbonate than other parts 
 of the bpdy; therefore, bone food is necessary for the mother 
 (cows' milk, eggs, especially yolks, peas, beans, lentils, whole 
 wheat, outer grains, etc.). Dietetic treatment for the mother is 
 very important at this period while bone is forming. 
 
 "The intestines of the child are also undergoing vital changes 
 at this period and earlier. This includes, as has been established 
 by Dr. Herbert D. Pease, the primary fixation of the child's intes- 
 tine in the left hypochondriac region. 
 
 "It is therefore vital to the off-spring to establish perfect per- 
 istalsis of the mother's intestines. Elimination and evacuation 
 should be regular without drugs. Constipation is the enemy of 
 both mother and child." 
 
 § 33 — SUSPECTED CAUSES OF CANCER 
 
 Because constipation in the United States causes more human 
 misery than drunkenness we shall not dismiss the subject until 
 it is considered in connection with the prevalence of acidosis and 
 cancer, now on the rapid increase from coast to coast. 
 
 The demand for laxative pills, cathartics and heart depressors 
 for the relief of constipation and the headaches due to the ab- 
 sorption of retained toxines from congested intestines over- 
 loaded with decay, is greater than the demand of the "morning 
 after" for bracers. 
 
 It is needless to reassert this truth, for all of us know that if 
 we ask any druggist what one so-called remedy is most coveted 
 by the human race we shall be told that "constipation pills" sit 
 
112 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 on the mountain top of popular clamour for relief from dis- 
 tress. 
 
 The average creature, who lives largely on food deficient in cel- 
 lulose, fibre, and mineral salts, needs no description of the mis- 
 ery constipation begets, but there is another warning for such 
 creatures which should not be ignored. 
 
 Diagnosticians are agreed that many of the ills that plague hu- 
 man nature are preceded by a history of constipation. They 
 also agree that freedom from constipation averts many ills. 
 
 They are not agreed upon the cause of cancer. Some of them 
 believe cancer is a premature aging and breaking down of the 
 cells. They hold that certain cells become aged while the tis- 
 sues around them are still in a state of comparative youth. The 
 aging cells they say express their senility by returning to a more 
 embryonic form and as they do so increase in number, thus re- 
 sulting in the morbid growth they call cancer. 
 
 In the opinion of many cancer specialists this faculty of multi- 
 plication is one of the manifestations of degenerating cells. 
 
 Other cancer specialists hold that cancer is the direct result 
 of irritation, either mechanical or chemical, and that it may be 
 produced by the absorption of an unidentified poison. 
 
 Still others believe that it is produced by the invasion of a 
 parasite yet unrecognised and too small to be discovered by the 
 most powerful microscope. While they are all in doubt about 
 the origin of cancer, they all know it is increasing at the rate 
 of 2.4 per cent, a year in the United States. 
 
 Dr. Horace Packard of Boston University, discussing the can- 
 cer question before the Surgical and Gynecological Society of 
 the American Institute of Homoeopathy at Chicago, June 28, 1915, 
 declared that demineralised foods form a factor in the devel- 
 opment of cancer. 
 
 "The human family is underfed in mineral food salts," he 
 said. "A momentous fact is that the flour mills of the civilised 
 world are busy eliminating every particle of iron, phosphorus, 
 sodium, potassium, silicon, calcium, chlorine, magnesium and sul- 
 phur (mineral salts) from our staple food supply and sending 
 out food material rich in heat units but pitifully meagre in ener- 
 gising and immunising material. 
 
 "Since a critical examination of the habits of life of civilised 
 
TWO KINDS OF FOOD 113 
 
 canoer-plagued people in comparison with the habits of prim- 
 itive cancer-free people shows that the main difference between 
 them is in a dietary poor in mineral salts among the cancer- 
 plagued people and a dietary rich in mineral salts among the can- 
 cer-free people, the most logical and rational course is to adopt 
 this as a keynote to cancer treatment. 
 
 "All forms of malignant disease are possible only because of 
 absence of or loss of immunity. All animal life in normal state 
 of environment and supplied with nutriment bearing all the or- 
 ganic ingredients necessary for the maintenance of disease-re- 
 sisting vitality possesses in itself a protective immunity to cancer. 
 
 "In view of the well established fact that in the vegetable world 
 an adequate supply of the earth's salts, phosphorus, potassium, 
 iron, magnesium, silicon, calcium, etc., acts as a distinctive de- 
 terrent of parasitic life and makes for vigorous disease-resisting 
 life, may we not assume as much for the animal world?" 
 
 There is indeed a direct relationship between the known 
 causes of constipation and the suggested causes of cancer. This 
 relationship is based upon the loss of cellulose, mineral salts, col- 
 loids, and vitamines in our breakfast foods and breadstuff's. 
 
 Take, for instance, the bran of wheat, one of the food ele- 
 ments lost to modern cancer-plagued civilisation. Wheat bran 
 consists of three layers, all of which contain larger proportions 
 of cellulose or fibre than the interior of the grain. 
 
 The two outer layers contain more of the phosphorus, calcium, 
 and iron compounds than the other parts of the grain ; while the 
 innermost layer contains a special kind of protein, which is the 
 seat of the indispensable vitamines lost in the milling of wheat. 
 
 As we have seen, bran is not so "digestible" as first-patent 
 flour for the reason that all of first-patent flour is absorbed 
 whereas all of the bran is not absorbed. The mistake of esti- 
 mating the food value of any food by its ability to undergo com- 
 plete absorption has already been recognised by many authorities 
 and it is to be hoped the medical profession will soon give to 
 the non-absorbable food elements the importance that belongs to 
 them. 
 
THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCES. 
 SES ARE MORE DEADLY THAN WAR 
 
THREE: WHY MODERN REFINING PROCESSES ARE 
 MORE DEADLY THAN WAR 
 
 § 34 — CORN MEAL OR CORNLESS MEAL 
 
 The folly of comparing the "digestibility" of white patent flour 
 with the "indigestibility" of bran is self-revealed through the very 
 nature of the arguments employed by the millers. 
 
 "Complete absorption" means constipation. Deficiency of min- 
 eral salts means constipation. Absence of cellulose or fibre 
 means constipation. Bran takes up moisture and holds it in the 
 intestines, thereby making the intestinal mass more elastic, stim- 
 ulating peristalsis and increasing the rhythmic waves of con- 
 traction and relaxation so necessary to the process of elimination. 
 
 Bran surrenders to the body the solubles it contains. These 
 solubles, physiologically active, are absorbed to perform the meta- 
 bolic task assigned them. Had God not meant them to be pres- 
 ent He would not have called them from the void. 
 
 Bran is but one of the discarded particles of wheat, corn and 
 rice. Its importance must not be overemphasised at the expense 
 of the other discarded particles. Bran in itself is not a food ; it 
 is merely a natural constituent of wheat, corn, rice, peas, beans, 
 etc. 
 
 White patent flour contains approximately n per cent, pro- 
 tein; bran contains 15 per cent. Flour contains 1 per cent, fat; 
 bran contains 4 per cent. 
 
 The lecithins or phosphorised fats are found in the bran and in 
 the germ of the grain. In the milling of patent flour and re- 
 fined corn meal the lecithins are discarded. 
 
 Patent flour, like refined corn meal, contains less than one- 
 half of 1 per cent, mineral salts. The bran and germ of the 
 grain contain nearly ten times as much. Of phosphorised com- 
 pounds alone bran contains twelve times as much as patent flour. 
 
 This does not mean that bran is a substitute for whole meal. 
 It is not. Bran lacks many of the elements found in the cells 
 
 117 
 
118 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of the thin outer skin of the wheat. It is the whole grain, with 
 bran and germ included, nothing added and nothing removed, 
 that is ground into honest, adequate, God-given meal. 
 
 Such meal is rich in all the food minerals and vitamines essen- 
 tial to animal life, containing just that quantity of bran neces- 
 sary to make constipation impossible. 
 
 Where constipation is avoided the absorption of the irritating 
 and poisonous end-products or toxines of intestinal putrefaction 
 is rendered quite impossible. 
 
 Thus one of the suspected causes of cancer and of many other 
 diseases, including hardening of the arteries, is also avoided. 
 Involuntary suicide and auto-intoxication are synonymous. 
 
 The proposition that bran or any other food adjunct will cure 
 cancer is not advanced here. Foolish would be the cancer vic- 
 tim who resorted to bran as a cancer cure, but there can no longer 
 be any doubt that the absence of these essential food substances 
 from the diet are responsible for the development of many dis- 
 eases. 
 
 Our government in 191 7, to extend the supply of wheat and 
 to improve the nutrition of the masses, contemplated the wisdom 
 of restricting the consumption of wheat to whole wheat. The 
 millers of patent flour seeing in this project grave danger to 
 their industry, succeeded in thwarting the movement. 
 
 Our government then urged us to eat wheat substitutes, em- 
 phasising corn in particular. 
 
 Certainly our boys "over there" wanted us to follow our gov- 
 ernment's suggestion. They wanted us to eat corn. We can 
 say this positively, because we know they wanted us to do every- 
 thing necessary to win the war. 
 
 We knew that without the sacrifice of life on the battlefield 
 and without the sacrifice of pet ideas and cherished habits at 
 home, speedy and decisive victory could not be achieved, yet we 
 did not consume corn as we should. We did not make a soldier's 
 honest effort to secure the kind of corn we should have had. 
 
 Our indifference to corn can be explained by the fact that the 
 kind of corn now served to us is not only flavourless, due to the 
 milling system that robs it of its flavour, but like white wheat 
 .flour, it lacks the indispensable substances of an adequate diet. 
 
 In asking us to eat corn our government certainly wanted us 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 119 
 
 to eat the right kind of corn. We can get the right kind of corn 
 by going after it. God grows no other kind. 
 
 We know that corn will produce the finest poultry ever grown, 
 but we have doubted its value as a human food, not knowing 1 
 that the kind of corn fed to poultry is not the kind fed to the 
 human. 
 
 We know that corn will produce an abundance of eggs, but we 
 are sceptical of its ability to nourish human tissues, not realis- 
 ing that the kind of corn fed to human beings will not produce 
 eggs. 
 
 We know that corn will produce the heaviest and meatiest beef 
 which only the great corn belt of the Middle- West is capable of 
 producing, but we assume that it will not put on the backs of men 
 the flesh it will put on the backs of cattle. Yes, it is true that 
 the kind of corn fed to man will starve cattle. 
 
 The near-corn for which man tries with little success to de- 
 velop an appetite will kill poultry, hogs and cows. Chickens fed 
 on it will die in less than fifty days. Children fed on it to the 
 exclusion of other offsetting foods will speedily develop pellagra. 
 
 Children fed on it with an insufficiency of milk and fruit so lose 
 vitality and resistance to disease that they become easy victims 
 of any infection that passes along. 
 
 What then is the difference between corn that will nourish 
 animals and near corn that will kill animals ? between corn that 
 will nourish men and near corn that will not nourish them ? 
 
 Why do farmers recognise this difference, providing only the 
 right kind of corn as food for the animals in which their money 
 is invested? 
 
 Why do fathers and mothers of children ignore facts that 
 farmers apply to the development of their live stock? 
 
 Would our boys in the trenches, fighting for the betterment 
 of the human race, ask us to answer these questions if they knew 
 the answer, honestly applied to our own home needs, would in- 
 crease our health, strength, stamina and endurance, and by re- 
 leasing other necessary foods to our soldiers and our allies con- 
 tribute heavily to the winning of the war? 
 
 Of course, they would. 
 
 What then are the facts ? 
 
 The whole kernel of corn contains 10 per cent, protein. Re- 
 
120 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 fined corn meal contains less than 8 per cent. This protein 
 difference is of little moment, but it represents a deficiency which 
 becomes progressively worse as we go down the line of nutritive 
 substances withdrawn from refined corn meal. 
 
 God puts these substances in the grain ; man takes them out. 
 
 The whole grain contains 4.3 per cent, fat derived chiefly from 
 the germ. This fat is not like lard. It is a highly complex sub- 
 stance containing the "fat soluble A" without which no young 
 animal or child can grow, and without which no adult can main- 
 tain health. % 
 
 In refined corn meal only one- fourth of the original fat of the 
 kernel is preserved. In whole corn meal we find the vitalising 
 mineral salts, all of them, to the extent of fifteen parts to the 
 thousand, whereas in the refined corn meal only four parts are 
 left, many of the salts having been removed entirely. 
 
 Like whole wheat, the kernel of corn has a fibrous outer skin 
 beneath which is a layer rich in protein and phosphorus com- 
 pounds of complex character. This layer is called the gluten 
 layer. Within it lies the germ. 
 
 All these layers and the germ itself with their rich mineral 
 compounds and vitamines are discarded in feeding man, al- 
 though carefully preserved in feeding animals. Yet the laws of 
 nutrition apply to man and beast in the same manner. 
 
 Not only do these substances, discarded in our effort to "im- 
 prove" on God's handiwork, contain the vitality of the corn, they 
 also contain its flavour, both of which are lost in the refining 
 process. 
 
 This loss makes man instinctively turn his back on corn. 
 
 Certainly in war and in the reconstruction that follows war 
 we ought to be just as much concerned in putting beef on the 
 backs of our soldiers and workers as upon our corn-fed animals. 
 
 Thousands of our doctors and nurses went to the other side in 
 191 8. Surely when medical attention for preventable ills at 
 home becomes scarce we need more resistance than ever. 
 
 Why do we tolerate any dietetic condition that menaces the 
 health of prospective mothers, of nursing mothers, of grow- 
 ing children, of workers in shipyards, munition plants, fac- 
 tories or shops ? 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 121 
 
 It is our duty to aim for efficiency and productivity, free from 
 the handicap of preventable afflictions. 
 
 Even in peace when we succumb to deficiency diseases caused 
 by a one-sided diet our doctors cannot help us unless they re- 
 store the missing nutritives of which we have been deprived. 
 
 The archives of the United States Public Health Service at 
 Washington are filled with records that prove this assertion. 
 
 What, then, shall we do about it if we fail to insist that all 
 our millers of corn meal shall give us the whole grain, freshly 
 ground ? 
 
 Of course, our mills should be nearby. 
 
 Corn will keep for years unground. Only when tempered 
 with water and ground long before it is needed does corn spoil. 
 Spoiled corn is unfit for food, but it need not spoil. 
 
 The trouble with the corn miller is that when he releases his 
 demineralised, degerminated and impoverished meal he wants 
 none of it to return a thousand miles to him "out of condition." 
 He wants it to stand on the shelf of the grocery store a year, 
 if necessary, and not become rancid during the interval. 
 
 He is not concerned with the food properties of his product. 
 He is interested in the profit per package. Such ideals do not 
 win wars, nor do they conserve the health of the nation, nor da 
 they inspire men who understand them to lay down their lives 
 in their perpetuation. 
 
 Fortunately, at an expenditure of five or six dollars we can 
 obtain little grinding machines for use at home. With them we 
 can make our own whole corn meal as well as our own whole 
 wheat meal if our grocers refuse to provide the unrefined prod- 
 uct. Once the millers witness an invasion of their field by 
 a sufficient number of hand mills to make them pause in their 
 present system, they will begin to vie with each other in the 
 production of grain foods as they should be produced. 
 
 § 35 — ANEMIA, TUBERCULOSIS, HEART DISEASE 
 
 Constipation is the enemy of mother and child. It is wide- 
 spread among adults of both sexes. It gives rise to many physi- 
 
122 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 cal ills which originate in congestion, inflammation, irritation, 
 and absorbed toxines. 
 
 There are many reasons why the prospective mother and her 
 unborn babe should not be robbed of the salts of food. 
 
 The millers will never know how many babies they have 
 handicapped from birth. See section 99. 
 
 Be it remembered that no chemist can tell us in terms of grams 
 anything about the exact quantity of phosphorus, iron, potas- 
 sium, lime, silicon, sodium, magnesium, manganese, sulphur, 
 chlorine, fluorine, or iodine which we should take into our bodies 
 every day. 
 
 Nature has fixed that mysterious and hidden formula for us, 
 yet, confounded in our wisdom, we turn our backs upon the truth 
 and seek destroying novelties in the paths of darkness. 
 
 The chemist admits he can never tell us the exact quantity of 
 these bio-chemic salts necessary to the life and health of the 
 human creature. 
 
 Three chemists at Columbia University devoted months to a 
 study of but three of the twelve food minerals, determining noth- 
 ing as to the quantity of them required, but determining every- 
 thing as to their necessity. 
 
 Humanity seems unwilling to trust the Creator in this re- 
 spect. Eminent scientists seem unable to believe that all nat- 
 ural unrefined foods, whether they be fruits, grains or grasses, 
 contain all the elements necessary to see them safely on their 
 journey through the body. | 
 
 By assuming the right to manipulate, modify, or destroy the 
 presence and proportion of these food minerals in commercial 
 breadstuffs, they refuse to see the wreckage they have left in 
 the wake of their mineral contempt. 
 
 They do not know how they have burrowed into the vitality 
 of human life while it is still in the mother's womb. 
 
 They do not suspect to what extent they have been responsible 
 for anemia, tuberculosis, heart disease, and the other ills, such 
 as pneumonia, diphtheria, scrofula, measles, appendicitis, dia- 
 betes, B right's disease, cancer, etc., that follow lowered resist- 
 ance and the destruction of immunity. 
 
 We cannot go into a theatre, church, public building, trolley- 
 car, or walk along the dusty city streets without inhaling the 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 123 
 
 living micro-organisms which cause tuberculosis, yet, if our re- 
 sistance is normal, we need have no fear of the disease because 
 the germs are destroyed as fast as they enter our bodies. 
 
 If this were not so, because everybody is exposed to tubercu- 
 losis, all the nations of the earth would perish from this disease. 
 
 In typhoid epidemics all do not develop the disease. Nor* 
 mal vitality provides in some the resistance necessary to combat 
 the assault, however violent. 
 
 Through the facts to follow we may obtain some hint of the 
 relationship our denatured foods now bear to the constant in- 
 crease in those diseases of adult life, cancer, diabetes, Bright's 
 disease, appendicitis, hardening of the arteries, and organic heart 
 disease, which are destroying so much of the best among men 
 and women. 
 
 § 36 — REJECTED FOOD MINERALS A MOUNTAIN OF FOLLY 
 
 To obtain an adequate conception of the gigantic scale on 
 which the nation is now undermining its vitality we must ex- 
 amine a few extraordinary figures as large and significant as the 
 tabulations of disease and death with which they are related. 
 
 In 19 1 5 the United States produced the largest yield of wheat 
 ever grown in any country of the world — 1,002,029,000 bushels. 
 This wheat was worth $932,888,999. 
 
 Of corn in 191 5 the United States produced 3,090,509,000 
 bushels, worth $1,913,025,071, the most valuable corn crop ever 
 grown. 
 
 The barley, rye, and rice crops of 191 5 in point of production 
 established records. 
 
 The barley was worth $118,577,682, the rye $37,861,403, the 
 rice $22,313,350. 
 
 In addition there was a record buckwheat crop worth $12,- 
 854,750. At the 1918 war values these grains were worth three 
 times as much in cash but just as little in food value. 
 
 Here surely, according to the statistics announced Nov. 8, 
 1 91 5, by the Department of Agriculture, was reason for the 
 
124 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 celebration of a joyous Thanksgiving throughout the United 
 States. 
 
 Yet, from all this wheat, corn, barley, rye, rice, and buckwheat, 
 from all of these hundreds of thousands of tons of the bread- 
 stuffs of the nation, the phosphorus was removed, the potas- 
 sium was removed, the iron was removed, the manganese was 
 removed, the magnesium was removed, three-quarters of all the 
 mineral salts and colloids, all of the ferments, enzymes, and vita- 
 mines were removed. 
 
 Two per cent, of the total weight of wheat consists of min- 
 eral salts. Rice contains less, oats more, corn nearly the same. 
 
 What a tragedy has been enacted through the washing, screen- 
 ing, sifting, and bleaching of our wheat, through the brushing, 
 scouring, and polishing of our rice, through the degerminating 
 of our corn, through the pearling of our barley, through the 
 thinning and extending of our buckwheat; through the refining 
 of our rye! 
 
 Take wheat alone as an index of the extent of the losses sus- 
 tained by humanity through the denaturing processes through 
 which all these grains are prepared for human consumption. 
 
 Each bushel of wheat produced in 191 5 weighed 57.9 pounds, 
 a total of more than 580,000,000,000 pounds, of which 2 per cent., 
 or more than 5,000,000 tons, consisted of food minerals. Of 
 these five million tons three-fourths were completely lost in the 
 refining process. Here, with wheat alone, we witness the wanton 
 destruction of nearly four million tons of the food elements most 
 indispensable to the health of man, woman, and child. 
 
 We see the deliberate rejection of the keystone of the arch, 
 yet when we add to this the rejected food minerals of our corn, 
 barley, rye, rice and buckwheat we build up a mountain of folly 
 so colossal in its menace to the human race that well, indeed, may 
 statesmen tremble when they behold its dimensions. 
 
 Other nations have taken alarm as proof after proof of the 
 ravages for which foodless foods are responsible have been dis- 
 closed. 
 
 In May, 1912, I received from the honourable secretary of the 
 Bread and Food Reform League of England a record of the 
 experiments conducted by Dr. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, Fel- 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 125 
 
 low of the Royal Society, reader in chemical physiology of the 
 University of Cambridge. 
 
 Hopkins experimented with an 80 per cent, whole wheat meal 
 which, though not containing all of the wheat, yet retained a 
 much larger proportion of the bran and germ than white flour. 
 
 Even with such semi-impoverished material the results of 
 his investigations were so remarkable that they inspired a be- 
 lated agitation in behalf of whole meal loaf or, as it was called 
 by the London Daily Mail, "household bread." 
 
 At the same time Dr. E. S. Eddie and Dr. G. C. Simpson, 
 members of the research staff of the School of Tropical Medi- 
 cine, University of Liverpool, carried on investigations in which 
 the effects of refined flour and white bread upon children and 
 adults were carefully studied in contrast with the effects of 
 whole meal or whole wheat bread. 
 
 An extended research was also conducted by Dr. Benjamin 
 Moore of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, in which 
 groups of pigeons were fed on bread made from fine white flour, 
 while other groups of pigeons were fed on whole wheat bread*. 
 
 The results afford further irrefutable evidence of the essential 
 health-giving qualities of those parts of grain and cereal foods 
 which are discarded in the milling of flour, polishing of rice, 
 pearling of barley, refining of rye, and the degerminating of corn. 
 
 One thing we know: the mountain of rejected food minerals 
 is balanced, alas, how inadequately, by a lake of patent medicines. 
 
 § 37 OUTER PARTS OF THE GRAINS AND THE NERVOUS 
 
 SYSTEM 
 
 Dr. Frederick Gowland Hopkins, department of chemical phy- 
 siology, University of Cambridge, will prove a stumbling block 
 to all millers of "patent" flour. He says : 
 
 "The superior value of whole wheat meal lies in the fact that 
 it retains certain food substances whose presence allows our 
 systems to make full use of the tissue-building elements of the 
 grain. These substances are removed from the fine white flour 
 in the milling. 
 
126 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 "All my work to date confirms my belief in the superior food 
 value of standard whole wheat bread. After definitely proving 
 that young animals grow with very much greater rapidity on 
 brown flour than on white flour, I have been able to improve 
 the tissue building rate of the white flour subjects by adding 
 to their white flour an extract made from the brown flour. 
 
 "To make the best use of any food material, such as the 
 proteins for instance, certain other food substances and possibly 
 a variety of them must also be present in definite proportions. 
 
 "If one essential food constituent which ought to make up 
 at least I per cent, of the total food is present in only half its 
 normal amount, then when it is a case of building up the tissues 
 the system will only be able to make use of half of the other 
 food elements even if these other food elements make up the 
 main bulk" of the food. 
 
 "This principle has long been recognised as regards plant life 
 and growth. A plant in order to attain perfect growth must find 
 in the soil a certain minimum of each of many elements. 
 
 "Consider, for example, the element potassium. If only half 
 the necessary amount of potassium be present, then, no matter 
 how abundant may be all the other soil and air constituents, their 
 normal utilisation is limited to one-half. The rate of growth 
 and the ultimate development of the plant are consequently 
 depressed. 
 
 "The absolute amount of potassium employed in growth is 
 very small compared with the carbon or nitrogen; but any de- 
 ficiency in it limits growth as surely as a deficiency in the more 
 important elements. 
 
 "The substances of unknown nature may need to be present 
 in very small amount, but if the necessary minimum is not avail- 
 able the utilisation of other constituents in tissue growth or 
 repair is infallibly deficient. 
 
 "In the process of converting the wheat grain to fine white 
 flour these elements are lost or destroyed. It follows that no 
 matter how much nourishment they might otherwise contain our 
 systems cannot make the best use of such nourishment, owing to 
 the absence of those elements necessary to their assimilation/'' 
 
 The conclusions of Eddie and Simpson of the research star! 
 of the School of Trop : cal Medicine, University of Liverpool, 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 127 
 
 throw still another light upon the experiments of Hopkins. 
 They say: 
 
 "It has been proved by Braddon and other workers in the 
 East that exclusive use of polished rice as a diet leads to a 
 form of acidosis or peripheral neuritis. This disease does not 
 occur in those native races who use whole rice or unpolished 
 rice as a diet. 
 
 "Our own experiments have been extended to similar work 
 in relation to the stripping of the outer case from the wheat 
 berry so as to produce a white bread instead of a brown bread 
 and we find that parallel results are obtained when the outer 
 layers are excluded from the diet with both wheat and rice. 
 
 "These experiments clearly demonstrate that the outer part 
 of the grain contains the essential constituents for the nutrition 
 of the nervous system both in growing animals and in adults." 
 
 Benjamin Moore, chief of the biochemical department of the 
 Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, as the result of his 
 laboratory research, was forced to the following conclusions : 
 
 "Groups of pigeons have been fed on fine white bread made 
 from white flour known to be unbleached and unadulterated, 
 while similar groups of pigeons have been given an ordinary 
 quality of whole wheat bread. 
 
 "The white bread pigeons have all speedily developed marked 
 symptoms of malnutrition and serious nerve derangements. Be- 
 sides losing weight they sit listless and shivering, lose power in 
 their legs, suggesting nerve paralysis, while many develop con- 
 vulsions. 
 
 "The whole wheat bread pigeons, on the other hand, con- 
 tinue healthy and up to normal weight. 
 
 "In another series of experiments pigeons which had devel- 
 oped grave nervous symptoms on a white bread diet recovered 
 completely when, after a week of special nursing, they were 
 placed on an exclusive whole wheat bread diet during their 
 convalescence." 
 
 § 38 — STUNTING THE GROWTH OF THE YOUNG 
 
 "All the recent work done in the biochemical laboratories 
 of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine proves beyond 
 
THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 question that in all cereals, such as wheat, barley, oats and rice, 
 there are series of important substances incorporated in the 
 inner layer of the husk which are essential to the nutritive value 
 of the grain." These are the words of Dr. Benjamin Moore, 
 chief of the biochemical department of that institution, 
 
 "If these elements are eliminated in the milling or prepara- 
 tion of the grain, a diet largely composed of cereals or bread thus 
 denatured will not only fail adequately to nourish the body, but 
 will tend to set up active disease. 
 
 "Certain of the diseases of malnutrition among children, no- 
 tably rickets, scurvy -rickets, tetany and convulsions, present 
 symptoms very similar to those we note in our white bread 
 pigeons. So striking is this similarity that physicians who have 
 followed up our work are already treating certain of their mal- 
 nutrition patients with a diet of whole wheat bread. 
 
 "Qur nerves as a nation are much less stable than in the days 
 prior to a white bread diet. All our work suggests that the 
 growing tendency of the age to neurasthenia, 'nerves/ etc., is 
 not unlikely due to removing from our diet those very elements 
 of cereal food which nature has hid in the husk of the grain, 
 and which man, in his ignorance, discards." 
 
 A special meeting of the British Association and the Health 
 Congress of the Royal Institute of Public Health was called at 
 Portsmouth to consider the results of the work done by Hop- 
 kins, Eddie, Simpson, and Moore. Little has come of this work 
 for the reasons that such discussions usually take the form of 
 ponderous scientific data and the people learn nothing of them. 
 
 Prior to the investigations of these British scientists an ex- 
 tensive research into the same subject had been conducted in 
 France. Armand Gautier, internationally eminent, had explored 
 the entire field of nutrition, inspiring numerous other French 
 scientists to undertake work of similar nature. 
 
 All of them have arrived at the same conclusion. Man has 
 lost the instinct of nourishing himself. The lower animals, when 
 left to themselves, have an innate knowledge of proper food, but 
 it is necessary that mankind be instructed in a certain amount 
 of scientific knowledge in order that a health-sustaining and 
 disease-resisting diet may be selected. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 129 
 
 Just one week before the grim day in which France became 
 involved in the conflagration that spread over the nations of 
 Europe in 1914, a little group of French scientists, with no thought 
 of the calamity so shortly to overtake the world, gave to humanity 
 the results of their experimental research into the dangers of 
 feeding with refined cereals. 
 
 Their conclusions were published in a French medical journal, 
 July 25th, 1914. Born as they were in the agonies of a reign of 
 destruction and death they possess peculiar significance to the 
 people of the United States, who, a few weeks later, were 
 advised by various commercial-scientific committees, seeking to 
 solve the problem of war prices, to turn away from wheat and 
 wheat flour and consume rice, rye, barley, corn, and oats instead. 
 
 E. Weill and G. Mouriquand were two of the investigators 
 who carried on numerous experiments with a refined and de- 
 mineralised diet for the purpose of determining its effect upon 
 the artificial production of anemia, nervous prostration, inter- 
 ference with the growth of the young, and the breaking up of 
 the natural forces which, in the healthy, well-fed animal, enable 
 it to resist disease. 
 
 Their conclusions, literally translated from the French, are 
 as follows: v 
 
 "To determine whether the effect of feeding pigeons with 
 pearled barley would bring about the same loss of health as that 
 which follows feeding with white flour we fed groups of birds 
 with such barley, which, like refined wheat, is deprived of its 
 germ and outer layers containing the mineral salts and vitamines 
 of the seed. 
 
 "The pigeons thus fed showed similar waste 2nd paresis of 
 the limbs and wings as has been frequently noted on a white 
 bread diet. These symptoms were followed by ataxic cerebellar 
 or labyrinthine phenomenon — the animals falling backward or 
 laterally with hyperextension of the limbs and head, ending 
 in death. A cataleptoid condition sometimes preceded death 
 where there had beer* no previous symptoms." Again see 
 section 99. 
 
130 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 39 INCREASED CONSUMPTION OF MEAT 
 
 Not content with the results of their experiments, which 
 demonstrated the inadequacy of pearled barley as a life sustain- 
 ing food, Weill and Mouriquand subjected pigeons to a mixed 
 diet of pearled barley, polished rice, and bolted wheat flour from 
 which the germ, the bran and underlying layers, containing the 
 salts, had been removed. 
 
 Weill and Mouriquand expressed the results of their experi- 
 ments in these words : 
 
 "All the pigeons fed on this mixed diet of polished rice, pearled 
 barley and bolted wheat flour showed paralytic disturbances 
 ending in death. We have thus proved that symptoms of the 
 beri-beri type can result from a diet of refined cereals. 
 
 "Nutritive disturbances in infants are doubtlessly, at times, 
 caused by a too exclusive feeding with exhausted flour derived 
 from decorticated cereals. 
 
 "The physician should take care to vary the diet of the weaned 
 child and include in it cereals from which the pericarp, bran and 
 germ have not been removed." 
 
 Six months later another Frenchman, A. Balland, national 
 associate of the Academy of Medicine, issued a warning to the 
 French government in which he said: 
 
 "Several times I have pointed out the exaggerated develop- 
 ment of the bolting of flour, which augments the price of bread 
 and diminishes its nutritive value. 
 
 "Notwithstanding the known facts it is in vain that some of our 
 most distinguished physicians, eye-witnesses of the miseries 
 suffered in hospitals, who are anxious for the future of the race, 
 have arisen against the invasion of white bread. 
 
 "The bolting of flour, flavoured by the world-wide cultivation 
 of wheat, which is extending every year, reaches at the present 
 time as much as 50 per cent, of the weight of the grain, while 
 less than fifty years ago only 13 per cent, of the grain was 
 unutilised in flour milling. 
 
 "Household bread has disappeared from the ration of the 
 French army and this fact is specially dwelt upon by those who 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 131 
 
 dread the effects of the use of white bread because never in 
 the history of France is there greater need than just now of 
 well-nourished, active, and long-enduring soldiers. 
 
 "Recently the bolting of flour used for the French army bread 
 has discarded from twenty to thirty per cent, of the weight of the 
 grain. The result has not let itself be long waited for. Every- 
 where the ration of bread appears insufficient; the hunger of 
 the soldier is less satisfied. 
 
 "At the beginning of the French revolution, when the army 
 bread was made entirely of unbolted flour, the subject was placed 
 before the Academy of Sciences for a decision concerning the 
 advisability of removing a portion of the grain, and Parmentier, 
 the agriculturist, who introduced the cultivation of the potato 
 into France, prepared the official report. 
 
 "Even then it was recognised that bolting the white flour 
 was injurious and did not constitute a substantial aliment for 
 the soldier." 
 
 Balland, quoting from this ancient report, says: 
 
 " 'What is good for the soldier is good for every man who 
 is engaged in active physical work and who needs thoroughly 
 nourishing food. The bread so universally employed to-day 
 is made of the central parts of the grain which are the least rich 
 in the color of the bread/ " 
 
 Supplementing Balland's warning Michel Levy, and Begin, 
 army official inspectors, declared: 
 
 "Bolting eliminates the useful elements of flour in more than 
 one respect and has no other compensation than an improvement 
 in the color of the bread. 
 
 "What the white bread lacks in nutrition has to be made up 
 by an increased consumption of other foods containing the miss- 
 ing elements. This fact is brought out very clearly in the re- 
 ports of the food supply furnished by the French army. 
 
 "The use of white bread enormously increases the consump- 
 tion of meat, which, when pushed beyond the limits of normal 
 toleration, is followed by many physical derangements as grave 
 as those which result from the mineral deficiency of refined 
 cereals." 
 
 Never before has any case been made in behalf of public 
 health in which the evidence has been so overwhelming or so 
 
132 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 conclusive. Yet, if we may be permitted the phrase, "the worst 
 is still to come." 
 
 § 40 — RICE, SCOURED AND POLISHED 
 
 Few Americans have ever eaten rice as nature intended them 
 to eat it. The beautiful grain, midway between cream colour and 
 light brown in hue, with a flavour that the polished rice eater has 
 never tasted, has been banished from the United States for 
 many years. 
 
 The robbed substitute is the brushed, scoured, polished, and 
 sometimes talcum coated grain of commerce, so degraded and 
 denatured by the milling processes through which it passes that 
 when fed to the fowls of the barnyard it brings about their 
 death in seven weeks. 
 
 Fed on the natural, unrefined grain containing all the elements 
 with which nature has endowed it, the creatures of the barnyard 
 thrive indefinitely. 
 
 The "innocent" bowl of rice, as we now scour and polish 
 it, served to the growing child and the convalescent struggling 
 desperately upward out of an abyss of distress, will not support 
 human life. We have roboed it as we rob the wheat. 
 
 No, this is not the cry of an alarmist. Behold the facts. 
 
 In the Philippine Islands a disease called acidosis, or beri-beri, 
 has wiped away countless thousands. 
 
 We have similar diseases in the United States, but we call 
 them inanition, anemia, neurasthenia, nervous prostration, gen- 
 eral breakdown. 
 
 Beri-beri, or acidosis, journeys from one stage to another, 
 through all of these experiences. Its name neither adds to nor 
 detracts from its ability to destroy. Those who encounter it 
 die the death. 
 
 Dr. V. G. Heiser in the year 19 10, then director of health 
 of the Philippine Islands, Dr. Fraser of Singapore, Dr. Aaron 
 of the Philippine Medical School, Dr. Highet of Siam, and Dr. 
 DeHaan of Java, produced evidence that showed conclusively that 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 133 
 
 acidosis, or beri-beri, is caused by a diet of polished rice, such 
 as is consumed in the United States. 
 
 As early as 1905 Dr. Donald McCaskey had noted the ravages 
 which follow a diet of polished rice. 
 
 Polished rice does not introduce some mysterious germ into 
 the body. It simply starves the blood and tissues until they no 
 longer offer a defence to any germ. 
 
 With resistance broken and immunity destroyed, as the result 
 of inadequate nourishment, pathogenic organisms take up their 
 residence in the weakened tissues of the body, and grow and 
 multiply until disorder ensues. 
 
 During January and February, 1910, another _of the many 
 outbreaks of acidosis among the inmates of the Coulion Leper 
 Colony aroused the interest of the little group of physicians 
 named above. 
 
 The disease resisted all medical treatment. It was noted that 
 the lepers were striving to maintain life upon a diet of polished 
 rice. As an experiment the polished rice was discontinued and 
 the natural grain substituted. 
 
 The sick in the hospital were fed with the rice polishings that 
 had been removed from the refined grain. Rice polishings are 
 the outer layers of the rice that give to the grain its light cream- 
 ish brown colour. Underneath, the grain is snow white. 
 
 This snow whiteness consists principally of starch; the pol- 
 ishings contain the phosphorus compounds and other mineral 
 salts, ferments, vitamines, and nitrogenous products brushed, 
 scoured, and polished away to make the grain pleasing to the 
 delicate eyes of pale women and children. 
 
 On a sixty days' diet of the natural grain, to which the rice 
 polishings had been added, the spread of the disease was inter- 
 rupted and complete cures established. Yet, not one of the 
 400,000 children under ten years of age who died in the United 
 States that year could find a pound of that natural brown rice 
 in all the land. 
 
 Still the medical profession needed more evidence than this to 
 convince it that when man denatures his food by refining pro- 
 cesses he destroys its ability to confer upon him immunity to 
 disease. 
 
 So Dr. Fraser of the Straits Settlements and Dr. Aaron of the 
 
134 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Philippine Medical School set about to* prove that when man 
 brushes, scours and polishes away the phosphorus compounds 
 and other organic minerals present in the pericarp of natural 
 brown rice he robs the human family of its ^requisite supply of 
 these elements. I 
 
 After this fact had been demonstrated to the satisfaction of 
 the physicians in the Far East it was again experimentally con- 
 firmed in chickens and later in human beings. 
 
 Finally two groups of railway workers in the Straits Settle- 
 ments were employed as a poison squad. The group of men that 
 partook of polished white Siam rice of best quality developed 
 beri-beri within a period of approximately sixty days, while 
 the group that partook of the unpolished rice remained free 
 of the disease. 
 
 § 41 — NATURAL BROWN RICE 
 
 In feeding the two groups of railway workers in the Straits 
 settlements, one group received polished white Siam rice, the 
 other group natural whole rice of the same kind. 
 
 Every effort was made by interchange of clothing, by personal 
 contact and by living in the same house to convey the disease 
 to the group that ate of the natural rice. Not a single case 
 developed. The process was then reversed. 
 
 The group that partook of the polished rice was put upon 
 a diet of natural rice, and vice versa. Within sixty days the 
 refined rice eaters developed beri-beri, although they had re- 
 mained immune to the disease as long as they ate the natural, 
 whole, unrefined rice. 
 
 The results of these experiments were then confirmed in- 
 Manila by the use of rice polishings in the treatment of acidosis, 
 the victims of which showed immediate improvement in their 
 condition. 
 
 A recommendation was then made to the Governor-General 
 of the Philippine Islands, urging him to forbid the use of pol- 
 ished rice in all public institutions. 
 
 In the quarterly report of the Bureau of Health of the Philip- 
 pine Islands for the first quarter, 1910, appeared this statement: 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 135 
 
 "It is hjQped by this means not only to eradicate the disease from 
 such places, but also that it may serve as an educational factor 
 in disseminating knowledge as to the method by which such 
 disease may be avoided." 
 
 The Governor-General, June 3, 1910, issued an executive order 
 to all health officers and presidents throughout the Islands, for- 
 bidding the use of polished white rice in all United States Govern- 
 ment workshops, prisons, hospitals and other institutions. Thus 
 it was determined that polished rice was bad food in the Philip- 
 pines, although elsewhere in the United States people could eat 
 it as they wished. 
 
 October 22, 19 10, 1 received a communication from Dr. Harvey 
 W. Wiley, then chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, Washington, 
 D. C 
 
 Dr. Wiley, as you know, was forced to resign from the gov- 
 ernment service because of his courage in pursuing food frauds. 
 His activities were becoming a menace to many commercial insti- 
 tutions. These institutions found able agents to thwart his efforts. 
 
 He said in his letter to me : "We should not even in a small 
 way permit a condition of nutrition favouring the development of 
 any disease due to the debasement of rice. Rice is becoming a 
 more general diet in this country, and the dealer who first begins 
 the campaign for pure unadulterated rice will promote the cause 
 in a commercial way that will do much toward protecting the 
 health of the people." 
 
 Upon the receipt of Dr. Wiley's letter Francis H. Leggett & 
 Company, a wholesale grocery house with which I was then con- 
 nected, decided to restore whole natural rice to the people. 
 
 It was evident to Theodore F. Whitmarsh, vice-president and 
 general manager of the institution, also president of the National 
 Wholesale Grocers' Association, that physiologists were beginning 
 to recognise that the discarded substances of refined foods were 
 essential to the health and well-being of man. 
 
 He saw that any commercial effort to keep pace with these 
 scientific discoveries promised to prove a good business policy. 
 
 I called to his attention and the attention of his associates the 
 comments of Dr. Alexander Bryce of Birmingham, England, 
 and the experiments of Schauman. 
 
 Bryce had said: "It is probable that a daily supply of the 
 
136 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 different compounds of organic phosphorus is necessary in the 
 food, as no proof exists to show that the nucleins, lecithins or 
 phytins are capable of being substituted one for the other." 
 
 Schauman had proved that pearled barley and white wheat 
 flour not only induce disease among men, but among fowls. 
 
 Whitmarsh determined to make whole natural rice a feature of 
 his business, together with whole wheat meal and old-fashioned 
 oat meal. Arrangements were made with Texas millers for a 
 supply of high-grade whole rice. 
 
 This rice was packed in one-pound cartons, and I was in- 
 structed to find a name for it. I labelled it "Premier Natural 
 Brown Rice." 
 
 Several thousand dollars were spent in those early days by 
 Francis H. Leggett & Company in an effort to exploit the virtues" 
 of this rice. Notwithstanding the reform it represented and its 
 marked superiority in flavour and nutritional value, the product 
 was finally sold as chicken food at a loss. 
 
 The people were slow at that time to respond, and their in- 
 difference discouraged Whitmarsh as to the commercial possibili- 
 ties involved in any effort to popularise honest food. 
 
 In 1917 he became Herbert Hoover's chief aid in the Food 
 Administration, but although I consulted with him in person 
 and deluged him with letters, he believed it expedient to avoid the 
 subject as a war measure, advising me that "the Food Admin- 
 istration could not undertake to educate the people." 
 
 Whitmarsh thus lost the opportunity of an age to become the 
 greatest living benefactor of mankind. Had the Food Adminis- 
 tration emphasised the scientific truths at hand, the entire world, 
 under the pressure which the Hoover organisation showed it 
 could apply in other and less important directions, would now 
 be profiting by them. 
 
 § 42 — A SPOONFUL OF GRAVY 
 
 In 1905 Dr. Donald McCaskey was medical inspector in charge 
 of a company of Igorot soldiers in Buena Vista, Cavite Prov- 
 ince, Philippine Islands. The soldiers all went down with acidosis, 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 187 
 
 or beri-beri ; all complained of palpitation of the heart, shortness 
 of breath, pains in the nerves, flabbiness of tissue, emaciation, and 
 pufly swelling of the limbs. Remember these symptoms for you 
 will see them again under wonderful circumstances. The disease 
 ended ultimately in paralysis and death. 
 
 When McCaskey was put in charge of these troops he noted 
 they had been eating the usual Philippine ration of rice, which, 
 however, had been polished in imitation of the American custom. 
 
 McCaskey was familiar with outbreaks of beri-beri that had 
 swept like wildfire among the Japanese troops during the Russo- 
 Japanese war, and he knew that it had been observed at that 
 time that such troops as were fed with unpolished rice were not 
 subject to beri-beri. 
 
 Numerous drugs had been employed on the Igorot soldiers, 
 but as they did not bring relief McCaskey put them on a diet of 
 unpolished rice. These are his words : 
 
 "The results were so astounding that inside of six weeks the 
 beri-beri sufferers had recovered sufficiently to take the trail and 
 hike on their own legs fifteen miles to Manila." 
 
 Later the convictions borne of this Manila experience were 
 further confirmed by his study of beri-beri in the Japanese hos- 
 pitals at Hiroshime, Tokio, Kobe, and Sasebo. 
 
 Surgeon-General Takaki of the Japanese navy was made a 
 baron in recognition of his discovery that beri-beri, prevalent 
 among Japanese soldiers and sailors, was not of bacterial but of 
 dietetic origin, "due to the loss of certain food constituents, 
 notably phosphorus, contained in the inner coating or pericarp of 
 the rice grain, which is always removed and discarded in the 
 preparation of polished rice." 
 
 Chamberlain and Vedder of the United States Army Board for 
 the Study of Tropical Diseases, after studying the very high mor- 
 tality of breast-fed infants in the Philippine Islands, reported that 
 "these infants recovered from nervous diseases of dietetic origin 
 with remarkable rapidity under treatment with an extract of rice 
 polishings." This extract contains phosphorus, iron, calcium, 
 potassium, and many other bodies of unknown nature discarded 
 in the modern process of milling rice to give it a white and fancy 
 appearance. 
 
 .Vedder, with Strong and Cowell of Manila, experimented with 
 
138 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 a rice diet in Billibid prison, the hygienic conditions of which are 
 reported as almost ideal. 
 
 The result of their experiments has been briefly summarised in 
 the following words: 
 
 "It has been generally admitted that the higher the phosphorus 
 content of rice the less is the possibility of that rice to produce 
 beri-beri. 
 
 "Fraser and Stanton found as an average result in all their 
 examinations that unpolished rice contains 0.540 per cent, of 
 phosphorus pentoxide. 
 
 "Aaron found an almost identical quantity, his figures being 
 0.557 per cent. 
 
 "We therefore emphasise the necessity of carefully considering 
 the question of the amount of phosphorus pentoxide which rice 
 should legally be required to contain in order for it to be regarded 
 as an unpolished rice exempt from taxation in the Philippine 
 Islands." 
 
 All these investigators have clearly established the fact that 
 refined foods are inadequate to the needs of the living animal. 
 
 Some of them, however, have gone into confusing and dan- 
 gerous fields. 
 
 "Give us enough 'phosphorus pentoxide' and we shall be safe," 
 concludes one group. 
 
 "Give us enough 'potash' and everybody will be safe," says 
 another group. 
 
 "Give us the 'vitamines' and our food, of whatever it may con- 
 sist, will be sufficient to our needs," declares another group. 
 
 Another group tells us that "if we consume sufficient 'calories' 
 we need have no other worries." 
 
 "A spoonful of gravy is all that is necessary to supply the off- 
 setting elements missing in white bread and other refined foods," 
 says Dr. Woods Hutchinson. 
 
 None of these commentators seems to realise that it is not 
 any one of the elements of known or unknown nature to be found 
 in natural food, however important in itself, but rather the com- 
 bination of all of them which is essential to health and longevity. 
 
 Short time experiments with any one of them or with the 
 absence of any one of them or with any arbitrary combination of 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 139 
 
 — 
 
 some of them cannot yield results which will serve as a standard 
 for an entire lifetime. 
 
 § 43 — MEDICINES ADDED TO SUGAB AND STA&CH 
 
 It is not the phosphorus lost in the milling of wheat, the 
 polishing of rice, the pearling of barley, or the degerminating of 
 corn which explains the inadequacy of such refined and denatured 
 foods when consumed by man or animal. 
 
 Commenting on the phosphorus content of unpolished rice as an 
 index of its fitness for food, Chamberlain states : 
 
 "The determination of any other element which is chiefly con- 
 tained in the pericarp, such as potassium, iron, calcium, etc., 
 would be an equally good index of the safety of the rice." 
 
 In other words, the food factory cannot remove any one ele- 
 ment from the cereals prepared by it without also removing all 
 of the other elements. They are so intimately bound up with 
 each other that when one goes all go. 
 
 To over-emphasise the importance of ferments or vitamines 
 or any one of the mineral salts is to cloud the whole issue of 
 metabolism in mystery and darkness. One might as well over- 
 emphasise iodine and ignore the vitamines as to over-emphasise 
 the vitamines and ignore iodine. 
 
 We have already seen something of the thyroid gland and have 
 learned that in health its iodine content is much higher than in 
 disease. 
 
 The manner in which iodine, so completely removed from bread, 
 biscuits, cakes, crackers, cookies, breakfast foods, cornmeal, 
 pearled barley, rye flour, polished rice, pancakes, glucose, table 
 syrup, sugar, candy, etc., influences the metabolism of other indis- 
 pensable bodies is vaguely hinted at through the experiments of 
 A. I. Ushenko. 
 
 Ushenko found that "following thyroidectomy (which means 
 the removal of the thyroid gland) the percentage relation of phos- 
 phorus to nitrogen in the urine is first increased but then again is 
 strangely diminished before death. 
 
140 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 "The amido acids and purin bodies are increased while crea- 
 tinin is diminished. The metabolism of the tissues containing 
 phosphorus and nitrogen is acutely disturbed, the synthetic proc- 
 esses being mostly affected." 
 
 Here we behold the removal of an iodine-secreting gland af- 
 fecting disastrously the interrelations of other parts of the body 
 and modifying at once the nature and proportion of elements 
 secreted and excreted by those other glands. Iodine in itself will 
 not support life. Its combination with other elements is essential. 
 
 Chamberlain declares that Schaumann's assumption that it is a 
 phosphorous compound which prevents polyneuritis is not correct. 
 
 "A large number of substances/' he says, "have been shown to 
 be of no value in the prevention of polyneuritis. Among these 
 may be mentioned potassium, chloride, phosphoric acid, either 
 singly or combined, potassium phosphate, either acetate or car- 
 bonate, magnesium phosphate, lipoids of the lecithin group, nitro- 
 gen compounds, such as histidin, asparagin, and various amino 
 acids (elaborated in the digestion of meat, eggs, cheese, etc.), 
 potassium iodide, thyroid extracts, Romann's salt mixture, cot- 
 tonseed oil, egg albumen, or any combination of these substances." 
 
 The failure of vitamines, when consumed without the assistance 
 of the other food elements necessary to normal nutrition, to per- 
 form the miracle of sustaining normal life and health requires 
 little demonstration. 
 
 These vitamines, some of which, isolated by Casimir Funk, are 
 complicated chemical compounds, occur as colourless needle- 
 shaped crystals with a melting point of 451 degrees Fahrenheit. 
 When added to a diet of sugary and starchy foods they will not 
 maintain life, although sugar and starch are rated among the 
 very highest of the "high calorie" foods, and therefore are looked 
 upon by mistaken scientists as the most important of all foods. 
 
 In fact, however high the calories, or however abundant the 
 vitamines, unless the other food elements, so wantonly destroyed 
 by food refinement, are present the body cannot make proper 
 use of them. 
 
 The experiments of Voegtlin and Towels with foods of "high 
 calorie" value deprived of their mineral content demonstrate the 
 inadequacy of the calorie theory. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 141 
 
 These investigators found that "an aqueous extract of autolysed 
 spinal cord from which the coagulable protein has been removed 
 contains vitamines or anti-neuritic substances which cure symp- 
 toms of polyneuritis in birds fed on polished rice when adminis- 
 tered in daily doses corresponding to four grams of dried cord. 
 
 "These vitamines or anti-neuritic substances, when added to a 
 diet of polished rice, seem capable of removing some of the nerv- 
 ous symptoms of disease, but fail absolutely to establish normal 
 metabolism and the affected birds do not recover/' 
 
 This is known. The simplest of natural foods contain all the 
 mysterious physiologically active principles required to maintain 
 normal health. Still we find scientists blindly rummaging through 
 fields of experimental darkness seeking complicated and high- 
 sounding explanations for phenomena so humble on the surface 
 and so majestic at the core that they have defied all the cross- 
 examinations, all the probings, all the analyses, and all the 
 theories of man. 
 
 The grain of wheat simply asks to be let alone. The other 
 cereals cry out to humanity, "We are sufficient in ourselves; do 
 not change our nature, do not undervalue our functions, do not 
 manipulate our attributes, do not destroy those potent forces we 
 have brought forth from the earth for the food of man." 
 
 In vain shall we seek for peace while we are at war with the 
 laws of God. Scientific phrases are not substitutes for the laws 
 of life, howsoever they may contribute to the vain glory of the 
 eminent members of that august inner circle of established repu- 
 tations whose mighty wisdom, ignoring the simplest laws of life, 
 clashes with the all-sufficient but hidden purposes of the Creator. 
 
 The shadow cannot ignore the substance; the dream cannot 
 ignore the reality; the reflection cannot ignore the flame. The 
 lore of the libraries cannot ignore the miracle found in a drop of 
 milk or a grain of wheat. 
 
 Real science, in all the humility of true greatness, suggests in 
 what it is doing for the welfare of the world an image of the 
 divine, but the semi-scientific confusion which has complicated 
 the dietary of nations is but a modern Babel. 
 
142 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 44 — BASES AND ACIDS IN FOOD 
 
 Every housewife is familiar with the bubbling and effervescing 
 which follow the mixing of baking powder ingredients. Cream of 
 tartar and baking soda or baking soda and molasses, when brought 
 together in the presence of moisture, froth and bubble. The 
 bubbling is due to the elaboration of a gas which was Originally 
 part of the baking soda bound up in it by chemical bonds. Break- 
 ing of these bonds by the acid action of the cream of tartar or 
 molasses sets the gas free, which is thus allowed to escape through 
 the mixture to be raised during the baking process. 
 
 Baking soda is alkaline ; cream of tartar and molasses are acid. 
 Alkaline substances are at war with acids. When they come 
 together they fight it out until both become neutral. After the 
 fight there is neither alkali nor acid present. When neutralised 
 by each other nothing is left but neutral salts. 
 
 The alkalis are called "bases," possibly because they establish 
 a base for the operation of the acids. Some acids are feeble, 
 others are highly energetic. Lactic acid is one of the feeble 
 acids; sulphuric acid is one of the energetic acids. Both, how- 
 ever, are neutralised by bases. So are all other acids. 
 
 It is necessary to understand this because acids and bases are 
 neutralising each other in the body during every moment of life. 
 
 V/hen the acids manufactured in the body, such as lactic acid, 
 uric acid, carbonic acid, phosphoric acid, sulphuric acid, and many 
 amino acids, are allowed to remain unneutralised through some 
 failure of life's processes they attack the tissues, thus producing 
 the result known as acidosis. Acidosis is the curse of all refined 
 food eaters. 
 
 This is so because all refined foods are of the acid-producing 
 type. The condition known as acidosis may be feeble or it may 
 be extremely violent. Between the two extremes it can register 
 a hundred degrees of intensity, each of which is given a different 
 name by the diagnostician, depending entirely upon the organ or 
 gland of the body mostly affected. 
 
 In beri-beri, pellagra, rheumatism, tuberculosis, neuritis, nerv- 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 14S 
 
 ous prostration, anemia, and many other disorders, acidosis is 
 always present. This means that the acids which develop in the 
 body as the result of the processes of digestion and assimilation, 
 have not been neutralised. The bases that ought to be present to 
 do their work have been thrown away. 
 
 The living cells, tissues and nerves which, in health, are bathed 
 in the alkaline fluids natural to them, now become saturated with 
 irritating acid secretions which stimulate them to do all sorts of 
 unnatural things and which if unchecked actually bring about 
 their destruction. 
 
 All this has so much to do with beri-beri, tuberculosis, rheuma- 
 tism, anaemia, pellagra, malnutrition, neuritis, nervous prostra- 
 tion, and many other diseases that we must begin to appreciate the 
 destroying nature of acidosis and how it is brought about. 
 
 We have seen that the function of the food minerals, many 
 of which, let it be noted, are bases, are : 
 
 i. To regulate the specific gravity of the blood and other 
 internal secretions of the body. 
 
 2. To regulate the chemical reactions of the blood and other 
 internal secretions and excretions. 
 
 3. To preserve the tissues from disorganisation and putrefac- 
 tion. 
 
 4. To enter into the permanent composition of certain struc- 
 tures, especially the bones, teeth, and tissues. 
 
 5. To enable the blood to hold certain materials in solution 
 and to assist in their appropriation to the needs of the body. 
 
 6. To serve special purposes, such, for example, as the in- 
 fluence of chlorine on hydrochloric acid formation, the influence 
 of calcium in favouring coagulation of the blood ; the influence of 
 iron in the formation of blood pigment, the influence of potassium 
 on the elasticity of the tissues, etc. 
 
 Notwithstanding the relationship of food minerals to the 
 phenomena of life, there is not one table of calorie values now 
 published in the United States which does not ignore the mineral 
 division of foods. All these tables confine their information to 
 three heads — the so-called life preservers, ''proteins, " ''carbohy- 
 drates/' and "fats." 
 
 Now, all proteins and carbohydrates are acid-forming foods. 
 When consumed without their corresponding bases they grad- 
 
144 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ually bring about a condition of acidosis which prepares the way 
 for the development of many diseases. 
 
 There is much evidence to indicate that it is the development 
 of acidosis in the body which destroys the body's natural im- 
 munity to disease. Proteins and carbohydrates are typical high 
 calorie fbods. All the scientists are talking about calories. The 
 dietitians base all their tables and formulas upon these calories. 
 Every hospital and sanatorium in the country talks glibly of 
 calories. All of them see to it that this or that invalid or con- 
 valescent receives a certain number of calories every day, and 
 the foods are selected, as a rule, according to a table, depending 
 entirely upon their record as calorie producers. It is the failure 
 of the calorie that we are now to consider in order that we may 
 grasp the dangers of acidosis and how to guard against them. 
 
 § 45 — CALORIES AND "SCIENCE" 
 
 Men are still alive who recall the days when horseshoes, nailed 
 over the barn door, were looked upon as a cure-all for disease 
 and a preventive of evils. Where the horseshoe hung lightning 
 would not strike ; the horse would not get glanders. A few peo- 
 ple still believe in the efficacy of horseshoes. 
 
 Other men recall the days when buckeyes were the greatest 
 friends of the human race. There was an old adage that ran 
 like this : "Carry a buckeye in your hip pocket and you will 
 escape rheumatism, or if you get it the buckeye will cure you." 
 A few people still cling to the buckeye superstition, but scientific 
 men laugh derisively at the absurd faith of their humbler brothers 
 in horseshoes and buckeyes. 
 
 These scientific men, who so clearly see the mote of supersti- 
 tion in the eye of the great unwashed, do not see the beam in their 
 own aristocratic orbs. 
 
 They are now giving lectures on "calories." They write about 
 "calories." The Government publishes bulletins on "calories."' 
 Hospitals and sanitaria, that ought to know better, compose 
 "scientific" diet lists for the guidance of invalid and convalescent 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 145 
 
 and in all these lists the "calorie" assumes an importance that 
 horseshoe or buckeye never enjoyed. 
 
 Professional nurses are talking about the "calorie" theory and 
 some of them collect fees for their familiarity with it. 
 
 Even restaurants have fallen under the spell' and are imitating 
 the scientific leaders of thought who look down from lofty pin- 
 nacles of wisdom and smile indulgently as they witness the spread 
 of the silliest fetish that ever cursed the medical world. 
 
 On the 1918 bill-of-fare of one of the largest systems of restau- 
 rants in the world, with establishments in New York, Brooklyn, 
 Newark, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Boston, Chicago, Montreal, 
 Toronto, Buffalo, Syracuse, Providence, New Haven, Paterson, 
 Atlantic City, Baltimore, Washington, Norfolk, Atlanta, New 
 Orleans, Memphis, Jacksonville, Louisville, Cincinnati, Cleveland, 
 Minneapolis, St. Paul, Kansas City, Denver and Los Angeles, is 
 published the following: 
 
 "Figures in parentheses indicate calories as computed by an 
 expert in nutrition. These show the energy value of the different 
 food items and will permit customers to conserve food by ordering 
 scientifically." 
 
 Let us separate the calorie scientist from the horseshoe farmer 
 or the buckeye bricklayer. 
 
 In the first place we must find out what a "calorie" is and then 
 we must show conclusively that it is the easiest thing in the world 
 to condemn a man to death while stuffing him with the fattest 
 calories found in the grocery store. 
 
 A calorie is a unit of measure. It has the same relation ta 
 heat measurement as the inch bears to the yardstick or the ounce 
 to the ordinary balance. 
 
 If twenty drops of water are so heated that their tempera- 
 ture goes up one degree the amount of heat required to send 
 the mercury up in the thermometer to this extent is said to be a 
 calorie. 
 
 The scientists, speaking of twenty drops of water, describe 
 this quantity as a gram. It can thus be seen that the heat re- 
 quired to raise the temperature of one gram of water two de- 
 grees is two calories and that if two grams of water are raised two 
 degrees it takes four calories to do the trick. 
 
 After Barnes, by experimenting in his laboratory, had estab- 
 
146 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 lished the principle that the relation of heat to energy could be 
 expressed with the accuracy and precision of mathematics, he was 
 able to prove that if one calorie of heat is produced in a steam 
 engine enough energy can be obtained therefrom to lift a load of 
 three pounds from the ground one foot in the air. 
 
 A certain beautiful truth lies at the heart of this discovery. 
 But as it is now applied to the food requirements of man it has 
 become distorted, ridiculous, grotesque. 
 
 The scientists have invented a contrivance which they call the 
 "bomb calorimeter" in which they burn up olive oil, kerosene, 
 butter, engine oil, bread, gasoline, turnips, benzine, soup, dyna- 
 mite, white bread, fire-wood, cheese, anthracite, or any other com- 
 bustible matter under investigation for the purpose of determin- 
 ing its caloric value. Though there are two kinds of calories, the 
 large and the small, we shall employ the term merely as a unit 
 of heat measurement. 
 
 Inasmuch as the physical energy of the body necessary for its 
 tissue activities can come only from food, an article of diet that 
 can send the mercury in the thermometer of the calorimeter 
 soaring to the breaking point must be full of possibilities as a 
 source of body energy. Thus do the caloricians reason. 
 
 These scientists, while laughing at horseshoes and buckeyes, 
 have attached so much importance to this idea that they com- 
 pletely overlook the fact that food, to be burned in a body in the 
 production of calories, is dependent upon the condition of the 
 body to do the burning. 
 
 They have also lost sight of the fact that most of the heat 
 which results from the burning of food in the body goes to main- 
 tain the normal temperature of the body and that where health 
 is impaired through faulty nutrition no number of calories, how- 
 ever large, can avail anything. 
 
 These same scientists, in their intense enthusiasm for the rule 
 of calories, ignore the fact that the most deficient and worthless 
 of all foods are those which strangely enough possess the high- 
 est caloric value. 
 
 It never occurs to them that calories cannot and do not put iron 
 into the red colouring matter of the blood ; that calories have noth- 
 ing to do with the oxidising-agent, manganese, which keeps com- 
 pany with the iron of the blood. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 147 
 
 It never occurs to them that calories have nothing to do with 
 the building of a protecting shell of fluorides around the bone 
 structure of the teeth or that calories have nothing to do with 
 providing the bone structure with calcium and phosphorus. 
 
 It never occurs to them that calories do not neutralise the 
 acidity of the tissues or preserve the normal alkalinity of the 
 blood and other internal secretions. 
 
 It never occurs to them that calories, however abundant, can- 
 not act as a substitute for sodium, magnesium or sulphur in the 
 body, or that calories cannot take the place of potassium or any 
 of the other mineral salts and colloids which assist in the control 
 of the processes of assimilation and elimination. 
 
 It never occurs to these scientists that with normal blood, teeth 
 that can grind food, tissues in healthy condition and glands 
 that are performing their functions normally, the human body is 
 capable of availing itself of the energy bound up in normal foods, 
 technically expressed as calories, even though the average person 
 never heard of one. 
 
 It is because of these facts and others of still greater significance 
 that the superstition of caloric feeding has persisted at the bedside, 
 in the hospital and in the sanitarium until there is now no one 
 who can estimate the number of men, women and children who 
 have died as a result of this scientific superstition. 
 
 It may be an interesting scientific achievement to determine the 
 number of calories elaborated in the body by the digestion of 240 
 grams of bread, 31 grams of butter, 120 grams of steak and 44 
 grams of prunes. 
 
 Perhaps it is also an achievement to determine that smoked 
 bacon contains 10.5 per cent, protein, 64.8 per cent, fat, 0.00 per 
 cent, carbohydrates, with a fuel value per pound of 2,841 calories 
 or 100 calories per gram. 
 
 With such a table, containing the calorie value of all the foods 
 on the calendar, the dietitian can devise a theoretical formula of 
 feeding which should contain a guarantee of uneventful con- 
 valescence for the sick and an assurance of perpetual well-being 
 for the healthy. 
 
 Unfortunately for its victims the calorie theory ignores the 
 fact that no food, regardless of its calorie value, is burned in a 
 dead body and that no food can liberate its calories according to 
 
148 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 the calorie formula unless the organs of the body are actively per- 
 forming their proper functions. 
 
 The failure of the calorie theory and the superstitions which 
 flow from its abuse are traceable to the lopsided importance at- 
 tached by scientists to a mere detail of the miracle of nutrition, 
 while ignoring in their calorie enthusiasm the significance of those 
 wonderful substances upon which life depends — the salts, col- 
 loids, enzymes, ferments and vitamines of food. 
 
 The calorie scientists do not consider the fact that foods are 
 refined every day to a degree that removes and destroys these 
 salts, colloids, enzymes, ferments and vitamines without changing 
 one particle the calorie value of what is left. 
 
