FOOD FONlDAMENTAt Food Fundamentals A View of III' Health as Caused by Wrong- Habits of Living- and a Discus- sion of Food Based on Experience from the Viewpoint of an Osteopathic Physician E, H, BEAN, D, O. tjDri^-'-^ Copyright 1916 by E. H. BEAN TO MY MOTHER Who is seventy-three years of age and has never been ill. 346525 PREFACE Only those who have freed themselves from think- ing in the ordinary and much worn channels turn to osteopathy as their profession. And this applied with greater force to those who championed osteopathy in its earlier days than it does now. I spent three and one-half years in Kirks ville, Mo., the first half year to regain sufficient health to enter the school and the remainder of the time to take the course in osteopathy. During this time I greatly profited by the privilege of close association with Dr. A. T. Still, the Founder of Osteopathy, as he chose to make use of my services in getting out his latest book, "Osteopathy, Research and Practice." Whatever was left in me of narrowness of mind, of biased opinion, of prejudice in thinking, of following in the customary paths of mental activity, received a forceful and lasting shock as I gathered a close glimpse of an invincible mind expanded by orig- inal thinking; a mind which finds it easy to soar into the clouds above ordinary thought — that master mind of Dr. Still. His words are still ringing in my ears: "Keep your mud valves open and your engine in such condition that you can move out of the hearing of theories, and halt for all coming days by the side of the river of the pure waters of reason and be able to demonstrate that which you assert." Having been educated as a teacher and having followed that profession for ten years it was only natural that the author would try to answer the ques- tions directed to him in practice in such a manner that the inquirer would be able to get his point of view accurately. To constantly keep doing this lead to extensive investigation, observation and an endless amount of reading. A life-long battle with stomach and intestinal trouble impelled him to an open mind in regard to the usefulness of a proper diet. From the first he supple- mented his osteopathy with what he knew on the sub- ject of diet. He believes his per cent of cures has been materially increased by using diet and his sphere of usefulness very much enlarged. His views of diseases, diet, and osteopathy have not always been readily ac- cepted by his clientele. They have kept him constantly awake and alert to what is going on in the different fields of medicine, and as time passed he found himself as truly engaged in educational work as though he spent every hour of the day in the schoolroom. The author found that people would not or could not follow any ideas of diet that were at all compre- hensive without they were reduced to writing. For years he has refused to give instructions in diet with- out writing them out. Having the fundamentals before his patient he was able to give them details which they could easily grasp and carry out. But this required much additional explanation. This book, then, is the result of an open mind accepting truths fearlessly, and of carrying out a practice along these lines. It is to fill a need of my clientele. It was written primarily for those with whom the author comes in contact, for it requires personal effort, personal mes- sages frequently repeated, to bring about a change in habits of eating. If, perchance, a single physician may grasp these fundamentals and teach them to others, the author will be highly repaid for putting them in this form. The quotations used have been gleaned in an un- usual way. They are not an unbroken section of the writings from which they were taken, but a collection of short passages, rearranged and assembled with slight omissions or additions or changes necessary for the present arrangement, and because of this the cus- tomary markings showing just where the passage came from could not well be used. Care has been exercised to use these assembled quoted expressions in such a way as to carry their original meaning, and to give credit in each case. Certain expressions and phrase- ology taken from "Christianizing the Social Order," by Walter Rauschenbusch, have been used in such a way as to make the proper markings difficult, so this indirect acknowledgment is made and credit given. E. H. Bean. Columbus, Ohio, June 28, 1916. Food Fundamentais PART ONE THE POINT OF VIEW A book of this character will be given a hearing only by a few. People will read extensively on most any subject except health. They will read carefully a short magazine article on the subject of health if written to entertain rather than to instruct; or, if it discusses in a light vein the curative power of some medicine; and the article will be considered of par- ticular value, and read with due reverence and awe if it is amply colored with superstition. Too much of the literature on health is fragmentary, consisting of the advancement of one meritorious idea with no thought or notice of its relation to other vital concep- tions. Too much of it is wholly false and results in increasing the total amount and severity of illness. Much of it is written from the wrong point of view. Literature characterized by such weaknesses prepares the reader for a ready acceptance of quackery and pretension, not as practiced by those known to be charlatans, but by impostors with a high standing in society and the community. Of the vast amount of literature that has grown up about health and cure of disease, much is not fundamental, does not deal with fundamentals. But these superficial and incomplete articles are to be read 4 • '-'- 1 ;- ♦ ^ Fdod Fundamentals by those who have not yet gained a spindling notion about the smallest fundamentals underlying the sub- ject. There are a few writers who have contributed a limited number of books on this subject that deal with fundamentals, and a study of such literature should be a part of the education of every child. The author would not attempt to make a complete list, but a few of those from whom he has gained much of what must be considered fundamental are: Louis Cornaro, Dr. Dio Lewis, M. D., Dr. E. H. Dewey, M. D., Dr. Daniel S. Sager, M. D., Dr. J. H. Tilden, M. D., Dr. J. H. Kellogg, M. D., Hereward Carrington, Horace Fletcher. Louis Cornaro, an Italian, wrote a few essays about three hundred and fifty years ago telling how he regained his health at forty years of age and re- tained it. He lived to be over a hundred years and enjoyed health. This book, or its translation, is found in most public libraries and should be in every home. It deals with one fundamental which is very much up-to-date. "Our Digestion," by Dio Lewis, an allopathic physician, was written in 1872, but as it deals with sensible and fundamental ideas it will always be stan- dard information, and is much ahead of most of the current literature of today on health subjects. "The Art of Living in Good Health," by Daniel S. Sager, an allopathic physician, is replete with in- formation that every parent should know. It is writ- Food Fundamentals 5 ten in a calm and studied tone; it is concise and well indexed. People who read this thoughtful medical man's book will not fall an easy victim to many of the medical and surgical practices of today. "The No Breakfast Plan and The Fasting Cure," by E. H. Dewey, an allopathic physician, is a book with a message that conveys a wider sight and purer conception of truth. It is for all the people, not alone for physicians. The writings of Dr. J. H. Kellogg are illumi- nating, but some of the errors into which they lead one who follows them are pointed out later in this book. (Pages 40-47.) Dr. J. H. Tilden, an allopathic physician of Den- ver, Colo., is a prolific and virile writer, daring and bold, a strong force for right thinking on health sub- jects. His books on *Tood," "Diseases of Women," "Criticism of The Practice of Medicine," and articles in Philosophy of Health on "Care of Children" should all be read by those who think they understand a little about modern medicine. Whatever else may be found in the writings of these men there stand out prominently one or more ideas easily recognized by the discerning mind as a fundamental truth. None of them are wholly right, and no writer on this subject is, because there is more to be known, and the point of view must be perfected. Having gained a right point of view and a thorough understanding of the underlying fundamentals the 6 Food Fundamentals weakness of any author is easily discovered and the usual discussion of diet and health under various names may be readily classified or disregarded. There is a tendency to neglect the acquisition of information about food and diet, but when the attempt is made it is not altogether easy to decide what is truth and what is falsehood. But these are books that every parent should read. They are not the only ones, but others should not be substituted for these, — not until the physician employed has read and studied them. And because physicians persist in shutting their minds to any but a narrow, biased consideration of things pertaining to health, parents must discover for themselves the fundamentals and the right direction in which to look and move. They must give this subject time. They must read more than a magazine or newspaper article. Nothing should be made clearer than that the mass of physicians of all schools are ignorant of the fundamentals put forth by the great physicians of all ages on how to cure and prevent diseases by right living and eating. Not even the best schools of this or any country offer such information to their medical students. They are crazy about germs and serums and turn out doctors who are crazy on these same things. After leaving school the doctor must find out about diet and right living, — what they have to Food Fundamentals 7 do with curing and preventing of disease. Not many- give their time to securing this information, once they have entered practice. People are not thinking enough about how to care for their health and that of their children. They are paying physicians to do their thinking for them, for what he may know, be that much or nothing. The ignorance of the general public on this subject is so great that most anything tainted with popular approval will find its way into newspapers, maga- zines, and books, and be received by those who read it with one hundred per cent, approval. "Ignorance in preparing and combining foods is universal, and ignorance of a need of knowledge on this subject is almost universal." (Tilden). "It is inconceivable, the ignorance of people about their food. Not one man in ten knows anything about it beyond the fact that certain things taste good, and certain other things do not taste good." (Dio Lewis) . In this day of cults and isms, all grown up because of the signal failure of medicine and its domineering methods, it is a foremost duty of a household to have first-hand information about health-culture before making the choice of a family physician. The wise choice of a physician these days becomes the choice of an individuality rather than the choice of a prac- titioner of some certain line or method of healing. A few of each school have properly prepared themselves for the task of teaching people how to live. The 8 Food Fundamentals choosing of a physician is the choosing of a person who has so prepared himself. It does not matter what his method of treatment, if it lacks this essential it is fundamentally deficient. That physician who wields successfully a reliable method of therapeutics, joins with it knowledge and experience of how health is regained and maintained by right living, and has ability as a teacher of his clientele in these matters, becomes a citizen of unusual value to any community. It requires honesty of the pure brand — honesty with one's self, honesty in thinking. How many, many physicians keep still about vaccination though they know of its wrong, excusing their attitude by think- ing they can be of more use by securing certificates of exemption for a few, if silent, than by asserting their convictions in the face of organized medicine. This is not a pure brand of honesty, and the illustration could be many times multiplied. That physician who fully grasps the truth that disease is largely a product of wrong habits of living, and undertakes to teach his following this truth, is met not only with listless hearers, but with the oppo- sition of a strongly entrenched medical profession who thoroughly understand how to make use of the associated press; and with the daily remarks of ministers and editors who unwittingly enforce and reinforce error. He builds character by losing good friends, good patients, good money, and refusing to teach buncombe instead of truth. It requires a tre- Food Fundamentals 9 mendous quantity of scientific good sense to combat wrong habits of living, and there are not many physicians looking for the job. It is a great task demanding a great faith and an undying zeal. It does not increase the profits but brings down anathe- mas from his brothers in the profession, and friends and relatives of the patient. Such a physician never gets the pay to which he is entitled. He belittles himself with wisdom instead of haloing himself with popular opinion and surgeons' instruments. Human- ity revels in being taken as near Death's door as possible without dying and will pay a great fee for it. No one knows how people will resist a treatment of rest in bed and a limited diet unless it is accompanied by operation, but the physician who makes the attempt. People are looking for a cure in a bottle, or in a bath, or in electricity, or in milk, or in a manipulation, or what not, and to any of these must be added a little sophistry and superstition. "Humanity, as it now exists, does not want to be told how to live. The cry is for a bottle of medicine, and not for advice.'* (Dr. Daniel S. Sager, Allopath). Human frailty must limp up and plead guilty to a conquering tendency and desire to be relieved of illness without being dis- turbed in the customary manner of living. And to sleep, eat, work and indulge as one desires appeals as such a very sweet reasonableness that it is usual for those who become ill as a result to be permitted to 10 Food Fundamentals "drowse on with the sleeping dogs whom none cares to stir." Instead of making suitable investigation for themselves, sick people follow each and every idea recommended to them by friend or stranger. It does not matter or seem to be of any importance how ignorant of the body or the laws of health the pro- moter of the idea may be. It is some easy way of obtaining health that appeals; some short-cut that will permit the sufferer to continue to indulge his usual habits. It does not require much space to say all that it is necessary for each individual to know about foods. It takes more effort and time to set people to thinking right, to eradicate wrong notions, to remove prejudice, and to get them to realize the importance of giving attention to dietary measures and right habits of living than it does to instruct them about food. Many are willing to make a change in their habits of living and eating when they are freed from a few false notions and see the reason for the change. There is profound relief in knowing that there are always a few who keep in hailing distance of common sense. The time is not far in the distance when many will be willing to pay physicians to teach them to so live that they may remain well. Not a few, however, prefer to lessen their number of years here on earth and continue to indulge as of old. People will not) think and act along healthful lines until the trend of their thought about disease Food Fundamentals 11 has been ruptured and detached from their unyielding faith in falsehoods, some of which have been knit into every fiber of their being from infancy and about which the roots of their mind are coiled as the roots of a flower in a flower-pot. Living a healthful life is an individual matter, and none will ever know just what the other fellow should do. But there is enough known to get a view of the fundamental lines along which we must move to leave behind the antiquated and harmful customs, the "policy of tinkering and pal- liatives." We can point the direction which leads to a plan that revolves around a different axis and carries with it a conspicuous glow of virtue. GERMS. There is no greater obstacle to right teaching about health and disease today than the erroneous teachings about germs. There are germs, to be sure ; germs that are peculiar to the condition called typhoid fever, pneumonia, malaria, etc. But the part played by the germ in disease or in health is not understood. On the other hand, it is very thoroughly misunder- stood. If the terms in all our literature referring to germs, microbes, etc., as causing disease could be blotted out and the term poison put in their place, the idea conveyed would be more nearly the truth. The difference is fundamental, — fundamental in con- ception and fundamental in applying a treatment. The ordinary conception and teaching is that the mul- 12 Food Fundamentals tiplying of poisonous germs cause the disease, and every effort is put forth to kill the germs. Accumu- lation of poisons do the damage, not the accumulation of germs, and every effort should be put forth to pre- vent the accumulation of the poisons. Measures that will prevent and do away with the accumulation of poisons are very different, indeed, from those put forth to kill germs. But those things that will ac- complish this result regarding the poisons will do away with the presence of the poisonous germs in any great number. It is taught that before a germ can cause disease there must be a lowered resistance of the body. The lowered resistance is disease and is present before the poison germ makes its appearance. The thing that brought about the lowered resistance is the cause of the disease. All the causes of disease may be put in two great classes : First, errors in living ; second, the Osteopathic lesion. A brief explanation of the relation of Osteopathy to disease is found elsewhere in this book. These are the things that reduce the vitality, lower the resistance — bring about disease. The germs may be regarded as scavengers, but this is but a fragmentary idea of them. They may also be regarded as helpful workers in dissipating disease processes. It is their business to take up or ingest poisonous or waste material and to so change and surround this material as to make it least harmful to Food Fundamentals 13 the elements of the blood, the lymphatic fluid, and the nervous system. Unless the material the germs ingest is poison they are harmless. It has been shown that the typhoid germ is often present without typhoid fever. The same thing is known about the germ of tuberculosis, pneumonia, gonorrhea, syphilis, malaria, etc. The entrance of these germs into the body does not necessarily mean disease. They are not always poisonous. When the body's resistance is lowered, elimina- tion is restricted and the fluids and secretions become poisonous, then the germs ingesting this poison makes it less harmful to the body, but they are poisoned in the act, and they receive all the blame for everything that goes on, our bad habits being entirely excused from the matter. The white blood cells can carry away more poison after it is ingested by germs or changed by them than if the white cells were to surround the poison directly; and it will not be so harmful to the white cells. The white cells had better be regarded as white angels than policemen. It is barely possible that in some conditions in some few cases the dissolution of the tissues in dis- ease is so rapid and the multiplying of germs so furious that it would seem that their enormous pro- duction is a menace to life and health. But if the accompanying conditions are understood and prop- erly interpreted such a thing is quite unlikely. It is well to look upon such an interpretation of facts with 14 Food Fundamentals suspicion until the evidence is better than is offered today. The sluggish, filthy sea of poisonous secretions in which the millions of germs are found wallowing are not usually of their own making, but rather the logical outcome of a depleted system overcome by forced digestion and accumulation of poisons. A very good and efficient proof, one acceptable to those searching for the truth regardless of its source, is to take away food, supply osteopathic treatment, and proper eliminating measures. The germ does not determine the character of the disease. The method of elimination, the mem- branes chosen by the system for that purpose, the breaking down of some organ because poisons are not eliminated are factors that determine the character of disease, — ^the symptoms that become manifest. In all diseased conditions there is an accumula- tion of poisons. These must be gotten rid of. If the ordinary channels of elimination are overworked then tissues whose function is such that it can be perverted or brought into wrong functioning to accomplish the immediate demands are appropriated. These tissues are most often the mucous membranes. If the intestines are broken down by overwork, the wrong functioning that results is spoken of as typhoid fever. In such an extreme emergency every mem- brane of the body is brought into use for extra work. And the physician usually sets about trying to get these tissues to stop their work. He treats symp- Food Fundamentals 15 toms. The typhoid germ is busy in the intestinal glands because it is well adapted to work there and can live longest on the poisonous food it finds there. But there are other germs beside the typhoid in the intestines working just as hard as it. These germs are ignored as a cause of the disease. Why? Be- cause they are also found elsewhere in the body. They are the kind that can work anywhere. Syphilis or gonorrhea are not diseases caused by a specific germ. They are filth diseases. The mem- branes break down from irritation and abuse, poison- ous secretions are permitted to collect, and absorption of septic poison results. Treated sanely the symp- toms are not very severe. The three stages of syphilis are different stages of drug medication. All the bad symptoms come from the usual drug medica- tion. You think not? Why? Because the regular doctors say not? Let me ask you how many cases they have treated by letting the drugs alone? Then how can they know? Be honest in your answer and thinking. If men were honest in their thinking there would not be so many diseases. Measles, mumps, scarlet fever, and all the so-called contagious diseases are no more contagious than pneumonia or catarrh. If a man has a carbuncle and a fever and you breathe the poisons from his breath, you will be poisoned. It may not make you sick, and it may. If it did you would probably think you had taken a cold. People usually excuse some symptom they do not understand 16 Food Fundamentals by saying, "I think I caught cold." If you breathe the breath of a person with measles you will be poisoned, and this will be true even if you have had measles before. Measles are caused by effete material in the body accumulated from overeating, wrong eat- ing, excess of clothing, and a condition of the atmos- phere which favors this disease. That is all there is to the contagion idea in any disease. A family live about the same and its members are likely to have similar diseases. Especially is this true when they have fed themselves on winter foods during the warmer part of the winter and spring as well as during the colder part. Then with too much clothing the elimination of the skin is impaired. The air be- comes warmer and damper and decomposition of the foliage of trees, shrubs, and grass becomes profuse and the air poisoned with it. Then the whole family or neighborhood has the disease, and why not? But the germ is still helpful and not the disease-producing agency. The reason why one does not have measles or some other disease more than once is just as easily explained from this point of view as any other. The fact is they often do have the disease called measles or small-pox more than once. But that the body builds a resistance against all diseases cannot be ques- tioned. And that it sometimes succeeds in so fortify- ing itself against certain poisons that they never will again produce the same results cannot be questioned. Food Fundamentals 17 I think this occurs in many more diseases than is usually thought. No doubt it often occurs in pneu- monia, typhoid, etc. The person who has had measles and who is again the victim of bad habits of eating and living and the climate and exposure that once produced it, does not go free from bad results. They become the subject of some other disorder. The re- sistance against the poison may be so great that the same amount of elimination is not called for that was needed when the body first yielded, but the extra poison will demand extra attention. From this point of view how absurd it is to inject poisons into the system by vaccination, the worst of all being that for small-pox. Typhoid fever vaccination does not prove the disease is caused by a germ. The greatest result gained from such a procedure is that this measure is followed by less drugging. Less drugging and more sanitation explain the results that are now being gained in the preven- tion of typhoid fever. Malarial fever has not been banished by killing the mosquito. Draining and drugging the marshes may have done away with the mosquito, but it also purifies the air from decomposi- tion products, and here is the explanation of the results. Breathe the air from decaying vegetation, eat enough to have the food decay in the intestines, wear enough clothing to close the pores of the skin, and with a suitable atmospheric temperature and humidity, you will have malarial fever where there is never a mosquito. 