 Thus they ignore the growth-promoting substances of foods 
 which have no calorie value and those other substances of food 
 which, absolutely worthless from the calorie standpoint, are 
 nevertheless indispensable to the regulation of the specific gravity 
 of the blood, to the regulation of the chemical reaction of all the 
 internal secretions, to the preservation of the tissues from dis- 
 organisation and decomposition, to the composition of the solid 
 structure of the body, to the ability of the blood to hold certain 
 materials in solution. 
 
 T. B. Osborne and L. B. Mendell found that animals fed with 
 mixtures of refined protein, refined sugar, starch and fat, which 
 have a greater calorie value than all other foods, even when 
 mixed with inorganic matter in the form of crystallised salts, 
 declined rapidly in health. 
 
 The elements essential to health were found under these feed- 
 ing experiments in milk whey. Milk whey has absolutely no 
 calorie value whatsoever. Yet when milk whey was added to 
 these refined foods the decline of the health of the animals was 
 arrested. 
 
 Milk whey contains none of the proteins or fats of milk. It is 
 the clear watery fluid which contains only the organic salts of 
 calcium, iron, potassium, phosphorus, etc., and some of the 
 growth-promoting substances found in milk. 
 
 Milk whey might be called clear soup for chemically it re- 
 sembles clear soup more than any other food now known to man, 
 but it is as ignorant of calories as sugar, in all its calorie fulness, 
 is ignorant of life-sustaining properties. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 149 
 
 Man can manufacture sugar from starch but God has withheld 
 from him the secret of making whey or of substituting for it. 
 
 The U. S. Bureau of Standards, through the irritation of some 
 of its Ph.D. ornaments, will attack this iconoclastic "nonsense" 
 but it will not publicly criticise the data developed by other gov- 
 ernment bureaus. One recalls how the Ph.D.'s of his time at- 
 tacked the glorious Pasteur. They were on the government pay- 
 rolls of France and Germany. Now they are dead and Pasteur, 
 resplendent, remains the foremost scientist of all time. 
 
 § 46 — CALORIES AND GASOLINE 
 
 Clear soups have practically no caloric value. In the restaurant 
 table referred to a bowl of vegetable soup, which is very thick 
 soup, is given a value of 200 calories, whereas a bowl of oyster 
 stew is given a value of 630 calories. 
 
 Clear soup is even less rich in calories than watermelon, a 
 whole pound of which has a caloric value of but 50. Clear soup 
 is less rich in calories than apples, a whole pound of which yields 
 but 190 calories. 
 
 Some foods have practically no caloric value at all as compared 
 with oleomargarine (3410 calories), salt pork (3555 calories), 
 granulated sugar (1750 calories), refined corn-meal (1635 cal- 
 ories), white bread (1200 calories). 
 
 These low calorie foods, ranging in value from 200 calories per 
 pound down to almost nothing, include skimmed milk (165 calo- 
 ries), buttermilk (160 calories), string beans (170 calories), pota- 
 toes (160 calories), cabbage (115 calories), celery (65 calories), 
 cucumbers (65 calories), lettuce (65 calories), onions (190 cal- 
 ories), rhubarb (60 calories), spinach (95 calories), tomatoes 
 (100 calories), turnips (120 calories), lemons (125 calories), 
 oranges (150 calories), and strawberries (150 calories). 
 
 Now the Big Superstition involved in the calorie theory makes 
 its appearance. 
 
 When refined foods, which have a caloric value so high 
 up in the scale that they are measured by the thousands as con- 
 
150 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 trasted with other foods measured on the scale under the two 
 hundred mark, are fed to animals, the animals die. 
 
 If we feed these high calorie foods, such as corn-starch, granu- 
 lated sugar, corn syrup, corn grits, corn flakes, cream of wheat, 
 polished rice, tapioca, macaroni, white flour and puffed rice to 
 animals they die. 
 
 If fresh vegetable juices that have no caloric value at all are 
 added to these refined foods the animals will live, but they will 
 not gain their normal weight, their strength or their resistance to 
 disease. 
 
 Their complete recovery cannot be brought about until they 
 are fed with unrefined foods including the parts of the grains 
 rejected in the milling of patent flour, degerminated corn-meal 
 and polished rice or the substances found in the leaves of plants, 
 such as lettuce, cabbage, celery tops, spinach, etc., or in the 
 butter fat of milk and in the germ of wheat, rye, oats, corn and 
 rice. 
 
 When these cast-off substances, ridiculously deficient under the 
 rule of calories, are restored to the diet of the animals they at once 
 regain their weight and all their vigour. 
 
 The most important and interesting discoveries concerning the 
 growth-promoting substances called vitamines, not found at all 
 in the high calorie foods so abundant in America and so enthusias- 
 tically recommended for hospital and sanitarium use, have been 
 made during the last three years. 
 
 These discoveries show that in milk, in the seeds of grasses and 
 in the grasses themselves exist two substances which have no 
 caloric value but which stimulate and control the development of 
 children and contribute to the vitality of adults. 
 
 One of these substances as we have seen is found in the fat 
 of the food and the other in the juice of the food. Their chem- 
 ical character is unknown and they have never been separated 
 from the food materials with which they are associated. 
 
 McCollum shows that they are most abundant in cabbage, let- 
 tuce, spinach, cauliflower and milk, all of which, in the calorie 
 scale of values, are away down at the bottom. 
 
 In experiments, McCollum, with Osborne and Mendell, has 
 shown that the feeding of butter fat and whole milk promotes 
 growth in a remarkable way and that no matter what the caloric: 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 151 
 
 value of the food may be, if these substances, that have no 
 caloric value at all, are not present, the development of the animal 
 will be stunted and its health impaired. 
 
 We know that engine oil, kerosene, gasoline and benzine have a 
 higher caloric value than alcohol. 
 
 We know that alcohol has a higher caloric value than sugar. 
 
 The calorie scientists, therefore, ought to refine the stench out 
 of engine oil, kerosene, gasoline and benzine as they refine the 
 stench out of cotton-seed oil. Odourless and tasteless gasoline, 
 having a much higher caloric value than alcohol or sugar, could 
 then be put into soup. 
 
 The addition of a teaspoonful of gasoline to a bowl of soup 
 would contribute all the calories the professors declare so es- 
 sential to life. 
 
 Sugar in war is almost priceless and the average man ought 
 to be content, therefore, to put his little Ford in storage so that 
 the gasoline thus saved might be used to keep his children in 
 health if only some inventive genius would come along and re- 
 move its objectionable jitney flavour. 
 
 A speedometer, however perfect in its ability to register the 
 number of miles travelled, will get a chauffeur nowhere unless 
 accompanied by an automobile. 
 
 A complete set of horseshoes without a horse is of little use 
 to a driver. 
 
 The hands of a watch will throw no light on A. M. or P. M. 
 unless attached to an efficient timepiece. 
 
 If a convention of scientists assembled for the purpose of 
 emphasising the overshadowing importance of speedometers and 
 horseshoes as a means of locomotion or of watch hands as the 
 controlling factors in our system of measuring the duration of 
 heatless, meatless and sweetless days, the obvious folly of their 
 conduct would make them ridiculous before the world. One 
 might as well attribute the velocity of Niagara's fall to the speed 
 of the turbines whirling at its side. 
 
 Yet, in tying their blue ribbons about the neck of the calorie 
 and setting the poor thing on a pedestal of glory as the very 
 heart and essence of scientific feeding, they have attempted to 
 dignify the ludicrous, a feat heretofore never accomplished. 
 
152 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Those complex substances called proteins are found in food 
 and are parts of food. The calorie is not found in food and it is 
 not a part of food. 
 
 The carbohydrates (sugar and starches) are found in food 
 and are parts of food. The calorie remains still a "name and is 
 no part of protein, sugar or starch. 
 
 The fats, including those complex compounds known as leci- 
 thins, are found in food and are parts of food. The calorie 
 has nothing to do with phosphorised fats, with palmitin, olein 
 or stearine, all of which are found in foods and are parts of food. 
 
 The ash content of foods is present in all foods except refined 
 foods. The ash content when removed in sifting, bolting, polish- 
 ing, scouring, desiccating and refining carries with it all the salts 
 upon which life depends, all the vitamines which control growth 
 and development, and all the biochemic substances which confer 
 upon the body in health its natural immunity to disease. 
 
 The calorie is nowhere found among these substances. Yet 
 in all the learned treatises on calories no mention is ever made of 
 any of these food elements found in ash. 
 
 One might point to a hat or a necktie and say, "There stands 
 a statesman/' and be quite as accurate in his comment as is the 
 scientist who points to a calorie and says, "There flows the 
 fountain of youth." The hat and the necktie at least have ex- 
 istence. 
 
 Just how the calorie, merely a notch on a yardstick, has suc- 
 ceeded in appropriating the centre of the universe will probably 
 never be known, for as its shameless record of pretence begins 
 little by little to dawn upon the minds of the unwary, those who 
 have stood by so faithfully with the aid of big but meaningless 
 words will begin their flight into darkness even as rats abandon 
 a sinking ship. 
 
 In the treatment of disease the calorie can be made to serve 
 a noble end but not until those who consult its meaning include 
 in their efforts a conscious recognition of the indispensable sub- 
 stances it now ignores. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 153 
 
 § 47 — ACID FORMERS AND FEMALES 
 
 Sherman and Mettler reported in May, 1912, as a result of 
 experiments conducted in the laboratories of Columbia University, 
 their estimate of the acid and base-forming elements in the ash 
 of the mineral content of forty-seven different kinds of food. 
 
 Meats, including fish, showed a decided preponderance of acid- 
 forming elements. The lean flesh of different species, whether of 
 young or mature animals of the same species, showed similar 
 results. 
 
 The white of eggs was found to be an acid-former. Milk, on 
 the contrary, showed a slight preponderance of base-forming 
 elements. Vegetables and fruits showed a marked predominance 
 of base-forming elements. 
 
 Experiments of several days' duration upon healthy men 
 showed that where foods with a preponderance of acid-forming 
 elements were substituted for foods with base-forming elements 
 the increase of ammonia excretion in the urine accounted only 
 for one-fourth to one-third of the acid involved. 
 
 The sulphates and phosphates in the urine, evidences of the 
 fact that the sulphuric and phosphoric acids elaborated in the 
 body had been neutralised, as they should have been, were not 
 considered. 
 
 Sherman and Mettler did succeed, however, in stampeding self- 
 satisfied scientists. 
 
 It has never occurred to these scientists that white bread, 
 biscuits, crackers, farina, refined breakfast foods, pearled barley, 
 corn meal, corn flakes, cornstarch, polished rice, mashed pota- 
 toes and refined cereals and sugars of every kind are acid formers, 
 and that their constant appearance on the tables of the nation 
 is rapidly bringing about a national condition of acidosis. 
 
 Barr declares: "Rheumatoid arthritis is not due to the action 
 of bacteria or their toxines or of the toxines developed in the 
 intestines as a result of stasis. The cause is a mild chronic 
 acidosis which extracts the lime salts from the fibrous tissues, 
 muscles, nerves, cartilages, and bones. The extraction of lime 
 
154 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 salts from fibrous tissues causes it to swell and its vascularity 
 to increase. 
 
 "Loss of lime salts causes irritable weakness of the muscles. 
 Under such a loss the muscles waste and contract readily. They 
 frequently cramp and deep reflexes are exaggerated, often ac- 
 companied by rhythmic tremor. Neuralgic pains result from the 
 extraction of some of the very small amount of lime present 
 in the nerve tissue. With the continued absorption of the lime 
 the particular tissues swell and there is effusion into the joints. 
 
 "The cartilages soon become involved and this is followed by 
 thinning and erosion. The lime and other bases are so necessary 
 to the neutralisation of the acids elaborated by the acid-forming 
 foods that they surrender themselves to the actual destruction 
 of bones and tissues in order that as long as possible the un- 
 natural condition may be tolerable. Even when all the bases are 
 withdrawn from our food the phosphates and sulphates continue 
 to appear in the urine, showing that the body has had to steal 
 the alkaline bases from its own tissue in order to carry on life's 
 processes. Surely no one is so blind as to assume that this 
 stealing can go on continuously without encountering disaster. 
 
 "The fact that the disease is present chiefly among the poorer 
 class and in the female sex between the ages of fifteen and 
 thirty-five years lends support to this view," continues Barr, "for 
 in these there is a deficiency of lime intake, and during the active 
 menstrual period there is a tendency to an increased lime 
 metabolism. 
 
 "The relative absence of lime and potassium in the refined food 
 of the poorer classes leads to a deficient motility of the stomach, 
 and this in turn results in obstinate constipation with acid 
 fermentation. 
 
 "Apparently foods from which the lime and potassium are 
 largely removed will not provide the intake of these substances 
 necessary to normal metabolic processes." 
 
 Herman Hille says, "No vital process is possible without the 
 presence of mineral constituents, as these elements and salts 
 are generators of energy and are all equally important with 
 protein, carbohydrates, fats, oxygen, and water, the great calorie 
 producers. The human organism cannot exist without mineral 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 155 
 
 elements and salts in true organic form, as they are indispensa- 
 ble foods." 
 
 We begin to perceive the folly of removing the bases from all 
 our prepared cereal foods and breadstuff's and from the vege- 
 tables cooked at home. 
 
 § 48 — SALT INTAKE AND OUTPUT 
 
 Herman Hille declares: "From a purely physical standpoint 
 mineral starvation is usually the primary cause of disease. Or- 
 ganic minerals are more easily utilised than inorganic forms. 
 Loss of mineral bodies impairs the food value of foodstuffs, and, 
 moreover, tends to make them poisonous. 
 
 "Mineral starvation, regardless of the calorie value of the food 
 ingested, is followed by disturbances in the vital processes and 
 activities of the human organism, a reduced supply of vital en- 
 ergy, pollution of the blood, body juices and tissues, and the 
 preparation of a tissue-soil in which parasites thrive and mul- 
 tiply without hindrance. Applying these facts and conclusions, 
 we find that the food minerals can no longer be ignored by ra- 
 tional therapeutics. A rational scientific estimation of the value 
 of foodstuffs must include the mineral bodies." 
 
 These statements were made in Chicago, Nov. 7, 19 13, at the 
 fifth annual meeting of the American Association of Clinical 
 Research, in which body it is my privilege to enjoy membership. 
 
 Five years have passed since that memorable meeting, yet so 
 slow-moving is truth that no scientific institute or hospital in 
 America has to this day attempted to apply its life-saving prin- 
 ciples. 
 
 With a hundred other investigators Gautier has demonstrated 
 that sodium, phosphorus, potassium, lime, magnesium, iron, sili- 
 con, fluorine, chlorine, iodine, etc., are found in a constant man- 
 ner in the residue left by the combustion of the animal organs, 
 glands and internal secretions. 
 
 "These elements," he declares, "are absolutely indispensable to 
 the life of the tissues. The system is constantly excreting them 
 and, therefore, impoverishing itself by its excretions. It is, 
 therefore, imperative that they should be found in sufficient quan- 
 
156 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 tity and in assimilable forms in the different foods of man." 
 
 The French have not lacked warning to make them heed the 
 folly of removing from their diet such physiologically active ele- 
 ments, the reactions and interactions of which control the bio- 
 chemical processes of life. 
 
 The subject of mineral starvation, due to food refinement, 
 is no new theme. Foster, in his experiments, established the 
 fact that mice, pigeons, and dogs fed with meat which had been 
 drained of its bases by the action of hot water, even if there is 
 added to such meat, together or separately, starch, sugar, and 
 fat, do not live beyond twenty to thirty days. Give them all the 
 calories they require, but deprive them of the mineral matters 
 natural to food, and these animals behave as though absolutely 
 starved. 
 
 It should not be necessary to emphasise again the fact that 
 the salts are necessary to the carrying on of life's processes, and 
 that in such processes they are being constantly removed from 
 the body. 
 
 Gourand has proved that these salts are excreted daily in 
 health to the following extent: 
 
 Sodium chloride, n to 12 grams; phosphates, 4 to 5 grams,* 
 sulphates, 3 to 4 grams ; calcium carbonates, .5 gram ; magnesium, 
 .2 centigram ; potassium, .4 centigram ; iron, .02 centigram. 
 
 From what source do we obtain them when they are removed 
 from food? 
 
 Starling, corroborating the work of Foster, declares, "Ani- 
 mals fed upon demineralised or refined food rapidly show dis- 
 taste for such food, become ill and die sooner than if they re- 
 ceive no food at all. 
 
 "It is therefore evident," he continues, "that the mineral con- 
 stituents of food, although yielding no energy in themselves, are 
 as necessary to the maintenance of life as the energy-yielding 
 or calorie-yielding foodstuff." 
 
 § 49 — MATERNITY AND TUBERCULOSIS 
 
 The average physician, whether ordinarily interested in food 
 or not, becomes peculiarly aroused during the gestation and lac- 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 157 
 
 tation period of his maternity patients, and the convalescent pe- 
 riod of all his patients. 
 
 - In the gestation period the foetus acts as a mineral parasite. 
 If the mother's diet at such a time is deficient in the vitamines, 
 mineral salts and bases demanded by the developing embryo, 
 the deficiency is made up at the expense of her own tissues, with 
 a corresponding loss of vitality both for her and for her off- 
 spring. 
 
 Of all the tragedies due to the ignorance under which food is 
 refined this is the most grim and depressing. The elaboration of 
 milk during the lactation period without a proper supply of the 
 food elements always found in normal milk, is followed by the 
 same dismal consequences. 
 
 Here, during these two most sacred periods of woman's life, 
 when the human heart goes out to the ministering mother in rev- 
 erence, nature is actually asked to operate without the materials 
 -essential to the accomplishment of her purpose, and so she, who 
 supports the heaviest burden of life, pays toll to folly in the 
 form of preventable infirmity and pain. 
 
 Referring to the abstraction of calcium salts from the moth- 
 er's blood by the fcetus as the cause of the rapid progress of 
 tuberculosis, Drennin reports that "inasmuch as gestation and 
 lactation both deprive the mother of lime salts, there is conse- 
 quently less lime for the process of calcification of the tubercu- 
 lous areas — nature's method of cure in tuberculosis. 
 
 "This, therefore, accounts for the frequent rapid rise of tuber- 
 culosis following maternity, increasing after every successive de- 
 livery, until the underfed mother generally succumbs after the 
 third. 
 
 "During the re-establishment of functional activity following 
 wasting disease, a deficiency of these compounders of life, the 
 mineral salts, bases and vitamines of natural foods, means not 
 only slow recovery but permanent injury, depending entirely 
 upon the extent to which the refinement has been carried on." 
 
 Weston P. Chamberlain, Major Medical Corps, United States 
 Army, cites the conclusions of Wellman, that the foods upon 
 which prospective mothers, nursing mothers and convalescents 
 are most frequently asked to subsist, such as starchy gruels, 
 broths, farina porridges, polished rice, corn meal, tapioca pud- 
 
158 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ding, white toast and similar types of demineralised cereal foods, 
 are inadequate. 
 
 Wellman reports that fowls fed by him developed polyneuritis 
 on a diet of foods such as corn starch, Louisiana molasses, corn 
 grits, cream of the wheat, boiled sweet potatoes, boiled Irish 
 potatoes, sago, macaroni, white bread, biscuits, puffed rice, pol- 
 ished rice, corn flakes, pancake flour, etc. 
 
 In the case of sago, boiled potatoes and corn starch the symp- 
 toms of paralysis followed sooner than when the fowls were fed 
 on raw, highly-milled rice, showing that the mere milling of rice 
 itself is only one of many other food abuses which pave the 
 way to disease. 
 
 In view of these facts, Wellman declares it is absurd to leg- 
 islate in the United States against polished rice unless action is 
 also taken against patent flour, pearled barley, refined rye, de-, 
 germinated corn meal, corn starch, glucose, granulated sugar, 
 etc., all of which are used even more freely in the diet of the 
 American family than polished rice. 
 
 Wellman's findings in regard to white bread are of special in- 
 terest in connection with Little's reports regarding the occur- 
 rence of progressive malnutrition in Labrador, among people 
 who at certain seasons live extensively on white flour bread of 
 the refined type, imported from Canada and United States. 
 
 Funk, referring to the many recent discoveries in regard to 
 the importance of certain minute quantities of certain substances 
 in the food, the lack of which entails disturbances in metabolism, 
 says : "These special substances may be destroyed by leeching 
 out and by boiling, by carrying desiccation too far, especially in 
 food for cattle, and by discarding the outer cover of grains, 
 especially rice, corn, wheat and rye." 
 
 The conclusions of Funk are elaborately confirmed by many 
 experiences in the feeding of horses for vitality and strength, 
 and the feeding of cows for milk production. 
 
 In an examination of a number of dairies in New York State, 
 New Jersey, and several in Illinois, including dairies where cer- 
 tified milk was produced under the auspices of county medical 
 societies, I found that cows improperly nourished continued to 
 yield milk of poor quality until their tissues were exhausted, 
 when they were shipped to uninspected slaughter houses, and 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 159 
 
 there killed and dressed for the retail butcher and bologna man- 
 ufacturer. 
 
 i Through the demands of lactation for an insufficient mineral 
 food of assimilable nature, their tissues like the human tissues 
 were actually consumed in milk production which brought about 
 a condition of emaciation, anemia and impaired vitality favour- 
 able to the development of tuberculosis. The dairy cow suffers 
 the same experience suffered by the human family, and for the 
 same reason. 
 
 H. C. Sherman of Columbia University, commenting upon the 
 calcium and vitamine necessities of man and beast, says : 
 
 "In the Orient where very little milk is available to the ma- 
 jority of the people, green vegetables, rich in calcium and vita- 
 mines, largely take its place." 
 
 Y. G. Chen, one of his oriental students, reports green vege- 
 tables are five times as prominent in China as in America. 
 
 "That children in the Orient," concludes Sherman, "fare as 
 well as they do with a very low milk supply, as compared with 
 America's supply, is explained by the much longer time during 
 which they receive their mothers' milk. 
 
 "In China nursing is continued often for two full years, and 
 not rarely for three full years. The child thus has ample time 
 to become adjusted to the consumption of a variety of vegetable 
 foods before its maternal milk supply is entirely cut off. 
 
 "It is not improbable," asserts Sherman, "that the free use of 
 green vegetables with their high calcium and vitamine content in 
 the food of the mother may be a factor in her ability to nurse 
 her child through such a long period. 
 
 "This must be true because McCollum has found that the 
 vitamines of milk are not manufactured by the cow, but are 
 taken directly by the cow from her food. 
 
 "Since animals store but limited quantities of vitamines in 
 their tissues, yet pass relatively large quantities into their milk, 
 it is plain that the milch cow is much more economical and ef- 
 ficient as a producer of vitamines than is the beef steer fed for 
 slaughter." 
 
 In other words, we obtain from milk, vegetables and whole 
 grains substances not found in meat, white bread or refined 
 cereals. How is the mother to obtain these substances from food 
 
160 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 when they are not present in that food? How is the child to 
 obtain from the mother substances which the mother does not 
 obtain ? 
 
 No wonder maternity, rebuking the outrages imposed upon it 
 by the commercial food manufacturer, revolts against the disre- 
 gard of nature's laws under which it is forced to suffer, and ex- 
 presses its revolt in terms of misery where happiness and health 
 should reign. 
 
 "So long," says Sherman, "as we thought of nutrition in terms 
 of proteins, fats, carbohydrates and calories, naturally we were 
 inclined to assume that a diet consisting largely of breadstuffs or 
 other grain products could be balanced by the addition of meat. 
 In fact," he continues, "it has long been more or less common to 
 think of meat as the animal food par excellence, and milk has 
 often been spoken of as a meat substitute, whereas it is vastly 
 superior to meat as a source of supply of substances not found 
 in meat at all. 
 
 "Meat, except in traces, not only does not contain the salts of 
 iron, lime, potassium and magnesium as they are found in milk, 
 but it does not contain the 'fat soluble A' found in cream, or the 
 'water soluble B' found in skim milk, for which reason it is in 
 no manner suited to take the place of milk, green vegetables or 
 whole grains in nutrition. 
 
 "The inadequate lime content of meat has long been known," 
 Sherman asserts, "and the inefficiency of ordinary meats as 
 sources of vitamines has been strikingly demonstrated by Osborn, 
 Mendel, McCollum and Simmons. 
 
 "Hence," he concludes, "we can no longer think of milk and 
 meat as interchangeable, or of meat as a full equivalent of milk 
 in the diet." 
 
 We are beginning at this belated date to realise that food cal- 
 cium is indeed one of the mysteries of life, and that without food 
 calcium, which is but an organic form of lime, and its associate 
 salts and solubles we condemn our little mothers and their babes 
 to death. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 161 
 
 § 50 — THE ADVERTISING AGENCY 
 
 Medical literature is now crammed with the truth concerning 
 food calcium, which, until the publication of "Starving Amer- 
 ica" six years ago, was rarely referred to. 
 
 The plain people do not bother their heads about medical lit- 
 erature, hence they have not heeded the perils that calcium de- 
 ficiency places in their path. 
 
 Milk is the heaviest calcium supply truck, next to whole grain 
 breadstufls, now carting lime in assimilable form into America's 
 storehouses of health. 
 
 Next to milk and whole grains the green vegetables and edible 
 leaves common to every American garden, are the great calcium 
 providers. 
 
 These three forms of food not only yield lime in abundance, 
 but they yield the now famous "fat soluble A," and the equally 
 famous "water soluble B" in quantities sufficient to promote 
 growth and to maintain health. 
 
 They also yield those complex compounds of phosphorus, po- 
 tassium, iron, magnesium, sulphur, sodium, silicon and the other 
 organic salts of the earth in happy abundance. 
 
 McCollum ranks the green vegetables and edible leaves like 
 lettuce, spinach, chicory, parsley, cabbage, etc., very much richer 
 in calcium and "fat soluble A" than cereals. Unfortunately by 
 "cereals" he means the refined products obtained from milled 
 grains which have lost not only their vitamines, but their salts 
 as well. 
 
 If we foolishly refined our lettuce, parsley, chicory, cabbage, 
 spinach and other greens and vegetables as we refine our wheat, 
 corn and rice, they would also rank low in life-giving proper- 
 ties. Fortunately we cannot refine vegetables except by stupid 
 methods of cookery, so we have few problems of refined vege- 
 tables on our hands. 
 
 These 1918 observations upon diet by some of our most emi- 
 nent scientists are among the surprises unfolded every day. 
 
 Away back in 1910 the New York Globe through its columns 
 
162 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 not only permitted me to make these same assertions, but went 
 much farther in its characterisation of America's food follies, 
 and for eight years continued them daily. 
 
 Nearly six years have passed since the publication of "Starv- 
 ing America," a book that inspired many commentators to say 
 its author was riding a pet hobby to destruction, and yet to-day 
 those same commentators are confirming by laboratory experi- 
 ment the conclusions set forth in that book. 
 
 America no longer needs any further facts on the subject of 
 nutrition. The archives of its laboratories are swollen with 
 facts. What America needs now is the application of them and 
 their recognition by commercial food factories and their ad- 
 vertising agencies. 
 
 I abandoned the field of food advertising six years ago for 
 the reason that all of us were lying about food, not so much in 
 malice as through a blind commercial enthusiasm that could not 
 be justified and would not submit to disillusionment. 
 
 Advertising agencies then as now were spending millions of 
 dollars through newspapers and magazines, in lithographs and 
 street cars, instructing the people in truths not true. All of us, 
 I am now speaking of the advertising men, were pushing into 
 greater prominence the very foods that ordinary decency should 
 have inspired us to condemn. 
 
 We were leading the people farther and farther afield. We 
 were miseducating them, setting up false standards for them, 
 shoving them ever farther away from the fundamentals of nu- 
 trition, surrounding them with artificial compounds from which 
 all the life and vitality had been extracted. 
 
 We were debauching the American people but we were satis- 
 fying our employers, and making millions of profit for them out 
 of their highly ornate labels, their decorated cans, cartons, pack- 
 ages, bags, boxes and glass jars, the contents of which outraged 
 the laws of nutrition now recognised by science as absolute and 
 inexorable. 
 
 When I broke away from the advertising camp as it was then 
 organised, I was chairman of the Vigilance Committee of the 
 New York Advertising Men's League, and chairman of the Vig- 
 ilance Committee of the Associated Advertising Clubs of the 
 World. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 163 
 
 When I quit these organisations my friends, almost to a man, 
 thought I had been obsessed and had lost my balance. I was the 
 stray sheep of the fold, and because my journey was into barren, 
 lands that promised nothing, none followed me. I addressed 
 conventions of advertising men in Boston, Baltimore and Roch- 
 ester, and wrote articles on the subject for Advertising and Sell- 
 ing, The Editor and Publisher and Printer's Ink, but my efforts 
 fell on deaf ears and advertising ethics did not change. 
 
 To-day the scientific laboratories of Europe and America are 
 driving all advertising men into confession and the war has only 
 served to emphasise the hopelessness of their position. The 
 magnificent men who do so much to influence the thought and 
 habits of their time are face to face with revolution. 
 
 What benefactors they would be if the vast sums of money 
 now passing through their hands were spent in exploiting those 
 foods which during three generations in America have been 
 gradually abandoned! 
 
 What benefactors they would be to the whole world in the re- 
 construction period now dawning, if they turned away from 
 manufacturers of foodless foods and devoted their superb talents 
 to the development of foods that will sustain life, nourish pros- 
 pective mothers, maintain the health of nursing mothers, develop 
 normally the growing children of the nation, and feed the work- 
 ers of the world in a manner that would insure for them the 
 maximum of strength, life, health and happiness. 
 
 Behind all their errors lie the unnoticed and neglected min- 
 eral salts and vitamines against which the food manufacturers 
 of America have made their most violent attacks, and out of the 
 world's loss of which they have reaped their heaviest profits. 
 
 The war must bring to us a realisation of these truths, and 
 all the reform that goes with them, otherwise the blood of our 
 youth will have been shed in vain, and as far as preventable 
 diseases are concerned the world will be little better off than it 
 was before the Hun unleashed his hounds of hell upon civ- 
 ilisation. 
 
 If my work on the New York Globe during long years of 
 struggle has established anything it has established the fact that 
 in the recognition and application of the truths of nutrition, 
 
164 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 purely commercial institutions can and do find a profitable busi~ 
 ness, which the advertising agent can develop if he will. 
 
 Of what use are the food scientists if our food manufacturers 
 intend to ignore them? 
 
 Of what use are our scientific laboratories if the rich fruits 
 of their labors are not to be utilised by the industries that feed 
 our men, women and children ? 
 
 If science is to be looked upon as merely ornamental, as are 
 the fancy labels on so many of our food products, then let us 
 do away with science, because as long as it stands before us un- 
 heeded it becomes but a mockery, reminding us in vain of the 
 things that God Himself has prepared for our benefit. 
 
 With this digression, which I consider timely and important, 
 we shall continue. 
 
 § 51 — COW FEED, HORSE FEED AND FOOD 
 
 In New York City, Armour & Co. discontinued the killing of 
 dairy cows because of tremendous losses sustained through the 
 excessive number of condemnations resulting from generalised 
 tuberculosis. On the killing floor these cows could be milked, 
 showing that they had been producing right up to the day of 
 slaughter. 
 
 In one certified dairy herd in New York State 124 of 125 
 cows were found in a state of malnutrition clearly indicative of 
 the unfitness of their food. 
 
 The daily dietary of these cows consisted of: 
 
 Ten pounds beet pulp (the exhausted residue of the beet sugar 
 industry). 
 
 Ten pounds alfalfa (good food). 
 
 Two to ten pounds degerminated corn meal and brewer's grain 
 (brewer's grain is the exhausted refuse resulting from the pro- 
 duction of beer). 
 
 To this mixture was added from one-half to one pint oil meal 
 or gluten feed. Oil meal is the residue of the process employed 
 in the production of cotton seed oil. Gluten feed is the residue 
 of the process employed in the production of glucose. 
 
MODERN REFINING PROCESSES 165 
 
 Many of these cattle foods are impoverished foods, yet they 
 appear on the formula of the certified dairy by reason of the fact 
 that they satisfy the modern dietitian's erroneous idea of a "bal- 
 anced ration." 
 
 November 15th, 191 2, all the cows in the herd were tuberculin 
 tested. Two were found to react to the test and were with- 
 drawn from the herd. 
 
 May 20, 1 91 3, the herd, having been on the "scientific calorie 
 diet" for nearly one year produced fifteen reactors. The con- 
 dition was beginning to alarm the owners of the cows. 
 
 In the meantime the stable superintendent had placed his de- 
 livery horses on the impoverished cow food. He was anxious 
 to make a record for himself and as the cow food was cheaper 
 than the horse food, he made the change. Between the fifty- 
 sixth and seventieth days the horses on the debased food began 
 to show the same symptoms of acidosis, emaciation and anemia 
 characteristic of the cows. 
 
 The horses were then put back on whole grains and grasses, 
 whereupon they promptly recovered. The cows were continued 
 on the same refined diet until a veterinarian, noting the experi- 
 ence of the stable superintendent with his horses, declared the 
 condition of the cows, favourable to the rapid development of 
 tuberculosis, was due to the character of the food consumed by 
 them. He immediately ordered a change, notwithstanding the 
 high calorie value and the scientific proportion of carbohydrates, 
 proteins, and fats with which the certified milk producers were 
 being nourished. 
 
 A contrast to this episode, concerning which more will be said 
 later, regarding the disastrous results of the use of demineralised 
 food on milk-producing cows and mothers, is to be found in the 
 experience of David T. Arrell, Youngstown, Ohio, breeder of 
 thoroughbred American trotting horses. 
 
 Arrell has bred, broke, trained, and developed prize-winners 
 on four points — food, pasture, shade, and stable. He so keenly 
 recognised the fact that the quality of his horses, their health, 
 vitality, endurance, resistance to disease, and general physical 
 perfection depended upon their food that he went so far as to 
 provide No. 1 unbleached oats for which he paid, prior to the 
 outbreak of the war, $1 a bushel, laid down in Youngstown. 
 
166 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 As a practical horse-breeder he had noticed that his animals 
 fed on unprocessed or non-by-product foods remained prac- 
 tically immune to all the equine diseases with which the average 
 horse-breeder is plagued. 
 
 As against this observation concerning the vitality of the horse, 
 properly fed, officials of the Bureau of Animal Industry estimate 
 that from 35 to 50 per cent, of all the milk-producing herds in 
 the United States are affected with tuberculosis. All of these 
 herds are fed more or less on exhausted or refined foods. 
 
 These diseases of disturbed metabolism, not only with respect 
 to cows and horses, but also with respect to the human being, 
 are as prevalent as the deaths of 400,000 children under ten years 
 of age in the United States every year might indicate. 
 
 Lovelace reports 936 cases of peripheral neuritis in a rail- 
 road hospital in North Brazil. More American refined food ! 
 
 Heizer, Fraser, Aaron, Higet, and others, as we have seen, 
 have demonstrated the insufficiency of demineralised foods of 
 high calorie value in the Culion Leper Colony, the Straits Set- 
 tlement, and Billibid Prison. 
 
 Caspari and Mosykowski report practical experiences in New 
 Guinea and Berlin which caused them to conclude that human 
 neuritis is a widespread disease of disturbed metabolism caused 
 principally by refined carbohydrate foods, the high calorie value 
 of which is not disputed. Human neuritis is but one of the many 
 symptoms of acidosis, but one of the many food diseases. 
 
FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT 
 CRY FOR ACTION 
 
FOUR: EIGHT POISON SQUADS THAT CRY FOR 
 
 ACTION 
 
 § 52 — THE MADEIRA-MAMORE CASE 
 
 Let us see how the facts recorded through these pages are 
 illuminated by certain human experiences of intense dramatic 
 interest. 
 
 The Madeira-Mamore Railway Company in 1914 went into 
 the hands of a receiver, after constructing a single track two 
 hundred and thirty-two miles long connecting Bolivia with Bra- 
 zil. 
 
 The first mile of this railway was laid just ten years ago, its 
 object being to exploit the rubber industry of South America, 
 not to advertise the dietetic virtues of ripe fruits, or fruit juices, 
 or the deficiencies of American diet. 
 
 In the construction of its two hundred and thirty-two miles of 
 track four thousand men were literally starved to death on a 
 white bread diet. Those who escaped death owed their good 
 fortune to the juice of fruits 
 
 Most of the victims of acidosis, or as they called the disease in 
 the State of Matto-Grosso, "beri-beri," are buried in Candelaria 
 Graveyard, three kilometres south of Porta- Velho, midway be- 
 tween that town and Santo Antonio — the district explored by 
 Theodore Roosevelt. 
 
 When the appalling history of this poison squad holocaust 
 was written by engineers connected with the enterprise all ref- 
 erence to the deaths by white bread starvation among the labor- 
 ers, after a conference of the railroad officials, was deliberately 
 blotted out. The officials thought the public might misinterpret 
 the facts at the expense of the country through which the rail- 
 road had been projected, and it was decided as a good business 
 policy that no mention should be made of the tragedy in the 
 various articles written for electrical, engineering, and scientific 
 publications. 
 
 169 
 
170 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 When P. H. Ashmead, chief engineer of construction, him- 
 self a victim of white bread acidosis, reported on the number of 
 deaths in camp, exception was taken to his figures and his list 
 of four thousand victims was cut in two so that in the records 
 of the tragedy only two thousand names appeared. 
 
 Ashmead, one of the best known consulting engineers of New 
 York, on the day he discovered the first symptoms of his ap- 
 proaching breakdown, determined to take passage for England 
 on the next vessel out. Terrified by what he saw going on about 
 him he had good reason to fear that he, too, was entering the 
 shadows of death. 
 
 The dietetic treatment he finally underwent and which saved 
 him from interment in Candelaria Graveyard I shall describe. 
 
 H. F. Dose, one of the Madeira-Mamore engineers who de- 
 voted three years to the completion of the work started by P. H. 
 Ashmead, fortunately made numerous observations and kept in 
 close touch with the twenty physicians of the company. Three 
 of these physicians, among whom was Dr. Lucian Smith, were 
 stricken with the disease but escaped death. 
 
 All the facts of the expedition, interpreted under the light of 
 the Kronprinz Wilhelm adventure, a poison squad classic that 
 you will soon explore, confirm the instant need of reform. 
 
 The laborers, of whom there were originally six thousand, 
 consisted of Russians, Greeks, Turks, Italians, Germans, Eng- 
 lish, Japs, Hindoos, French, Jamaicans, Barbadians and Bra- 
 zilians. The officers, engineers and physicians were chiefly Brit- 
 ish and American. 
 
 The labourers received the equivalent of $240 a day in United 
 States currency. They were charged by the Commissary De- 
 partment an average of one dollar a day for their food. The 
 cost of this food, its inadequacy considered, was so high that it 
 included the lives of the men. 
 
 A half-pound tin of glucose jam was sold to them for one 
 dollar. A No. 2 tin of canned sauerkraut sold for one dollar. 
 A No. 1 tin of canned sausages sold for one dollar. The No. 
 1 tin contained thirteen ounces. The No. 2 tin contained twenty- 
 seven ounces. 
 
 White bread constituted the chief foodstuff of the men. It 
 was baked in the camp from patent flour imported from the 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 171 
 
 United States in thousand-barrel lots, and was furnished by 
 wholesale grocers in New York City under the most highly ad- 
 vertised brands on the market. 
 
 In addition to the white bread (acid-forming) were enormous 
 quantities of hard white crackers (acid-forming) and tapioca 
 (acid-forming) made from the root of the native cassava plant. 
 Like farina, cream of the wheat, corn flakes, toasties, pearled bar- 
 ley, degerminated corn meal and polished rice, tapioca is a re- 
 fined, denatured, demineraiised, high-caloried, acidifying food. 
 
 Supplementing these one-sided units of nutrition were large 
 quantities of lard (acid-forming), coffee, sugar (acid-forming), 
 macaroni (acid- forming), and- xarque (acid-forming). A few 
 bags of rice (acid- forming) were also included. 
 
 In the nature of luxuries, sold to the men at enormous prices, 
 were such foods as canned pork and beans (well balanced as to 
 acid-forming and base-forming substances), canned spinach 
 (which the men refused to eat because they did not like its qual- 
 ity), canned wieners (acid- forming), canned jam (acid-form- 
 ing), corn flakes (acid-forming), oatmeal and condensed milk 
 (well balanced). 
 
 The oatmeal and condensed milk were confined to the officers' 
 quarters. 
 
 For breakfast the labourers ate white crackers and white 
 bread with plenty of black coffee, sweetened with sugar. As 
 they had to pay for their own meals, and pay heavily for them, 
 they economised as much as possible, believing as most others be- 
 lieve, that bread is the staff of life, and in itself sufficient to 
 maintain strength, energy and health. 
 
 At noon they ate white bread, white crackers and xarque, with 
 more coffee and sugar. Occasionally dried codfish, ham or ba- 
 con was substituted for the xarque. Xarque is dried beef, which- 
 looks like leather. It is packed in slabs or layers, weighing fifty 
 pounds each. Each slab is several inches thick, and as dry and. 
 hard as wood. Before cooking, the xarque was soaked over 
 night in water, and then boiled. 
 
 In the evening the men ate more white bread, crackers and 
 xarque, and occasionally indulged themselves in a can of sauer- 
 kraut, a can of pork and beans, or a can of jam. 
 
 The French, Jamaicans and Barbadians grouped together, and 
 
172 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 every day made what the others called "sinkers," a sort of heavy 
 doughnut composed of white flour, sugar and water, fried in 
 iard. 
 
 All of the foods in the labourers' camp, with the exception of 
 the beans, which they ate sparingly on account of their high 
 cost, were of the acid-forming type. The base-forming sub- 
 stances were not only deficient in quantity, they were not present 
 at all. 
 
 Acidosis under such conditions was inevitable. 
 
 The officers, many of whom escaped serious forms of the 
 disease, enjoyed a larger variety of foodstuffs from which to 
 choose, including dried fruits (base-forming), nuts (base-form- 
 ing), oatmeal (in itself almost a complete food), and potatoes 
 (also base-forming). 
 
 Chief Engineer Ashmead, who ate largely of white bread, 
 mashed potatoes and fresh meat, obtained by slaughtering in 
 camp an occasional beef-steer imported on the hoof for that 
 purpose, began to manifest the first symptoms of the disease al- 
 most as soon as the laborers themselves. The fresh meat, of 
 which he partook abundantly, and which was reserved for the 
 officers' use, did not act as a prophylaxis against the disease be- 
 cause fresh meat, or any other kind of meat, lacks the base- 
 forming substances so indispensable to the integrity of the in- 
 ternal secretions. 
 
 The first symptoms observed among the laborers and officers 
 affected were manifested in a tendency to stub their toes while 
 walking along smooth roads. The foot would seem to drag. 
 After that a slight swelling appeared in the ankles, which grad- 
 ually extended upward to the knees with loss of sensation. 
 When this swelling was at its height a dent in the flesh made by 
 pressure of the finger would remain for a long time. 
 
 Shortness of breath and palpitation of the heart, with tremor 
 of the nerves were the next symptoms, after which the men be- 
 gan to walk as though they were suffering from locomotor- 
 ataxia, with the halting, hesitating, uncontrolled stride charac- 
 teristic of that disease. 
 
 As the cases advanced the swelling subsided, and the leg grad- 
 ually wasted away, until prior to death nothing remained appar- 
 ently but the bone and skin. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 17S 
 
 Before death all the men were completely prostrated and help- 
 less. None of the drugs with which the physicians were pro- 
 vided had any effect. Finally the doctors ordered "no more 
 rice." They thought that rice was the bugaboo because they 
 had been reading of the relationship between rice and "beri- 
 beri." They did not know that rice had about as much to do 
 with the fatal outbreak of the disease which they characterised 
 as "beri-beri" as a baby carriage influences the eruption of the 
 molars of its occupant. 
 
 As the poor devils gazed in the direction of Candelaria Grave- 
 yard where white flour was to disturb them no more, they might 
 well have chanted, "Eventually ! Why not now ?" 
 
 § 53 — SPURNING MONKEY FOOD 
 
 Chief Engineer Ashmead noticed the development of the dis- 
 ease in his own case under circumstances that impressed all its 
 details upon his mind. The camp had lost a man in the jungle, 
 so dense that once a man got into it he lost all sense of location., 
 When lost it was a serious problem to find the way back to camp. 
 Ashmead participated in an extended search for the missing man, 
 which failed. As night came on he gave orders to blow the camp 
 whistle at short intervals until morning, that the sound might 
 give the lost man some guide through the heavy brush. 
 
 In directing the search Ashmead had to climb a slight hill. 
 When he reached the top he was "out of breath" to such a de- 
 gree that he had to stop in his tracks. When he removed his 
 leggings that night he thought he noticed for the first time that 
 he was "taking on flesh." He certainly was growing "stouter." 
 His ankles were "thicker." 
 
 He soon became sure of this, for in a few days he found it 
 difficult to buckle the straps of his leggings. Then came the 
 consciousness that he was losing his appetite for bread and meat. 
 For the first time in his life he experienced a craving for orange 
 juice. He had never been fond of oranges until that time. 
 
 On the fifth day following the first appearance of his ankle 
 
174 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 symptoms he noticed when he pressed the flesh at the ankle his 
 finger mark remained. 
 
 Laborers were dying around him everywhere. They had "beri- 
 beri," the doctors all agreed. He examined their symptoms and 
 discovered his were like theirs. "I've got it too!" he said, and 
 the doctors ordered him away immediately. 
 
 He returned to England and on the ship fortunately found 
 plenty of oranges. Throughout the entire journey he ate little 
 else and after landing in England he continued to saturate him- 
 self with orange juice. Within sixty days his heart dilatation 
 had disappeared and, except a depressing sense of lassitude for 
 the following six months, he was apparently none the worse 
 off for his experience. 
 
 Oranges are base-forming, as are the juices of all other fruits. 
 The value of fruits consists in their alkaline mineral salts and 
 feeble fruit acids. 
 
 Most fruits are rich in potassium and calcium salts, which are 
 united with the tartaric, citric and malic acids that produce the 
 agreeable flavours of the fruit. These feeble acids are quickly 
 burned up or oxidised in the body into alkaline carbonates. 
 
 It has been demonstrated on hundreds of occasions that these 
 fruit acids exercise a wonderfully benevolent action upon the 
 blood and kidneys. 
 
 In such violent diseases as scurvy, beri-beri, anemia, neuritis, 
 acidosis and other morbid conditions in which the tissues are 
 bathed in acid secretions the alkaline minerals of fresh fruits 
 prove invariably of great benefit. 
 
 The lemon, the orange and the grape are invaluable in such 
 disorders. 
 
 The peculiarly pleasing fruity odour of ripe fruits is due to the 
 presence of ethereal bodies which completely elude chemical 
 investigation. Nobody knows just what they are. It is doubtful 
 whether anybody ever will know. 
 
 Artificial fruit flavours, made in the laboratory from coal tar, 
 ethers, esters and aldehydes, grossly resemble the odour and 
 flavour of certain fresh fruits such as the peach, banana, pine- 
 apple, strawberry, and apple. They not only have no nutritive 
 value but in many instances are actually dangerous because they 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 175 
 
 are used to disguise otherwise inadequate foods to make them 
 more pleasing to the palate. 
 
 Such foods never fool the stomach, yet where there is con- 
 troversy between eminent scientists in the employ of commercial 
 institutions, and apparent conflict between the methods adopted 
 by the Almighty and the theories advocated by certain profes- 
 sors, the individual possessed of a little reverence for the things 
 God has wrought and a little common sense with respect to his 
 own body will decide against the professor in favour of God. 
 
 Ashmead, although he did not know it, was making use of the 
 alkaline earthy salts of the orange to his own benefit. 
 
 There was no calcium in the Madeira-Mamore Railway poison 
 squad diet. 
 
 One of the suppressed facts in connection with its mortality 
 records was the scourge of tuberculosis that swept over the men 
 who escaped "beri-beri." 
 
 Both Ashmead and Dose, from whom I have obtained in person 
 the facts recorded here, informed me they lost as many men 
 through tuberculosis as through the disease the doctors called 
 "beri-beri." All other engineering enterprises, all other large 
 contracting efforts, all other army or navy expeditions or explor- 
 ing adventures in which, through accident or ignorance, the base- 
 forming elements of food are not properly provided, meet with 
 the same fate. 
 
 How can we forget that in a modified but none the less serious 
 form our American school children, particularly the children of 
 the poorer classes, are robbed of the elements of a base-forming 
 diet? 
 
 In their limited selection of foods all the following refined, 
 demineralised or acidosis-producing products are found: beef, 
 pork, lamb, liver, ham, white bread, soda crackers, wafers, bis- 
 cuits, doughnuts, buns, rolls, pie crust, lard, lard compound, cake, 
 corn flakes, corn meal, farina, tapioca, polished rice, corn starch, 
 sugar, glucose, syrups, cheap jams and jellies, penny candies, 
 etc. 
 
 The chief base-forming foods are oranges, lemons and ripe 
 fruits of all kinds, the outer grains, such as whole wheat, whole 
 corn, natural brown rice, whole rye, greens of all kinds, lettuce, 
 beet tops, celery, spinach, cabbage, onions, cauliflower, asparagus, 
 
176 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 the roots of tubers, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, turnips, beets, 
 beans, peas, lentils, nuts of every kind and unsulphured dried 
 fruits, such as prunes, black raisins, currants, sun-dried apples, 
 apricots and peaches. 
 
 Egg albumen or €gg white, like meat, is acid-forming. 
 
 Egg yolks are base-forming. 
 
 Milk is physiologically balanced, as to base-forming and acid- 
 forming substances. 
 
 In accordance with their custom or ability to obtain eggs, an 
 abundance of milk, fruits and vegetables properly cooked, the 
 children of the poor are saved from the extreme acidosis which 
 kills quickly as it did along the Madeira-Mamore Railway. 
 
 So many thousands suffer from malnutrition without knowing 
 it, from anemia, from impaired vitality, from lowered resistance 
 to disease, from "laziness/' and from other serious departures 
 from normal physical stamina that end in misery, impaired 
 efficiency and untimely death, that it is time indeed the public 
 understood the relationship between base-forming and acid- 
 forming foods. 
 
 The death of the four thousand railway laborers who built 
 those two hundred and thirty-two miles of railway that run by the 
 Candelaria Graveyard represent not only preventable loss of life, 
 due to ignorance of the laws of nutrition, but they also repre- 
 sent tremendous financial losses sustained by the builders of the 
 railway who, handicapped by sickness and inefficiency, poured 
 more money into the construction of their project — a hundred- 
 fold more — than would have been necessary had the diet of their 
 men been properly safeguarded and less false economy invoked. 
 
 Men who are not fed properly cannot yield productive energies. 
 Sick men or dead men cannot build or dig. Soldiers improperly 
 fed cannot long endure under the terrific strain to which they 
 are subjected. 
 
 It is a curious but tragic fact that thousands of healthy 
 monkeys played around the Madeira-Mamore camp where human 
 beings were dying by the score. The monkeys lived, enjoyed life 
 and maintained their energy and activity on a diet of tropical 
 fruits and nuts. Their presence in the vicinity of the sick 
 laborers, who fell as fast as they might fall in battle, seemed 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 177 
 
 to be an effort of Mother Nature to speak to her unfortunate 
 human children, suggesting a remedy for their misery. 
 
 The food of the monkeys was available. It was base-forming 
 food, but the men, who, even as labourers, had: conceived aston- 
 ishing ideas of class distinction, had already dubbed it "monkey 
 food." In their reluctance to subsist on "monkey food" they 
 rejected what would have saved them, even as the sailors aboard 
 the Kronprinz Wilhelm rejected and sank the whole wheat 
 cargoes of two British merchantmen, notwithstanding their dire 
 need of the thousands of pounds of bran and germ contained 
 in those cargoes. 
 
 With respect to his food man has ever been a contradiction and 
 a fool. The fixed laws which control the processes of nutrition 
 are so simple, so obvious and so actually luminous that a child of 
 twelve can grasp them. 
 
 Man alone is the only animal that ignores them. The Great 
 White Plague and many of the other ills directly traceable to in- 
 adequate food, through the use of which the human body is 
 deprived of the elements necessary to maintain its integrity, could 
 be banished from the human race if the human race would only 
 apply to its dietary the fixed laws which control the resistance 
 of the sheep and horse to the same disease, and the disregard 
 of which makes the hog and the cow a constant prey to it. 
 
 The reluctance of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad to eat 
 "monkey food" and the ignorance of the crew of the Kronprinz 
 Wilhelm in rejecting foods that would have saved them, have 
 done more than merely breaking down the Brazilian railroad, 
 more than merely compelling a German raider to make a dash 
 for port with a crew of sick men. 
 
 They have brought home to America the importance and the 
 significance of understanding its food supply, and of making a 
 belated resistance to the inroads which, commercialism, stupidity 
 and false taste-standards are making upon them and their chil* 
 dren. 
 
178 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 54 — SHEEMAN, FORBES, HART, MAXWELL, STEINITZ, 
 ZADIK, LEIPZIGER, ROHMAN, GUMPERT, EHRSTROM, 
 METTLER, SINCLAIR, VOIT 
 
 Does the Madeira-Mamore poison squad really bear any rela- 
 tionship to the average American food ? 
 
 Henry C. Sherman, Columbia University, declares : "Possibly 
 because the crudity of the views formerly held and still some- 
 times met (especially in fraudulent advertisements of proprietary 
 foods) tended to bring the subject of nutrition into ridicule, the 
 study of the phosphates and other phosphorus compounds in 
 food and nutrition was very generally neglected. Recently, how- 
 ever, the significance of phosphorus in the growth, development 
 and functions of the organism is at last being adequately recog- 
 nised." 
 
 Phosphorus was only one of the twelve mineral elements re- 
 moved from the foodstuffs of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad. 
 The investigations of Forbes, at the Ohio Experiment Station, 
 indicate that much of the malnutrition is not due to a low protein 
 diet, but to a deficiency of phosphorus and calcium in the food 
 supply. 
 
 Here are but two of the mineral elements specially studied in 
 the diet of hogs, cows, and American homes. Let us look at 
 them, unmindful of the other ten. 
 
 Phosphorus is found in the body as phosphorised proteins 
 called nucleo-proteins existing in the cells and tissues. True 
 phospho-proteins exist in casein (milk) and ovovitellin (egg 
 yolk). In brain and nerve substances, and also to some extent 
 in other tissues, the phosphorus appears as phosphorised fats 
 called lecithins. Egg yolk is particularly rich in this form of 
 phosphorus; so is the discarded germ of wheat, corn, rice, and 
 barle}'. 
 
 Less highly organised forms of phosphorus are utilised by 
 the body as phytin compounds or phytates. Wheat, corn, rice, 
 barley, oats, and buckwheat, in their natural unrefined state, con- 
 tain phosphorus in this form in abundant quantities. 
 
 Maxwell, in observing germinating seeds and developing chic 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 179 
 
 embryos, found that in the construction of the tissues of the 
 growing vegetable or animal organism, the phosphorised fats 
 played a most important part. 
 
 Steinitz, Zadik, and Leipziger discovered that these various 
 phosphorus compounds could not be substituted one for the 
 other. Simple proteins with inorganic phosphates do not make 
 a substitute for phospho-proteins. 
 
 Rohman has shown that the phosphorised proteins furnish the 
 material for tissue growth. 
 
 Gumpert and Erdstrom demonstrated that phosphorus equilib- 
 rium was maintained in experiments upon men when the phos- 
 phorus was consumed in the. form of phospho-proteins, whereas 
 when taken as dicalcium phosphate or as the potassium phos- 
 phate of meat the same quantity of phosphorus would not serve 
 the needs of the body. 
 
 Hart, in feeding hogs in experiments conducted in the Wiscon- 
 sin Experiment Station, found that 1.12 grams of phosphorus per 
 day in its various compounds was just about sufficient for the 
 hogs until they attained a weight of about eighty-five pounds, 
 after which 1. 12 grams became clearly insufficient for the needs 
 of the animal. 
 
 Sherman, commenting upon this fact, states: "1.12 grams of 
 phosphorus would hardly seem a desirable amount for a growing 
 child of the same size, or for a fully grown man or woman." 
 
 It was said, as we have seen, that the Madeira-Mamore labor- 
 ers died of "ben-ben/* although the phosphorus had been re- 
 moved from their food prior to their deaths. 
 
 Sherman, Mettler, and Sinclair, through the office of experi- 
 ment stations, United States Department of Agriculture, re- 
 ported a comparison of the amount of phosphorus contained in 
 the food of typical American families. They did not go to the 
 Madeira-Mamore poison squad for their facts. They went right 
 into the homes of the people and showed that a freely chosen 
 diet of our typical denatured food products does not furnish 
 much more than 1.12 grams of phosphorus, estimated as 2.75 
 grams phosphorus pentoxide. 
 
 These investigations were carried out in a lawyer's family in 
 Pittsburgh; a teacher's family in Indiana; a school superinten- 
 dent's family in Chicago; a teacher's family in New York City; 
 
180 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 a students' club in Tennessee; 115 women students in Ohio; a 
 carpet dyer's family in New York; a sewing woman's family 
 in New York ; a house decorator's family in Pittsburgh ; a glass 
 blower's family in Pittsburgh ; two mill workers' families in 
 Pittsburgh ; a mechanic's family in Knoxville, Tenn. ; thirty lum- 
 ber men in Maine ; a farmer's family in Connecticut ; a farmer's 
 and mechanic's family in Tennessee; thirteen men students, five 
 women students and one child in Knoxville, Tenn. ; two Negro 
 farmers' families in Alabama. 
 
 The study continued fifty-eight days and took the average from 
 12,238 meals consumed by men and 798 meals consumed by 
 women. 
 
 Speaking of these analyses Sherman declares : "The results 
 indicate that present food habits lead to a deficiency of phos- 
 phorus compounds and it is not improbable that many cases of 
 malnutrition are really due to an inadequate supply of phosphorus 
 compounds." He was cautious in his conclusions, but explicit. 
 He did not comment on the fact that in removing the phosphorus 
 from natural food all the other mineral salts, colloids, and 
 vitamines with which phosphorus is associated are also auto- 
 matically removed in the process, because one cannot be removed 
 without carrying the others with it. 
 
 His experiments have proved, notwithstanding that in the 
 American home many offsetting foods are consumed which were 
 not available in the Madeira-Mamore poison squad, the mineral 
 elements necessary to normal metabolism are nevertheless de- 
 ficient in the typical American meal. 
 
 § 55 ELIZABETH COUNTY JAIL 
 
 Next to tuberculosis the most commonly talked of infirmity of 
 human flesh is the disorder popularly described as "heart 
 disease." 
 
 Heart disease, as we know from the insurance companies, is 
 constantly increasing in the United States. In all cases of min- 
 eral starvation brought about by a prolonged diet of refined food, 
 examination of the heart shows dilatation. The heart is always 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 181 
 
 enlarged following a diet of the kind so few of us have fed to 
 chickens. 
 
 Malnutrition and "enlargement of the heart" can almost be 
 said to be synonymous. 
 
 In the food deficiency disease described as "beri-beri" the 
 heart is always involved, just as it was involved aboard the Kron- 
 prinz Wilhelm and in the Madeira-Mamore Poison Squad. 
 
 In the disease which confused commentators sometimes call 
 "acidosis," sometimes "pellagra," sometimes "edema," sometimes 
 "neuritis," sometimes "general breakdown," the heart is always 
 involved. 
 
 It is peculiarly noteworthy that the recorded increase in "heart 
 disease" runs parallel with the symptom of milling introduced in 
 the United States about 1879. Remember the heart of the dead 
 frog. You will hear of it again. 
 
 Numerous instances are on record indicating that a deficiency 
 of iron, phosphorus, potassium, calcium and the other mineral 
 salts, colloids and vitamines always found with these salts in 
 unmanipulated milk, butter fat, whole cereals, fresh vegetables, 
 greens, and fruits leads to numerous forms of physical disorder 
 in which "heart trouble" is one of the constant factors. 
 I Many cases are on record proving that where offsetting foods 
 are entirely missing from a refined food diet, the heart becomes 
 involved in from forty to sixty days. 
 
 Many other instances are on record showing that where "off* 
 setting" foods are consumed to an extent sufficient to retard the 
 progress of mineral starvation, the development of the disease is 
 delayed accordingly. 
 
 It is now known that where refined or demineralised foods 
 make up a considerable portion of the diet the disease may be 
 postponed for years, and then may be described as merely a 
 mild or unrecognisable disorder, accompanied by a few not 
 necessarily alarming but nevertheless unpleasant symptoms which 
 do not, as a rule, cause their victim to become unduly anxious 
 about his health. 
 
 Where the diet is abundant and includes a wide variety of 
 foods, as in the case of the average business man who partakes 
 of a more or less pretentious noon-day meal, while his growing 
 family is lunching on left-overs at home, the body seems capable 
 
182 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of adjusting itself to a considerable abuse of acid-forming foods 
 over a long period. The chapters on fatigue poisons will throw, 
 in their proper place, a bright light on this dark subject. 
 
 It is now well established, however, that after the fortieth year 
 the effects of mineral deficiencies begin to manifest themselves 
 in "heart disease," the great fatigue accountant. 
 
 Until 1913 the medical profession in which the "show me" 
 philosophy persists as nowhere else, was generally of the opinion 
 that the disease called "beri-beri" was confined to the tropics. 
 
 For this reason it was never suspected that the "heart disease" 
 of the United States and the "beri-beri" of the Orient might in 
 some manner be related to each other, or at least due to causes 
 which, while dissimilar in intensity, were nevertheless the same 
 in character. 
 
 November 6, 1913, Dr. Herman D. Parker, of the United States 
 Public Health Service, was detailed by his superiors to Eliza- 
 beth, N. J., to investigate an epidemic described as "jail edema," 
 which had broken out in the county jail. 
 
 In this jail, as in many others, the food served its inmates was 
 of the typical refined type, consisting chiefly of white bread- 
 stuffs, polished rice, boiled potatoes, oleomargarine, beef clods 
 and coffee. 
 
 Its prisoners were confined only while awaiting trial under 
 indictment, or serving a sentence of less than one year. 
 
 For fifteen years prior to the investigation of Dr. Parker, the 
 Elizabeth County Jail, like most other jails, had developed a his- 
 tory of periodical epidemics of "jail edema." 
 
 Dr. Livingood, the jail physician, had made a record for three 
 years of the mysterious disorder which had plagued his prisoners, 
 noting that eighty per cent, of all the prisoners serving more than 
 ninety days fell victims to the disease, which the United States 
 Government officials finally diagnosed as "beri-beri," but which, 
 as we shall see later on, has been described by other groups of 
 Government officials as "pellagra." 
 
 In Dr. Parker's Public Health report of the Elizabeth Jail 
 investigation he stated : "The fact that the disease existed 
 so long without recognition in one locality leads to the sup- 
 position that it probably exjsts under similar circumstances in 
 other localities." 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 183 
 
 "Dilated heart," "heart dilatation," "heart enlarged," are some 
 of the official phrases used in describing the physical condition 
 of the heart, in all the Elizabeth County Jail cases examined. 
 
 The fact, not the theory, that in every one of these Elizabeth 
 County Jail cases involvement of the heart was noted as one of 
 the chief symptoms, and the further fact that a demineralised diet 
 of refined foods of the same kind consumed in such large measure 
 by our growing children, most of whom are never destined to 
 break into jail, was finally fixed as the cause of the disease, are 
 singular indeed when it is considered that in "pellagra" and 
 "beri-beri" and "jail edema" and "war nephritis" the heart is 
 always involved in the same way. 
 
 The significance of this fact is still further emphasised when 
 it is considered that the same character of "heart disease" is on 
 the constant increase in the United States. 
 
 § 56 — THE BRITISH STEAMER "DEWA" 
 
 May 26, 1915, the British Steamer Dewa arrived at Quarantine 
 in New York from Cienfuegos. It had been reported by wireless 
 that on the vessel's trip^irom Rangoon to Natal, Brazil, eight of 
 the crew had died of "bro-beri" and twenty-five more cases were 
 on board. 
 
 Health Officer O'Connell boarded the boat when she arrived 
 at midnight, and found a condition which caused something of a 
 hubbub, although the same condition in more or less modified 
 form is found all over the City of New York and no hubbub 
 follows. 
 
 With Health Department Inspectors Kearney and Fallon, un- 
 der the authorisation of Commissioner S. S. Goldwater, I made 
 an investigation of the food of the crew, from which twenty- 
 five cases of "beri-beri" were taken to the hospital at Swinburne 
 Island. 
 
 Just six weeks before, the sailors had commenced to feel the 
 effects of their diet, in substance almost identical with the diet 
 of the Elizabeth County Jail. 
 
 The Dewa was putting on a cargo of sugar at the Keys in 
 
184 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Cienfuegos, Cuba, when one of the sick men died. Two others 
 followed in quick succession. 
 
 The health officer of Cienfuegos, yellow inside, although not 
 yellow outside, ordered the Dewa to sea at once. The English 
 officers aboard were astounded. They protested. 
 
 First Officer A. Chambers and Steward A. Batterman declared 
 they had never witnessed such an inhuman act. 
 
 "What shall we do? Our men need hospital treatment," was 
 their appeal to the health officer. 
 
 "Go," was the answer. 
 
 And so, ordered from the dock, they put to sea with their 
 cargo of sugar and sick men. 
 
 The health officer did not want to know the nature of the 
 disease. He did not want his professional training to fructify 
 on the spot. He cared nothing for diagnosis, prognosis, or thera- 
 peutics; all he demanded was that the crew of sick men should 
 go out to sea and die. 
 
 It was nothing to him where they went, provided only they left 
 Cienfuegos. 
 
 It did not concern him what kind of disease the Dewa might 
 carry to some other port. 
 
 He didn't know that he had the remedy for the disease at 
 hand, and could have saved all its victims. 
 
 He wanted to wash his hands of the whole affair, and he 
 washed them, to his ignominy and disgrace, henceforth forever. 
 
 We shall let him pass. 
 
 Unable to obtain proper food or medicine, the Dewa sailed for 
 New York. Five more of her men died at sea. 
 
 At the time of her arrival off New York nearly half her crew 
 had succumbed. None of the officers was stricken. The fire- 
 men and deck crew were the chief victims. 
 
 According to the ship's manual, prepared by a British sur- 
 geon, the treatment for "beri-beri" is arsenic, strychnia and salt, 
 followed by a diet of white bread and tea. 
 
 The steward was sure the Dewa's crew was suffering from 
 "beri-beri" so, although he had no strychnia or arsenic aboard, 
 he prescribed plenty of white bread and tea. 
 
 Upon their arrival they were taken to the hospital for more 
 white bread and tea. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 185 
 
 The daily food of the crew prescribed by the Government of 
 India was as follows : 
 
 Natural brown rice ("ballam"), one pound, six ounces. 
 
 Wheat flour ("morda"), unbolted, ten ounces. 
 
 Dried peas ("dal"), six ounces. 
 
 Buffalo grease ("ghee"), two ounces. 
 
 Salt, one-half ounce. 
 
 Curry stuffs, one ounce. 
 
 Dried fish ("bhetki"), four ounces. 
 
 Potatoes and onions, six ounces. 
 
 Tamarinds, one ounce. 
 
 Tea, one-fourth ounce. 
 
 Sugar, one and one-half ounce. 
 
 Lime juice, one ounce. 
 
 The fish aboard was called "bhetki." 
 
 The "morda" was baked into cakes ("chupattee") with water 
 and "ghee." 
 
 This diet would have prevented neuritis, pellagra, scurvy, 
 edema, beri-beri or acidosis, but the supply of natural brown rice 
 ran low. The peas were exhausted, and in their place the 
 steward bought a quantity of white American flour and white 
 American polished rice. 
 
 The crew divided themselves into two groups. One group 
 would not eat the polished rice nor the white flour. The other 
 group would not eat the natural brown rice. 
 
 None of the sailors who lived on the natural brown rice 
 contracted the disease, in spite of the fact that the rice was 
 musty. 
 
 I was face to face with the fact, not the theory, that whole 
 unpolished rice, even when musty, will support life for sixty 
 days, but on a diet of white flour for the same time, Man, regard- 
 less of his colour, will collapse. 
 
 I asked the steward what had become of the tamarinds. 
 
 "We did not stow enough of them," he replied. "Oh, if we 
 only could have had some dates or other fruit." 
 
 He knew nothing of the base-forming quality of fruit, but he 
 craved tamarinds and dates. Dates would have prevented the 
 "beri-beri." 
 
 As a rule, even before the war, when dates were plentiful, 
 
186 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 the people looked upon them as luxuries, not as a medicinal 
 food. 
 
 If the people of the world knew the value of the date, raisin, 
 or of any other fruit, they would not only marvel over it as 
 Moses did, but they would have it in their homes all the time. 
 
 The steward of the Dewa yearned for dates, but he could not 
 get them on the open sea. 
 
 The American people, able at all times to put their hands on 
 large quantities of fruit, eat sparingly of it — alas ! too sparingly. 
 
 Looking at the date, as a mere fact, we find so many wonders 
 that our American indifference toward it cannot be explained. 
 
 The date, like all other fruit, has saved lives wherever men have 
 existed. 
 
 The instincts of the Dewa's steward ran true. It did not occur 
 to him that the date will grow where nothing else will grow. 
 All that he knew was that it did not grow at sea, and that he 
 could not get it there. 
 
 The date palm in the hot deserts actually converts the dead 
 sands that doze in the sweltering sun into a food, the flavour of 
 which is not rivalled in the food world, and the value of which 
 is the astonishment of the chemical laboratory. 
 
 Moses knew what he was about when he gave especial care 
 to fruit trees. He forbade the Jews to cut fruit trees down 
 even on their enemies' land. In this respect also he was unlike 
 the Kaiser. 
 
 The Dewa's steward, when I told him of Moses's attitude to- 
 ward fruit, and explained to him what fruit would have done for 
 his sick crew, leaned dejectedly against the rail of the ship and 
 said : "Moses was a wise man." 
 
 Even the heathens knew the value of fruits, inventing special 
 gods to protect them, such as Pomona, Vertumnus, Minerva. 
 
 The palm tree on which the date grows was common among 
 the Hebrews. They extracted honey from its fruit. They made 
 bread and cakes from it. 
 
 Dried and reduced to flour, caravans in the desert rived on it, 
 but they did not sift it through gritz gauze or bolt it through 
 silk cloth to take the life out of it for refinement's sake. 
 
 The Romans cherished it as the most aristocratic ingredient in 
 many of their most famous dishes. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 187 
 
 Our modern victims of folly are not blessed with any such 
 enthusiasm. They are simply "modern." 
 
 § 57 — THE MISSISSIPPI PENITENTIARY POISON SQUAD 
 
 About the time the symptoms of mineral starvation were mani- 
 festing themselves aboard the converted German cruiser Kron- 
 prinz Wilhelm on the high seas, physicians and surgeons con- 
 nected with the federal public health service were undertaking 
 a series of tests to demonstrate that pellagra was caused by im- 
 proper food, and that the elimination of the cause would cure 
 the disease. 
 
 An exhaustive review of facts relating to the diet of working- 
 men's families, particularly among the poorer classes, resulted in 
 the disclosure that pellagra always followed a diet rich in car- 
 bohydrates (refined sugars and starches) and that it had a ten- 
 dency to show itself wherever there was a rise in the cost of 
 food, thus making it harder for the poorer families to obtain a 
 nourishing diet. 
 
 In the facts compiled, not one reference was made to the 
 necessity of substituting whole corn meal undegerminated, either 
 white or yellow. 
 
 No reference was made to the fact that whole wheat meal con- 
 verted into bread and breadstuffs, instead of the white bread 
 and biscuits of the south, would prevent pellagra. 
 
 No reference was made to the fact that natural brown rice, 
 freshly milled, so easily obtainable in the south, should be sub- 
 stituted for the polished and demineralised product extensively 
 consumed among the poor. 
 
 No reference was made to the fact that all these foods could 
 be obtained at a price even cheaper than their refined, demin- 
 eralised, and inadequate commercial substitutes, consumed in such 
 enormous quantities throughout the United States. 
 
 Dr. Joseph Goldberger, who was among those to visit the 
 stricken crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm, April, 191 5, had been 
 seriously concerned with the obvious inadequacy of the diet 
 of the thousands of victims of pellagra every year in the south. 
 
188 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Accordingly, three experiment stations were established, two at 
 Jackson, Miss., and the third at the Georgia State Sanatorium. 
 
 In his preliminary study of 200 cases during the spring and 
 summer of 1914, Goldberger had come to the conclusion that 
 "carbohydrate foods" are responsible for pellagra, and, accord- 
 ingly, he urged a reduction in the diet of starchy foods in the 
 treatment of the disease. 
 
 Then came the sensational poison squad experience in which 
 twelve convicts, six of whom were murderers, risked their lives 
 in the interests of medical science in order to enable Goldberger 
 to prove his theory that pellagra is directly due to the consump- 
 tion of inadequate food. 
 
 These victims in the Mississippi penitentiary were fed exclu- 
 sively on degerminated and demineralised corn products. 
 
 November 2, 19 15, after six of the men had developed pellagra 
 in a pronounced form, and two others had shown definite symp- 
 toms of the disease, Governor Brewer pardoned them all. 
 
 The authorities had kept the test as secret as possible. They 
 feared that relatives of the prisoners who submitted to the 
 ordeal, might invoke the habeas corpus or resort to some other 
 legal device to rescue the victims of the experiment. 
 
 Several of the convicts attempted suicide during the test. Two 
 of them, Guy R. James and D. W. Pitts, made formal application 
 to the penitentiary board to be sent back to their cells in order 
 that they might serve their life terms in preference to continuing 
 further the sufferings they underwent. 
 
 One of the pardoned convicts, W. H. English, describing his 
 experience on the day following his pardon, stated : 
 
 "For the first few months I felt only lazy and stupid. Along 
 about July 1 I began to lose weight. At that time I tipped the 
 scales at 167 pounds. Now I weigh 118 pounds. When Gov- 
 ernor Brewer pardoned us yesterday he told us we could remain 
 in the penitentiary and be cured by a 'balanced diet' treatment. 
 One might think this invitation would have been accepted by 
 some, but not even one of the eleven accepted it. The twelfth 
 had broken down two months before and was sent home." It 
 was reported that he had committed suicide. 
 
 As a result of the pellagra poison squad experience the follow- 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 189 
 
 ing remedy, which in no manner refers to whole grains or un- 
 refined cereals or adequate breadstufls, was set forth : 
 
 "An increase in the diet of fresh animal and leguminous 
 foods." 
 
 "Ownership of milk cow and increased milk production for 
 home consumption." 
 
 "Poultry and egg raising for home consumption." 
 
 "Stock raising." 
 
 "Reduction in the diet of the carbohydrate or starchy foods." 
 
 "Diversification and the cultivation of food crops, including an 
 adequate pea patch, in order to minimise the disastrous effects of 
 a crop failure and to make food cheaper and more readily 
 available." 
 
 "Make the other class of foods cheap and readily accessible." 
 
 "Improve economic conditions, increase wages and reduce un- 
 employment." 
 
 To these recommendations with which it will be difficult if not 
 impossible to conform, the following may some day be added: 
 
 Eat the foods already at hand, but eat them in their natural, 
 unrefined state. (Not difficult.) 
 
 Grind the whole corn and consume it in the form of corn 
 bread, corn pone, corn cake, corn porridge, containing all of the 
 corn. (Not difficult.) 
 
 Adopt the same principle with regard to wheat, barley and 
 rice. (Not difficult.) 
 
 Eat something green every day and make sauces or soups of 
 the waters in which vegetables are boiled, instead of throwing 
 them down the waste pipe or into the sink. (Not difficult.) 
 
 Forget the fresh meat if you can't get it and use milk and 
 eggs, beans, peas and lentils instead. (At least not as difficult 
 as getting and keeping a cow.) Economical and sensible. 
 
 But a mere fragment of the real value of the pellagra poison 
 squad has been given to the world. Through faulty interpreta- 
 tion the sufferings of men, so severe that their very violence 
 caused some of them to attempt suicide, have been in this experi- 
 ment almost lost to their fellows, even as the Kronprinz Wilhelm 
 experience was lost to humanity. 
 
 According to the reports given out the men were fed collards, 
 hominy, corn bread, corn grits, fried mush, biscuits, brown gravy, 
 
190 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 rice, coffee, and sugar. Nothing was said of the fact that hominy 
 is a demineralised, degerminated, refined corn product; that 
 corn bread is the same kind of a demineralised corn product ; that 
 fried mush, made from degerminated corn meal or grits is the 
 same kind of a refined corn product, and that it was not because 
 they were corn, but because they were bolted corn, only part of 
 the corn, that a diet of such foods resulted in disastrous conse- 
 quences, which consequences, in this case, were aptly named 
 ''pellagra," just as they would have been named something else 
 had they been named by another set of scientists. 
 
 § 58 — WATERY TISSUES OF THE HOG, PASTY COMPLEXION 
 OF THE HUMAN 
 
 Before reviewing the most startling poison squad experiment 
 of all time it will be well to emphasise the significance of the 
 Madeira-Mamore tragedy and the Elizabeth County Jail episode 
 by checking up on the feeding of sheep and hogs. 
 
 Figures provided by the United States Bureau of Animal 
 Industry show that less than three one-hundredths of I per cent, 
 of all the sheep killed in one federal inspected slaughterhouse 
 during a period of twelve months ended November i, 19 13, had to 
 be condemned on account of disease ; whereas in another estab- 
 lishment of the same kind one-sixth of all the hogs slaughtered 
 during the same twelve months had to be condemned. 
 
 This means that for every one sheep found to be diseased 
 528 hogs were found to be similarly affected. This vast differ- 
 ence, startling in its suggestiveness, between the sheep and the 
 hog, in regard to their respective resistance to disease, draws 
 attention to the difference between the methods whereby they are 
 fed. 
 
 There are hundreds of examples of the manner in which the 
 condition of an animal's tissue tone and general health are af- 
 fected by its food. 
 
 The bureau of Animal Industry, Bulletin 25, issued December 
 16, 1913, reports on the fact that cattle fattened on an artificial 
 diet of cottonseed cake and beet pulp, notwithstanding the pres- 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 191 
 
 ence of silage in their food, lost by shrinkage while still alive 
 more than twice as much weight as cattle fed on the natural diet 
 of grasses and the seeds of grasses, during transit from point of 
 origin to destination. 
 
 September, 1900, Dr. Oscar Liebreich of the Imperial Board 
 of Health, Berlin (Geheimer Medicinalrath, Ordenlicher Profes- 
 sor der Heilmitteliehre und Direktor des Pharmakologischen In- 
 stituts des Konigischen Universitat, Berlin), made the following 
 report on the use of coloring matter by sausage makers : 
 
 "It is now close upon half a century since the coloring of pale- 
 colored sausages was introduced. Many farmers and cattle 
 breeders have now adopted the method which enables them to 
 enhance the weight of their cattle and hogs. Instead of feeding, 
 as used to be done, with leguminous substances with bran, pota- 
 toes, skim milk, etc., the animals now get all sorts of so-called 
 strengthening feeds: Farmhouse refuse (tankage, garbage, by- 
 products of breweries, cottonseed meal, exhausted pulp) and the 
 like. 
 
 'This method of fattening produces a considerable modifica- 
 tion in the composition of the flesh. While under the old system 
 of feeding, animals with solid, substantial, muscular flesh, rich 
 in colouring substance, were produced, the flesh formed by 
 present artificial feeds is very fat, contains a great deal of water, 
 and is very poor in colouring substance. 
 
 "The old system of feeding produced the fleshy pork; the 
 new system produces fat pork. 
 
 "While formerly sausages were of a good red colour, they 
 are now always pale. Hence the dye must be employed where 
 people want the true character of modern pork to be disguised 
 to resemble what it should be." 
 
 Here we have the rapid shrinking of the water-logged tissues 
 of the artificially fed cattle and the anemic flesh of artificially 
 fed hogs to teach us the dangers of refined food in the produc- 
 tion of enfeebled vitality and disease. 
 
 The sheep still feeds itself as it has fed for thousands of 
 years. It follows nature's instinct. It knows nothing of the 
 artificial by-products upon which dairy cows and hogs are 
 crammed. In consequence it resists nearly all diseases and main- 
 tains a state of normal health. 
 
192 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 In 1913 M. B. Ravenel, professor of bacteriology of the Uni- 
 versity of Wisconsin, made an examination of conditions in the 
 slaughter houses of Wisconsin and other states. In addition to 
 the many other diseases with which he found the hog to be 
 cursed, he declared in his report : 
 
 "Twenty per cent, of the average lot of hogs brought to slaugh- 
 ter are tuberculous. These hogs do not develop the disease within 
 themselves, but contract it by feeding on by-products of cream- 
 eries and following tuberculous cows engaged in the production 
 of milk." 
 
 Here we have a startling similarity between the pale, watery 
 tissues of the hog, including the diseases to which such de- 
 vitalised tissues offer little or no resistance, and the pale com- 
 plexion, anemia or hemoglobin deficiency of the human be- 
 ing. 
 
 Dr. Rolf Wilson is responsible for the following statement, 
 published in the Medical Times, January, 1914: "R. L. Bab- 
 cock, Chicago, rarely finds in city dwellers the hemoglobin above 
 90. I believe the prime reason for this," he says, "is the 
 demineralisation of the food now put upon the market." 
 
 In the deficiency of certain food minerals in the diet of the 
 hog the same results are noticed as those observed in the human 
 animal under similar conditions of mineral deficiency. We shall 
 now see how this similarity has asserted itself in the most extraor- 
 dinary poison squad experiment of history. 
 
 § 59 — the "kronprinz wilhelm" poison squad 
 
 On April nth, 1915, the Germans brought to the shores of 
 America a poison squad, the first real poison squad of history. 
 There never was a poison squad like it. There probably will 
 never be another. All the so-called scientific short-time feeding 
 experiments, and all their misleading results were put to shame 
 by the experience of the Kaiser's sailors. 
 
 Yet, to this day, the governments of the United States, Great 
 Britain and France have persistently ignored the lesson unwit- 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 193 
 
 tingly taught by the Germans. It is doubtful if the Germans 
 themselves have profited by that lesson. 
 
 April nth, 191 5, the converted cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm was 
 discovered lying at anchor in the James River, off Newport News, 
 to which port she had followed her raiding predecessor the Prinz 
 Eitel (Attila) Friedrich. 
 
 AAter sinking fourteen French and British merchantmen, she 
 had successfully run the gauntlet that brought her to her safe 
 retreat in American waters. No one in the world dreamed that 
 Sunday morning that the Kronprinz Wilhelm would some day 
 carry American troops to France. 
 
 We are not concerned with the raider's exploits before she 
 flew the Stars and Stripes, but with the consequences of her 
 marvellous experience under the German flag. 
 
 When she put into Newport News she was stricken with a 
 disease the doctors called "beri-beri." 
 
 One hundred and ten of her crew of five hundred were 
 prostrated. The others were on the verge. Throughout the news- 
 papers of the United States was spread the report that the 
 sailors were the victims of eating polished rice. 
 
 Government experts, state experts, specialists in private prac- 
 tice, and great numbers of eminent health officers and physicians, 
 hastened to the ship to hold consultations over the curious disease.. 
 They all pronounced it beri-beri and they all insisted it was 
 caused by eating polished rice. 
 
 The medical magazines had been filled with discussions of 
 beri-beri, always associating the disease with a diet of polished 
 rice. Beri-beri and polished rice had become "scientific" twins. 
 It was orthodox to think of them together, hence the opinion of 
 the experts was sound enough to satisfy the world. 
 
 When, April 16th, 191 5, I climbed up the side of the vessel (I 
 will tell you how I got there later), I was admitted to the con- 
 sultation of twelve doctors and officers who were discussing 
 the queer malady, its cause and its possible remedy. "Surely 
 it is beri-beri/' they were saying, "but how does beri-beri differ 
 from pellagra, and how does pellagra differ from scurvy, and 
 how does scurvy differ from neuritis, and how does neuritis differ 
 from pernicious anemia, and why is the disease not scurvy instead 
 
194 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 m ' i iii 
 
 of beri-beri, and why is it not pellagra instead of either?" and so 
 on and so on. 
 
 There they sat, this group of mystified scientists, in the dining- 
 room over the grand salon of the once famous North German 
 Lloyd Transatlantic liner. The luxurious salon itself had been 
 filled with coal. The ship's sumptuous cabins de luxe had been 
 filled with coal. 
 
 Mystery, tragedy, contradiction and disease brooded in the 
 heart of that once palatial ship. 
 
 The bewilderment of the doctors was not wonderful, for the 
 Kronprinz Wilhelm herself was but a symbol of the bewilder- 
 ment of the whole world. 
 
 I had no business on that ship. I had been ordered to keep 
 off. I had exhausted every conceivable device and pulled every 
 wire of influence. I had appealed to Washington in vain. I 
 tried to act as a messenger for a ship chandler. 
 
 I had tried all the prominent physicians of Newport News, 
 the Collector of Customs, the politicians. Everywhere I received 
 the same answer. Journalists were barred from that ship by an 
 edict that recognised no exception. The order of von Bernstorrr 
 was sweeping and from it there was no appeal. 
 
 In despair I stood afar off and watched the sombre grey hulk 
 with her four grey smokestacks and her four grey guns. There, 
 locked up in her sullen heart, was a great truth of unrecognised 
 significance which America must soon learn or for her con- 
 tinued ignorance of which pay a dismal price. 
 
 I was barred from that truth. I was not permitted to pass 
 it along. I was not a member of the inner circle of established 
 rep^ations. Scientific bigotry and narrow ethics were keeping 
 me out. I had no right to be interested in science yet I had 
 given more study to the causes of malnutrition and had addressed 
 more physicians on that one subject than perhaps any other man 
 in America. 
 
 Why not outwit the pretence and the superiority and get 
 aboard in the guise of some eminent person? Truth belongs to 
 all. There is no monopoly of it. In its presence the strategies 
 of war dwarf in dignity to the vanishing point. Strategy was the 
 last resort. 
 
 It worked. Through its operation I found the truth and in pos- 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 195 
 
 session of it am able to contradict the scientific opinions that then 
 swept across the country and that still continue to pose as truth. 
 Polished rice had no more to do with the disease then ravaging 
 the crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm than horseshoes have to do 
 with thunderbolts. 
 
 In addition to finding the truth I found myself in an embar- 
 rassing, a trying, a thrilling predicament. I had engaged the best 
 launch available and in dignity was taken alongside the cruiser, 
 where I presented the card of a celebrated New York physician 
 to the officer who asked me what I wanted. I requested him 
 politely to deliver "my card" to the ship's surgeon. 
 
 In five minutes I was summoned aboard and ushered through 
 long shady passages covered with German inscriptions and photo- 
 graphs of the Emperor into the consultation room. 
 
 Twelve men, seated around a great table, arose to greet the 
 "eminent physician." The ship's surgeon, Dr. E. Perrenon, and 
 her officers, saluted me in semi-military fashion. Then the dignity 
 of my entrance was exploded as if by a bomb. 
 
 A prominent health officer, one of the group of consulting 
 scientists, recognised me. "Why," he exclaimed in a loud voice, 
 "here is McCann of the New York Globe" It seemed that I 
 had never heard such a loud voice in all the world. It sounded 
 like a volley from the cruiser's four-inch guns. 
 
 Turning to the ship's officers, he continued, his voice seem- 
 ingly louder than before, "Mr. McCann is a representative of a 
 New York newspaper." Every word was separate and distinct. 
 The entire sentence was full of barbed-wire and bayonets. Turn- 
 ing to me before any of the others could speak, he finished his 
 assault by saying: "Where did you get the card you sent in? 
 What is its meaning?" 
 
 Everybody bristled. An impostor had been discovered aboard 
 the ship of science. Perhaps his mission was hostile. At any 
 rate he was a newspaper man and newspaper men were anathema. 
 The men remained standing, awaiting an explanation. I gave it 
 to them. Some of them may be thinking of it yet. 
 
 It was no time for soft speeches. It was no time for ignorance 
 in high places. It was no time for shrinking courtesy. The 
 scientific gentlemen heard what was said and for the benefit of 
 
196 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 the learned and superior persons who talk glibly of beri-beri 
 and polished rice, it is all set down here. 
 
 I had no apology for my words and no time to waste. If there 
 was beri-beri on that ship there were thousands of cases of the 
 same disease in every State in the Union, and there was no earthly 
 reason why a group of scientists should suddenly become 
 hysterical over a condition on a German cruiser while lying at 
 their own feet at home there were hundreds of sucrT conditions 
 which the scientists ignored. 
 
 No man interrupted me. I was as much shocked at their 
 silence as they were at my impertinence, so I kept on and re- 
 minded them of many of the neglected truths of the diseases of 
 dietetic origin. 
 
 Finally the ship's surgeon abandoned his seat at the table and 
 advanced toward me. He extended his hand. He smiled. From 
 that moment I knew we were friends. "I will hear all you have 
 to say after the others have departed," he said. 
 
 When the others had boarded a launch and were taken ashore, 
 he retired with me to his headquarters, and after an hour's 
 conversation sent for the ship's cook. The three of us had it out 
 together. 
 
 The polished rice explanation was the first lie to vanish. Pol- 
 ished rice was not responsible for the pathetic condition of the 
 crew, for the reason that polished rice never appeared oftener 
 than once in twenty-one meals. 
 
 But what did the men eat? The answer to that question is one 
 of the most important issues now confronting America, Great 
 Britain and France. 
 
 § 60 — TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTY-FIYE DAYS! 
 
 After leaving Hoboken, August 3rd, 1914, the German cruiser 
 roamed the seas for two hundred and fifty-five days, subsisting on 
 supplies taken from French and British merchantmen before she 
 bombed them. During this period of two hundred and fifty-five 
 days she touched at no port, depending entirely for coal and 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 197 
 
 provisions on her raiding ability and her speed in escaping 
 French and British warships. 
 
 The cruiser's troubles began September 4th, 1914, when she 
 sank the British steamer Indian Prince, bound from Bahia to 
 New York, after seizing all her coal, meat, white flour, oleo- 
 margarine, canned vegetables, coffee and soda crackers. Her 
 own supply of fresh meat was nearly exhausted when the Indian 
 Prince crawled into view. The white flour was looked upon as 
 manna from heaven. A month passed. 
 
 October 7th, 1917, the British refrigerator steamer La Corren- 
 tina, bound from Argentina to London with 5,600,000 pounds of 
 fresh beef, was sighted. The Germans ran her down and took 
 from her enough fresh meat to supply her needs for several 
 years. She crammed her own spacious refrigerators with hind 
 quarters and ribs. She corned 150,000 pounds of rounds in 
 addition to her supply of the chilled and frozen quarters. 
 
 She stowed enough meat to give each member of her crew as 
 much as three pounds a day for an entire year. She also seized 
 all the La Correntina's butter, white flour, tea, biscuits, sweet 
 crackers, potatoes, canned vegetables, and her meagre supply of 
 fresh vegetables before blowing her up. Six weeks passed. 
 
 November 21st, 1914, she captured the French bark Anne De 
 Bretagne on her way from Fredrickstad to Sydney. This boat, 
 before she was blown up, surrendered all her coal, white flour, 
 butter, potatoes, canned vegetables, champagne and dried peas. 
 The rest of her provisions went to the bottom. 
 
 The Germans had all the meat and bread and oleomargarine 
 they could eat. With their twenty-six knots an hour they knew 
 they could continue to scour the seas until the end of the war, 
 sinking vessel after vessel, and obtaining coal and provisions as 
 long as they kept their health. 
 
 Fresh meat, bread, and oleo and boiled potatoes are generally 
 assumed to be life-sustaining foods. The Germans unwittingly 
 had commenced to explode that theory. 
 
 December 4th, 1914, after she had been out four months, she 
 sank the British steamer Bellevue, bound from Liverpool to South 
 America. From this ship she secured four thousand tons of coal 
 and an immense shipment of sweet biscuit with all the white 
 flour, butter and canned vegetables the Englishman carried. 
 
198 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 The subtle, slow-moving influence of their refined and demin- 
 eralised diet had not yet broken the sturdy Germans. They had 
 no suspicion that the fruits of their raids were actually eating into 
 their lives. 
 
 On the afternoon of the same day she sank the French steamer 
 Mont A gel, bound from Marseilles to South America. Before 
 blowing her up she confiscated all her butter, white flour and 
 potatoes. Each raid, while supplying tons of food, was intensi- 
 fying the chronic acidosis that was finally destined to overcome 
 her crew and compel her to make her last dash through darkness 
 with all lights out and a full head of steam, into a neutral port. 
 She would be out there yet sinking the Allies' ships if it were not 
 for her typical American meals, plenty of fresh meat, mashed 
 potatoes, canned vegetables, white bread, butter, sweet cakes and 
 coffee. 
 
 Christmas of 19 14 passed quietly, and three days later, Decem- 
 ber 28th, she sank the British steamer Hemisphere, bound from 
 Hull to Rosario, obtaining five thousand tons of coal with a great 
 quantity of white flour, butter, sweet cakes, potatoes and canned 
 vegetables. 
 
 January 19th, 191 5, she sank the British steamer Porato, bound 
 from Liverpool to South America, after absorbing her coal, white 
 flour, sugar, canned vegetables, oleo and a great quantity of 
 Huntley & Palmer's sweet biscuits. So many of these biscuits 
 were seized that tin boxes of them were given away as tips 
 to the boys who ran out to her in small boats on the James River 
 with messages, papers, etc. 
 
 I watched the boys take away their prize boxes of Huntley & 
 Palmer's biscuits and after I had learned the truth I wondered 
 whether the people would really never hear about it through the 
 magazines and ladies' journals and other organs of uplift that 
 carry the costly advertising of so many foodless foods. 
 
 January 14th, 191 5, she sank the British refrigerator steamer 
 Highland Brae, running between the slaughterhouses of Argen- 
 tina and the meat markets of London. The temptation to seize 
 more fresh meat was not resisted and in addition she took enough 
 shoes to supply a small city. She also took all the oleo, white 
 flour, potatoes and canned vegetables which the Highland Brae 
 had aboard. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 199 
 
 Scarcely had the bomb exploded which caused the British 
 steamer to gurgle to the bottom when the British schooner Wil- 
 fred M., from St. Johns to Bahia, came peeping over the horizon. 
 In half an hour the Germans overhauled her and took posses- 
 sion of her cargo of salt fish, potatoes, white flour and butter. 
 
 The pallor of her crew and the dilation of the pupils of their 
 eyes and marked shortness of breath here and there were ob- 
 served by the ship's surgeon but were not considered significant 
 and the men went on devouring their typical American meals, so 
 highly rated by the advertising geniuses of the refined food in- 
 dustry. 
 
 February 5th, 1 91 5, she sank the Norwegian bark Samentha, 
 from Linton to Falmouth, loaded with a cargo of wheat — 
 whole wheat. The germ and bran of that wheat would have been 
 worth more to the rapidly succumbing Germans than its weight 
 in gold and precious stones, but the Germans did not know they 
 were sick. They did not know how badly they needed that whole 
 wheat with its alkaline calcium and potassium salts. 
 
 They did not know that within a few weeks a hundred of them 
 would pass just one inch beyond the limit of toleration and then 
 fall without warning, paralysed, to the deck. In consequence of 
 their faith in fresh meat, white flour, oleo, boiled potatoes and 
 coffee, those thousands of bushels of whole wheat with their 
 priceless salts were sent to the bottom. Not a bushel was trans- 
 ferred to the German ship. 
 
 February 23rd, 191 5, she sank the French passenger steamer 
 Guadeloupe, from Buenos Ayres to Bordeaux. There was more 
 red meat aboard and plenty of ham, butter, white flour and canned 
 vegetables. She seized it all. Some of her crew were com- 
 plaining of swollen ankles and pains in the nerves of the legs 
 below the knees. Otherwise they seemed able to eat, sleep and 
 work, and apparently no plague was in sight, for there still re- 
 mained to them plenty of meat, lots of potatoes and enough white 
 bread and butter to last seemingly forever. 
 
 March 25th, 191 5, with fifty of her men acting "queerly" and 
 none of them any too vigorous, she sank the British steamer 
 Tamar, from Santos to Havre, with sixty-eight thousand bags of 
 green coffee, seizing all her butter, lard, white flour and canned 
 vegetables. 
 
200 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 She did not heed the fact that there is a balance of acid and 
 base-forming elements in the "ash" content of all food. 
 
 She did not heed the fact that in the food she seized, the 
 base-forming elements had all been processed out. 
 
 She did not heed the fact that after a diet of refined food a 
 mild chronic acidosis is set up which abstracts the lime salts 
 from the fibrous tissues, muscles, nerves, cartilages and bones. 
 When the limbs of the German sailors began to swell they did 
 not know that the swelling was due to the abstraction of these 
 lime salts with the increased vascularity which follows. 
 
 They did not heed the fact that loss of lime salts causes ir- 
 ritability and weakness of the muscles with neuralgic pains. 
 They did not know that the continued loss of lime salts causes 
 effusion into the joints. 
 
 They did not know that following these stages in the progress 
 of acidosis the cartilages soon become involved and that this con- 
 dition is in turn followed by thinning and erosion. 
 
 They were consuming enormous quantities of the refined foods 
 of high caloric value now so extensively relied upon throughout 
 the United States and they looked in all directions for the cause 
 of their trouble but the right direction. 
 
 They did not know that the abstraction of lime salts is a 
 cause of the rapid progress of tuberculosis. They simply con- 
 tinued to raid as long as any strength remained in their fanatical 
 bodies. 
 
 March 27th, 1915, they sank the British steamer Coleby, bound 
 from Rosario to St. Vincent with another cargo of whole wheat. 
 They took her coal, white flour, butter, potatoes and canned 
 vegetables, but sent the precious wheat to the bottom. 
 
 Alarming conditions began to develop. Typical symptoms of 
 paralysis, dilated heart, atrophy of muscles and pain on pressure 
 over nerves, with anemia, were marked. Fifty of the men could 
 not stand on their feet. They were dropping at the rate of two 
 a day. It seemed that a curse had descended upon the cruiser 
 and it was plain that the whole crew was rapidly going to 
 pieces. 
 
 The Kronprinz Wilhelm would either be manned by five hun- 
 dred dead bodies in a few more weeks or she would have to make 
 a run for it to the nearest port. Her wireless had told her that 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 201 
 
 Newport News had given harbor to the Prinz Eitel (Attila) 
 Friedrich. She would take a desperate chance against the enemy 
 and make a dash. April nth, 191 5, having been out 255 days, she 
 made that dash. 
 
 § 61 — AMERICAN MEALS 
 
 That is why the German cruiser lay at anchor in the James 
 River, a floating wreck, a hospital ship, a lesson to the American 
 experts who cry "beri-beri and polished rice/' when red meat 
 and white bread are the real issue. Their scientific murmurings 
 only serve to further mislead the American people and cloud 
 refined food in a maze of professional ignorance. Of course 
 there really is a disease called beri-beri that really is caused by 
 polished rice, but there is no rice connection between the acidosis 
 of the Kr on prinz Wilhelm and the beri-beri of Billibid Prison. 
 
 Here was a crew of men living in the open air, eating the 
 staple articles of diet for which the American scientists claim 
 so much. Fresh meat, all the fat and cheese they could eat, 
 boiled potatoes, canned vegetables, condensed milk, sugar, tons 
 of fancy cakes, biscuits and white bread, and all the coffee and 
 tea, they could drink constituted their diet. 
 
 "But if German sailors eat typical American meals for two 
 hundred and fifty-five days and develop on that diet of white 
 bread and meat a condition of malnutrition that has resulted so 
 disastrously, why do not the Americans themselves develop the 
 same conditions?" you ask. 
 
 Americans do develop the same conditions, but because they 
 eat many other offsetting foods, which were outside the reach of 
 the German sailors, the severity of the condition is modified 
 accordingly. 
 
 On the Kr on prinz Wilhelm the intensity of the cause deter- 
 mined the gravity of the effect. There was no outside assistance 
 in the form of offsetting fresh vegetables and fruits or whole 
 grain foods to lessen that intensity. The canned vegetables con- 
 sumed, although theoretically contributing base- forming elements, 
 ;were consumed in comparatively small quantities. 
 
202 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Their juices, contaminated to some extent with salts of tin 
 and sheet iron, acted possibly as an irritant to the kidneys, already 
 taxed beyond their capacity with excess quantities of sulphuric, 
 phosphoric and amino acids, elaborated in the digestion of high 
 protein and refined carbohydrate foods. 
 
 Americans before the war, as far as they could afford, ate more 
 or less generously of onions, lettuce, asparagus, cabbage, carrots, 
 parsnips, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, celery, apples, berries, 
 oranges, grapes and other base-forming foods, all of which assist 
 Nature to combat or to modify some of the evil effects of the 
 refined diet on which the Germans attempted to thrive for a long 
 period. 
 
 Thousands of children of the poor in the United States have 
 always been like the crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm. During 
 the era of high war prices they have been more than ever like 
 that crew. They do not now obtain these offsetting foods in 
 adequate quantities, and in the case of adults there are thousands 
 who, making improper choices, deprive themselves needlessly of 
 these offsetting bases. 
 
 In the meantime the condition of acidosis does progress suf- 
 ficiently to interfere with the growth of the young and to rob 
 the body of the adult, through lowered vitality, of its natural 
 defence against disease. It imposes a tremendous handicap upon 
 pregnancy and lactation. It predisposes to tuberculosis, pneu- 
 monia, appendicitis, measles, meningitis, constipation and cancer. 
 
 It does not pile up its woes in a heap as was done on the 
 German cruiser. It spreads them out thinly over a larger area 
 and provokes many preventable ills. 
 
 The Kronprinz Wilhclm's experience should be illuminating 
 to Doctors Dufour, Giroux, Quirin and Rudolf, who have re- 
 ported on the outbreak of war nephritis and trench edema, but 
 they probably have never heard of the Kronprinz Wilhelm and 
 her trouble. 
 
 The lesson of the Kronprinz Wilhelm is this: She has proved 
 almost conclusively the inadequacies of the very foods on which 
 America relies so heavily for the protection of her troops, as well 
 as the protection of her so-called middle and lower class civilians. 
 
 No prolonged experiments had ever been conducted to deter- 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 203 
 
 mine the evil result of living exclusively on such foods. The 
 Kronprinz Wilhelm furnished that experiment. 
 
 There can be no greater or more picturesque proof of the folly 
 of unbalancing food by refinement, of the folly of ignoring the 
 meaning of the salts, colloids and vitamines natural to all un- 
 processed foods; of the folly of claiming for high caloric foods 
 the absurd virtues they do not possess. 
 
 With Dr. Perrenon, the ship's surgeon, I went over all these 
 points, and many more, treating them in detail. I did not sug- 
 gest to him that it was beri-beri which had so tragically affected 
 his men, for the reason that the cure for beri-beri, pellagra, 
 acidosis, nephritis, edema and scurvy is the same. It consists 
 in restoring by unrefined foods to the sapped body the bases 
 stolen from it. 
 
 Dr. Perrenon asked me to write a formula for feeding his 
 stricken men. I did so, left him an article I had written on the 
 subject and returned to New York. 
 
 Then came the following response in writing : 
 
 "With respect to the disease we have on board we are satisfied 
 now that this condition is due to the impoverished character of 
 our food supply. The remedy you have suggested is obviously 
 the correct one and I shall immediately order its application. I 
 shall read your monograph studiously. 
 
 "E. Perrenon, 
 "Chief Surgeon, S. S. Kronprinz Wilhelm." 
 
 The formula which it was my privilege to suggest, after all 
 medical treatment had failed, and the extraordinary result which 
 followed its application, will constitute the final chapters of this 
 dramatic, and, at the same time, truly scientific episode. 
 
 § 62 GERMAN RESULTS 
 
 What was the cause of the breakdown aboard the Kronprinz 
 Wilhelm, and what was the nature of the remedy which, after 
 all medical treatment had failed, restored the broken men to 
 health? 
 
204 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 From the ship's cook, with the chief surgeon's assistance, I 
 obtained the following chart, showing just what each meal con- 
 sisted of prior to the breaking out of the disease described by 
 the scientific men as "beri-beri." The chart, explaining the 
 origin of the disease that caused the collapse of no of the crew 
 of 500 in 255 days, and was taking off the others at a rate 
 which promised that the entire crew would be down in two 
 weeks, tells just what was behind the beri-beri, acidosis, neuritis, 
 jail edema, trench edema, war nephritis, pellagra, or whatever 
 term is adopted to describe the sufferings of the men. 
 
 MONDAY 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Cheese, oatmeal, condensed milk, Pea soup, canned vegetables 
 
 white bread, butter (oleo), coffee, served in juice that stood in cans, 
 sugar. roast beef, boiled potatoes, white 
 
 bread, coffee, condensed milk, 
 sugar. 
 
 TUESDAY 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Sausage, white bread, butter Potato soup, canned vegetables 
 
 (oleo), fried potatoes, coffee, con- served in juice that stood in cans, 
 densed milk, sugar. pot roast of beef, boiled potatoes, 
 
 white bread, butter, coffee, con- 
 densed milk, sugar. 
 
 WEDNESDAY 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Corned beef, white bread, butter Beef soup, roast beef, boiled po- 
 
 (oleo), fried potatoes, coffee, con- tatoes, white bread, butter (oleo), 
 densed milk, sugar. coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 
 
 THURSDAY 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Smoked ham, cheese, white Lentil soup, fried steak, fried po- 
 
 bread, butter (oleo), coffee, con- tatoes, white bread, butter (oleo), 
 densed milk, sugar. coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 
 
 FRIDAY 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Boiled rice, cheese, white bread, Pea soup, salt fish and pot roast, 
 
 butter (oleo), fried beef, coffee, boiled potatoes, canned vegetables 
 condensed milk, sugar. served in juice that stood in the 
 
 cans, white bread, butter (oleo), 
 coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 205 
 
 SATURDAY 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Corned beef, cheese, fried pota- Potato soup, roast beef, boiled 
 
 toes, white bread, butter (oleo), potatoes, white bread, butter (oleo), 
 coffee, condensed milk, sugar. coffee, condensed milk, sugar. 
 
 SUNDAY 
 
 Breakfast Dinner 
 
 Beef stew, cheese, fried potatoes, Beef soup, pot roast, canned vege- 
 
 white bread, butter (oleo), coffee, tables, served in juice that stood 
 
 condensed milk, sugar. in the cans, boiled potatoes, white 
 
 bread, butter (oleo). 
 
 At four o'clock every afternoon the men were served with a 
 plate of Huntley & Palmer's fancy biscuits or sweet cakes with 
 coffee, condensed milk and sugar. 
 
 SUPPER 
 
 Evening meal consisted either of fried steak, cold roast beef, 
 corned beef hash, beef stew with potatoes or cold roast beef with 
 white bread, butter (oleo), coffee, condensed milk and sugar. 
 
 The raids, which resulted in the sinking of so many French 
 and British merchantmen (fourteen), yielded, as we have seen, 
 enormous quantities of coal for fuel, enormous quantities of 
 fresh beef, white flour, sugar, oleomargarine, potatoes, cheese, 
 condensed milk, white crackers, sweet biscuit, coffee, tea and 
 sugar, with considerable quantities of canned vegetables, ham, 
 bacon, beans, peas, beer, wine and spirits. 
 
 The raids never resulted in any large quantity of fresh vege- 
 tables or fruits. If such fresh vegetables and fruits as were 
 confiscated had been divided among the crew they would not have 
 sufficed for more than one day. In consequence they were re- 
 served for the officers' table, which they managed to provide 
 with fair quantities from one raid to another. 
 
 All the officers showed symptoms of anemia and mild acidosis, 
 but none of them was prostrated. From their tissues and blood 
 the lime, iron and potassium had not been robbed to the degree 
 suffered by the tissues and blood of the men. 
 
 The formula, designed to restore these lost salts which it was 
 
206 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 my privilege to suggest to the ship's chief surgeon, and which 
 was followed by him after it became evident that the men would 
 not respond to medication, was as follows : 
 
 "To one hundred pounds of wheat bran add two hundred 
 pounds water. Leach for twelve hours at one hundred and 
 twenty degrees Fahrenheit. Drain off liquor. Give each man 
 eight ounces each morning. 
 
 "Give each man one teaspoonful wheat bran, morning and 
 night, until contra-indicated by loose stools. 
 
 "Boil cabbage, carrots, parsnips, spinach, onions, turnips to- 
 gether two hours. Drain off liquor. Discard residue. Feed 
 liquor as soup in generous quantities with unbuttered whole wheat 
 bread. 
 
 "Wash and peel potatoes. Discard potatoes. Retain th-e skins. 
 Boil skins and give liquor to men to drink four ounces a day. 
 
 "Give to each man yolks of four eggs a day in fresh, sweet, 
 unskimmed milk, one yolk every three hours, with as much milk 
 as he will drink by sipping. 
 
 "At noon, with dry whole wheat bread, give one ounce fresh 
 roast beef, for the psychological effect upon the men who have 
 been taught to believe that without meat they cannot live. 
 
 "One hour before drinking milk give juice of ripe oranges or 
 lemon juice, diluted with water without sugar, to each man. 
 
 "Keep apples or apple sauce within reach of men all the time. 
 
 "At end of first week let the men eat solids of vegetable soup 
 as well as liquor. 
 
 "It is imperative that the men shall avoid all cheese, whites of 
 eggs, lard, fat of any kind, white bread, crackers, pastry, pud- 
 dings, mashed potatoes, sugar, saccharine, salt meat, fish, polished 
 rice, pearled barley, degerminated corn meal and gravy (acid- 
 forming foods)." 
 
 Aboard the cruiser we have a diet of typical American foods 
 which, as to its adequacy, completely satisfies the standards of the 
 modern scientist. 
 
 At the end of two hundred and fifty-five days we have a 
 disease of "mysterious" origin. To top off these conditions we 
 have what appears to be the most outlandish and ridiculous cor- 
 rective diet ever proposed. What then is the explanation of the 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 207 
 
 seemingly well-balanced diet which went wrong, and of the appar- 
 ently foolish diet which went right? 
 
 Certainly it was the duty of scientific men to keep the crew of 
 the Kronprinz V/ilhelm under surveillance that the effects of their 
 extraordinary dietetic experience might be properly interpreted 
 for humanity at large. 
 
 If exclusive feeding on white bread, butter, potatoes, fresh 
 meat, canned vegetables, sweet cakes, tea, coffee, condensed milk 
 and sugar with a little rice, a few beans and an occasional piece 
 of ham, is followed by any consequences at all, the experience of 
 the Kronprinz Wilhelm afforded an opportunity to determine 
 what those consequences are. 
 
 The Kaiser's sailors were crippled. They were subsequently 
 put back on their feet. Their sufferings and the result of their 
 sufferings demonstrated at last to the American people the alarm- 
 ing inadequacy of the most typical American foods. 
 
 Out of the crew of five hundred the one hundred and ten who 
 had reached the limit of toleration on the two hundred and 
 fifty-fifth day had gone right up to the breaking point. The 
 other three hundred and ninety had not completely collapsed. 
 They were merely on the verge. 
 
 Prior to the sudden prostration of these victims of demin- 
 eralised food none of them had any suspicion that he was about 
 to be stricken, but those who through pain and exhaustion finally 
 realised the gravity of their condition, were now prepared to 
 submit to heroic treatment, however absurd it might appear. Yet 
 the men who were still able to walk the deck possessed no 
 adequate conception of the gravity of the slow moving, insidious 
 attack which their typical American foods had made upon their 
 tissues. Like most of us they were the victims of habit which 
 they were reluctant to change. 
 
 None of them realised that the secondary consequences of 
 acidosis, even of its milder forms, are more dangerous than 
 nervous prostration, neuritis, edema, beri-beri, or whatsoever 
 other terms is employed to describe malnutrition. 
 
 None of them cared a sailor's knot about the function per- 
 formed by the alkaline salts necessary to neutralise the acid 
 end-products of a meat and white flour diet. 
 
 They were not interested in the fact that meat as dressed for 
 
208 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 human consumption is stripped of its bones and drained of its 
 blood, and therefore does not furnish the alkaline substances 
 upon which the normal alkalinity of the internal secretions de- 
 pends. 
 
 They were not worried about the fact that in the ordinary 
 meat-containing diet, man to 'some extent offsets the acidosis that 
 follows such diet by consuming milk, egg yolks, celery, lettuce, 
 spinach, carrots, parsnips, beets, cauliflower, onions, string beans, 
 asparagus, apples, oranges, berries, and other fruits and vege- 
 tables. 
 
 They were not interested in the fact that acidosis, even of the 
 mildest type, is the forerunner of tuberculosis and other diseases, 
 which follow in the wake of lowered vitality. 
 
 They were too busy sinking ships to bother with the fact that 
 acidosis is the most relentless calcium destroyer now engaged in 
 breaking down human tissue. 
 
 They had never heard of Scandola, who has demonstrated 
 that nothing promotes the elimination and loss of calcium more 
 than the use of decalcified foods, such as white bread, deger- 
 minated corn, sugar and meat. 
 
 To them the work of Drennan, indicating that the withdrawal 
 of calcium may cause a fatty infiltration and fatty degeneration 
 of the liver cells, meant nothing. 
 
 They had too much to do to worry over the proofs that where 
 the calcium supply of the blood is diminished the blood will not 
 coagulate on demand, and that after a diet deficient in calcium 
 post-mortem examination shows hemorrhages even in the long 
 bones, thus revealing the hidden ravages that progress unseen 
 until too late to be averted. 
 
 They were eating foods not only deficient in calcium but 
 deficient in the other mineral salts that accompany calcium, but 
 they had no thought of the fact that where the mother is deprived 
 of a sufficiency of calcium foods the fetus is handicapped by lime 
 deficiency, its bones do not grow properly, its teeth do not erupt 
 normally, and later they quickly decay. 
 
 That their own diet had been robbed of calcium for purely 
 commercial reasons meant no more to them than it now means to 
 the Americans who also ignore it. 
 
 For many years it has been known to the medical profession 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 209 
 
 that the auto-intoxications or acid intoxications known as acidosis 
 can be experimentally produced on a diet free from the alkaline 
 salts. 
 
 The sailors of the Kronprinz Wilhelm cared no more for this 
 truth than does the American public. For many years it has 
 been known to the medical profession that Nature, attempting to 
 neutralise these acid conditions, sets up a process in which 
 ammonia is withdrawn from the urea to such an extent that the 
 quantity of "acetone bodies," acetone, diacetic acid, and beta- 
 oxybutyric acid can be gauged by it, and that these acetone bodies 
 are found in many diseases, including diabetes. 
 
 Did these facts have any significance for the raiding sailors of 
 the Kronprinz Wilhelm f They did not. 
 
 Ott and Crofton have shown that twenty times the normal 
 quantity of calcium salts is excreted in tuberculosis, but the 
 sailors cared no more for that than they cared for the fact that 
 the complete withdrawal of calcium destroys the defence of the 
 tissues not only against the invasion of the tubercle bacilli 
 but against the assaults of many other diseases; that a normal 
 food calcium content is indispensable to human life. 
 
 That foods not processed or refined provided this normal 
 calcium content meant nothing to the crew of the Kronprinz 
 Wilhelm, who for two hundred and fifty-five days suffered such 
 a loss of calcium that they established with considerable pre- 
 cision the fact that two hundred and fifty-five days constitutes 
 approximately the maximum length of life on a diet of such 
 demineralised or decalcified food. 
 
 §' 63 — the "kronprinz wilhelm" cure 
 
 The German sailors were not concerned with the fact that 
 demineralisation or refinement of foodstuffs involves not alone 
 the loss of calcium but also the loss of all other "ash" con- 
 stituents of normal food, such as potassium, iron, magnesium, 
 silicon, fluorine, iodine, etc., and the other substances, fat soluble 
 "A" and water soluble "B," found in leaves and grasses, and the 
 germ or fat containing substances of cereals, each of which per- 
 
210 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 forms a function in the economy of nutrition no less picturesque 
 or important than the role played by calcium. 
 
 It was certain that if removed from the German cruiser to a 
 hospital and subjected to the conventional hospital treatment, 
 including tea, white toast, white bread, butter, cornstarch pud- 
 ding, farina, cream of wheat, mashed potatoes and chops, all 
 of the victims of the Kronprinz Wilhelm would have been doomed 
 to tuberculosis, if tuberculosis had not already taken residence 
 in their tissues. 
 
 Their only hope of complete restoration to health, which meant 
 complete repair of all the damage already done, and a return of 
 nutritional immunity against disease, lay in a prolonged diet of 
 food containing an excess of base-forming elements and a de- 
 ficiency of acid-forming elements. 
 
 This was the idea responsible for the "crazy" dietetic treat- 
 ment I was permitted to suggest to the ship's surgeon, and which 
 he applied with results that speak for themselves. 
 
 It was clear that the tissues of the stricken men hungered 
 for alkalines of vegetable origin, and that these alkalines had to 
 be supplied. 
 
 It was also clear that there was no better way of supplying 
 them than by saturating the tissues with fluids containing them 
 in solution. All the foods proposed, particularly the vegetable 
 liquors, were rich in alkaline salts. That is why the potato skins 
 were employed. 
 
 I was convinced, and Dr. Perrenon agreed with me, that inas- 
 much as the men had failed to respond to every other treatment, 
 it would have been wrong to withhold the alkaline treatment, even 
 though it might be laughed at in high places. 
 
 We know that April nth, 191 5, the stricken men aboard the 
 cruiser numbered one hundred and ten. 
 
 April 1 2th, two new cases were reported. 
 
 April 13th, one new case was reported. 
 
 April 14th, four new cases were reported. 
 
 April 15th, three new cases were reported. 
 
 April 16th, the men began to be saturated with soluble alkalines 
 of vegetable origin, to neutralise as quickly as possible the acidity 
 of their internal secretions, and the toxins poisoning them. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 211 
 
 April 17th, 191 5, no new cases were reported, and Dr. Perrenon 
 expressed great confidence in the treatment. 
 
 April 1 8th, no new cases were reported. Many of the more 
 recent cases manifested marked improvement. In eighteen cases 
 the swelling in the ankles subsided, and in a number of cases it 
 was marked that the pain on pressure over the nerves was not 
 so acute. 
 
 April 19th, four men were so much improved that Dr. Perrenon 
 permitted them to go on deck. Many others showed signs of 
 improvement. 
 
 April 20th, fourteen men were able to leave the ship's hospital, 
 and return to their own bunks. 
 
 Dr. Perrenon said: "The effects of the new treatment are re- 
 markable." 
 
 April 2 1 st, eight men were dismissed from the ship's hospital. 
 
 April 22nd, eight more were dismissed. 
 
 April 23rd, four more were so much improved as to be pro- 
 nounced out of danger. 
 
 April 24th, seven more cases were dismissed from the hospital, 
 and one of the completely paralysed victims could stand on his 
 feet without help. 
 
 Ten days had passed and forty-seven men were so far ad- 
 vanced toward recovery that Dr. Perrenon said : "We can safely 
 say they are cured. ,, The phenomenon was so striking that I 
 had again journeyed to the vessel to be an eye-witness of it. 
 
 Dr. Perrenon escorted me on the tenth day to one of the 
 worst cases, that of a sailor who spoke English well. He was 
 the second man aboard to collapse, going down in January, 191 5. 
 After a diet from the officers' table he recovered until February 
 23, when he again went down. 
 
 When I visited the ship for the first time Dr. Perrenon thought 
 the man might die. When I saw him on the tenth day he said : 
 "I have had three days without pain. I am now hoping to be 
 well." 
 
 I examined him with Dr. Perrenon. The swelling of his legs 
 had subsided, but the pain still existed when pressure was ap- 
 plied. His condition was indeed pathetic. 
 
 "You know you owe this to white bread and meat," I said to 
 him. "Yes," he answered, "my case is the worst, but the other 
 
212 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 cases are bad enough. We all owe it to white bread and meat, but 
 there will be no more such food in the German Navy when they 
 know what happened to us. They will profit by this, all of 
 them." 
 
 I wondered then whether his words were prophecy, but so far 
 their application in America reveals nothing prophetic about 
 them. 
 
 Returning to Dr. Perrenon's headquarters, after visiting the 
 men, he brought out his history of all the cases, each of which 
 is complete, with an exhaustive record of all the symptoms, in- 
 cluding the date on which each man was seized. 
 
 In January there were two cases. 
 
 In February, the 23rd and 25th, there were two more. 
 
 In March, the 4th, 16th, and 25th, there were three. 
 
 In April the men went down like ten-pins, and they continued 
 to go down until their prolonged mineral fast was broken by the 
 strangest prescription ever written. 
 
 "What can American scientists do in the presence of such a 
 crisis ?" I asked Dr. Perrenon. "They can bow their heads," he 
 said. 
 
 "Will they not find some way to explain the situation that will 
 still show the world that their knowledge of disease is ample, and 
 the present habits of the people no real cause for anxiety?" I 
 continued. 
 
 "Some of them may be big men," he replied. "Big men will 
 accept the truth no matter where they find it. As for me, my 
 record is complete. Our German authorities will not let it escape 
 them. Our experience will not be lost to Germany." 
 
 He pointed significantly to the written records in his hand, and 
 patted them affectionately, as if he realised their priceless char- 
 acter. 
 
 The Kronprinz Wilhelm was putting on coal as if she were 
 making ready for another dash to the sea. "But what will hap- 
 pen if you run the gauntlet again and are pursued and " I did 
 
 not finish the sentence. He looked at me. There was a pause. 
 Then he spoke. 
 
 "If we should be lost and our records destroyed a hundred of 
 your American physicians and other authorities have seen the . 
 cases. The effects of the remedy have also been seen. I think 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 213 
 
 nothing can happen " It was his turn to leave a sentence 
 
 hanging in the air unfinished. 
 
 Summing up the experience of the Kronprinz Wilhelm prior 
 to her appearance in the James River, Dr. Perrenon said : "We 
 had many cases of pneumonia, pleurisy and rheumatism among 
 the men. They seemed to lose all resistance long before the 
 epidemic broke out. We had superficial wounds, cuts, to deal 
 with. They usually refused to heal for a long time. We had 
 much hemorrhage. There were a number of accidents aboard, 
 fractures, and dislocations. The broken bones were slow to 
 mend. Nature was not doing her duty. Food is indeed the cause 
 of much disease. In nine months we can learn much that is not 
 to be found in the text-books. ,, 
 
 At 5:30 P. M., Saturday, April 24th, 1915, Dr. Perrenon was 
 ordered by his superiors to repress all facts concerning the con- 
 ditions aboard the vessel. He would not admit that Bernstorfl 
 issued the orders but I was led to believe as much. 
 
 I left Newport News at once for Washington, where I reported 
 to Congressman Walter M. Chandler, who escorted me imme- 
 diately to the headquarters of Surgeon-General Blue. 
 
 "Apart from all considerations of public policy or official rec- 
 ognition of unofficial but well corroborated facts," said the con- 
 gressman, "there is an element in this Kronprinz Wilhelm 
 situation which demands the recognition of this government and 
 the profound attention of its experts." 
 
 Surgeon-General Blue, after learning in detail the facts re- 
 ported here, turned us over to Dr. Arthur H. Glennan, acting 
 surgeon-general, and Dr. J. W. Kerr, chief of the Research 
 Laboratory. 
 
 Drs. Glennan and Kerr grasped the situation instantly. The 
 magnitude and significance of the incident were obvious. The 
 general bearing on the welfare of millions of growing children 
 in America, who rely with profound confidence on the wholly 
 inadequate foods which figured so largely in the general break- 
 down of the crew of the German raider, was clear to them. 
 
 By their admissions they indicated they realised that perhaps 
 they really were on the peak of a newer and wider outlook upon 
 the sadly neglected field of food research. 
 
 In minute detail they reviewed with me the work of Drs. H. C. 
 
214 « THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Sherman and J. Edwin Sinclair, reported by them as far back 
 as 1907 from the Havemeyer Laboratories, Columbia University, 
 in connection with those foods that contain an excess of acid- 
 forming- elements as compared with other foods containing an 
 excess of base-forming elements, or alkaline ash. 
 
 They noted the conspicuous fact that in the dietary of the 
 German seamen the alkaline bases were distinctly absent, and 
 that their food was almost totally deficient in these indispensable 
 elements. 
 
 They noted that Sherman's and Gettler's research revealed 
 nearly every one of the foods on which the Germans subsisted 
 for two hundred and fifty-five days to be of the type that con- 
 tains an excess of acid-forming elements. 
 
 That the Germans responded almost instantly to a diet rich 
 in alkaline ash was obviously significant. 
 
 That forty-seven men should be dismissed from the ship's 
 hospital within a period of ten days, following the ingestion of 
 fresh vegetable soup, potato-skin liquor, wheat bran, whole wheat 
 bread, egg yolks, whole milk, orange juice and apples, was worthy 
 of notice. 
 
 That no drugs were administered, and that all fat, egg albumen, 
 cheese, meat, white flour and sugar were withdrawn from the 
 crew's diet, was worthy of notice. 
 
 That conflicting stories had already made their appearance in 
 the American press, concerning the kind of food consumed by the 
 Germans, was also worthy of notice. 
 
 "An investigation now," they said, "depends upon the courtesy 
 of the German government in permitting us the privilege of 
 making an extended study of the situation. We cannot, of 
 course, invade the ship, and would not dream of doing so if 
 we could. Doubtless a request from the Secretary of the Treas- 
 ury to this department to study the situation would be followed 
 by the permission of the commander of the vessel to our men to 
 probe the facts." 
 
 We were not then at war with Germany, but our Government 
 did not probe the facts. When we Jater went to war with Ger- 
 many, the facts not only affected our physical power to deal with 
 Germany in the trenches, but they also affected the productivity 
 of our civilian population at home. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 215 
 
 They now affect our second line of defence, the child. 
 
 The Kronprinz Wilhelm, a German raider, taught us a truth 
 which to some degree may have helped the Germans, just as our 
 American inventions — the submarine and the aeroplane — helped 
 them. 
 
 As far as America, England and France are concerned, the 
 Kronprinz Wilhelm episode had no significance. 
 
 God's laws, so easily discerned, remain ignored. 
 
 § 64 — THE HEIGHT OF CHILDREN CUT DOWN 
 
 The report of the Health Commissioner of New York City for 
 January, 1918, showing the complete loss in Manhattan and 
 Brooklyn in one month of 18,000,000 pounds of fruit and vege- 
 tables, including pineapples, oranges, potatoes, onions, string 
 beans, squash and turnips, only serves to emphasise the fact that 
 in America we do not hold our public officials responsible for 
 failure. 
 
 Here was food of the very kind the people needed most, yet 
 it was allowed to perish because authority to avert the catastrophe 
 had been centralised in nobody. 
 
 In Great Britain they kick a prime minister down stairs, throw 
 a cabinet out of doors, and hoist a general upstairs when results 
 do not suit them. 
 
 In France the political career of a world-famous official is 
 chloroformed over-night and in dire extremity the English submit 
 to a French generalissimo. 
 
 The Prussian government, finding the efficiency of this or that 
 professional murderer on its staff not sufficiently horrible, ap- 
 points another official murderer. 
 
 In America we handle our worst bunglers, our most selfish, 
 inefficient and inactive officials and politicians, our most useless 
 servants, with deference and sloth. We criticise them day in and 
 day out, but rarely hold them responsible. There is nothing 
 superlatively American in that. 
 
 In all our expenditure of money and all the beautifully carved 
 planks of our political platforms, we have ignored the child. 
 
216 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 , _ , 
 
 The well-laid plans of Germany for an enormous army in- 
 cluded for many years the expenditure of vast sums to promote 
 the health of children. 
 
 France, facing a declining birth-rate, began the supervision of 
 the health of school children back in 1842, and was the first to 
 establish milk stations in 1892. 
 
 Going further than this, but for self-preservation alone, France 
 enacted laws governing the employment of expectant mothers, 
 and created a money subsidy for mothers who nursed their 
 babies. 
 
 In America the Department of Agriculture, spending millions 
 of dollars annually, has played politics with food industries, with 
 the packers and their agents, with special privileges, with manu- 
 facturers and distributors, and while issuing hundreds of thou- 
 sands of bulletins, has permitted the standards on which child 
 welfare is founded to be lowered right and left. 
 
 The facts, for the very safety of America, should inspire a 
 congressional review of the Department of Agriculture similar 
 in scope to the probe made by the Federal Trade Commission, 
 1917-1918, into the affairs of the packers. 
 
 In confirmation of the disclosures paraded through these pages, 
 Dr. Thomas D. Wood, professor of physical education, Columbia 
 University, declared early in 19 18 that the war had already 
 brought to America as well as to Europe an increase in ill health, 
 due to under-nourishment among children, a fact all the more 
 alarming because it strikes at the very foundation of childhood, 
 burdening the future citizen with a handicap to be carried 
 throughout adult life. 
 
 Dr. Lucas, examining the poorly nourished war children of 
 Belgium, to whom hundreds of shiploads of American white flour 
 were fed by the Belgian Relief, found tuberculosis and rickets 
 had increased to such an extraordinary extent that the hospitals 
 and sanatoriums, supplemented with many additional clinics, were 
 wholly unable to care for the cases. 
 
 In France and England tuberculosis among children, due to 
 undernourishment, first doubled during the early years of the war 
 and then quadrupled. Even the height of children during the 
 growing period between twelve and fifteen years of age was cut 
 down one and one-fifth inches, and the older children who had 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS SIT 
 
 finished their growth as far as height was concerned, according 
 to Dr. S. Josephine Baker, suffered an appalling loss of vitality 
 due to underfeeding. 
 
 The increase in wages in 19 18 did not offset the decrease in 
 the buying power of the dollar, and Dr. Baker declares from her 
 specialised investigations that "never before have our children 
 been so underfed or so lacking in vitality." 
 
 "There is no actual starving among them, it is merely a ques- 
 tion of habitual underfeeding, the real significance of which is 
 lessened resistance to disease. 
 
 "Such underfed children will not only contract the diseases 
 of childhood more readily, but they will be the first to fall victims 
 of tuberculosis." 
 
 Neither the Department of Agriculture nor the Food Ad- 
 ministration attempted to avert the destruction of the millions 
 of pounds of food which these undernourished children re- 
 quired, but which they did not obtain. 
 
 The Department of Agriculture is on record to the effect 
 that it knows how to avert these tragedies. Surely the results 
 of our sloth are sufficiently visible to inspire the application of 
 this knowledge. 
 
 We know, for instance, that during the first six months of 
 1915, two years before we entered the war, of 11,000 applicants 
 for enlistment in the United States Marine Corps only 365 were 
 considered physically fit. 
 
 The report of the surgeon-general of the Navy for 1916 shows 
 70 per cent, rejections for the Navy and Marine Corps. Of 
 278,537 applicants for enlistment in the army between 1914 and 
 19 1 7, 205,281, or nearly 74 per cent., were rejected at the re- 
 cruiting offices because of physical defects, apparent even to 
 observers who had no medical training. Even a red light is 
 recognised as a danger signal and when we see it we promptly 
 heed the ditch, but we saw no danger signal in these rejec- 
 tions. 
 
 At the recruiting depots where the men were subjected to more 
 rigid examinations, an additional 10,062 were rejected, a total of 
 nearly 78 per cent. Nobody asked the cause. 
 
 It is now known that fully 10 per cent, of all our boys were 
 thrown out because of underdevelopment, no surprise to those 
 
218 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 familiar with the conditions existing among our school chil- 
 dren. 
 