18 Food Fundamentals Internal sanitation is needed as much as external. It is much more important that each individual on a crowded, illy-ventilated, overheated street car has a sweet and pure breath than it is for the hanging straps to be cleansed from germs. A foul breath is poison, and one who is compelled to inhale it should cry out against the imposition and start a laymen's school to teach people and physicians where to lay emphasis. The medical profession are finding it very hard to undo the work of false teaching that it has promul- gated for centuries, and none will be more difficult to eradicate than the teachings about germs, stimulants, and foods. When they untimely discover they are promulgating a wrong idea they lay the blame on the advertising doctor. But it should be observed that the advertising doctors only perpetuate the wrong teaching once started by the regular profession. They perpetuate the idea that backache is from kidney derangement. The regular profession started the idea; now they recognize it as an error. So it is with many other ideas. That germs cause disease has been unfalteringly accepted by the people en masse, and certain good has resulted. There is improvement in sanitation and hygiene which is always to be commended. But there is no greater menace to the health of people today than the teaching about germs. The distorted truth about germs has shunted the vision astray from the real Food Fundamentals 19 cause of disease and has resulted in blinded efforts to palliate and relieve, and a damnable neglect of the stiffening of the will against the continuance of un- healthful habits of living. Wrong teaching about germs has instilled into the minds of many a poisonous fear which in itself is a curse to good health. "In this connection the question may arise as to the influence of germs or microbes in disease. Germs or microbes of whatever character are powerless to injure a healthy man. If this were not so we should all die of germ diseases, for we live in an atmosphere of germs, breathing tuberculosis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, measles, etc. It is only when the body is re- duced or brought down from its high plane of vigor and vitality to a low level that it yields to the influence of noxious microbes. If tubercle germs are injected into the skin of a healthy man he will not suffer in the least, and un- doubtedly, as has been proved, a healthy individual can swallow various germs and suffer no ill effects. In many instances it is a question whether germs are not a result rather than the cause of disease. The germs themselves are not so poisonous as their toxins or excreta. There are many points about disease yet remain- ing to be solved. We know that in many instances the bacilli of diphtheria may be found in the mouth of an individual and long remain harmless to him. This may go on for an unlimited period, or these bacilli may suddenly take an active or malignant form from causes which seem to be as yet beyond our under- standing. Unquestionably the body of a healthy man has the power to destroy any or all germs or microbes. Many of the so-called disease germs, the bacilli of con- sumption, typhoid fever, and others, have had an ex- istence for centuries, and they will still continue this existence so long as time lasts, for they form an in- 20 Food Fundamentals tegral part of the life of plants. Just as a tree is not killed by cutting off its leaves, neither is consumption, diphtheria, pneumonia, or any other so-called germ disease prevented by destroying the bacilli. We live in a world of germs, and we know absolutely nothing of many of the forms of germ-life, because we have no microscopes sufficiently powerful to show them; but this does not prevent us from knowing that these minute forms of life exist, — we know they exist by their effects on plant and human life. This only em- phasizes the importance of cultivating habits of good living for the sake of absolute immunity. By a well regulated natural life we can keep our bodies in such condition that they will resist disease of any kind." (Dr. Daniel S. Sager, Allopath.) "That these germs are actually present I do not for one moment deny. Their presence within the sys- tem, on such occasions, is not the cause of the disease, but merely one of its accompaniments. If they are the cause they must be present before the disease appears. Dr. R. L. Watkins examined the evidence showing germs are not present before the disease, and says: It is claimed that these bacilli are carried to the tissues by the blood, . . . it is acknowledged that they have never been found in the blood. Dr. Lionel S. Beale also contended that there was no evidence what- ever for the belief that the bacilli invariably existed first, while there was strong evidence to the contrary. A. H. Hoy, M. D., in "Eating and Drinking," holds the idea that we are breathing, eating, drinking germs all the time at the rate of some 14,000 per hour. We cannot possibly keep them out of any system ; the most healthy body doubtless contains the germs of the above mentioned diseases — if not this minute, then probably the next, or the next — for we eat, drink and breathe them constantly. Why, then, do we not all have ty- phoid, and consumption, and cholera, and diphtheria? Simply because there is no suitable soil in our bodies in which they can flourish; no food material upon Food Fundamentals 21 which they can sustain themselves ; and that is the sole and the only reason why we do not all have these dis- eases, and all others supposedly caused by germs. Now, as the prime object in the cure of all dis- eases is the elimination of offensive material ; and since germs do help in its elimination, by actually feeding upon it, it follows that all germs are our actual friends or benefactors in such diseases, helping and aiding us rid the system of the effete material that it contains, and that we do, as a matter of fact, get well largely on account of it, and certainly not in spite of, their presence — as it has always been taken for granted." (Here WARD Carrington.) If the germs help why don't we get well every time? Because we keep feeding the germs by con- tinuing to take food. The poison or toxin supposed to be caused by the germ, secreted by it, are brought about by the medical treatment and eating. The germs eat up the poison and change them until they are less harmful, but when they are given more to eat than they can dispose of they are blamed for secreting the poisons. "The germ theory has really exploded, and if it were not for the money that is invested in it, it would crumble into naught; but now that millions are in- vested, it must be kept up at all hazards. There is not one established truth, so far as the application of the germ theory to the cure of disease is concerned. We hear a great deal about controlling diphtheria with antitoxin. Statistics have been doctored to suit the needs in bolstering up this theory, and I say that honestly compiled statistics would prove the fallacy of the theory; and time will prove the truth of my statement. I have insisted, for years, that the only difference between the present results of treating severe forms 22 Food Fundamentals of diphtheria with antitoxin and the treatment of diph- theria by drugs previous to the advent of antitoxin, is that the antitoxin treatment is not so fatal as the previous treatment. In other words, patients treated with antitoxin have a better opportunity to get well; nature has a better opportunity to throw off disease; and this has made a difference in the results. But the test for the diagnosis of diphtheria is absolutely false. In examining a number of school children, the diphtheritic germs can be found in more throats that are not sore than in those who are com- plaining of a sore throat. If the diphtheritic germ is the cause of diphtheria, it will cause diphtheria in everyone in whose throat it finds a lodging-place. This is true, or there is not any truth about the law of spe- cifics. The fact that germs of all kinds can be found in people who are in good health is proof sufficient to any reasonable mind that germs cannot be the cause of disease. So long as the average person knows no difference between evidence and testimony, medical fallacy will thrive. A world of testimony need not necessarily carry one iota of evidence, and it is evidence and evi- dence alone, that counts; and if everyone who bears testimony in favor of the germ theory should be com- pelled to speak the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, there would be but little said in regard to the subject. If we had a public censor — one who would exclude everything that could not be proven — he would exclude nearly everything that is today writ- ten on the subject of the germ theory. I recognize sepsis as the only infecting agent in all so-called specific diseases. The toxic element in all diseases is sepsis. I assume that all secretions, ex- cretions and exudations are non-toxic until they are forced to become toxic by decomposition, and that all germs are innocent until their habitat has become toxic from putrefaction. The thought I wish to convey is that septic poison- ing is capable of appearing as puerperal fever, ery- Food Fundamentals 23 sipelas, typhoid fever, bubonic plague, diphtheria, scarlet fever, wound infection ; indeed, all blood poison- ings, including gonorrhea and syphilis. Septic infec- tion is virulent in proportion to the amount absorbed. All discharges from wounds and inflamed mucous sur- faces are peculiar to the organs affected, but when these discharges are pent up and forced to take on putrefaction, the poisoning is that of septicemia.'' (Dr. J. H. TiLDEN, Allopath.) DRUGS. Some think that if the body is out of chemical balance all they have to do is to buy some drug and take it. Nothing is farther from the truth. These substances cannot be supplied the body in this manner. The people have been wrongly taught about iron as an important element of food. It is important, and the green vegetables are a valuable means of supply- ing it in a form in which it can be used. Iron that is supplied in fruits and vegetables can be used by the body if indigestion does not prevent, but it has been proven that iron furnished as a drug cannot be used by the body. In the meantime iron is being con- tinually administered as a drug and the people take it, believing that they are benefited instead of injured. The people have been taught that iron in the form of a drug could be appropriated by the system, but the medical world knows better now, and having recog- nized the teaching as wrong it would appear that a great effort would be put forth to correct it, but such corrections are left to so-called "quacks." 24 Food Fundamentals Why are drugs prescribed? Because people de- mand them. They demand them because of habit, and because they have been taught that drugs cure disease of all kinds even though the disease has been brought on by incorrect habits of living. If the medical world knows better now, why don't they set about to correct their error? The foundations of the medical teachings are weak and will not bear the strain of an acknowledged error. Then it is a greater task than they wish to assume, also a thankless one. And it would hurt business. So the work of correct- ing erroneous teachings is delegated to those whom they please to term "Quacks," and when the efficient "Quack" is well on the way of accomplishing the great task, the medical profession plays the part of appro- priating the teaching as the essence of their own. In this way they deceptively maintain the unhampered confidence of the people — an attitude which is pitiably sickening to those who know. The forces of drugs are so solidly intrenched and the moral indignation of those who would throw a gleam of light on the drug practice has been so care- fully gagged and suppressed that to work the change that is now in progress is a monument to great men who make sacrifices for truth. The people are now experiencing the profound relief that comes from thinking for themselves, and the drug forces show uneasiness and are beginning to shiver. Food Fundamentals 25 It is difficult for people to give up drugs entirely ; they are slow to believe it can be done or that it is wise to do so. There are circumstances when the careful use of a well chosen cathartic may be wise; there may be a very few circumstances when the use of an opiate to relieve the dying may be a wise meas- ure, but if the treatment has been what it should have been, there are doubts about such occasions as these arising. There is more disease and pain caused by wrong treatment than can be expressed by the most forceful language. "The superstition of medicine, or the belief that medicines cure disease, is a relic of what may be called a dark age, an age extending back almost a thousand years before the birth of Christ. The superstition of medicine has filled the world with fear, and to a large extent created ills it has pre- tended to cure. In modern times this superstition has been more particularly appropriated and perpet- uated by the manufacturers of patent medicines, whose aim is not only to keep the people in gross ig- norance, but to terrify them as well. They (the phy- sicians) know full well that the idea of the curative power of medicines is inborn, and knit into the very fiber and being of humanity, and will remain so as long as patent medicine firms continue to broadcast and brazenly trumpet forth what is the greatest myth in existence — the curative power of medicines. With the disappearance of this myth, mankind would become at once interested in learning the means — the only means — whereby health and longevity of life are produced, that is by an observance of the laws of health. The thousands of medicines which we now use should all, with a few exceptions, be cast into the sea 26 Food Fundamentals of oblivion. Probably the number of medicines which are a necessity to humanity does not exceed ten in number. Most physicians, after an experience of a number of years, come to the conclusion that they must have been hypnotized, in their younger days, into the belief that medicines cure disease. In his early practice the physician is always on the lookout for a medicine which will cure disease of one kind or another. As his experience increases he comes to re- gard medicines as relieving conditions, not as curing diseases. Many individuals make immense fortunes by propagating the falsehood that medicines — their medicines — cure disease. The only agent that cures disease is pure blood. Pure blood is not made with medicines of any kind, but only by pure air, pure food, and pure water. In general, it may be said that medicines act just as so much poison when taken into the human body. Even physicians have been deluded into believing in the curative action of drugs. Medicines of a certain kind may remove the cause which produces disease, and in doing this the disease is said to be cured. Un- questionably there are medicines which are a boon to humanity, and with which we could not well dis- pense, but the systematic drugging of the body with the so-called blood medicines, in order to build up the body, is a weak attempt to do what Nature does to perfection by means of pure air, food, and water. Medicines are not tolerated by the system. Barrels of pepsin and pancreatin have been admin- istered to individuals suffering from dyspepsia. They are still suffering. As for dyspepsia, it may be re- marked, in passing, that it is always entirely curable, and without drugs of any kind. We are still laboring under the delusion, perpetuated in one way or another through the public press, that medicines cure. The healing power is to be found in the blood, and not in medicines. Food Fundamentals 27 If man would only live, eat, and drink as he should, there would be absolutely no indication for medicine." (Dr. Daniel S. Sager, Allopath.) "There is no excuse for the use of drugs; for cures can't be made by them, and they do mask symp- toms, making it difficult to tell exactly if the symp- toms present are those of disease or those of drugs; and if food is being given, the symptoms will be still further modified. When drugs are given, rest is broken ; for if they have any influence at all, it is to depress and retard recovery. A bare exception to this rule may be when the remedies used are to overcome bowel obstruction, and then a heavy head and hand prescription may do more harm than good in carrying out a plan for freeing the bowels of an accumulation that is causing disease. For example, in typhoid fever, if the bowels are forced to move, it may cause hemorrhage; in appendicitis, an attempt to move the bowels with drugs may cause death; in real obstruction, drugs given to move the bowels may cause perforation and death. There is a truth that should be known to med- ical men; namely, that heart tonics and stimulants wear the heart out — that patients with heart disease will live much longer, and stand a better chance of getting well, the less heart medicine they take. Can drugs cure a bad habit? If those who have used up all their nerve energy by lust and love take pneumonia, will serum cure? Will drugs cure the stomach derangements that are brought on from ex- hausted nerve energy? Can drugs cure the nagger or the nagged? When men and women have ex- hausted their nerve energy and are suffering melan- choly, can they be cured by drugs? If a woman is suffering from headaches brought on from tea, coffee, or autotoxemia, will drugs cure her? Suppose a rheu- matic subject has the tippling habit, and keeps his nerve energy below par by sexual abuse — will drugs cure him? 28 Food Fundamentals What can drugs do? Relieve pain, of course. Yes, but drugs that relieve pain check elimination, and all the disagreeable symptoms are due to na- ture's efforts to throw off disease, and to paralyze the nerves with drugs means to surrender to disease. Nothing will cure that does not look to the cor- rection of the mental and physical bad habits. Isn't it reasonable to believe that bad habits must be cor- rected? Wouldn't a rational remedy be anything that will correct the habits of life ? What do drugs do for the average consultant? Relieve symptoms. If a person is free from symp- toms for a given time afterwards, isn't he cured? Let us reason together: Suppose the symptoms pre- scribed for be those of a periodic headache, isn't it a fact that the nerve-storm (headache) will spend its force and be gone every little while without the aid of drugs? If drugs do anything, they merely cut the attack short. Well, isn't it worth while to get relief? Yes, if the relief does not cost too much; but if the drug is used to bring relief from two to five years, and in that time weakens heart action to such an extent that the patient suddenly dies from heart paralysis, isn't the victim paying a fearful price for a remedy that only relieves — cuts the attack short and in no wise removes the cause?" (Dr. J. H. TiLDEN, Allopath.) Coffee, tea and chocolate can be grouped with a multitude of soda-fountain drinks and other drugs to be condemned. These are drugs, not foods. As drugs they have been used for many generations and not a few have grown old while using them. But this is no argument, for millions who have used them have died young while one grew old. One is not to be preferred to the other for they all introduce a poison into the body which is harmful to the nervous system ; Food Fundamentals 29 they cause constipation; they irritate and produce changes in the mucous membranes with which they come in contact; they do their part toward over- stimulation; they impede elimination and promote accumulation of poisons; they induce overeating. In all these ways and others they ruin the nervous sys- tem. They are especially bad for children. I wish all people could see clearly that there is no such a thing as a specific disease ; that after all disease is decay, degeneration, weakening of the nervous system. I wish all people could clearly grasp the idea that disease is in no way inherited. The tendency toward disease may be inherited, but what does that mean? It means that the nervous system of the parent or parents being weakened, of necessity they must trans- mit a weak, nervous system to their offspring. A parent whose nervous system has been ruined by fre- quent attacks of gonorrhea or syphilis does not trans- mit a specific disease nor a tendency to a specific dis- ease. They transmit a nervous system weakened in a similar way to that of the parent, but in no way afflicted with syphilis, nor with any tendency toward affliction with it. The inherited nervous system being weak all along the line is a fit nervous system to suc- cumb easily to wrong habits of living and to all un- favorable environment. This same thing holds good with a mother who has debauched herself with afternoon tea and 30 Food Fundamentals similar habits. She may transmit a weakened ner- vous system that in no way is very unlike the nervous system that is inherited from the syphilitic parent. If there is a difference it is usually in degree, not in quality. And if the tea-debauching mother is as much debauched in general as the syphilitic parent the trans- mitted nervous system will share a fate equally as bad in each case. The illustration equally applies to parents who debauch or weaken their nervous systems in any way. It does not matter whether it is coffee, tea, tobacco, society, or what not. Coffee is a stimulant. An occasional cup will not materially hurt anybody. Occasionally it can be con- sistently taken. The same is true with tea or choco- late. It is not the occasional performance of a wrong habit of eating that kills, but it is the habitual per- formance of it. But this truth does not lessen the fact that when it is used much it is debauching just as truly as other more formidable bad habits are de- bauching. It does not lessen the fact that the final effect on the nervous system is quite the same — de- generation from poison and abuse. Coffee without sugar is better than with it, because sugar is not good for the system. But this is all there is to the good effects of black coffee. Many bad things may be said about condiments. All condiments of whatever nature or dressing in which condiments are used should be abandoned. Food Fundamentals 81 They are builders of wrong habits of living and are health destroyers. If there is one exception it is the moderate use of salt. There is not a shadow of doubt about the fact that they should all be at once discon- tinued. Food will become more tasty without them as the palate and taste buds are educated. "Nerves of special sense are made inefficient as protectors of health by the use of stimulants — to- bacco, alcohol, and drugs — salt, pepper, and other condiments common to sensualists. The crime com- mitted by the use of stimulants is that the narcotic variety deadens sensations, removes the power of choice, and causes a retention of the excretory debris, while the piquant food-dressings whip into activity a false desire for food and, like the narcotic stim- ulants, ruin the power of discrimination. When the nerves of special sense are abused too long, they become morbid and their cravings are ab- normal; they can*t sense delicate flavors, such as un- seasoned foods have; tobacco, alcoholics, salt, sugar, mustard, spices, and pepper are about the only sen- sations craved; normal food flavors are insipid and eventually despised. When this time comes, the body has lost its defenses, and the mind has deteriorated; it cannot discriminate good from bad; the artistic mind becomes gross, and the man becomes uninter- esting, and is left behind and forgotten by former friends. A tremendous price to pay for self-indul- gence!" (TiLDEN.) Tobacco is a drug and not a whit less abominable than coffee, tea or whisky. When the saloons are gone there is another evil just as great to* be attacked — the cigarette evil. I have no use for the criticism that condemns tobacco and excuses coffee. I have no 32 Food Fundamentals sympathy for a condemnation of liquor and an excuse for overeating. We are all ''tarred with the same stick." Overeating and drinking liquor to excess have similar effects on the physical body. The one is not much worse than the other. Tobacco is a bad thing, ruining the physical and mental body; but so does too much bread, or pie, or strawberry shortcake. I am not sure but what one who eats too much stim- ulating food is not more dangerous to a community than one who drinks to excess or smokes cigarettes. If you don't follow me to these logical conclusions just set about studying this food question and observe the results of wrong habits of eating. A WELL BALANCED DIETARY. There is a false idea prevalent that a meal should be a balanced meal ; that it should contain all the ele- ments in about the same proportions in which they are found in the body. Nothing can be more absurd, and yet hundreds of people never question the sensibleness of the idea. Domestic science teachers, writers on home economics, hospital authorities, and those of a scientific education everywhere accept such an idea without hinting to themselves that it could be absurd. The chemical balance of each individual body differs every hour. In the morning it is not what it is in the evening. One day it is not what it is the next. When one is ill it is in no way similar to when \ Food Fundamentals 33 he is well. It varies with the occupation, and whether the individual is out or in doors. It varies with light or heavy, cool or warm clothing. It varies with the chest expansion, the amount of natural sleep, and many other things pertaining to the life and habits of each individual. Food tables are of value because of the general information in them. In general terms they mean a great deal and should be studied more, especially to get information about foods which offer to the body such needed elements as soda, potash, phosphorus, lime, and others not usually recognized as important food elements. But to make use of food tables for balancing a certain meal to meet the chemical require- ments of the body is a mocking sham of the dizzy theorizer. If such a meal be gotten up it would not meet the requirements of one individual who is to partake of it, and most certainly would not come very near to filling the needs of any number of them. Knowing the chemical needs of the body in a general way, we can place food at its disposal from which it will supply its demands. The different ele- ments of the body should be offered to it in foods that furnish these elements in a form easily used by the body. Those foods which contain the least number of different elements are the most suitable for this pur- pose, because they are the most stable, decompose and ferment less easily than complex foods, and are more easily digested. 