 All these rejects had all the red meat and white bread they 
 could eat. They had all the corn flakes, corn starch, biscuits, 
 pancake flour, syrups, degerminated corn meal, polished rice and 
 patented breakfast foods they could consume. Yet the policy 
 of the Department of Agriculture and of the Food Administra- 
 tion was not to interfere with business or the established order of 
 things. 
 
 It was enough for their purpose to get stuff labelled food ! 
 regardless of whether it was adequate food or not. It was the f 
 easiest solution of a truly heroic problem, but the easiest way is 
 usually not the best way. 
 
 According to the Food Administration's policy the quality and j 
 adequacy of food received no attention, but it was of paramount 
 importance that commercial interests should in war time make , 
 their pre-war normal profits, for the reason that in Herbert Hoov- 
 er's belief, although no one should make any profit out of war, he L 
 held that as an economic system the country could not revolve 
 twenty-four hours without it. 
 
 This statement, never published in the newspapers, is found 
 on page 933 in the testimony of Herbert C. Hoover at the hear- 
 ings before the sub-committee of the Committee of Manufac- 
 turers, United States Senate, Thursday, January 3, 1918. 
 
 In the light of the neglected facts which our many war ac- 
 tivities completely submerged, it is manifest now that we must ! 
 heed the pressing truth. 
 
 Mere tonnage, bulk and volume may suffice for a time, but if at ! 
 the root of the nation undernourishment is permitted to gnaw, 
 all its heroic efforts must result in ghastly failure. 
 
 General Pershing himself, in February, 19 18, manifested no lit- 
 tle solicitude with regard to the food supply of our forces in j 
 France. A despatch from his headquarters informed us that on [ 
 an inspection tour he asked the boys if they were getting enough 
 to eat. 
 
 It was not generally known in America at the time that a . 
 disease called war nephritis was prevalent as an epidemic among 
 French and British troops, as well as among those of the Cen- 
 tral Powers. 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 219 
 
 The Canadian Medical Association in April, 191 7, reported the 
 frequency of war nephritis among the troops, declaring that the 
 disease was the subject of an investigation in the military hos- 
 pitals at the front. 
 
 In 1916 "Bulletin et Memoires de la Societe Medicale des 
 Hospitaux," Paris, published the report of Dufour, Giroux and 
 Qurrin on war nephritis, which substantially agreed with the 
 findings reported by Rudolf of the Canadian Hospital Service in 
 France. 
 
 The medical observers declared that the disease was due to a 
 limited diet, "particularly a too exclusive consumption of meat." 
 
 The most significant symptoms of the disease are described as 
 edema, which yields to a milk diet. Considerable vomiting, severe 
 headache, roaring in the ears, difficulty in breathing and increased 
 blood pressure accompanied the edema. 
 
 These symptoms are identical with the poison squad white 
 bread and meat symptoms heretofore reviewed. 
 
 Immediately after the outbreak of war in 19 14, I was called 
 into consultation by the Belgian Relief and asked to devise a 
 formula to cover the purchase and shipment of supplies for the 
 stricken victims of Prussian violence. 
 
 I submitted all the facts concerning the dangers of a white 
 flour diet that up to that time had been determined by various 
 government agencies. I made recommendations accordingly. 
 These recommendations were not acted upon. 
 Why were they not acted upon ? Why are they not acted upon 
 now? 
 
 White bread has not saved the children of Belgium. It has 
 not saved the children of France and England. It has not saved 
 the children of America. 
 
 If the governments of the United States, France and England 
 were not already in possession of data proving that the whole 
 grain contains substances not found in the refined grain, the 
 tragedy symbolised by war nephritis among the troops could be 
 properly charged to invincible ignorance, a state of darkness 
 which is at the root of so many miseries suffered by the human 
 family, but our own government has spent thousands of dollars 
 to determine the facts, all of which are on file in the archives of 
 the United States Public Health Service at Washington, even 
 
220 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 though they were not utilised by the Department of Agricul- 
 ture, the Food Administration, or the Quartermaster's Depart- 
 ment. 
 
 We now know that the manufacturers of patent flour are on 
 record with the assertion that they vigorously opposed all efforts 
 of the Department of Agriculture and the Food Administration to 
 interfere with the white flour milling process, asserting in their 
 defence that they insisted properly upon the retention in their 
 refined product of all the elements of the grain "fit for human 
 food," and the rejection of all the elements of the grain "unfit 
 for human food." 
 
 If they really believe that their discarded substances are unfit 
 for human food, why do they advertise some of them so exten- 
 sively even in the medical journals as "most fit," "most neces- 
 sary" and "most indispensable" to human health, after appro- 
 priating enormous advertising funds for the exploitation of their 
 fancy by-product packages ? 
 
 § 65 DONALD B. MCMILLAN'S FOOD 
 
 No wonder in March, 191 8, from behind the American front 
 in France, through an Associated Press despatch, came the an- 
 nouncement that "for a time our troops had to eat dark bread, 
 but now they receive an ample supply of pure white bread." 
 
 The commercial influences, working in America for white 
 bread, had made American officials in France believe that white 
 bread was superior. They did not suspect that bread made of 
 wheat bled white might be a tremendous aid to the enemy. 
 
 They had never heard of the experience of Donald B. Mc- 
 Millan, leader of the Croaker Land Expedition, 1913-1917. 
 
 They had never heard of the similar experience of Roald 
 Amundsen, leader of the Norwegian Antarctic Expedition in the 
 Fram, 1910-1912. 
 
 The Fram crew knew nothing of white bread. Not a man 
 was ill for an hour, yet they faced colossal hardships for two 
 full years upon a diet of pemican, consisting chiefly of oatmeal 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 221 
 
 and dehydrated vegetables, with a little dried ground meat and 
 oat biscuits made of whole oat meal and milk powder. 
 
 Thursday, December 6, 1917, from Donald B. McMillan in his 
 office, American Museum of Natural History, New York City, 
 I obtained the extraordinary record of his dietetic experience. Its 
 significance is of priceless value to the entire world. 
 
 "Four years of eating whole wheat biscuits, whole wheat 
 bread, chocolate, dehydrated fruits and vegetables," he said, 
 "surely ought to constitute a very thorough test of the nutritive 
 value of these foods. Just such a prolonged test has convinced 
 me that I could live indefinitely even in the Arctic upon such 
 foods. My own experience has confirmed my conviction that 
 they are truly ideal for the use of all explorers and expeditionary 
 forces. ,, 
 
 In spite of the vicissitudes of his long struggle with the ele- 
 ments, McMillan was unchanged in appearance. During his long 
 absence he suffered no loss in health, weight, vigour or strength, 
 and what he says is of moment to us in this hour of intensified 
 endeavour, the rugged demands of which have nothing in com- 
 mon with that delicate substance — bread bled white. 
 
 McMillan sailed from the Brooklyn Navy Yard on the ill- 
 fated steamship Diana, July 5, 191 3. At one period during 
 his four years' absence the world gave him up for lost. But the 
 world is richer, immeasurably richer, as a result of his return 
 to civilisation with the fruits of his inspiring adventure, fruits 
 which I reverently pray America will not refuse to eat. 
 
 Here are his words as they were taken down by my friend, E. 
 H. Tunnison, an earnest disciple of food truth : 
 
 "Perhaps Small and I of our original party of seven wer« 
 the only two who remained in the Arctic for the full term of 
 four years. I believe, therefore, that we two have been subjected 
 to a diet test longer than any other human beings whose experi- 
 ence has been recorded. 
 
 "Eckblaw, who returned to South Greenland in 1916, with 
 Danish officials, and Small, ate ships biscuits until our stock of 
 them was depleted, after which they were forced to eat dog bis- 
 cuits composed of inferior ingredients, in some instances horse 
 meat. The dog biscuits did not seem to disagree with them.'' 
 
c 222 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 (The Bennett dog biscuits are made from meat and whole 
 wheat). 
 
 "The Eskimaux, both parents and children, are very fond of 
 dog biscuits. They are also fond of whole wheat biscuits/ When 
 we left for home we gave them three hundred pounds of 'whole 
 wheat biscuits which still remained among our supplies. 
 
 "I ate the whole wheat biscuits exclusively, although by the 
 end of the last year they had become very hard and irritated my 
 mouth slightly when I chewed them. 
 
 "They had been baked specially for our use, and at my request 
 had been made harder than usual because of the natural ten- 
 dency of biscuits to become soft and crumbly. Our cook soon 
 devised a way to remedy the unexpected defect of extreme hard- 
 ness. He placed them in a canvas bag and beat them with a 
 hammer until they were pulverised. He then added a little flour 
 and converted them into appetising loaves of bread. 
 
 "During the entire period I suffered no disturbance either of 
 digestion or of intestinal action, due, I believe, to the use of 
 the whole wheat. 
 
 "When I was with Peary on his trip to the North Pole in 
 1909 it was the common experience of all of us to suffer from 
 bleeding intestines. 
 
 "Peary believed in beef, suet and raisins, tea, ships biscuits 
 (white flour) and condensed milk. He took with him 10,000 
 pounds of white flour, 1,000 pounds coffee, 800 pounds tea, 10,000 
 pounds sugar, 7,000 pounds bacon, 10,000 pounds white biscuit, 
 100 cases condensed milk, 30,000 pounds pemican, 3,000 pounds 
 dried fish. 
 
 "I took with me 5,000 pounds whole wheat biscuits, 2,000 
 pounds whole wheat flour, 1,080 pounds dehydrated vegetables, 
 equivalent to 10,000 pounds fresh vegetables, including potatoes, 
 rhubarb, turnips, spinach and onions; 12 cases assorted dehy- 
 drated soup, 19 crates yellow-eyed beans, 12 crates pea beans, 
 150 pounds Scotch green peas, 200 pounds yellow split peas, 1,000 
 pounds dried apples and apricots, 608 pounds prunes, 300 pounds 
 raisins, 900 pounds chocolate, bitter and sweet, 1,000 pounds 
 brown sugar, 42 cases baked beans, and assortment of nuts, dates, 
 figs, lime juice and grape juice, and a small assortment of canned 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 223 
 
 peaches, pears, cranberries, apples, cherries, plums, corn, peas, 
 tomatoes and squash. 5 * • 
 
 A casual comparison of the food taken by Peary and the evil 
 results, that followed its consumption, with the foods taken by 
 McMillan and the remarkably uneventful results experienced by 
 his party reveals the fact that Peary's supplies, with the except 
 tion of the raisins, contained in his pemican, were strikingly 
 deficient in the base-forming or alkaline salts and vitamines so 
 essential to health, strength and endurance. 
 
 McMillan's superior judgment in the matter of diet, aided by 
 his observation of Peary's unfortunate experience, enabled him 
 to overcome the deficiencies of the Peary diet with results so 
 striking that the Army a'nd Navy of the United States might well 
 analyse them and appropriate their virtues. 
 
 Among McMillan's illuminating observations the following is 
 especially significant. 
 
 "We all were most decidedly impressed by the wonderful 
 flavour and invigorating quality of the dehydrated fruits and 
 vegetables. We also ate with gusto the baked beans (rich in 
 alkaline substances). 
 
 "Explorers in the past, Kane in 1853 and Scott and Shackelton 
 in 1902, frequently collapsed for the reason that they did not take 
 an adequate supply of foods containing these essential sub- 
 stances. They were deceived by their belief 'that fresh meat was 
 a suitable preventive of scurvy" (sometimes called acidosis, some- 
 times beri-beri, pellagra, neuritis, jail edema, pernicious anemia, 
 etc.). 
 
 Scurvy is a symptom of impoverished or de-alkalised blood, 
 due to the consumption of acid-forming foods, white flour, meat, 
 sugar. 
 
 Scurvy or one of its many kindred disorders always develops 
 when the blood is robbed of its potassium and calcium salts. 
 
 These disorders are feared by explorers although they are 
 typical deficiency diseases, practically identical with beri-beri 
 and pellagra, which are not feared at all by the people who stay at 
 home. 
 
 Elisha K. Kane, M.D., U. S. N., leader of the second Grinnell 
 Expedition, 1853-1855, a group of Americans who penetrated the 
 polar regions in search of Sir John Franklin, British explorer lost 
 
2M THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 in the Arctic in 1845, describes in his report of his unsuccessful 
 and costly experience the evils with which malnutrition cursed 
 his heroic and noble effort. 
 
 "Not a man now," he wrote, "except Pierre and Morton, is ex- 
 empt from disease, and as I look around upon the pale faces and 
 haggard looks of my comrades, I feel that we are fighting the 
 battle of life at a disadvantage, and that an Arctic night and an 
 Arctic day ages a man more rapidly and more harshly than a 
 year anywhere else in all this weary world/' 
 
 Dr. Kane's supplies, though he had the medical knowledge of 
 his time to guide him in their selection, consisted of pemican, 
 biscuits, pickled cabbage and a small stock of American dried 
 fruits and vegetables, which was only too soon exhausted. Had 
 the vegetables held out his men would have been saved. 
 
 Following their exhaustion his crew lived upon hard tack 
 (pilot crackers) from which the bran and germ had been fool- 
 ishly sifted out ; stewed dried apples, tea, coffee, sugar and small 
 portions of potato and fat. 
 
 Whole wheat would have brightened his melancholy lament, but 
 Kane had never heard of it, although Sylvester Graham, M.D., 
 had tried to make it famous. 
 
 As their supplies became thinner, the Kane crew resorted to 
 the use of fresh meat, easily obtained in the Arctic. Meat did 
 not save them. Soon muscular weakness, such as chickens, 
 guinea pigs, white mice and human poison squad subjects ex- 
 perience when fed on white flour and meat, asserted themselves. 
 
 The men bled from the nose at the slightest provocation. Their 
 blood had lost the power of coagulation, as all blood does when 
 robbed of its calcium. 
 
 McMillan, profiting by his studies of polar adventures, saw to 
 it that his supplies contained an abundance of these salts so 
 grossly disregarded in our American diet. 
 
 Shackelton, too, in his "The Heart of the Antarctic," has some- 
 thing to say on this subject. These are his words: "In the first 
 place the food must be wholesome and nourishing in the high- 
 est degree. At one time the dread disease scurvy was regarded 
 as the inevitable result of a prolonged stay in ice-bound regions, 
 and even the Discovery Expedition, during its labours in the 
 Antarctic, 1902- 1904, suffered from scurvy, but during our entire 
 
EIGHT POISON SQUADS 225 
 
 trip from 1907 to 1909 we did not develop a single case of sick- 
 ness, relying almost exclusively upon whole wheat biscuit, de- 
 hydrated fruits and vegetables, marrowfat peas, lentils and kid- 
 ney beans. 
 
 "We carried with us dried prunes, peaches, apricots, raisins, 
 currants, apples, dehydrated potatoes, carrots, cabbage, onions, 
 Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, celery, spinach, parsley, mint, rhu- 
 barb, mushrooms and artichokes to the extent of 3,800 pounds, 
 with 2,240 pounds of whole wheat biscuit." 
 
 Anthony Fiala, commander of the Ziegler Polar Expedition. 
 1903- 1905, says in his "Fighting the Polar Ice" : 
 
 "The remark of General Grant that an army travels on its 
 stomach, is now a maxim in text books on military logistics." 
 
 Fiala's experiences emphasise the truths which all other polar 
 explorers have contributed to the sum total of wisdom under 
 which not alone armies, but civilians and their children, should 
 be fed. 
 
 McMillan tells us that he took with him five barrels of corned 
 beef, but did not touch a mouthful of it, and that during the 
 day, between meals, his party stood hunger off by munching upon 
 whole wheat which they carried in their pockets, now and then 
 chewing upon a pilot biscuit or a piece of bitter chocolate. 
 
 "When I accompanied Peary," he declared, "our pemican which 
 had been prepared by one of the Chicago packers, was found to 
 contain numerous particles of foreign substance and therefore 
 became useless to us. I made sure to obtain a different kind of 
 pemican when I went North," he said. 
 
 I have before me as I write a six-pound tin of the McMillan 
 pemican which he brought back with him from the frozen north. 
 
 This experience of McMillan's was not without its significance 
 to Francis J. Heney, who encountered so much organised effort 
 to interfere with his 1917-1918 investigation of the crimes of the 
 packers. 
 
FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CLINIC 
 AND CLASS ROOM 
 
FIVE: AMAZING CONFUSION OF CLINIC AND CLASS 
 
 ROOM 
 
 § 66 IGNORING THE COMMONPLACE 
 
 We have reviewed the results of hundreds of experiments con- 
 ducted by scores of investigators working independently of each 
 other upon the problems of nutrition. 
 
 We have seen how all efforts to square the academic theories 
 of dietitians with the simplest and most obvious of food facts 
 end in complication and confusion. 
 
 This chaos, for it is chaos indeed, broods as frequently in 
 high places as among the plain people. It is largely the result 
 of the materialistic spirit of the twentieth century, now happily 
 undergoing a change. 
 
 Men who fondly cherished their intellectual accomplishments 
 as the chief glories of progress and the loftiest pinnacles of civ- 
 ilisation, were prone to ignore the commonplace. 
 
 Intellectual pride seemed to develop in them a sort of spiritual 
 astigmatism. In their earthly pursuits they abandoned altogether 
 the old-fashioned idea that God is the author of life, and that all 
 manifestations of life are the expressions of fixed laws. 
 
 They forgot that a hen's egg laid in China is identical in physi- 
 cal and chemical properties w T ith a hen's egg laid in Texas, or if 
 admitting the fact, they promptly explain it away in ponderous 
 phraseology. 
 
 They forgot that the flavour of the elderberry and the peach 
 are the same to-day as when they were boys; that the seed is 
 always true to type, and that from the acorn springs only the oak. 
 
 They forgot that cow's milk produced in the isle of Guernsey 
 or the state of Delaware is always physiologically the same and 
 that the milk of the normal human mother, whether she be Es- 
 kimo, Filipino, Armenian, Spaniard, Turk, Pennsylvania Dutch, 
 Nordic, Alpine or Mediterranean, is always identical in com- 
 position. 
 
 229 
 
230 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 They did not stop to ponder over this constancy and fidelity 
 of adherence to a never-changing standard, when all human 
 standards about them are changing, even as the colors of the 
 chameleon. 
 
 They saw in them nothing of the operation of a divine law. 
 
 They failed to note that the first food of every human being 
 is colostrum, and that for the first three days of every normal 
 infant's life the one and orfly food it requires is colostrum. 
 
 They failed to see any active providence in the second food 
 of the normal babe, which suffices it for at least a year. 
 
 They could not admit that the appearance of colostrum and 
 milk in their proper turn and at their proper time, without con- 
 scious effort on the part of mother or child, is an expression of . 
 nature's august obedience to the will of God. 
 
 They could not believe that if, as the result of the control of 
 a fixed law, the food of the first three days and the food of the 
 first year of the life of a human being have been pre-arranged 
 and elaborated according to fixed standards, there must also be 
 some similar pre-arrangement and control exercised in the pro- 
 duction of the foods that follow during the second, the tenth and 
 the fiftieth years of life. 
 
 Such propositions as these they described as mysticism, failing 
 to note that the grasses and the seeds of grasses prescribed in the 
 book of Genesis, are the expressions of a law, and that there- 
 fore these grasses and their seeds are to be accepted by man 
 without change, manipulation, modification or refinement, even 
 as colostrum and mother's milk are accepted by the infant without 
 change, manipulation, modification or refinement. 
 
 The very thought of refining mother's milk at the breast would t 
 be abhorrent to the modern infant specialist. He knows where 
 nature's laws have not been violated through ignorance or ca- 
 price, the milk of the healthy mother, just as it is compounded 
 by her tissues, is the one food on which her infant thrives best. 
 
 When such milk is examined chemically the reason for this f 
 phenomenon becomes obvious, and upon man's understanding of 
 it he bases all his efforts in cases of necessity to modify the next 
 best food for the babe — cow's milk, which must be made to re- 
 semble physiologically the milk of the human by a marked change 
 in its protein, fat, sugar and mineral content, in order that it 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 231 
 
 may be in some measure adapted to the requirements of the 
 infant. 
 
 These commonplace phenomena which rarely inspire the seri- 
 ous contemplation of science and never the sonnets of a poet, are 
 not interpreted by materialists as indices of a vast, beautifully 
 ordered and sublimely executed scheme in the creation and main- 
 tenance of life and health on this planet. 
 
 Science, examining not the whole but its parts, does not as a 
 rule arrive at the conviction that any capricious departure from 
 the normal represents a trespass against laws of nature that 
 must inevitably lead to physiological discord — disease. Break the 
 law if you can get away with it ; otherwise don't break the law 
 is the advice of science, viz., the prophylactic kit. 
 
 Man's failure to heed the laws of life is responsible for all the 
 confusion and preventable misery suffered by him in the physical 
 order. This confusion and. misery is everywhere apparent. 
 
 The more materialistic the nation the more vigorously it treads 
 the paths of luxury, and the more violently it departs from nor- 
 mal. 
 
 Great is the price paid for its caprices in painful infirmity 
 and untimely death. 
 
 By a curious mockery of modern civilisation, the scientist and 
 the teacher are found among the chief victims of this confusion, 
 as we shall see. 
 
 § 67 — Hutchinson's teaspoon 
 
 Ignoring the extent to which patent medicines, headache pow- 
 ders, nerve tonics, constipation cures, "blood-builders," and the 
 thousand and one self-administered doses are consumed by the 
 ton, and denying outright that these physical infirmities owe their 
 I existence to modern "food refinement," many popular authori- 
 I ties persist in preaching the almost supernatural virtues of white 
 ! bread. 
 
 In a widely circulated article on this subject, published in the 
 [American Magazine, under the caption "The Color Line in 
 Foods," Dr. Woods Hutchinson said : 
 
 "The whitest possible of white bread was overwhelmingly 
 
232 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 proved to be not only more appetising but weight for weight and 
 price for price, more nutritious and more wholesome than any 
 black, brown, or brindled staff of life. 
 
 "It is quite true that patent processed flour does not retain 
 the yellowish and nutritious germ of the wheat berry and that 
 this germ contains small amounts of 'fat' and 'phosphorus' which 
 are not present in the remainder of the wheat and grain. But 
 when the trouble was taken to weigh and measure the exact 
 amount of this 'fat' and this 'phosphorus' it was found to be ex- 
 ceedingly small, and a single teaspoonful of egg and a mouthful 
 of meat or fish or a teaspoonful of milk would more than make || 
 good the amount lost in an entire pound loaf of bread." 
 
 The error of Hutchinson's gospel is a matter of arithmetic. 
 
 A pound loaf of whole wheat bread contains approximately 
 eight ounces of water and eight ounces of whole wheat meal. In 
 the whole wheat meal the total quantity, not of "fat" and "phos- 
 phorus," but of fat, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, man- 
 ganese, calcium, silicon, sulphur, sodium, iodine, iron, and other 
 bodies of unknown nature, approximates 2 per cent, of the en- 
 tire grain. 
 
 The eight ounces of whole wheat meal in a one-pound loaf 
 weigh 5,500 grains. Of this amount 2 per cent, or seventy grains [ 
 consist of the mineral substances described. 
 
 Hutchinson asserts, "These substances are present in a tea- 
 spoonful of egg, a mouthful of meat or fish, or a teaspoonful \ 
 of milk." 
 
 The eight ounces of patent flour in one-pound loaf of white 
 bread weigh 3,500 grains. Of this quantity much less than one- 
 half of 1 per cent., or, to be exact, eighteen grains, consists of 
 the mineral substances described. 
 
 The difference between seventy grains, found in the whole 
 wheat bread, and eighteen grains, found in the white bread, is 
 fifty-two grains. These fifty-two grains, according to Hutchin- 
 son's declaration, are found in a teaspoonful of egg or milk, 
 ' 'which, therefore, more than offsets the loss sustained in white 
 bread." 
 
 In milling the grain at least four of the mineral substances are 
 entirely lost and many of the others reduced to a mere trace. 
 
 Let us see how these substances are restored by a spoonful of 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 238 
 
 | egg- Eight ounces of eggs weigh 3,500 grains. Of this amount 
 ' but sixteen grains consist of the mineral elements described. 
 
 To offset the deficiency of fifty-two grains a quantity of eggs 
 .: yielding fifty-two grains must be consumed. 
 
 Eight ounces of eggs yield sixteen grains. One ounce of eggs 
 yield two grains. To supply the missing fifty-two grains, twenty- 
 j six ounces of eggs, or approximately two dozen, must be con- 
 sumed. 
 
 There remains a vast difference between a spoonful of egg 
 ! and two dozen eggs. 
 
 Let us see now what would be required of a teaspoonful of 
 |; milk in order that it might perform the miracle which Hutchin- 
 1 son asserts it does perform. 
 
 One pint of milk weighs 3,500 grains, approximately, and as 
 seven-tenths of one per cent, of milk consists of the mineral sub- 
 J stances described there are found in an entire pint but 24 grains 
 of the missing 52 grains. 
 
 Thus, in order to offset the 52 missing grains, considerably more 
 than two pints of milk must be consumed, just about three hun- 
 dred times more than the resourceful teaspoonful of Hutchinson. 
 
 As for a mouthful of meat little need be said. The Madeira- 
 Mamore poison squad had plenty of white bread, but no meat. 
 The Kronprinz Wilhelm poison squad had plenty of white bread 
 and all the meat its members could consume. The results in both 
 cases were identical. Neither the absence of the meat nor its 
 presence in any manner diminished or increased the nutritional 
 value of the white bread consumed. 
 
 Had that bread been black, brown, or brindle it would have 
 needed no such addition as "a single teaspoonful of egg, a mouth- 
 ful of meat or fish, or a teaspoonful of milk." 
 
 This is a sample of the confusion of "learned" men. We 
 shall now examine another. 
 
 § 68 — STRANGE CONCLUSIONS OF LUSK 
 
 The extraordinary manner in which purely speculative theoris- 
 ing concerning carbohydrates, proteins, fats and calories clashes 
 
234 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 with actual fact was demonstrated at the anniversary meeting of 
 the New York Academy of Medicine, November 20, 1913, when 
 Graham Lusk made the statements that follow : 
 
 "It is necessary that the body have a constant replenishment 
 of its protein store. There is no doubt of the superior value of 
 meat, fish, egg and milk proteins to that of bread, beans and 
 Indian corn. 
 
 "The proteins of rice and potatoes hold an intermediate posi- 
 tion between the two classes of proteins above mentioned. Such 
 facts make it possible to classify proteins according to their 
 physiological value and they may be sold, therefore, as milk in 
 three classes — A, B, and C. In a fourth grade, D, might belong 
 gelatine and some other proteins which cannot replace the body 
 protein which is continually wearing away. 
 
 "Experiments with wheat protein show that gliadin, which 
 represents nearly one-half of the protein of wheat, is of inferior 
 food value. It requires more protein in the form of bread to 
 protect from protein loss than it does when meat or milk is in- 
 gested. The same is true of other proteins derived from grains." 
 
 In making these extraordinary statements before a group of 
 learned scientists, Lusk entirely ignored the fact that meat pro- 
 tein, which he referred to in such extravagant terms, when de- 
 prived of its mineral salts, destroys life. 
 
 It is evident, therefore, that he did not establish his value of 
 meat protein upon processed meat which we have seen, after hav- 
 ing been immersed in distilled water and then fed to dogs, kills 
 the animals. 
 
 Why, therefore, should he estimate the value of wheat pro- 
 teins or the protein of any other grain upon the demineralised 
 white bread protein or the demineralised Indian corn protein 
 which he used as a base for his comparisons ? 
 
 We have seen how, in the absence of the mineral salts, colloids 
 and vitamines, natural to all foods, no kind of protein is of any 
 value to any living animal. 
 
 We have not only seen that such protein possesses no value f 
 but is actually harmful. Reversing the order of Lusk's experi- 
 ment it can be established that meat proteins from processed or 
 exhausted meat are worthless compared with wheat proteins or 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 235 
 
 corn proteins containing all of the mineral salts and colloids of 
 the unbolted grain. 
 
 At the same meeting Lusk also said, "The Eskimo consumes 
 large quantities of meat, even as much as nine pounds a day, and 
 yet health and strength are not wanting among these meat-eat- 
 ers, and they are not the victims of uric acid diseases." 
 
 Contradicting this declaration of Lusk, the Journal of the 
 American Medical Association, March 28th, 1913, said: 
 
 "We have previously noted the poor condition of health and 
 sanitation obtaining among the natives of Alaska. In 1900 the 
 census figures placed the native population of Alaska at 29,536, 
 while in 1910 it had fallen to 25,331, a decrease in ten years of 
 14.5 per cent. 
 
 "Surgeon M. H. Foster of the public health service reported, 
 August nth, 191 1, that at Sitka fairly reliable statistics placed the 
 annual birth rate for a period of five years and seven months at 
 72.3 per thousand, and the annual death rate for the same pe- 
 riod at 854 per thousand, an actual decrease in population of 
 thirteen per thousand. 
 
 "On request of the Secretary of the Interior, Past-Assistant 
 Surgeon Emil Krulish of the federal public health service was 
 detailed to investigate the health and sanitation of the Alaskans 
 under the commissioner of education. His report, under date of 
 January 22nd, 1913, after a study of nine months, was filed with 
 the Secretary of the Interior, January 25th, 1913. 
 
 "The report corroborates all the findings of Surgeon Foster. 
 The most serious menace is tuberculosis, which, if not erad- 
 icated in the near future, will exterminate the native population 
 of Alaska in the course of sixty or seventy years. This disease 
 is present in all forms, especially in the pulmonary, osseous, and 
 glandular types." 
 
 It is not surprising that the flock should be bewildered when 
 the shepherd brings to the sheep-fold such an amazing assort- 
 ment of fodder. 
 
236 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 69 — DISEASE GEEMS BAD WHERE THEY DO NOT BELONG 
 
 Charles Clyde Sutter, referring to the natural defence of the 
 body against disease, says: 
 
 "We are continually in the presence of disease germs ; almost 
 daily we are exposed to contagious or infectious diseases, yet 
 the body in health is able to protect itself and ward off the casual 
 agents of disease. Any disturbance of perfect equilibrium in 
 the functions of the body may be described as disease. 
 
 "The severity of the disease is determined by the intensity of 
 the cause and by the state of the organism and its power of de- 
 fence. The first general biological law or general attribute of liv- 
 ing matter is that of self-preservation. The first biological acts of 
 living protoplasm are therefore nutritional. For perfect health 
 there must be complete appropriation, assimilation, and elimina- 
 tion. 
 
 "It is impossible to prevent the entrance of bacteria into the 
 digestive tract with our food. Against this invasion the normal 
 human individual is protected by the secretions of the stomach. 
 The body is protected against the poisonous substances formed 
 in the intestinal tract by the internal secretions, the influence 
 of the lining membrane of the intestines, the liver, which alone 
 destroys two-thirds of the poison, and by the various glands 
 throughout the body which have the power of destroying toxic 
 substances, and also by the organs which aid in their elimination. 
 
 "It will thus be seen, in accordance with natural law, that 
 the organism is supplied with powers of nutrition which induce 
 resistance, which enable it to protect itself by the destruction, 
 by the counteraction, and by the elimination of deleterious agents, 
 and thus, by adaptation, provide for the re-establishment of 
 the disturbed equilibrium." 
 
 Notwithstanding the certitude of these frequently demonstrated 
 truths the school teachers of the United States, who are also the 
 victims of confusion in high places, make no attempt to influence 
 the young to a proper understanding of the laws of nutrition. 
 
 Most of them are familiar with the erroneous but popular 
 doctrines of Hutchinson and Lusk, but few, if any of them, 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 
 
 know that refined foods of high caloric value, cause a disturbance 
 of the functions of assimilation and elimination. 
 
 They do not know that calcium salts, so wantonly removed 
 from most natural foods, act upon the blood and blood vessels by 
 tightening the unduly permeable vascular wall, thus promoting 
 coagulation and stopping exudation. 
 
 They do not know, as summed up by Kayser in his review of 
 the importance of calcium salts for the therapy of internal af- 
 fections, that these salts influence the excitability of the nervous 
 system by depressing the latter, especially the vegetative and au- 
 tonomous, and are therefore indicated in internal medicine espe- 
 cially for tetany, epilepsy, hay fever, and asthma, in all of which 
 they are used with success. 
 
 They do not know that through there ability to increase the 
 phagocytic power of the blood, calcium salts appear to come 
 into question for the therapy of infectious diseases, like pneu- 
 monia and tuberculosis, and that they also prevent oxalic acid 
 poisoning. 
 
 Not knowing the importance of calcium in the diet, they can 
 have no suspicion of the importance of phosphorus, potassium, 
 manganese, iron, or any of the other mineral salts, colloids, and 
 vitamines so indispensable to the normal physical and mental 
 developments of their pupils. 
 
 In consequence of their ignorance of these fundamental truths 
 they are unable, while learnedly discussing many of the orna- 
 mental isms and ologies of the class room, to direct the growing 
 child in matters that have a greater bearing upon its future 
 life than all botany, geology, geometry, geography, and astronomy 
 combined. 
 
 The missing link in our modern system of education is to be 
 found in the darkness which thus separates teacher from child. 
 
 § 70 — AILING INSTRUCTORS IN "iSMS" AND "OLOGIES'* 
 
 According to records compiled by a committee, headed by Dr. 
 Oswald Schlockow at the behest of the Brooklyn Teachers' 
 Association, and made public November 14th, 191 5, 20 per cent. 
 
238 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of the teachers during the school year of 1913-1914 were absent 
 from illness. 
 
 All the data in the report were obtained from application 
 blanks submitted by teachers to the board of superintendents 
 for the refund of salaries deducted for absence caused by illness. 
 
 Illness usually affects the pocket book as well as the health 
 of its victims, a fragment of human wisdom which the school 
 teachers have obviously acquired. "That 20 per cent, of absences 
 from duty is far too low is proved," says the report, "by the fact 
 that refund blanks are not generally submitted for brief periods 
 of absence. And, moreover, it must be assumed," continued the 
 report, "that many teachers, who, under normal conditions would 
 and should have remained at home, because of physical disability 
 to teach, forced themselves to report for duty which they could 
 not properly perform." 
 
 In other words, the pocketbook compelled these sick teachers 
 to subordinate the hazards of doing those things which their 
 physical condition made next to impossible to the stern necessity 
 of earning money. 
 
 The total number of applications for excuse of absence for 
 all causes in the year 1913-1914 among this one group of teachers 
 was 4,148. The total time lost by their illness was 68,442 days. 
 The four prevalent ailments responsible for this loss were diseases 
 of the respiratory organs, infectious diseases, diseases of the 
 nervous system, and diseases of the digestive system. 
 
 The throat and lung troubles it was found constituted 35 
 per cent, of the diseases, acute contagious diseases 16 per cent., 
 nervous diseases 15 per cent., and digestive disorders 11 per cent. 
 
 These four diseases follow loss of resistance and immunity. 
 
 "The fact disclosed by our investigation," declared the com- 
 mittee headed by Dr. Oswald Schlockow, "that over one-fifth 
 of the entire teaching corps of the city was absent because of 
 illness during one school year indicates the existence of an ad- 
 ministrative problem of great moment. 
 
 "The teachers' health ultimately determines the efficiency of 
 the entire educational system of the community. 
 
 "The heavy morbidity rate ascribable to respiratory diseases," 
 it declared, "deserves an investigation by the school authorities 
 into the system of ventilation." 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 239 
 
 Here, again, is a striking symptom of the confusion of the 
 times. "It is evident that we must know what kind of air our 
 teachers and their pupils breathe," assert the investigators, but 
 there they stop. 
 
 The crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm lived in the open air of 
 the open sea. The convict poison squad of Mississippi breathed 
 the purest air under the most hygienic and sanitary conditions 
 which the state could provide. The railroad laborers of the 
 Madeira-Mamore poison squad breathed an air uncontaminated 
 by the fumes of the modern industrial settlement. Pure air 
 and debased foods are not compatible. 
 
 The school children of the country will never learn this fact 
 until their teachers learn it. 
 
 § 71 — THIN-HAIRED WOMEN AND BALD-HEADED MEN 
 
 As school teachers take their classes on inspection tours through 
 the patent flour mills of Brooklyn the commerical chemists who 
 pilot them from grinder to sifter and from sifter to bolter always 
 volunteer the information that white patent flour is incomparably 
 superior to whole wheat meal. 
 
 "White flour is far more nutritious than any mulatto-coloured 
 product ever milled, ,, they say. "Professor Harry Snyder 
 says so." 
 
 The teachers, impressed by the immensity of their surround- 
 ings, and the really extraordinary experience of watching a 
 battery of mills in operation in a large plant, go back to their 
 classes perfectly satisfied that white bread will do after all. 
 
 It never occurs to them that should Professor Harry Snyder 
 speak out in meeting the money invested in so-called patent flour 
 mills would have little use for him. 
 
 Any school teacher who wants the truth can have it for herself 
 without reference to Professor Harry Snyder. All she needs 
 are three pieces of grits gauze known as No. 30, No. 50 and 
 No. 60, three pieces of silk bolting cloth, known as No. 9, No. 10 
 and No. 13, a small Fairbank scale with weights measurable 
 by the one-thirty-second of an ounce for rough estimates and 
 one grain weights for finer estimates, a magnifying glass that 
 
240 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 will enlarge ten diameters or a small microscope that will en- 
 large ioo diameters. 
 
 With this outfit if the school teacher will take eight ounces 
 of Whole Wheat Meal and put them through the simple opera- 
 tion suggested here some disclosures will be made that will prove 
 little short of startling. 
 
 I have capitalised Whole Wheat Meal because every city in 
 the United States gives shelter to hundreds of packages of so- 
 called entire wheat flour which, not being entire wheat at all, 
 will not serve our purposes. 
 
 Carefully sift the eight ounces of whole wheat meal through 
 the No. 30 grits gauze. All the meal except approximately 
 one 16-32 of an ounce passes through the gauze. 
 
 With the magnifying glass it will be seen that the one 16-32 
 of an ounce left on the No. 30 grits gauze consists of large 
 particles of bran and germ with the "brush flour" that adheres 
 to the bran. 
 
 The bran is found to consist of rough, canvas-like, brownish 
 particles, with a very remarkable suggestion of woof and warp. 
 The germ, difficult to distinguish from bran with the naked eye, 
 will be found to consist of rich, oily, cream-coloured particles. 
 
 A chemical analysis of this bran and germ, which take up large 
 quantities of water and hold it in the intestines for lubricating 
 purposes, shows they contain the mineral salts, colloids, and 
 vitamines. Both bran and germ are rich in silicon, sulphur, ni- 
 trogen, iron, iodine, potassium, manganese, phosphorus, nucleo 
 proteins, or phosphorised albumens, lecithins, or phosphorised 
 fats, and the simple phytin compounds and phosphates without 
 which, as proved in the St. Petersburg experiment, no animal 
 can be properly nourished. 
 
 The woman who values the thin and lustreless hair that re- 
 mains to her, and the bald-headed man who wishes he had some 
 hair to value, even thin and lustreless, will look dejectedly upon 
 the discarded silicon, and the anemic creature who seeks in 
 vain for solace in beef-iron-and-wine will pray for the miller 
 who throws all this elemental food to the hogs. 
 
 The teacher is now ready for operation No. 2. By sifting 
 the balance of the wheat through grits gauze No. 50 it will be 
 found that one and 5-32 of an ounce will remain on the gauze. 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 241 
 
 Under the magnifying glass these particles, less coarse than those 
 that were sifted out first, will be identified as bran, germ, and 
 middlings. 
 
 No handsomer breakfast food ever appeared on the market, 
 and yet such breakfast food is know only to swine. 
 
 The calcium, so necessary to Mother Nature in her calcifi- 
 cation of tuberculous areas, will be disclosed under chemical 
 analysis in these rejected keystones of the human arch. 
 
 The school teacher's pupils will say, "Do we not eat this 
 beautiful stuff held by grits gauze No. 50?" and the school 
 teacher will say, "No, dear children, this is cattle food." 
 
 § 72 — A PRETTY TEST 
 
 The school teacher, carefully sifting the balance of the wheat 
 through grits gauze No. 60, finds that one and 29-32 of an ounce 
 remain on top of the gauze. This rejected material consists 
 of fine particles of germ, branny specks and middlings with their 
 precious salts and colloids. 
 
 A chemical analysis of the contents of grits gauze No. 30, No. 
 50, and No. 60, shows that about two-thirds of the mineral 
 salts of the original whole wheat have been removed and thrown 
 away. 
 
 She will now take No. 9 silk bolting cloth and pass the balance 
 of the wheat through it, whereupon she will find that two and 
 18-32 ounces remain on the silk. Again the magnifying glass is 
 applied. The rich, cream-coloured particles consist of fine mid- 
 dlings, fine germ, and a few branny specks. 
 
 In this intimate mixture the bran is brown, the germ yellow, 
 and the middling white. The combination is very beautiful but 
 it is not sufficiently anemic for human food. 
 
 The chemical test is again applied. It is discovered that on 
 silk bolting cloth No. 9 and grits gauze No. 30, No. 50 and No. 60, 
 three-fourths or 75 per cent, of the total original mineral con- 
 tent of the whole wheat has been deposited. This mineral de- 
 posit represents the loss all white flour sustains. 
 
 The balance of the wheat is put through No. 10. Only 17-32 
 
242 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of an ounce remain on the cloth. The lens reveals this to be 
 very fine middlings, sometimes known as farina, sometimes 
 known as cream of wheat. It will not support life. 
 
 Now take the balance of the whole wheat meal and sift it 
 through silk bolting cloth No. 13. One and ten thirty-seconds 
 of an ounce remain behind. This is fine flour, the summum 
 bonum of modern milling. 
 
 More refined, white, patent flour can be recovered from the 
 middlings scattered through the other separations, so that out 
 of the eight ounces of whole wheat about five ounces of flour, 
 minus the minerals of the wheat, can eventually be recovered. 
 
 This flour is subdivided by the millers into patent, straight, 
 and low-grade. When patent flour was selling for $7 a barrel 
 of 196 pounds, straight flour sold for $5 a barrel of the same 
 weight, and low-grade flour for $4.25 a barrel. 
 
 The high-grade flour, consumed by the baker, costs just half as 
 much as the low-grade flour going to the dear people who don't 
 know a thing about it. 
 
 The phrase "high grade" is not employed in the significance 
 of nutritional value. The higher grade the flour the more it 
 has been robbed of the elements indispensable to health. 
 
 As our school teacher becomes skilful enough in her use of the 
 grits gauze and silk bolting cloth it will be easy for her to sep- 
 arate the low grade, the inferior flour and the siftings and tail- 
 ings from the so-called patent flours. 
 
 After having sifted the patent flour through the silk bolting 
 cloth, the school teacher will obtain a few slides of window glass, 
 six or eight inches long by two inches wide. On one of these 
 slides she will arrange a few little hills of the different siftings 
 of the patent flour upon which she is experimenting. 
 
 Placing these little hills side by side she will carefully slick 
 them off with another piece of glass until with one steady down- 
 ward pressing pull she has levelled all the little hills and given 
 them a smooth surface. 
 
 She will then immerse the glass slide with its layers of patent 
 flour in a pan of cold water. This operation will bring out the 
 bloom of the so-called high-grade flour and the grey of its low- 
 grade neighbours. 
 
 The lines of difference between each of the separations will 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 243 
 
 be as plainly marked as a hedged fence. The school children 
 will not be satisfied to stop when they witness these exhibitions. 
 They will want to jump the fence, and explore the field beyond. 
 
 § 73 — EXPERIMENT WITH CHICKENS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 
 
 When school teachers manifest an interest in the definition 
 of the word "food" the school children will begin to learn some- 
 thing about themselves not now taught through any text books. 
 
 They will learn that the school girls of to-day are destined to 
 be the mothers of the race ten or twenty years hence and they 
 will understand why the school room is the place to study foods 
 in their relationship to health and disease. 
 
 . In the basement or on the roof there will be ten cages divided 
 into two groups of five each. 
 
 There will be four chickens in each cage of the first group. 
 The cages of the second group will be empty. The school chil- 
 dren will feed the chickens. 
 
 The chickens in cage No. i will be fed whole corn, whole 
 oats, natural brown rice, whole wheat, unpearled barley, grass 
 or greens of any kind, and water. The children will note that 
 on this diet the chickens in cage No. I will be proud and spirited. 
 Their feathers will be brilliant, their flesh firm, and their bodies 
 well developed. 
 
 The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 2 with 
 simple mixtures of whole grains and denatured grains, the re- 
 mainder of the diet being the same as that of cage No. 1. They 
 will note that at the end of a period of six months there will 
 be a marked superiority in the appearance of the chickens in 
 cage No. 1. 
 
 The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 3 with 
 pearled barley, polished rice, processed oats, degerminated corn 
 meal, and dough balls made of white flour and water with the 
 same quantity of greens fed to the chickens in cages No. 1 and 
 No. 2. 
 
 In a few months the marked physical degeneracy of the health 
 of these chickens will teach the children its own lesson. 
 
2M THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 4 with 
 beet pulp, from which some of the mineral salts have been ex- 
 tracted by leaching in distilled water. In addition to this they 
 will feed the chickens with soda crackers, white biscuits, gin- 
 gerbread, gingersnaps, white bread, pie crust, and candy, plus 
 water, with the usual quantity of gravel and greens. 
 
 The conditions of the chickens in a few months will be elo- 
 quently suggestive. 
 
 The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 5 with 
 white bread, white biscuits, white crackers and cakes, cream of 
 wheat, farina, macaroni, corn flakes, caramels, soda water, and 
 other fancy drinks. 
 
 As the feathers of these chickens begin to droop and the chick- 
 ens begin to huddle in the corners of their cages, seeking for 
 the darkness, miserable even unto death, the lesson of the re- 
 lationship of food to animal life will be taught. 
 
 At this stage of the experiment the healthy chickens in cage 
 No. 1 will be transferred to cage No. 6 and there they will 
 be fed on the diet of cage No. 5 until they, too, begin to show 
 the same symptoms of dissolution and disease. 
 
 The chickens of cages No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5 will then 
 be transferred to cages No. 7, No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10, 
 where they will be fed on the natural, undebased, unimpoverished, 
 undenatured diet of cage No. 1. 
 
 The school children will see the sick chickens recover rapidly, 
 and they will go through life with a lesson thoroughly learned. 
 When they assume the responsibility of home life for themselves 
 they will know that to abandon the laws of nature in the pursuit 
 of some capricious food ornament will be at the expense of the 
 health, happiness, and welfare of those dependent upon them. 
 
 § 74 — WHAT THE CHILDREN WILL LEARN 
 
 Having become familiar with the chicken-feeding experiments, 
 the children will learn that it is possible to alter the resistance 
 of animals at will, and to overcome the effects of one diet by 
 combining it with another. 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 245 
 
 They will learn that the resistance of animals as determined 
 by Hunt, even to certain poisons, differs greatly according to 
 the character of their diet. 
 
 They will learn that Bulletin 69, Hygienic Laboratory, United 
 States Treasury Department, declares "that in extreme cases 
 mice after having been fed on certain diets, may recover from 
 forty times the dose of acetonitrile fatal to mice fed on other 
 diets." 
 
 They will learn that a diet of oats or oat meal usually leads 
 to a marked resistance, and- that the administration of certain 
 iodine compounds with such a diet further increases an abnor- 
 mal resistance. 
 
 They will learn that the experiments reported by the Govern- 
 ment show that as far as resistance to acetonitrile is concerned, 
 iodine exerts its action through the thyroid gland, and the re- 
 sistance caused by an oat diet is in part an effect exerted upon 
 the thyroid. 
 
 The result achieved with iodine in the Rotunda Hospital, 
 Dublin; the thyroid researches of Victor Hoarsely and the dis- 
 covery of thyroidine by Bauman, have led more than one pa- 
 thologist to the conviction that iodine is a potent factor in the 
 neutralisation of the toxic substances formed in the human body. 
 
 They will learn something of the most amazing developments 
 of the war in the 1918 report from the British government 
 laboratories at Cambridge, Glasgow and London, and various 
 factories and hospitals in which government war bread experi- 
 ments were conducted. 
 
 They may ask the question in the presence of that report, 
 "Is it not strange that after a nation-wide campaign to dis- 
 courage the use of whole grain bread in the United States, a 
 campaign that received the backing of the Food Administration 
 itself, there should come from the British government a decla- 
 ration that it finds bread composed of whole wheat flour mixed 
 with 20 per cent, of other cereals not only suited to all ages 
 and digestion, but also yielding a higher percentage of energy?" 
 
 They will learn that the British loaves used in the experi- 
 ment were baked from flour milled under the personal super- 
 vision of A. E. Humphreys, president of the National Asso- 
 ciation of British and Irish Millers. 
 
246 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 They will learn that no precaution was omitted to make the 
 experiments complete, and that every result was worked out in 
 a series of tables. 
 
 They will learn that at one factory in Yorkshire the tests 
 were applied to a group of men, women and children, whose 
 sole bread supply for two months was whole wheat bread. 
 
 They will learn that although under medical supervision 
 throughout their experience, in no case did the whole wheat bread 
 cause digestive troubles, but that the health of the subjects im- 
 proved during its use. 
 
 They will learn that the people of New York City, now con- 
 suming more than 100,000 loaves of 100 per cent, whole wheat 
 bread every week, could have told the British government this 
 and much more several years ago. 
 
 "When the whole wheat bread was tried on various sufferers 
 from tuberculosis," declares the British report, "most of them 
 gained weight. The main fact established is that the human 
 body can make better use of the parts of the wheat grain which 
 have hitherto been discarded, than pigs and poultry to which these 
 rich and nutritive by-products of milling have been given in the 
 past. The country has gained enormously in food and energy 
 from the compulsory inclusion in the loaf of these rejected 
 by-products." 
 
 Well may the children ask, "What did the millers, the prof- 
 iteers and the Food Administration officials say when this British 
 report was made public?" 
 
 In the meantime they will learn, from such hints as these, that 
 man is guilty of sin, when he knowingly and deliberately re- 
 moves from his food supply, in order to make it commercially 
 profitable, those profoundly active and indispensable substances 
 that God has compounded not for the benefit of the food manu- 
 facturer, but for the benefit of little children, and the fathers 
 and mothers who lovingly, anxiously, and in pain watch over 
 them. 
 
 They will learn that all through nature are exhibited subtle 
 hints that the fixed laws under which all un juggled food comes 
 to man's hands were intended with the co-operation of man's 
 intelligence to serve his needs. 
 
CLINIC AND CLASS ROOM 247 
 
 They will learn that nature demands of man that he shall 
 accept her dispensations not as accidents, but as exquisitely- 
 rhythmical processes, as profound in their operation as they are 
 benevolent in their functions. 
 
SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 
 
SIX: HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 
 
 § 75 — "unsound flour," even though white 
 
 Before dismissing white flour, it is necessary to refer to two 
 other forms of flour against which the public needs protection. 
 
 One is called "unsound flour," the other "bleached flour." 
 
 Prior to August 19th, 191 3, the authorities had never bothered 
 about the question of unsound flour in the city of New York, 
 although the New York Produce Exchange for years had main- 
 tained a department, the chief duty of which was to reject such' 
 flour, so that members of the exchange would be protected 
 against the financial loss involved in purchasing an inferior or 
 inedible flour. 
 
 The government had never made a seizure of such flour not- 
 withstanding the enormous traffic in spoiled flour carried on. 
 
 Flour men suffered no worries concerning any possible official 
 interference with the final disposition of the rejected product. 
 It was easier to work off decomposed flour by mixing ten parts 
 of the rotten product with ninety parts of sound flour, thereby 
 avoiding waste through the medium of the public's stomach. 
 This unsound flour was always sold at a ridiculous price, but 
 the public always paid the regular market price for the finished 
 breadstuff from which it was made. 
 
 Such was the situation August 19th, 1913, on which day, in 
 order to bring the issue to a crisis, I arranged with Dr. William 
 H. Allen, director of the New York Bureau of Municipal Re- 
 search, to have some of his men make an investigation with me 
 of the grain piers of Jersey City. 
 
 Accordingly, Dr. W. H. Deaderick and J. H. Kirshman, of the 
 New York Bureau of Municipal Research, accompanied me 
 on an inspection of the Lehigh Valley flour and grain piers. 
 There we discovered 58,800 pounds of unsound, musty, and 
 inedible flour packed in the regulation 196-pound cotton bags. 
 
 These bags are porous. All flour is shipped in them. Rats run 
 
 251 
 
«52 THIS FAMISHING WOULD 
 
 over them. They are subject to many unspeakable forms of 
 contamination in the freight yards. But that is still another mat- 
 ter relating not to nutrition but to sanitation. 
 
 The regulations of the New York Produce Exchange require 
 flour to be marked "Sound" or "Unsound." None of this flour 
 bore any mark indicating its true nature and no satisfactory ex- 
 planation could be made by Flour Inspector W. J. Taylor, in 
 charge of Piers I, G, and E, Lehigh Valley Railroad, Jersey City. 
 
 I notified the New York station of the bureau of chemistry, 
 Department of Agriculture, of our findings. Federal Inspectors 
 Lind and Ford were despatched to the scene. The government 
 men were denied access to the flour by the railroad officials. 
 
 For a period of twenty-four hours they believed they could 
 do nothing with the stuff which, in the meantime, had been re- 
 jected as "unsound" by Messrs. Hewer & Siney, of the New 
 York Produce Exchange, and sold at a fraction more than a 
 cent a pound to a blending plant on Staten Island. 
 
 The government's inspectors, in communication with Wash- 
 ington, were instructed by wire to make another effort to examine 
 the flour. They returned to the pier the following day but, in 
 the meantime, somebody had performed a mysterious ceremony 
 over the decomposed stuff. 
 
 During the night the contents of the 196-pound bags were trans- 
 ferred to 140-pound bags. The manipulation was intended to 
 rescue the rotten flour from the jurisdiction of the government 
 officials. 
 
 It has been held in the trade and in more than one federal 
 district court that the government's jurisdiction over any product, 
 however rotten, comes to an end once that product has been re- 
 moved from the original package in which it had been shipped 
 into interstate commerce. 
 
 Dr. Carl Alsberg, chief of the Bureau of Chemistry, was im- 
 mediately notified of the complexity of the situation, and, re- 
 gardless of the legal aspect of the case, his efforts finally resulted 
 in a seizure of the rotten flour on a libel issued by United States 
 District Attorney Warren Davis, Trenton, N. J. The attach- 
 ment was made by United States Deputy Marshal Beekman, 
 Jersey City. 
 
 Prior to this seizure I had made numerous vain attempts to 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 253 
 
 obtain action through the New York City Health Department, 
 but the Health Department refused to concern itself with the 
 unsoundness of the city's bread supply. 
 
 It is not generally known or even suspected that unsound flour 
 is exceedingly common. They tell us whole wheat flour spoils. 
 They do not refer to spoiled white flour. 
 
 § 76 — "bleached flour" 
 
 Most large cities and nearly all the small towns of the United 
 States are deluged with bleached flours. Millers of the middle 
 west are dumping low grade bleached products into bakeshops in 
 carload lots. Scarcely a day passes in which the chief inspector 
 of the New York Produce Exchange is not called upon to ex- 
 amine bleached flour. Even the housewife can detect this fraud 
 if she so desires. 
 
 The baker who uses bleached flour knows what he is buying 
 at a cheap price for the reason that the barrel in which it reaches 
 him is labelled according to its contents, although he is not re- 
 quired by law to label his bread and cake in the same way. 
 
 The federal pure food label on bulk packages is intended only 
 as an index of wholesale values for the benefit of the manufactur- 
 er or merchant. It does not follow the manipulated foodstuff in- 
 to the hands of the consumer. Hence the consumer knows noth- 
 ing of the vast system of fraud which ends when the bulk package 
 is safely delivered to the cellar or sub-cellar of the food factory, 
 or deposited in a public warehouse subject to the food factory's 
 orders. 
 
 The test for bleached flour is a simple one and a rather pretty 
 experiment. Take a handful of the suspected flour. Pat it into 
 the form of a little mound or pyramid, placed on a marble slab 
 or wooden table. With the thumb depress the top of the mound, 
 thus forming a cup or well about the size of a thimble. Into 
 this well pour a teaspoonful of a mixture purchasable at any 
 wholesale drug store under the name of the Gries Hasway 
 Reagent. This reagent is a mixture of equal parts of sulpha- 
 
254 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 nilic acid and alpha-naphthylamic. Both these substances can 
 be purchased in any city drug store. 
 
 Let the reagent stand in the well in the mound of flour for 
 from ten to twenty minutes. If the flour has been bleached 
 the reagent will be coloured pink. If the flour has not been 
 bleached there will be no discolouration. 
 
 Under the existing sanitary codes of most American cities 
 there is a provision which enables the Health Department of 
 most communities to proceed against the thousands of carloads 
 of bleached flour which the middle western millers are now 
 unloading upon the public. 
 
 The government, which has failed to prevent the bleaching 
 of flour for interstate commerce, needs the aid of local health 
 departments to help it in its efforts to stamp out this base and 
 indefensible practice. 
 
 Flour is bleached to conceal inferiority by making it appear of 
 better quality than it is. Most sanitary codes provide against 
 the staining, colouring, coating or bleaching of any food product 
 for the purpose of concealing inferiority. Under such provisions 
 it becomes an easy matter for the corporation counsel of any 
 American city to bring action against bleached flour. 
 
 Not satisfied with robbing the wheat of its most indispensable 
 mineral elements, millers have still further debauched their in- 
 dustry by resorting to electrolytical chemistry in their efforts 
 to fool the people. 
 
 That the flour and grain markets of the world are notoriously 
 corrupt is not disputed by those on the inside of the situation. 
 The extent to which this corruption is destined to be tolerated 
 depends entirely upon the capacity of the people to understand 
 its heinous nature and apply the remedy that lies at hand. 
 
 I do not insinuate that bleached flour is in itself any more 
 responsible for any of the diseases of malnutrition than any other 
 form of denatured flour, nor do I intimate that it constitutes more 
 than a symptom of the confusion and chaos in which the United 
 States permits its food standards to become legally entangled. 
 
 Bleached flour may have nothing to do with infant mortality. 
 It does, however, have much to do with sham, fraud, make- 
 believe,, and as such it must be treated. 
 
HOW "BUSINESS 5 ' MUZZLES TRUTH 255 
 
 § 77 — the "mixed flour" evil 
 
 It was known in the trade long before the outbreak of the 
 Spanish War that millions of pounds of adulterated white flour 
 were annually sold to bakers. It was the custom of the trade 
 to cheapen the so-called patent flour manufactured by the millers 
 of wheat by adding varying percentages of corn starch or rice 
 starch or potato starch, all of which in bulk were purchasable 
 before the war at a price at least one-third less than the price 
 of wheat flour. 
 
 During the years from 1910 to 1915, for instance, wheat at 
 the large centres ranged in price from 771/4. cents to $1. 31 per 
 bushel, the average price being about $1 per bushel. 
 
 During the same period the price of corn in the same markets 
 ranged from 45 cents to 86 cents per bushel, the average price 
 being 65 cents per bushel. 
 
 Congress, seeking new revenues during the Spanish War and 
 knowing the trickery of the wholesale bakery supply houses, 
 included in the Spanish War revenue act of 1898 a provision fix- 
 ing a tax of 4 cents a barrel on "mixed flour," together with 
 an occupation tax of $12 per annum and providing that the man- 
 ufacture and sale of mixed flour shall be conducted under the 
 control of the Department of Internal Revenue. 
 
 The Spanish War revenue measure did not concern itself about 
 fraud or public health. It was a money-raising proposition. 
 It was, however, an eloquent index of a situation, the very ex- 
 istence of which had never been suspected by the people. 
 
 Whether it was known or not, nearly all bakers before the 
 Hoover regulations were issued requiring them to use wheat 
 flour substitutes at three times their value, were producing five- 
 and ten-cent loaves with the assistance of corn starch, rice starch, 
 potato starch, or other water absorbing ingredients. 
 
 The manufacturers of corn starch or corn flours are them- 
 selves on record with the following statement: 
 
 "The philosophy of the present mixed flour law is that the 
 mixing of wheat with other cereals or the products thereof is 
 .a vicious practice, but that upon the payment of certain taxes 
 
m§ THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ^—— ^—7* — — ^^— ^— ^— ^— ii —————————————— 
 
 the miller who is sufficiently conscienceless to do so can make 
 almost any sort of mixture. 
 
 "As a matter or detail it should be borne in mind that the 
 wholesomeness of mixed flour is not at present protected by 
 the law of 1898, but rather the more recent food and drugs act 
 (1906).' Consequently the removal of the taxing provision could 
 by no stretch of' the imagination have any effect whatever upon 
 the important point of wholesomeness." 
 
 The manufacturers of corn starch declare that "technical re- 
 search in this country and practical experience abroad have shown 
 that the protein of wheat is sufficiently strong, easily to carry 
 through the process of bread-making 20 per cent, added starch, 
 be the source of that starch rice, potato or corn." 
 
 Let us examine the philosophy of the corn starch manufac- 
 turer who describes his product as "a yeast food flour." I have 
 a signed statement in my possession, dated March 10, 191 5, ad- 
 dressed to the bakers of the country by one of these corn products 
 manufacturers. Because it tells just why corn starch is used 
 and throws inside light upon the subject I quote it in full as 
 follows : 
 
 "If there ever was a time when in justice to your business you 
 should use 'special yeast food flour' it is right now. When you 
 can buy 'special yeast food flour' at about the same price as 
 wheat flour or probably a little less and when you consider that 
 ^special yeast food flour' will give you a net profit of at least 
 $6 per barrel over the profit you get on your wheat flour, you 
 certainly cannot afford to manufacture bread without 'special 
 yeast food flour/ 
 
 "Two hundred pounds 'special yeast food flour' with 400 pounds 
 water makes 600 pounds material. 
 
 "Two hundred pounds wheat flour with 120 oounds water 
 makes 320 pounds material. 
 
 "Other ingredients (lard, salt, etc.) are not figured in this 
 computation, being the same in each case. 
 
 "This shov/s a net gain of 280 pounds material for every bar- 
 rel 'special yeast food flour' used. 
 
 "Even figuring that you only get 200 pounds baked bread 
 extra from every barrel of 'special yeast food flour' used in your 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 257 
 
 shop and only figuring the cost of bread at 3 cents per pound 
 j you can readily see that you are making a profit of $6.00. 
 j "As a matter of fact a barrel of 'special yeast food flour' will 
 j give you more than 200 pounds of baked bread extra and no 
 doubt your cost of bread now is more than 3 cents per pound. 
 "It is therefore up to you to decide how much 'special yeast 
 I food flour' you can use. If you use a barrel a day. or 200 barrels a 
 ! month, as other large bakers are using, you still make at least 
 1 $6.00 on each barrel. This means an extra profit of from $180 
 j to $1,200 a month through the use of 'special yeast food flour' 
 j alone. 
 
 "Everything that we claim can be demonstrated to your entire 
 ' satisfaction in your own bakery and the results you will get 
 will prove that what we have written in this letter is true in 
 every sense of the word. 
 
 "Ninety per cent, of the large bakers in this country and 
 Canada are using 'special yeast food flour.' 
 
 "If 'special yeast food flour' is wrong then nine out, of every 
 ten bakers are wrong, which would hardly be possible. 
 
 "Is it not fair to assume that they are using it because they 
 make good profit from it? 
 
 "May we, therefore, send you a shipment at once? Your 
 early order will be appreciated. Yours very truly, 
 
 "Manager." 
 
 This letter is characteristic of many others now in my posses- 
 sion. It reveals the real purpose for which corn starch is utilised 
 by bakers in the systematic and ever-increasing effort to lower 
 the food value of the staff of life in order that constantly in- 
 creasing profits may be obtained. 
 
 § 78 — THE DEVITALISED FIVE-CENT LOAF 
 
 The manner in which the staff of life can be manipulated at 
 will for commercial purposes indicates the necessity of estab- 
 lishing an official definition of the word "bread," together with 
 means of controlling its integrity. 
 
258 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 In February and March, 191 5, much interest was aroused con- 
 cerning the use of "plaster of Paris" in the production of the 
 bread made by one of the largest bakers in the United States. 
 
 Considerable light was shed upon the secret use of a mineral 
 mixture in the making of bread in Boston, New York, and other 
 American cities, when Referee Nussbaum, at the inquiry of New 
 York State into an alleged conspiracy to increase the price of 
 bread from five to six cents a loaf, on the ground that war prices 
 made bread ingredients higher, probed into the secrets of whole- 
 sale bakers. 
 
 Prior to the taking of testimony in the bread case, at the office 
 of Deputy Attorney-General Alfred L. Becker, 299 Broadway, 
 New York City, Inspector James O. Jordan of the Boston Board 
 of Health made a report to Mayor Curley, in which he asserted 
 that bakeries in New York and Massachusetts were making 
 bread which contained calcium sulphate, otherwise known as 
 gypsum or plaster of Paris, materials used in making plaster 
 casts. 
 
 When questioned concerning the truth of Inspector Jordan's 
 report the vice-president of one of the largest baking concerns 
 of the world, admitted at the state's hearing that such a product 
 was in use, that it had been employed for three years prior to 
 the date of the state's investigation, and that it had been 
 patented. 
 
 He justified its use on the ground that it enabled the baker 
 to leaven his dough before excessive fermentation took place. 
 
 ""Excessive fermentation," he said, "is destructive of practi- 
 cally all food values in the ingredients used in modern baking." 
 He argued, therefore, that the only bread which retains any food 
 value is the bread that contains this patented powder, for the 
 reason that prior to its discovery all bakers' bread was worthless 
 because of the destruction of practically all of its food value. 
 
 We have examined the evidence that shows white bread is 
 not a bone-builder. 
 
 We have examined the evidence that proves pigeons fed on 
 white bread suffer a loss of the lime salts of their bones even 
 to the extent of perforation of the skull. 
 
 We know that Voit established this fact as long ago as 1882. 
 
 According to the report of the Boston Board of Health on the 
 
HOW '-BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 259 
 
 composition of this "plaster of Paris" powder the samples ex- 
 amined contained calcium sulphate, 24 parts; sodium chloride, 
 24.90 parts; ammonium chloride, 11.50 parts; starch, 30 parts. 
 
 The testimony taken before Referee Nussbaum placed on 
 record the admission of one of the most prominent white bread 
 bakers in the world that white bread is worthless bread, devoid 
 of food value unless it contains a certain chemical compound 
 manufactured under the direction and control of certain com- 
 mercial corporations. 
 
 When the people are informed that the way to restore the 
 food value of white bread is to add to it a compound of gypsum 
 or plaster of Paris in amounts however small, all the indictments 
 charged against the broken star! of life are unwittingly confirmed. 
 
 The highest of high prices paid for denatured bread means 
 nothing to the well fed or to those in comfortable circumstances, 
 but to the average American family, whose daily diet consists 
 largely of bread, it means decay. 
 
 The poor and the rich together are consuming an inadequate 
 substitute for wheat in the form of white flour food, but the 
 poor, who need all the honest nourishment they can get, con- 
 sume by far the greatest quantity of this foodless form of food. 
 
 In New York City the common people know that the Euro- 
 pean war early in 1915 was merely an excuse for advancing 
 the price of bread to six cents. It was because they cried out 
 against this advance that the attorney general of New York 
 State interfered. 
 
 They know that it was due to his interference that the price 
 was not only returned to five cents, but that one year later, 
 February, 19 16, when the raw materials from which bread is 
 made were bringing even higher prices than when the six cent 
 rate was arbitrarily fixed, one large concern in New York City 
 sold the same bread made by the same people at four cents a loaf. 
 
 By its clamour the public had affected the price of bread while 
 remaining in ignorance concerning its. devitalised character. 
 Growing children who eat bread three or four times a day are 
 not concerned in an advance of one cent a loaf or in a reduction 
 of one cent a loaf. 
 
 The bread inquiry of the attorney general of New York State, 
 through the extraordinary admissions which it provoked on the 
 
260 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 part of the bakers themselves, shocked and for a time confounded 
 the entire white flour industry of the United States. 
 
 § 79 A PAID ADVERTISEMENT 
 
 Immediately following the disclosures made by Inspector Jor- 
 dan and Referee Nussbaum, the following newspaper advertise- 
 ment appeared under this caption : "About Four Years Ago the 
 Blank Baking Company Engaged Three Trained Men and 
 Instructed Them to Devote Their Time in Search for a Method 
 of Making Better Bread." This Resulted in the Greatest Dis- 
 covery Ever Made in the History of the Bread Business and is 
 a Great Boon for the Benefit of Humanity. 
 
 "In view of the inaccurate, misleading and really absurd news- 
 paper statements that have been made regarding the methods em- 
 ployed by our company we wish first to state a fact within the 
 knowledge of every housewife, that yeast is a living organism 
 and in order to live and multiply, and thereby leaven the dough, 
 the yeast must have food. 
 
 "In the old process this food was the flour, sugar, and other 
 constituents of the dough. The yeast consumed a certain por- 
 tion of these materials and converted them into alcohol and other 
 products, including a certain gas which raised the bread and 
 made it light. 
 
 "Under the new discovery, however, minute amounts of cer- 
 tain salts are added which serve in place of a part of this food 
 which, under the old method, the yeast consumes. 
 
 "In the old process a portion of the flour, particularly the 
 glutenous part, was broken down by the yeast and thus valuable 
 nutritive properties were lost. 
 
 "By the new process this does not take place, but, on the 
 contrary, a greater percentage of the natural gluten of the wheat 
 is retained in the baked loaf. 
 
 "In order that exact minute quantities might be properly in- 
 troduced, first into the water and then into the dough, these 
 salts were made up into a powder. 
 
 "Of this powder a very minute amount is added to the 1,500 
 
ii HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 281 
 
 i ^ ■ ■ 
 
 pounds of material — flour, sugar, milk, vegetable oil, yeast, salt 
 
 jand water — which constitutes a standard size dough in our 
 
 bakeries. 
 
 "The result is that there is left in the bread foUr one-hun- 
 dredths of I per cent, of calcium salts which are the identical 
 salts contained in all natural waters and practically all vege- 
 table and animal products. 
 
 "On a percentage basis fresh milk contains more than four 
 times as much natural calcium salts as if contained in the form 
 ijof the artificial calcium salts put into Blank's bread. 
 
 "In other words, one glass of milk contains as much natural 
 ( calcium salts as two loaves of Blank's bread contains of arti- 
 ' ficial calcium salts. Cheese contains about thirty times as much, 
 ( peas contain about three times as much, greens twelve times as 
 I much, beans five times as much, chocolate three times as much, 
 I turnips twice as much." 
 
 The advertisement drew no contrast between the organic cal- 
 1 cium compounds found in natural foods and the laboratory 
 product introduced in the bread referred to. It confined its as- 
 j sertions to the claim that the calcium thus introduced made 
 j bread better, but it said nothing of the natural organic com- 
 pounds of iron, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, manganese, 
 fluorine, etc., which the yeast powder did not restore to the white 
 bread described as "a great boon for the benefit of humanity." 
 The advertisement went on : 
 
 "Medical men have shown that a normal adult drinks in twen- 
 ty-four hours three and a half quarts of water. A twenty-four 
 hour supply of many natural waters would contain as much cal- 
 cium sulphate as is found in ten loaves of Blank's bread. 
 
 "The above citations are sufficient to show that the salts are 
 present in such small amounts that no question can arise in 
 any one's mind not antagonistic to the real facts that they are 
 not used for any purpose of adulteration or deception. 
 "Some of the reasons for their use are as follows : 
 "In the leavening of bread the yeast, besides forming the gas, 
 carbon dioxide, which makes the bread light, also forms alcohol 
 and certain by-products which in the similar process of fermen- 
 tation of grains to form whiskey we call 'fusel oil. 5 
 
 "This fusel oil is a very poisonous and rather disagreeable 
 
262 THIS FAMISHING WORLD ^^^ 
 
 smelling oil. This action takes place whenever bread is raised 
 by yeast whether in the household or in the bakery. 
 
 "The amount of fusel oil and certain other disagreeable acid 
 products thus formed is very small, but has its effect upon the 
 bread and certainly does not make the bread any more 
 wholesome. 
 
 "In the new process the amount of these fusel oil products 
 is diminished almost to the vanishing point. The result is a 
 bread with better taste, odor, color, texture, and flavor, and 
 a more wholesome bread because of the absence in this pro- 
 cess of these small amounts of objectionable products." 
 
 These statements really mean that the many millions of loaves 
 of bread baked by the Blank bakery prior to the discovery of 
 its yeast food powder contained the very poisonous and rather 
 disagreeable smelling fusel oil and certain other disagreeable acid 
 products which develop in all bread in which the Blank yeast f 
 powder is not used. 
 
 § 80 — "the lid is off" 
 
 The advertisement of the Blank bakery, published apparently 
 for the purpose of neutralising the published report of Inspector 
 Jordan and the facts disclosed by Referee Nussbaum continued } 
 as follows: 
 
 "From the above citations regarding the natural occurrence j 
 of calcium sulphate in foods it would be evident to every one | 
 that calcium sulphate is perfectly harmless as it is present as I 
 a natural constituent of so many foods that are daily consumed 
 by the people. 
 
 "In fact, we might go further than this, as the opinion among 
 the best medical authorities is that the food supply of the 
 people does not contain sufficient calcium salts which are so 
 necessary in the formation of bones, teeth and other tissues, 
 especially to growing children. 
 
 "Physiologists tell us that an adult man should have in his 
 food one and a half grams of lime as lime salts per day. To 
 obtain this amount from bread alone he would have to eat seven 
 loaves of Blank's bread, while one quart of milk would furnish 
 more than the required amount. 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 263 
 
 i ■ 
 
 "It has become a common practice in the purification of water 
 I supply for the cities to add to the water small amounts of calcium 
 I hypochlorite. This practice is heartily indorsed by all public 
 | health and medical authorities. A percentage of added lime put 
 in in this way is in all cases a larger amount than the added lime 
 ! salts in Blank's bread. 
 
 "We know that Blank's bread as made to-day is the best bread 
 ! in the world ; better bread than you can make in your own 
 I kitchen, and better bread than you can buy except under the name 
 j Blank. 
 
 "Our company has done more for the baking trade in advancing 
 ''modern ideas in baking and in the erection of modern plants 
 I than any concern in the trade. 
 
 "The lid is off, we have nothing to hide, never have had any- 
 thing to hide and you may feel secure in the use of Blank's bread 
 and know when you buy it you will use the best obtainable. No 
 better or cheaper food exists. Feed it to your children in gener- 
 ous portions. It is good for them." 
 
 (Signed) "BLANK BAKING CO." 
 
 This advertisement did not inform the public that the standard 
 bushel of sixty pounds of wheat produces fifty-nine pounds of 
 whole wheat meal, one pound being lost in the form of moisture 
 through evaporation in the grinding, and that the same bushel of 
 wheat produces but forty-five pounds of white flour, showing a 
 loss of fifteen pounds of the most vital elements of the wheat, 
 including more than 75 per cent, of its total mineral content — a 
 I loss not made up in the baking of white bread by the use of any 
 j patented powder. 
 
 It did not inform the public that every barrel of white flour 
 
 I represents a loss of sixty-five pounds of the most precious ele- 
 
 j ments of the wheat — elements which are thrown to the hogs 
 
 i and which are not restored to white bread by the addition of 
 
 any patented powder. 
 
 § 81 IMITATION GRAHAM 
 
 Following are the standard bakery ingredients of white bread 
 and whole wheat bread at pre-war prices : 
 
264 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 196 pounds white flour $4.00 
 
 124 pounds water 00 
 
 4^4 pounds salt 05 
 
 2 pounds sugar 11 
 
 2 pounds yeast 10 
 
 8 pounds compound 80 
 
 Total $5.06 
 
 This mixture represents a total cost of $5.06, which produces 
 180 loaves to retail at 10 cents each, or 360 loaves to retail at 
 five cents each. 
 
 The ten-cent loaves when scaled off before baking weigh thirty 
 ounces. During the baking process they lose three ounces by 
 evaporation, coming out of the oven weighing approximately 
 twenty-seven ounces. 
 
 The five-cent loaves when scaled off before baking weigh fifteen 
 ounces. When they come out of the oven they weigh between 
 thirteen and thirteen and one-half ounces. 
 
 The gross profit to the baker with flour at $4 a barrel is the 
 difference between $18, the selling price of 180 loaves at ten centsi 
 a loaf, and $5.06, the actual cost, or $12.94. 
 
 One large baker, with whom I am familiar, paid in January, 
 1916, $5.50 a barrel for his white flour. At this price his gross 
 profits on each barrel of flour was $11.44 on an investment of 
 $6.56, including cost of sugar, salt, compound and yeast. 
 
 There are many miserable substitutes for honest whole wheat 
 bread which masquerade under a whole wheat label. They are 
 soft, soggy, brown, and, one would say, if it were not for their 
 poor flavour, almost tasteless. Certainly such loaves of so-called 
 whole wheat bread can never inspire adult or child to an appe-i 
 tite for more. 
 
 Such bread discourages bread reform. Nevertheless there is 
 on the market, in addition to a few genuine whole wheat loaves, 
 a near approach to whole wheat which is made according to the | 
 following formula : 
 
 257 pounds whole wheat, 
 
 154 pounds water, 
 
 14 pounds molasses, 
 
 5 pounds salt, 
 
 7 pounds compound, 
 
 5 pounds yeast. 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES THUTH 
 
 ;, 
 
 This quantity of raw material produces 289 loaves, which re- 
 tail at ten cents each. These loaves are scaled off to weigh 24^ 
 ounces. Losing 2}^ ounces in the oven by evaporation, they 
 weigh a scant 22 ounces after baking. 
 
 The significant feature of these figures to the bread consumer 
 lies in the fact that it costs $1 a barrel less to manufacture a 
 jwhole wheat meal than it does to manufacture white patent 
 ; flour, and yet the millers of whole wheat meal charge the baker 
 |$i more for their products than they do for patent flour, mak- 
 ing an arbitrary difference of $2 in favour of their own pocket- 
 book. 
 
 In other words, they obtain $2 a barrel more for a product 
 which costs $1 less. 
 
 When bakers take the stand and admit under oath that white 
 bread is foolish bread, without food value, they render a service 
 to the community, but when they say that the way to restore the 
 food value of white bread is to load it up with plaster of Paris 
 \ or gypsum, or any other form of patented powder, they deceive 
 themselves, they deceive their bread, and they deceive those who 
 eat it. 
 
 § 82 PHYSICIANS SEEK IN VAIN 
 
 Physicians have sought in vain for substances that can renovate 
 the broken human body. Failing to find them they have explored 
 other fields and we have, as a result, antitoxins, serums, and 
 germicides. 
 
 Commercial scientists know that they cannot put back into 
 bread from the hands of chemists those things that come only 
 from the hands of God. 
 
 Colostrum, the first food of the human being, is as we have 
 seen the first food of all mammals, yet its exact role is not fully 
 understood by scientists. From the nature of its composition, 
 its corpuscles, salts and colloids, fats, sugars, proteins and 
 anti-bodies, it is inferred that it furnishes to the new-born child, 
 during its adjustment to its new surroundings and the full ex- 
 pansion of its lungs and the awakening of its digestive pro- 
 
266 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 cesses, an adequate nourishment of a character similar to that 
 which it received from the placenta as a fcetus. 
 
 Commercial scientists might as well try to produce synthetic 
 colostrum, synthetic blood, a synthetic spinal cord, a synthetic 
 nervous system, a synthetic brain, and a synthetic soul as synthetic 
 bread. The most colossal impertinence now visible in this world 
 of confusion is the effort of man to duplicate in ignorance 
 and presumption, by a process of extravagant theorising, the 
 handiwork of the Creator. 
 
 An army of investigators has proved that artificial mineralisa- 
 tion with respect to food is impossible. 
 
 The extensive research conducted by M. S. Maslow at the 
 Institute for Experimental Medicine at Petrograd, with regard 
 to the biologic importance of phosphorus for the growing organ- 
 ism and its action on the intracellular ferments, would alone be 
 sufficient to confound the plaster of Paris scientists if they had 
 ever heard of it. 
 
 Apparently really scientific experiments, proving that synthetic 
 phosphates cannot be substituted for the highly complex organic 
 phosphorus compounds of natural food and that synthetic phos- 
 phates should not be given for therapeutic purposes, have no 
 meaning for men who by adding calcium sulphate to bread would 
 have the world believe that they transform its inadequacy into 
 the wholesomest of human foods. 
 
 The scientist responsible for the plaster-of-Paris bread ingre- 
 dient has given to the press this interview: 
 
 "In the milling of flour more and more of the outside of the 
 grain has been taken off in order to get absolutely white flour, 
 thus accounting for the contention that flour is not as nutritious 
 as formerly. 
 
 "By the addition of lime and other beneficial salts the qualities 
 removed in the effort to get white flour have been restored to the 
 wheat and other advantages have been noted. 
 
 "My associates in the laboratory work maintain that our find- 
 ings have resulted in the most important food discovery in years. 
 
 "The so-called secret process was kept so only because of a 
 desire to have world-wide patents on the invention before courting 
 publicity." 
 
 In his testimony at the attorney general's inquiry, 199 Broad- 
 
HOW "BUSINESS 5 ' MUZZLES TRUTH 267 
 
 way, Tuesday, March 2nd, 191 5, the vice-president of the Blank 
 Baking Company declined to reveal the process which he claimed 
 as his, being content with saying that it had accomplished great 
 good for humanity. 
 
 There is other testimony, dating from the year 1490 B. C, on 
 this subject of white flour destruction, which the attorney gen- 
 eral's inquiry did not record. 
 
 In the twenty-sixth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of Leviti- 
 cus, or Vaicra, as the Hebrews call it, it is written that as punish- 
 ment for the crimes of man their bread would undergo degenera- 
 tion; that the staff of life would be broken; that no matter to 
 what extent it might be manipulated, even to the extent of hav- 
 ing ten women oversee its baking in the same oven, and no mat- 
 ter how carefully it might be weighed out, the people would eat 
 only to find it a worthless and foodless food. 
 
 Food that does not fill is not food. These are the exact words 
 of the prophecy : 
 
 "After I shall have broken the staff of your bread, so that ten 
 women shall bake your bread in one oven, and give it out by 
 weight and you shall eat and shall not be filled." 
 
 Uttered 3,408 years ago, this prophecy has been fulfilled. Its 
 fulfilment stole in upon humanity quietly, stealthfully, unnoted. 
 Twentieth century science has demonstrated its truth. The 
 microscope and the test tube have confirmed the description of 
 Leviticus of the white bread of 1918. 
 
 § 83 — DOLLARS DICTATE TO SCIENCE 
 
 The work conducted, 1914, 191 5 and 1916, to determine the 
 ravages of a demineralised diet, by Goldberg, Warring, Willets 
 and Wheeler, at orphanages in Jackson, Mississippi, and at the 
 farm of the Mississippi State Penitentiary, was not designed to 
 disclose truths which the millers would at once confine in a com- 
 mercial straight jacket. 
 
 But — their power over science is complete, and so when the 
 United States Public Health Service, April, 191 6, published a 
 
268 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 warning bulletin by Voegtlin, Sullivan and Myers, they had no 
 difficulty in silencing it. 
 
 That Government bulletin declared that the roller mill system 
 deprived flour of valuable food constituents. That if animals are 
 fed on highly milled wheat and corn they will die within a month 
 or two, whereas they will live in perfect health for many months 
 on an exclusive diet of unmilled wheat or corn. 
 
 It also described the dangers incident to the excessive use of 
 baking powder, which destroys the vitamines of the grain. 
 
 The flour millers immediately swooped down upon the United 
 States Public Health Service, whereupon in September, 1916, a 
 "correcting" bulletin was issued. The government had been terri- 
 fied into acquiescence by the dignity and power of the industry 
 offended. 
 
 This "correcting" bulletin, for the consolation of the millers, 
 told the people to be sure to obtain an adequate mixed diet to 
 supply sufficient of the essential dietary components outside of 
 the refined cereal contained in the diet, but not to be worried over 
 the dangers of white flour as previously described. 
 
 The millers asserted that the Government bulletin had oc- 
 casioned so much alarm that the production of highly milled 
 flours had fallen off nearly 25 per cent., and the flour industry 
 had been hit hard in a financial way ; hence the effort of the gov- 
 ernment to re-establish the prestige of refined highly milled wheat 
 and corn. 
 
 No wonder Assistant Secretary Vrooman of the Department of 
 Agriculture declared, May, 1917, "The most powerful food lobby 
 ever assembled at the Capitol, is here stimulating press agents 
 and commercial scientists to promote the interests that ramble in 
 human health and that seek by every means in their power to 
 prevent the government's control of the grain elevators and patent 
 flour mills of the country." 
 
 No wonder the Life Extension Institute declared in a bulletin : 
 "Destruction of food is an injury to our country just as positively 
 as destruction of munition or arms, and the commonest and most 
 inexcusable destruction of food is the milling of wheat." 
 
 No wonder Professor Alonzo E. Taylor, Herbert Hoover's 
 assistant in the Food Administration, asserted, "A 76 per cent, 
 flour represents the peak of the curve of utilisation ; the other 24 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 269 
 
 per cent, of the grain would be wasted if consumed by the human 
 being." 
 
 No wonder the millers released for publication this "peak of 
 the curve of utilisation" story to newspapers and magazines. 
 The sophistry of this desperate effort to save patent flour for the 
 multitude is as transparent as it is false. 
 
 In 1889 G. Bunge, professor of physiological chemistry at Yale 
 University, demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of whole 
 wheat bread was 30 per cent. Of course this unabsorbed protein 
 was not utilised, but Bunge also demonstrated that the unabsorbed 
 protein of lentils was 40 per cent., of carrots 39 per cent., of po- 
 tatoes 32 per cent., of cabbage 18 per cent. 
 
 If "the peak of the curve of utilisation" were applied to other 
 food as the millers would have it applied to patent flour, we 
 would not eat lentils, carrots, potatoes or cabbage without refining 
 them as patent flour is refined. 
 
 Bunge also demonstrated that the unabsorbed protein of milk 
 ranges from 7 to 12 per cent., for which reason we should refine 
 milk also before permitting our children to consume it. 
 
 "We must see," declared Bunge, "that the diet of human beings 
 does not lack woody fibre, bran or cellulose. The excessive fear 
 of 'indigestible' foods which prevails among the wealthier classes 
 leads to debility of the intestinal muscular walls." 
 
 Whole wheat contains 2.5 per cent, cellulose. 
 
 "Do not eat cellulose," cry the millers and their scientists. But 
 strawberries contain cellulose to the extent of 2.^ per cent., 
 radishes 2.8 per cent., beans 3.6 per cent., grapes 3.6 per cent., 
 pears 4.3 per cent., raspberries 6.7 per cent., raisins 7 per cent., 
 hazelnuts, almonds, walnuts and hickory nuts between 3 and 7 
 per cent. ; asparagus, canteloupe, watermelon, mushrooms, apples, 
 and celery contain as much cellulose as whole wheat. 
 
 Let us therefore eat none of these foods if we would bask 
 under the shadow of "the peak of the curve of utilisation." 
 
 We must eat no more fruits or vegetables, and particularly 
 must we avoid spinach, and lettuce, if we accept the warnings 
 of men upon whose successful efforts to protect us from cellulose 
 depend their fortunes. 
 
 The scientists know that the ability of the body to absorb 
 
270 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 every atom of the various nutritive elements of any given food 
 does not and cannot determine the value of that food. 
 
 They know that the truck horse, the dairy cow and the beef 
 steer are unable to absorb any more of the wheat, the corn or 
 the oat than is man himself. 
 
 "The peak of the curve of utilisation" suddenly loses its power 
 when they sell cattle feed to live stock men. They know that the 
 unabsorbed per cent, of grain foods is so heavy in the case of 
 animals that the droppings of a single steer are sufficient to sustain 
 a hog. 
 
 They know that the United States Government recommends to 
 farmers the raising of hogs in this manner as an economy. They 
 tell us that even a j6 per cent, flour will not keep indefinitely and 
 that the loss through decomposition would greatly exceed the 
 gain secured by milling all of the wheat. 
 
 Again, as we have seen and as we shall continue to see, they 
 lie, but all commercial lies will reveal themselves to our children 
 when their chicken feeding experiments are conducted in the 
 schools. 
 
 § 84 — THE AWAKENING OF THE TEACHER 
 
 Through the awakening of the teacher the children will learn 
 why gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins ; why all nature is 
 conspiring to teach them the folly of trespass against the nat- 
 ural law in respect to food; why there is something erroneous 
 about the popular conception of gluttony when it is looked upon 
 as the act by which an African entering a watermelon-eating 
 contest succeeds in so distending himself with watermelon that 
 he can't walk. 
 
 They will learn that gluttony is the deliberate and wilful act 
 based on ignorance, indifference, or sloth, whereby an otherwise 
 rational human creature refuses in his selection of food to 
 recognise the fact that the laws of nutrition which apply to the 
 health and success of the stock farm also apply to him, by reason 
 of which he thoughtlessly eats and causes his children to eat 
 things he would not feed to poultry, horses, cattle, sheep or hogs. 
 
 They will learn that it is quite impossible as a regular daily 
 
PIOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 271 
 
 occupation to eat too much of the right kind of food ; that the 
 right kind of food nourishes and invigorates; that the wrong 
 kind of food tears down ; that true invigo ration is reposeful and 
 normal, and is never tempted to excess. 
 
 In recalling the experiences of the Kronprinz Welhelm poison 
 squad they will contrast the facts developed by feeding 500 men 
 throughout an enforced experience that endured for 255 days with 
 the nonsense of the short-time nutritional experiments such as 
 those conducted in commercial laboratories and by the referee 
 board, in which after a few short weeks' diet on some one sus- 
 pected food or food adjunct a whitewashing report, which means 
 nothing, is given to the world. 
 
 They will grasp the fact that at the end of 150 days a clean 
 bill of health could have been given to the food of the sailors of 
 the Kronprinz Wilhelm, thereby reducing that now classic episode 
 to a resultless short term "scientific" experiment. 
 
 They will grasp the fact that the ordeal suffered by the Ger- 
 man sailors went beyond the 150-day limit, and that even if it had 
 ended at the termination of 200 days a complete whitewash of 
 the food of the men, while still possible under the so-called scien- 
 tific methods usually employed, might have had some curious 
 doubts to explain away. 
 
 They will grasp the fact that at the end of 255 days there was 
 no further room for doubt. 
 
 When school children begin, as a matter of classroom duty, to 
 look into their own mouths the facts concerning their teeth will be 
 correlated with their own chicken- feeding experiments and inter- 
 preted to the physical betterment of the nation. 
 
 § 85 — MORE TESTIMONY 
 
 The natural bond between the chicken feeding experiment of 
 the school children and the school children's teeth is not difficult 
 to locate. 
 
 Dr. Louis Goldstein, New York City, says: 
 
 "After examining the teeth of not less than 400 school children 
 in my home neighbourhood here in the Bronx I have yet to see 
 
272 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 a perfect set of six-year molars (first four permanent teeth to ap- 
 pear in childhood). These teeth in nearly every instance were 
 entirely decayed. I have never observed a perfect set of teeth in 
 any American child and have but one adult patient showing ex- 
 tremely good teeth. She is a young woman." 
 
 Dr. Burtice E. Lawton, New York City, declares : "Our faulty 
 teeth are undoubtedly the result of an impoverished diet. We see 
 many defective teeth among those in the best walks of life. 
 Heredity does not seem to greatly increase the condition, for 
 at present I have a patient undergoing treatment — a girl — who is 
 the child of strong, robust parents. 
 
 "For the past three years I have observed her teeth on an 
 average of once a month. Her teeth have virtually been starved 
 and are suffering from the absence of a sufficient quantity of lime 
 salts. Had she been fed on good, old-fashioned whole grain 
 breads and breakfast foods when a youngster she would not be 
 compelled to come under my care now." 
 
 Dr. E. A. Crostic, New York City, declares: "No one in 
 New York City is eating the proper food these days. Foreigners 
 who come here with a history of natural foods behind them pos- 
 sess solid tissues. 
 
 "Thirty years ago when the occasion arose people could sit in 
 a dentist chair and have several teeth extracted without wincing. 
 To-day, so lacking in nerves, energy and vitality are our women, 
 that almost any of them after the ordeal of one or two extractions 
 is on the verge of collapse." 
 
 Dr. Robert W. Taggert, New York City, declares : "The six- 
 year molars are decayed and in many cases completely gone by the 
 time the child attains the age of seven or eight years. It is almost 
 impossible to save these teeth in any instance. 
 
 "German parents, who grew up on the whole wheat and rye 
 bread of their native land, prior to the introduction of refined 
 bread, have better teeth than their children." 
 
 Dr. Samuel C. Newman, New York City, declares: "You can- 
 not beat the Italians for good teeth. They rarely have more than 
 one or two teeth missing, the others being perfect and as hard as 
 rocks. To drill into their hard tooth substance means to dull burr 
 after burr in the attempt. 
 
 "Among the city children of my locality I find soft and sensi- 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 273 
 
 live teeth. The six-year molars are usually gone and in some 
 instances I have observed that they do not last longer than six 
 months after their eruption." 
 
 Dr. I. H. Knopf, New York City, declares : "The Italians, who 
 do not eat dainty food, have fine teeth. This fact is significant." 
 
 Dr. Anton J. Haecker, New York City, declares : "Twenty- 
 five years ago I had the opportunity of examining the teeth of 
 the school children of Worms, Germany; 250 families, existing 
 entirely on whole grain and vegetable foods, were living within a 
 school district at that time. 
 
 "I could pick out the children of these families from among the 
 others readily for the reason that their cheeks were rosy and they 
 were the picture of health. The fine condition of their teeth as 
 compared with the others was little short of amazing. 
 
 "Their diet consisted exclusively of whole grain bread, vege- 
 tables and fruit. The inhabitants of the famous Black Forest 
 district of Germany and the lumbermen of the Vogelsburg moun- 
 tains have wonderful teeth and are in rugged health. 
 
 "On Sunday quite often one pound of meat must suffice for 
 the appetite of eight people, the main foods being black bread, 
 potatoes and rye flour soups." 
 
 Dr. W. E. Andrews, New York City, declares: "The teeth 
 of Slavs, Bulgars, Russians, and Poles are ordinarily perfect. I 
 have lately seen the grinders of an old Slav, 61 years of age, who 
 works in a nearby coal yard. Not a tooth was missing. His 
 childhood diet of black bread and fish had given him an inde- 
 structible tooth structure." 
 
 Dr. C. R. Kelly, New York City, declares: "Periods of dis- 
 ease in children marked for general nutritional disturbances in 
 which tooth nourishment is for a time completely shut off leave 
 their traces like sign-posts on developing teeth." 
 
 Dr. Charles A. Dubois, New York City, declares : "The elimina- 
 tion of starch and sugary foods, including candies and syrups, 
 from the diet is essential to the treatment of pyorrhea. There is 
 no such thing as local tooth disease. The condition that leads to 
 decay is always systemic." 
 
 Dr. F. A. Sterling, New York City, declares: "Natives of 
 Africa whom I have examined have possessed teeth in perfect 
 condition, due entirely to their living on coarse, natural foods. 
 
274 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 I have observed that the nearer people are to primitive nature the 
 better are their teeth. Savages all have good teeth. The coloured 
 race, particularly those living on whole corn meal and the un- 
 refined sugar cane diet of the southern plantations, have good 
 teeth. 
 
 "In one generation, in advancing from the southern corn fields 
 and cane brakes, the teeth of our coloured children become very 
 poor." 
 
 Dr. J. Archambeau, New York City, declares: "The people 
 of the British West Indies (Jamaica), subsist on yams, vegetables, 
 bananas, sugar cane, in abundance, a little salt fish and very little 
 meat. Decayed teeth among these people are very rare. Most 
 of their teeth look as though they were fashioned from ivory. 
 Only poorly nourished people develop pyorrhea. 
 
 "Since the natives of the British West Indies have begun to 
 import American delicacies I have had much fear for the future 
 condition of their teeth." 
 
 § 86 — COURAGE OF SENIOR SURGEON BANKS 
 
 In 19 1 7 the corn flour millers ardently supported the recom- 
 mendation of the Federal food authorities to mix from 15 to 30 
 per cent, of denatured corn flour with 85 or 70 per cent, of 
 denatured wheat flour. 
 
 The millers of denatured wheat flour vigorously opposed these 
 recommendations of their corn rivals and employed chemists to 
 combat them. These two opposing trade interests thus provoked 
 a bitter controversy over the mixing of two products, both de- 
 natured, both of them used on an ever-increasing scale. 
 
 Into this controversy crept no hint of the warnings of the 
 United States Public Health Service and the Life Extension In- 
 stitute. 
 
 Testifying for the millers, Robert M. French of the French- 
 Pancose Laboratory employed by the New York Produce Ex- 
 change, went before the Senate and House Committees on Agri- 
 culture, telling them corn and wheat ought not to be mixed; 
 that whole wheat would not keep ; that whole corn meal would not 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 275 
 
 keep, and that all the advantages obtained by eating the whole 
 grain would therefore be offset by losses due to spoiling. 
 
 Finally the campaign of the millers of denatured flour to 
 force their standards upon the army, navy and civilian populations 
 of the United States became so scandalous that Senior Surgeon 
 Charles E. Banks of the United States Public Health Service is- 
 sued a statement which, notwithstanding its withering force, has 
 been consistently disregarded by all American authorities. 
 
 Undaunted by the war emergency pretexts which ever tend to 
 silence even the voices of outspoken men, Dr. Banks courageously 
 and valiantly said : 
 
 "I read with considerable amazement but not with surprise the 
 statement made by Robert M. French, a chemist in the employ 
 of the Produce Exchange, evolving another of the various forms 
 or THROWING A SCARE into the public mind lately adopted 
 by the patent flour interests. 
 
 i "French says, 'If the quacks and jingoes who preach whole 
 wheat flour were to have their way bread of any kind would be- 
 come a rarity/ 
 
 ! "This is his special form of scare. Another scare recently ap- 
 pearing in the Northwestern MUler, a journal devoted to the 
 interests of patent flour manufacturers, amounts in effect to the 
 statement that whole wheat flour will produce typhus fever. 
 
 "Again, a large miller in a public interview threw another scare 
 into the people by declaring regretfully that he was afraid if whole 
 wheat were used for bread it might cause dyspepsia. 
 
 "Still another contemptible insinuation published in a flour 
 trade journal was that the Belgians were starving because they 
 could only get whole wheat bread — contemptible, I say, because 
 this sorely stricken people can scarcely obtain anything to eat, 
 and their tragedy is being exploited to frighten the American 
 public into swallowing henceforth the only material the millers 
 intend to make, unless compelled to do otherwise, a starch flour — 
 just starch and nothing else of consequence. 
 
 "The present milling percentage reached in producing this 
 patent flour does not exceed 75 per cent, of the grain, thus dis- 
 carding an entire quarter of the crop as a tribute to the white 
 flour fetich. This quarter of the crop, containing the rich ele- 
 ments of phosphorus, potassium, calcium, iron and the other 
 
276 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 mineral salts and vitamines of the grain, is sold by the millers 
 as 'feed' for animals. The tissue-building elements of the grain 
 thus go to the animals while the millers sell for human consump- 
 tion the starch as flour. 
 
 "It is not necessary to confuse the lay public with the physio- 
 chemics of the digestion of starch except to say that starch is not 
 an element of the body and to get anything out of starch for the 
 body it must be converted into something else. 
 
 "The end result is what is the matter with the American people 
 to-day, physically forty inches around the waist at the age of 
 forty and so on, an inch for every year, a puff for each eye, and a 
 bag for each cheek. The present milling methods are only thirty- 
 eight years old and were devised for mechanical reasons solely 
 because the old stone grinding was too slow. There was nothing 
 of a dietetic or hygienic character which demanded this improved 
 roller process to take care of the rapidly increasing size of our 
 crops. 
 
 "Not content with this new process, which simply got out the 
 starch more readily, the millers later invented an artificial bleach- 
 ing process for the purpose of further refining the already deathly 
 pallor of their product. This is refinement run mad and the house- 
 wives of America have been led through ignorance to believe that 
 the whiter the flour the better or purer the product. 
 
 "A pale, anaemic generation of people has grown up under its 
 continued use, as any medical man can testify who has had ex- 
 tended opportunities to examine hundreds and thousands of 
 American boys physically, comparing them with the youths of the 
 nations of Europe who have a whole grain diet. 
 
 "Our forefathers ate whole wheat bread for nearly three 
 centuries, and if the absurd shrieks of the patent flour prophets of 
 disaster were worth controversy it would only be to say that our 
 hardy ancestors, men of brawn and vigour, who knew nothing of 
 the bled-white wheat flour sold to-day, ought to have starved or 
 died of typhus fever, and the lucky survivors should have built 
 a museum to exhibit the last loaf of the old, deadly bread for their 
 descendants to gaze upon. 
 
 "These athletic grandsires of ours who got the elements from 
 the wheat which produce muscle, blood, bone, and nerve tissue, 
 enabling them to do pioneer work and to live to old age, might 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH % 
 
 i i 
 
 well ask the starch contingents what sort of tissue starch makes, 
 advising them that if starch has any advantage in this line it 
 would be well to present evidence of its superiority instead of 
 abusing the champions of whole wheat as quacks. 
 
 "These patent flour people are not quacks. They are rather 
 apostles of the doctrine of frightfulness, and if they are success- 
 ful in forcing the American public to live on denatured cereals, 
 America will eventually become a race of physical degenerates." 
 
 § 87 THE TRADE CHALLENGES TRADE LIES 
 
 Dr. Banks thundered in vain. At Hotel Sherman, Chicago, 
 May, 191 7, the American Master Bakers, at a convention assailed 
 all proposals to mill a larger percentage of whole wheat. They 
 went so far as to send a message to Herbert C. Hoover, disap- 
 proving of any official action to compel the milling of a higher per- 
 centage than 81. 
 
 At the convention Solomon Westerfeld, vice-president of the 
 New York Retail Grocers' Association declared : "The American 
 stomach will not stand whole wheat bread. " 
 
 The convention then passed resolutions declaring, "Whole 
 wheat will not keep ; it spoils." Yet during the four years pre- 
 ceding that extraordinary resolution the quantity of whole wheat 
 bread baked weekly in New York City and Brooklyn had in- 
 creased to 50,000 loaves. 
 
 The American stomach not only stood this whole wheat but 
 the whole wheat did not spoil. 
 
 The irony of all these sordid, selfish and unpatriotic protests 
 against the physical welfare of the American people is disclosed 
 when we learn that while the millers were lobbying not only in 
 Washington, but all over the country, in their desperate efforts 
 to perpetuate the old profitable system, the Washburn-Crosby 
 Company were circulating hundreds of thousands of booklets, 
 advertising the merits of its Wheat- A-Laxa Whole Wheat Flour, 
 containing 100 per cent, of the wheat. 
 
 As if to rebuke the hypocrisy of the millers, the Washburn- 
 Crosby Company declares: "Our whole wheat flour fulfils to 
 
278 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 the letter the requirements of the United States Health authori- 
 ties. Being the whole of the wheat it contains all the life-sus- 
 taining elements of wheat in sufficient amounts to supply the pro- 
 portion of the daily requirements of the body in readily di- 
 gestible form. 
 
 "It represents what our great instinctive food and dietetic 
 experts through all ages have affirmed — that whole wheat flour 
 is a complete food for the human body." 
 
 Here was another kind of commercial voice crying in the wil- 
 derness, but America's food authorities could not hear it. 
 
 The Washburn-Crosby Company by its own confession does not 
 believe that whole wheat bread killed Belgians, as reported by 
 Herbert Hoover, or that American stomachs will not stand wholQ 
 wheat, or that whole wheat produces typhus fever, dyspepsia, 
 and will not keep. 
 
 At the same hour W. K. Kellogg, advertising "Krumbles," 
 made of ioo per cent, whole wheat, published the following ad- 
 vertisement : 
 
 "Krumbles makes sturdy boys because it is made of the whole 
 of the durum wheat with all its mineral salts, the thing that 
 doctors say all children need." 
 
 The Shredded W T heat Company declared at the same time that 
 whole wheat was an ideal food, easily digested, containing all the 
 salts necessary to the health of the human body. 
 
 The Postum Cereal Company, manufacturing Grape Nuts, 
 has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to exploit what it 
 calls a whole wheat product. 
 
 The H-O Company, manufacturing thousands of tons of 
 "Force," made of whole wheat, denies that whole wheat will kill 
 Belgians, produce typhus fever, or cause dyspepsia. 
 
 The Bennett Biscuit Company, manufacturing Wheatsworth 
 Biscuits, made of whole wheat, stands like another tower of 
 might against the selfishness of industries whose hearts remain 
 hard even under the lamentations of war. 
 
 The Pillsbury Company, putting one of its by-products into 
 fancy packages, and spreading the truth concerning its medicinal 
 qualities through the advertising pages of newspapers, magazines 
 and medical journals, contradicts sweepingly all the statements 
 of the commercial scientists and flour millers, whose treacherous 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES TRUTH 279 
 
 and flimsy arguments, based on stubborn disregard of truth, 
 stand forever against them as an indictment and a conviction. 
 
 § 88 — CALCUTTA AND THE RICE PLAGUE 
 
 As if to contribute to the confusion of America's war efforts 
 to solve the bread problem of her allies as well as her own, the 
 Indian Medical Gazette, published in Calcutta, first quarter 191 7, 
 in an editorial, "The War and Burmah Rice," declared that pol- 
 ished rice, the counterpart of patent wheat flour and corn flour, 
 is not fit to eat. 
 
 "Dr. T. F. Pedley, health officer of Rangoon, points out that 
 the craze for polished rice (deprived of its germ and mineral 
 cells) is a pernicious mistake. The more highly polished the 
 rice the less valuable it is as a human food," asserts the Indian 
 authority. 
 
 "Pedley shows that the brightly polished white rice sold in 
 grocers' shops in England, is neither nutritious nor tasty, and that 
 this accounts for the very poor opinion entertained by English 
 people of the value of rice as a food. 
 
 "Pedley advocates the pushing in the home markets of nat- 
 ural whole Burmah rice, which is both tasty and nutritious. 
 
 "The fancy trade names Tatna,' 'Bassein,' 'Carolina/ have no 
 geographical significance. They merely designate the whiter, 
 more tasteless, more unnutritious and higher priced rice. 
 
 "In Bengal bazaars much Rangoon rice is sold. It is gener- 
 ally whiter than the home-grown Burmah rice made in the Denkhi, 
 but still not the highly polished stuff sold at high prices in Eu- 
 rope. 
 
 "In Calcutta it is only too clear to judge by the pernicious 
 smoke chimneys that rice mills are multiplying in the land, and 
 are doubtless paying concerns, but the public should be taught 
 that polished white rice is inferior in nutritive value to the 
 rougher reddish or brownish rice, unpolished. 
 
 "Whole brown rice is as superior to polished rice as was the 
 old-fashioned oatmeal made by the local village miller, to the 
 oat food with fancy names now sold in every shop. 
 
2S0 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 "This unnutritious polished white rice is the main cause of 
 malnutrition among the rice eaters of the East." 
 
 While America stood in bewilderment over her bread policy, 
 from every quarter of the globe came these significant contri- 
 butions to the literature of decay and death now being compiled 
 by millers the world over. 
 
 The governments of many nations at war filed away the truth, 
 and the commercial interests, fattening on the anemia of the 
 world, kept it filed away. 
 
 Food commissioners, administrators, directors, bureau chiefs, 
 secretaries and under-secretaries had no word to say on the sub- 
 ject except that they were afraid to kill people by feeding them 
 with food as it came from the hands of God. 
 
 None of them seemed to believe that God might be trusted in 
 His scheme of providing for the nourishment of the world. But 
 of this they were sure; the boards of directors, the mill pro- 
 prietors, the stock owning banks and the advertising agencies 
 knew more about the laws of nutrition than the Creator who 
 formulated them. Yet July 27th, 191 7, Senator Borah publicly re- 
 ferred to God as if God really had existence, saying : "This is a 
 time for prayer." 
 
 It would be prayer indeed that would smite the creatures who, 
 sending from their advertising agencies plates and matrices to 
 every country newspaper in the United States, urge the people 
 not to abandon their white flour diet. 
 
 These corrupting lies are as contemptible as the lie which 
 informed the world that whole wheat bread killed a thou- 
 sand Belgians. 
 
 A war of sacrifice should include in its plans the wiping out 
 of special privileges at home. These evils may pay huge divi- 
 dends to a few, but they perpetuate a cold, bloodless, conscience- 
 less scheme of presumption which collects tribute from the help- 
 less masses. 
 
 § 89 — A PARADOX 
 
 As if to laugh at the facts, the February, 1918, number of the 
 Forecast came out with a repetition of the statement of Herbert 
 
HOW "BUSINESS" MUZZLES THUTH 281 
 
 Hoover, discouraging the use of whole grain bread because he 
 believed that "the whole grain bread fed by the Belgian Relief to 
 the unhappy subjects of King Albert killed at least a thousand 
 of them." 
 
 This story, which refused to die, followed closely on the heels 
 of a statement published by Professor Alonzo E. Taylor over a 
 preface written by Herbert Hoover himself, urging the use of 
 whole grain foods because they contain substances which when 
 not present bring about serious conditions of malnutrition re- 
 sulting in death. 
 
 This strange paradox disclosed a condition of official vague- 
 ness in the Food Administration, where sharply outlined truth 
 alone should have existed. 
 
 "Much more mineral matter is contained in grain offal than 
 in patent flour," says the Hoover-Taylor statement. "Individu- 
 als who prefer bread made of patent Hour must therefore secure 
 their mineral salts from fruits and vegetables, and this is entirely 
 practicable. If, however, it is not possible to secure fruits and 
 vegetables then the diet must contain Hour made of the whole 
 grain in order to obtain the necessary mineral matter. 
 
 "Cereals contain the water soluble vitamine in the outer layers, 
 and it is therefore not present in patent Hour, but is present in 
 whole wheat Hour." 
 
 The authorities at Washington knew according to the most 
 reputable authorities that at the outbreak of the war 2 per cent, 
 of the people of the United States owned 60 per cent, of the 
 wealth; 33 per cent, of the people — the middle class — owned 35 
 per cent., and the remaining 65 per cent, of the people owned 
 5 per cent, of the wealth. 
 
 They knew that war activities had sharply accentuated this 
 concentration of wealth and further reduced the holdings of the 
 many whose war incomes, although inflated, did not keep pace 
 with the rapidly advancing prices of foodstuffs. 
 
 They knew that the immigration commission which reported 
 in 1909 upon the incomes of nearly 16,000 families whose bread 
 winners were engaged in industrial pursuits found the incomes 
 of 64 per cent, of them below $750 a year, and the incomes of 
 31 per cent, below $500 a year, the families averaging 5.6 mem- 
 bers each. 
 
282 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Even then 8,000,000 women were industrially employed in 
 America, two-thirds of them receiving less than' $8 and nearly 
 one-half receiving less than $6 a week. 
 
 Two million of these women were described as "adrift" from 
 home. They were entirely self-supporting. 
 
 Five million, four hundred thousand women who lived at home 
 contributed largely to the support of parents and other depend- 
 ents by pouring their earnings into the family purse. 
 
 A hundred authorities had told us in the most emphatic terms 
 of the necessity of putting into the bodies of these people the 
 important substances withdrawn from so much of their food. 
 
 Professor Taylor himself says that 55 per cent, of their food 
 consists of bread, and by that he means denatured bread. 
 
 As if to accentuate these truths as a preparation for Amer- 
 ica's entry into the war, the Association of American Physicians 
 met at Washington, May, 19 16, with Dr. Henry Sewell of Den- 
 ver in the chair. 
 
 At that convention, the 31st, Dr. E. J. Wood of Wilmington, 
 N. C, presented long neglected evidence to show the deadliness 
 of the deficiency diseases which he declared have been far more 
 specific than is thought. 
 
 The theory that the people were getting their offsetting min- 
 erals and vitamines from fruits and vegetables had long been 
 battered down, but as a theory it still persisted in high places, as 
 in the Food Administration. 
 
 Dr. Wood declared: "Refined corn meal, polished rice and 
 patent flour are deadly foods. We have proved this by experi- 
 ments in which we provoked outbreaks of disease by feeding 
 highly milled meal to our victims, and in every instance promptly 
 correcting the disease by feeding whole meal." 
 
 Dr. Alfred S. Hess at the same convention declared: 
 "Whereas Dr. Wood has found the germ of corn, always bolted 
 out in making refined corn meal, to be a sure cure for deficiency 
 diseases, I have found the wheat germ always bolted out in 
 making white flour, a sure cure for malnutrition in infants." 
 
 Yes, confusion rests upon the multitudes. Their scientific 
 leaders, who have no political, state or federal authority, seek 
 to lead them out of their perils. Their scientific leaders who do 
 possess authority are strangely content to let them rest where 
 thev arQ 
 
SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE 
 USE OF ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 
 
SEVEN: WHY FAMINE FOLLOWS THE USE OF 
 ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 
 
 § 90 OLD BROWN SUGAR 
 
 Old men and women consume little or no sugar. Babies that 
 live consume very little. Sugar-eating infants do not survive. 
 Men who drink alcoholic beverages rarely eat sugar. The vic- 
 tims of diabetes avoid sugar. 
 
 Thus a large element of our population consumes sugar spar- 
 ingly or not at all. In spite of this the Department of Com- 
 merce shows the average consumption of cane sugar in the 
 United States for the year ending June 30, 191 7, was eighty-one 
 pounds for every man, woman and child. 
 
 These figures covered cane sugar only. Another sugar de- 
 bauch in the form of glucose candies, corn syrup and table syrup 
 made of glucose and refiners' syrup was not included. 
 
 Combining the various forms of refined sugar and eliminat- 
 ing infants, the aged, whiskey drinkers and invalids, the aver- 
 age annual consumption of refined sugars in the United States is 
 at least one hundred and fifty pounds per person. 
 
 The figures of the Department of Commerce show that in 
 Germany the consumption is sixteen pounds, in France twenty- 
 eight pounds and' in Great Britain thirty pounds. America has 
 become a nation of refined sugar hogs. 
 
 What are the facts concerning the effects of excess sugars in 
 the diet, and what does such excess mean, in terms of degenera- 
 tion, to the future of this country? 
 
 Sugar, as now manufactured, yields only heat to the body. 
 Sugar is "purified" fuel burned in the tissues without contribut- 
 ing any of the salts, vitamines, biochemic reactions, building or 
 repair material indispensable to health. 
 
 The end products of its combustion are acids. When it is con- 
 sidered that the American people already consume in their re- 
 fined breadstuffs, breakfast foods and meats, enormous quanti- 
 
 "285 
 
286 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ties of acid-producing foods, the sugar bombardment becomes 
 threatening in the extreme. 
 
 I use the word ''bombardment" because it expresses the facts 
 exactly. In our excessive consumption of refined foods we are 
 bombarding the entire nation's defence against disease ; and re- 
 fined sugar, heaviest of the artillery, is rapidly breaking down our 
 resistance against these great enemies of the human family, 
 anemia, tuberculosis, pneumonia, heart disease and diabetes. 
 
 In the days when we were eating unrefined grain products 
 and unrefined sugars we ate more vegetables, fruits and greens, 
 from all of which are obtained the basic or alkaline substances 
 needed by the internal secretions. These alkaline substances keep 
 the blood and other body fluids in the state of normal alkalinity 
 essential to health. 
 
 Then appeared our first grave dietetic error almost simul- 
 taneously with the introduction of highly milled grains, the ab- 
 ncrmal starch content of which must be converted in the body 
 into sugar before it can be utilised. The body makes its own 
 sugar, all it can use, from non-sugar foods and even though de- 
 prived of every form of commercial sugar, man, woman or child 
 can and does obtain all the fruit, vegetable, and cereal sugars 
 necessary to health and life. 
 
 Sugar became popular because, as our mothers and grand- 
 mothers knew it, there was good reason for using it in gen- 
 erous quantities. Not only was it far more flavourful but in- 
 comparably more nutritious than the refined products of mod- 
 ern times, upon which we are gorging ourselves at the expense 
 of teeth, blood, bone and tissue. 
 
 Twenty-five years ago old-fashioned brown sugar, manufac- 
 tured on the sugar cane plantation, was in common use. Such 
 sugar possessed not only all the sweetness of the cane but also 
 its aromatic and nutritive substances including the mineral salts 
 no longer present. 
 
 Maple sugar can be refined until it, too, is as white and flavour- 
 less as granulated cane sugar, beet sugar, glucose or corn syrup. 
 
 The delicious flavour of maple sugar is due to the presence 
 of "impurities" derived from the sap of the maple tree. The 
 delicious flavour of old-fashioned brown sugar is due to the 
 presence of "impurities" derived from the juice of the can#* 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 28? 
 
 The elimination of these impurities yields a colourless, but sweet 
 product. 
 
 To-day we do not know whether our refined sugar is derived 
 from the honey reed, now known as the sugar cane, or from a 
 beet root. All we know is that it is sweet. Whence it comes,, 
 what curious processes it passes through on the way, how it af- 
 fects the body when it arrives, are questions never asked. 
 
 In the old days when Louisiana was producing old-fashioned 
 brown sugar and when a clean, wholesome, old-fashioned brown 
 sugar was manufactured in the West Indies, the refiners, grasp- 
 ing at ways and means of earning greater profits, conceived the 
 idea that if they could prejudice the public against brown sugar 
 nobody would buy it. 
 
 So they started to drive out of the American market all the 
 old-fashioned brown sugar then made on the cane plantations. 
 
 My work has made me unhappily familiar with many food 
 crimes which, by their very nature, cannot be punished. This 
 crime was literally a conspiracy against the human race, and its 
 consequences are now to be reckoned with although no body 
 of laws exists with which to meet them. 
 
 The refiners knew if they could prejudice the people against 
 the use of brown sugar, thus destroying the market for it, they 
 could then buy it up, refine it, and control its distribution, thus 
 securing a profit on every pound of the raw material that every 
 planter produced. 
 
 In the old days the manufacturer of brown sugar shipped 
 his product direct to market. The refiners did not touch it on 
 the way. Of course they were unable to collect tribute from 
 such a system. 
 
 To get control so that all the producers would have to send their 
 raw sugar through the refiners' hands it was necessary to kill 
 off the demand for brown sugar. To kill off the demand it was 
 necessary to disgust the people with all brown sugar so that their 
 appetite for it might be destroyed. 
 
 To accomplish this they inaugurated one of the most violent 
 advertising campaigns ever witnessed in America. In 1898 they 
 were ready to "educate" the public and educate it they did. 
 
288 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 91 — NEW WHITE SUGAR 
 
 The advertisements of the brown sugar exterminators con- 
 sisted obviously of an attack upon old-fashioned brown sugar. 
 Each advertisement was accompanied by a picture said to be 
 an enlarged photograph of a dreadful looking animal described 
 as a cross between a louse and a lizard. 
 
 To prove such a creature lived in all brown sugar they went to 
 Dublin and dug up a commercial chemist who, like many other 
 commercial chemists now earning fat fees by furnishing "sci- 
 entific" support for many food indecencies, was willing to cer- 
 tify, for a consideration, that he had found this louse-lizard- 
 monster in brown sugar. 
 
 One of the advertisements, which I quote word for word from 
 the Congressional Record, read as follows: 
 
 "Professor Cameron, public analyst of the City of Dublin, who 
 has examined samples of raw sugar, states that they contain 
 great numbers of disgusting insects which produce a disgusting 
 disease." 
 
 The advertisers did not say what disease. It was enough for 
 their purpose to say it was a disgusting disease. They "knew 
 they were lying but the American public, long fed on advertising 
 lies, swallowed the statement and asked no questions. 
 
 "The shape of these disgusting insects," the advertisement 
 continued, "is very accurately shown in the accompanying photo- 
 graphs magnified two hundred diameters. It is a formidably 
 organised, exceedingly lively and decidedly ugly little animal. 
 From its oval-shaped body stretches forth a proboscis terminat- 
 ing in a kind of scissors with which it seizes upon its food. Its 
 organs of locomotion consist of eight legs, each jointed and 
 finished at its extremity with a hook. 
 
 "The number of these creatures found in raw sugar is some- 
 times exceedingly great and in no instance is raw sugar quite free 
 from either the insects or their eggs. Brown sugar should 
 never be used." 
 
 Now comes the devil from behind the stump, and here is 
 what the devil said through the medium of this advertisement. 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 
 
 "It is fortunate, however, to note that these terrible creatures 
 do not occur in refined sugar of any quality. Use only refined 
 sugar." 
 
 Our mothers and grandmothers were horrified. Wherever 
 they looked they found a picture of the disgusting louse-lizard- 
 monster. They saw the dreadful creature in all their delicious 
 desserts and dainties. Their fruit cakes, muffins, cookies, brown 
 bread, taffies, candies, hard sauces and other good things sud- 
 denly appeared before them as horrible sepulchres in which re- 
 posed the dead bodies of vermin. 
 
 One after another the advertisements appeared. The Dublin 
 professor became famous and the American public writhed in 
 disgust. 
 
 The brown sugar industry, as far as the housewife was con- 
 cerned, was completely destroyed. 
 
 Wholesale bakers' supply houses, unknown to the housewife, 
 continued to handle the stuff in carload lots and the retail bak- 
 ers fed it, without arousing their suspicion, to the poor crea- 
 tures who wouldn't dream of using it in any home-made prod- 
 uct. 
 
 The poor plantation owner who made brown sugar just as 
 maple sugar is made to-day, found his market closed to him. 
 His only means of disposing of his raw sugar was to sell it to 
 the refiner. This is what the refiner wanted and this is what 
 he got. 
 
 Just as the farmer used to send his grain to the local grist 
 mill but was gradually forced to ship it to the centralised roller 
 mills, thereby losing control of his product and furnishing enor- 
 mous profits to a few highly organised groups of money makers, 
 so also the planter found it necessary to do business with a 
 few monopolists or quit. 
 
 Through the louse-lizard-monster the American people have 
 been deprived of a luxury which there seems to be no hope of 
 restoring to them unless, grimly determined to act for them- 
 selves, they decide to discourage the use of refined sugars of 
 every kind and thus make it necessary for the sugar interests to 
 give them back the old-fashioned product so ruthlessly de- 
 stroyed. 
 
 In the meantime they must remember that the quantity of 
 
290 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 sugar which the human body can utilise is limited, although 
 they are constantly encouraged to eat more sugar and still more 
 sugar on the ground that it provides the body with heat. 
 
 Foods are neither heating nor cooling. No food has the 
 power of raising the temperature of the body to a point higher 
 than tEe normal constant, 98.4 degrees Fahrenheit. No foods 
 are cooling in the sense that they can reduce the temperature 
 of the body to a point lower than this same normal constant. 
 
 Sugars become heat producers only when the body's ma- 
 chinery of heat control breaks down. The result of such break- 
 down is fever. In fever the body literally burns up. Not only 
 are the sugars of the body burned but its very tissues are burned. 
 
 The warmth so necessary to life is produced by a slow form 
 of oxidation supported by the foods we eat. 
 
 In breathing we take large quantities of oxygen from the 
 air through our lungs, provided the hemoglobin, or iron contain- 
 ing substance of the blood, is present in normal amount. 
 
 Hemoglobin carries oxygen to the tissues where it is needed 
 and carries the waste product, carbon dioxide, away. The slow 
 evolution of heat which accompanies this process is described 
 as the body temperature. 
 
 In disease the oxidation or burning process frequently pro- 
 ceeds faster than in health. So delicately adjusted is this burn- 
 ing process that a slight variation of four or five degrees either 
 way is often sufficient to cause death. 
 
 It has been conclusively established that the circulating blood 
 cannot carry for the needs of this burning process any sugar 
 in excess of one-tenth of one per cent, of the total volume of 
 blood. To get more than this limited quantity of sugar into 
 the blood circulation vital organs must first break down. 
 
 We simply cannot utilise more sugar than this fixed limit per- 
 mits, for which reason the excess sugar now consumed consti- 
 tutes one of our biggest waste problems. 
 
 Yet, always are we urged to consume more sugar not, as is 
 quite apparent, for the good of our health but for the benefit of 
 the sugar industry. 
 
 There is an organ in the body called the pancreas which in 
 health sets up a barrier against the entrance into the blood of 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 291 
 
 larger quantities of sugar than the one-tenth of one per cent, 
 .which the blood can take care of. 
 
 Cramming ourselves with sugar in quantities never before con- 
 sumed by any nation in the history of the world, we are lit- 
 erally overloading the pancreas, and the liver, kidneys, lungs, 
 skin and other glands are whipped into action to dispose of the 
 excess fuel. 
 
 How long it takes for these glands, taxed beyond their strength, 
 to completely break down we do not know. But we do know 
 that sugar gluttony is one of the seven deadly sins because it is 
 a slow form of suicide. 
 
 Scientists have proved that in diseased conditions of the pan- 
 creas, although they do not know how such diseased conditions 
 are established, all excess or waste sugar is eliminated through 
 the kidneys. 
 
 How long the kidneys can stand up under such overloading 
 is not known. But it is known that in America kidney disease 
 in one form or another is constantly on the increase. 
 
 In this respect it is interesting to know that the refined and 
 concentrated sugars do not conduct themselves in the body as 
 other sugars, such, for instance, as honey. In another chapter 
 I shall attempt to show the really wonderful difference between 
 these forms of sugar. 
 
 For the present it is enough to reiterate that we are laying a 
 sugar curse upon the heads of prospective mothers, nursing 
 mothers, infants still unborn, growing children, bread-winners 
 and workers. To lift this curse we must exercise control over 
 our refined sugar appetites, cutting down our consumption until 
 the one hundred and fifty pounds per person per year is reduced 
 to thirty pounds or less. 
 
 Happy was the day that America learned she really could pass 
 safely through a sugarless siege. 
 
 § 92 — SUGAEITIS 
 
 While all America during 191 7 and 1918 was clamoring for 
 sugar and a Senate Committee was busily engaged in probing 
 
293 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 into the conditions responsible for the sugar famine, the De- 
 partment of Health of New York City was preparing a bulletin 
 on the spread of diabetes, a disease in which there is such seri- 
 ous disturbance of nutrition that the body partially or completely 
 loses its ability to make use of sugar in any quantity, however 
 small. 
 
 This disease makes it impossible to utilise starch as well as 
 sugar, for which reason foods that are turned into sugar in the 
 body, such as potatoes, macaroni, white bread, farina, rice and 
 corn-meal, provide no nutrition and are wasted when consumed. 
 
 From the facts set forth the public health officials concluded 
 that diabetes has been coming more and more into prominence 
 in recent years and that during the past ten years the disease has 
 taken its place as a very significant factor in the nation's mor- 
 tality rate. 
 
 Joslin, whose work on the disturbance of sugar nutrition is 
 now accepted as an authority in the United States, declares that 
 we have here not far from 500,000 individuals who either have 
 diabetes now or are destined to have diabetes before they die. 
 
 Commenting on this startling fact the Department of Health 
 of New York City asserts, ''That this is based on something 
 more than guess-work is clear from the careful statistical analy- 
 sis presented by the author." 
 
 The outstanding feature of the alarming situation revealed by 
 Joslin is the fact that these diseases are to a considerable extent 
 offsetting the good effects, such as prolongation of life, which 
 should follow the development of sanitary science in recent 
 years. 
 
 We no longer let our garbage decompose in the public streets. 
 We no longer permit the bodies of dead animals to rot in our 
 back yards. In many communities the cesspool has been abol- 
 ished; water purification plants have been established; the 
 drinking water is treated with alum and then chlorinated so as 
 to prevent the spread of typhoid. We have established quaran- 
 tine restrictions, meat inspection, milk inspection, food inspec- 
 tion and are spending millions of dollars annually in semi-po- 
 litical efforts to safeguard the purity and wholesomeness of our 
 food, our air and our water. 
 
 But, while we are lengthening life by modern sanitation and 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 293 
 
 by saving infants under five years of age who, on account of 
 their low vitality and general weakness, used to die, we are 
 killing off men and women in the early forties with diabetes 
 and obesity. 
 
 Yet — it is now clear that in the development of these diseases 
 our abnormal consumption of refined sugars and refined cereals 
 is responsible. 
 
 Sugar in the forms in which Nature prepares it is an indis- 
 pensable element of diet. 
 
 Because it is soluble it is easily carried by the blood to the 
 muscle that needs it. 
 
 But, as we consume it to-day, sugar is not a natural, but an 
 artificial product. 
 
 With the exception of honey there is no concentrated sugar 
 in Nature. Very dilute sugar exists in ripe fruits and vege- 
 tables, principally in their juices. 
 
 Man has learned the trick of taking this dilute sugar and con- 
 centrating it, although Nature teaches him that he should obtain 
 the sugar he needs almost entirely from his ordinary fruit, vege- 
 table and cereal foods, just as his ancestors did for thousands 
 of years before him and as animals have done since the begin- 
 ning of time. 
 
 Nature provides man with a ferment found in saliva. This 
 ferment converts the starch of potatoes, wheat, corn, rice, oats, 
 beets, carrots and all other starch-containing seeds and roots into 
 sugar. 
 
 By converting corn-starch through chemical treatment into 
 glucose and by refining cane juice and beet juice, man serves 
 notice upon his salivary glands that he has no use for them and 
 shuns the assistance which Nature asks them to render. 
 
 So, to-day, we consume millions of tons of concentrated candy, 
 confections, syrups and sweets of all kinds. The inevitable re- 
 sult is a gradual breaking down of the body's ability to make use 
 not only of concentrated sugar but of any kind of sugar and 
 under the terrific strain the organs of control are finally smashed 
 and in susceptible individuals diseases, born of sugar and starch 
 abuses, are permitted to break through and invade the body. 
 
 It is not astonishing that we now have a half million people in 
 this country condemned to premature death by sugar. 
 
294 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 It is not astonishing that since the abnormal increase in the 
 consumption of sugar the last generation has recorded a fifty 
 per cent, increase in diabetic affections. 
 
 Refined sugar and refined starch have been U-boating the stam- 
 ina of America. 
 
 For a long time they did their work without leaving a trace. 
 Scientists scratched their heads and puzzled over the facts which 
 they did not understand. But, to-day, the nature of sugar and 
 the diseases that flow from its excessive consumption are bet- 
 ter understood. 
 
 There is good reason to believe that honey does not conduct 
 itself in the body like refined cane sugar or beet sugar and it is 
 probable that maple sugar differs in like manner. 
 
 Davidoff observed that honey was tolerated by the diabetic to 
 whom sugar in any other form was poison. Davidoff made 
 this discovery by the merest accident. Yet he so marvelled over 
 it that he reported his findings to the medical fraternity. 
 
 A single instance does not, of course, establish a law. But 
 Davidoff's single instance can be put to the test in a million in- 
 stances and the results of such tests will establish a law. I 
 have had under my observation a diabetic who suffers the keen- 
 est distress if he consumes a single cube of granulated sugar or 
 eats a single slice of white bread. Strangely enough he can 
 consume honey in moderation and whole wheat bread without 
 experiencing any distress. 
 
 Nearly two years have passed since I called to his attention 
 the phenomenon noted by Davidoff. Hesitatingly and with 
 great reluctance he took his first teaspoonful of honey expecting 
 to pay the price for his indulgence. He was amazed to find no 
 reaction. A few days later he repeated the dose and again 
 seemed to enjoy immunity. He tried a teaspoonful of honey 
 every day for a week, at the end of which time he became a 
 little bolder and gradually increased his daily dose of honey until 
 now he is adding to his diet four big teaspoonfuls every day. 
 