34 Food Fundamentals The body needs and makes use of all the different kinds of foods, but it is not necessary to supply them all at one meal. It is not even necessary to supply all of these elements every day of twenty-four hours. So there is no necessity of what is recognized as a balanced ration — a balanced meal. "No table can show anything more than an aver- age report on the constituents of each article of food, and while this average answers the purpose very well for the staple foods, the fruits and vegetables must vary from a very low to a high nutritive value, de- pending upon the soil, the fertilizer used, and the at- mospheric state, all of which must vary. To assume that it is necessary, or even possible, to know the quantitative analysis so as to determine the value of foods taken into the body is nothing more or less than bigotry and stilted assumption, and certainly not in keeping with the usual ignorance displayed in feeding the sick. If it were necessary to know the exact composition, an analytical chemist would have to analyze every crop of every garden ; and where two or three crops in succession are raised on the same soil, a chemical examination would have to be made of each crop ; for the soil would not be the same with any two crops. Chemists would also have to establish a laboratory between the kitchen and the dining room, and carefully analyze every article of food, to see how much food value had been lost in the cooking, and how much the chemistry had been changed by the cooking; also to discover how much the food, served on the table, had been changed by the adding of the seasoning, condiments, and mixing; and, neither last nor least, determine what change the digestive secre- tions bring about. This would necessitate a knowl- edge of the state of the mind and body at the time of eating, and for weeks before." (Tilden.) Food Fundamentals 35 Just how much of any element of food is needed by the body at a time is known by no one quite as well as the individual who is taking the food, pro- vided he is in health. General statements may be made, landmarks pointed out as guides in choosing the amount, and people may be taught so they may know when they have eaten enough, but it becomes a personal matter with every individual to determine the amount of food he should take. It will never be given to any individual to know for others how much they shall eat, and the sooner this is known to the complaining the sooner will they assume the responsi- bility which is of necessity theirs. If more of any element than the body needs is given it, serious results follow. When excess is taken all the food is digested in an inefficient manner. The work may be done without distress or evident dis- turbance, but no real good food enters the blood — the tissues are fed with poisoned food. Whatever is in- gested more than is needed is a burden which must be unloaded at a great and unnecessary expenditure of nervous energy. Digestion is a work that is accom- plished by the nervous system. It draws very heavily on the nervous system to supply the force to perform the details of digestion. And if digestion is imperfect the food given the nervous system to replenish its waste is imperfect food, and often very irritating to the nervous system. People should grasp the idea 36 Food Fundamentals that food may irritate the nervous system to the ex- tent of causing an inflammation of the nerve sheaths and a general neuritis. OVEREATING. The one great error of diet is overeating. If one does not overeat it is not necessary for him to pay very much attention to what is written about diet. If one does not overeat the matter of combinations does not play nearly so important a part. Why? Because the body will adjust itself to many of our bad habits, and to all of them just as perfectly as it is possible. Many an individual reading these sentences will immediately excuse themselves from the necessity of paying any attention to their eating, and license themselves to all kinds of indulgences. It is in line with their desires to convince themselves their habits of eating are not at fault. Most individuals who are feeling bad are overeating; the exceptions are so rare they should not be noted. It is not unusual for members of a family to accompany one of their number into a physician's office and give assurance that the complaining one is the smallest eater of the family. What is meant by overeating? With whose eating am I to compare my own in order to determine whether I am overeating or not? Overeating is a relative matter not to be deter- mined by comparison. It depends on many things Food Fundamentals 37 and is wholly individual. Eating beyond the digestive capacity is overeating. "We are all guilty of it, (overeating) not occa- sionally but habitually, and almost uniformly, from the cradle to the grave. It is the bane alike of our infancy and youth, our maturity and age. It is in- finitely more common than intemperance in drinking, and the aggregate of the mischief it does is greater. Children and youth are regularly taught, hired, bribed, or tempted, to overeat from their birth. Our stomachs are the scape-goats which must bear all our physiological delinquencies and save us the pain of blaming ourselves. If they feel uneasy after a heavy meal, it is not we who are to blame for having eaten it. No, it is the fish which lies heavy on the stomach, or the stomach which is unfortunately at war with soup or potatoes, or some other well-relished article. We never eat more than enough. We never devour lob- sters or oysters or salmon or cheese, or anything which experience has told us our enfeebled stomachs cannot digest. We are too prudent and self-denying for that. And yet, somehow or another, our stomachs get hold of all these things in spite of us, and we must pay the same penalty as if we had eaten them deliber- ately and with malice prepense." (Dig Lewis.) To say to a patient, *'Don't overeat," is on a par with the foolishness of saying, "Don't worry." To avoid overeating some fundamental conditions must be studied and put into operation. The meals must not be taken where there is noise and the hustling of waiters, where one is surrounded by the clatter of dishes and quick movements. It is too difficult to remain composed and to chew the food deliberately under such circumstances. Loud, quick and restless music is a cause for rapid eating, while slow, com- 38 Food Fundamentals pased and sweet music may be consistent with moder- ate eating. Enough time must be allotted for this important function, for hurried eating invariably leads to overeating. The rich, starchy foods and the rich proteins should not be ingested at the same meal, if for no other reason than to avoid overeating. Rich dressings, sweetened dressings, gravies, condiments, jellies, fruit preserves, and highly seasoned food of any kind tempt the palate to pass too much food. Sip- ping a liquid while eating a dry food is a poor routine. Eating when tired, worried, excited, angry, or too joyous will result in overeating. Modern cooking, in which all the resources of the chef or housewife are used in devising a dish in which the most kinds of food may be combined, leads to overeating. Many other daily habits must be observed and changed if overeating is to be avoided. Do the best possible to comply with these conditions: eat at home, and only when there is a keen relish for plain food, cooked and served in the simplest manner. If the preparation of the food is simple, if it is daintily arranged and served, if the table linen is spotless, if the conversation is cheerful and uplifting, the chances for good digestion are very much enhanced. But people cannot always eat at home. Then choose a home-like place to eat. If the people demand quiet, this will accompany a self-serve restaurant as frequently as elsewhere. Demand foods that are plainly cooked and not overseasoned. And in passing Food Fundamentals 39 it should be observed that when not eating at home it is very often necessary to eat two or more dishes or orders of one article of food, in order to obtain a meal of suitable combination. Then when meat is served, refuse the potato or starchy preparations that go with it at the same price. When enough people do that, meat will be served alone at a less price than when served with other articles. The cooks and managers of eating places should often be told how displeasing it is to have so much grease cooked and served with the non-starchy vegetables. Most people prefer these vegetables cooked in plain water, sea- soned with salt only, and then add cream when the vegetables are served hot. Lettuce and celery and cabbage should be offered to the public in more than a small dessert quantity. Fruit should be offered in small amounts or in larger amounts owing to what is desired, and this fruit should not always be preserved, or served with syrup on it. It is difficult to obtain a baked apple at an eating house without it has been ruined with sweetening. This is because these places think people eat fruit as a dessert only. When they find out that people want green vegetables cooked plainly and fruit either raw or cooked plainly to make up a large part of a meal, they will give the people what they want. The cure of overeating must come about by removing the cause, whatever it may be. The will power should be cultivated and abundantly used. 40 Food Fundamentals "Many persons suffer from constipation because they do not eat enough. They are in constant fear of overloading the stomach and bowels, and the con- sequence is that these organs lack sufficient work to stimulate them to proper activity. The writer has many times surprised such patients by the prescrip- tion of a meal two or three times as large as was being taken. The patient has usually found that he suffers no harm from his large meal, and is able to digest it without difficulty, and has also experienced a notable improvement in bowel action. The degree of this movement (peristaltic wave of stomach and intestine) depends upon the amount of stimulation, while the amount of stimulation de- pends largely upon the bulk of food taken. This stim- ulating effect is produced not only in the stomach, but in the small intestine. It is evident, then, that for vigorous stimulation of the intestine, such as is needed to bring about the evacuation of the colon, a full meal must be more effective than a meager one. People who "diet" do themselves great injury often by too great restriction of the bill of fare, both in quantity and variety of food. In this connection it should be noted, however, that in increasing the amount of the food intake, the increase should usually be in bulk rather than in food value. The added bulk should consist of such foodstuffs as lettuce, celery, turnips, tomatoes, greens, fresh fruits and other articles which give large bulk with little nourishment." (Kellogg.) This kind of teaching leads to overeating. If an individual should follow the general tone of Colon Hygiene, by Kellogg, overeating will surely result. The experience he had with patients who followed his advice in overeating can be duplicated by any physi- cian. But it is not wise. The patient may not suffer Food Fundamentals 41 immediate harm, but they will surely suffer harm if they continue this practice. If overeating killed as quickly as it did harm, overeating would soon be dis- continued. That patient who has been reducing the diet will surely feel much improved if they take larger meals, provided they do not overcome the digestive apparatus at once by their indiscretion. But the im- proved condition will not last longer than the nervous system can easily bear the added strain. The increased stimulation brings about the good feeling. The degree of the peristaltic wave and the strength of it does not depend upon the amount of stimulation. Within certain limits the more stimula- tion the greater the force of the wave, but use any amount of stimulation you choose there will not be much force to the movement if there is not much mus- cular strength in the intestinal walls. There may be present a powerful stimulation and no peristaltic wave at all, because the muscles are overcome with work and are stretched until they lack power. "In constipation, these stimulating reflexes are often weak, and must be reinforced by every means possible. Hence the diet must be so managed as to secure the maximum amount of stimulating influence upon the lower bowel. Eternal vigilance is necessary ; every meal must be taken with reference to the bowel action. A single omission of a meal, or a meal of unsuitable food, may be sufficient to produce an undue accumulation of feces in the colon and rectum, and unless this is immediately corrected, the most serious results may follow. So if regularity of bowel move- 42 Food Fundamentals ment is to be expected, care to take the food at reg- ular intervals becomes a matter of absolute impor- tance. In many cases of chronic constipation the colon, especially the cecum, has become so dilated that it is seriously crippled. Its thin, atrophied walls are un- able to handle large masses of material. In such cases, large bulky meals are likely to overweight the cecum and to form an impaction which may remain for days, giving rise to fermentation, distention of the colon with gas, colic pains, and great inconve- nience. Complaint is often made that bulky foods cause much flatulence and distress and seem to in- crease the constipation. The remedy is not to be found in discarding "coarse vegetables" or other bulky foods but in taking smaller and more frequent meals. By this means the amount of material present in any portion of the bowel at any particular time will be reduced, the bowel will never be over dis- tended, and will have an opportunity gradually to recover its normal tone. The proper plan for the meals in such a case is to take two principal meals and two minor meals. The principal meals should contain the chief part of the nutriment; the minor meals should make small de- mands upon the digestive organs; the bulk should be about the same for each of the four meals. No fats should be taken at the minor meals and nothing re- quiring more than two hours for gastric digestion. It is best to confine the minor meals to fruit and cellulose." (Kellogg.) To my notion of things these are the directions that bring about the very condition of weak and dis- tended intestinal walls which is pointed out as a handi- cap. Dr. Kellogg seems to conclude that constipation brings about the distention and weakness of the walls ; that no matter how much bulk you put into the intes- Food Fundamentals 43 tines there can be no such thing as failure on their part because of the amount of work you ask of them. This is incorrect; constipation is often brought about by overeating. Physicians should know there is a limitation to the amount of work that may be accomplished by the digestive apparatus. It does not matter what the food may be, whether it is fruit or coarse vegetables, or both, or anything else under the sun, — if you over- work the digestive apparatus, indigestion and con- stipation with distention by feces and gas will follow, and the intestinal walls will be weakened. A fruit meal may result in indigestion and much distention. And this may occur in an individual quite healthy, if overeating on fruit occurs. Nothing is gained by overeating, and it does not matter if the food is fruit, bran, vegetables, agar agar, or what not. If the eat- ing is kept within the limits of the capacity to digest, then there will be less gas, less putrefaction, less con- stipation, and that good result which stands out above all, there will be a toning up of the muscles in the intestinal walls and a resulting shrinking in size of the intestines. This latter fact seems to be entirely overlooked by those who advocate the taking of large bulks of food. If large and impacted bulks of food with collections of gas from fermentation are the things that weaken the muscles, pray how will large bulks of food, resulting in indigestion and constipa- 44 Food Fundamentals tion and gas formation, strengthen these muscle walls ? Give rest by reducing the quantity of food is a more logical procedure. "The products of fermentation of carbohydrates/ are acids which are harmless in the quantities in whicK they are produced in the body/' (Kellogg.) / These acids are very irritating to the nerves and often cause inflammation beneath the nerve sheath. They lower the vitality of the entire nervous system; they irritate and change the cells of the mucous mem- brane with which they come in contact; they affect the secretions of the glands of the stomach and intes- tinal walls. A certain amount of fermentation of carbohydrates takes place in the act of digestion, and this may be where the confusion arises. But it should be known that excessive fermentation causes diges- tion to cease, or a more correct statement would be that digestion ceases from some cause and then ex- cessive fermentation takes place. "Many persons have thought themselves bene- fited by the use of raw grains, such as wheat and oatmeal. While it would be impossible for a person to live on a diet consisting exclusively of raw grains, it is possible that some benefit may be derived from the use of such food to a moderate extent, through the fact that uncooked starch digests slowly. Raw starch, if taken in more than minute quantities, as has been shown by experiment by the writer, finds its way in considerable quantities into the colon. Here digestion slowly proceeds, producing dextrin and sugar, which furnish to the acid-forming bacteria just what they require for their growth in a section of the intestines where the help of these friendly Food Fundamentals 45 organisms is most needed. Man's natural dietary comprises food containing a sufficient amount of raw starch to prevent extensive putrefaction in the colon." (Kellogg.) Raw starch taken into the stomach will never reach the colon in that state if the individual is not very seriously overworking his digestive apparatus. If Nature intended that the raw starch should reach the colon in that state it is rather strange that She provided for its complete digestion much farther up in the digestive tract, even starting the process in the mouth. There has been no provision made for diges- tion of starch in the colon, as one would imply from what Dr. Kellogg says. If it reaches the colon it will ferment, to be sure, but if this fermenting process is needed in the colon it is a wrong state of affairs. In the process of digestion of starch, fermentation takes place, but one should not conclude that fermentation of starch is digestion of starch, for that is not all there is to the digestion of starch, but that is all that occurs in the colon. These acids that are sup- plied the colon by the raw starch would not be needed if overeating, followed by undue fermentation and putrefaction, had not violently impaired the mucous membrane of the colon so it cannot work properly. I have found that the use of fruit and clabber or fresh, good buttermilk is one of the best special diets for many people. It improves the condition of the colon, or rather, the colon is permitted the chance to improve under a diet of this kind. It permits the 46 Food Fundamentals more normal secretions of the mucous membrane of the colon to do away with much of the bad results of putrefaction and undue fermentation. I have also found that a judicious use of bran with this special diet is a good thing. It provides some bulk and un- doubtedly acts so as to promote a faster movement of the waste materials in the small intestine. But the good results come about by giving the overworked intestines and stomach a rest, and doing it in such a manner as to prevent accumulation and absorption of waste, rather than because certain bacteria in the intestines or colon make a hasty disappearance. They leave because the putrefaction and undue fer- mentation ceases, and not because of the substances in the buttermilk and fruit. Overeat of buttermilk and fruit and trouble will still remain. It will be different, of course. These same bacteria will not be present, but others will. Why others ? Why not the same ones as when putrefaction is present? Because the bacteria that are useful when putrefaction is taking place in the colon are not as useful when the products of fermentation of fruit and buttermilk are in the colon. Dr. Kellogg makes a great deal out of the millions of germs in the colon, and the virulency of the poison of those attending putrefaction of meat. But let me emphasize that those millions will not appear if overeating has not taken place. And what does appear will not be poison if the decomposition of meat does not make them poison. Don't try to get rid Food Fundamentals 47 of the germs. Get rid of the thing that demands the presence of the germs. The kind of germs and the quantity of them is determined by the needs of the situation. APPETITE. When an individual loses his appetite there is much solicitude on the part of himself, his friends and his physician. Everything else is put aside and a gen- eral welcome is given to any counsel, no matter what its source, that will point a trail by which something may be learned of the whereabouts of the appetite. That individual, or that physician, is not wise who will not listen to the wisest of physicians — Nature. When Nature points the direction, man's knowledge, experience and wisdom should be relegated to the background. But it is difficult for people to believe that Nature would say, "Don't eat." This is because of wrong teaching about the necessity of food, about the use of food, and about the cause of disease. That individual who does not want food is in no condition to receive food. Many a worried individual would not become sicker, if he listened to Nature saying "No food." Many an insane individual would become better if food were properly administered. Many a fever would disappear if it were not fed. If there is no appetite, take no measure to force one. There is something else that should be righted. Go back farther for the cause. And until the cause is found and removed, it is quite safe to let food alone. 48 Food Fundamentals "Appetite is discrimination; it must have stimu- lation; it is disease. Appetite must have just the right amount of condiments on the food, or the food cannot be eaten. It is an artificial desire for food, and is the same, except in less degree as the inebriate's desire for alcohol, and the fiend's desire for opium, morphine, cocaine, and other drugs." (Tilden.) "A voracious appetite is a sign of disease, or of a strong tendency to disease, and not a sign of health, as is generally supposed. Ill health as infallibly follows the indulgence of such an appetite as any other effect its legitimate cause." (Dio Lewis.) Kellogg thinks loss of appetite will cause consti- pation, and that constipation causes loss of appetite. I think he confuses the terms appetite and keen relish. There is a vast difference between a keen relish for food and the diseased condition of a demanding or driving appetite. If food, plain food, cannot be taken without a keen relish, it should not be taken at all. If it is necessary to tease and coax the palate with condiments and sweet dressings and excessive mixing, then there is present a diseased appetite. Natural appetite and keen relish are synonomous terms. But the term appetite as used by physicians and laymen means disease. If plain food is demanded, it is a diseased condition, not a natural appetite. A loose use of such terms leads to much misunderstanding. Out of the noble impulses of the human soul there arises a desire to show sympathy, to be of comfort and use to those who are ill or unfortunate. This com- mendable virtue leads members of a family, relatives, Food Fundamentals 49 and neighbors to hasten to give the sick some favorite dish of food. Every artifice of a good cook v^ill be put to the test to induce the sick to take food. These attentive people can do no greater unkindness to the sick than induce them to eat. That sick child is un- fortunate who has a parent that becomes unduly con- cerned because it does not have any appetite, who at all times of day and night uses persuasion to get the child to eat. That friend who tempts and tries friendship by insisting that the sick eat of the dish so thoughtfully prepared, becomes a hindrance unusually difficult to remove. Not that the parent or friend have in any way lost their sympathy or tenderness, but that the best of intentions from the noblest of hearts, if accompanied by ignorance, often go far astray. NATURE OF DISEASE. If disease is not a thing caused by germs, if it is not a thing to be combated by drugs, if it is not a thing at all, what is its nature? Disease is perverted health. It is not a thing which attacks. It is built. It is grown. The seed is sown, soil cultivated, and the product is the general condition of ill-health. This is true of tumors, eczema, appendicitis, and the rest of them. 'Teople seem to think that disease is a sort of rat running about within the body, and that we must send in a black-and-tan to kill it. You will hear them say : 'My trouble was in my stomach ; the doctor gave me some stuff and drove it into my kidneys. 50 Food Fundamentals Then he gave me another sort and drove it into my head. Now he is going to attack it there.' " (Dio Lewis) , Excess and overindulgence are the great factors in the building of diseased conditions. Overeating, overworking, worry, fear, jealousy, anger, pessimistic ideas, hatred, fretfulness, selfishness, disappointment, too much warm clothing, too much sitting around, too much pleasure, too much society, too much responsi- bility, mental and physical sex abuse, too much tea, cocoa, coffee, tobacco, and other drugs, etc. Not a few of these or their allied conditions are brought about by privation and destitution. All these and many more things have an important place as causa- tive factors in disease but they are too often ignored as such. They are of such vast importance that the existence of one or more of them often will defeat every other effort to cure ; and the removal of the one or ones existing in addition to the proper treatment results in immediate relief and ultimate cure. These devastating habits and human frailties do not look like faults to some people or physicians, but are accepted as a part of the inevitable and mysterious game of life. But it is not the truth and only the blunted conscience will accept it as such. Accumulative Poisoning, Poisoning is the proper name to be applied to most all diseases. Ptomain poisoning would also be Food Fundamentals 51 a good term. Ptomain poisoning occurs in the body- more often than in tin cans. Autointoxication is a common term, and if it is properly explained is a very- good one. But it should be understood that the self- poisoning is accomplished as a result of body abuse rather than as a result of poison secreted by the body cells. There is not a great deal of difference between pneumonia and typhoid fever; between measles and eczema; between constipation and diarrhea; between a general neuritis and epilepsy; between puerperal fever and appendicitis; between rheumatism and syphilis, etc. Not as much difference as you would think. Not as much difference as the names imply. Are all these the result of the accumulation of poison in the system? Yes, but this accumulation is brought about in different ways and different tissues are in- volved. Puerperal fever is the result of the absorp- tion of poisons from material that should have drained away instead of putrefying. So is syphilis in its early stages, but later potassium iodid and mercury change it. Both these diseases are septic poisoning. Septic poisoning is the result of absorption of putrefy- ing material. Ptomains are the result of putrefaction. So there you are. Ptomain or septic poisoning would be a good name for any of these diseases. And when seen in this light the treatment will be more effective. Did you ever hear of a syphilitic being treated with mercury and potassium iodid? Then was he given in addition all the drugs in the pharmacopeia? Did he 62 Food Fundamentals lose the symptoms of what is called syphilis? When he went to a physician many years later, was he not treated for syphilis? If he had been cured why did the physicians continually keep asking him about syphilis and treating him for the disease? If he was not cured was it because the specific cure was not administered? And do these facts apply to just one, or to millions? The truth is that syphilis as it is known in medical literature is a drug disease. If the drugs were omitted and a sane treatment adminis- tered nearly every case could be completely cured. No such disease as is described in medical literature would occur. If all such diseases are so similar, why so many different names? Because disease is considered an entity, a thing; something that can attack, or some- thing that can be driven out. If there is a pain in the temple it is called neuralgia, and physicians or patient does not see it as a part of a general, bad condition of the entire body. If the patient does not sleep, then it is a nervous disease, and neither patient nor physician can see that it is a disturbance of the sympathetic nervous system, — a general condition. "I dare not tell you how important I think it is that you should fully take in this idea — that the general is everything, the local nothing. Never till you comprehend this can you even make a fair start in these health investigations." (Dio Lewis.) Food Fundamentals 53 So diseases are named from the symptom, and the symptom is considered the disease, and the symp- tom is treated. The symptom is a timely and friendly warning, and it is wrong to try to stop Nature's warning. The effort should be to stop the thing that caused the pain, the fever, the discharge, etc. Going back to the cause of these disease manifestations they will be found to be a local signal pointing to a general condition. And these general conditions are accumu- lations of poisons or chronic autotoxemia. Sore throat, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, sick head- ache, neuralgia of the face, pain in the eyes, pain or aching of the cheek, enlarged turbinates, nasal polypi, decaying teeth, pyorrhea, earache, etc., all may be caused by a congestion of the head resulting from stomach and digestive disturbances. There may be other factors such as osteopathic lesions of the neck, jaw, etc., but these factors are seldom the entire cause. The tenth or pneumogastric nerve is very much irritated by fermentation and decomposition of food in the stomach, and through its connections with other nerves of the neck and face there is a constriction of the structures at the base of the head blocking the blood flow to the heart and producing congestion of all the structures, both deep and superficial. And besides these direct results from irritation of the ner- vous system, there are irritating gases gradually oozing up the esophagus to irritate the mucous mem- brane of the throat and adjacent tissues. This leads 54 Food Fundamentals to a congestion of blood in the membrane and glands and in part accounts for the enlarged tonsils and adenoids. "Chronic autotoxemia is a passive state, grad- ually brought on by the common abuses, such as over- taxing in work and play, overeating, or eating im- proper foods, incompatible combinations, and either too much starch or too much meat, and often too much of both; all present a gradual backing up in the sys- tem of waste products. If likened to a house, it can be described as a gradual accumulation of dirt, where the housewife removes just what she is compelled to, but where the dirt can't be seen it is allowed to gather until there must be a general cleaning out, or one must quit the place. With the human body in the process of develop- ing this general state of poisoning the bowels are always full, notwithstanding there may be an evac- uation daily; the tongue and mucous membranes are thick and pale, and in extreme cases there is a dirty brown or yellow coating and a bad breath ; the gums are inclined to be red and ulcerated near the teeth; at middle life, and often before, the teeth will loosen and fall out — alveolar pyorrhea; the tonsils and throat tissues are often thick and slimy; there is al- ways catarrh of the nose, with dry scales forming; the hearing and seeing are not acute; the hair is full of dandruff and in time will fall out; the tissues of the body are often flabby, and there is always over- weight, or underweight; too much abdomen, either from fat or gas ; a morbid appetite for food and drink, and a desire to satisfy the sensual nature; piles are frequent in many subjects all the time; an inclination to be drowsy if not entertained; good natured if fat, or nervous and cranky if lean; given to headaches; always tired; secretions and excretions malodorous. Food Fundamentals 55 When a man has eaten too much his teeth and lips will begin to show a slight incrustation, with the merest taint to his breath, and bad taste in his mouth. When wrong eating is continued the lips, teeth, and tongue become more and more incrustated, the breath becomes more and more malodorous, and various dis- comforts of the stomach develop. At first there will be a slight feeling of emptiness, which passes off quickly. This symptom gradually becomes more and more severe, until it amounts to suffering. The pa- tient soon learns to relieve the irritation by eating a little food of any kind. This condition of the stomach will cause some people to eat their regular meals a little earlier; others will eat fruit, candy, or some sort of a lunch between meals. The more relief bought in this way, the more suffering; for such habits add to the stomach derangement; and the more the stomach is deranged, the more relief is sought in eating, drink- ing and the use of stimulants, until there is a chronic gastritis, ulceration, or cancer ; or perhaps the irrita- tion may lead off into a fully developed neurasthenia ; or, because of individual peculiarities, or various in- herited weaknesses, other forms of disease, acute or chronic, may develop, and ruin, if not destroy, life." (TiLDEN.) This is a pretty clear statement of how a large amount of the sickness develops. Yet there are not a few cases which will not follow along these lines. This view gives a suitable conception as to why there will be different diseases built in different individuals by similar wrong habits of living. Deceptive Nature of Certain Disturbances. There is a mass of ignorance about diseased conditions of the stomach and intestines. These organs can be violently disturbed without giving the 56 Food Fundamentals patient distress. One can have a bad catarrhal con- dition of the stomach and intestines and continually believe there is nothing wrong with them. Ulcerated conditions of these organs may be present and the patient not complain in the least. A badly constipated condition may be building a violent disease and no pain be connected with it at all. Carrington says: "I have long contended that even very grave states and diseased conditions might exist without giving the least hint of their presence by any external notice- able sign." Carrington quotes the following from Dr. James Gulley: "The most serious ulceration of the stomach and bowels — nay, cancerous ulceration of those organs — may go on without the smallest amount of animal pain.'' Dio Lewis quotes the following from Prof. Hitchcock: "But men do not perceive the bad effects of over- feeding, because in general they are ignorant of their character, and confine their attention to the more im- mediate effects instead of looking at those which are remote. They generally suppose that, if the stomach or any internal organ be oppressed or disordered, pain will be produced in the organ itself; whereas, the un- easiness and pain are most commonly in some other part, not infrequently a remote part, of the body. And, oftentimes, food which ultimately does the man a great deal of injury gives to the stomach a transient relief, just as piling a large quantity of wood upon a fire seems for a time almost to extinguish it." And this seems to be an unfortunate circum- stance, that pain does not accompany these intestinal disturbances. This fact, alone, explains thousands Food Fundamentals 57 of puzzling symptoms. It explains why a child or an adult will be in seeming health and suddenly be the victim of a fatal disease. The whole scien- tific world is grappling with the puzzle to find the germ and where it came from, and overlooking things more important. Parents think that because the infant or child is fat and puffy it is in perfect health, but they refuse to think its sleeplessness, its nervousness, its peevishness, its irritability could be caused by overeating, or wrong eating. So people must come to know that wrong eating and living do not always strike a blow in the face on the spur of the moment to set the violator right, but for every cause there is an effect — a corresponding effect. It is most difficult to teach people who have no pain or distress that their digestion may be at fault. I am not surprised that doctors shrink from the thank- less task — those who know. They often lose a patient by even intimating their trouble is in the bowels or stomach or due to some habit of eating, a habit similar to that practiced by the multitudes, for how can a thing that everybody does be wrong? These diseases do not come on without any warn- ing, but we have not yet learned that any indisposi- tion or discomfort is a very, very loud and important warning. We have not come to learn that anything whatsoever said to us by Nature is highly important. We refuse to listen to Nature, and pay somebody who does not understand Her to blindly guide us. Indi- 58 Food Fundamentals gestion resulting in a slightly soured condition of the food mass or a little decomposition of it will result in the absorption of much poisonous matter. This is a result of the presence of more food than the diges- tive juices can properly reduce. Such digestive dis- turbances build tremendously serious diseases. They are as sly, deceptive, insidious, illusive, and at the same time deadly, as a copper-head snake. Pain is absent in these cases because the sympathetic nervous system is involved. Each and every cause is followed by a suitable and well measured effect, and with loud emphasis let me assert there is no exception to the rule. Abuse of the digestive apparatus does not kill immediately, and to no other fact is the continuance of the out- rageous maltreatment of the stomach explainable. Misuse of the digestive system even for a short time brings a protest, but physicians and laymen are not trained to interpret the milder warnings of Nature. Nothing but violent sickness or distress is regarded, and this is especially applicable if there is suspicion that food is the cause. Food is ruled out by reasoning that it cannot be harmful to anybody. The little pain in or about the eye, the soreness and distress in the back of the neck at the base of the brain, the pain in the side or in the limbs, the flutter of the heart, the slightest tendency to nausea, the bad odor of the breath, the metallic taste, the sliminess of the mouth secretions, the soreness of the mouth, throat, tonsils, Food Fundamentals 59 or nose, the constipation, the foul odor of the stools, the inactive liver, the cold hands and feet, the red nose, the lack of appetite, the tendency to catch cold, the desire for large quantities of food, the desire to eat before mealtime, and countless other fitting and adequate warnings are dismissed with a waive of the hand, and "I must have caught a little cold," or a dose of medicine and "patient waiting" until some- thing more serious results. It is reasoned that every- body eats this way, it can't be harmful. But this is the explanation why everybody is ill, and why there are so many physicians, pretenders, and quacks who are making a living "curing" the sick. It is true that any ideas whatsoever about food will not adequately explain all the illness, for sickness is not brought about by a single cause, but by many causes. Expe- rience and observation leads me to believe that the food question in all its phases is so large a factor in the causation of disease as to make many other so- called factors dwindle to pitiable insignificance. Each and every discomfort of the body and inclination from a feeling of well-being should be interpreted and arrested in its incipiency, rather than let it mature. There is no known disease but what can be brought on by excesses coupled with climatic condi- tions. Excesses of all kinds are a factor in their building. There is no known disease that will not be less severe if food is kept from the body except in the quantity that can be properly digested and as- 60 Food Fundamentals similated. There are many of the common complaints which will entirely disappear if the quantity of food ingested is limited to the quantity actually needed. The future study of disease should center about the study of effects of bad habits of living. It should be a study of the effects of accumulation of poisons and of the influences that lead to such accumulation. It is time that people should know some of the cardinal signs of disease. They are too willing to believe that any discomfort they may have cannot be traced to the taking of food. It is repulsive for many people to hear a physician say they are eating too much. People want to be cured while they continue to do the thing that has caused the trouble; if you will work to that end, you are their doctor, and if not, they will choose another. CONSTIPATION. Whenever the movement of the food mass or waste material in the intestines is abnormally slow there is a constipated condition present. The rate of movement normal to one individual is abnormal to another, so constipation is a relative term. One whose bowels move daily may be quite badly constipated. Often the material passed one day should have been passed one, two, or three days previous. Any one who has to "take something" to make the bowels move is building trou- ble very fast, he is very badly constipated. Constipation is a full-grown disorder as prolific in the production of other disorders as some germs are Food Fundamentals 61 supposed to be in the reproduction of their kind. The evil effects of constipation are not in evidence at the onset of the condition. The systematic poisoning that occurs is brought about gradually and insidiously. The eliminating organs, the skin, kidneys, lungs, liver, and glands, are steadily and faithfully at work ridding the body of the accumulating poisons. They may succeed for months and years in keeping the accumulation be- low the point of violent explosion, but the one who is constipated may be quite certain that trouble as a result of it is in waiting for him. Little children who are con- stipated are certainly on the direct road to a miserable life, and when parents are advised to administer soda, magnesia, etc., to these little ones and follow the ad- vice, they hasten the day when the child will have a physical break-down. The causes of constipation are many. There have been large volumes written on the cause and cure of constipation. Any one case may have one or many causes. Overeating, laxative drugs, and neglect, or irregularity in soliciting a bowel movement are the greatest of all the causes. One of the most important things for people to learn is that all laxative drugs build constipation. There is not a good medical authority but what makes this fact plain. People who realize drugs builds constipation continue to take laxatives. Why ? Because physicians prescribe them, and because the people do not know anything else to do. Why do physicians prescribe them if medical authorities warn 62 Food Fundamentals against it? Because they do not know anything else to do. If we grant that some of them know other measures we must conclude that these other measures mean too much work on the part of the physician, for they do not take the necessary time to do the teaching that accompanies the application of such measures. "The writer regards all medicinal agents that force bowel action by irritation (wrongly termed "stimulation") as pernicious and, without exception, harmful, and to be used only as temporary or emer- gency measures. The use of laxative drugs to cure constipation must be regarded as one of the most certain and pro- lific causes of this condition, and a person who has once formed the habit of using laxatives must as a rule continue the practice as long as he lives, unless he is so fortunate as to find some one wise enough to show him the way out of his troubles. Most drugs which act upon the bowels produce their effect only after having been absorbed and cir- culated through the blood. This has been proved to be true even in the case of saline laxatives, which are absorbed in the upper part of the intestine, and acting through the nerve centers controlling the colon, pro- duce a laxative effect long before the drug has reached the colon through the intestines. The effect of many other laxative drugs may be produced by injection under the skin. It is thus evident that the action of laxative drugs is not confined to the intestine, but through absorption into the blood stream these irri- tating substances are brought into contact will all the tissues. Bennett, of Edinburgh, showed more than a hun- dred years ago that calomel does not increase the action of the liver, and his observations have been in recent years confirmed by Rutherford and others. All laxative drugs are irritant poisons. It is not too much Food Fundamentals 63 to say that all laxative drugs are harmful. There is no such thing as a harmless laxative medicine." (Kellogg). The evil effects of constipation are so far-reaching and so serious that it would not be easy to convey any adequate idea of them without devoting much space to enumerate and explain them. Those that stand out prominently are: a change in the lymph fluid of the body in which it becomes laden with soured, poisonous or partly decomposed material ; a change in the quality of the blood similar to that of the lymph and sometimes a reduction of its alkalinity and at other times an in- increase of its acidity ; a profound irritation and weak- ening of the nervous system; and not least are the direct results on the intestines, injury to the lining membrane and glands, weakening of the muscles of the intestinal wall, overdistention and lengthening. "The fact that the bowels move daily or even more than once daily must not be regarded as evi- dence that no intestinal toxemia exists. If the stools are foul smelling, this fact alone is ample evidence that active poisoning is taking place. Let the skeptical reader consider for a moment what would be the re- sult if the foul substances discharged in a bowel move- ment were in some way returned into the body. Sup- pose, even, that a person were for twenty-four hours shut up in a close room with the loathsome products of a single bowel movement. What visions of head- ache, nausea, loss of appetite, depression and other miseries rise at the suggestion of such a wretched experience! How much more active for evil must be the same putrefying mass when retained in the colon, and sending into the blood its flood of horrible toxins of varied sorts and potencies." (Kellogg.) 64 Food Fundamentals It should be apparent that to cure constipation in the real sense of the word means to remove all the causes. Nearly all cases of constipation can be cured in the sense that the bowels will move one or more times a day, — a sufficient amount to prevent accumu- lation of poisons from this source. But in chronic or long standing cases there has been damage done that never can be repaired, damage to the mucous mem- brane, glands, nervous system, etc. To break up a con- stipation is no little task. Whatever measures used to break it up must be followed by a change in the habits of living for the remainder of life or the treatment and teaching are not of the best. But little can be done for a patient who will not solicit a bowel movement as regularly as he takes his meals. The one is no more important than the other. Three bowel movements daily is more normal than one. Home, office, school, employer and employee, — all hu- man activity must be adjusted so the impulse to have the bowels move will not be neglected but encouraged. Osteopathic treatment, short fasts, light meals of fruit, sour milk, vegetables, the drinking of plenty of water, bran, and the enema of water, are the chief additional measures to be employed. Special cases may need other measures, and there are many other meas- ures to be used. It requires the greatest skill upon the part of a physician to cure constipation. I do not believe that osteopathic lesions are the sole cause of constipation in any case. ''Fix the nerve centers and Food Fundamentals 65 eat what you please" sounds well, but it is wrong teaching. It is wrong to teach that osteopathy will cure constipation so that the same old habits of living may be continued and the patient remain well. It may be said in answer that such is being done. But that would be a wrong statement, and is only made by those who do not understand constipation. If the osteopathic lesions of the spine are an important cause, then their removal is the potent measure to be employed in the cure, otherwise the osteopathic treatment is no more of a cure than is bran or the enema. To secure bowel movements by the use of bran is not a cure of consti- pation. Some wisdom should be employed in the taking of enemas. Harm may come from too much relaxation of all the abdominal tissues as a result of the warm enema; also from overdistention ; and from washing the secretions off the membrane ; and from forming the habit. To avoid overdistention always take the enema when lying down, never while sitting up ; and take the water slowly, cutting it off if pain or evidence of over- distention is present. The water bag should be two or three feet above the patient. Use a teaspoon level full of salt in a pint of water or heaping full to the quart. A small amount of cool water, about a pint, is often just as effective as much more warm water. The cool water brings about a very strong muscular movement or peristalsis of the bowels. If too cool it makes a 66 Food Fundamentals spasm of the muscles and pain and the water cannot be taken. But if the bowel is thoroughly emptied by a small enema it is better than a large enema. Two quarts of warm water may be used to obtain results when a smaller enema is not successful. If there are evidences of great relaxation afterwards, such as weak- ness, or aching of the bowels, or an all-gone feeling, then take a little cool water into the bowel after the warm has been discharged. This cool water may be retained or discharged as desired. It will tone up the blood vessels and muscles. The use of the enema in acute illness and in chronic cases is different. In an acute case it is often well to use it once or twice daily for a time. In chronic cases it is a very questionable practice to use it daily for any long period of time, and as a rule it is not needed. The osteopath will have less need for it than other prac- titioners. Constipating Foods. There is no such thing as constipating foods. Overeating of any food will lead to constipation, and this is true if the food is rhubarb, prunes, onions or anything else. It may be that too great a quantity taken at one meal may lead to frequent movements of the bowels in some people, but if the thing is often re- peated the final result will be constipation. Food Fundamentals 67 Some foods stimulate peristalsis of the stomach and intestines more than others and in this respect some foods may be spoken of as laxative foods, but if these foods are ingested too often and in too large quantities the final result is constipation. This is not because the foods are constipating but because irri- tation of the mucous membrane of the intestines and overindulgence in food are constipating. Cheese is not constipating. The U. S. Government has proven that. Cheese is a very strong food and when a little of it is added to a full meal of other food, constipation will result ; not because of the cheese, but because of overworking the digestive apparatus. If much more of the cheese be taken with much less other food constipation will not result unless overeating has taken place. Fiber that cannot be digested and certain chem- icals in foods promote peristalsis of stomach and in- testines. The non-starchy vegetables contain the fiber and when eaten raw they provide such chemicals. But raw fruits take first place among those foods supply- ing the chemicals. That food, then, which does not furnish fiber nor the chemicals might be spoken of as more constipating than some other foods, but even it promotes peristalsis and is not truly constipating. Other constipating fac- tors must be present to bring about the result. Highly refined flour bread leaves but little fiber or cellulose 68 Food Fundamentals after digestion, and it does not provide the necessary chemicals to promote peristalsis. Therefore bread is more constipating than some other foods, and with it should be ingested fiber vegetables or bran. Milk, eggs, meat, potatoes, rice, and many other foods are almost wholly assimilable and leave but little refuse in the in- testines. These foods should not be eaten without sup- plying the cellulose or fiber material that should ac- company them. This is always best furnished with fiber vegetables. The fiber vegetables are the non- starchy vegetables. Some of them contain but little fiber and others contain quite a good deal, but those that contain but little furnish much vegetable juice that is active in chemicals, and all of them furnish a goodly supply of the cellulose and the chemicals. An ounce of green peas furnish about nine grains of cel- lulose while an ounce of dried peas furnish twenty- eight grains of cellulose. Some might think it would be wise to eat the dried peas with the bread and pota- toes, or any food that supplies little cellulose. But the dried peas furnish much nutriment of different kinds and give a large task to the digestive apparatus, so it is a mistake to add them to the task of digestion of potatoes, meat, bread, etc. The same is true of dried and green beans. It is the green or non-starchy vege- tables that should be used to furnish bulk or fiber. Food Fundamentals 69 OSTEOPATHIC LESIONS A CAUSE FOR DISEASE. By osteopathic lesions we mean "Any abnormality of structure which interferes with function. Do not get the idea that these lesions are great big things, that there must be a dislocated vertebra or rib, or a spinal curvature or some great abnormality in order to constitute a lesion. There are comparatively few lesions of that kind. When there is the least particle of abnormality of position of spinal structure or when there is change in the relation of bones, ligaments and muscles, these conditions con- stitute lesions. We may have a rotation of a vertebra and that is a lesion; we may have a curvature of the spine and that is a lesion ; we may have a straight spine and that is a lesion ; a rigid spine, hardened or tensed muscles all constitute lesions. They are all lesions because they are abnormal structural conditions and interfere with the origin and transmission of nerve force. When there is anything wrong with the nerve impulses, some disturbance of function is going to occur. In order to have good digestion, good elimination, etc., we must have the proper distribution of nerve force and no interference with the nerves after they leave the central nervous system. Any of the lesions spoken of might interfere with the nutrition to the central system where the nerve cells are located. The spinal cord and brain must be nourished with good blood. The blood carries nutrition from the gastro- intestinal tract to the central nervous system. If there is any interference to the blood supply on account of spinal lesions, the nervous impulses will be weak and the individual will not have good health. Most lesions come on slowly and may be two, three, four, five or even twenty years in developing. Injury and trauma are causes ; overwork, exposure and many times infec- tious diseases, where the individual is extremely ill for a period of time ; all these are factors which will pro- 70 Food Fundamentals duce a warping and twisting of the spinal column and bring about mal-adjustment. Chronic diseases come on as a result of these slowly developing diseases/* (Dr. G. M. Laughlin, Osteopathic Physician). Any of these things enervate, deplete and exhaust the nervous system resulting in faulty elimination and accumulation of poisons. Where osteopathic treat- ment is properly applied it restores a normal circula- tion of blood to the nervous system, the spinal cord and brain. In doing this it builds up the nervous system and in that way assists the functioning of every organ. Now it does not matter what the disease it is a great factor in its treatment to build up the nervous system. Osteopathy does that, and it can be correctly stated, that the osteopathic treatment of disease has a wider and more universal application as a curative measure than the osteopathic lesion has as a causative factor. The osteopathic lesion is not the cause of all diseases, but it is none the less true that the treatment of the osteopath will assist in the cure of a diseased condition which has been wholly brought about by wrong eating and living. The most potent active therapeutic meas- ure that can be administered to one suffering from accumulation of poisons is the osteopathic treatment, unless, perchance, the withholding of food be consid- ered an active therapeutic measure. When the osteo- path adds to his treatment the teaching of his clientele the correct habits of living, he is practicing the broad- est and most complete system of medicine known. Food Fundamentals 71 Osteopaths frequently give expression to the idea that wrong food, wrong combinations, or overeating is an osteopathic lesion ; that any wrong habit of living is an osteopathic lesion ; that any visceral trouble is an osteopathic lesion. They recognize these troubles and feel they should regard them as osteopathic lesions in order to justify their treatment of them. This view is not a necessary one at all. They are no more osteop- athic lesions than allopathic, and they are neither. Is it osteopathic to treat disease by regulating the diet? Well it depends upon what is meant by osteopathic. I do not think it is, but I think any osteopath who does not treat in this way is falling very far short of the opportunities his profession affords him. The fundamental upon which the osteopathic treatment is based may be stated in this way : the ad- justment of the abnormal relation of the body tissues will favorably affect the functioning of them. The treatment administered to accomplish this adjustment is manipulative in nature. Therefore, anything else is outside of the realm of the fundamental of osteopathy. Osteopathy is applicable to all conditions because it affects the circulation to the spinal cord and brain and in this way maintains the vitality of the nervous system against the onslaught of disease. The fundamental upon which the allopathic sys- tem of medicine is based may be stated thus : drugs or medicines are administered internally to favorably affect the functioning of the body tissues and organs. 