 His experience, I believe, while significant only as the ex- 
 perience of a single individual, is so curiously in harmony with 
 the experience of Davidoff that it should serve as an inspira- 
 tion for further study along this line. 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR S95 
 
 § 93— THE HONEY BEE 
 
 The curious indifference of the American people towards 
 honey has cost this country more in dollars, cents, public health 
 and common comfort than can ever be accurately estimated. 
 
 The manufacture of refined sugar in no wise assists in the 
 development of the nation's most important agricultural indus- 
 tries although bee-keeping in the production of honey results in 
 untold riches through pollination of the food farms of the coun- 
 try. 
 
 Neglect of the bee, through over-emphasis of the importance 
 of the cane, beet sugar and glucose industries, has not only re- 
 sulted in the withdrawal from the human family of a sugar food 
 and sweetener of infinitely greater value than refined sugar but 
 it has brought failure to many a fruit district that would other- 
 wise flourish beyond the fondest dreams of the fruit farmer. 
 
 For thousands of years the confections of the world depended 
 upon honey for their very existence. Jacob sent honey as an of- 
 fering to Joseph, the ruler of Egypt, at least three thousand 
 years before the first sugar refinery was built. 
 
 That honey and the honey bee should have been lost sight of 
 in the advance of civilisation constitutes one of the many curious 
 blunders which humanity, while priding itself on its progress, 
 is so prone to commit. 
 
 The bee is destined to benefit generations still unborn but be- 
 fore it can render its greatest service to humanity, humanity 
 must learn to consume honey. 
 
 It is not generally known that in the United States we con- 
 sume only 40,000,000 pounds of comb honey and 120,000,000 
 pounds of extracted honey annually. All this honey is gath- 
 ered by the bee in the form of nectar from the blossoms of 
 white clover, sage, sweet clover, alfalfa, willow herb, raspberry, 
 cotton, golden rod, aster, heartsease, apple, orange, basswood 
 and buckwheat. 
 
 The greatest living authority on honey and the man who has 
 done more to revive the neglected bee-keeping industry of the 
 United States than all others combined, A. I. Root, insinuates 
 
296 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 that the 160,000,000 pounds of honey gathered by the bees of 
 the United States every year represent but one per cent, of the 
 total quantity which the hills, valleys, and fields of America either, 
 can produce or have been producing since the beginning of the 
 world. 
 
 Ninety-nine per cent, of the annual crop, or a total of 15,- 
 840,000,000 pounds, is wasted every year. The enormity of 
 this waste is almost too vast to be grasped by the human mind. 
 
 In gathering this volume of honey, which we could gather 
 if we wanted to, every orchard in the land would be pollinated. | 
 What this pollination would mean in the production of food is 
 almost incredible. 
 
 The Van Rensselaer apple orchard in Medina County, Ohio, 
 tells the whole story which the farmers of America might well 
 heed to their advantage. The Van Rensselaer farm produced 
 on the average five hundred bushels of apples annually until ! 
 its owner trimmed and sprayed his trees and began to keep bees, 
 whereupon the production of the same orchard, with not a single 
 new tree, leaped from five hundred bushels to sixteen thousand ' 
 bushels in a single season. 
 
 Yet not so long ago bees were looked upon by the farmers 
 of the United States as nuisances and many lawsuits have been 
 bitterly prosecuted in order to destroy the so-called pests. 
 
 The farmer did not appreciate what a colony of bees meant 
 to the fruitfulness of his land. But, to-day, the tragedy of bee- ! 
 killing in many sections of the country is looked upon as a ' 
 heinous and deplorable crime against Nature. 
 
 On the Repp Farm in Gloucester County, New Jersey, we 
 have another experience of the bee's benevolence toward man 
 in the production of food. 
 
 This farm is now producing 120,000 bushels of apples. Repp 
 himself declares that so indispensable are bees to the growing | 
 of fruit in this country that fruit growers can afford to pay local 
 bee men at the rate of five dollars a colony merely to have the 
 bees in the orchards during the time the trees are in bloom, let- 
 ting the owners of the bees take them away again at once. 
 
 Neither Van Rensselaer nor Repp are pioneers in the matter 
 of pollinating fruit bloom through the instrumentality of the bee. 
 They did know, however, that the old conflict between bee keep- 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 297 
 
 ers and fruit growers in which the fruit growers swore that the 
 bees injured the bloom, punctured the fruit and interfered with 
 !' the packing, was unfounded. 
 
 They knew that the fruit growers did not understand that 
 they were driving away the very agency necessary for the proper 
 pollination of the fruit bloom when they were fighting the honey 
 bee as a pest. 
 
 In Massachusetts a bee keeper was obliged to remove bees from 
 
 i a whole district on the complaint of fruit growers that they were 
 
 1 a nuisance. Two years, later the fruit growers were glad to 
 
 have the bees come back. Two seasons of fruitless orchards 
 
 had taught them a lesson never to be forgotten. 
 
 Dr. Philips, of the Bureau of Entomology, Washington, ac- 
 tually declares that fruit orchards cannot be planted properly on 
 an extensive scale without maintaining in connection with them 
 numerous colonies of honey bees and he goes so far as to as- 
 sert that bee-keeping adds indirectly more to the resources of 
 the country by flower pollination than by the sale of honey and 
 wax. 
 
 The orange growers of Florida now know what the bee means 
 to their crops. Sweet cherry orchards have jumped from a 
 production of thirteen tons to thirty-nine tons merely through 
 the introduction of a few colonies of bees to the acre. Even 
 the tomato is pollinated by the bee. 
 
 In Massachusetts alone there are now over two thousand colo- 
 nies of bees pollinating cucumbers, squashes, melons and pump- 
 kins. The grape, strawberry, blackberry, raspberry, cranberry, 
 blueberry, gooseberry, currant, plum and pear need the bee. 
 
 In New Zealand it was found that red clover could not be cul-i 
 tivated until honey bees were imported from England. 
 
 Greater demand for honey as a sugar food means more bees. 
 More bees mean more food of every kind. Love of honey is 
 therefore one of the most productive of the forces now engaged 
 in the growing and harvesting of crops ; in the reconstruction of 
 the world itself. 
 
 We shall certainly never have more bees until we find a mar- 
 ket for more honey. Once the people begin to demand honey 
 instead of the substitutes th- df .are offered for honey they will 
 
298 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 set up a system in America from which will flow blessings be- 
 yond price. 
 
 That God made the bee for a purpose is potent to all but as- 
 tigmatic souls. 
 
 § 94 — HONEY 
 
 Honey cannot be adulterated. There is no need to go into 
 the details that justify this sweeping statement. All the efforts 
 of food sophisticators to imitate honey have failed. 
 
 These facts were settled for all time in a Federal District 
 Court, Philadelphia, November 20th to 25th, 191 3. The bee itself 
 was the chief witness against the honey fraud prosecuted by 
 the government and the records of the trial are indeed consoling 
 in that they have demonstrated that with all man's skill and all 
 the tricks of his laboratories he cannot successfully imitate God. 
 
 Space does not permit description here of how the ordinary 
 female bee on a diet of special food is developed into a true 
 queen bee with a perfect body and perfect organs suggesting 
 what can be done for the average child if properly nourished 
 before its birth and properly fed thereafter. 
 
 For the present our purposes are served if we learn and apply 
 one fact in connection with our purchase of honey. 
 
 The modern bee keeper extracts honey from the comb in a 
 rapidly whirling machine. Extracted honey is cheaper than 
 comb honey for the reason that the empty combs can be used 
 over and over again. 
 
 It takes from five to ten pounds of honey to make a pound of 
 wax and when the bees are constantly required to rebuild their 
 cells they lose just that much energy which ordinarily would be 
 spent in gathering honey. Hence in making it unnecessary for 
 the bees to construct new combs they are given more time to 
 gather honey. 
 
 For years in America the average market price for extracted 
 honey has been little more than half the price of comb honey. 
 Most people know nothing of the difference between extracted 
 honey and comb honey. They foolishly think all honey should 
 be liquid as it is usually fcund ;<» the glass jars on sale in the 
 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 299 
 
 stores. They also foolishly think that unless honey is in this 
 liquid state it is not pure honey. 
 
 This is superstition. All honey will granulate and become solid 
 unless heated to 160 degrees Fahrenheit and held at that tem- 
 perature for a half hour or more. 
 
 Honey is heated in this way in order to keep it liquid and 
 thus meet the ignorant objections of the uninitiated consumer. 
 
 But in heating the honey to make it satisfy artificial taste 
 standards its finest flavours and most distinguished character- 
 istics are lost, being driven off in the heating process. 
 
 The honey is still honey and still wholesome honey and still 
 delicious honey but the fine aromatic bouquet has been sacri- 
 ficed to a silly prejudice born in ignorance. 
 
 Another superstition of costly nature expresses itself in dis- 
 crimination against the light colored honey in favor of the 
 darker honey or against the darker honey in favor of the 
 lighter. 
 
 The natural color of alfalfa honey, white clover honey, 
 orange honey, basswood honey and sage honey is very light, al- 
 most water- white, with a little touch of amber. The red clover 
 and buckwheat honeys are much darker and people who are 
 used to these darker honeys refuse to accept the lighter honeys 
 on the assumption that they are impure. 
 
 To overcome these erroneous ideas the honey producer is fre- 
 quently forced to blend honey of all types and colours so as to 
 get a certain uniformity. This blending in no wise affects the 
 nutritive quality of the honey nor, let me repeat, does the heat- 
 ing affect its wholesomeness. But blending and heating make 
 it quite impossible for honey lovers to gratify their taste for 
 this or that particular kind of honey or to know anything of the 
 true nature of honey. 
 
 To a similar extent the use of pure maple sugar parallels the 
 results attained by the use of honey. But maple sugar is now 
 difficult to obtain. Even at the time when the sugar famine 
 was at its height a single manufacturer of cigarettes was pur- 
 chasing more than half the annual production of maple sugar 
 in the United States and Canada. 
 
 The last purchase of pure maple sugar made by this tobacco 
 
THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 concern consisted of forty carloads of 35,000 pounds each, a 
 total of 1,400,000 pounds. The price paid was less than twelve 
 cents a pound. Every ounce of this maple sugar went up in 
 smoke and not an atom of it will contribute to the nourishment 
 of the human body. 
 
 Well indeed will it be for us as a nation when we reduce our 
 consumption of cane sugar and give more attention to the uses 
 of honey and maple sugar. 
 
 Honey drop cakes, honey fondant, maple fritters, honey gin- 
 ger cookies, honey or maple ice cream, honey butter, honey jelly, 
 honey mousse, maple meringues, honey caramels, maple creams, 
 honey and maple taffy are indescribably superior to the same 
 sweets made of granulated sugar. 
 
 Honey cookies, marmalade, apple puddings, brown Betty, fruit 
 bread, coffee cake, corn bread, griddle cakes, short cake, pump- 
 kin pie, doughnuts, drop cakes, fruit muffins, cinnamon bread, 
 graham biscuits, tarts, layer cake, are all improved by the sub- 
 stitution of honey for sugar. 
 
 The American people have given little attention to the use of 
 honey in cookery, for which reason they are almost totally ig- 
 norant of the teasing and seducing flavour which honey imparts 
 to the hundred and one delicious and nutritious foodstuffs to 
 the excellence of which it so readily contributes. 
 
 For a hundred reasons, all of them compelling, let us eat more 
 honey, but less sugar. 
 
 § 95 — GLUCOSE 
 
 Glucose as a filler is the symbol of denatured carbohydrate 
 foods, the excess of which in the diet of the average American 
 family is the cause of many diseases, beginning in constipation 
 and ending in anemia, tuberculosis, acidosis, and the disorders 
 incident to lowered resistance. 
 
 Thursday, August 26th, 191 5, a prominent official of one of the 
 large glucose manufacturing companies admitted to me that a 
 restricted diet of denatured foods, whether glucose appears 
 among them or not, will develop many disorders in the body. 
 
 "Because we recognise these facts," he said, "we are now 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 301 
 
 striving to give to the human animal the indispensable organic 
 and inorganic mineral salts and colloids of the 'steep-water' of 
 our corn syrup factory. Our corn solids are the richest part 
 of the corn and we have tons of it to dispose of every day. 
 
 "We can actually get a better price for these substances as 
 fertiliser than we are now obtaining for them as cattle food," 
 he said, "but we so recognise their importance as food that we 
 have resisted the temptation to dispose of them as fertiliser 
 when they are so necessary to the animals that feed upon them. ,, 
 
 According to his estimate, 80 per cent, of the glucose manu- 
 factured from corn is disposed of to bakers, confectioners, jam 
 and jelly manufacturers and makers of other commercial foods 
 and beverages. 
 
 In all these types of ready-made food the salts of the sugar 
 cane are not restored through the glucose employed in their man- 
 ufacture, and practically the only mineral salts in the pie, cake, 
 pudding or candy (manufactured with glucose or granulated 
 sugar) are the salts introduced in the form of alum and other 
 baking powders and preservatives. These are not the salts, in 
 form or nature, required by the nutritional processes of the body. 
 
 Probably the most serious aspect of these demineralised carbo- 
 hydrate foods is the vast accumulation of evidence supporting 
 the belief that the excessive ingestion of refined sugars and 
 starches, so common in the diet of the American people, is a 
 factor in the cause of diabetes which may account for the rapid 
 increase of this disease. 
 
 Theodore C. Janeway, Bard professor of the practice of medi- 
 cine in the College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia Uni- 
 versity, declares: 
 
 "In diabetes the tissues are in a state of partial or complete 
 sugar starvation though they may be bathed in lymph rich in 
 glucose. The glucose, circulating in the blood and not utilised 
 by the muscles and cells for food, accumulates until in excess 
 of the normal upper limit of one part in one thousand. 
 
 "This excess of glucose in the blood is called hyperglycemia. 
 With long standing hyperglycemia the kidneys lose their power 
 to throw off the excess glucose and the degree of hyperglycemia 
 tends to rise progressively. It is because the appetite is fre- 
 quently gratified by carbohydrate foods (sugars and starches) 
 
 1 
 
-302 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 that hyperglycemia is increased with no gain to the body in 
 energy. 
 
 "Inasmuch as the diabetic has lost his toleration for sugars 
 and starches he must be safeguarded from all influences known 
 to diminish his tolerance. Among such influences, clinical ex- 
 perience teaches us plainly that hyperglycemia plays one of the 
 chief roles. 
 
 "Failure to institute proper dietetic treatment or self-indul- 
 gence on the part of the patient so frequently leads to the de- 
 velopment of severe diabetes in a previously mild case that it 
 is obvious that over-taxing the weakened power for using sugars 
 and starches is diminished by indulgence in sugars and starches." 
 
 The evidence that it is this indulgence which sets up the 
 morbid condition, eventually expressing itself as diabetes, is 
 weighty and significant. 
 
 § 96 — GLUCOSITIS 
 
 "In younger diabetic patients," declares Janeway, "it is not 
 safe to allow an amount of sugars and starches more than two- 
 thirds of that tolerated, and they must be kept under close su- 
 pervision because they are more likely to progress from a mild to 
 a severe form of the disease, even under treatment, for the 
 reason that they are apt to be careless and self-indulgent." 
 
 "The younger the patient the more marked are the evidences 
 of excesses in carbohydrates," declare Friedenwold and Ruhrah, 
 "yet we continue to encourage our children to daily indulgence 
 in penny sweets (refined sugar and glucose), notwithstanding 
 the abnormal proportion of refined carbohydrates which consti- 
 tute the bulk of their breakfast, dinner, and supper." 
 
 If excessive indulgence in sugars and starches diminishes tol- 
 erance and causes a mild case of diabetes to progress to a severe 
 form of the disease, is it not this very excess which sets up dia- 
 betes in the first place by eventually destroying all tolerance for 
 such denatured foods? 
 
 Olaf Hammarsten, emeritus professor of medical and physi- 
 ological chemistry in the University of Upsala, is very positive 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 30S 
 
 on this point. "A hyperglycemia may be caused by the intro- 
 duction of more sugar than the body can destroy. If too much 
 sugar is introduced into the intestinal tract at any one time, so 
 that the assimilation limit is over-reached, the glycemia is caused 
 by the passage of more sugar into the blood than the liver and 
 other organs can destroy." 
 
 Over-taxing any organ systematically is certain to be followed 
 by a morbid condition in the functioning of that organ. 
 
 In the morbid condition described as diabetes the factor of 
 most significance is always the carbohydrate factor. All the evi- 
 dence warrants the assumption that this carbohydrate factor is 
 not alone a symptom of the disease, but its actual cause. 
 
 Robert Hutchinson, physician to the London Hospital, de- 
 clares : "It must be borne in mind that the assimilation limit is 
 not the same for all individuals. Some people are able to con- 
 vert more sugar into glycogen than others. Persons with a low 
 assimilation limit are potential diabetics — that is to say, they 
 are more liable, through sugar excesses, than others to become 
 the victims of diabetes." 
 
 Here is a direct connecting link between sugars and diabetes. 
 There is evidence to indicate that artificial sweets, such as white 
 sugar and glucose, conduct themselves in the body in a manner 
 not now understood by scientists, but with much less tolerance 
 than is enjoyed by natural sugars, accompanied by the other 
 food elements with which nature endows them in the raw or un- 
 refined state. 
 
 Dr. Alonzo E. Taylor declares that all sugars are not toler- 
 ated in the same way in the body. "Levulose and lactose are 
 sometimes tolerated and utilised better by the diabetic than is 
 glucose," he says. 
 
 He is not clear as to the meaning of this. He simply cites it 
 as a fact. He calls attention to the phenomenon that all the 
 starches yield only glucose, not fructose or galactose, and there 
 are variations in the toleration of starches of different deriva- 
 tions. 
 
 "The starch of the potato," he declares, "is supposed to burn 
 better than that of corn. There is no doubt of one fact. Dia- 
 betics tolerate oatmeal better than any other carbohydrate. It is 
 common to feed a diabetic with little glycosuria and low acidosis 
 
304 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ioo grams of starch per day in the form of oatmeal (accompa- 
 nied by its natural mineral salts), when 50 grams of glucose 
 (hydrolised corn-starch) will pass almost quantitatively into 
 the urine. 
 
 "For this fact, striking as it is, we have no explanation," he 
 says. 
 
 Referring to the same phenomenon, Julius Friedenwold, pro- 
 fessor of gastro-enterology in the College of Physicians and 
 Surgeons, Baltimore, and John Ruhrah, professor of diseases of 
 children in the same institution, declare: 
 
 "The different varieties of sugars and starches ingested may 
 vary in their glycosuria-producing power. Glucose causes the 
 greatest percentage of sugar to appear in the urine in the short- 
 est time. Fruit sugar augments the glycosuria only to one-half 
 the extent when given in the same amount." 
 
 Who will say that this lessened tolerance for glucose is with- 
 out significance? Yet we commonly read in the magazines ad- 
 vice to mothers written in positive and conclusive terms : "Give 
 your children plenty of sugar, candy and sweets. It is good 
 for them." 
 
 Occasionally a pioneer strikes out in the direction of the truth, 
 only to be startled by his discovery that all natural foods con- 
 duct themselves in the body in a manner entirely dissimilar to the 
 conduct of unnatural, artificial or prepared foods. 
 
 Honey is not glucose. Glucose is not sap maple syrup or 
 maple sugar. Glucose is not sorghum or open kettle cane syrup 
 or old-fashioned molasses, now a thing of the past. 
 
 § 97 — WHY THE EXCESS? 
 
 We know that in health the circulation can utilise only a cer- 
 tain fixed quantity of glucose — 0.1 per cent, (one part in a thou- 
 sand parts of blood) — beyond which quantity the healthy or nor- 
 mal pancreas, one of the vital organs of the body, according to 
 the investigations of Zulzer, Pfluger, Cohnheim, Minkowski, Nor- 
 ten, Dominicis, Kleiner and Meltzer, seems to set up an im- 
 penetrable barrier. 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 305 
 
 Well indeed may the scientist who is looking for strange rea- 
 sons to explain the origin of diabetes be asked these questions : 
 How, even in health, can the human body profit by the con- 
 sumption of enormous non-utilisable quantities of starch, glucose 
 or sugar? 
 
 How long can the body tolerate this overload or excess? 
 
 In diseased conditions of the controlling organ the excess or 
 waste glucose is eliminated through the kidneys, yet all Amer- 
 ica is encouraged to use refined sugars, starches and glucose in 
 enormous quantities, notwithstanding the fact that in order to 
 pass into the circulation at all, beyond the fixed limit of o.i 
 per cent, a vital organ, the pancreas, must first break down and 
 become diseased, permitting, in other words, diabetes to develop. 
 
 It is well known that the body in health manufactures in a 
 natural manner from the starches, gums, sugars and fats of vege- 
 tables, grains and fruits all the glucose it requires for its normal 
 needs and all the glucose it can utilise. 
 
 As long as the body remains in health the circulation pos- 
 sesses the ability and readiness to rid itself of a surplus of glu- 
 cose, but in the case of growing animals, old animals, animals 
 bearing offspring, animals nourishing their young, or animals in 
 feeble health, it is not known by any scientist to what extent 
 the circulation, already overtaxed, possesses the power to rid 
 itself daily of a large surplus of glucose, the tolerance toward 
 which, as we have already seen, is decidedly limited. 
 
 There is indeed much evidence to support the conviction that 
 under such extra burden the controlling organ (the pancreas) 
 must succumb to the strain, thus opening the way to the develop- 
 ment of that disease, the origin of which seems to be so mys- 
 terious, but which all men agree upon in calling it diabetes. 
 
 Pfluger concluded, as a result of his experiments, that there 
 is a close relationship between the liver and "pancreas-diabetes," 
 declaring that "the liver in diabetes works actively and is the 
 most important seat of production in diabetic-sugar." 
 
 Eppinger, Folta and Rudinger have adduced evidence to show 
 that there is a certain relationship existing in pancreas-diabetes 
 between the pancreas, adrenals and thyroids. 
 
 They assert that it is not the pancreas alone that controls the 
 blood-content of glucose. What, then, is to be said of the con- 
 
306 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 elusions of those scientists who persist in attributing to the 
 failure of the pancreas the cause of diabetes and who seem to 
 look upon the glucose factor only as a symptom of the disease 
 and never as its cause ? 
 
 § 98 — CAN WE IGNORE THIS? 
 
 We know now positively that the body is tenacious of its 
 fixed alkaline bases, and on a diet deficient in these bases it can- 
 not long supply the necessary quantity of alkali required to 
 neutralise the organic acids which are daily elaborated in the 
 blood and tissues as a result of the decomposition of proteins, fats 
 and carbohydrates. 
 
 On the one hand there is a deficiency of bases in our refined 
 foods and on the other an excess of carbohydrates. No scientist 
 would dare to claim seriously in the presence of these facts that 
 a physiological equilibrium can be maintained permanently on 
 such a broken balance. What would the incomparable Pasteur 
 have said of this ? 
 
 Glucose, now used in the manufacture of many commercial 
 foods, including nearly all the candies on the market is a min- 
 eral-free carbohydrate of artificial origin. 
 
 Packard says cancer is due to a diet of mineral-free carbo- 
 hydrates. 
 
 Armand Gautier has demonstrated that the loss of minerals 
 by excretion is offset only by constant intake. Neither glucose 
 nor any other refined food contributes to this intake. 
 
 Starling and Foster have demonstrated that animals fed on 
 demineralised or refined food die sooner than if not fed at all. 
 The demineralised canned beef, the extractives of which were all 
 boiled out before canning to make beef extract and canned soup, 
 which caused so much sickness among our troops during the 
 Spanish-American War, is a further illustration of this fact. 
 
 Rolf Wilson says mineral starvation is followed by dire con- 
 sequences. 
 
 Takaki, Chamberlain and Vedder have demonstrated that the 
 mineral deficiency of refined food is responsible for high mor- 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 307 
 
 tality among breast-fed infants. Mother's milk lacks mineral 
 matter in accordance with the mineral deficiency of her food. 
 
 Drennin attributes the rapid course of tuberculosis, after 
 pregnancy, to mineral starvation. The foetus acts as a mineral 
 parasite, robbing the mother's tissues unless her food supplies 
 its needs. 
 
 Czerny declares that natural immunity depends on nutrition 
 and that one-sided nutrition with sugars, syrups and candies 
 destroys this immunity in children. 
 
 Weigert reports that "tuberculous children succumb more 
 quickly when nourished with sugars and starches. The water 
 content of the organism is inversely proportioned to the natural 
 immunity. Carbohydrates diet increases unnecessarily the 
 amount of water in the tissues and prompts a rapid rise in the 
 body weight. 
 
 "Such children, who appear plump, round and well nourished, 
 are water-logged and show slight resisting power against in- 
 fection." In an earlier chapter we saw this. Now we under- 
 stand it. 
 
 Various investigators have found that demineralised sweets, 
 sugar, glucose, etc., give rise to many disorders. Why do they 
 exclude diabetes from the fist of these disorders when the chief 
 symptom of diabetes lies in its rebellion against sugar, par- 
 ticularly its rebellion against glucose ? 
 
 Charles as far back as 1882 declared : "Temporary glycosuria 
 may be induced by a diet too rich in starch and sugars, and this 
 is more liable to occur with a diminished alkalinity of the blood. 
 Permanent glycosuria constitutes diabetes mellitus." 
 
 He says, in other words, that if a temporary glycosuria can 
 be induced by an excessive ingestion of refined starchy or sugary 
 foods and such excess is continued until the temporary glycosuria 
 becomes permanent, the net result of such excess is diabetes. 
 
 He also declares that glucose combines with certain acids and 
 bases, as potash and lime, forming glycosates or saccharates, and 
 in alkaline solution has a great tendency to absorb oxygen. 
 
 He also makes the significant assertion that in diabetes less 
 oxygen is absorbed than in health. 
 
 If glucose is a confiscator of oxygen and if it is observed in 
 diabetes that less oxygen is absorbed than in health, is it not 
 
308 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 indeed time that the role of glucose as an oxygen pirate be inves- 
 tigated ? 
 
 The pancreas in health appropriates the salts of lime and 
 potash in the elaboration of its normal alkaline secretions, as is 
 shown in the analyses of these secretions. 
 
 What scientist will say that this selective action of the pancreas 
 on these alkaline bases is devoid of significance or that the nor- 
 mal functioning of the pancreas does not depend in any manner 
 upon its ability to make use of them? 
 
 Yet, in the presence of the fact that glucose has an affinity 
 for these alkaline bases and combines with them, thereby inter- 
 fering with their ability to conduct themselves in the tissues and 
 internal secretions in accordance with Nature's laws, who will 
 say that the excessive ingestion of glucose, in strict obedience to 
 its affinity for alkaline bases, does not rob the pancreas of lime 
 and potassium salts by combining with them and carrying them 
 off? 
 
 If deprived of lime and potassium in this manner, does not 
 the pancreas suffer an impairment of its ability to assist in the 
 control of the upper limit of the blood content of glucose? 
 
 Kleiner and Meltzer of the Rockefeller Institute assume (they 
 use the word assume) that it is the failure of the pancreas to per- 
 form its function which causes diabetes. 
 
 But what causes that failure? 
 
 There is much evidence to support the belief that refined, 
 demineralised starches and sugars, of which glucose is the most 
 conspicuous type, induce this failure, first by weakening the 
 ability of the pancreas to resist the excess glucose assault and, 
 second, by permitting the entrance of glucose into the blood 
 without hindrance after the glucose bombardment has succeeded 
 in breaking down the natural barriers against it. 
 
 The experiments of Kleiner and Meltzer, indicating that in 
 health the circulation can utilise only a fixed quantity of glucose 
 - — o.i per cent. — beyond which the healthy or normal pancreas 
 appears to say, ''No more shall enter," support the conclusion, 
 although not intended to do so, that it is the excess of glucose and 
 the excess of other refined and demineralised starches and sugars 
 which causes a temporary glycosuria to be superseded by a per- 
 manent diabetes, and that the importance which eminent scientists 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 309 
 
 \iave heretofore attached to the diseased condition of the pan- 
 creas in relationship to diabetes is erroneously given to a strik- 
 ing and significant symptom of the disease instead of to its 
 cause. 
 
 § 99 — INFANTILE PARALYSIS 
 
 In June, 19 16, an epidemic of infantile paralysis broke out in 
 Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 The disease spread so rapidly that after 187 deaths had been 
 reported in New York City and hundreds of cases discovered 
 in eleven states and Canada, Health Commissioner Haven Emer- 
 son announced that he would appeal to the National Red Cross 
 for help. 
 
 Three thousand three hundred physicians and nurses were put 
 to work in New York and Brooklyn, and the Health Department 
 informed the public that the United States Public Health Service 
 and the Rockefeller Institute would begin active work at once 
 to assist in stamping out the scourge. 
 
 Fifty-five street playgrounds were ordered closed. Every chil- 
 dren's reading room in Manhattan and Brooklyn was closed. 
 Sunday schools were closed. Summer camps were broken up. 
 Children not only could not cross the state line but they were 
 not permitted by the police to pass from town to town. 
 
 Dr. Lewis C. Ager called for public subscriptions to buy 
 braces and other supporting devices for victims of the disease. 
 
 Then came this remarkable statement, July 9th, 1916, from 
 Professor Simon Baruch, who diagnosed the first recorded case 
 of perforating appendicitis successfully operated on, and who 
 is one of the foremost members of the American medical pro- 
 fession : 
 
 "For several months I have watched the scientific development 
 of the malign influence of defective or absent vitamines in cer- 
 tain foods, as published in the weekly reports of the United 
 States Public Health Service, together with articles in the 
 medical journals on beri-beri and pellagra. 
 
 "Pigeons fed on polished rice are affected by paralysis, tech- 
 nically called polyneuritis, which begins with loss of weight and 
 
310 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ends fatally. Dr. Sidell found that pigeons fed on this exclusive 
 diet did not become paralysed (within the two months of experi- 
 ment at least) if they were given also some otherwise useless 
 yeast products (rich in mineral salts) from the brewery vats 
 which are usually wasted. He has also shown that if this waste 
 material be given to a pigeon already paralysed it will recover 
 within an hour and to all appearances it will be normal in twelve 
 hours. 
 
 "There is a striking similarity in some of the causes predis 
 posing to infantile paralysis and beri-beri. Both occur chiefly 
 in overcrowded localities, in hot weather, and more among males 
 than females. Both are accompanied by fever and paralysis, 
 and both are extremely fatal. Both have prevailed as epidemics, 
 and their fatality has caused terror and despair. 
 
 "Beri-beri was formerly regarded as an infectious disease from 
 undiscoverable sources, but is now known to be due chiefly if not 
 solely to absence of vitamines in the diet. 
 
 "May not infantile paralysis, which has eluded thus far the 
 most searching investigations, be likewise traceable to some 
 defect in diet that may be discovered ? 
 
 "We have a clue to the possibilities in this direction in the 
 report of the United States Public Health Service of April 17th* 
 1 91 6, on bread as food, in which the fact is clearly brought out 
 that the fine roller-milled wheat flour is devoid of vitamines, and 
 that owing to the use of baking powders containing bicarbonate 
 of soda the vitamines in other foods are likely to be destroyed. 
 
 "In a study of pellagra in South Carolina, Voeghtlin regards 
 this malady as somewhat related to beri-beri. He found that this 
 disease prevailed in the factory districts, where people eat mostly 
 fat bacon, cereals and soda raised biscuits or corn bread made 
 of highly milled corn, while in the backwoods, where coarsely 
 milled grain is used, pellagra is rare. 
 
 "The high cost of vitamine-containing foods, like eggs, milk 
 and meats, makes it impossible for these poor people to protect 
 themselves against the loss of vitamines in purchased cereal 
 foods. 
 
 "It may be of interest to ascertain if infantile paralysis has 
 been more prevalent since 1878, Avhen the new milling processes 
 >vere invented. I omitted to mention as proof of similarity of 
 
 ;! 
 
FAMINE DUE TO ARTIFICIAL SUGAR 311 
 
 causes that the experiments made on pigeons have been con- 
 firmed in chicken, which fed on whole corn remain healthy, 
 while the same fowls fed on highly milled cornmeal are affected 
 with paralysis. 
 
 "These briefly stated scientific facts lead me to believe that 
 close scrutiny of the food of the children afflicted may lead to the 
 discovery of a dietetic cause of infantile paralysis/' 
 
 Perhaps it will be found that the diet of the mother before 
 the birth of the infant predisposed it to infantile paralysis. 
 
EIGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF 
 MILK AND MEAT 
 
EIGHT: PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES OF MILK AND 
 
 MEAT 
 
 § 100— MILK 
 
 Every boy at the front in 191 8 underwent a radical change of 
 habit. There was no easy transition through which to slide grace- 
 fully from the comforts of peace into the hardships of war, yet 
 here at home we seek to go on as before, leaving to our sons and 
 brothers the glory of dying for a principle. 
 
 We know that milk is a perfect food, the cheapest of all 
 animal foods, and that our money now goes only half as far as it 
 used to go. Notwithstanding this we beheld in 191 8 milk stations 
 closing their doors, and farmers sending their cows to the butch- 
 er's block because the people did not consume the great flood of 
 milk pouring in from the country at war prices. 
 
 The Bankers' Trust Company informs us there are approxi- 
 mately 27,301,199 family groups and wage-earning individuals 
 counted as families in the United States. In 1916, 24,428,000 
 had annual incomes of $2,000 or less. Millions of families 
 strive to nourish and develop their children on incomes less 
 than $1,000 a year. 
 
 Although milk in times of stress is in itself sufficient to save 
 the infant, the findings of the Children's Bureau with reference 
 to Baltimore show that only 29 per cent, of the children be- 
 tween the ages of two and seven years were receiving in 1918 
 fresh milk to drink as against 60 per cent, in 191 7, and that less 
 than 3 per cent, of these children received as much as three 
 cups of milk a day. 
 
 H. C. Sherman, Columbia University, has demonstrated that of 
 all the food value of the food consumed by farm animals we 
 recover less than 4 per cent, in beef, the actual figures according 
 to Armsby being 3.5 per cent., whereas 18 per cent, is recovered 
 in the form of milk. 
 
 Cooper and Spillman demonstrate that the crops produced per 
 
 315 
 
816 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 acre of cultivated farm land will yield but 14 pounds of mutton, 
 18 pounds of beef, 22 pounds of pork, 27 pounds of poultry and 
 eggs, and J2 pounds of milk estimated on a protein basis. 
 
 It is thus seen that a quart of milk is a greater food asset than 
 an amount of meat furnishing the same weight of protein. 
 
 Osborne, Mendell, McCollum, Hart and Humphrey have dem- 
 onstrated the value of those substances found in whole milk 
 which promote growth and perform other important functions in 
 maintaining health. 
 
 Back in 1906 Hopkins discovered the fat soluble "A" of cream 
 and the water soluble "B'* of skim milk. Seeking further light 
 on the nature of these then unknown substances he withheld pub- 
 lication of the details of his experiments until 1916. 
 
 During the same period Osborne and Mendell were demon- 
 strating the same facts. To these facts McCollum and Davis 
 have also contributed. 
 
 Milk is not only the most benevolent and useful of man's 
 friends, it is also the most treacherous of his foes. Countless 
 thousands of mothers, were it not for the saving virtues of 
 milk, would be in mourning for their lost infants, and countless 
 thousands of mothers are suffering the anguish that only a 
 mother can understand through the untimely taking off of their 
 little ones, murdered by milk. 
 
 The health of the cow and the methods employed in making 
 milk safe have been sadly neglected in America. We know the 
 truth but do not apply it. 
 
 Because milk is such a perfect food for the human being, it is 
 also a perfect food for the micro-organisms that spread tuber- 
 culosis, diphtheria, septic sore throat, typhoid fever and many 
 other diseases that afflict the human race already devitalised 
 and non-resistant through its morbid consumption of refined 
 starches and sugars. 
 
 The United States Government has tabulated 500 epidemics 
 of typhoid fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria caused by milk. 
 These epidemics are but a few of those reported. They merely 
 indicate the enormous extent to which milk, the great life- 
 saver, becomes a destroyer. 
 
 Bad milk can be eliminate'd and good milk, at least safe milk, 
 can be substituted in its place. Under the honest supervision 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 317 
 
 of any adequately organised health department in small town or 
 city, milk when properly pasteurised is a blessing. When not 
 properly pasteurised it is a curse. 
 
 Unlike eggs, meat, poultry and fish, milk cannot be stored in 
 refrigerator warehouses for a year. It cannot be held for specu- 
 lation. It cannot be refined as wheat, oats, corn, rice, barley, 
 rye and sugar are refined. It brings into the home all the food 
 substances in abundance, except iron alone. 
 
 The young animal stores up iron in its liver before its birth 
 sufficient to carry it out of the milk consuming period. 
 
 As long ago as 1826 Magenhofen in his laboratory in Frank- 
 fort determined the composition of milk, separating the lime, 
 potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, sulphur, fluorine, 
 silicon, iron, the sugars, fats and casein. All the analyses made 
 since his time have been identical. 
 
 The English authority, A. Wynter Blyth, declared in 1909 
 that Magenhofen's treatise on milk, though little known, con- 
 tains practically all of what, up to that time, had been established 
 concerning its composition. 
 
 The iron of milk is sufficient for the child up to one year of 
 age, but thereafter it requires more iron which unhappily it does 
 not receive from white bread, or sugar. 
 
 These milk facts should be remembered, but facts more im- 
 portant than these are about to attack us. 
 
 § 101 MILK AND TUBERCULOSIS 
 
 God intended cow's milk for the food of calves to be consumed 
 at the udder. Milk from the clean udder of a healthy cow is prac- 
 tically sterile. The calf's food under normal conditions is not 
 only free from germs, it is fresh. 
 
 The child receives cow's milk from twelve to seventy hours old. 
 Good cow's milk depends upon four factors — a healthy cow, a 
 clean cow, plenty of ice and speedy transportation. 
 
 If the cow is not healthy the milk is dangerous even when 
 fresh. If the cow itself and the hands of the milker are not clean, 
 or if the milk-can is not sterile, the milk becomes infected at once, 
 even though it be good as it leaves the udder. 
 
318 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 If not kept cold the germs multiply by the millions. One drop 
 of milk may contain 40,000,000 bacteria twenty-four hours after 
 milking. 
 
 The germs of typhoid fever and diphtheria enter milk through 
 careless or dirty methods of handling. The germs of bovine 
 tuberculosis are introduced through a diseased udder or through 
 small particles of manure which are frequently found infected 
 with virulent tubercle bacilli. 
 
 The United States government as well as the governments of 
 Great Britain and Germany have proved the deadliness of bad 
 milk and the meaning of bacteria as an index of its quality. 
 Practical and efficient methods of controlling these dangers have 
 been evolved, but in only a few American cities have they been 
 applied. 
 
 If milk were a transparent fluid its luxuriant colonies of bac- 
 teria and their accompanying poisons could be seen by the naked 
 eye. Because milk is opalescent the presence of these infant 
 murderers is not suspected. The human eye can easily see a 
 colony but only through the microscope can a single germ be 
 detected. 
 
 It is common for milk to reach our large cities containing 
 150,000,000 bacteria per cubic centimetre. Even these enormous 
 quantities cannot be detected by the naked eye. 
 
 Such milk is polluted with B. coli found only in the intestines 
 of warm-blooded animals. Finding their way into milk through 
 particles of manure they rapidly multiply. B. coli in milk means 
 that the milk is filthy. 
 
 The most poorly equipped Health Department in America can 
 determine the presence of B. coli in the milk consumed by its 
 children, and through the authority possessed by it can shut such 
 milk out until the dairy farmer substitutes decency for indecency. 
 
 Bovine tuberculosis is transmissible to the child not only 
 through milk but through potcheese, ice cream, butter and raw 
 meat, such as the uncooked bolognas common throughout the 
 United States. 
 
 Bovine tuberculosis does not necessarily kill ; it usually mains 
 or cripples. Its ravages do not manifest themselves at their 
 worst until early adult life. 
 
 Bang proved conclusively that virulent tubercle bacilli are 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 319 
 
 found in milk. Hirschberger found n out of 20 specimens of 
 milk from tubercular cows contained tubercle bacilli. Ernst 
 found 42 per cent, of the cows examined by him were giving off 
 tubercle bacilli in the milk, and that the milk of 36 tubercular cows 
 with healthy udders contained tubercle bacilli. 
 
 Rabinowitz and Kempner found tubercle bacilli in 71.4 per cent, 
 of the milk examined by them, Prokauer found 55 per cent, of 
 the milk examined by him contained tubercle bacilli. Anderson, 
 United States Public Health Service, found 11 in 104 dairies 
 shipping milk to Washington, D. C, were selling a product con- 
 taining virulent tubercle bacilli. 
 
 Mitchell asserts that milk containing tubercle bacilli is the 
 cause of 90 per cent, of the cases of tubercular cervical lymph 
 nodes in Edinburgh infants and children. Mitchell found 10 
 per cent, of the enlarged tonsils of children infected with the 
 bovine tubercle bacillus. 
 
 Of the school children examined in Berlin by the von Pirquet 
 method, 70 per cent, were found to be infected with tuberculosis 
 of the bovine type, thus revealing the fact that before the war 
 400,000 in Germany were annually infected through the milk, 
 butter, potcheese and meat of tubercular cows. 
 
 Styles found 61 per cent, of the 67 cases of tuberculosis of the 
 joints in children examined by him to be caused by the bovine 
 bacillus, due to infection through milk, butter, ice cream or meat. 
 In all the affected children less than one year old Styles found 
 the bovine bacillus present. 
 
 All these children had been fed exclusively on cow's milk. 
 
 Fraser, operating upon 70 cases of bone and joint tuberculosis 
 in children under twelve years of age, found 31 cases of the 
 bovine type, showing the diseased cow to be responsible for their 
 misery. Of 25 children brought up exclusively on human milk 
 Fraser found only 6 infected with bovine bacillus, the infection 
 in these cases having come from butter. Of 41 children fed on 
 cow's milk, Fraser found ^7 infected with the bovine type and 
 onty 4 with the human type. 
 
 The British Royal Commission on tuberculosis reports that 
 among fatal cases in children, one-third are found to be due to 
 the bovine type. 
 
 Of 500 autopsies performed by Muller on children, the deaths 
 
320 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of 200 cases were attributed to tuberculosis of which an unde- 
 termined number was of the bovine type, showing the deadliness 
 of raw milk. 
 
 Ravenel, studying 153 cases of tuberculous children from 5 to 
 16 years of age, found 36 due to bovine infection, whereas out of 
 280 cases of children under 5 years of age he found 65 due to 
 bovine infection. 
 
 The Imperial Bureau of Hygiene reported before the war that 
 2,700 children died annually in Germany of bovine tuberculosis. 
 
 We know now beyond our right to dismiss the facts with a 
 shrug, that bovine tuberculosis does kill our children, and that 
 they have little resistance to the disease because of their enormous 
 consumption of white bread and refined sugars. 
 
 Let us see whether or not only a few dairy cows in America 
 are suffering from tuberculosis, or whether the disease is wide 
 spread, so that we may determine the gravity of the raw milk 
 oeril. 
 
 § 102 NOT PASTEURISED 
 
 Ward reports at least 10 per cent, of the cattle killed in the 
 San Francisco stockyards, coming from open ranges, are tubercu- 
 lar. 
 
 Melvin, United States Bureau of Animal Industry, declares 
 that at least 10 per cent, of the dairy cattle of the entire country 
 are tubercular. 
 
 Veranus A. Moore, Cornell, found 302 herds in a total of 421 
 contained tubercular cows. Of 9,633 dairy cows tested by him 
 3,432, more than a third, were tubercular. 
 
 These diseased herds were distributed throughout 39 counties. 
 The tuberculin test is such a reliable index of the presence of the 
 disease that out of 23,869 cows reacting positively to the test, the 
 disease was found in 23,585 when slaughtered, a percentage of 
 nearly 99. 
 
 The United States Government publishes a bulletin warning 
 dairymen and cattle growers of the dangers of the disease. That 
 bulletin says: "Among tubercular dairy cows retaining the ap- 
 pearance of health and not known to be affected until tested with 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 321 
 
 tuberculin, 40 per cent, or more, are actively expelling tubercle 
 bacilli from their bodies in a way dangerous to the health of other 
 animals and persons. . 
 
 "When tubercle bacilli are present in milk they are especially 
 numerous in butter. The dangers to which public health is ex- 
 posed through the use of milk from tubercular cows is of a 
 magnitude almost beyond conception. 
 
 "The distribution of tubercle bacilli is a commercial systematic 
 distribution from door to door, or rather from table to table. As 
 long as the use of tubercular dairy cows is permitted the manner 
 in which unpasteurised dairy products are at present distributed 
 will insure that practically every member of the human family 
 is exposed to tuberculosis. 
 
 "This may explain why 91 per cent, of the bodies of persons 
 who die from various causes show the lesions of tuberculosis." 
 
 In spite of these and hundreds of other facts indicating the 
 vast extent to which tuberculosis menaces the consumer of raw 
 milk, raw butter, raw ice cream and raw meat, and the vast ex- 
 tent to which tuberculosis of the bovine type actually ravages 
 the human family, dairymen and cattle dealers openly oppose 
 all efforts of public health authorities to apply the two remedies 
 by which humanity can be protected from these dangers. 
 
 They ignore pasteurisation, which destroys all disease germs in 
 milk, and they fight the tuberculin test, although for their own 
 purposes they employ it to cover up the evidences of disease by 
 "plugging" their cows with secret doses in order to mask the 
 symptoms when an official test is made. 
 
 § 103 — PLUGGING THE COW 
 
 In New York, New Jersey and Illinois the "plugging" of 
 tubercular cows with illegal doses of tuberculin has reached such 
 vast proportions that in a number of instances even honest officials 
 have been rendered powerless through this method of trickery. 
 
 Cattle men have discovered that a dose of tuberculin injected 
 into the neck of a tubercular cow is followed by a peculiar 
 phenomenon which scientists call "reaction." 
 
322 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 A few hours after the test is applied the tubercular cow suffers 
 a rise in temperature. The fever continues until it reaches its 
 climax, after which it begins to subside, forming the typical react- 
 ing curve. 
 
 After this reaction the tubercular cow for a period of three or 
 four weeks will not respond to another test unless it be a double 
 dose. During this short period of immunity an official test with 
 a single dose made by a winking veterinarian will fail to disclose 
 the presence of the disease. 
 
 Thus the conscienceless owner of a diseased cow "plugs" the 
 animal with a secret dose, waits four or five days, then asks for 
 an official test. A clean bill of health over the signature of a 
 state veterinarian is then issued, and the cow can be sold even 
 to the famous certified herds. 
 
 In cases of generalised tuberculosis in which nearly every gland 
 and organ of the cow's body is involved, the animal is so full of 
 toxins of its own manufacture that it either fails to react to the 
 tuberculin test or suffers what is called a delayed reaction. 
 
 The so-called official tests terminating at the twenty-fourth 
 hour do not detect the delayed reaction, although such cow is 
 a hundredfold more dangerous. All tests should be continued to 
 the thirty-sixth hour, otherwise they are worthless. 
 
 These conditions are not occasional, they are common. 
 
 The annual report of the New York State Department of 
 Agriculture, Bureau of Veterinary Service for 1913, of which 
 I have a certified copy, was actually suppressed because of the 
 wide-spread evils it revealed. The politicians were afraid of its 
 publication, fearing the farmer vote. 
 
 When the New York City Health Department detects diseased 
 milk it shuts out the dairy farm. This diseased milk is then con- 
 sumed by people who are not fortunate enough to live in the 
 metropolis. 
 
 To emphasise the tragedy of this system, Dr. S. S. Goldwater, 
 Health Commissioner, sent a message February 26th, 19 14, to 
 Governor Glynn's Milk Commission. That message which every 
 small town in the United States should study, read as follows : 
 
 "Yesterday we discovered another typhoid carrier in one of 
 the milk-producing farms from which the Health Department has 
 traced a number of cases of typhoid fever. The milk of this farm 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 32S 
 
 has now been excluded from the list of milk shippers to New- 
 York, but owing to inadequate state control this typhoid-produc- 
 ing milk will now be shipped to the smaller towns which will have 
 to suffer as a result of New York's vigilance. If the smaller 
 towns were under state regulations instead of being allowed to 
 go as they please, these tragic conditions would not be possible." 
 
 March 25th, 19 14, the New York Milk Committee, numbering 
 among its members many of the most eminent pathologists of 
 the metropolis, issued a public statement declaring that nine out 
 of every ten children suffering from tubercular cervical glands 
 would be sound and healthy as far as tuberculosis is concerned 
 if they had not been fed with the milk of diseased cows. 
 
 All but 10 per cent, of the people of New York State drink 
 raw milk, which means that 4,000,000 children are directly ex- 
 posed to the most dreaded infection that curses the human race. 
 
 One-third of the cows of the state are spreading tuberculosis 
 among human infants. A large percentage of the beef sold in 
 the smaller butcher shops in the state consists of the carcasses 
 of dairy animals suffering from tuberculosis at the time of 
 slaughter. 
 
 It is through this source of infection that the pitiable conditions 
 of thousands of children under ten years of age, and the fatal 
 illness of scores of adults, are to be traced. Low resistance and 
 constant infection! What an indictment of our intelligence! 
 
 The facts were laid before the Senate and Assembly, and cat- 
 tle dealers immediately gathered at Albany from all parts of the 
 country. The political pressure applied by them disarmed the 
 legislators of the Empire State, and nothing was done. 
 
 Before the war politicians subordinated the physical welfare of 
 the children of their constituents to their own political advance- 
 ment. The boys who went to France to die have at least taught 
 them by another kind of example the hellishness of such phi- 
 losophy. 
 
 The efforts to open the eyes of these politicians were not alto- 
 gether fruitless. It developed as a result of the agitation that 
 more than two million dollars of the state's money had been 
 wasted by the Department of Agriculture between 1907 and 1914 
 through indemnities granted to a select list of politically powerful 
 owners of tubercular cows. 
 
SM THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 It was also shown that these cows after condemnation and 
 slaughter were either installed in State reformatories, hospitals, 
 training schools, orphan asylums, and prisons to infect their in- 
 mates, or were slaughtered and their meat sold to butchers. 
 
 It was shown that the junior member of a cattle dealing firm 
 had applied to Dr. J. William Fink, state veterinarian, for a 
 tuberculin test of a diseased herd producing milk for consumption 
 in New York City. 
 
 Dr. Fink was asked to apply a fake test and give a clean bill of 
 health to the diseased cows in order that they might be shipped 
 across the state line into New Jersey. Dr. Fink refused to make 
 the test, but another state veterinarian succumbed to the tempta- 
 tion and the cows were given a clean bill of health. 
 
 An investigation showed that all the cows were grossly diseased. 
 They had to be condemned for fertiliser. 
 
 The arrests that followed involved such a large number of New 
 Jersey and New York officials, and disclosed so many similar out- 
 rages, that it became necessary to apply a coat of political white- 
 wash to the guilty parties. 
 
 There is no such thing as blissful ignorance in the fool's para- 
 dise. The fool's children pay too great a price for the folly of 
 their father. 
 
 § 104 THE CERTIFIED HERD 
 
 Certified milk is raw milk. Unless such milk be honestly 
 certified it is more dangerous than common milk, because on the 
 assumption of its safety it is fed to delicate infants and invalids, 
 whose powers of resistance are even lower than the low average. 
 We are not discussing the honest certified herd. We are discuss- 
 ing the control of all certified milk. 
 
 In spite of the efforts of the Montclair Board of Health, a 
 certified herd, numbering six hundred cows, succeeded in defying 
 the Board for two years because of the dignity of the Medical 
 Milk Commission that stood sponsor for its certified milk, "guar- 
 anteed to be free from the germs of the contagious and infectious 
 disease known as bovine tuberculosis." 
 
 Finally, October 13th, 1914, after conditions had become so 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 325 
 
 gross that it was impossible further to withhold knowledge of 
 them from the public, the Essex County Medical Milk Commis- 
 sion, the first commission in America authorised by law to certify 
 milk, was asked to interfere on the ground that the certified herd 
 harbored at least one hundred diseased cows. 
 
 The dignified Medical Milk Commission refused to admit that 
 irregularities were possible under its system of supervision, and 
 resisted the invitation to perform its duty. 
 
 It was my privilege to expose to the public the wretched farce 
 of this scientific superstition and the complete collapse of the 
 certified milk myth which prior thereto had flourished at the ex- 
 pease of helpless infants. 
 
 We invaded the dairy and made a test of its cows. Within 
 a period of two weeks, up to and including October 28th, 1914, 
 two hundred and fifty-four cows were tested. Of these certified 
 cows seventy-nine were found suffering from tuberculosis, yet 
 all of them, up to the very day of their slaughter, were producing 
 "certified" milk for infants and invalids. 
 
 Of these condemned cows twenty-four were sold to a Brooklyn 
 slaughter house. I had reason to know that a vast system of 
 Health Department corruption was operating through the graft 
 route in this slaughter house. 
 
 I laid the facts before the Government, and for once was suc- 
 cessful in inducing the Federal authorities to seize these twenty- 
 four cows in Jersey City on their way through interstate com- 
 merce to Brooklyn. They were slaughtered, October 28th, for 
 purposes of post mortem. 
 
 The examinations were conducted by Bureau of Animal In- 
 dustry veterinarians Dr. E. C. Yoder, Dr. Frederick Wilson and 
 Dr. Robert M. Mullins. The witnesses in addition to the writer 
 included Dr. J. E. Smith, president New Jersey Medical Associa- 
 tion, Dr. James McDonough, Montclair Board of Health, Dr. 
 Wilbur F. Harrison, Jersey City, Health Officer James Hagan, 
 Jersey City, and Dr. R. C. Newton, president New Jersey State 
 Board of Health. 
 
 The Essex County Medical Milk Commission, which had certi- 
 fied to the milk produced by these twenty-four cows, was not 
 represented. 
 
 All the cows were found grossly diseased, and under the regu- 
 
THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 lations of the United States Government, the generalised cases 
 were sent to the fertiliser tank. 
 
 Certified cow No. 3184, producing certified milk for infants, 
 was typical of the tragedy. She was found to be suffering from 
 tuberculosis of the bronchial glands, tuberculosis of both lungs, 
 tuberculosis of the portal gland, tuberculosis of the mediastinal 
 gland and tuberculosis of the liver. 
 
 Following this examination another group of twenty-four 
 cows was seized on its way to the Brooklyn slaughter houses and 
 slaughtered under Government supervision. They were all dis- 
 eased. 
 
 After one hundred and ninety-one cows had been condemned 
 in the certified herd, which had been looked upon as a model 
 throughout the Medical Milk Commissions of the United States, 
 the first Medical Milk Commission established in America passed 
 into the waste heap of rejected rubbish. Eminent academicians 
 who had been forcing certified milk upon the public for years, 
 reluctantly admitted that diseased cows really could produce 
 diseased milk under the shadows of inflated scientific reputations. 
 
 The laity had paid the bills, had borne the burden of the mis- 
 takes, had suffered the pains of disease. 
 
 The sad events which, upon these disclosures, followed each 
 other in dizzy succession, exposed such a condition of complete 
 demoralisation of many of the most famous certified herds of 
 the country, that had the newspapers reported the facts it is quite 
 certain somebody would have gone to jail. 
 
 Thanks to the encouragement and support of the three men to 
 whom this book is dedicated, I was able to stick to the scandal 
 out of which subsequently many convictions were obtained, re- 
 sulting in penitentiary sentences. 
 
 § 105 — OLD OFFENDERS 
 
 Nineteen certified herds within a period of six months were 
 found to be literally rotten with tuberculosis, and as far as New 
 York City is concerned, a new system of supervision was inaug- 
 urated by Dr. S. S. Goldwater. 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 327 
 
 Following the trail into Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Wiscon- 
 sin, I was able to demonstrate with evidence just as specific and 
 ; conclusive that the dairy butter and ice cream industries were 
 quite as rotten as the certified milk industry. Both industries 
 | required nation-wide reform, of which, at this writing, August 
 28th, 1918, no indications are visible. The facts are known to the 
 United States Department of Agriculture and the United States 
 Public Health Service, but no official action has been taken. 
 
 Justice James C. Cropsey, Supreme Court, Brooklyn, October 
 I 4th, 1916, emphasised the horror of these unmolested conditions 
 by sentencing a group of convicted slaughterers to Sing Sing. 
 
 Five slaughtering establishments had been operating for twenty- 
 five years in Brooklyn. They specialised in the killing of diseased 
 cows, culled from the dairy herds of the country. These cows, 
 milked as long as they were profitable, were finally, after a career 
 of poisoning the milk, butter and ice cream of the people, salvaged 
 through the peoples' stomachs. 
 
 Sixty thousand such cows were killed annually in these five 
 establishments. 
 
 By the payment of graft to the extent of $30,000 a year, or 
 50 cents a head to the officials, the carcasses of the diseased ani- 
 mals were stamped with the official "inspected and passed" seal. 
 
 For four years the officials succeeded in resisting my efforts to 
 break up this deadly system. Finally, through the assistance of 
 Commissioner of Accounts, Leonard M. Wallstein, legal evidence 
 was obtained which resulted in the indictment of twelve 
 slaughterers whose establishments, May 26th, 1916, operating as a 
 single unit in a vast system of units, were shut down, thus scatter- 
 ing the diseased dairy culls through the smaller towns and cities 
 of the country. 
 
 The wholesale convictions that followed have meant nothing 
 to the officials of other states, and the parade of diseased meat 
 continues. Even the success of Commissioner Wallstein in col- 
 lecting $1,025 graft money before the trap was sprung that 
 finally bagged the Brooklyn operators, had little or no meaning 
 for other officials, who to-day remain as inactive as they were two 
 years ago. 
 
 The packers who have persistently denied the charges made 
 against them by the Federal Trade Commission, 1918, and whose 
 
328 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 denials have been given wide publicity by the newspapers carrying 
 their advertisements, cannot hurdle the evidences of their guilt, 
 even though they succeed in fooling the public. 
 
 On forty-seven occasions, unarmed with official authority, I 
 have obtained in the last five years forty-seven convictions against 
 Armour & Company, Swift & Company, and Sulzberger & Sons 
 Company (now Wilson & Company). These convictions are 
 all recorded. They resulted in fines of $500 each, the limit per- 
 mitted under the statute. 
 
 The newspapers that have given publicity to their denial of 
 guilt, with the exception of the New York Globe and the Chicago 
 Daily News, did not publish the details of any of these convic- 
 tions. 
 
 "Old offenders" are sometimes looked upon by the courts grave- 
 ly and solemnly, but only as a rule when they are commonplace 
 offenders whose crimes are the crimes of human infirmity. 
 
 July 5th, 191 5, a poor creature pleaded guilty before Justice 
 Petit of Chicago on the charge of stealing two hams, and was 
 sentenced to the penitentiary for life under the "old offender" 
 statute. 
 
 "The world will be informed," said Justice Petit in imposing 
 sentence, "that I have sent you to the penitentiary for life for 
 stealing two hams. I have not done that. Your record shows you 
 are a crook, and it is time that the country finds a way to keep 
 habitual offenders like you in jail." 
 
 One week later a Federal-inspected establishment, Swift & 
 Company, was convicted in the courts of New York for the 
 sixteenth time within a period of two years, and fined $500 on a 
 charge of trafficking in putrid flesh. 
 
 I was responsible for the sixteenth conviction of this offending 
 corporation, and it seemed to me that under the "old offender" 
 act a corporation guilty in the same community of the same crime 
 on sixteen occasions within a period of two years is an old 
 offender. 
 
 Justices Russel, Salmon, Kernochen, Moss, Collins, Herrman, 
 Mclnerny, Zeller, Forker, O'Keefe and Freschi during this short 
 period collected $20,000 in fines from Armour & Company, Swift 
 & Company, and Sulzberger and Sons Company. In only one 
 case did the convicted establishments appeal. In that appeal the 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 329 
 
 conviction of the lower court was upheld by the Appellate Divi- 
 sion, on which sat Justices Ingraham, McLaughlin, Scott, Dowiing 
 and Hotchkiss. 
 
 In imposing sentence in one of these cases, Justice Russel had 
 perhaps the old offender statute in mind, for he said : "We can- 
 not send a corporation to jail. It is no wonder then that you con- 
 tinue without fear in your assault upon human life and health. 
 When it is considered that this court has the power to send an 
 individual to jail for such an offence as you have committed 
 but can do no more in dealing with the same offence when com- 
 mitted by a corporation than impose a paltry fine which by an 
 establishment doing a business of more than $400,000,000 annual- 
 ly, must be looked upon as inconsequential and without signifi- 
 cance, it is not strange that there are agitators abroad who cry out 
 like John the Baptist against these inhuman sins so difficult to 
 detect and so inadequately punished when brought to trial.'' 
 
 These specific instances are recorded here for the reason that in 
 spite of the existence of the "old offender" statute and the evi- 
 dence of corruption that has flowed in a steady stream from my 
 self-appointed and unofficial investigations, the authorities have 
 persisted in ignoring their duty, while from the milk-producing 
 herds of the country the culls and rejects, the lame and the halt, 
 the diseased and the spreaders of disease continue to pass un- 
 molested into the food supply of the people. 
 
 § 106 — America's kidneycides 
 
 The meatless days established, 191 8, by the Food Administra- 
 tion were wisely appointed, but the suicidal gluttons of America 
 thought otherwise, and the Food Administration, heeding the 
 clamor, decided it was not necessary to stop the assault and 
 battery tendencies of Americans with respect to their kidneys, and 
 "meatless days" were wiped off the calendar. 
 
 Prior to the last week of February, 1918, in America, man's 
 efforts to spare his kidneys constituted patriotism. After that he 
 could beat his kidneys to death with a club, if he wanted to, and 
 still be a patriot. 
 
330 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Sink your canines into as many bloody, bawdy, kindless steaks 
 as you have a mind to ! Grind the juicy cadaver between your 
 molars — if you have any molars ! Go to a dentist and have your- 
 self equipped with crowns, bridges, or any other device that will 
 enable you to pound to a pulp all the dead flesh your appetite 
 desires ! Nothing will now stop you but the price — unless it be 
 your own intelligence. 
 
 The man who over-exercises his kidneys, in the performance of 
 which he must under-exercise his brains, will not contribute much 
 to the world's welfare. The converse of this self-evident truth 
 will hold water without leaking. 
 
 Homicide is punishable under the State law. Suicide is be- 
 lieved by millions to be punishable under the Divine law. Kidney- 
 cide goes scot-free. 
 
 All of this may make the angels weep; but incidentally it en- 
 abled five packers to pile up net profits of a hundred million dol- 
 lars a year. 
 
 These five packers did not make very much money on a single 
 pound of meat, nor did they prior to 1918 pay a living wage to 
 their employes ; but they killed so many animals and sold so much 
 meat that what they called their "turn-over" enabled them to 
 pay dividends of something like forty per cent, on the money 
 invested in their plants. Therefore, unlike the angels, they did 
 not weep while Americans were condemning their kidneys to 
 hari-kari. 
 
 Most of the kidneycides of America never heard of Anthony 
 Bassler or the American Journal of Electro-therapeutics and 
 Radiology. They do not care much about the comments of Bass- 
 ler, as published in that journal, upon the significant fact, now 
 conclusively proved, that the human body cannot utilise more 
 than two ounces of protein a day. 
 
 Four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, lamb chops, pork chops, 
 sausage, bologna, chicken, fish or ham contain two ounces of 
 protein. 
 
 Therefore Bassler cries out that four ounces of any kind of 
 meat a day should be the extreme limit, even for gluttons, be- 
 cause any quantity of meat in excess of four ounces must be 
 thrown off as waste by the healthy body or stored up as poisons 
 for the kidneys to remove. 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 331 
 
 Even the boys in their first year in the medical schools know 
 that it is this overload which gradually smashes the kidneys and 
 throws them out of commission. 
 
 What is protein? Milk is protein. Eggs are protein. Cheese 
 is protein. Nuts are protein. A very large part of wheat, corn, 
 barley and rye is protein, about one-eighth. 
 
 In America, as stated at the hearing before the Committee on 
 Agriculture of the United States Senate in April, 19 17, by Secre- 
 tary Houston, we produced the year before 22,400,000,000 
 pounds of meat, 7,900,000,000 gallons of milk, 1,847,000,000 
 dozens of eggs, 567,000,000 fowls ; and so many billion pounds of 
 cereal protein that there aren't sufficient ciphers left in the lino- 
 type machine to tell the story here. 
 
 The story wouldn't mean anything, anyhow, if it hadn't been 
 for the testimony before the same Committee of Dr. Clyde L. 
 King, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University 
 of Pennsylvania. Dr. King showed that in the United States we 
 consume daily 80 grams, or nearly 3 ounces, of protein, whereas 
 even in Germany, whose inhabitants were all fed up before the 
 war, only 61 grams were consumed. The figures for France be- 
 fore the war were 44 grams ; for Japan, 14 grams ; for Austria, 
 27 grams ; for Russia, 26 grams ; for Italy, 52 grams. 
 
 The statements made here are not sweeping statements. They 
 have gone to headquarters for their authority and are fool-proof. 
 
 All of which means that Americans in consuming eighty grams 
 of protein daily are attempting the impossible. We are attempting 
 to dispose of about thirty-five grams more than we have capacity 
 for. Our kidneys cannot talk. They just have to stay mum 
 until a hundred and one bodily disorders start us looking around 
 for some mysterious cause of serious trouble. Then, as a rule, 
 it is too late to apologise to the kidneys. 
 
 The plain facts recorded here might have some consolation in 
 them if they really told the whole story ; but they do nothing of 
 the kind. Babies, old people, sick people, children under ten or 
 fifteen years of age, and the very poor — who are becoming more 
 numerous in America — do not consume the daily average of 
 eighty grams of protein. 
 