72 Food Fundamentals Anything outside of such administration of drugs is outside the realm of the fundamental of allopathic medicine. There is nothing gained by an exaggerated state- ment of a fact, and much is gained by the proper state- ment of it. MENTAL ATTITUDE. Of the bad habits of living the mental attitude as- sumes an important place. No digestive apparatus will work perfectly if influenced by a mind out of tune. Jealousy, anger, fear and worry are the worst afflic- tions along this line. But not a few individuals are sorely distressed with lesser ones. The cause of these things must be understood and removed. The follow- ing remarks discuss some common mental attitudes sensibly : "Fear is the most destructive emotion of the mind ; it paralyzes, kills, and destroys. Fear and worry are synonymous terms. If we do not worry we do not fear, and if we do not fear we do not become angry. Worry, fear, and anger are the grossest forms of egotism — self-imaginativeness. Fear is due to superstition and ignorance. Fearlessness must be cultivated by every individual. Fear is the one demoralizing agent. It lets down the bars and opens the system to the inroads of disease, inviting the very evil that we dread. It shuts off any healing action in proportion as we are held under by its paralyzing and depressing influences. Op- posed to this is faith, which gives assurance, confidence, and trusting expectancy ; is the one restoring and sus- taining mental state. Faith is the antidote to fear. Faith restores and exalts as much as fear demoralizes and depresses. Food Fundamentals 73 If it were possible for me to teach humanity how not to worry, I feel that I could have accomplished no work more far-reaching and beneficial in its results. Just as overeating is probably the greatest sin that is committed against the physical body, so in like manner is worry the greatest sin committed against the mind or mental body. Worry, or the worrying habit, can be cured; un- doubtedly so, but only by a systematic method of train- in^g of both body and mind. Worry is a habit of the mind, which is as susceptible to training, subjection, and control as is any other individual function of the body. Worry is a most useless employment. Certainly one should not worry over what can be helped or pre- vented. If it can be prevented, all that remains to be done is for the individual to do it, and the trouble is ended. If it cannot be prevented, only harm comes from thinking about it. The individual must he his own physician. He must realize, with every fiber of his being, the utter, absolute uselessness of the sin of worry. He must understand that if it were possible for him to spend a thousand years in thinking it out, in worry, it would not change the facts, causes, or conditions, one jot or iota. One must fully realize and be impressed with all this in his inmost consciousness before recovery is likely to come. When this point is reached, the point where every worrier perceives the absolute senseless- ness and futility of worrying, the cure of worry will have begun. Fear is not the only emotion that can do us deadly harm. Grief is one of the best known and most gen- erally recognized of these killing emotions. A fit of anger will destroy appetite, check indigestion, and un- settle the nerves for hours, even days. It will be ob- served that excitement may become a vice, and become harmful in its effects when carried to excess. Jealousy will upset the entire system, and is one of the most deadly enemies to health, happiness, and success. 74 Food Fundamentals These bodily effects of the emotions, and many- others, are in part due to certain chemical products formed in the body by the emotions, and are analogous in their effects to the venom of poisonous snakes, which is likewise secreted under the influence of fear and anger. A snake has a receptacle or sac in which to store the venom ; man has nothing of this kind, so that the venom spreads through all the tissues in spite of efforts to eliminate it. The emotions of sadness, pain, and grief affect the bodily secretions and excretions. It can be shown in many ways that the elimination of waste products is retarded by sad and painful emotions; not only this, but that the depressing emotions directly augment the amount of these poisons. On the other hand, the pleasurable and happy emotions, during the time they are active, inhibit the poisonous effects of the depress- ing moods, and cause the bodily cells to create and store up vital energy and nutritive tissue products. By proper training, the depressing emotions can be practically eliminated from life, and the good emotions rendered permanently dominant We must live in the happy memory of what was once enjoyed, rather than with useless regrets. Self-pity is one of the greatest afflictions that can happen to any individual. It begins by a surrender of one's pluck and moral courage in combating the battles of life. It is the giving up of hope, the loss of which is dangerous. Without hope life would not be worth living. In becoming the victim of self-pity we invite disease, mental disease, and its resultant condition of ^chronic invalidism.' We become cowards in our own estimation." (Sager.) "It is impossible to correct digestive troubles so long as an individual lives in an atmosphere of discon- tent; all that can be done is to palliate by selecting foods and food combinations that offer the least tax to the digestive functions. When these people are per- Food Fundamentals 75 suaded to believe that food has nothing to do with their bad feelings, and they recklessly eat anything and everything they certainly become very miserable. Almost daily I am told, by someone, of the many articles of food that disagree with him and then he adds that at times these foods agree. The reason for this is that the mind is better poised at one time than at another and there is more nerve energy than usual. Whatever the general opinion, I know that these pa- tients can be made comparatively comfortable when taught to suit their eating to their moods." (Tilden.) 76 Food Fundamentals PART 2 FOODS. A complete discussion of many of the subjects already mentioned would require a book in itself. It has been our object to say things that would open up channels of thought and incite further study. Food does not cure anything. No food can be given that will cure anything. The withholding of food or the properly prescribing it may be very helpful. There is no one diet that can be claimed to be superior to all others. No one has a corner on any diet, or any diet idea. There is merit in many different ideas about diet. To separate the chaff from the wheat in diet ideas is the thing needed. In considering foods we ignore the usual classifica- tion and discuss them under the general heads of Rich Starchy Foods, Rich Protein Foods, Non-Starchy Veg- etables, Fruits and Fats. The terms are not original with the author but they or modified forms of them are to be found in the writings of Dr. J. H. Tilden, and the combinations we use are largely the result of experi- ments conducted along lines suggested in his writings. FOODS RICH IN MATURE STARCH. So that the term may not be bunglesome this class of food is spoken of as Starchy Food. Irish potatoes, sweet potatoes, rice, tapioca, dry beans, dry peas, and Food Fundamentals 77 the various grains including the products made from them, such as: all kinds of bread, cakes, crackers, doughnuts, the different flaked cereals, oatmeal mush, cornmeal mush, shredded wheat, macaroni, hominy, cornstarch products, comprise the list that are most frequently found on the table. In these foods starch is found in its mature or granular form which is more difficult of digestion than starch in the milk form found in many of the green vegetables. "Most people have from one to six kinds of starches on their table three times a day." (Tilden). Is there a known good reason why an individual must have some one or more of these foods at every meal? Is it any more necessary to take a rich starchy food at every meal than it is to take a rich protein food, like meat, at every meal ? The never failing presence of one or more of the rich starchy foods on the table may be accounted for. Physicians almost universally give their approval to the custom; certainly there are few of them found decrying it. The starches are all palatable. They are easily prepared. No class of food can be so easily stored away for hasty use without fear of decomposi- tion. As a class they are the cheapest food on the markets. They can be mixed in a palatable way with nearly every other known article of diet, and the writers on dietetics and home economics have worked the public up to a high-pressure temptation to mix. 78 Food Fundamentals mix, mix, until it has become a consuming fever. So the habit is established. And "Nothing in life is stronger than habit, nothing harder to overcome." (Sager). When given an opportunity the saliva starts the digestion of starch. If conditions in the stomach are favorable the further digestion of starch occurs there. The greater part of the digestion of starch is accom- plished in the intestines. Hence individuals suffering with intestinal trouble should know that this class of food is not the most suitable for them. Starch is a food best used largely by itself. And the same obser- vation may be made of any other class of food. It is a good rule to eat very few different articles of food at any one meal. This may seem like turning civiliza- tion backward, but it means that the sick will be better prepared to go forward. The amount of digestion by the saliva will be de- termined by the chewing and the time the food remains in the mouth. The usual habit of eating is such that it is almost negligible. While all foods should be well chewed, this is particularly true of starchy food. It should be chewed and insalivated until it is very fluid in nature. It is a food that should never be taken at a meal which must be eaten hastily. This fact creates the tremendous verdict against eating crackers, milk toast, liquid oatmeal, milk on flakes, crackers in soup ; or against taking anything of a liquid or juicy nature Food Fundamentals 79 into the mouth at the same time with starch, like fruit, celery, or any vegetable; against the taking of sweets into the mouth at the same time, like sugar on oatmeal, etc., for the sweet excites so great a flow of saliva that the morsel is swallowed before it is properly chewed and digested. And there are other things which strongly condemn this manner of eating starch. Starch being best digested in an alkaline medium, it follows that mixing starch and foods that are acid or that require an acid medium for digestion, is not a good combination. When fruit, for instance, is taken with the starchy foods, the acid in the fruit will counteract the effect of the alkaline fluids in the diges- tion of starch and delayed digestion takes place. And very often this thing does not terminate with delayed digestion, but fermentation of the food takes place and violent poisons are formed and thrown into the blood for assimilation. Meat or other protein foods are di- gested in an acid medium and do not combine well with starch for this reason. They also result in overloading the digestive system with work, when combined with starch. "To starch's credit it must be said that its great offending is due more to the company it is forced to keep than to its own influence." (Tilden). Certain foods may be combined in a meal with starch, but usually should not be taken into the mouth at the same time. Starch goes well with milk, butter or 80 Food Fundamentals non-starchy vegetables. The milk may be whole or skimmed. Some individuals may use buttermilk, but I have found starch and buttermilk a combination that is dubious. A small amount of honey may be used on starch by those who are not very ill. A little bacon may be taken by the same class of individuals. Other combinations with starch are questionable, but reviewing the list of non-starchy vegetables it will be seen that the number of combinations are abundant. Those individuals who will persist in making fur- ther combinations can use the sweet fruits, as raisins, dates, figs, pineapple, mild apple, especially baked sweet apple. The raw fruit will combine with starch better than stewed fruit because the acids in raw fruit are more stable in character. People who are complaining cannot use questionable combinations with safety. Bananas should not be classified as a fruit. They are seventy-five per cent water, twenty-two per cent carbohydrate; they have quite a little oil and some protein. They are practically free of acid. For my purposes they are best classed as a starch. The banana supplies quite a good deal of nutri- tious material. It has the consistency of some clay and when mashed in the mouth the particles do not sep- arate, and in the stomach they remain intact just to decompose. This characteristic of the banana unfits it for food for children and others who eat hastily. To overcome this tendency it may be chewed with bran. Food Fundamentals 81 or thorough mastication of the banana alone will in part overcome it. The digestibility of bananas is im- proved if they are baked. They may be split and placed in a pan without the addition of anything and baked in a moderate oven until soft. The taste of them is changed by this process, and some have to learn to like the taste in this case just as they do in many other foods. Most people are prejudiced against the baked banana because of its appearance. The different cereal flakes, shredded wheat, grape- nuts, and the various kinds of foods on this order are partly digested starchy foods. Some of them are less concentrated than others, but most of them are more concentrated than the same weight of ordinary bread or potato. They are not to be condemned, but under- stood. They will be digested in less time than other starches and therefore are more stimulating. It is easy to overeat of this kind of foods, and here is the real danger in them. The sweet taste of them is evi- dence of part digestion, and this very thing leads to swallowing them quickly and taking more of them than the system needs. Grapenuts are especially con- centrated and stimulating. Shredded wheat is good food for those who like it dry. If these things are understood a choice of kind of starch is all there is to a choice of these foods. If prepared foods of this nature be added to the usual amount of the rich starchy foods no doubt overeating of starches will be the result. 82 Food Fundamentals If one is fond of the taste of whole-wheat biscuit bread there is no reason why he should substitute shredded wheat for it. If a child chooses cereal flakes eaten dry instead of bread or potato, there is no good reason why its wishes should not be granted. In truth there is very great reason why they should be granted. If there is no fundamental difference in the taking of two different starches, the one which gives the most enjoyment should be used. But there is a fundamental difference in taking cereal flakes soaked with milk and toasted bread eaten dry, or the cereal flakes eaten dry. All prepared cereal foods should be eaten as the rich starchy foods. Starchy foods are very prone to ferment. Foi this reason those with weak digestion should be careful that starchy foods are not taken into the stomach at a time when the stomach is not prepared to receive food; they should give special attention to the masti- cation of starch ; they should use only the most appro- priate of the starchy foods, and proper combinations with them. Yeast contributes very much to the readiness with which bread ferments, so that while starch is the class of foods that ferments the easiest, yeast bread heads the list of this class in this respect. It is the most treacherous of foods, and nothing in the way of food can be more expensive than an inferior quality of baker's bread made with yeast. My sympathies go out to children whose parents furnish them with such Food Fundamentals 83 food, and whose teachers give their approval of it in school lunches, and whose Sunday-school teachers and church authorities and organizations furnish it to them in lunches. When those higher up make a little study of the food they are giving their children they will perform a great service to their God and their off- spring, and will answer many of their own prayers. Such neglect of things vital occurs with sickening regularity and persistence. Too often mothers have time for most anything else but bread-making. Yeast bread should be banished from the table, and though the custom of using it is solidly intrenched the final results of people thinking for themselves will be indig- nation that will work a change. Toasting bread makes it less likely to ferment, so sickly people should toast their bread. Hot, fresh bread is no worse than cold fresh bread, and the only advantage offered by stale bread is the necessity of chewing it more thoroughly. Preparation of Starch. Starch is a food, the digestibility of which is im- proved by cooking or baking. No method of cooking should be used that will result in leaving the starchy mass liquid in nature. It should be firm or dry so that chewing will be induced. This should be remem- bered in preparing oatmeal porridge, rice, or starchy foods of this nature. They should be firm, and eaten with a little butter and without sugar. Any addition of cream or milk should be so manipulated as to not hasten the swallowing process. It is best to sip the 84 Food Fundamentals milk after the starch is eaten. Honey may occasionally be used on these foods by those who know their ability to digest, and respect it. Potatoes should be baked. They may be peeled, boiled until done, then browned in the oven. Mashed potatoes do not permit of enough chewing, and en- courage overeating. When gravy is added to mashed potatoes they are quite objectionable. Such food is a curse to children. Fried potatoes cannot be too severely condemned, and this is especially true when raw pota- toes are fried. "White-flour bread is easier to digest than any other. A properly made and baked white-flour biscuit offers the least tax on digestive energy of any bread, unless it is the same biscuit split and toasted. Whole-wheat bread is a splendid food for those with power to digest it ; but how about the invalid who cannot extract nourishment from it? It furnishes building material and energy; but the question must be settled : Does it cost the body so much effort to ex- tract the nourishment that its energies are all used up in simply digesting — vegetating? It is believed that white-flour bread starves those who, exclusively, eat of it. Grant that such bread does not contain all the properties of whole wheat, we must not forget that we do not need a great supply of building material after we are through growing — at that time in life when digestion is more vigorous than at any other time. After this age, white flour conserves energy by not re- quiring so much force to digest it, and if there is some- thing lacking, the appetite will drive the individual to a source of supply that will yield it with less expendi- ture of energy than it required to extract it from whole wheat. Food Fundamentals 85 People with small digestive power for the starchy class of foods, strange to say, are the ones who eat freely of whole-wheat and bran bread. The coarse bread is used because of its reputation for regulating the bowels; but it is a false reputation, for this class of patients soon evolves a toleration for the roughness, and the cellulose which is reputed to be a remedy for constipation acts in exactly the opposite way. Biscuit can be made from white flour, or an ad- mixture of whole wheat flour, if desired. When whole wheat is used beyond a two-thirds proportion, the dough is so porous that the gas from the baking-powder is lost, and of course, fails to rise and make the bread light. The more whole wheat used, the more rapid must be the process of mixing and getting the dough into the oven. When the bread is made from white flour that con- tains much gluten, many good bread-makers allow the molded biscuits to stand in a warming-oven until they rise, before placing them into the bake-oven. This should be done when the bake-oven is hot enough for the bread to bake rapidly. To make good bread, all the elements comprising it must be pure ; and if they are not — if one of the ele- ments is not good — the bread will be imperfect, if not a failure. When all the elements are perfect, the bread may be ruined because of a lack of skill in manipulating it. There are people so slow in their movements — so lacking in manipulative dexterity — that they are failures as bread-makers. All the ingredients should be brought together, so that, when the mixing is started, the work will not be delayed, and the bread ruined, by having to stop and run after some forgotten ingredient. The mixing should be done with a light hand, yet thoroughly, and finished as quickly as possible. The secret of good bis- cuits is to have all the elements perfect, and then mixed with a deft hand. The sooner the bread is in the oven after the mixing is begun, the better the bread will be. Too many rustle, tussle, and waste so much time before 86 Food Fundamentals the dough reaches the oven that when it is baked it is of such mongrel properties that no real bread-maker would own it. In the matter of manipulating the baking much skill is required. The bread-maker must be acquainted with the oven and know when it is in proper heat for baking. In a few words, it requires skill in every detail to insure good bread. How many housewives have it? A few have it, but do not have the proper materials to work with; others have everything but skill. This is not strange; for the commonest shortcoming of frail mankind is lack of efficiency, and this is oftener due to an overgrown conceit than to any innate lack of skill. Yeastless Bread, To a quart of white flour add salt sufficient ; a heap- ing teaspoonful of baking-powder; two tablespoonfuls of melted butter; make into a dough with unskimmed milk. Bake in the form of a loaf or biscuit. When baked, allow the bread to cool; then slice and return to the oven and toast; or, if made into biscuits, when they come from the oven they should not be more than an inch thick, baked to a good crisp crust, bottom and top. The left-over biscuits can be split and toasted for future eating." (Tilden.) (Author's Note : If the oven is faultless and there is reasonable skill, a little practice will prove these to be excellent forms of bread. Where the oven is not perfect and skill is not abundant, the addition of more baking-powder and butter may help to make up for these deficiencies. Unskimmed milk to which is added a little cream is an improvement) . FOODS RICH IN PROTEIN. The protein in the body is derived from many of the different foods, but those in which it occurs in decided strength are, all kinds of meat, eggs, cheese. Food Fundamentals 87 nuts, dry beans, dry peas, and milk. These are the foods to which I refer when I speak of protein foods. The oxidation of protein "furnishes energy, especially heat energy to the body, and, moreover, a portion of it is used to reconstruct the living protoplasm which breaks down in the functional activity of the tissues;" (Howell). The student of diet should not forget that protein occurs in many articles of diet. It occurs in an appre- ciable amount in some of what are called elsewhere the non-starchy vegetables. This fact is too often overlooked. It is well to think of eggs, cheese, and nuts, as though they were meat. They should be so regarded and combined. The usual daily protein consumption is much greater than the needs of the body demand. My expe- rience with the sick persuades me that whatever amount is taken beyond the needs of the body is a positive injury. It does not add to the resources of the body, but is carried as a burden, forms poisonous material, and destroys the chemical equilibrium of the body. Only our intelligence and our knowledge of foods will enable us to know how much we should take. Each individual must learn for himself the amount he needs. And with a little information about foods, good judgment, and a wise interpretation of his expe- rience, he can know better than any physician, his needs in this line. 88 Food Fundamentals Cheese is a very strong protein food, much too strong to make it wise to add a little of it to a full meal of other food. And only a small amount of it can be handled at any meal. One egg furnishes enough protein for a day, and certainly not more than two should be eaten, and this should be the total of the rich protein food for that day. Nuts are a very strong protein food, and the thorough chewing of nuts is im- portant. It is easy to allow small particles of the nut meat to be swallowed without mashing it. These bits of unchewed nuts will tenaciously resist the action of the digestive fluids. Protein once a day is sufficient for those who need most food of that character, and for many individuals less often is quite sufficient. "There are two main schools of dietitians ; namely : those who are known as vegetarians and those who are not — those who believe in all foods, vegetable and ani- mal. The latter school is divided into those who believe in a large intake of proteid and those who believe in a low intake. Voit heads the first class, advocating one hundred and eighteen grams of proteid. Chittenden is at the head of the other class, recommending half, or sixty grams of proteid, and even as low as thirty- five to forty grams. Those who belong to the 120 grams of proteid school recommend twenty eggs a day. The low pro- teid school advocates from six to ten. From the stand- point of this periodical, even the low school is much too high. Professor Chittenden came into his knowledge of the benefit of a low proteid diet by experimenting on himself. He had persistent rheumatism of the knee- joint, which he got rid of, along with 'sick headaches' and bilious attacks, by cutting down his eating. Food Fundamentals 89 Graham, of the *Graham System/ declared that he got rid of headaches, colds, constipation, and rheu- matism by cutting down his food supply so low that his neighbors declared he would starve to death. The advocates of a high proteid intake believe that it is well to take more than necessary — more than the system requires for building and repair — so as to have a reserve on hand in case a sickness should come re- quiring a reserve. The truth is, if there is a reserve, a time will come when it will have to be got rid of — sickness will come because of it, not from lack of it." (TiLDEN). Meat is a strong and stimulating food. It requires a large supply of oxygen to assimilate it. One with a large chest expansion, or one who works out of doors, can handle more meat than others and also maintain health. Meat should be thoroughly chewed as should all foods, but if the fiber is fairly well broken it is not so serious if it is swallowed quickly as it is if starch is eaten without thorough mastication. And the proteins that do not have fiber like meat can be eaten with more rapidity than can meat. An egg may be eaten for a hasty lunch, but bread or rich starchy foods, never. Cold meats, canned meats, dried or cured meats, and fried meats, should be regarded with suspicion. Bacon is an exception. It is largely fat, and the curing process to which it is subjected makes of it a food which when taken in small quantities tends to prevent fermentation in the stomach. 