 To keep the average up to this high level, the kidneycides have 
 to eat not only their own share and the vast excess representing 
 
532 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 the difference between their own share and what they ought to 
 eat, but also the left-overs which the babies, old people, and the 
 others cannot eat and do not eat. This hoists the total for millions 
 of kidneycides far above the eighty-gram mark and it is quite evi- 
 dent that there are many millions of kidneycides in America who 
 consume one hundred grams and not a few who consume one hun- 
 dred and fifty grams. 
 
 No ; such people are not patriots. They do not help win war. 
 They are the kidneyviki of America, and if.it were not for the fact 
 that the chaos over which they exercise control is the product of 
 gross ignorance, I would subscribe to the proposition that they 
 ought to be taken out, shot, and converted into fertiliser with 
 which to enrich the wheat fields, orchards and vineyards of the 
 Nation. 
 
 These kidneyviki, who ought to know that they cannot con- 
 sume more than four ounces of meat, including poultry, cheese, 
 and eggs, daily, without injuring themselves, ought to know also 
 that in Europe there is very much less than four ounces of meat 
 a day to consume. Why, then, should they complain of meatless 
 days? They can well afford, with benefit to themselves, to do 
 without meat on meatless days in order that from their savings 
 they may supply at least part of the needs of America's friends. 
 
 § 107 — MEATOLOGY 
 
 The failure of meat to supply the needs of the body can be 
 understood from the fact that it is easy to bring about in young 
 dogs a condition resembling "rickets" in children by feeding 
 the dogs on meats and fats alone. If pulverised bone is added 
 to their diet the young dogs recover quickly. 
 
 I do not for a moment agree with those who claim that there 
 is no place whatever for animal flesh in the diet of man. It 
 is well known that there are times when a meat diet is valuable, 
 provided the meat is cut from the carcass of a healthy animal 
 and none of its extractives are lost in cooking. Yet we should 
 remember that catarrh, rheumatism, blood diseases, and many 
 other physical disorders cannot be cured where meat is con- 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 
 
 sumed in excess. Meat is one of the pegs in our national shoe. 
 
 When we eat the flesh of an animal we eat the end-products 
 of the animal's life processes : urea, uric acid, the animal sweat, 
 dead cells, toxic waste, etc. When we eat whole grains, legumes 
 and milk, the nitrogen supply is just as great, even greater, with- 
 out the urea and the other poisons. 
 
 In comparing the merits of a heavy flesh diet with a diet 
 of whole grains, eggs and milk, we stumble into another point of 
 tremendous interest. For every pound of beef consumed by 
 man, ten pounds of corn are necessary to produce that pound 
 of beef. A pound of beef will partly support a man for a given 
 length of time; but the same quantity of corn necessary to yield 
 that pound of beef will support ten men for the same length 
 of time. 
 
 Leibig, as we have already seen, cites the restlessness and 
 incessant activity of meat-eating animals — lions, tigers, panthers, 
 wolves, hyenas — and observes that men who habitually cram 
 themselves with meat manifest similar irritability and lack of 
 repose. 
 
 This condition of high pressure in the vital processes is merely 
 functional excitement — not true invigoration. To be whipped 
 into stimulation is not to be strengthened or recreated. Let us 
 not forget that the meat-eating animals pace up and down with 
 a certain wildness of movement, while the elephant, camel and 
 horse exhibit all the dignity of reposeful strength. 
 
 When man attempts to live on an excess of meat and is forced 
 to neutralise the waste products produced by meat digestion and 
 in addition is also forced to neutialise the waste products con- 
 tinually generating in his own body, thereby imposing upon his 
 organs of elimination a double task, he is at the same time at- 
 tempting to sustain himself with imperfect foods. Then he com- 
 plains of constipation, biliousness, headache and albumen. 
 
 We know that a meat diet tends to acidify the blood and that 
 man's only defence against the attacks of disease is based upon 
 the normal alkalinity of the blood. A. E. Wolff has analysed 
 the flesh of beef, veal, and mutton to determine the average 
 of alkalines and acids in one hundred parts of such flesh. Com- 
 menting on Wolff's findings, Armond Gautier states : 
 
 "In the ash of muscle, phosphoric acid is united to the extent 
 
334 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 of two-thirds to the potassium of the tissues. The other third, 
 not rinding sufficient alkalinity to neutralise it, remains mostly 
 acid. The sulphuric acid found in the tissues comes from the 
 sulphur of the albuminoids. The destruction of meat in the 
 body thus tends to acidify the blood both by mineral acids and or- 
 ganic acids, which originate from the digestion and decompo- 
 sition of meat. 
 
 To render these acids harmless they must be neutralised in 
 the body. 
 
 In a meat and vegetable diet the vegetables furnish the al- 
 kalines necessary to neutralise these acids. 
 
 Meat eaters should therefore always supplement their diet 
 with plenty of fresh vegetables and should see to it that none 
 of the alkaline juices of the vegetables are lost in cooking. 
 
 But, in order to neutralise with vegetables the acids of meat, 
 the kidneycide who eats twice as much meat as he ought to, 
 would have to eat twice as many vegetables as he can hold. 
 Thus far no surgeon has been able successfully to devise an 
 operation that would enlarge the stomach to any such capacity. 
 
 It is much easier to develop an enlarged cranium than to di- 
 late a stomach ordinarily designed to hold a quart to a degree 
 that will enable it to receive a peck. There is no questioning the 
 fact that if we are going to go on in America with our present 
 rate of meat consumption, we have simply got to get new stomachs. 
 
 It might be possible at birth by a deft operation to substitute 
 a calf's stomach for the human stomach in order to enlarge the 
 human capacity, but to do so it would also be necessary to equip 
 the body with a liver and two kidneys that would measure up in 
 size to the increased demands made upon them. This would neces- 
 sitate the extension of the entire abdominal cavity — a difficulty 
 that might be overcome by grafting over the abdominal surface of 
 the infant fifteen or twenty square feet of cowhide. 
 
 To support this rotund sack we might rig up some kind of 
 a block and tackle which would enable the child as it grows 
 to waddle along into adult life. 
 
 The prospect is not promising, but it seems to be the only way 
 out of our present difficulty. 
 
 In the meantime the meat eater ought to consider certain 
 facts which have no bearing on patriotism but which affect his 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 335 
 
 own physical welfare to an extent rarely suspected by him. 
 
 Wet, water-logged, soggy, soft, gelatinous, flabby meat is al- 
 ways of poor quality as distinguished from good meat which has 
 a healthy red colour, unless it be pork or veal, the colour of which 
 is pale. 
 
 To the touch good meat should be firm and elastic; not wet, 
 but moist. 
 
 Meat of a pale pinkish or bluish hue should be rejected as 
 coming from diseased animals. Meat which has a deep purplish 
 colour should also be rejected, for this colour indicates that the 
 animal died a natural death — that it was not slaughtered. 
 
 Meat which has a blazing red colour, instead of a dark, rick 
 but dull red, has been treated with anhydrous sodium sulphite. 
 Hamburg steak is the most abused in this regard. 
 
 Tubercular meat is especially to be rejected. Animals suf- 
 fering from tuberculosis do not always leave in their flesh symp- 
 toms which can be detected by mere visual examination, although 
 the marks appearing in the advanced stages of tuberculosis are 
 unmistakable. 
 
 Meat which discharges its juice on the platter in large quan- 
 tities is frozen meat which has been thawed. Freshly killed or 
 merely chilled meat is comparatively dry. 
 
 In freezing meat for storage purposes the liquid constituents 
 of the tissue cells expand just as water expands. The expan- 
 sion ruptures the cell walls just as it ruptures a lead pipe. When 
 the meat is thawed for sale by the retailer the cell juices flow 
 through the broken tissues and escape. Frozen meat after thaw- 
 ing putrifies rapidly. 
 
 No meat should be consumed raw for the reason that it may 
 not only infect its consumer with tuberculosis but also with 
 trichinosis and other diseases. 
 
 The heat ordinarily applied to a heavy roast does not steri- 
 lise the lymphatic glands which lie imbedded in the flesh. If 
 the animal is tubercular the glands are always affected even 
 though no evidence of the disease is to be found in the tissues. 
 
 In milk the germ of tuberculosis is killed when heated to 145 
 degrees Fahrenheit for thirty minutes. This is called pasteur- 
 isation. 
 
 Meat, however, is a poor conductor of heat, and heat pene- 
 
336 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 trates to the centre of large pieces of meat very slowly. 
 
 If the interior of a roast of beef retains much of the blood- 
 red colour of the raw meat you can be sure that the temperature 
 has not been high enough to destroy any germs that may be 
 present. 
 
 Dr. Woodland of the British Royal Commission subjected 
 meats known to contain tubercular material to the ordinary pro- 
 cesses of cooking. After cooking he used the central portions for 
 feeding and inoculating animals. The results were startling. 
 
 He found the centre of a joint weighing six pounds never 
 attained a higher temperature than 140 degrees Fahrenheit dur- 
 ing ordinary cooking. The germs on the outside were destroyed, 
 but those on the inside remained alive. 
 
 The results of his experiment prove that the most trustworthy 
 method of cooking meat is by boiling. 
 
 Mutton is probably more easily digested than beef because 
 its fibres are much finer, and its connective tissues loose. Veal 
 is thought to be difficult to digest, although its connective tissues 
 are very loose and are readily converted into gelatine. 
 
 In explanation of the belief that veal resists digestion it is 
 said that the fibres of veal easily escape the action of the teeth 
 and that because its flavour is insipid as compared to the flavour 
 of other meats it fails to stimulate a liberal flow of the digestive 
 juices. 
 
 Pork is digested with great difficulty on account of its high 
 fat content. It requires a much longer time to digest fat than to 
 digest muscle fibre. Bacon is an exception to this rule as it can 
 often be consumed without any ill effects by those who find diffi- 
 culty in digesting other forms of fat. 
 
 The breast of chicken and game is digested with more ease 
 than any other form of meat. 
 
 Lamb is probably the most wholesome of all meat foods for 
 the reason that the sheep is found to be amazingly free of the 
 diseases which affect such a large proportion of the steers and 
 swine offered for slaughter. 
 
 Beef tea is made by boiling the flesh of old cows, known in 
 the packing industry as "canners" or "downers." 
 
 The boiling extracts the soluble substances present in the 
 tissues. The cast off cells of the old flesh and the waste products 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 
 
 of its muscles are soluble in water, consequently they enter the 
 extract. 
 
 The insoluble waste which appears in solid form becomes 
 "corned or canned roast beef." 
 
 For myself I find that carefully selected meats do not harm me 
 when consumed in moderation. Three or four times a week I 
 eat meat. When I used to eat it three times a day I did not 
 know what was the matter with my health, but now there is 
 nothing the matter with it. 
 
 § 108 — OLD WHEN TIEED 
 
 When we are tired we are old. Age might well be said to 
 be a state of chronic fatigue. Even the very young suffer from 
 fatigue and it is usually during fatigue, when the vitality is 
 at low ebb and resistance weak, that the germs of disease be- 
 gin their growth in the body. 
 
 Youth suffers two kinds of fatigue — nervous fatigue and mus- 
 cular fatigue. In either case the conditions may be brought 
 about by overexertion or disease. The scientists call the former 
 physiological fatigue and the latter pathological fatigue. These 
 two forms of fatigue differ from one another only in degree. 
 
 The sensations of fatigue, with all they signify, are of interest 
 to a nation confronted by food problems because it has been 
 established that certain kinds of food will produce the same 
 chemical changes in the human tissues that are brought about 
 by fatigue. 
 
 Fatigue interferes with the activities of every gland of the 
 body. Its principal effect is to destroy the capacity of muscle 
 and nerve to perform the work natural to them. Its chief symp- 
 tom is depression, and its chief effect the destruction of all those 
 natural forces which tend to protect the body from disease. 
 
 Because fatigue is so intimately related to food folly as well 
 as to overexertion and disease its dangers should be clearly 
 understood. 
 
 Dr. Arthur L. Fisk has devoted many years to the study of 
 fatigue, examining its phenomena through the tired muscle. 
 
388 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 He informs us that, inasmuch as the muscles are more acces- 
 sible for investigation and experiment than are the nerves, we 
 necessarily know more of the fatigue of the muscle than of 
 the nerves. 
 
 "But," he says, "as the general law of biology applies to both 
 muscle and nerve alike the processes which take place in the 
 one doubtless occur similarly in the other." 
 
 Until recently the fatigue of muscle which results from physi- 
 cal exertion was thought to be a condition only of the muscle, 
 but this is now known not to be the case. 
 
 If a healthy fresh muscle of a frog's leg is placed upon a 
 marble slab and stimulated with electricity it will contract in the 
 same manner as it would have done in life and health. 
 
 If these contractions are repeated in sufficiently rapid suc- 
 cession certain chemical changes take place within the muscle 
 tissue. During these changes there are formed in the tissues 
 some of the same toxic substances which are formed in a one- 
 sided diet of refined food. These substances are lactic acid, 
 creatine, and carbon dioxide. An exclusive diet of white bread, 
 meat and sugar produces the same tissue change as is pro- 
 duced in fatigue. 
 
 When these substances are developed in the muscle of the 
 frog's leg it resists further contraction and can then be said to 
 be in a state of fatigue. However, if these toxic substances 
 are removed by flushing the tissues with a weak salt solution 
 the muscle of the frog's leg will again contract when the elec- 
 trical stimulus is applied. 
 
 All these toxic products of fatigue are acid. During rest 
 following fatigue these acids are neutralised by the alkalines 
 of the blood and internal secretions, after which the muscle 
 is restored to a state of freshness, strength and tone. 
 
 If these corrective alkaline substances are removed by me- 
 chanical processes from food before it is consumed the blood and 
 other internal secretions which the body relies upon in health 
 to counteract the poisonous effects of fatigue must necessarily 
 be deprived of the tools with which they operate. 
 
 Even an amateur can readily appreciate the fact that to the 
 extent to which food refinement robs the daily diet of these 
 corrective alkaline salts the body is correspondingly handicapped 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 339 
 
 in its effort to overcome the evil effects of fatigue, from which 
 complete receovery on a refined diet is absolutely impossible. 
 
 § 109 — FOOD AND FATIGUE 
 
 To clearly understand the direct relationship between food 
 and fatigue it will be well to examine the remarkable experi- 
 ments of Weichardt, Ranke, Mosso and Lee. 
 
 Weichardt took living animals which had been fatigued by 
 their own exertions, cut from them pieces of muscle tissue, 
 and recovered from this tissue poisons which could not be re- 
 covered from healthy tissue in a state of rest. 
 
 These poisons, taken from the fatigued muscle, were injected 
 into the body of the rested animal, which soon after began 
 to manifest all the symptoms of natural fatigue. 
 
 This experiment proved that fatigue is produced by chemical 
 changes of an acid character which take place in the tissues and 
 that until these depressing acids are neutralised by the natural 
 functions of a healthy body the poisons remain in the tissues. 
 
 Ranke, convinced that the products, lactic acid, creatine, and 
 carbon dioxide, developed by muscle activity, were responsible 
 for the phenomenon of fatigue, experimented on frogs' muscles, 
 into which he introduced these substances taken from the 
 laboratory. 
 
 He found, after injecting creatine and carbon dioxide into 
 the muscle, that it lost its strength as well as its power to move. 
 
 After proving this he gave the name of "fatigue substances" 
 to creatine and carbon dioxide. 
 
 Mosso, as a result of his study of fatigue, found it was due 
 entirely to chemical changes within the muscle. 
 
 Lee describes changes which he says result in the produc- 
 tion of three acid substances which he calls sarcolactic acid, 
 novopotassium phosphate, and carbon dioxide. 
 
 All of these substances are acid in their reaction, which ac- 
 counts for the acid reaction of a muscle in a condition of fatigue 
 as distinguished from the reaction of a muscle in repose, which 
 is alkaline. 
 
340 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Until these acid products of fatigue are neutralised by the 
 alkalinity of the healthy blood which passes through the tissues 
 the fatigued muscle cannot recover its strength. 
 
 The fact that the alkaline salts are removed from most of 
 the foods served on the American dinner table has never been 
 heeded by the medical profession as a body, although individual 
 physicians in many parts of the country have in recent years 
 recognised the truth and are applying it in their practice by 
 prescribing unrefined foods in many diseases. 
 
 Fisk declares: "Fatigue is the result of chemical changes 
 which occur within the tissues and organs of the body and which 
 give rise to certain toxic products that act to depress these 
 tissues or organs. 
 
 "Nerve tissue is no exception to the general biological law. 
 Such changes occur in the nerves during activity as well as in 
 the muscle tissue. 
 
 "Intense mental activity is capable of giving rise within the 
 body to these profound chemical changes as shown by the frequent 
 occurrence of a nursing mother suffering an intense fright and, 
 subsequent to it, nursing her baby, who within three or four 
 hours thereafter has severe convulsions. 
 
 "This also demonstrates," he says, "that the action of the 
 fatigue poisons is not confined to the tissues in which they arise, 
 but passes over to all the other glands and organs of the body 
 affecting their secretions and functions. 
 
 "The constitution of the blood is altered by the absorption 
 of these acid products of fatigue, in consequence of which its 
 alkalinity is greatly diminished, a condition which results in 
 serious disorders. 
 
 "Any activity on the part of a nerve or muscle that is already 
 in a condition of fatigue results in decidedly more harm than 
 would a heavier task done under normal conditions, so that when 
 the body is fatigued even a small amount of extra work often 
 produces disastrous results.'' 
 
 The athlete generally recognises the importance of food of 
 the proper kind in order to enable him to recover from the fa- 
 tigue of his exertions. He instinctively recognises that if he can 
 get his blood in a healthy condition through proper dieting he 
 will more quickly overcome the depressing effects of fatigue 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES 34d 
 
 . ' 
 
 l and thus recuperate under strain in a more rapid manner, 
 Without knowing why, he understands fully that if he can 
 ! bring about in his blood a perfectly normal alkaline condition 
 it will have capacity for neutralising larger quantities of the 
 | acids of fatigue, thus contributing to his endurance and en- 
 abling him to outlast his opponent in a contest. 
 
 The conditioning of all boxers and athletes is based upon 
 the training table. 
 
 Growing children, prospective mothers, nursing mothers, and 
 I bread-winners engaged in the ordinary exhausting pursuits of 
 J the day are just as dependent upon the application of these 
 ij biological facts to their own physical welfare as is the boxer, 
 ' but the importance of food is not recognised in the ordinary 
 1 everyday walks of life. 
 
 § 110 — THE END OF FATIGUE 
 
 Extreme fatigue, whether nervous or physical, produces a 
 change in temper, causing irritability, and often overpowers the 
 noblest qualities. 
 
 There is scarcely a man, woman or child who does not daily 
 suffer some manifestation of irritability which, if properly un- 
 derstood, might be traced to its proper source and overcome. 
 
 Impoverished food, through diminishing the alkalinity of the 
 blood and thus reducing the capacity of that fluid to neutralise 
 the poisonous acids of fatigue, has done much to upset the 
 happiness of the human family. 
 
 Incompatibility of temper is dragged into the divorce courts 
 more often through the impoverished food route than through 
 any other channel. 
 
 The fretful, irritable' child which occasions so much vexation 
 and anxiety at home is the victim of much preventable suffer- 
 ing only because it is reacting to the ignorance of those who 
 have undertaken to supply its tissues with food incapable of 
 contributing to their normal needs. 
 
 Many a highly developed mind breaks down in the midst of 
 its unfinished labours solely because with all its intelligence it 
 
342 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 still acts in the dark as regards the physical needs of the body 
 which sustains it. 
 
 The worn down business man crams himself with foods which 
 no owner of a prize animal would permit in his kennel, stable, 
 or stock farm. 
 
 Fisk enumerates the order in which the functions of the 
 body are affected in fatigue. He says, "We first find the circu- 
 lation and respiration affected, then later digestion and then 
 the action of the kidneys. In individuals of advanced years 
 we have to deal with tissues in a condition of fatigue or de- 
 pression due to the wear and tear which they have suffered 
 during the stress of life in years that have passed. 
 
 "The evidence of this fatigue is shown by what is usually 
 called lowered vitality exhibited in poor circulation, deficient 
 respiration, impaired digestion, and faulty action of the kidneys — 
 processes which have to do with oxidation, assimilation, and 
 elimination. Such individuals are in a condition of chronic fa- 
 tigue, depression, or acidosis." 
 
 This word "acidosis' 5 persists throughout the literature of im- 
 poverished foods. The sailors who were stricken aboard the 
 converted cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm suffered from a condition 
 of acidosis so similar to that of chronic fatigue that the symp- 
 toms of both were identical. 
 
 In their case an abundance of acid-producing foods so dimin- 
 ished the alkalinity of their blood that their tissues were satu- 
 rated with the acids of fatigue. They lost the power of locomo- 
 tion. Their blood had been robbed of alkalines to such a de- 
 gree that even the slight scratches upon their hands and feet 
 refused to heal. 
 
 Alkaline solutions quickly enabled them to neutralise these 
 acid poisons and they promptly recovered. 
 
 Describing the effects of fatigue upon the aged, Fisk says : 
 "They increase the depression of acidosis of the tissues that 
 exists and this increase overpowers the system with poisons so 
 that death results." 
 
 Foods which produce an acid reaction in the body must be 
 consumed with foods which produce an alkaline reaction. 
 
 Foods robbed of their alkaline salts cannot contribute this 
 alkalinity to the blood. 
 
PREVENTABLE TRAGEDIES ®m 
 
 Blood robbed of its natural alkalinity cannot neutralise or 
 correct the acid products of fatigue. 
 
 The tissue sweeteners are the alkaline salts found in ripe fruits, 
 succulent vegetables and greens, milk, egg yolk, beans, peas, 
 lentils, whole wheat, whole corn, and other whole cereals. 
 
NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW 
 OF THE MYSTERIES OF FOOD 
 
NINE: WHAT THE WORLD SHOULD KNOW OF THE 
 MYSTERIES OF FOOD 
 
 § 111 IRON AND THE RAISIN 
 
 The skin of anemic women is white. The flesh of anemic 
 women is flabby. The muscles of anemic women lack tone. 
 When iron is withdrawn from their blood the roses vanish from 
 their cheeks. Cosmetics applied from the outside deceive neither 
 God nor man. 
 
 Iron deficiency as a disease baffles the medical profession. 
 There are no whoops of joy, no outbursts of buoyant energy, 
 no cries of bounding gladness, no hops, skips or jumps, no foun- 
 tains of eternal youth, vigour, life or health in the bottle of "beef, 
 iron and wine," or the jar of rouge. 
 
 Tired and listless folk, with energising iron clamouring for 
 recognition, fail to see it at their doors. 
 
 Among the most prolific sources of food iron, the raisin is 
 conspicuous. California might well be called the "Iron State" 
 though never has she been so honored. Her fruity little nug- 
 gets of iron are gathered from bounteous harvests only to be 
 ignored by white-faced creatures, who mournfully cry, "Where 
 are the iron men of yesterday?" 
 
 The raisin, heavy with iron in its most assimilable form, 
 begs mankind to let it do for the weak and the weary the things 
 it was created for. 
 
 Polar explorers with indomitable courage face the longest 
 nights of the Arctic winter when iron props their strength. When 
 the prop falls they yield tribute to misery and death, attended 
 by anemia, scurvy and mineral starvation. 
 
 No wonder the adventurer who pushes into the North places 
 the raisin on the pinnacle of glory nature made for it. 
 
 Lelensky fed dogs upon foods deprived of iron. Dogs can 
 live on any food that will sustain a human being. In one dog 
 thus fed on an ironless diet the percentage of the red colouring 
 
 347 
 
348 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 matter of its blood fell in nine days from 18.5 to 13. 1 ; in another 
 dog fed the same way the percentage dropped in six days from 
 14.8 to 1 1.3. Anemia became more pronounced as the ironless 
 diet was continued. 
 
 California with her vast crop of raisins should know that 
 the iron demanded by the body for oxidation, secretion, repro- 
 duction and growth must be obtained from food iron not from 
 medicinal iron. 
 
 Because it contains an abundance of iron the raisin might 
 well be chewed as gum or tobacco is chewed. It might well 
 become a part of all our breadstuff's, cakes and muffins. It 
 might well go with us into the hospital and the nursery. 
 
 Soaked in water overnight and simmered gently for a few 
 minutes in the morning, the raisin makes an ideal and easily 
 digestible breakfast fruit. 
 
 Like whole cereals it contains the mineral salts essential to 
 life. Not only does it provide iron in abundance, but it yields 
 in large measure lime, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. 
 
 The raisin is a gift of God. Every athlete, every mother, 
 every child, should cultivate the raisin habit. 
 
 If we could increase the consumption of raisins a hundred- 
 fold, much of the anemia due to our denatured foods would 
 disappear. 
 
 Come, California, give us raisins and more raisins, so that in 
 the days of peace we may find argosies of iron-laden dried 
 grapes ploughing their way over courses whose mistresses too 
 long were iron ships of war. 
 
 § 112 — Cornell's o.k. 
 
 Some little confirmation of the truths outlined here breaks 
 forth occasionally in wholly unexpected fashion. 
 
 In April, 191 7, the New York State College of Agriculture, 
 Cornell University, issued a bulletin urging the people to consume 
 generous quantities of milk, eggs, dried and fresh fruits, peas, 
 beans, succulent vegetables, whole wheat, whole corn and whole 
 rice in order to obtain the minerals necessary to health. 
 
 "Green vegetables contain great quantities of iron, and iron," 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 349 
 
 continued the bulletin, "enters into the composition of the cell 
 nucleus and of that part of the red corpuscle which carries 
 oxygen. 
 
 "Iron is important for growth and for maintaining the blood 
 in good condition. Children, young girls and women, expectant 
 mothers especially, need a diet rich in iron." 
 
 After outlining the necessity of iron, lime, phosphorus, po- 
 tassium, magnesium, sodium and other food minerals, the bul- 
 letin declared: "It is advisable to include in the daily dietary 
 a certain amount of cellulose frequently called indigestible plant 
 fibre or roughage." 
 
 Here, at last, is university recognition of facts in the denial 
 of which the food poisoners of America are more menacing 
 from within than was the Kaiser from without. 
 
 Every day since 191 1 the New York Globe persevered in 
 spreading this gospel, and every day until the Cornell bulletin 
 appeared it was laughed at, as it has been laughed at ever since. 
 
 § 113 — POTATOES, PARSNIPS, CARROTS, AND TURNIPS 
 
 Among the best of the foods symbolic of mineral richness, 
 is the humble potato. The United States has never made full 
 use of this naturally alkaline food. Our methods of preparing 
 it have squandered its most desirable dietetic substance. 
 
 Because the potato has been plentiful and comparatively cheap 
 we have looked upon it as unimportant, yet Armand Gautier 
 himself has no hesitancy in declaring that the potato, in addition 
 to whole-grain bread and meat, is the most general and valuable 
 aliment. Since it has become popular, famine has disappeared 
 from Europe. 
 
 The small new potato differs little in composition from the 
 fully developed potato. Because of its great richness in potas- 
 sium, calcium, and magnesium, it does not acidify the blood 
 as other starchy foods, but rather alkalises it. 
 
 When peeled and cooked in water it loses most of these 
 mineral salts, which pass into the water and are not served at 
 the table. Steamed in its skin the potato retains its full flavour, 
 
350 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 also its salts. Baked in its jacket it is ideal, provided the skin 
 has been carefully washed and brushed before baking. Even 
 the crisp skin when masticated will agree with nearly everybody — 
 man, woman and child. 
 
 Growing children and expectant mothers should not eat fried 
 potatoes, nor should any adult in delicate health. 
 
 Next to the potato in value as regards their alkaline influence 
 on the blood, the carrot, turnip and parsnip are paramount. 
 
 Tender, new carrots, steamed and served with butter sauce, 
 cream sauce made of milk powder and their own juice, are not 
 as popular in America as they should be. 
 
 Turnips, steamed, mashed and seasoned, are likewise lacking 
 in popularity. 
 
 Parsnips lack the general recognition which their virtues merit. 
 In the old-fashioned home these tubers are employed in soup 
 making, thus contributing their alkalising juices to the dietary. 
 They yield calcium in quantity almost as great as that afforded 
 by the potato. 
 
 The parsnip contains nearly twice as much calcium as the po- 
 tato and in potassium salts is richer than carrot, turnip or potato. 
 The parsnip also contains more phosphorus but less iron. The 
 carrot and turnip contain less than half the iron found in the 
 potato. 
 
 A judicious combination of these tubers will bring to the 
 dinner table such varying percentages of these alkaline salts 
 that in the long run the general average of the combination might 
 be said to be ideal. 
 
 In proportion to cost the fruits and vegetables furnish much 
 more iron than meat and fish. 
 
 Sherman reports the cost of meat and fish is about 35 per 
 cent, of the total expenditure for food and the cost of vegetables 
 and fruits only 18 per cent., although the food iron of the vege- 
 tables is incomparably superior to the mere traces of iron found 
 in meat. 
 
 Meat tends toward excessive intestinal putrefaction with result- 
 ing absorption of poisons detrimental to the red blood cells 
 and interfering with the economy of iron in the body. Fruits 
 and vegetables on the other hand have the opposite effect, and 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 351 
 
 their use in liberal quantities tends to prevent intestinal pu- 
 trefaction. 
 
 Herter shows that among anemic people the anemia is closely 
 associated with intestinal putrefaction, and that an improved 
 condition of the blood quickly follows upon the larger use of 
 fruits and vegetables. 
 
 He observes that anemia is much more common among meat- 
 eating animals than among herbivorous animals. Not only are 
 the salts contributed by the carrot, parsnip, turnip and potato 
 of great aid in bringing up the blood to normal, thus fortifying 
 the tissues against disease, but because of their bulky residue 
 they produce a mild laxative effect which prevents the absorp- 
 tion of putrefactive poisons in the intestines. 
 
 In ancient times the carrot and turnip were held in great es- 
 teem, and it is difficult to understand the reason for America's 
 indifference to them. 
 
 The Greeks and Romans boiled the carrot in a stew pan over 
 a slow fire with cummin and a little oil, sprinkling the finished 
 dish with ground cumminseeds before serving. 
 
 The epicurians of Athens prepared turnips by boiling them, 
 adding cummin, mashing in a mortar, then adding honey, grape 
 vinegar, gravy, stewed grapes and a little oil. The whole was 
 left to simmer and then served. 
 
 The extensive cultivation of vacant lots, home gardens and 
 truck gardens stimulated in America by the war, should never 
 again be discontinued. We should eat more cabbage, spinach, 
 lettuce, onions, leeks, radishes, parsley and cucumbers, except 
 in the rare cases where the individual presents an idiosyncrasy 
 against them. 
 
 All these greens afford large percentages of potassium. The 
 presence of potash (potassium carbonate) in the ashes of burned 
 wood accounts for the fact that wood ashes are alkaline. It 
 is for this reason they are used in sweetening sour or acid soil. 
 
 The potassium salts of these green vegetables have the same 
 effect exactly on the tissues of the body, keeping them sweet 
 and alkaline. 
 
 The eating of these vegetables actually diminishes the acidity 
 of the urine, a fact demonstrated by Blatherwick, who found 
 in all his experiments with vegetables that the urinary acidity 
 
852 THIS FAMISHI NG WORLD 
 
 is diminished as expected, showing that the alkalinity of vege- 
 table foods is actually utilised in neutralising the acids of the 
 body. 
 
 On this .point Sherman is most explicit and emphatic. "It 
 should be clearly understood," he says, "that an excess of base- 
 forming elements in the food is not in any sense objectionable, 
 since the oxidation processes in the body are constantly yielding 
 such large quantities of carbonic acid that any surplus of base- 
 forming elements goes to form bicarbonates which not only do 
 not disturb the neutrality, but which act as a reserve material 
 for its maintenance." 
 
 It is obvious as all experiments attest that the greater the 
 amount of meat, fish, eggs, sugar and starch consumed, the 
 more important is a liberal supply of fruits and vegetables. As 
 meat eaters we have run mad. Our vegetable appetite is far 
 below normal. This lack of balance, even without white bread 
 to contribute to it, is menacing the stamina of America. 
 
 § 114 — FRUIT 
 
 When the Creator placed man in the garden of Eden, He 
 commanded him to eat of the fruit it contained. 
 
 From that time fruit has been mentioned incessantly in the 
 history of nations. 
 
 The American farmer frequently complains that he cannot 
 obtain the cost of picking his fruit, nor the cost of a basket or 
 crate in which to ship it to market. 
 
 I have attended many legislative hearings in which these 
 grievances have been aired. 
 
 Fruit trees have been chopped down, the stumps removed, 
 and the whole orchard given up to the cultivation of other crops 
 because the people of the cities eat fruit so slowly that little 
 room is made for new shipments, which must be sold for a song 
 or allowed to rot on the ground. 
 
 The United States produces an abundance of fruits of every 
 kind, yet so strangely have the American people been weaned 
 from their fruit appetites that they consume perhaps one-fifth 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 353 
 
 of the total annual harvest. For this reason they pay fancy 
 prices for such fruits as they do eat. 
 
 If their fruit appetites were normal they would secure great 
 quantities of fruit at much cheaper prices, and the fruit farmer 
 who now barely ekes out a living from his labors, would be 
 prosperous and happy. 
 
 We know how Moses exempted from military service any one 
 who had planted a vineyard, and how all fruit trees conferred the 
 same privilege upon their owners. 
 
 The heathen nations understood the importance of fruits. To 
 make them sacred and thus augment their popularity, they in- 
 vented gods and goddesses to look after them, such as Pomona, 
 Vertumnus, Priapus. 
 
 The sole care of these deities was to protect orchards from 
 bad weather, insects and robbers. 
 
 The fruit of the olive tree grew under the protection of Min- 
 erva; the date was consigned to the protection of the Muses; 
 the fig and grape were looked after by Bacchus. 
 
 So greatly did the heathens venerate these two fruits that they 
 elevated Bacchus to the level of their other gods. 
 
 We have here an instance of a god receiving a promotion 
 through the human appetite for figs and grapes. 
 
 The Greeks always served two courses of fruits. The Romans 
 always ate fruit for breakfast. The third course of their princi- 
 pal meal consisted of an incredible profusion of the production of 
 their own orchards. 
 
 Rich patricians planted fruit trees on the summits of high 
 towers, and on their house tops, thus dwelling always, as they 
 thought, under the orchards and the protection of the god watch- 
 ing over them. 
 
 From Rome the modern method of canning California fruits 
 in a thin sugar syrup was borrowed. The Romans immersed 
 their fruit in honey for future use. In those days bees were 
 cultivated with great care, and the Romans not only enjoyed 
 the fruits of the orchard, but also the nectar of its blossoms. 
 
 In all experiments conducted with gorillas, chimpanzees and 
 other members of the monkey tribe, it has been found that these 
 creatures thrive best on a fruit diet. The reason for this is not 
 difficult to find, although certain groups of scientists have tried 
 
354 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 to prove that their own meat-eating grandparents descended 
 from the fruit and vegetable-eating primates. 
 
 The luscious flavour and tempting bouquet of ripe fruits 
 stimulate appetite and excite the flow of gastric juices. Fruit 
 juice is medicine. Fruit pulp is food. 
 
 No pharmacist has ever compounded a nostrum which bears 
 in curative properties the slightest resemblance to pure fruit 
 juice. 
 
 Perhaps if the fruit farmers of the United States were to 
 organise themselves into an educational association, and by tax- 
 ing their fruits a cent a basket, create a fund for the purpose 
 of advertising the truth concerning the medicinal virtues of ripe 
 fruit, they would no longer have occasion to complain of bad 
 markets. Fruit juice has no calorie value. It is just good. 
 
 The appetite for fruit is a natural one, and needs only to 
 be restored. The coarser and grosser flavours of charred meats 
 and heavy gravies have blunted the fine organs of taste, but down 
 in the heart of man is an instinctive appreciation of the products 
 of vine and tree which can never be entirely destroyed. 
 
 Upon this foundation there can be built to the benefit of the 
 people of America an edifice devoted to the improvement of pub- 
 lic health by way of the dissemination of fruit truth. 
 
 At the root of such truth lie the results of the work of Blunt, 
 University of Chicago, and Otis, College of Emporia, Kansas. 
 
 These laboratory workers were shocked to find that dietitians 
 invariably compute the quantity of iron in the cooked food 
 prescribed for their patients on the published percentages of 
 iron in the raw food. All these published percentages of mineral 
 salts in foodstuffs are determined from analyses of the raw 
 product. 
 
 Blunt and Otis, knowing that the soluble salts are lost in cook- 
 ing, also knew that such loss would deprive the patient of a 
 large quantity of the very elements for which the dietitians 
 prescribed certain foods. 
 
 Selecting iron as the subject for their tests, they found the 
 average loss in boiling in the usual way for spinach was 43 per 
 cent., for string beans 39 per cent., for navy beans 32 per cent., 
 for peas 36 per cent., for potatoes 15 per cent. As this loss 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 355 
 
 _ 
 
 ! represented soluble iron it is probable that the remaining salt 
 I is not nearly so available for the uses of the body. 
 
 The other salts are lost to a similar degree, hence all vege- 
 tables which are boiled before serving, unless their juices are 
 1 consumed as soup, make it necessary to consume more fruit, 
 the juices of which are not usually poured down the waste pipe. 
 
 § 115 — SULPHUKOTJS ACID 
 
 With the exception of prunes, currants and raisins, practically 
 I all dried fruit in America is outraged by treatment with sul- 
 phurous acid. Even the Sultana or blond raisin is bleached. 
 I The dried apricot, dried apple, dried peach, dried pear, and 
 j the fancy dates and figs are bleached. Dried mushrooms, mar- 
 aschino cherries, English walnuts and almonds are likewise sub- 
 | jected to the fumes of burning sulphur. 
 
 New Orleans and Porto Rico molasses, no longer worthy of 
 the name they bear, are doped with this chemical. White wines 
 contain enormous quantities of sulphurous acid, the spiteful, 
 biting, acrid flavour of which is dominant once the consumer's 
 attention is drawn to it. 
 
 Crystallised ginger root and candied fruit peels are treated irf 
 the same manner. 
 
 The enormous extent to which sulphurous acid and its salts 
 are employed is not dreamed of by the plain people. 
 
 For years the Bureau of Chemistry, Department of Agriculture, 
 at Washington, and the dried fruit industry have fought each 
 other to such lengths that scientists and lawyers engaged by 
 both sides in a controversy the public has never heard of, have 
 appeared in almost all the courts of the country for and against 
 the sulphurous acid abuse. 
 
 All efforts to reform the methods of preparation whereby 
 brunette fruits are forced to appear under a blond exterior have 
 been defeated by the food sophisticators. 
 
 For eight years the Referee Board to whose hands the sul- 
 phurous acid problem was referred for a decision, kept quiet while 
 
356 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 in the meantime the harvest of sulphured fruits increased 
 enormously. 
 
 In 1909 California alone produced 40,000,000 pounds of dried 
 peaches, bleached with sulphurous acid. In 1914 this quantity 
 had increased to 64,000,000 pounds. Eight years is a long time in 
 which to determine whether a poison is a poison, while the public 
 during the interim without its knowledge, goes on eating the 
 red corpuscle-destroying food. 
 
 The sulphur interests have been able to say to the United 
 States Government "hands off." Through their influence at 
 Washington they were able to keep the Referee Board in a 
 state of silence. 
 
 In the meantime Dr. J. C. Olsen, 191 1, through his experi- 
 ments showed that sulphurous acid destroys the kidneys. April 
 21, 1 91 3, I urged the New York Department of Health, which 
 has unlimited powers, to feed twenty orphan children daily with 
 the same kind of sulphur-bleached dried fruit that twenty mil- 
 lion other children in the United States are asked to eat. I 
 suggested that if at the end of one year these twenty orphans 
 should be found to be the victims of sulphurous acid poisoning, 
 the Health Department would have justification for exercising 
 its vast powers in the discouragement of the sulphite industry, 
 and would doubtless be absolved of all charges of cruelty for 
 having made the experiment. 
 
 The suggestion was looked upon as "inhuman." The same 
 timid souls who would not feed twenty orphans systematically 
 with bleached fruits, were willing to stand by idle while twenty 
 millions of other children were exposed to its perils. 
 
 The Government itself as far back as November 22, 1907, in 
 circular No. 37, declared: "Sulphurous acid in the food pro- 
 duces serious disturbances of the metabolic functions. It adds 
 an immense burden to the kidneys, which cannot result in any- 
 thing but injury. It impoverishes the blood in respect to the 
 number of red and white corpuscles. It is in every sense preju- 
 dicial to health." 
 
 Yet sulphurous acid is in greater use to-day than ever. 
 
 The Food and Drug Laboratory of the University of Cali- 
 fornia has openly criticised the government for its failure to act. 
 
 In volume 13, Nos. 8 and 9 of the Pennsylvania Department 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD S57 
 
 of Agriculture Bulletin, October, 191 5, Dr. M. E. Jaffa frankly 
 asserts: "Up to date there has not been offered a process (ex- 
 cept sun-drying) which can take the place of sulphuring, but 
 grapes intended for human consumption should not be subjected 
 to sulphur fumes as successful drying can be practised without 
 the use of sulphur. 
 
 "In the case of the apricot and peach the oxidation of the 
 j sulphurous compounds to sulphuric is slow. Samples of Thomp- 
 son seedless grapes have been tested with the result that while 
 j the content of sulphurous acid was below the limit permitted by 
 I the government, the sulphuric acid approximated ten times as 
 ! much. The same is true as regards the desiccated bleached po- 
 ; tato. 
 
 "The fruit grower tries to produce in his output a high degree 
 
 I of color. If the consumer did not demand intensely yellow 
 
 j fruit there would be no sale for it. Fruit is coloured by the 
 
 grower so as to get a higher price for his goods. The grower 
 
 is willing to put on the market a less highly colored product 
 
 if the consumer will use it." 
 
 In the meantime the people living in and around Salano County, 
 California, produced evidence to show that the sulphurous acid 
 or sulphur dioxide liberated by smelting plants not only destroys 
 the vegetation of the surrounding country, but injures the health 
 of man and beast. 
 
 So poisonous is the bleaching agent used in the dried fruit 
 industry that the commission reporting to the Bureau of Mines 
 on its investigation made between June, 1913, and September, 
 19 14, declared that in the proportion of 35 parts to 1,000,000 
 parts of air it is harmful to man, and that even 2 parts of the 
 poisonous gas in 1,000,000 parts of air applied for four hours 
 at one time, or for ten minutes a day, had such an injurious 
 effect upon plant life that it actually decreased the yield of 
 barley studied during the investigation. 
 
 The lower courts enjoined the smelting company from doing 
 further injury, and the Supreme Court, to which the case was 
 carried, confirmed the order, yet the sulphuring of food goes on. 
 
358 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 116 — "chops," waste and jelly 
 
 In the production of sulphured dried apples "apple waste 
 and "apple chops" are obtained as by-products. 
 
 The price of sulphured "chops" before the war ranged from 
 75 cents to $2 a bag of ioo pounds. They are used in the man- 
 ufacture of cheap mince meat for bakers' use, and for the pro- 
 duction of apple pie filler for the same purpose. 
 
 The price for "apple waste" before the war arranged from 6o 
 cents to $1.25 a bag of 100 pounds. "Apple waste" is sold to 
 jam and jelly manufacturers who boil it in a vat and then place 
 the skins, cores and trimmings between filter cloths under a 
 hydraulic press, to extract the juice. 
 
 This juice, with 60 per cent, glucose, 10 per cent, cane sugar, 
 sufficient phosphoric acid to insure jellying quality, and coal 
 tar color, with the aid of a chemical preservative, becomes 
 a handsome mess. It is sold in 3-pound wooden pails through 
 the grocery store, and in 30-pound wooden pails through the 
 wholesale bakers' supply houses. 
 
 Let the housewife read the label. She will find there such 
 phrases as "contains S0 2 ," "contains sulphur dioxide," "bleached 
 with sulphur," etc. 
 
 These same phrases will be found on the molasses barrels and 
 the wooden boxes in which dried fruit is shipped in wholesale 
 quantities. 
 
 The grocer does not transfer the illuminating phrase to the 
 paper bags in which he retails the bleached product. The baker 
 does not transfer it to the pie or cake in which it appears. The 
 confectioner does not label his candy accordingly. 
 
 When the government demands the labelling of the product, 
 the information is intended for the trade, and the consumer does 
 not get it. But a committee of housewives can invade grocery 
 store and bakery for the purpose of seeing for themselves what 
 kind of labels appear on barrels, boxes, pails and jars, the 
 contents of which are so fraudulently beautiful, so chemically 
 false. 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 859 
 
 The investigation ordered by Commissioner of Immigration 
 Caminetti into the Ellis Island scandal in 1912 disclosed the 
 fact that the pies forced upon the immigrants were composed 
 as far as the filler was concerned, of sweetened, sulphured 
 "apple chops." The pies were not labelled. 
 
 Anhydrous sodium sulphite is used by butchers all over the 
 country. I have traced tons of it into interstate commerce, and 
 have caused the arrest of scores of butchers who secretly em- 
 ployed it to give a fiery red colour to their stale meats, par- 
 ticularly to hamburger steak made from trimmings. 
 
 In the old days the juice of the sugar cane was clarified and 
 evaporated in open kettles set directly over the fire. The whole- 
 some and delicious by-product was called molasses. 
 
 To-day the stuff called molasses is clarified by the use of 
 sulphurous acid, which is subsequently neutralised by the addition 
 of an alkali. In the process the fine flavour and aroma of the 
 cane are greatly destroyed. 
 
 In some factories the acid is introduced as the fumes of burning 
 
 sulphur, in others in the form of acid sulphite of lime. Part 
 
 of this sulphurous acid is eventually oxidised to sulphuric acid. 
 
 As a result of the system now employed molasses contains 
 
 I little of the sugar of the cane, but it does contain enormous 
 
 j quantities of mineral scale, sulphates and sulphites. The whole- 
 
 I some and benevolent mineral salts of sugar cane as it comes 
 
 I from the field range in quantity up to 1 per cent. The raw 
 
 juice as expressed from the cane contains much less than 1 
 
 per cent, of these mineral salts, but so unnatural is the quantity 
 
 I of chemical neutralisers employed as refining agents that the 
 
 I finished molasses contains as much as 10 per cent, of useless 
 
 I mineral mud. 
 
 The food manufacturer takes the benevolent salts out of our 
 food and then burdens it with enormous doses of minerals of 
 1 a kind found in no food. 
 
 § 117 MOLASSES AND CANE SYRUP 
 
 In the old days molasses was worthy of the name, but to-day, 
 I as we have seen, except for the inconsiderable quantities made 
 
360 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 by a few farmers for home use, open kettle molasses has dis- 
 appeared from the market. 
 
 Open kettle molasses is really not molasses at all; it is cane 
 syrup. 
 
 In November, 1917, the Penick & Ford Co., Ltd., of New 
 Orleans, La., experimented with such cane syrup and produced 
 some 40,000 gallons of an unjuggled product, free from sul- 
 phurous acid or any of its salts. 
 
 In order to obtain a high price for inferior molasses, its manu- 
 facturer always bleaches it and the broker is forced to bleach 
 it again, by the addition of more sulphites. "Blanket" they 
 call it in the trade. 
 
 The Penick & Ford Co., Ltd., was amazed to discover that 
 instead of having to sell the unbleached product at a discount 
 it actually commanded a premium. 
 
 Early in 191 8 at 17 Battery Place, the company's New York 
 office, I tasted samples of this old-fashioned pure syrup, re- 
 joicing over its flavour, its body and its colour. There it stood, 
 an eloquent rebuke to the miserable commercial sophistries that 
 have debauched the molasses industry these many years. 
 
 Although technically such cane syrup is not molasses, it tastes 
 like molasses, smells like molasses, looks like molasses and dif- 
 fers from molasses only in that it is incomparably better. It 
 is merely the boiled down juice of the cane, from which none 
 of the crystallisable sugars have been extracted. 
 
 Commercial molasses represents the liquid that remains after 
 the extraction of the first, second and third crop of sugar and 
 the addition of the chemicals necessary to the extraction, including 
 sulphites. 
 
 The stuff known as "first molasses" contains what is left of 
 the cane syrup after a single crop of crystallisable sugar has 
 been extracted. 
 
 As a rule first molasses is "too good" to be sold to the retail 
 grocer for distribution to the consumer, hence it is put through 
 a second extracting process, which withdraws a second crop 
 of sugar crystals. The robbed product is then called "second 
 molasses," which contains very much less sugar and very much 
 more mineral mud than "first molasses." 
 
 With an eye to business the molasses manufacturer takes this 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 361 
 
 i ■ - ■ , 
 
 "second molasses" and again treats it to recover all the crystal- 
 lisable sugar it will yield. 
 
 This product is known in the trade as "third molasses," the 
 i kind usually sold to confectioners and bakers. 
 
 The last product in the process of degeneration is called "black 
 j strap," the rank flavour of which must be diluted in the taffy 
 factory and bake shops in order not to spoil the salable charac- 
 | ter of their finished luxuries. 
 
 "Black strap" is a thick, viscous, black mass containing 10 
 J per cent, of inedible impurities consisting of gums, acids, amino 
 j compounds and other chemical residue, the conduct of which 
 ,! in the living bodies of children, when consumed regularly over 
 ' a period of years, is utterly unknown to scientists. 
 
 Pure cane syrup or even "first molasses" free from sulphur 
 dioxide would be cheap at any price, but the people cannot buy 
 the former at all, and do not know where to seek the latter. Our 
 grandmothers made us swallow sulphur and molasses in the 
 I spring. That sulphur was harmless. Sulphurous acid and sul- 
 phites are poisons. 
 
 We now know that the housewife who sacrifices food value 
 for ornamentation indulges in perilous extravagance. When 
 her wheat is devitalised and bleached with nitrites, the finished 
 accomplishment is no longer flour. 
 
 The wondrously beautiful peacock is admired, but the flesh 
 of the homely turkey is consumed. 
 
 Chalky white bread is demanded, but dusky devil cake does 
 not shock. 
 
 The farmer never colours his wheat straw with coal tar 
 green, but he asks that his manufactured jam be dyed a passionate 
 red with gas house refuse. His butter, saturated with annatto 
 or turmeric in a desperate effort to keep up appearances, has 
 not the unassailable social standing of his white, creamy product. 
 The meat of the ox freshly slaughtered is brownish red, yet 
 the butcher is encouraged to substitute a scarlet hue with sul- 
 phites, as if the poor beast had died of coal gas poisoning. 
 
 The breast muscles of birds that use their wings are dark. 
 
 The white breast meat of the chicken is in a lingering state of 
 
 degeneration, caused by the time-unhonoured atrophy of disuse. 
 
 Lazy people who sit in rocking chairs would make poor stew 
 
362 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 for cannibals, although their flesh would become paler and paler, 
 whiter and whiter the longer they rock before going to the 
 caldron. 
 
 Coal is judged by its thermal heat units ; food by its appearance. 
 
 We do not recoil from the homely brunette prune or the little 
 darky raisin, but we yelp for the bleached blonds of the fruit 
 world. 
 
 The eye is pleased with stained glass, gaudy beads, flashy 
 trinkets, but the old-fashioned, sun-dried apple, rusty brown, 
 and the old-fashioned sun-dried peach and apricot, lacking in 
 skin beauty, possess food value and flavour incomparably su- 
 perior to their chemically educated cousins. 
 
 All reforms have to begin somewhere. There is no time like 
 now to begin this one. 
 
 § 118 — ROTS AND SPOTS 
 
 It never occurs to the average housewife that it is possible 
 to use rotten eggs for baking purposes. She does not know that 
 the putrefactive odours of the "spot" egg are volatilised in the 
 heat of the oven, and driven off, leaving no trace perceptible 
 to the sense of smell in the finished cake. 
 
 The baker is familiar with this phenomenon. I have caught 
 many bakers in the act of using such eggs in the production 
 of layer cake, sponge cake, and pound cake. 
 
 In one interstate conspiracy case tried in the Federal District 
 Court, Trenton, N. J., before Justice Relstab, in which I was 
 used as a witness by the Department of Justice, seven convicted 
 men left the court room on their journey to the penitentiary. 
 Their offence lay in the use of rotten eggs in the production of 
 pound cake sold through the 5 and 10 cent stores of New York 
 City, 40,000 pounds a day. 
 
 The quantity of rotten eggs available for baking purposes 
 according to the Food Research Laboratory of the United States 
 Department of Agrculture has a value of $50,000,000 annually. 
 Armour & Company estimate the value at $90,000,000. 
 
 I have caught Armour & Company in the act of selling rotten 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 36S 
 
 eggs to bakers at 3 cents a dozen, a crime against human decency 
 for which this institution suffered conviction, but for which ? 
 unlike the other culprits convicted in Trenton, it was not sent 
 to the penitentiary, paying a fine instead. 
 
 During the fall every case of 30 dozen eggs shipped to the 
 large cities yields an average of 18 eggs known as "crax," "dir- 
 ties," "leakers," "rots and spots." 
 
 The "spot" is the result of the action of putrefactive bacteria. 
 The "light spot" of yesterday is the "heavy spot" of to-day; the 
 "heavy spot" of to-day is the "rot" of to-morrow. 
 
 The egg candler can see the contents of any egg and determine 
 jts exact character without breaking the shell. 
 
 The light and medium "spots" after candling are broken into 
 .30-pound cans and delivered in the liquid state to bakers, or 
 frozen for future use. 
 
 "Spot" eggs, when poured through a sieve of fine mesh like 
 ordinary window screen, leave a mass of putrid clots on the 
 screen. Fresh eggs or sweet storage eggs pass freely through 
 the screen. 
 
 The "spot" collectors who prepare them for bakery use re- 
 ceive on an average $3.75 per can of thirty pounds, or $12 per 
 hundred pounds. Tanners can use such eggs but bakers pay 
 a premium of $5 a hundred pounds over the tanner price. 
 
 The good bacteria which appear in buttermilk and sauerkraut 
 are not to be confused with the bad bacter'a that produce putre- 
 faction in eggs. Putrefactive bacteria produce toxic substances. 
 In the baking process these bacteria are destroyed, but their 
 dead bodies and the poisons produced by them prior to their 
 death remain in the cake. 
 
 Instinctively the human family abhors putridity of any kind. 
 God has given man a nose, placing it on sentinel duty as near 
 the mouth as possible. The nose detects evidence cf putrefac- 
 tion and warns the mouth against it. In the rotten egg cake the 
 putrefaction is disguised, masked, camouflaged, and the nose, 
 designed only for honest operations, fails to penetrate the fraud. 
 
 The public has no suspicion of the magnitude of this unholy 
 business. In the metropolitan district alone within a period of 
 twenty-six months, 208 rotten egg bakers have been prosecuted 
 
364 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 and convicted. These prosecutions grew out of an intensive but 
 wholly unconventional effort to check the abuse. 
 
 In rounding up the offenders I was endowed with authority 
 by the mayor of Newark, the mayor of Jersey City, the health 
 commissioner of Hoboken, the mayor of Mount Vernon and 
 the health commissioner of New Rochelle. The police com- 
 missioner of Jersey City assigned eleven plain clothes men to 
 help me and the New York Bureau of Municipal Research 
 loaned me a score of assistants. 
 
 The disclosures of this little army of amateurs finally com- 
 pelled the New York City Health Department and the Federal 
 Government to act, with results that unfortunately are confined 
 to one district of one state. 
 
 So few communities heed the rotten egg traffic that the men 
 engaged in it actually defy detection. 
 
 In August, 1916, James Foust, Food Commissioner Pennsyl- 
 vania Department of Agriculture, appealed to William H. Wil- 
 son, Director of Public Safety, and Francis S. Brown, Attorney 
 General, for help in an effort to control the rotten egg business 
 of his state. He complained of the secrecy practised by the 
 rotten egg industry, its round-about methods, and the extraor- 
 dinary precaution exercised to avoid suspicion. 
 
 "We find it practically impossible," he admitted, "to prevent 
 the use of rotten eggs in establishments where food products 
 are prepared or manufactured, such as bakeshops and the like." 
 
 This pathetic confession of inability to control the rotten egg 
 industry in Pennsylvania ought to prove illuminating and sug- 
 gestive to other food officials as well as to those communities 
 that fail to provide adequate inspection. 
 
 In the absence of efficient inspection the housewives themselves 
 can make it impossible for any bakery to operate that does not 
 invite day and night inspection by the consumer. 
 
 The American housewife who orders her household supplies 
 by telephone knows nothing of what is going on behind the 
 scenes, and she never will know until she sallies forth in person 
 to do her own marketing, exercising vigilance of a kind she has 
 not dreamed of for many years. 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 
 
 365 
 
 § 119 — BAKERY WONDERS 
 
 The sum total of so-called "harmless" frauds to which the 
 confectioner and baker have been educated by manufacturers and 
 wholesale supply houses during the last twenty years, is now so 
 great that it promises, if not checked, to leave nothing genuine 
 in the industries which thrive upon them. 
 
 Compounds of foodless character have one by one taken the 
 place of the old-fashioned materials of known virtue. Their 
 presence is successfully concealed behind flavours, fillers and dye 
 stuffs. 
 
 Prizes have been awarded by the manufacturers of patented 
 compounds for the greatest number and variety of cakes pro- 
 duced by a baker employing the patented articles with the least 
 possible quantity of flour, eggs, butter and milk. The purpose 
 of these contests is obviously to demonstrate that the more the 
 baker develops into a scientist the less real food his product need 
 contain. 
 
 All the following bakers' and confectioners' products are now 
 on sale in barrels, pails, kegs, bottles and boxes in every city in 
 the United States: 
 
 Piefiline 
 
 Sa- Van-Egg 
 
 Bleached Shellac 
 
 Cakefiline 
 
 Wizzola 
 
 Avisol 
 
 Frostine 
 
 Yelco 
 
 Nonparif 
 
 Jellene 
 
 Icene 
 
 Creamthick 
 
 Marshmallene 
 
 Creamalene 
 
 Chinese Albumen 
 
 Nuttene 
 
 Tartfilene 
 
 Frozen Spots 
 
 Doughnuttene 
 
 Eutteral 
 
 No-Be 
 
 Egolene 
 
 Stearic Acid 
 
 Nitrite Flour 
 
 Aggola Powder 
 
 Tallow 
 
 Bleached Potato 
 
 Aigo 
 
 Packing Stock 
 
 Starch 
 
 Allenegg 
 
 Butyric Acid 
 
 Hydrogenated Oil 
 
 Eggatine 
 
 Butyric Ether 
 
 Carpenters Glue 
 
 Eggless 
 
 Aluminum Sulphate 
 
 Lamp Black 
 
 Eggola 
 
 Chocolate Brown 
 
 Alkalised Casein 
 
 No-Egg 
 
 Chocolate Black 
 
 Chops and Waste 
 
366 
 
 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Amyl Acetate 
 Amyl Buterate 
 Velanear 
 Acetic Ether 
 Benzoic Ether 
 Formic Ether 
 Nitrous Ether 
 Oenanthic Ether 
 
 Velanearic Ether 
 Metal Salicilate 
 Benzoic Acid 
 Sodium Benzoate 
 Sulphites 
 Sulphurous Acid 
 Phosphoric Acid 
 Citric Acid 
 
 Carmine 
 
 Vanillin 
 
 Coumarin 
 
 Naphthol Yellow S 
 
 Orange-I 
 
 Erythrosin 
 
 Ponceau 
 
 Amaranth 
 
 Egg- Yellow alone, for instance, is so powerful that a pinch 
 covering the point of the small blade of a pocket knife will make 
 a pound cake look like the incarnation of six eggs where no eggs 
 are present. 
 
 The same quantity will colour sufficient starch and glucose to 
 make a filler for a half dozen lemon custard pies without the 
 use of a single egg. 
 
 Trade circles deny their commodities are employed to conceal 
 inferiority. This defence never stands when a zealous official 
 prosecutes. There are no prosecutions. 
 
 § 120— SHORTENING WITH PETROLEUM 
 
 In January, 1918, I located a number of bakers in New York 
 and Brooklyn using as a shortening agent, in place of lard or 
 butter, a product knows as S. W. Mineral Jelly, manufactured 
 by the Valvoline Oil Company. This product physically and 
 chemically resembled white vaseline, deodorised, but is manu- 
 factured by a concern that has no relationship with the vaseline 
 industry. 
 
 Mineral jelly has its legitimate uses, but it is without food 
 value. It is made from mineral oil. The odor and flavor of 
 petroleum are removed. 
 
 Gasoline is the first product of mineral oil refinement, then 
 kerosene, then the lighter oils, then the heavy oils known as ma- 
 •chine oil and cylinder oil, then the heavy petroleum or crude 
 petroleum. By distillation this product is converted into white 
 mineral jelly. 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 867 
 
 Possibly in all tragedy there is an element of humour. There 
 are times when the ludicrous saves us from breaking under the 
 weight of ignorance and barbarism which curses our children. 
 Asking for bread we are told to eat cake. Thinking we are eat- 
 ing a product containing butter, lard, margarine or vegetable fats 
 we really consume without our knowledge, approval or consent 
 the residuum of the gasoline industry. 
 
 Bakers who employ these wonderful substances employ them in 
 secret. They are not proud of them. They do not advertise them. 
 I Yet, these same bakers claim a share of what we foolishly in 
 I America call civilisation. 
 
 Civilisation is not wealth, power, luxury, self-esteem; not 
 social eminence, not flourishing art, not the culture of the saloon, 
 not the tread of mighty armies, not the wash of turbined fleets, 
 not the accomplishments of industry. 
 
 Civilisation is not a veneer. It radiates from the heart through 
 flesh that feels all flesh its own. Its fruits are active solicitude 
 for the distressed, the poor, the weak ones of society ; chivalrous 
 devotion to woman, reverence of motherhood, love of children, 
 sympathy with youth, indulgence for the old, abhorrence of 
 special privilege, intolerance of all things narrow, secret, unfair, 
 unclean ; hunger for truth, thirst for justice, zeal for the common- 
 wealth, passion for true liberty, inspired by democratic conscious- 
 ness of inalienable rights, but bound by an equally imperious re- 
 minder of obligations and duties, loathing license, hating religious 
 bigotry, scorning racial prejudice. 
 
 Civilisation means readiness to sacrifice self for the unborn, 
 «ven as the millions who have died on the Western front have 
 sacrificed themselves. 
 
 Civilisation flows from faith in God. 
 
 Can we in America attain this ideal? Perhaps, if we begin 
 with our duty to the child. 
 
 Our boys who have fought and died have attained it. They 
 did not die for self. For them the world's lights were ex- 
 tinguished, the world's voices hushed, the world's hand with- 
 drawn. 
 
 If the giving of their lives was worth while it was not worth 
 while for self, for self ended in the giving. They went to 
 
868 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 slaughter not as cattle are driven from the pen to the killing bed, 
 but with souls aflame. 
 
 They knew when that thing we call the "End" stalked up to 
 them it had been misnamed. With blurred vision they recognised 
 it as the Beginning. They knew they had souls. We know that, 
 too. 
 
 How, then, shall we tolerate the soulless things through which, 
 for the material profit of a few, our children crawl? 
 
 § 121 LABELS AND STANDARDS 
 
 The people of America need food standards that will really 
 standardise. The wholesale jobbing trade have adopted stand- 
 ards as a commercial check against fraud, but the consumer is 
 not considered in their application. 
 
 In a few cities milk is no longer just milk ; it is Grade A milk, 
 Grade B milk, or Grade C milk. Cheese is no longer "full 
 cream" cheese. It is now whole milk cheese or skim milk 
 cheese. 
 
 With these two exceptions the housewife has no means of 
 knowing the quality, character or purity of the product pur- 
 chased by her, all the food laws notwithstanding. Even the 
 cheese standard does not tell her whether the milk entering it 
 was clean or dirty. 
 
 The honest cheese maker who screens his windows to keep out 
 flies, and who pays a premium for clean milk, has no advantage 
 over his indecent competitor. Indecency is encouraged because it 
 can show a larger profit in competition with decency. 
 
 Bread surely should be standardised. Some bakers use lard, 
 some use compound, others use ill-smelling fats, rescued from 
 ignominy by heroic processes. The baker who uses pure short- 
 ening enjoys no commercial advantage over his neighbour using 
 imitations. 
 
 A label adequately describing some of the loaves now on sale 
 would inspire as much mirth as a Charlie Chaplin picture. The 
 following cake label illustrates the point : 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 369 
 
 THIS CAKE 
 
 contains 
 
 Wheat Flour, Corn Syrup, 
 
 Uncertified Casein, 
 
 Chinese Egg Albumen, Egg-o-Sub, 
 
 Coal Tar Yellow, Alum, Sugar, 
 
 Coumarin, Vanillin, Tonca, 
 
 Water, Compound 
 
 If the cake contained a filler between the layers it would carry 
 another label like this : 
 
 OUR FILLERS 
 
 contain 
 
 Glucose, Sugar, Coal Tar Red 
 
 Chop, Skin and Core Juice 
 
 Phosphoric Acid, Sodium Benzoate 
 
 Pies under a standard system would be curiously labelled. 
 
 In New York City mince meat is made for mince pies from 
 horse meat. The meat of a young healthy horse would not be 
 objectionable, but a young healthy horse is worth on the hoof 
 at least $150 so that its dressed meat would cost at wholesale 
 60 cents a pound. 
 
 There is no such thing as horse meat; it is really nag meat. 
 Broken down nags are purchasable at from ten to twenty-five 
 dollars each. Their flesh should lead to this label : 
 
 MINCED NAG PIE 
 Crust Shortened with Petroleum 
 
 In Missouri the use of alum is unlawful in food products; 
 elsewhere it is extensively honored. 
 
 In Wisconsin the adulteration of food is not a misdemeanour, 
 and no penalty can be collected for a first offence. 
 
 In Minnesota no man has a constitutional right to keep secret 
 the composition of substances sold by him as food. 
 
 In the trade coal tar dye is known as "egg color," "tomato 
 red," "strawberry red," etc. 
 
 In bonbons the use of dye is ornamental. In orangeade, 
 strawberry soda, raspberry soda, fruit icings, cakes, jams, jellies, 
 pie fillers, tomato soup, macaroni, ice cream, smoked fish, cor- 
 
870 THIS FAMISHING WORLD ^^^ 
 
 dials, syrups, fruit juices, catsup and chili sauce it disguises 
 inferiority and fraud. 
 
 Catsup made of sweet potatoes, pumpkins and other gourds 
 lias enjoyed a large sale by reason of "tomato red." 
 
 The grocers "best" pumpkin may be any one of the wholesale 
 standards, "Fancy Golden," "Extra," "Choice," or "Good." 
 
 The grocer who sells "Good" as his best makes three times as 
 much profit as the grocer who sells "Fancy Golden" as his 
 best. 
 
 The housewife under present conditions does not know what 
 the grocer knows, wherefore her ignorance can be juggled by 
 trickery or protected by honesty, and she will never know. 
 
 John Philips Street, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment 
 Station, reporting to the governor on twenty-three samples of 
 canned pumpkin, found they ranged from forty-one cents to 
 $1.28 a pound. 
 
 When the housewife asks the grocer to send her a can of 
 peaches she usually says, "Send me a can of your best peaches." 
 She does not know that there are "Extra Regulars," "Extras," 
 "Extra Standards," "Standards," and "Pies." She knows noth- 
 ing of the density of the syrup or whether the peaches are 
 Melbas, Yellow Clings, Yellow Frees, Extra White Clings, Extra 
 White Heaths, Extra Yellow Crawfords, Extra Standard Yellow 
 Clings or Second Yellows. The labels are mum. 
 
 The grocer knows because he pays a different price for each. 
 One standard costs the grocer a dollar a dozen less than an- 
 other. Because the standards are not passed on to the house- 
 wife she knows nothing of the difference between the cheaper 
 grades and the better grades, and so is easily misled through 
 "bargains." 
 
 All canned peas are peas, but the grocer buys them from the 
 wholesaler as "Double Extras," "Extra Sifted," "Sifted," 
 "Standards," "Soaks." 
 
 The law standardises gold so that we have 24 carets, 18 carets, 
 14 carets, and 10 carets, but canned tomatoes are simply toma- 
 toes, though they may be "Fancy Red," "Hand-picked," "Fancy 
 Hand-picked," "Whole Solids," "Regular," "Extra Quality," 
 "Choice," "Standard," or just "Good." 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 371 
 
 Canned corn may be "Fancy Maine," "Fancy Choice," "Maine 
 Style," "Maryland," or just "Corn." 
 
 The whole canned food family, from salmon to plum pudding, 
 runs through a wonderfully complex system of trade standards, 
 but leaves the housewife always in the dark. Does she not want 
 light? 
 
 § 122 — STANDARDS AND LABELS 
 
 Butter is wholly standardised as far as the wholesaler is con- 
 cerned, and for each standard the retailer pays a different price, 
 but usually the housewife has a choice of only two grades, butter 
 and best butter. 
 
 The real standards are as follows: 
 
 Extra creamery Renovated extras 
 
 Creamery firsts Renovated firsts 
 
 Creamery under-nrsts Renovated lower grades 
 
 Creamery top-seconds Ladles firsts 
 
 Creamery seconds Ladles seconds 
 
 Creamery thirds Ladles lower grades 
 
 State dairy, finest Packing stock No. I 
 
 State dairy, good to prime Packing stock No. 2 
 
 State dairy, common to fair Packing stock lower grades 
 
 This is why one grocer's worst butter may be another grocer's 
 best and so on through a labyrinth of trickery for which the 
 housewife in dismal ignorance pays the bill. 
 
 The most hopelessly unstandardised compound now to be seen 
 in America is labelled "ice cream." Ice cream contains all the 
 way from 2 per cent, fat to 14 per cent. This fat may consist 
 of any fat, including cream. 
 
 The ice cream maker to-day uses a homogeniser with which 
 he incorporates lard, cocoanut fat or any form of animal or 
 vegetable compound with skim milk powder and water, or sweet 
 skim milk. 
 
 All commercial ice cream contains a bodifier, usually in the 
 form of glue. Imitation flavors and colors add to its mystery. 
 
872 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Honest ice cream made of Grade A whole milk, pasteurised, and 
 so labelled, ought some day to establish the reputation of an 
 honest man. 
 
 Why are there no standards to enlighten the housewife? In 
 the first place until recently she had no vote. The political rep- 
 resentatives of the food fakers did not consider her. They 
 never will consider her until she serves notice that she is no 
 longer ignorant of the subject of foods. 
 
 § 123 — CHEATING CATTLE 
 
 Millions of dollars are stolen annually from the farmer by 
 manufacturers of dairy feed known as "balanced rations." 
 
 The adulteration of these feeding stuffs has grown constantly 
 during the last twenty years. In the Fall of 1918 there were in 
 New York State alone 1,760 separate and distinct brands of 
 "mixed" feeds. The feed manufacturers had so monopolised the 
 raw material, and had so dominated public officials, that the 
 farmer found himself wholly unable to purchase straight feeds. 
 He was obliged to buy them already compounded, notwithstand- 
 ing the frequent exposure of the frauds they concealed. 
 
 The cost of producing milk, butter, cheese, eggs, poultry and 
 beef have tremendously increased through the widespread distri- 
 bution of these copyrighted "balanced rations," so many of 
 which are actually worthless. 
 
 Despite this fact the officials, controlled by the manufac- 
 turers, have continued to ignore the shameful system although 
 professing friendship for the farmer and consumer when seek- 
 ing votes. They have known the truth ; no defence of ignorance 
 can excuse their failure to interfere with this nation-wide system 
 of thievery. 
 
 In 191 1 Dr. W. H. Jordan, director New York Agricultural 
 Experiment Station, exposed the methods employed to conceal 
 refuse by saturating it with molasses in the production of "bal- 
 anced rations." 
 
 After describing the worthlessness of these adulterated feeds 
 he informed the manufacturers that he was "utterly, out and out, 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 878 
 
 the enemy, here and everywhere, of the worthless stufl entering 
 into compounded feeds." 
 
 In 1 91 6 the Wicks Investigating Committee examined Dr. Jor- 
 dan, obtaining from him further information concerning the 
 fraudulent character of these adulterated feeds as revealed by 
 long, continuous analyses in the New York State Laboratory, 
 Geneva Experiment Station. 
 
 These exposures were recorded for the benefit of all state 
 and federal officials in Flour and Feed, page 34, December, 
 191 1, and in the Wicks Committee Official Report, page 784, 
 1916. 
 
 The official analyses showed that the feeds included ground 
 corn cob, oat hulls, screenings, oat clippings, elevator sweepings, 
 shredded straw, peanut hulls, sawdust, weed seeds, dirt and sand, 
 to the extent of 50 per cent. 
 
 "The dairymen should avoid these prepared feeds," declared 
 Dr. Jordan. "The molasses feeds have lent themselves to this 
 sort of mixing because the molasses obscures the mixture. The 
 oat refuse is worthless. It has no more feeding value than the 
 straw refuse around the barn! Under the present law the 
 manufacturer can put anything he wants to into these feeds, the 
 price of which is actually higher than the market value of the 
 ground grain which the farmer cannot now buy from the millef 
 to mix for himself." 
 
 In 1912 the State of Indiana published an official analysis of 
 "oat feeds" in contrast with oats. Oat groats, for instance, were 
 found to contain fibre 1.97, ash 2.10 (normal and good), whereas 
 oat straw contained 37 per cent, fibre and 5 per cent, ash; oat 
 hulls 29.7 fibre and 6.7 ash; oat clippings 22.15 ^ Dre an d I S P er 
 cent, ash (abnormal and bad). 
 
 The average of the mixed oat feeds examined disclosed the 
 presence of 25.35 fibre and 6.56 ash, a total of 33 per cent 
 waste. 
 
 Dairy feed, containing this stuff, consists chiefly of wood and 
 ash, mixed with black strap, the lowest by-product masquerading 
 under the name of molasses. This black strap contains an addi- 
 tional 10 per cent, of ash, consisting of scale and the mineral 
 residue of the chemical processes employed in the refining of 
 
374 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 sugar. Thus the percentage of inert waste matter is pushed still 
 higher. 
 
 Notwithstanding the agitation against the use of these indiges- 
 tible and non-nutritious feeds, Dr. J. K. Haywood, U. S. Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture, assured the feed manufacturers, 1913, that 
 it was no longer necessary to go to court to settle differences. 
 (See Flour and Feed, December, 1913, page 60.) 
 
 The same year G. A. Chapman, president of a feed manu- | 
 facturing concern, who in 19 18 became head of the Feed Division 
 of the U. S. Food Administration, said: "We feed manufac- 
 turers do not want to sell for less than we can get for our stuff." 
 (See Flour and Feed, December, 191 3, page 31.) This state- 
 ment fairly reflects the attitude of the mixed feed crowd toward 
 the farmer. 
 
 The same year Dr. Haywood, U. S. Department of Agriculture, 
 sitting with the feed manufacturers, moved the adoption of the 
 phrase "corn gluten feed" to cover the stuff known as "corn 
 starch bi-product with corn bran," urging that the word "refuse" 
 be dropped in describing chaff, empty hulls, immature oats and 
 dust. (See Flour and Feed, December, 1913, page 35.) 
 
 The worthlessness of ground corn cob and rice hulls had 
 become so generally recognised by 1914 that June 1st of that year j 
 State Commissioner of Agriculture Page prohibited their mixture 1 
 in compound feeds sold in Arkansas. The government did not 
 follow. Why ? 
 
 The same year Dr. James W. Kellogg, chief chemist Penn- 
 sylvania Department of Agriculture, reported on 600 samples | 
 of feed analysed by him. Fifty of the molasses feeds contained ! 
 water to the extent of 20.24 per cent. He demonstrated that a 
 single car of 20 tons of such feeds contains 3 tons of water. 
 For this water the farmer in 1918 paid $60 a ton. He also paid 
 the same price for the indigestible wood-fibre, scale, weeds, sand 
 and refuse concealed in the only stuff he could buy. 
 
 By 191 6 the New York State Feed Dealers' Association af- 
 filiated with the American Feed Manufacturers' Association, had 
 become so bold in boycotting millers who dared sell unmixed 
 feeding stuffs direct to the farmer that the attorney general, 
 forced by the disclosures of the Wicks Investigating Committee, 
 threatened prosecution. 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 875 
 
 To avoid prosecution the Feed Dealers' Association dissolved 
 | but immediately reformed under another name with the same 
 ; members and the same officials. 
 
 Throughout all these years there have been no prosecutions. 
 I Apparently the farmer will always have to act for himself. He 
 ;! knows, or should know, that oat hulls, the outside shell which 
 ;| acts as a protecting overcoat for the grain within, whether it be 
 !| oats, rice, wheat, barley or corn, are not in any manner similar 
 !j to the sweet, tender, inner skin of the grain known as "bran." 
 
 Bran is essential to the health of dairy cattle as well as to the 
 |i health of man. Hulls are essential only to the profit of the feed 
 I manufacturer. 
 
 § 124< — PASTEUR AND GOD 
 
 The handicaps of ignorance under which our grandfathers 
 struggled, suffered and died, have been lifted from modern life 
 through the application of many scientific discoveries, beginning 
 with the achievement of that most brilliant, unselfish and ideal- 
 istic of earth's benefactors, Louis Pasteur. 
 
 One does not have to go back fifty years to witness the typhoid 
 epidemics that swept helpless communities to the grave. Yellow 
 fever counted its victims by the thousands. Smallpox kept pace 
 with this dread disease as a slaughterer of men. 
 
 Surgery knew nothing of antisepsis. Gangrene, blood poison- 
 ing and tetanus fought for the lives of those who were cut, 
 mangled or bruised. Convulsions of infants with cholera- 
 infantum destroyed hundreds of thousands. Child-bed fever, due 
 to the ignorance of the medical world, was the nightmare of every 
 physician. 
 
 It was not so long ago that piles of garbage, filth and decay 
 were to be seen lying about in the camps, hamlets, villages, towns 
 and cities of the nation. To-day every town has its health of- 
 ficer, every city its health department. 
 
 As much money is spent on public health in the United States 
 as upon education. We control the sanitary conditions of floating- 
 baths, stationary pools, bathing beaches; we operate day nur- 
 
376 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 series ; we promote the progress of industrial hygiene, regulating 
 public laundries, disinfecting passenger cars and omnibuses, re- 
 quiring the removal of harmful gases from work rooms. We 
 compel the owners of marsh lands and sunken lots to fill in or 
 drain them, to prevent the breeding of mosquitoes. 
 
 We look after the sanitation and ventilation of theatres, and 
 oblige physicians to report occupational diseases and injuries. 
 
 We prevent persons suffering from communicable diseases f 
 from working in their homes on articles intended for general con- 
 sumption. 
 
 We regulate the free distribution of vaccines, antitoxins, 
 serums and cultures. 
 
 We conduct contagious disease hospitals and tuberculosis 
 clinics. 
 
 We inspect slaughterhouses and control the disposal of their 
 offal. 
 
 We condemn the use of the common drinking cup and the 
 common towel. 
 
 Until Louis Pasteur arrived our ignorance was abysmal. He 
 taught us the relationship of micro-organisms to disease. He 
 unfolded for us the mysteries of fermentation, decomposition 
 and putrefaction. His discoveries now permeate every province 
 of practical life. 
 
 Until he came the world knew nothing of the complications 
 of elemental reaction; of the growth and diseases of plants, 
 of the nutritional and pathological processes of animals, of the 
 canning, drying, refrigerating and spoiling of food, of the treat- 
 ment of water supplies, of the disposal of sewage, of the manu- 
 facture of vaccines and serums. 
 
 Prior to the birth of this God-sent messenger there was no 
 guiding hand to lead the way out of the wilderness of disease. 
 W T ine soured; silk worms died; food rotted; children perished; 
 anthrax killed cattle; men succumbed to rabies; until Pasteur, 
 with an almost intuitive insight into the operations of nature, 
 gave to the world his knowledge of micro-organisms. 
 
 Cow's milk could not then be made safe, as it is now made 
 safe, thanks to Pasteur, in a few cities like New York, Chicago 
 and Washington. 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 877 
 
 Klein, inspired by Pasteur, had not yet wrestled with the fact 
 that diphtheria is communicated through milk. 
 
 Koch had not yet discovered tuberculin. The toxic sub- 
 stances which microbial life produce, extending to the poison- 
 ing of food through decomposition, were not even hinted at in 
 dreams. 
 
 Prior to the war, 1914, the terrors of the European herdsmen 
 had been put to sleep. All these forces, glorified still further 
 by the introduction of Lister's aseptic and antiseptic surgery, have 
 fought death with a conquering hand. Infectious diseases no 
 longer scourge the world. Yet — it was only in the early 
 "eighties" that they were traced to their origin ; the organisms re- 
 sponsible for them isolated and studied in the light of prophy- 
 laxis. 
 
 Medicine in these few short years has ' grown out of an 
 ignorant mysticism into a science, and public health has become a 1 
 tangible reality. We even boast of a serum therapy for hog 
 cholera and a vaccine for black leg. 
 
 Yet, notwithstanding the genius of Pasteur, who fought to 
 preserve the life of man, many diseases are on the rapid in- 
 crease. 
 
 In the past fifteen years typhoid has been reduced from 32.0 
 to 17.9, diphtheria from 29.6 to 18.8, but cancer has increased 
 in the same time from 67.9 to 78.9; diabetes from 11.5 to 15.3; 
 heart disease from 124.2 to 138.6; ulcer of the stomach from 
 2.9 to 4.0 ; Bright's disease from 87.4 to 92.5. 
 
 Why do these diseases increase? Alas, Pasteur, the idealist, 
 who refused to profit commercially through his genius, who 
 worked alone for God and man, who made no retort when the- 
 German scientists who afterwards established Pasteur Institutes 
 in his honour, mocked him, flaunted him and sneered at him, i$ 
 dead, and the scientific world to-day, profiting by all his achieve 
 ments, stands in humiliation as unbridled disease laughingly 
 gallops before their eyes in its ride to death. 
 
 As if looking into the future at those dreadful years, 1914- 
 1918, Pasteur, in 1889, at the dedication of the Pasteur Institute, 
 said: "Two opposing laws seem to be now in contest The 
 one, a law of blood and death, opening out each day new modes 
 of destruction, forces nations to be always ready for battle. The" 
 
378 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 other, a law of peace, work and health, whose only aim is to ' 
 deliver man from the calamities which beset him. The one seeks 
 violent conquests, the other the relief of mankind. The one 
 places a single life above all victories, the other sacrifices mil- 
 lions to the ambitions of a single individual. The law of which 
 we are the instruments, strives even through the carnage to cure 
 the wounds due to the law of war. Which of these two laws 
 will prevail, God only knows. But of this we may be sure, that 
 science, in obeying the law of humanity, will always labor to 
 enlarge the frontiers of life." 
 
 This great Pasteur knew nothing of the forces of the soil that 
 step upward to the higher life of vegetation and then on into that 
 loftiest triumph of physical creation, the flesh of man, contribut- 
 ing their energies even beyond the flesh, which is but an instru- 
 ment of the soul, but he did know the soul and its relation to its 
 Maker. * 
 
 "Happy the man," he wrote, "who bears with him a divinity, an 
 ideal of beauty and obeys it ; an ideal of art, an ideal of science, 
 an ideal of country, an ideal of the virtues of the Gospel." 
 
 Above his tomb in the Institute Pasteur these words are 
 graven. 
 
 It was Pasteur who wrote : "These are the living springs of 
 great thoughts and great actions. Everything grows clear in the 
 reflection from the Infinite. The more I know the more nearly 
 is my faith that of the Breton peasant. If I could know all I 
 would have the faith of a Breton peasant woman." 
 
 He could not understand the failure of scientists to recognise 
 the manifestations of God that lie everywhere in the world 
 around us. Because he thought that his work was like that of 
 St. Vincent de Paul, who did so much for suffering children, 
 he asked upon his death-bed that the life of the saint be read to 
 him. 
 
 He, the believer in God, whom pagan science deifies as it has 
 deified no other human genius, could see God in the laws of 
 life. 
 
 His benefactions emerged from his spiritual vision. 
 
 To-day, in spite of his science, death continues to reap its 
 harvest, because his successors have not only stopped where he 
 left ofT, but in their pride have dismissed God from their equa- 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 379 
 
 lions, smiling when Pasteur is devoutly described as "a child of 
 God." 
 
 If modern science would bow its head it would ask these 
 questions : "With epidemics stamped out, why do we point with 
 pride at the mortality records of the present day, when they 
 disclose to us that in spite of all our wisdom, in spite of the 
 army of public health workers who devote their lives to the 
 control of disease, we permit the deaths of 400,000 children 
 under ten 3^ears of age in the United States every year? 
 
 "Why are diabetes, Bright's disease, appendicitis, cancer of 
 the stomach, heart disease, constantly increasing, when Pasteur, 
 the author of our glories, placed in our hands the weapons 
 that conquer death? 
 
 "Why do tuberculosis, malnutrition, anemia, nervous prostra- 
 tion and constipation still destroy hundreds of thousands an- 
 nually ? 
 
 "What would have been the vigor of our grandfathers had they 
 possessed the scientific knowledge that Pasteur placed at our 
 disposal ? 
 
 "In their day man's food was not denatured. 
 
 "With all the influence n#w at work in his behalf, what would 
 be the effect upon his health if it were not denatured to-day? 
 
 "In giving man his food, is it possible that God prescribed? 
 Why, then, do we tolerate the distortion of His prescription? 
 
 "Shall we go on, baffled in our wisdom, or like that child of 
 Faith, Pasteur, shall we journey back to God?" 
 
 § 125 — WHENCE CAME LIFE? 
 
 Evolutionists have pretended to trace the origin of man to the 
 monkey by way of a "missing link, 5 ' no trace of which, in spite 
 of never-ending search, has yet been found outside the imagina- 
 tion of a solitary group of theorists. 
 
 From the monkey ever downward they journey into succes- 
 sively lower circles of life, passing through countless thousands 
 of years until they reach the tadpole stage. 
 
 Still lower they descend into the dim realms of an unrecorded 
 
380 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 history, reaching at last a single cell of living protoplasm, the 
 Beginning of Life on Earth. 
 
 There they stop! 
 
 How did that protoplasm, the source of all life on this planet, 
 as they contend, get here ? 
 
 Pasteur saved millions of lives by demonstrating that "spon- 
 taneous generation" does not take place. What then, if it did 
 not generate itself, can they say to explain the presence of 
 protoplasm as the first link in their chain of life? 
 
 They are certain they have found the first link even though at 
 the centre of their chain a missing link breaks the circle. 
 Protoplasm! How came it to earth? 
 
 "Ah," they explain, "protoplasm originally immigrated from 
 interplanetary space, after floating through starry regions per- 
 haps for ages. Arriving at last, free and unincluded, upon the 
 surface of the earth it found conditions accidentally favourable 
 for its development and entered at once into that vast series of 
 overlapping cycles whose glory is now manifested through mil- 
 lions of living creatures ranging in dignity from the protoplasmic 
 cell in the belly of a jelly fish to a Wooo^row Wilson or a 
 Ferdinand Foch." I 
 
 Loath to credit God with creation they choose rather to spin 
 their tenuous filaments of hypothesis, until the thin web of 
 speculation, hanging from supports of thinner nothingness, will 
 no longer sustain the mote out of which are ravelled endless 
 reams of biologic despair. 
 
 Rent after rent and tear after tear have ripped the reaches 
 of their scientific gossamer until now its tattered remains are< 
 less visible than the skeletal fragments of the "missing link," of 
 which not a single vertebra has yet been found. 
 
 In the year 191 1, Truth tore another gap in the shreds and 
 patches still fluttering in the winds of pagan unrest. B. S. Shat- 
 tock and L. S. Dudgeon reported the results of experiments con- 
 ducted to ascertain whether nonsporing bacteria, dried in a 
 vacuum and kept there would survive those dried in air, or die 
 more quickly. 
 
 They tested the action of sunlight, of heat and of cold, upon 
 bacteria dried in an airless space in order to learn how far such 
 solar and interplanetary conditions might -be deadly to dried bae- 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 381 
 
 teria, if such bacteria could be supposed present in a free state 
 beyond the limits of terrestrial atmosphere. 
 
 The Bacillus coli died on the fourth day both in vacuum and 
 in air. The solar light and ultra-violet rays were fatal to these 
 organisms in less than one hundred hours. 
 
 The Bacillus typhosus perished almost as rapidly. 
 
 The Staphylococcus pyogenes aureus survived from four to fif- 
 teen weeks, then died. 
 
 The Bacillus pyocyaneus was killed by exposure to bright 
 sunlight in a vacuum in six hours. Nothing living can remain 
 alive in the vacuum of sunlit space. 
 
 Science knows at last that dry bacteria, even if free to wan- 
 der through the interplanetary vacuum, could not survive the 
 solar rays. While journeying earthward (by any conceivable or 
 inconceivable medium) through hundreds of millions of miles 
 of vacuum separating planet from planet, they would be killed, 
 if such a thing were possible, a hundred times over. 
 
 As Sir James Dewar's experiments have demonstrated that the 
 ultra-violet rays will kill undried bacteria while frozen, at the 
 temperature of liquid air, what becomes of the hypothesis that 
 living protoplasm on the earth originally immigrated from the 
 heavens? Dried or undried, in vacuum or in air, in heat or in 
 cold, sunlight is fatal to the lowest forms of life and vacuum 
 alone kills all its higher forms. 
 
 The earth was once a flaming sun in which no organic life 
 of any form could exist. When it cooled sufficiently, passing 
 from the gaseous to the solid state, conditions favourable to the 
 support of life were developed. 
 
 Then life appeared. How did it appear? 
 
 The assumption that a wandering cell drifted from star to 
 earth breaks down when it is seen that such cell could not have 
 arrived in a living state, if it could have arrived at all. 
 
 But — though it could have found a sun-proof shield to protect 
 it from the solar shafts and some other device for resisting the 
 attack of the celestial vacuum how came it originally to the star 
 from whence it migrated to earth? That star too, was once a 
 flaming sun, an incandescent incinerator, a steriliser of life. 
 
 The answer is : "Spontaneous generation" has died a scientific 
 death. Pasteur pasteurised the lie. 
 
382 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 "Interplanetary migration" has died a scientific death, shat- 
 tockised, dudgeonised and dewarised. 
 
 Even if protoplasmic life existed among the stars it had to be 
 placed there, but under no conditions could it come away. 
 
 With drifting immigration and self -creation gone, to whom 
 shall the scientist go to explain his protoplasmic life if not to 
 God? All else has failed him. To be satisfied with failure is 
 Death. 
 
 To whom shall he go for a formula to nourish his child? 
 What God has given man suffices Life. What man makes of 
 God's gift destroys life. Wherever he looks he sees the folly 
 of seeking to explain creation as a protoplasmic accident. He 
 sees a design, yet, with back to God, he smashes that design only 
 to hear his children wail. 
 
 Oh, food of man, had you soul to match his soul, well might 
 you ask, with all other things of God, to be let alone. 
 
 § 126 — PATRIOTISM 
 
 In the Seventh century the ducal states of Germany were 
 disintegrated by the corrupt administration of the counts who, as 
 officials in charge of the territorial districts, were not super- 
 vised by central authority. The complete disintegration of the 
 states was brought about by a group of selfish interests that con- 
 spired to control all their economic interests and to exercise ar- 
 bitrary powers over their politics. 
 
 This hidden power was, of course, invisible to the plain people 
 until the crash ensued. 
 
 In America, during the canned beef scandal of 1898, and 
 continuing progressively until the almost thwarted probe of the 
 Federal Trade Commission, ordered by President Wilson, Feb- 
 ruary 7th, 191 7, complaints increasing in number and gravity were 
 constantly heard in connection with the growth of a great invis- 
 ible power in the United States. This power, like the German 
 counts, sought to control economic interests and to exercise 
 arbitrary powers over politics. 
 
 The poison that destroyed the ducal states was at work in the 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 383 
 
 new world. Much evidence had been adduced to indicate that 
 this invisible power threatened to dominate visible government — 
 to become greater than government. 
 
 The two questions that had to be answered were: "Is the 
 safety of democracy threatened by the unmolested growth of this 
 , invisible power ?" "Has it already destroyed the functions of 
 many democratic institutions, and does it menace them all ?" 
 
 The answer to these questions involves the very essence of 
 a patriotism. 
 
 * The packers, who paid vast sums for the use of white space 
 'on which their declarations of patriotism were given to America 
 ] at war, were involved in the system of invisible government that 
 
 President Wilson wisely determined to examine. 
 J The investigation of the Federal Trade Commission has done 
 
 * much to clarify the meaning of patriotism. Heretofore the pub- 
 lic has known little, if anything, of the motives which inspired 
 
 and controlled that investigation. 
 
 1 As one of the examiners of the Commission I believe my 
 i conferences with its members and staff have qualified me to de- 
 scribe the principles by which its activities were guided. Those 
 •principles were based on a conception of patriotism for which 
 'millions of American boys have been ready, without question, to 
 ;lay down their lives. 
 
 Certainly the meaning of the word as it has been understood 
 ;by the Federal Trade Commission is of interest to those boys. 
 ) To the Commission as it exists in 1917 and 1918 patriotism means 
 much more than love of country. It means love of right govern- 
 1 ment extending even into foreign countries. The man who loves 
 1 only one little spot of ground may be a poor patriot and a dan- 
 gerous citizen, even though he boasts of loyalty and courage. 
 
 The father who loves only his own children, disregarding the 
 children of his neighbour, may, in the narrowness of his interests, 
 permit a condition to develop among his neighbor's children that 
 will some day react upon his own to their destruction. 
 
 The Kaiser was looked upon in Germany as the very father of 
 German patriotism, but the world now knows that his patriotism, 
 narrow and selfish, was crammed with ruin for his own people. 
 He cared nothing for the happiness or the rights of other nations. 
 His selfishness in disregarding the interests of all his neighbours 
 
384 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 not only plunged them into anguish and desolation, but it 
 brought anguish and desolation home to his own. 
 
 The Kaiser was a bad patriot and a bad citizen because he 
 neither loved right government in his own country, nor right 
 government in any country. 
 
 This attitude toward society, because it clashes with all the 
 laws of God and man, is described not only as uncivilised but 
 as barbarous; yet the same principle execrated and reprobated 
 in the person of the Kaiser applies to every individual and j 
 group of individuals in the world, when their interest in life is ' 
 confined to selfish pursuits. 
 
 It was this brand of selfish patriotism that brought decay to 
 civilisation in the valley of the Nile. The Egyptians could weld 
 copper, an art lost to the modern world. The Egyptians who j 
 built their magnificent temples, their mausoleums, their pyramids, ' 
 employing mechanical devices that have become extinct, were ? 
 reaching out for universal democracy. Selfish patriotism under- 
 mined the Egyptian ideal, and to-day the land of the Pharaohs > 
 is dead, never to be born again. 
 
 Selfish patriotism brought decay to Greece and Rome. Greece 
 flourished in glory, producing Plato, Aristotle and Socrates, three g 
 of the clearest thinkers the world has ever known. Our Amer- 
 ican museums are graced with fragments of the art of her sculp- 
 tors. Even her songs have been preserved, but because selfish 
 patriotism followed in the wake of her luxury ancient Athens is 
 no more. 
 
 Socrates cried out against the decay that threatened Greece 
 but the masters of her wealth would not listen to him. They„ 
 gave him hemlock and sent him to his death. 
 
 Well has it been said that when a nation crucifies its thinkers, 
 that moment that nation dies. 
 
 Rome, mistress of the world, stretched her boundaries as far 
 north and west as Scotland. Her galleys sailed every sea, carry-, 
 ing her laws to all parts of the known world, returning with 
 tribute, power and luxury to pour into her lap. Steeped at last 
 in the dregs of narrow patriotism and brute selfishness, she awoke 
 to find that decay had sapped her strength. When the barbarians 
 came down from the North with their battering rams they 
 smashed her gates, demolished her statues and pillaged her 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 385 
 
 libraries. Departing with her wealth, they left her lying pros- 
 trate on the sands of time. 
 
 Out of the wreck of the Roman Empire the Germanic states 
 developed, and among them was born what is said to be one 
 of the first democratic assemblies of Europe. 
 
 The new commandment, "Love one another," had not yet been 
 applied by the patriots who posed as her rulers, statesmen and 
 economic princes, but slowly the new philosophy of life, based on 
 that commandment, crept into the hearts of the people, where it 
 was dumbly cherished even though still unheeded by their 
 rulers. 
 
 Eventually the new philosophy pushed its way westward as far 
 as England. Men began to clamour for liberty, the very essence 
 of democracy. Some of them became bold enough to advance 
 the proposition that it was not true that a king could do no wrong. 
 So clamorous became their cries that finally at Runnymede 
 the Magna Charta was drawn up and signed. That document, 
 although it contained the seeds of America's Declaration of In- 
 dependence, still provided too much protection for selfishness 
 and special privilege. There was cockle among its wheat, and 
 King John held much the same contempt for democracy as that 
 cherished by Napoleon and Wilhelm Hohenzollern. 
 
 At last, from England and Holland, stalwart men who loved 
 freedom though they had not yet formulated its principles, 
 came to America, where the foundations of democracy in time 
 were established on soil consecrated by blood and sacrifice. 
 
 Wealth came, and with wealth, danger. The growth of selfish 
 interests threatened the institutions that had cost so much. 
 
 Then Lincoln spoke, and after two millions of lives had been 
 snuffed out in again uniting two peoples as one people under 
 one flag and one law, the fools of their day killed the rail- 
 splitter. With his death the last slave that will ever tread 
 America's shores was free. 
 
 Again wealth threatened. Riches began to pour down from 
 the mountains and up from the plains. Our rivers could not carry 
 it so we built cars of steel and rolled them over rails from ocean 
 to ocean. With riches came sick ideals. 
 
 Finally we received the first of many shocks. Little Belgium, 
 protected by treaties, was crushed like an eggshell. The liber- 
 
SS6 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ties of the world were in the balance. America was again 
 divided. Blinded by easy living and the gushets of her wealth, 
 she was unable to see as a united nation the difference between 
 right and expediency. Thus divided she could not interfere. 
 
 The bleeding little victim of selfishness incarnate stood the 
 raiding monster off a little while, but in that moment of tragedy 
 a better world was born. At last, chastened by the sufferings of 
 others, the scales fell from our eyes, and our nation, united once 
 more in a lofty ideal of patriotism, sent her boys forth to mingle 
 their blood with the blood of a ravaged world, that true patriot- 
 ism might again inflame the souls of men, not on any one little 
 spot of ground, but all over the earth. 
 
 Through the deaths of millions, some of whom we once fool- 
 ishly thought we held in contempt, characterising them always as 
 "foreigners" when they sought liberty at our gates, even as our 
 own fathers, who were also "foreigners," sought it before us, we 
 have learned that in America there are not two or three sets of 
 laws, but one law, and that under that one law there cannot flour- 
 ish two or three kinds of citizens, but one kind of citizen. 
 
 The time had finally come for our government to say to any 
 man who lives under the shadow of our flag : "You will remain 
 here a true patriot, or you shall be sent away an outcast and an 
 ex-patriot forever. The measure of your patriotism is not found 
 in what you are able to gouge out of life, but what you put into 
 it." 
 
 The Federal Trade Commission was the feeble instrument 
 through which our government first probed the disease at home, 
 hesitatingly, cautiously feeling its way until it was sure the ulcer 
 had been reached. 
 
 The Commission embodied the doctrine that the disciples of 
 special privilege in America are not patriots ; that the masters of 
 industry in America who seek to control legislation and to dom- 
 inate the enforcement of laws to suit their own ends are not 
 patriots; that eminent scientists and skilful lawyers who defend 
 commercial expediency at the expense of justice and public wel- 
 fare are not patriots; that it is necessary, in order to preserve 
 democratic institutions, to place under proper and lawful control 
 all those groups of narrow and selfish men whose activities tend 
 to set up an invisible government, thus rendering good govern- 
 
MYSTERIES OF FOOD 387 
 
 ment ineffective, or substituting bad government in its place. 
 
 Distracted by the horrors of overseas events, we have become 
 almost indifferent to our home affairs, except in so far as they 
 affect our winning of the war. 
 
 The Commission turned our attention to the Hun within our 
 own gates, and as the evidence of its investigation discloses, the 
 warning was sounded none too soon. 
 
 To its obvious and inevitable conclusions one might add that 
 food manufacturers who seek to perpetuate pernicious methods 
 'of sophisticating the nation's dietary rather than revolutionise 
 a system that can be defended only behind falsehood are not 
 patriots; that the plain people who cling to follies that curse 
 generations yet unborn are not patriots; that the ignorant and 
 bigoted who foster religious prejudices and racial animosities are 
 not patriots. 
 
 The sons of America who followed Pershing to Europe in 1918 
 went forth to uphold by their deaths the loftiest principle to 
 which mankind has ever subscribed. They did not go forth to 
 perpetuate narrowness, selfishness, greed or false patriotism at 
 home. 
 
 They have shown America the perils of these selfish pursuits. 
 They have opened America's eyes to the meaning of service to 
 others. They have done much to prepare America to face the 
 hard conditions that must be faced if these beloved hills and 
 plains of ours are not to take their place beside Egypt, the old 
 Greece, Ancient Rome and Modern Prussia. 
 
TEN: IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 
 
TEN: IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 
 
 S 127 GETTING THE CHILD STARTED 
 
 The suggestions that follow are the result of constructive 
 criticism urging their incorporation in the second and subsequent 
 {editions of this work. They are offered as ideal combinations for 
 jithe food of children from the time they are weaned or taken from 
 the bottle until their own grandchildren are born. 
 
 Adults may add to the combinations hinted at here anything 
 they care to. There are no arbitrary exclusions from lobster up 
 to plum pudding or from kippered herring down to chow-chow, 
 provided only that the child is not permitted to share in such 
 liberties. 
 
 In fact what is here proposed is but a skeleton hint ideally con- 
 sidered for children beyond the age of three. Prior to that time, 
 dating from the weaning period, the same foods as they are indi- 
 vidually found to agree with the weaned baby are wholly ade- 
 quate to its needs. The combinations proposed are, obviously, 
 generous. Half of any of them will suffice, even less. 
 
 Before weaning, a good doctor's advice should be solicited and 
 heeded. Thereafter common sense, with due consideration to the 
 personal idiosyncrasies of baby, should be the guide. Upon these 
 projected outlines the adult may build as fancy inspires or whim 
 commands, not ignoring the general lav/ involved by permitting 
 titillating goodies born in caprice to dominate the daily diet for 
 any extended period or to be substituted for the simple substan- 
 tial upon which health, strength, stamina, endurance and re- 
 sistance to disease depend. 
 
 Breakfast, Monday. 
 
 Half small grape fruit or sliced ripe apples, or ripe raspberries, 
 or ripe blackberries, or ripe strawberries, or ripe canteloupe. 
 
 39* 
 
-' 
 
 392 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 [Avoid green, immature, unripe fruit. At the beginning orange 
 juice or baked apple should be the extremes of fruit indulgence.] 
 
 Natural brown rice and pasteurized milk. 
 
 Whole wheat bread or toast and pasteurized butter. 
 
 Breakfast, Tuesday 
 
 Scraped raw apple or baked apple or whole raw apple, skin 
 and all, when the child can be trusted to use its teeth. 
 Whole wheat meal porridge and pasteurized milk. 
 Whole wheat bread or toast, pasteurized butter and honey. 
 
 Breakfast, Wednesday 
 
 Juice of whole ripe orange. 
 
 Old-fashioned cut oatmeal with pasteurized milk. 
 
 Whole wheat bread or toast and pasteurized butter, or whole 
 wheat muffins, whole wheat cinnamon rings or other spiced break- 
 fast bread containing all of the grain, be it wheat, corn, rye or 
 oats. 
 
 Breakfast, Thursday 
 
 Stewed, unsulphured dates or stewed, unsulphured rigs. 
 
 Poached tgg on whole wheat toast. 
 
 Pasteurized milk. 
 
 Whole grain bread and pure maple syrup. 
 
 Breakfast, Friday 
 
 Stewed prunes. 
 
 Pasteurized milk. 
 
 Whole wheat pancakes or buckwheat cakes served with un- 
 sulphured, old-fashioned, open kettle molasses, made by hundreds 
 of farmers in the South for southern consumption, but because 
 of northern ignorance of its virtues rarely shipped beyond the 
 Mason-Dixon line. 
 
 Breakfast, Saturday 
 
 Grape fruit, orange juice, apple or any other fruit. 
 Old-fashioned, undegerminated corn meal porridge and pas-* 
 teurized milk. 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 393 
 
 I' 
 
 Fruit muffins made of whole meal, date meats or raisins. 
 A hand-mill will give you freshly ground meal or cut breakfast 
 foods if you can't buy them in the stores. 
 
 Breakfast, Sunday 
 
 Stewed figs or apple sauce. 
 
 Poached egg on whole wheat toast, or scrambled egg f or egg 
 souffle with a few strips of the crisp fat of broiled bacon. In 
 the case of very young children up to four years of age, the lean 
 meat, seared and hardened by the fire, should not be consumed. 
 
 Whole grain porridge with pasteurized milk. 
 
 Muffins, cinnamon rings, coffee cake or any of the other slightly 
 spiced and sugared breakfast goodies that make the eyes of 
 children sparkle and at the same time contribute to the sturdiness 
 of their little lives. 
 
 § 128 — OBSERVATIONS ON BREAKFAST MENUS 
 
 These breakfast combinations are merely hints covering the 
 importance of proteins, carbohydrates, fats, mineral salts and the 
 so-called "vitamines." 
 
 It will be noted that the child will rarely be tempted to over- 
 eat when such combinations are in reach. The appetite not ac- 
 tivated by cravings will be normal. To-day the child may eat 
 bread in addition to the cereal, to-morrow may be content with 
 less than a single slice or not satisfied with less than two. His 
 needs will control the quantity consumed. 
 
 Any variations that normal taste demands or that will relieve 
 monotony or any patented breakfast food made from the honest 
 whole grain can be substituted as desired. 
 
 The fruit may consist solely of apples with splendid results. 
 The necessary potassium and calcium salts are afforded by all 
 juicy fruits. The whole grains and milk will supply all the pro- 
 tein, fats, carbohydrates and salts of iron, phosphorus, chlorine, 
 sodium, lime, sulphur, silicon, magnesium and manganese neces- 
 sary. 
 
394 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 The unbolted germ of the whole grain and its outer layer will 
 contribute solubles and cellulose without respect to any scientific 
 table of grams, calories or vitamines. 
 
 If pasteurized dairy butter is not obtainable a vigorous effort 
 should be made to supply it at least during three days of each 
 week. During the other days one of the oleomargarine or nut 
 butters, put out by reputable manufacturers, without the use of 
 benzoate, may be substituted freely. 
 
 § 129 — DINNER MENUS 
 
 Dinner, Monday 
 
 Soup made of a combination of two, three, four or five fresh 
 vegetables and greens, such as onions, parsley, carrots, spinach, 
 parsnips, celery, celery tops, beet tops, the outer leaves of lettuce, 
 cabbage and the stub ends of asparagus ordinarily discarded. 
 
 Steamed or baked potatoes served in the skin. When the skin 
 is baked crisp the child may eat it with impunity. If soggy it is 
 just as well not only to let the skin alone but also to banish the 
 potato. 
 
 Poached egg or an egg cooked in its shell for ten minutes in 
 water at 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Such an egg is "coddled" and 
 emerges from the shell as soft as jelly. 
 
 Endives, lettuce, crisp celery or greens of any kind. 
 
 This combination may be substituted entirely for the soup 
 but where means afford it will do no harm to have both. 
 
 For dessert three or four dates, one or two figs or a bunch 
 of ripe grapes in season will top off the meal. 
 
 Dinner, Tuesday 
 
 Thick lentil soup. 
 
 Creamed carrots served in the water in which they are cooked, 
 thickened with dry milk powder or whole meal. 
 Greens. 
 Whole wheat bread and pasteurized butter. 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 395 
 
 A little jelly or jam may be added. 
 
 Stewed, fresh rhubarb or any ripe fruit, cooked or raw. 
 
 Of course there are no objections to apple pie or cottage pud- 
 ding, but for very young children the crust of the pie had better 
 I be removed. If you give them the "innards" you can eat the 
 1 crust yourself and if you are interested in child psychology you 
 j will be amazed to note that the deal will provoke no uprising of 
 \ Bolshevism in the household. The child will be "perfectly satis- 
 I fied," offering no objection. 
 
 This phenomenon has been observed so frequently and with 
 i such persistence that it indicts the indulgence of parents who 
 j assume that any seeming discrimination against the child must 
 ! ! be followed by an incipient disturbance of the peace. 
 
 Dinner j Wednesday 
 
 Onion soup made of the juice of stewed onions or any other 
 vegetable broth which, according to American custom, is usually 
 drained into the sink. 
 
 Creamed parsnips and peas served in their own sauce, to 
 which dry milk powder again lends consistency, flavor and nutri- 
 ment. 
 
 Tender corn on the cob and a potato may be included. 
 
 Whole wheat bread, pasteurized butter and granulated honey, 
 which may be orange, alfalfa, sage, clover, buckwheat or any 
 other kind the market affords. You can really get granulated 
 honey, which is infinitely superior in flavor to liquefied honey, if 
 you ask for it and continue to ask for it. All wholesale grocers in 
 America can supply it and the retail grocer need only place his 
 order to get it. 
 
 Any kind of fruit you care to serve. 
 
 Dinner, Thursday 
 
 Thick bean soup. 
 
 Stewed, fresh spinach served in its own sauce. 
 Any vegetable combination, including turnips, fresh beets, par- 
 snips or potatoes. 
 
THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Barley cakes, oat cakes, rice cakes or fruit muffins. 
 Apples, apple pudding or apple sauce. 
 
 Dinner, Friday 
 
 Soup made of greens with unpearled barley, natural brown 
 rice, or both. 
 
 Dried peas, dried beans or dried lentils, soaked ten hours and 
 cooked all night in a fireless cooker or in any other way that you 
 care to adopt. 
 
 If you don't know the fireless cooker, try it. 
 
 Old-fashioned, sun-dried apples or sun-dried apricots if the 
 fresh variety is not in season. 
 
 Whole wheat bread, pasteurized butter and jam. 
 
 Dinner, Saturday 
 
 Vegetable soup. 
 
 Natural brown rice with custard sauce. 
 
 Greens. 
 
 Sliced fresh pineapple, sliced fresh peaches, berries or cante- 
 loupe. 
 
 Whole wheat bread, pasteurized butter, with a half dozen ripe 
 olives. 
 
 Dinner, Sunday 
 
 Chicken soup with boiled or roasted chicken. 
 
 After the age of five children may have in moderate quanti- 
 ties lamb or beef, but don't give them corned beef, ham or 
 sausage, 
 
 Creamed onions, creamed cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, tender 
 cabbage or string beans. 
 
 Greens. 
 
 Baked banana with cake containing real eggs and real milk or 
 milk powder, or one of the good gelatin desserts. 
 
 § 130 — OBSEEVATIONS ON DINNER MENUS 
 
 A thin film of fresh peanut butter on such days when eggs 
 are not served makes a good addition to bread, but the peanut 
 
I- 
 
 IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 397 
 
 butter must be fresh. When stale, peanut butter develops a de- 
 composition substance known as acrolein, which is dangerous 
 
 J to children as well as to adults. 
 
 Nuts of any kind may be consumed by children when they 
 
 ; have learned to masticate them thoroughly. Let "thoroughly" be 
 
 ' emphasized. 
 
 The adult may grate Parmesan, Roman or Domestic whole 
 
 -milk cheese over anything he likes, but it is better to keep the 
 
 ' cheese from the child. It must be remembered that cheese, like 
 
 i eggs, beans, peas, lentils, milk and meat, is a nitrogenous food. 
 
 ! Americans consume too much nitrogen in the form of protein. 
 
 1 Offending proteins are responsible for many forms of human dis- 
 temper. 
 
 § 131 — THE EVENING LUNCH OR SUPPER 
 
 The child's evening lunch or supper should be light and re- 
 „ quires no greater variety than milk and bread, to which anything 
 in reason may be added, especially real whole wheat crackers. 
 
 Foods which the child should avoid entirely are the cheap, 
 chemically flavored, dyed sweets that everywhere attract the 
 juvenile penny, greasy gravy, fried foods of every kind, sulphur- 
 bleached apricots, sulphur-bleached apples, sulphur-bleached 
 peaches, sulphur-bleached pears, cheap condiments, vegetables 
 that have lost their solubles, liver, kidney, hard boiled eggs 
 unless mashed to a pulp, sulphur-bleached molasses, bakery 
 cookies, bakery ginger bread and confectioner's taffy made from 
 the low-grade, highly sulphured stuff that masquerades in the 
 trade as "third and fourth crop molasses" ; all tinned foods sold 
 in tins that are not lacquered; all bakeshop or drug-store ice cream 
 made from raw milk, homogenized fat (lard when it is cheap), 
 carpenter's glue, ethereal flavors and coal tar colors; all factory 
 cakes loaded with aluminum sulphate, ethereal flavors, fillers in 
 the form of artificial jellies, etc. Coffee and tea are not permis- 
 sible until growth has been attained. 
 
398 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 § 132 — THE GROCERY OF THE FUTURE 
 
 Perhaps in the near future grocery stores, bakeshops, ice cream 
 parlors and candy shops will take the public into their confidence 
 by displaying signs something like those that follow. Such dis- 
 plays will be based, of course, on the assumption that each placard 
 or bulletin represents a background of truth. 
 
 Bread 
 
 There is no legally standardized loaf of bread in America. 
 Our whole wheat bread is made of certified whole wheat meal, 
 shortened with fat that has not been chemically manipulated. 
 If America had a legal standard the adulterator would not use 
 the dusky color of the honest loaf as a mask to conceal in- 
 feriority. 
 
 The white bread maker would not then point to his immaculate 
 loaf, free from the faintest tint of color. He would not contrast 
 the "chastity" of that white loaf with the "defilement" of the dark 
 one. It is not our fault that to-day the public looks with suspicion 
 upon the masquerading "graham" loaf, losing faith in it and 
 finally going back to the "clean" white loaf. The certified loaf 
 of substantial bread with love and understanding kneaded into 
 its heart, will be one of the glories of American manhood, woman- 
 hood and childhood when America finds time to give its bread 
 attention. Such a loaf we sell. 
 
 Canned Foods 
 
 We recommend only such tinned foods as are packed in con- 
 tainers, the seams of which are soldered on the outside to pre- 
 vent their contents from dissolving the poisonous flux frequently 
 employed. Furthermore, we recommend only such tinned foods 
 as are lacquered to prevent erosion by the action of enzymes 
 and fruit or vegetable acids. Tin is not one of the benevolent 
 minerals. It is not found in the human body except as intro- 
 duced in the form of metallic salts dissolved from tin cans. 
 Properly lacquered and properly seamed canned foods are good 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 399 
 
 but the dehydrated fruits and vegetables of the future will far 
 surpass them in quality and economy. 
 
 Loose Milk 
 
 We don't sell it. When nobody sells it more babies will sur- 
 i vive. One can dip a dirty hand up to the wrist or a dirty arm 
 | up to the elbow into a can of loose milk. One can add water 
 not too scrupulously clean to loose milk. One can kill a baby 
 to-day with yesterday's left-over from the bottom of the loose 
 milk can. Loose milk is a barbarism which Twentieth Century 
 civilization need not and should not tolerate. 
 
 Spices 
 
 Because dentists and other professional gentlemen need oil of 
 cloves, oil of cinnamon and oil of mustard is no reason why 
 we should sell exhausted spices. Our spices contain all the fixed 
 and volatile oils with which Nature endowed them before they 
 were ground. 
 
 Vanilla 
 
 Our vanilla extract contains no tonka, coumarin or synthetic 
 vanillin. If you really want vanilla, the compound substitute is 
 not what you want and we have no desire to fool you into ac- 
 cepting it. 
 
 Flavors 
 
 We don't sell synthetic strawberry, raspberry, peach, banana, 
 pineapple, pistachio or cherry extracts made from formic ether, 
 oenanthic ether, valerianate ether, ethyl ether, amyl ether, benzoic 
 ether, butyric ether, esters and aldehydes. This is a grocery 
 store, not a drug store. 
 
 Vinegar 
 
 We sell no spirit vinegar colored with caramel. Our cider 
 ! vinegar originated in apples, not in acetic acid and a dye factory. 
 ; Vinegar apples are cheap enough to justify popularity without 
 I resort to the indescribable. All vinegar is adulterated with water. 
 ! So is ours. 
 
400 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 Jam 
 
 We are members of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty 
 to Jams. Glucose, apple stock (skins and cores), apple juice 
 ( obtained from apple waste by boiling and the use of a hydraulic 
 press), phosphoric or tartaric acid preserved with sodium ben- 
 zoate and made brilliant with ribbon dye do not justify the bold 
 print "berries" on the neck strip of the jar. 
 
 They more than justify the small print "compound" incon- 
 spicuously hidden along the margin of the label. If you will 
 examine jam labels you will ask for membership in the Society. 
 
 Butter 
 
 Our butter is not a "top second" or an "under first." It is 
 not processed or renovated. It is not made in a centralizing 
 plant. It has not been whitewashed by a neutraiizer. It is not 
 included in the vast classification condemned by the U. S. Depart- 
 ment of Agriculture as an "unsanitary product" manufactured, 
 from salvaged, inedible cream. Unfortunately the U. S. Gov- 
 ernment has done nothing to discourage the sale of such butter, 
 except to talk about it in bulletins that are not read by the people. 
 We not only talk about it but we refuse to sell it. 
 
 Oleo 
 
 We sell oleomargarine for what it is. The government, under 
 the influence of vote-getters who pander to "the farmer," dis- 
 criminates against it by insisting that the factories in which it 
 is made shall be clean, thus distinguishing it from butter which 
 the government permits to be made in factories officially de- 
 scribed as dirty. Oleo is not supposed to contain the famous 
 "fat soluble A" that has been trotted out by dirty-buttermakers 
 to establish the alleged superiority of dirty butter over clean 
 margarine. 
 
 We doubt that dirty butter, resurrected through the addition 
 of soda ash, at which the U. S. Government winks, contains any 
 "fat soluble A." The "fat soluble A" professors say nothing 
 about soda ash or its influence over their trapeze-performing 
 vitamines. This is a food store not a humor factory, or we'd 
 stand here a long time and laugh with you over the butter farce. 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 401 
 
 Full Cream Cheese 
 
 We don't sell any. Nobody does. There is no such thing. Our 
 cheese is whole milk cheese. It contains all the cream the cow- 
 gave but no more. We also sell skim milk cheese for just what 
 it is, and it isn't bad at all. 
 
 'Molasses 
 
 All so-called "New Orleans molasses" as now manufactured 
 is bleached with sulphurous acid. The Supreme Court of Penn- 
 sylvania has condemned sulphurous acid as a poison. We have 
 had to arrange for a special make of molasses. It is darker than 
 the bleached kind because it is not doped. Its old-fashioned 
 flavor is what you have been longing for since you moved from 
 Louisiana in your childhood. 
 
 Dried Fruits 
 
 We sell prunes, raisins, currants and citron because they have 
 not gone through the process known as "Panama hat bleach." 
 We also sell sun-dried apples and apricots but none of the sul- 
 phured fruits that make us" wonder why people who are satis- 
 fied with brunette raisins think they must have blond pears. 
 
 Hamburger Steak 
 
 We don't sell chopped meat reddened with anhydrous sodium 
 sulphite. There is a law against such stuff in Pennsylvania and 
 another one in this store. 
 
 'Alum 
 
 The law allows alum in pickles, mince meat, relishes, condi- 
 ments and baking powder. We don't. If you think alum is 
 good for you try it on the cat. If the cat emerges from the test 
 without injury we will gladly alter our policy. 
 
 Olive Oil 
 
 The only olive oil we sell is cold-pressed, virgin oil. If you 
 would know something of the true degradation of the olive oil 
 
402 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 industry refer to U. S. Department of Commerce Special Agents 
 Series, Bulletin No. 75, which is a complete expose of the devil- 
 tries practised at the expense of the American olive oil consumer 
 by Italian, French and Spanish olive oil manufacturers. Ninety 
 per cent, of the olive oil sold in America is a deodorized product 
 that is passed on its way to you through such chemical solvents 
 as carbon bisulphide, benzine, carbon tetrachloride and trichlor- 
 ethylene, all of which are used in the resurrection of inedible 
 oils for the American table. 
 
 Peanut Oil 
 
 There are many kinds of peanut oil but we sell only the virgin, 
 cold-pressed oil which differs amazingly in f ruitiness and quality 
 from the hot-pressed peanut oil made from unsifted run-of-the- 
 ground nuts. 
 
 When Americans begin to appreciate the fine flavor and dis- 
 tinctive quality of pure, cold-pressed peanut oil they will change 
 their table habits. 
 
 "Pure" Means Nothing 
 
 All eggs, including storage eggs, are "pure" eggs. The crab- 
 apple is just as "pure" as the greening. Shin bone trimmings 
 are just as "pure" as porterhouse steak. Chemically treated corn 
 oil, cottonseed oil, peanut oil and olive oil are just as "pure" as 
 the oil that flows from the press. The word "pure" is over- 
 puffed with pride. In the food world, through academic decisions 
 rendered in the courts, it has come to mean nothing. When the 
 most important word in the language is reduced to such a state of 
 degeneracy you are obliged to rely more and more upon your- 
 self. For this reason you can no longer afford to remain in 
 ignorance where foods are concerned. 
 
 Economy 
 
 Small prunes contain twice as many pits and twice as many 
 skins as large prunes. If you believe prune pits and skins are 
 cheaper than prune meat, buy the small ones, but take our word 
 for it you are fooling yourself. 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 403 
 
 Purely Vegetable 
 
 "Purely vegetable" does not mean harmless. Opium, strych- 
 nine, cocaine, nicotine, laudanum are purely vegetable. 
 
 'Art 
 
 We have no art department. Coal tar dyes belong to the rib- 
 bon business, not the food business. Color schemes are all right 
 on the label but not in the food. 
 
 Bensoate 
 
 If you want foods preserved with benzoate you can buy them 
 down the street. We won't sell them because we have no M. D. 
 sign outside and nobody behind the counter who is qualified 
 - to prescribe medicine in a grocery store. 
 
 One Dose 
 
 One dose of the food frauds against which we have taken a 
 stand would hardly kill you. People don't die that way from 
 food frauds. It is the evil history of food sophistication and the 
 indecencies that food chemicals conceal that we object to. 
 
 Our Cakes 
 
 Our cakes contain eggs, not "egg color." If egg color was not 
 intended to suggest the presence of eggs that are absent some 
 other color would be employed and cakes would be lavender, 
 purple, pink and green, not yellow. 
 
 Com Meal 
 
 We sell corn meal containing all of the corn, including the 
 good part always fed to hogs. 
 
 Brown Rice 
 
 All natural rice is brown. If the rice polisher who makes it- 
 white knows as much about rice and what it ought to look like 
 as the Almighty who designed it to feed the human race, why 
 
404 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 doesn't he produce the credentials that entitle him to so change 
 its character that when he gets through with his job even chickens 
 that eat the stuff cannot live longer than six weeks? 
 
 White Flour 
 
 God put vitalizing, tissue-sweetening mineral salts into the 
 wheat; man takes them out and then wonders why there are so 
 many false teeth. Use white flour if you must, but confine it to 
 the trimmings. If bread is the staff of life, see to it that your 
 children do not lean on a broken staff. 
 
 Candy 
 
 Our candy contains no coal tar dye, no synthetic chemical 
 flavors, no soapstone, no radiator lacquer, no carpenter's glue, 
 no paraffin, no weather-proofing shellac, no lamp black, no sub- 
 stitute for licorice or chocolate. 
 
 Hand Made 
 
 The body must be built from building material. It cannot get 
 such material out of food unless it's in food. Hand-made or 
 artificial concoctions do not substitute for Nature's offerings. 
 Think this over when you are hungry. 
 
 Nuts 
 
 Walnuts, hickory nuts, peanuts, pecans, filberts, Brazil nuts, 
 almonds were made to eat. That's what we have teeth for. 
 
 Milk Powder 
 
 We sell milk powder, freshly made from whole and skim milk, 
 so clean and sweet at the beginning of the process that it re- 
 quired no neutralizer to correct its acidity. Stale milk cannot 
 be successfully converted into milk powder without chemical 
 manipulation. Honest milk powder is destined to come into 
 daily use in the American home. It just naturally flows into 
 gravies, cream sauces, mashed potatoes, custards, the ice cream 
 freezer and the chocolate pot. Like all other human foods, it is 
 abused. The brands we sell have a history. 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 405 
 
 Honey 
 
 People have the foolish notion that honey as sold in bottles 
 should be liquid or it isn't "pure." Therefore they look with 
 suspicion upon any honey that is not liquid. The only place 
 pure honey, unprocessed, remains liquid is in the comb. When 
 withdrawn from the comb it granulates, assuming the consistency 
 of candy creams. Pandering to the false notions of the people, 
 the honey distributor subjects his freshly extracted honey as it 
 
 I is taken from the comb to heat for a half hour. After this 
 
 j process honey will not granulate. 
 
 During the liquefying process its whole character is changed 
 
 | and the highly volatile, aromatic, flowery flavor of the nectar 
 
 I is dissipated and lost forever. The public has no conception of 
 the vast difference between granulated honey as it ought to be 
 
 I and liquid honey as it is. One can liquefy one's own granulated 
 honey at home if one wants to. There is certainly no justifica- 
 tion or necessity for degrading it by liquefaction in a factory. 
 
 Grayfish 
 
 Canned grayfish represent a Government innovation. Grayfish 
 have been misbranded by the U. S. Department of Commerce 
 in order to take the curse off the fish. Under their real name — - 
 dogfish — a mad species of shark, people would not buy them or 
 eat them. One might as well try to sell canned buzzard, canned 
 crow, canned vulture, canned hyena, canned wolf, canned wild 
 cat under their proper names. Realizing the necessity of camou- 
 flage, the Government itself actually broke down the spirit of the 
 Food and Drugs Act, as it applies to misbranding, by giving the 
 canners of dogfish a legal right to offer their salvaged sea offal 
 under a misleading label. Had a plain citizen done this he could 
 have been prosecuted, but when the Government itself lifts the 
 bars against misbranding, a precedent is established for the emu- 
 lation of plain citizens and no man may now foresee the future 
 of misbranding. 
 
 Fortunately grayfish are not a success and the people will not 
 eat them under any name, even though they are sold in carload 
 lots to the unsuspecting grocer. 
 
— ■ 
 
 406 THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 ■ -i 
 
 Table Syrups 
 
 The old word "glucose" has lost its dignity and with it its 
 popularity. Another camouflaged phrase has had to be invented 
 to neutralize the public's misgivings concerning this artificial 
 syrup. "Corn syrup" is the new name given to the old product, 
 but "corn syrup" is not corn syrup ; it is cornstarch syrup. Corn 
 syrup is not made from the whole corn and does not contain 
 the food virtues of whole corn. It is merely hydrolized starch, 
 chemically converted from granular carbohydrate form to liquid 
 carbohydrate form. It has no sweetening power of itself and 
 consequently must b* mixed with other sweeteners of doubtful 
 superiority in order to make it salable. 
 
 Corn Flakes 
 
 Little of the corn remains in the corn flake except the starch. 
 Corn flakes are not an ideal food for children. Try to bring up 
 a pen of pigs or a coop of newly hatched chickens on corn flakes 
 if you would appreciate the difference between corn flakes and 
 corn. On a diet of corn flakes they will die; on a diet of corn 
 they will thrive. 
 
 Farina 
 
 Farina is simply a form of white patent flour in granules. 
 When these granules are reduced or pulverized they become 
 flour. In bulk you can buy farina at retail in small quantities 
 at about $15 a barrel. Under fancy names in packages you can 
 buy the same thing at $28 a barrel. In either case when you 
 buy it, you will buy none of the tissue-sweetening virtues of the 
 wheat. 
 
 Macaroni 
 
 Macaroni and spaghetti, although composed of white patent 
 flour, and very frequently a little yellow coal-tar dye to suggest 
 the presence of eggs, giving them the rich golden color commonly 
 associated with artificially decorated noodles, are not to be looked 
 upon with the same misgivings as those with which we regard 
 white bread. Bread is the staff of life and is used at every meal. 
 Macaroni and spaghetti are used occasionally. Dressed with rich 
 
IDEALLY BALANCED MENUS 407 
 
 itomato sauce and grated cheese they have much to recommend 
 jthem when honestly made and honestly sold. 
 , We condemn no food luxuries brought into the household to 
 ■relieve monotony. If we had honest bread three times a day 
 we might eat almost anything with impunity; hence our apparent 
 discrimination in favor of macaroni and spaghetti. 
 
 "Offsetting" Foods 
 
 "Eggs, fresh vegetables, fresh fruits and greens," declare the 
 champions of the present system of food debasement, ''afford 
 !| plenty of 'offsetting' foods which more than make up for the 
 ! deficiencies recorded against refined or impoverished foods." 
 I We can indeed supply the deficiency found in 5 cents' worth 
 (one pound) of patent white flour by purchasing $1 worth of 
 1 "offsetting" lettuce, 80 cents' worth of "offsetting" oranges, 70 
 i cents' worth of "offsetting" eggs or 36 cents' worth of "offset- 
 ting" milk. High prices, of course, have nothing to do with keeping 
 these "offsetting" foods out of the hands of the plain people. 
 It is consoling to know that we can always supply the indis- 
 pensable tissue-sweetening salts that ought to be present in 5 
 cents' worth of unrefined cereals if we will only go out and spend 
 $1 in some other "offsetting" direction, but there aren't sufficient 
 dollars in the world to supply a sufficient number of expensive 
 "offsetting" foods to take the place of the deliberately squan- 
 dered tissue-sweeteners, sifted and bolted out of the mainstay of 
 man's life — bread. The cheapest "offsetting" food in the world 
 is withdrawn from the cheapest food in the world — bread. 
 Robbed man and his robbed children are then calmly informed 
 that they can restore the loss by investing twenty times as much 
 money in "offsetting" food as they are able to spend. This is 
 domestic economy with a vengeance but it is actually taught in 
 many universities. 
 
 Our $2,000,000,000 wheat crop of 1919, robbed of its pre- 
 cious life-sustaining, tissue-sweetening, vitalizing salts, can be 
 "set right" by spending $40,000,000,000 (more than it cost ex- 
 travagant America to get in and out of the war) in order, for- 
 sooth, to repair with "offsetting" foods the "trivial and inconse- 
 

 40S THIS FAMISHING WORLD 
 
 quential" damage sustained by our refined bread and breakfast 
 foods. 
 
 Soda Crackers 
 
 Under various patented names soda crackers, never referred 
 to as a product of a "bread trust," but sold in fancy packages 
 under fancy names at 9 cents each, retail, containing 4^ ounces, 
 cost you $5945 a barrel. Loose soda crackers selling at retail at 
 20 cents a pound cost you $39.20 a barrel. Perhaps the differ- 
 ence of $20 a barrel really represents the actual value of the 
 sanitation included in the fancy package, but the difference be- 
 tween a barrel of flour as purchased by bakers at $10.50 whole- 
 sale and the fancy product at $59.45 or $39.20 a barrel, consti- 
 tutes in our opinion what the world really means when it talks 
 of profiteering but thinks it has something else in mind. If we 
 took the savings now pocketed by profiteers and applied them 
 to child welfare work, America would be great among the nations. 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
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