90 Food Fundamentals The one great objection to meat as a food is its tendency to putrefy. This is serious. If one does not handle meat well they had better let it alone. But I find, when taken properly, it can be digested by many who have serious experiences with it when taken in the usual manner. People have been taught that it is extremely harmful to eat much meat, but they have not been told that it was harmful to overload on eggs, baked beans, cheese, or nuts. They have been taught to believe they are "on a diet" when they eat no meat. "It is a physician's business to understand, as much as pos- sible, all foods, not as a faddist, nor as a fanatic, but as a rational being able to render the greatest good to the greatest number." (Tilden). And the physi- cian should give his clientele the right view. Meat is best digested in an acid medium, and it is well to take some acid food with it. All of the non- starchy vegetables combine well with meat. Those that are well adapted to be taken raw, can be eaten in that manner. The acid fruits may be combined with meat, and these may either be taken raw or cooked. The difference between taking fruits raw or cooked is explained in another place. The "Tilden Salad is lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, equal parts, with either enough garlic to give the desired taste, or sweet onion. In the spring and summer the green onion with its top may be used. The best winter salad is Food Fundamentals 91 made the same way, except the Pascal celery is sub- stituted for the cucumbers. Dress either of these with salt, olive oil, and lemon juice." (Tilden). A salad of this nature should be taken with every meat meal. I find many variations that are accept- able and wholesome. Turnips, cabbage, carrots may be chopped fine and used with lettuce and lemon juice. Either one of these may be used with lettuce and lemon juice. To any such combination the addition of raw apples chopped is an advantage. Likewise, other fruit, as oranges, may be added. I don't think much of olive oil dressing on this salad to be taken with meat, but those who like it may try it. Always use lemon juice in the place of vinegar. If meat is eaten in reasonable quantity with cooked non-starchy vegetables, and with a salad of the nature just given, there will be no decomposition of the meat unless one overeats or is not in condition to receive such food. The tendency for raw vegetables to prevent fermentation, the greater activity of the dif- ferent chemical elements in the juices of raw veg- etables, and the greater ease with which meat is digested in the presence of acid, make this combination favorable to the perfect digestion of the whole meal. If meat is taken in this manner, the cry against its moderate use will disappear. It will be necessary for me to make the positive statement that starch is not to be taken at the meat meal. It is so generally the custom to eat bread or 92 Food Fundamentals potatoes with meat and with every meal that anything less than a positive statement about it is always under- stood to include bread and potatoes. If the salad cannot be had, use lemon juice on the meat. If no vegetables can be obtained use fruit with the meat. People interested in their health and giving it some thought can work out these principles. Patients of mine have shown that it is quite practical and palatable to make a sandwich out of a large apple and ham, using the apples in slices as bread. In the same way can a fruit and cheese sandwich be made of apple and pimento cheese. Apple and bacon make a tasty sandwich. The turnip can be used instead of the apple. There is no end to suitable delicacies of this kind to take the place of bread and meat. School lunches should be along this line, if school lunches are to be used. Those people who will try a meal of any kind of meat with raw apple will be surprised how tasteful it is. This is particularly true of a nice roast of beef and raw apple. When the body becomes ad- justed to this style of eating, they will find it most satisfying. The worst combination that can be made with meat is sugar. And it does not matter whether the sugar is taken in the coffee, on the fruit, or in any manner, if it is taken with a meat meal it cannot be a good combination. But this does not mean it is a fatal mistake. One can take a small amount of sugar or honey on fruit or other food whose taste demands Food Fundamentals 93 it, and that when taken at a meat meal. But who thinks of putting sugar on their meat or eggs as a dressing? The idea is almost repulsive, is it not? When people are accustomed to looking for food com- binations to account for distress or sickness, they will doubtless see this combination is entirely wrong. If in doubt, eat a meal of meat and plenty of sugar, and see what results. Digestion will be delayed in the stomach, and decomposition is likely to take place be- fore the meat leaves the stomach. The rancid grease, the decomposing meat, the fermenting sugar, all hot and nauseating, affords the nervous system a great task and abundant irritation. People who eat this way suffer abundantly with headaches and tonsilitis. "Very few people realize what digestion means. It means the disintegrating of food, not only the break- ing up of its gross particles, tearing the fibers apart and bringing it into a state of pulp, but it means the chemical disorganization of its elements. What is this disorganization for? For the purpose of bringing about a liquid state of the food. This liquid is known as peptone. It must be capable of penetrating mem- brane equal to water. All the residue and material that is unfit to gain the circulation is excluded, and it is fair to presume that a given quantity of peptone pre- pared from grass will be similar in properties to the peptone made out of beef that has been evolved from grass. In other words, grass will make flesh, and the elements in the grass that go to make flesh are exactly similar to the elements found in the flesh after it is made — if not, why not? Beefsteak never enters the circulation as beefsteak ; it enters as a peptone, and that peptone has the elements that were gathered by the 94 Food Fundamentals animal from the fields by eating the grass and digest- ing it. These things being true, is there any sense or reason to this great hue and cry against meat? The man who is posted on the actual cause of human suffering knows that man can eat great quan- tities of meat without much harm if the meat is from healthy animals, but when he puts oatmeal with it, or cakes and syrup, then he is drawing close to digestive troubles. Meat is the most stimulating of all foods. It is easy of digestion — it reaches the nerve centers in the shortest time. When disease or injury has inhibited nutrition, and the patient is low from pronounced ener- vation, the feeding of a concentrated meat broth may overstimulate and further prostrate, or even kill. Under such circumstances a small amount of fruit or vegetable juice will be kindly received and prove life- imparting — I mean the fresh uncooked juice. One of the most foolish and senseless medical cus- toms is that of prescribing white meat, because it is supposed to be easier of digestion, when the truth is just the reverse. The prescribing of white meat is a bad habit, the same as thousands of other medical habits that were started a long time ago by medical men who are now dead, and whose ideas are dead and should have been interred with their bones. White meat is possessed of little real nutritive value. The dark meat is nutritive in keeping with the color — the darker, the richer in food value. The round steak is ten to twenty per cent more nutritious than the loin. Those who think they are unfortunate in being compelled to buy the cheap cuts of meat are really getting the best of the bargain. To avoid overeating, meat (fish, fowl, game, nuts, or any butcher's meat) should be eaten with cooked non-starchy vegetables and combination salads — a large dinner-plate-ful of salad. About two ounces of protein, or twelve ounces of lean meat, is supposed to be light eating; but for business men, four ounces of lean meat daily, or eight ounces every other day, with Food Fundamentals 96 a large plate of salad, and all desired of cooked non- starchy vegetables, with fruit for dessert, makes a simple meal and one that will satisfy a normal man. The normal guide for eating is to have a relish for every bite taken. The food must be desired not the The fires of passion that are lit and fed by ex- cessive eating of meat, bread, and potatoes may bum out in an acute disease ; a typhoid fever may call a halt, and if the patient does not die, he may be relieved for months afterward — depending, of course, on whether he returns immediately to his excessive eating. Those who labor should not eat meat oftener than once a day, and bread, potatoes, or other decidedly starchy foods once or twice a day. Those of sedentary habits should not eat meat oftener than once every other day, or moderately every day when the temper- ature is ten above zero or lower. Cooking of Meat, The protein of meat is rendered indigestible by improper cooking. Beef requires more care in cooking than pork. A boiling that would render beef hard, insipid, and difficult to digest, if not indigestible, would only serve to make pork tender and appetizing. A fry- ing that would render beefsteak tough and tasteless would render pork toothsome and tender. Roast Beef. — Beef is at its best roasted ; but to retain all the flavor, and render the albuminoids and gelatinoids tender and easily digestible, it should be roasted in quantities. A small roast is usually too dry. The larger the roast, the better, but small families can- not indulge. Paper-bag roasting is said to be satisfac- tory : Place the meat in a paper bag, and roast in an oven the same as for ordinary roasting. Roasting in a jacket is a good way to prevent the meat from drying out : Make a batter out of flour and water ; the batter should be stiff enough to coat the meat well. After giving the prospective roast a thorough coating, wrap 96 Food Fundamentals paper around it, and then coat the outside of the paper with another layer of the batter. Roast the regulation time, counting a little extra on account of the jacket. Meat, fish, or fowl cooked in this way is pleasing to all who are fond of meat. All meats have a better flavor when cooked in a jacket. Pot Roasts, — This style of cooking is well suited for small families. Put the roast to cook in a small amount of cold water, and allow it to come to the boil- ing point very slowly ; then turn the gas down, if cook- ing with gas; or, if on a range, place the vessel on a part that will keep the contents simmering. Just enough water should be used so that when the meat is tender it will all be evaporated; then place the vessel on a hot part of the stove and brown the meat for five or ten minutes. If by mistake too much water has been used, the meat can be lifted out, put in a baking-pan, and placed in the oven for browning. The fluid from which the meat was taken may be used as a soup or broth, or it can be used to dress cooked vegetables in place of butter or cream. Beefsteak. — The larger and thicker the steaks are, the better. Only the expert can cook and deliver to the epicure a perfect steak. Steaks can be given a pan broil that will be tasty : Prepare the steak by cutting off the fat; get the frying-pan hot — very hot; then put the meat in the skillet and cover at once ; in thirty seconds lift the cover and turn the meat, and then in thirty seconds turn again. The secret of making a steak taste good, cooked in this way, is to have a hot fire, hot pan, and a cook who can lift the cover and turn the meat in the quickest possible time. Should butter be added either before or after the cooking? What for? Butter adds nothing except to make diges- tion more diflficult. By adding butter before or while cooking, a pan broil is converted into a fry. Clasping in a wire toaster and holding close to a bed of hot coals is a very nice way to broil meat. If the steak is quite dry cooked in this way, because of its thinness, a little butter should be added. Food Fundamentals 97 Round Steak, cooked as follows, is quite palatable : Put into a very hot frying-pan and thoroughly sear; then allow it to stew by adding a small amount of cold water. The cooking, until the meat is tender, should be by a simmering heat rather than hard boiling. When tender, take up on a hot plate, cover, and place in warming oven. There should be only a small amount of fluid in the pan when the meat is taken out. This can be disposed of in various ways. Some people add a little flour and make a gravy to serve with the meat, but I do not recommend this. Tomatoes may be cooked in this fluid, or onions already stewed, may be added ; serve on the meat. If carefully manipulated, the fluid can be gauged so as to be cooked away by the time the meat is tender; then, if desired, the surface of the meat may be browned the second time. The toughest meat can be cooked very tender, and quickly, in a steam cooker that cooks under steam pres- sure. These cookers are especially to be recommended for cooking old or tough fowl and game. Meat should be cooked well and in any style de- sired. Steamed meat is easy of digestion. It should be cooked without seasoning, and, when served, the less salt used the better. Broiled meat is appetizing, but not so good for those with very delicate digestion. Stewed meat is easy of digestion. Potroasts are espe- cially fine when cooked with little water and well browned. Pork. — Pork is related to other meats as anthra- cite is related to other kinds of coal. It is a heat-pro- ducer par excellence, besides furnishing proteid for tissue-building. It is an excellent food for cold weather, for the human organism requires four times as much food for producing heat as for making muscles — that is, four times as much fat, sugar, and starch as albu- men, fibrin, gluten and casein. Pork contains, in one pound of its fat, the equivalent of two and a half pounds of sugar or starch; hence, less than half as much of animal food is required as of the best vegetable food. 98 Food Fundamentals This being true, it can be seen that it is much easier to overeat on meat than on other foods. More animal food is required in winter than in summer. In cold countries fat is provided as a heat-producer, while in hot countries sugar and starch are the heat-producers. Because of the excess of fat, and the smaller per- centage of albuminoid or tissue-forming food, found in pork, there has sprung up the habit of eating beans with pork. The field bean contains about twenty-four per cent of muscle maker, while in a hundred pounds of pork there is only ten per cent of muscle-making food. For sedentary people — those who are confined to the house, office, or indoor work, and are deprived of exercise in the open air and sunshine — pork, or pork and beans, is too hearty. Because of the stupe- fying and nerve-exhausting effects of this diet on seden- tary people, many condemn the eating of pork and would have it banished as a food. Many of these anti- pork eaters suffer the same stupefying influence from beans cooked with olive oil and doughnuts fried in veg- etable oil. Few know what good cooking is. And many imagine that the harm comes from pork-fat. But the truth is that bad cooking, wrong combinations, and, neither last nor least, the universal habit of over- eating, bring discredit on such valuable and staple food as pork. Pork is injurious when eaten by those who have not the digestive power to take care of it. Much depends on how it is cooked. Fried pork is not better nor worse than any other fried food. The harm comes in ill preparation — spoiled in cooking — and in over- eating and bad combinations. If a family is not pre- pared to cook properly, and frying is necessary, or fry- ing is desired, then manipulate the cooking in the best way possible for the conveniences at hand. Stewed Pork. — Pork ribs, or backbones stewed tender, are a food that most people like. This meat, cooked in a steam cooker, is made very tender, tasty. Food Fundamentals 99 and wholesome. The cooking should be prolonged until the meat has reached a state of tenderness that will allow the bones to drop out. Roast Pork. — Roast pork can be cooked in the usual way, or it may be cooked in a paper sack or a batter jacket. To broil any meat, have a broiling pan hot — hot enough to sear ; then place the meat in the pan, which, if hot enough, will turn the meat white at once. The meat should be turned almost instantly. Turn it from side to side three or four times, and at the same time, if cooking with gas, extinguish the flame long enough for the pan to cool down to a heat that will cook, but not sear; then relight the gas; if cooking on a coal range, move the pan to a cool part of the stove and keep the meat simmering, so to speak; finish cooking with enough heat to cook the inside of the meat with- out hardening the albumen. In broiling, the object is to sacrifice the outside of the meat — harden the albu- men of the surface of the meat — but keep the inside soft and juicy. When meat is properly broiled it swells, and, on cutting, the liquid flows readily ; but if cooked too much or too rapidly, with too much heat, the albumen coag- ulates, and the meat will be hard and tough ; even veal, lamb, and young chicken will be disappointingly hard and dry. All broiling meats should be cut at least one inch thick ; the thicker the better — even two and three inches ; but to cook meat so thick requires a proper fire and an expert cook. Chicken is one of the most digestible of meats when properly served. On account of the selfish commercial- ized spirit of this age, it is almost impossible to avoid being poisoned one or more times every year by unfit poultry. When poultry is bought alive in the open market, there is no way of knowing whether or not it has served a life sentence in some poultry penitentiary ; neither is there any way of knowing, if dead, how long it has been confined in purgatory before it has been 100 Food Fundamentals brought out as a candidate for benevolent assimilation — before its human or other reincarnation. If beeves, hogs, and sheep were dressed as poultry is dressed, or not dressed — namely, placed in cold storage with entrails intact — there would be so much poisoning that all people would turn against eating meat. Poultry is kept for weeks, months, even years, in cold storage with entrails undisturbed ; and we are told by poultry butchers, indorsed by the pure food laws, that this style of dressing is correct. If it is, why not prepare all carcasses in the same way ? The people should boycott the trade ; refuse to buy undrawn fowls; refuse to buy cold-storage fowls that have been dressed in this way, even if the butcher offers to draw the fowl before delivering it to the house. Tur- keys are not different from chickens ; neither are fish. If even doctors knew how many people are stricken down with disease every year from ptomaine poisoning coming from this source, the protest against the prac- tice would be so strong that it would soon end. Besides sickness, there must be, every year, many deaths. The canning of poultry has become so extensive that those who are wise will not order chicken, turkey, veal cutlets, and many other articles of food at restau- rants or on dining-cars. There is not much choice be- tween cold-storage and canned fowl. It is filthy eating, and those who indulge are flirting with sickness and death. So far as protecting the people in this matter is concerned, the pure-food laws protect this vile, death- producing industry. Just why, is beyond finding out ; possibly there is too much money invested in the dam- nable practice. Money is king, and the so-called ser- vants of the people fall down and worship this king, and forget their sworn duty to those whom they pre- tend to serve. Eggs. Eggs, like milk, form a complete food ; that is they contain more or less of each of the fundamental food elements necessary to build the body and repair waste. Food Fun'damsntals 101 Eggs and milk are the only complete food products found in the animal kingdom. "Egg albumen is said to consist of a mixture of different proteids, indicating that the egg, from a chem- ical standpoint, is a highly complex substance; and, like all complex foods, it is very unstable; it takes on change very easily — decomposes in the stomach and bowels readily. The yolk is fully as complex as the white ; and, as a consequence, the egg is not so innocent a food as many suppose. It is generally recognized as being easy of digestion; and I presume, in those who have perfect health and digestion, this is true ; but the observing physician will find many people who are made from slightly uncomfortable to miserable by its use. This is especially true of those who have slow digestion ; for they experience discomfort from the use of eggs cooked in any form. Eggs are especially bad for those who have ulcer- ation or dilation of the stomach. People with delicate digestion should not eat any except fresh eggs — eggs not more than one day old. Indeed, this rule should be followed out on all foods ; for stale fruit and vegetables, when eaten, are very much inclined to cause fermen- tation. A lack of care in this matter is often the cause of continued ill-health. The white of the egg is pure albumen, and consists of a solution of proteid shut up in the interior of mil- lions of cells. All animal bodies are made up of cells, and the egg is an undeveloped chick. These cell-walls are broken when the egg is beaten, and this allows the proteid to escape. It appears more reasonable to as- sume that a soft-boiled egg is made easier of digestion than a raw egg because the heat causes a bursting of the capsules of the cells, allowing the contents to be acted upon by the gastric secretions at once. If this be true, then raw eggs should be thoroughly beaten before being eaten; and, when there are no counter- manding objections, a little lemon juice may be added to cover the raw taste and aid digestion by furnishing acid. 102 Food Fundamentals Raw eggs are recommended in combination with milk, broths, or coffee. In diseases accompanied by loss of flesh and strength, large quantities of raw eggs — as many as twenty-four — are recommended in twenty-four hours. Patients who can take care of such quantities of eggs, or a like proportion of other foods, are not in a very sick state. Those who are seriously ill will grow worse and die under such dieting! Stuffing is a better term for such feeding. Some of the best authors on dietetics recommend the mixing of sherry or other wines or alcoholics with raw eggs for the sick. The class of patients I see would be made worse by such treatment, and it is doubtful if people in health would stay well long if given such diet. Alcoholics of all kinds have a detrimental effect on the stomach, either in health or disease. Not any- thing in the drink line is more disease-producing than egg-nog. Hard-boiled eggs, finely chopped or ground, can be digested in a normal stomach as quickly as soft- boiled eggs. Much, however, depends on the cooking. The term "hard-boiled eggs" is bad, as long as it means that eggs are to be boiled. Albumen — either in meat, eggs, or vegetables — should not be boiled. Eggs being albumen, they should not be cooked in boiling water. Eggs are best cooked in the shell, as follows : Soft-Cooked Eggs« — Place eggs in boiling water, remove from the fire, and allow them to stand for eight to ten minutes. If the eggs are very cold, they should be left in the water from two to four minutes longer. To cook eggs hard, place in cold water, and allow the water to come to the boiling-point ; then place on back of stove for twenty minutes. Don't boil. Steamed Eggs. — Break an egg in a sauce-plate, previously heated and buttered enough to keep the egg from sticking to the plate ; place in steamer over boiling water, and cook until white is firm. Salt and butter slightly. Food Fundamentals 103 Scrambled Eggs. — One tablespoonf ul of milk, half cream, to each egg ; beat thoroughly and put in a but- tered pan; then place this pan in another containing near-boiling water, and stir until the eggs are cooked to the desired consistency ; then salt to taste. A double boiler is convenient for cooking scrambled eggs. Have the water hot, but not boiling. To boil eggs hardens the albumen and causes them to be indigestible. Eggs Poached in Milk. — Melt butter, a half of an inch cube, in half a teacup of hot, rich milk, in a double boiler, put in two to four eggs, and cook carefully, not allowing the water to boil in the boiler. Salt and pep- per to taste." (Tilden). NON-STARCHY VEGETABLES. The expression, **non-starchy vegetables,'' is a happy term applied by Dr. J. H. Tilden to designate the vegetables usually spoken of as the green, succulent, or juicy vegetables. They might well be termed fiber vegetables. Non-starchy vegetables is a good term to contrast with "decidedly starchy foods.'* All these so- called non-starchy vegetables contain starch, but it is milk starch and is easier digested than granular starch. Milk starch is in the stage of development in which the capsule is not firm and completely formed; gran- ular starch is matured starch — it has a matured starch-cell, -wall, or -capsule. Green beans or peas have starch in the milk or immature form but when the beans or peas are ripened the milk starch has become granular starch, the cell walls having matured and hardened. Green peas or beans are classified as non- starchy vegetables and ripened beans or peas as the decidedly starchy food. 104 Food Fundamentals The non-starchy vegetables have a very impor- tant place in any dietary. They supply a quantity of the purest water obtainable. They supply chemicals much needed for health. They supply tissue salts that can be obtained in no other way and which are abso- lutely necessary. This pure water and these pure salts play no little part in the chemical action that takes place in digestion and especially in assimilation. Some of the tissue salts supplied by this class of vegetables are: sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, iron, phosphorus, and chlorine. Of all the tissue salts in spinach sixteen per cent are potash, thirty-five soda, eleven lime, six magnesia, three iron, ten phosphorus, six sulphur, four silicic acid, and six chlorine, with fractional parts of each not counted. Cauliflower is rich in potash and phosphorus. Cabbage is rich in potash, soda, lime and sulphur. Dandelion is rich in potash, soda, and lime. Asparagus is rich in potash, soda, and phosphorus. Cucumbers rich in potash, soda, and phosphorus. Lettuce con- tains forty-six per cent potash, nine of soda, six of lime, eight of phosphorus, three of sulphur, twenty of silicic acid, and five of chlorine, the total of these salts being less than one per cent of all the elements it con- tains. The whole list of them are valuable because of the chemical contents. The scientists are now em- phasizing what they please to call vitamins. These vegetables contain them. Vitamins have no impor- tance as isolated substances. As a part of the vege- Food Fundamentals 105 table or food they are just as important as the pure water or mineral salts or other substances and no more so. When an element of any article of diet is individualized and studied as a drug, the wrong view- point has been taken. It is this kind of study of iron in fruit and in the blood that has lead to wrong con- clusions about it. * The non-starchy vegetables are an important group of foods that will assist in keeping the blood alkaline and pure. The alkalinity of the blood insures against disease. The chemical balance of the body is kept by a proper use of non-starchy vegetables and fruit. It is well to make much of the bulk of a meal of them for they are more easily digested than the rich starchy foods or the rich protein foods. They afford bulk and are useful in preventing constipation. But the idea of bulk preventing constipation is over- worked. The juices supplied by these vegetables pro- mote intestinal peristalsis and may be looked upon as useful in preventing constipation. But in the presence of indigestion the juices or bulk count for nothing in preventing constipation. The thing most needed to prevent constipation is to keep the quantity of food down to the ability of the body to properly handle it. If the intestines have become too large and long from continued engorgement and overdistention, they will shrink and become smaller, if the proper amount is 106 Food Fundamentals ingested. But this requires time and the lessened dis- tention will result in some distress while the change is going on. Turnips, carrots, cauliflower, beets, cabbage, brus- sels sprouts, onions, summer squash, parsnips, spinach, lettuce, cucumbers, green peas, string beans, celery, asparagus, mushrooms, green corn, fresh or canned, salsify, endive, egg-plant, dandelion, and all kinds of greens, are the non-starchy vegetables in common use. Many of these vegetables should be eaten raw. There is no doubt that cooking detracts from the value of those that can be eaten raw. After cooking the juices are less stable and less active. The juices of raw vegetables like the juices of raw fruits have a tendency to prevent fermentation. This is because they are stable and also because they are very useful in the chemical action that accompanies digestion. I do not believe raw vegetables are constipating. They may require a little more work for complete digestion than cooked ones, but if the total of the work required of the digestive apparatus is not too much, constipa- tion will not result. "Because both meat and wheat contain the four- teen principal elements of the human body, the idea that to eat freely of either or both will supply the body with all the food needed, and that other foods are not necessary, is quite general. The continuation of this reasoning excludes fruit and raw vegetables ; for why take up valuable stomach space by eating cattle food (salad) and fruit? The majority of human beings be- lieve themselves to be fasting when eating fruit and Food Fundamentals 107 salad. From this point of reasoning it is easy to come to the conclusion that, inasmuch as there is nothing to be gained by the eating of fruit (it being an expensive luxury, and raw vegetables being an expensive cow food), then, for economical reasons, if for no other, they should be left out of the dietary. Consequently, a habit is formed of eating too much meat, bread, pota- toes, beans, and peas; if a change is desired, pudding, pie, and rich dressings are added; resulting in a dis- ease-producing style of eating, and a world of sickness, as we see it all over the country. An ignorant and slouchy manner of cooking vege- tables marks the prevailing style. It means, put the vegetables in a large quantity of salt water, and when cooked drain off the water; then season and serve, or cook again after draining. These vegetables often fur- nish cooks an excuse for making a rich dressing. The amount of cream, butter, and flour or cornstarch used by people on these vegetables is so great that there can be no good reason for looking about for any other cause for their sickness. The truth of the matter is that the vegetables are only an excuse for eating an impossible amount of rich dressing. I frequently tell people that they should fast until they are possessed of a hunger that will cause them to eat with a relish all foods, with- out a dressing. People who will not do this need not anticipate living out their life expectancy — the num- ber of years possible for them. Disease and premature death are the prices paid for bribing the palate into passing food into an overworked digestive organ. Vegetables should be cooked in as little water as possible, and positively no salt or seasoning of any kind should be added until served ; then those who eat may season to please their tastes. Use as little water as possible and cook in vessels with close-fitting covers, and cook until they are as tender as it is possible to cook them ; then, when served, dress with salt, butter, or cream. The more thorough the cooking, the less tendency there will be to constipate the bowels. Half- cooked and raw vegetables are constipating. When 108 Food Fundamentals cooked properly, the water will be well cooked away, and if there is a small amount left, it should be a rich syrup from the sugar in the vegetables. If desired, a reasonable amount of butter may be added, and the vegetables placed in a hot oven for ten minutes; then remove to a warming-oven until ready to serve. The less salt used the better. If the vegetables are not prime, soak them before they are dressed for cooking ; and if they lack sweetness, a little sugar may be added; this, however, will not often be necessary, if the vegetables are cooked right and not water-logged. Turnips and carrots, turnips and parsnips, onions and spinach, cabbage and endive, are a few vegetables that may be cooked together to advantage." (Tilden.) VEGETABLE SOUP (Modified from Tilden). Take equal parts of four or five of the following vegetables: potatoes, turnips, carrots, cabbage, celery, spinach, onions, green peas, green beans, green corn. Grind these fine and put to cook with enough water to keep them from burning, and when tender, add boiling water or hot milk to make soup. Those who are sickly should use the water instead of the milk. Season with salt and butter, or salt and cream. To- matoes may be used when the soup is to be used as a part of a meat meal, and provided the potatoes be left out. VEGETABLE SALADS (Modified from Tilden). 1. Lettuce, celery, and onion, seasoned with lemon juice and salt, or with lemon juice alone. Olive oil may be added to this or any of the following by those who like it. Food Fundamentals 109 2. Lettuce, celery and fresh tomatoes sliced or cut up. This to be seasoned like number 1. Never use vinegar as a seasoning or salad dressing. 3. Add cucumbers to either of the above. Cucum- bers must be crisp and fresh. 4. During the fruit season fresh berries or grapes may be added to either of the above; or fresh apples may be cut up and added; or oranges. In the winter season California grapes may be added. Also canned tomatoes may be used in the winter season where fresh ones are used in the summer. 5. Slaw dressed with lemon juice may be sub- stituted for the salad. Cabbage may be added to either of the above. A fruit salad may be used instead of a vegetable salad for a protein meal. A dressing of lemon juice and sweet milk may be used on any salad that is to be a part of a protein meal. Where tomatoes or fruits or lemon juice is used in a salad it may accompany a meat or protein meal, but not a starch meal. Raw vegetables may be used in combination with a starch meal by leaving out the acid dressing and tomatoes. The vegetables may be seasoned with salt, salt and sweet milk, or with the juice of some cooked vegetable. Those who desire to follow my directions should classify tomatoes as a fruit, then it will not give them trouble. The non-starchy vegetables may form the large part of every meal of the rich starches or the 110 Food Fundamentals rich protein foods. They may be used raw or cooked with either the starch or the protein. Some raw veg- etables should be eaten daily by those who would main- tain their health. This should be true with every in- dividual as a daily custom, and should be abandoned only when temporary illness or circumstances make it compulsory. The same thing is true about the cooked vegetables. Such a habit will in a large measure in- sure against overeating and constipation. Some of these vegetables contain a volatile oil which is extracted by the process of cooking, and when the vessel is covered this oil becomes concentrated and escapes with the steam penetrating the house with a strong odor. Leaving the vessel open will permit the odor to become gradually dissipated and not notice- able. If the vessel is covered the vegetables may be darker than if left open because some of the oil or other gases are redissolved. These are not good reasons for cooking them without a cover. They may look better, they may not have so much of the veg- etable taste when cooked in an open vessel, but a light color and lack of taste do not mean better veg- etables. The taste for non-starchy vegetables should be cultivated. It is usually impaired by overseasoning, and the kind of taste that the seasoning gives is ex- pected. When the taste of the vegetable becomes noticeable, it is so unusual and unexpected that it is thought undesirable and is disliked. Food Fundamentals 111 The vegetable soup should be eaten without the addition of starch to the soup. For many people it means a great sacrifice to eat soup without crackers or other starch in it. To regain and maintain health means not to indulge in this manner. If there must be something besides the vegetable pulp to chew, then add a dish of slaw to the bowl of soup. Raw cabbage will afford something to chew on while the soup is sipped, and that something is more consistent with health than starch washed down with the soup. When the energy that is now being expended to devise fur- ther obnoxious combinations is halted and turned into seeking suitable ways in which to tastily serve plain dishes of food, civilization will have been better served. Fresh, crisp cucumbers never hurt anybody that was in fit condition to receive food. A lady just re- ported to me that she ate cucumbers last evening and suffered terribly from them ; that she never ate cucum- bers in her life without suffering afterwards. Her meal last evening consisted of bread, butter, potatoes with meat gravy, strawberries, raw cabbage and cucumbers with vinegar over them. She did not eat any of the meat for fear it might harm her. Now this woman should say that she suffered from eating bread, butter, potatoes, gravy, strawberries, cabbage, cucum- bers and vinegar, all at one meal. There is no con- sistency in picking out any one of these articles and blaming it. Had she eaten the meat with the cabbage, cucumbers, strawberries, and lemon juice, she would 112 Food Fundamentals not have suffered unless she was in no condition to receive food. Had she eaten the bread, butter, pota- toes, cucumbers and cabbage, she would have gotten along without distress. 'These same people (stupid people) will eat meat, bread, potatoes, gravy, pie, and sliced cucumber in vinegar, and wash it all down with a pint or quart of buttermilk ; then, when cholera mor- bus shuts them up like a jackknife, declare that the cucumber has the devil in it." (Tilden). Cabbage is one of the best of non-starchy veg- etables. It may be eaten raw or cooked, but when cooked it should be done according to the directions for cooking non-starchy vegetables and not in grease and much water as is usually done. Cabbage may be eaten fearlessly if other sensible ideas of living and eating are followed. Raw cabbage should be a more favorite dish. It goes well with fruit in making up a fruit meal. It may be used in connection with other raw vegetables nicely. Raw onions are a good food if chewed most thor- oughly and are productive of much harm when not chewed to a liquid form. When particles of onion enter the stomach in solid form they decompose. If the onion is too hot to chew comfortably, then it should not be eaten until baked or stewed. It does not matter how young and fresh the onion is if it burns the mouth so much it will not be well masticated, then it is not fit to eat in this manner and should be cooked. Food Fundamentals 113 If radishes are chewed thoroughly they are not as harmful as is usually thought. It is haste and careless- ness in eating the radish that results in harm. The summer squash is classed as a non-starchy vegetable, while a Hubbard squash or those like it should be used as a rich starchy food. FRUIT. Fruit is a food which supplies the body with very important elements. These elements have an impor- tant part in maintaining the chemical equilibrium of the body. Acid fruits are supposed to be laxatives. It is true that they stimulate intestinal action. But not everything that stimulates movements of the in- testines should be looked upon as a laxative. When fruit, especially the acid fruits, are taken at a meal without any other food they tax the digestive appa- ratus but very little. They afford abundant liquid, stimulate peristalsis of the intestines, and give the organs a rest. The rest is of as much importance in the laxative effect as anything else. Fresh acid fruits of all kinds are cooling to the blood and should be used freely in the summer season, less freely during the mild winter weather, and not at all during cold weather. The delicate, sensitive, mucous membrane lining the stomach and intestines of some people become irritated by fruit very acid in character, if taken often. Grapefruit, lemons, cran- berries, some plums, rhubarb, strawberries, and cher- 114 Food Fundamentals ries are fruits of this character. They should be used wisely. If much sugar is used on fruit, much harm necessarily results ; therefore, any fruit or preparation of fruit that requires much sugar should be abandoned by those who would be healthful. Any cooking of fruits should be of a simple nature and without the addition of much sugar, and with no starchy ingredients. Fruit preserves, jellies and jams are "palate teasers'* of a harmful character which lead to overeating. When added to bread the combination will insure digestive disturbances. When taken, such preparations should be eaten as a part of a fruit meal. They may be taken with milk or cream, or they may be used as sweetening for fruit, either raw or cooked, that needs sweetening a little. Fruit should be used as a meal by itself, or combined with sweet milk, whole or skimmed, clabber, buttermilk, cream, either sour or sweet, cottage or cream cheese. The recognized teaching is against the use of fruit with milk, but this teaching is wrong. Do not permit yourself to accept teachings that are not supported by facts. Prove for yourself that fruit and milk may be eaten without any harmful results. If you take one bite of bread, potato, or starch of any kind with a fruit meal, then the combination is a ques- tionable one and bad results may follow. As men- tioned elsewhere, fruit may be taken at a meat or pro- tein meal, either as a dessert or as a major part of the meal. Food Fundamentals 115 While fruit and starch are not to be recommended as a combination, I am aware that they do not kill im- mediately if so taken. In truth they may be combined without noticeable harmful results. But I must re- mind the reader that many of the harmful results from eating are not so very noticeable until the effects are profound and far advanced. If such a combination be indulged occasionally, nothing serious will come from it, but if continued, bad results will follow. When fruit and starch are combined, then toasted bread or baked potato, or whatever starch is to be used should accompany such mild acid fruit as sweet apple, mildly acid apple, figs, dates, raisins, and bananas. It is a common thing for physicians to give people the idea that the acid of fruit will make their rheu- matism worse, or may bring on rheumatism, or cause acid stomach. It is common for them to give serious precautions to those afflicted with neuritis against the taking of sour fruit juices. This information is passed from house to house until it is a general impression that fruit juices are harmful in many conditions, espe- cially rheumatism and neuritis. These ideas are incorrect. It is being daily proved that one of the best classes of food for people afflicted with rheumatism and neuritis is fruit. There is no reader of this book who cannot prove it for himself, unless, perchance, he is an individual whose condition is such that he cannot eat fruit until his system is given an opportunity to rid itself from some of the accumu- 116 Food Fundamentals lated acids. If such an individual fasts or goes on a vegetable diet for a short time he can eat fruit fear- lessly if he makes up his combinations properly. When a physician tells a patient with acid stomach or rheu- matism to discontinue the use of fruit and to use soda or magnesia he is giving bee-line directions to the nearest hospital. Why is it that people who are afflicted with rheumatism or neuritis never get rid of these troubles when they stop eating fruit? Why is is that some of those who don't eat fruit will develop these troubles ? Most people eat fruit in such a style as to mag- nify their troubles, and this is true if their trouble is rheumatism or something else. It is not the fruit that does it, however, but it is the whole assembly of foods, the guests of honor being starch and fruit. It is the mixture, not the fruit. Much false teaching prevails about an acid stomach. There is nothing that will make an acid condition of the stomach sooner than fruit and starch, unless it is fruit, sugar and starch. But why blame the fruit? Leave the other food out of its company and the acid condition of the stomach does not arise. Any kind of fruit may be used. The advantages of some and the disadvantages of others have already been mentioned. The fruits of the season are always the best, if there is nothing else to make them objec- tionable. All kinds of melons are to be used as fruit. Food Fundamentals 117 If very much melon is eaten with any kind of food other than fruit there will be a souring of the food mass and indigestion. It does not require so much sugar to keep canned fruit as people think. Much of it will keep perfectly if it has but very little or no sugar in it. If a tart berry is taken into the mouth and crushed it will taste very sour. If the same berry is crushed before it enters the mouth it will not taste so sour, and if it is diluted a little with cream or milk the sour taste will nearly all disappear. These facts may be applied when eating a tart fruit of any kind. Intelligently applied this is not a device to mislead the taste and permit the taking of too much acid as it might at first appear. "Fresh fruits of all kinds are cooling foods ; hence, the reader can see how foolish it is to eat much fruit in cold weather, and, on the other hand, how foolish it is to eat the heating foods in summer. Baked apples, raisins, dates, and figs may be eaten in the mild weather of winter by people who are below normal in vitality ; those in full health can eat apples, grapes, grape-fruit, or any fresh fruit the market affords, for luncheon, but nothing else; and if there are indications of any disagreement, it may be under- stood that too much starch is being eaten at the other meals, and the amount should be reduced. The sweet fruits should be substituted for cane sugar and the candy made from it. Raisins are the best of the three sweet fruits I usually recommend for winter use — namely: raisins, dates, and figs. They should be picked off the stem and washed thoroughly with hot water, and then put in a colander to drain. This process softens the fruit and brings out the flavor. For children who can*t chew, or can't be induced to 118 Food Fundamentals chew, the raisins may be stewed, and rubbed through a fine wire sieve to remove the seeds. Take equal parts of raisins, prepared in this way, with freshly made cottage cheese; add cream, and mix. This mixture may be eaten with raw fruits — apples, California grapes, or winter pears — and followed with a glass of milk. This combination makes a splendid noonday meal for children who are not on the breast, or who are bottle-fed. Steamed apples are better than regularly baked apples. They may be steamed in a double boiler, plac- ing in the boiler without the addition of water. Those who have chronic irritation of the stomach should select sweet apples, or those that are very mildly acid, and the apples should be peeled and cored to avoid the mechanical irritation liable to be produced by these parts ; but healthy people should eat the whole apple, for every part of the apple contains important elements for body-building. Cottage cheese, factory- made cream cheese, clabber or buttermilk — in fact, all dairy products — may be eaten with fruit for break- fast, or for any other meal when nothing more is de- sired. Breakfast foods and fruit in some form, or fruit between meals following or preceding starchy meals, cause much sickness every year among children ; indeed, eating between meals and eating unsuitable mixtures lay the foundation on which atmospheric, local, and domestic influences build endemics and epidemics. It is a mistake to eat any kind of bread with fruit, although it is done by nearly everybody ; but we should not forget that there is a world of sickness, and there must be a reason for it. Hundreds of thou- sands of doctors and healers are devoting their entire time to professionally caring for the sick; millions of dollars are invested in institutions for the care of the sick. This certainly indicates that there is a lot of un- necessary sickness, and it can't exist without a cause ; for nature is continually at work fighting back evil influences. Every moment man's life is attended by Food Fundamentals 119 health-imparting influences; his health uplift is so great that he should enjoy continuous health, if it were not for his hundreds of bad habits, many of which he knows about, but fails to shun, and many more he knows nothing about. The mixing of fruit and bread, or other foods made from grains, is one mistake which, when joined with others, helps to de- velop disease. Many people declare they can't eat fruit because it hurts them. There are many reasons why this is true. Those who eat bread, or bread and potatoes, or bread, potatoes, and rice, or who have from two to six, and even more, varieties of the decidedly starchy foods at every meal, are troubled with acid digestion. They not only have an acid stomach, but their mouths are acid ; the secretions in the bowels are acid most of the time; there is often colitis, proctitis; and women have an acid leucorrhea. These subjects have rheumatism or neuralgia, and they are very nervous; sleep is broken; when they eat fruit, the fruit acid increases their nervousness; and if they have rheumatism, the fruit acids increase the pain and general discomfort. If these patients drop all the decidedly starchy foods for a time, they will improve, and soon be able to take fruit acids with a relish and without discomfort." (TiLDEN). Rhubarb is a poor fruit. It is irritating to the mucous membranes if taken in quantities, or very often. The final result of eating much rhubarb is con- stipation, and this is surely true when taken with starch. It may be used as a fruit, but its use should be limited. It usually calls for more sugar than is good for the individual who uses it. Honey should be used on rhubarb instead of sugar. 120 Food Fundamentals For the best understanding of how tomatoes are to be used by those following the ideas presented in this book they are to be classed as a fruit. They may well be spoken of as a fruit-vegetable. In all I say of fruit I include tomatoes. In all I say of non-starchy vegetables, tomatoes are not included. By classing them as a fruit it becomes plain that they are not to be used in combination with starch. The fact that they are an acid fruit which is vegetable in nature gives them a first place in combination with protein and especially meat. Tomatoes are one of the foods that are best taken raw. When canned it is best to take them as they come from the can without re-heating. They are made unfit for food when mixed with starch preparations, as a dressing of flour and milk, or the addition of crackers to tomato soup, or to the tomatoes when pre- pared as a vegetable. They should be regarded as one of the best of foods and have an important place on any table, or as a part of any general diet. Apples are one of the choicest of fruits. They should be taken as a fruit meal or as a part of a fruit meal. They are not to be eaten between meals and at bed-time. People who think apples keep them from being constipated find that they do not always do so. One meal each day of fruit alone will come nearer doing so than apples at bed-time, but if wrong habits of living are the cause of the constipation this will be only temporary. Food Fundamentals 121 I know of but one use for vinegar and that is to put up pickles. Those who know of any other method of putting them up can do entirely without vinegar. Lemon juice can take its place in every other way. Vinegar should not be used because it delays digestion. It does more than delay digestion ; it stops it until the vinegar is overcome with stomach secretions. FAT. About fourteen per cent of the body weight is fat. It is stored up in the body as a reserve food; it fur- nishes a part of the heat energy and is rather impor- tant in this respect; it is a protein saver, and by this we mean that the more fat we use as food the less pro- tein is needed — when the fat is oxidized the protein is held in reserve. Foodstuff containing fat, starch or sugar is worked over to form the fat as it appears in the body. We don't know which of these substances gives the body most work to convert them into fat as it appears in the body. Olive oil is probably the fat most easily digested. For this reason it has its record as a good thing to produce fat. But if one takes more fat than his sys- tem demands or handles it will create digestive dis- turbances that will make him poor. Butter is next to olive oil and being more palatable is much preferred. 122 Food Fundamentals People should know that from the standpoint of purity and health oleomargarine is as valuable as butter, and as acceptable to the digestive system. As a medium for cooking it probably surpasses any other fat. When butter is high in price, it should be used in its stead, nothing will be lost, and the saving in money is con- siderable. Ignorance and prejudice are the two things that keep the price down, however, so this advantage will not always remain. To heat fat makes it more susceptible to elements of decomposition. Fats that have been heated and reheated are not suitable for use; they easily become rancid in the stomach. Fried fats are unsuitable for eating. The presence of fats in foods or in the stomach with other foods results in much slower and more diffi- cult digestion. There is no doubt it has a place in the dietary and a wise use of fat will be healthful. FRAGMENTARY IDEAS ABOUT MISCELLANE- OUS FOODS. Milk is a questionable food for some people. There is no doubt that some adults will handle milk more perfectly and with greater ease than others. This must be determined by the individual. Milk is not a good food for sickly people. The good results that has been gained by the use of milk in sickness is due to its being better than other diets frequently used. Milk is better than milk toast, or toast and meat broth, or toast and eggs, or many other more complex diets commonly prescribed for the sick. Food Fundamentals 123 It is a prevailing idea that sick people must have food to keep up their strength. Physicians think this is true, and reasoning that milk is the most simple food that will supply all the elements of the body, it naturally is used a great deal in illness. But its very complexity, the very fact that it does contain so many different elements, unfits it for food for the sick and makes it of less value as a food in sickness than a food more simple. Milk should be avoided by those who are of a bilious temperament, and by bilious temperament is meant the temperament of one who has such an accumulation of poisons that the liver is frequently overcome. Malted milk is less nutritious than whole cow*s milk. It is a lighter diet than ordinary milk and for this reason is a better diet for the complaining. The mental attitude toward it creates a large part of its value for it is usually supposed to be a very nutritious food, and because it is easier digested than whole milk a patient will get along better on it. This, how- ever, is because it is less nutritious. It is more taste- ful when hot than cow's milk, an advantage not to be ignored. Malted milk affords a very suitable warm drink with fruit or starch meals, but it is a food and should be regarded as a part of the meal. Home-made ice cream is not only a pleasing food but a good one. The only criticism to be made of it is that it is cold, and if it is permitted to melt in 124 Food Fundamentals the mouth before swallowing, much of that objection is removed. Anything cold taken into the stomach during or after a meal will delay digestion and bring on disturbance. So people with weak digestion should use wisdom in eating ice cream. It is difficult to buy good ice cream. Starch and gelatine used to make it firm detracts from its harm- less qualities. The abuse of su^ar results in much disaster to health. The sugar found in honey, fruit and starches is the form of sugar best for the body. Honey is the only concentrated sugar that can be used with wisdom. It must be used sparingly. Raisins, figs, dates and prunes contaii^ much fruit sugar. Fruit sugar is rich in that form of sugar known as levulose. In this form sugar is assimilated by the body without further digestion or change. Honey contains much levulose. Cane sugar must be changed a time or two before it has reached the form of levulose, and until it has reached that form it ferments very easily. When eaten in cakes, cookies, doughnuts, fruit preserves, as seasoning or sweetening to any food, as candy or syrup, cane sugar reaches the stomach in a form that readily ferments. It stays in that form as long as it is in the stomach and usually sets up fermen- tation. Cane sugar has no place in the stomach. Even small amounts should be banished from the diet of one who is ill. Food Fundamentals 125 When it is understood that the final products of starch digestion is sugar, and a large part of the final products of digestion of fruit is sugar, then it can be seen that there is enough of that material furnished the body without the addition of cane sugar in the concentrated form. It should be made clear that every bite of potato, every bite of bread, every bite of any wheat product, or any form of starch means that a little sugar has been put into the sys- tem, and then it will be realized that very much of the money spent for cane sugar is spent for the build- ing of disease. Sugar is a protein saver, and by that we mean the more sugar used the less protein is needed. "The fact that the starch of cereals is, in the process of digestion, converted into sugar, has led many persons to suppose that by eating of cane-sugar, the task of the digestive organs is lightened ; in other words, they assume that cane-sugar, being a predi- gested form of starch, will be more easily assimilated and is better adapted to the system than starch itself. This is an error, the facts being the very opposite. The teaching of Physiology on this point indicates that cane-sugar in the stomach is in the wrong place. Cane-sugar in any form, as in maple syrup, candies, bon-bons, preserves, etc., is specially prone to ferment within the stomach. And cane-sugar would never be found, as such, in the stomach provided it were thor- oughly insalivated in the mouth, for the specific action of the saliva upon it is to convert it into another form of sugar which does not readily ferment in the stomach. Predigested starch usually means malt-sugar. Malt- sugar differs entirely from cane-sugar, and partic- 126 Food Fundamentals ularly is this distinction noticeable in the manner in which the stomach treats the two sugars, especially as it relates to their fermentation. It is interesting to notice that while cane-sugar so readily ferments, yet on the other hand in solu- tions of from fifteen to twenty per cent and higher it prevents this very same process of fermentation or souring from occurring in other substances. Hence the use of cane-sugar in preserving fruits." (Sager.) Bran is not a food but it may be used with foods to supply bulk. It is not the easiest thing for the nervous system and the muscles to move along the intestines, so it must be used with wisdom. Bran may clog in the intestines, and often does, to the injury of the one who depends on it to free the bowels of clogged material. One who is very ill should not take bran for the sake of affording the intestines a bulk to work on. If any food should be administered it will be fruit juices and clabber and depend on them and osteopathic treatment to rid the bowels of accumulations. Plenty of water should accompany the bran to in some degree prevent the drying of the food bulk as it passes along the intestines. This is important. Kellogg uses mineral oil in this connec- tion, but I do not favor the use of mineral oil. Laxa, a Kellogg product composed of bran and agar agar, is a very useful substance. It is to be used just the same as bran. Bran is not a severe irritant nor is it a laxative. It affords a bulk of cellulose which is indigestible and which remains to pass along with the waste and Food Fundamentals 127 refuse the entire length of the intestines. If it is irritating to some delicate mucous membranes so would the fiber of vegetable foods irritate them. When taken with a light meal bran has a tendency to prevent overeating, but when taken with a full meal of the heavier foods it may tend to overeating, though not always. It should be taken by those people who are con- stipated when they are eating a meal which does not afford much cellulose, especially a light meal of fruit and milk. When one is around at their work and on a special diet in which there is little bulk after digestion has been accomplished, bran may be used. It should be taken with the meal and in the quantity needed. After being taken off the special diet the continuance of bran will depend upon what ideas are being followed to establish normal functioning of the intestines. The more one is able to accomplish without the use of bran and such stuffs the greater physician he is. The osteopath will find less use for bran than other practitioners because of the good re- sults gained by his special treatment. But that phy- sician who has not mastered its use can learn to be more helpful to his patients. Bran bread or bran of any kind with wheat or flour in it should be regarded as starch. Bran may be taken at any meal. AIR. Too little attention is given to ventilating the body internally and externally. The digestion of 128 Food Fundamentals some people becomes more perfect as the chest ex- pansion is increased. Foods requiring much oxygen for assimilation are much better handled by those with large chest expansion and those who work in the open air. Meat and foods made from grain are of this kind — the rich proteins and the rich starches. Most people recognize that when working they can digest more food and feel the need of it. This is not wholly dependent on the breaking down of muscle tissue, but quite a little on the more complete oxida- tion of the food in the tissues as a result of breathing more air. Catarrh of the throat and nose is made worse and kept in existence by breathing air that is too warm. Office buildings, public buildings, hospitals, homes, are all kept overheated. I . cannot overstate the harm that arises from this custom. The body should be so clothed that the skin will be ventilated. Underwear should not be too heavy and close-fitting. Woolen underwear should not be used at all, not even by those with rheumatic tendencies. Linen or light cotton underwear serves well. The legs and sleeves may be a little longer and the weight a little heavier during the cold weather than those used for summer, but the difference should not be much. In this climate no change should be made in the fall season until the cold weather has come to stay, and the same should be true in the spring. The skin will react to the first cold days if given a chance. If one is a little Food Fundamentals 129 cold those days he will not catch cold, but will be a little uncomfortable. The skin will become thicker at once and the hairs on it will grow rapidly, provided warmer clothing is not put on. And the bed clothing should be changed on the same plan. Woolen blankets may be used with greater consistency than woolen underclothing. But they should be used only in the coldest weather. Night robes should be loose fitting, and too much covering should be avoided. Exposing one's lungs and bronchial tubes while sleeping to the coldest air of winter weather is not a good measure. It is not so bad when one is active. A room with enclosed walls having many windows and properly ventilated is better than the open sleeping porch. Putting the window down at the top and permitting the window shade to come down over the open space does not properly ventilate the room. The window and the shade may be up from the bottom to much better advantage; then screens may be placed so as to prevent currents of air being directed on the occu- pants. Some heat may be in the room when the tem- perature is lowest, but this does not mean that the windows are to be closed and the room kept warm. The best ventilation for a room is obtained when at- tention is given to conducting the air that is in the room outside rather than bringing fresh air from the outside into the room. This is best done by air shafts or flues. If the foul air is taken out of a room there is little doubt about fresh air gaining entrance. 130 Food Fundamentals Care of the skin is a health measure of first importance. Bathing, rough towel rubbing, flesh-brush rubbing, are measures that can be applied all the year around and bring better results than some fad idea carried out spasmodically. A sponge bath night and morning, followed with much rubbing, accomplishes the desired results. How cold this bath should be de- pends on how much the skin is injured to this kind of measure, and the degree of rebound or reaction that follows, the age, state of health, etc. Whether a cold tub bath is a good measure depends on many things and as a rule will not be properly applied by very many people. Air baths are excellent and can be carried out very nicely as a daily measure for a while in the morn- ing and evening, if enough thought is given to the mat- ter. The bath and brisk rub should immediately fol- low cleansing the teeth and drinking cold water. Then the clothing should not be put on until every toilet measure or other morning duty is attended to that may be carried out in the sleeping or dressing rooms. The gown should not be put on at once in the evening when the clothing is removed, but a cool sponge bath, a rub, and numberless little duties that are usually carried out before undressing may be attended to while nude. It is daily attention to the skin the year around that counts, and this is why it is necessary to adopt suitable measures. •Food Fundamentals 131 WATER. About 65% of the body is composed of water. It serves as a solvent for the solid foodstuffs; it aids in the removal of waste products, and also in the removal of heat from the body; it assists in bringing about certain important chemical changes, especially those relating to digestion of food. *To accomplish these ends it must be drunk in sufficient quantity. It is a well recognized fact that most people in the United States drink too little water, from which various ills result.'* (Long). I frequently tell my patients they should take enough water to keep the urine clear. And excepting the first voided in the morning, this should be true. The rule may be help- ful to some, but a clear urine may be passed by one who is drinking very little water! It is impossible to make a fixed rule. One or two pints should be taken in the morning on arising, at least thirty minutes be- fore other food is eaten. Further water drinking during the day may be largely confined to times when the stomach is nearest empty. Drinking a reasonable amount at mealtime is not a bad practice unless the food is washed down by it. Drinking abundant water is a healthful measure, but just as food or drugs do not cure disease, neither does water cure anything. And this is as true of mineral water as any other. Attention must be directed to the difference be- tween drinking water and food. Grape juice, or any fruit juice, or any kind of soup or milk, is a food 182 Food Fundamentals and should not be taken "in a haphazard way, between meals and at mealtime, mixed with any and all sorts of foods." (Tilden.) Again, Tilden remarks: "I do not think there should be a limit to drinking; only those, however, who eat too much and of too hearty foods, or use too much of condiments, will have an uncontrollable thirst, and only those who eat and drink inordinately will suffer from the heat of the summer months. Cold drinks and ices may be used at the close of a meal, but after digestion is fairly under way, cold drinks or ices should not be taken into the stomach until digestion is completed." If one takes a very cold drink after eating he delays digestion until the stomach heats up the food and water. If his system is capable of the load, he makes no complaint, and if he suffers from indiges- tion he does not blame the ice water. Water may be taken cool or warm as desired, but not very hot or very cold. If cold water chills in winter, take it warm. All liquids other than water should be sipped. They are foods. People take fluids into the stomach much hotter and colder than they think. If drinking a warm fluid, let it touch the skin surface of the upper lip and notice how much hotter it is to this surface than it is when passed to the inside of the lip and mouth. The fluid has not cooled, but the nerves of sensation has decreased. This little test will save many people from stomach trouble, for many take fluids too hot, and this one thing will keep up their trouble Food Fundamentals 133 in spite of other reasonable treatment and care. This little test illustrates well how trouble may exist in the stomach without pain. The hot fluid that causes pain to the edge of the lip may be held in the mouth without any sensation of pain, and as it advances into the stomach the sensation becomes less acute. SALTS. There are many different salts in the make-up of the human body. And they are important as a food. They appear as chlorides, phosphates, sulphates, and carbonates of calcium, sodium, potassium and mag- nesium. Common table salt, sodium chloride, is an alkali. If the style of eating is correct there is no need of an additional amount of this salt. But the style of eating usually followed must deprive the body of a sufficient amount of many of the salts. If the quantity is abundant there is lack of balance between the different salts. "Hard and fast lines cannot be drawn on the use of salt. Or perhaps it would be better for me to say they can be drawn, but should not; for the vegetable foods — especially those made from grain, rice, peas, beans, and potatoes — carry a large amount of potash, and salt is needed to decompose an excess of potash intake. Phosphate of potash is a constituent of muscles and of the blood corpuscles, but it is an abnormal con- stituent of the blood serum and has a bad influence on the heart. 134 Food Fundamentals Potash belongs to the muscle, and soda to the blood. Potash and soda decompose each other. This being a great chemical truth, it is not strange that vegetarians have a desire for salt ; and it is a physiological fact that those who eat largely of vegetables should eat salt. Why ? Because the potash in vegetables will be cumu- lative unless enough salt is taken to neutralize. Potash- bearing food causes the excretion of the soda and the demand for salt; under such circumstances it should be supplied, for the body requires it. A chemically pure salt, or chloride of sodium, is least harmful; but it should not be forgotten that its greatest harmfulness comes from stimulating an un- natural appetite and forcing the consumption of too much food. Salt enables those who use it to overeat, and the habit will not be overcome until the desire for salt is overcome. The mineral element in food is of as great impor- tance as the albuminous element. Tissue cannot be built without the tissue — or food — salts which fur- nish the skeletal or structural elements." (Tilden.) No doubt the different salts are important as building material. But in my opinion they are more important in keeping a proper chemical balance, and as conductors of electricity in the body, and when supplied by vegetables and fruits the pure filtered water that accompanies them is a valuable factor. Table salt is used very much to excess. The quantity should be limited. This is a matter of training, or correcting the bad habit. Foods that once did not taste well without salt, taste better without it when the taste for plain foods is developed. Food Fundamentals 135 INDULGENCES. Throughout this book I have frequently sanc- tioned the use of a questionable food and advised against its frequent use. This is more of a concession than recommendation. People are not going to give up the use of these favorite dishes altogether, and I consider it wise to say how they may be used with the least harm. When I say that pickles, corn- bread, shortcake, etc., should not be used too fre- quently the statement is a relative one. If one in- dulges in pickles today they should be feeling quite well before they should permit themselves to eat pancakes or shortcake. Any indulgences of this nature must depend upon one's ability to properly handle them, and it should always be kept in mind that pain is not an indicator in these matters — the indicator may be one of many, many things less noticeable than pain. One cannot eat pancakes every morning for weeks without doing himself injury. They should not be taken oftener than once or twice a week. This is true of cornbread and of many different combinations that tax the digestive powers and the nervous system heavily. If one eats pancakes or cornbread for break- fast he should not eat baked beans for supper that day. The eating for a day should be studied and watched even more than for any one meal. 136 Food Fundamentals Hot cakes may compose a good meal, but not as usually taken. The cakes must be made of good material and thoroughly light and granular instead of being heavy and pasty. They should be eaten with butter, and if anything additional is to be used on them, it should be a little honey. No syrup of any kind. Enough pancakes followed with a glass or two of milk should be taken for the meal, though raw non-starchy v€(getables as lettuce or cucumbers or radishes may be used. Strawberry shortcake, peach cobbler, apple dump- lings, plum pudding, fruit pie^ and any starch and fruit mixture may be spoken of under one head as a bad combination, unfit for the complaining stomach. The best way to eat this kind of food is to make the entire meal of it and milk, with raw non-starchy vegetables, sipping the milk after eating a generous helping of the mixture. It should be used as a light meal and should not be repeated too often. If there is the slightest sign of disturbance after eating a meal of this kind the next meal should be omitted or it should consist of fruit only or raw vegetables only. Eating according to the regular routine should not be re- sumed until all symptoms have disappeared. If a child should be at a table where this kind of food is displayed, and if it is a part of the plan to give it this food, then it is a mistake to withhold it until the child has eaten a full meal of other kinds Food Fundamentals 137 of food, for overeating is then inevitable. Permit the child to eat freely of the fruit mixture, then sip a glass or two of milk, and eat raw vegetables, if it desires them. Make the entire meal of the fruit mixture, milk, and vegetables. This usually satisfies the child's desires and is much better for it than a full meal of bread, butter, mashed potatoes, chicken, gravy, etc., and then a piece of pie or a dish of some fruit mixture, as strawberry shortcake. Pies other than fruit pies may be used as a des- sert for a starch meal, but it is better to eat them in the same manner as a fruit pie — make them the basis of a meal of which milk and raw vegetables may form a part. Custard pie, banana custard pie, or chocolate pie are among those more appropriate as a dessert with a starch meal than the fruit pie. In this manner many questions arising about the use of puddings and many mixtures may be answered. It is not absolutely necessary to do away with all these delicacies, but it is necessary to give them a suit- able place in the dietary of the healthy and no place in the dietary of the sickly. Candy has already been spoken of as an unsuitable food. The sick must not indulge in it at all. When taken by those who are well or in fair health it should form a part of a fruit meal. Candy will go with fruit better than with any other food, and children should not be permitted to take it between meals nor with any other kind of a meal. 138 Food Fundamentals Sauer Kraut may be used as a part of a meat meal occasionally, and some people may use it quite frequently. I have not used this in a dietary way enough to know of its limitations, but I am inclined to think if the cabbage is properly chewed and if it is kept free from vinegar, the combination of kraut with protein is a good one. Picklesy sweet or sour, may be used with a meat meal. They are a treacherous food, however, and only those who are well should indulge and that not too fre- quently. The pumpkin is a treacherous food that should not be used by one who has weak digestion or is sickly in any way. It sours readily when exposed to the air and ferments easily in the stomach. COMBINATIONS. The general character of the secretions of the mouth is alkaline. The general character of the secre- tions of the stomach is acid. Starch is best digested in an alkaline medium and protein in an acid medium. If starch is taken into the mouth and chewed thor- oughly the digestive process is well begun, and the resulting product passed into the stomach is not likely to ferment. When it reaches the stomach, it will meet with a digestive fluid much less acid in nature than if protein were to be digested. We have good reasons to believe that for a time at least the character Food Fundamentals 139 of the stomach secretions will be alkaline, or poten- tially so, when starches alone are present. Likewise when it passes to the intestines the digestive secre- tions are adapted to this special work. If protein is taken into the mouth the secretions excited by its presence are less alkaline in character than those excited by starch. They are probably neutral in nature and no digestion of the meat takes place. The more the meat is chewed, the more per- fect will the neutralization of the secretions be. If only chewed a little they may remain alkaline and have an influence toward the decomposition of the meat. If chewed thoroughly there is a probability of the saliva becoming neutral or acid in nature. When the meat is passed into the stomach the secretions be- come decidedly acid to meet the conditions needed for its digestion, and in turn the secretions thrown into the intestines and formed by them are specially suited for meat digestion. Any food, of whatsoever nature, if taken by it- self, will call forth a ready response from each and every part of the digestive tract to meet the demands of the occasion. Does it not appear that if a bite of rich starchy food like bread or potato is taken into the stomach together with a bite of meat or any rich protein food, the stomach is required to accomplish two things 140 Food Fundamentals diametrically opposite? At best the work of the stomach under such circumstances is far from per- fect. And if starch is ingested at the same time with fruit or any acid food is it not apparent that the work of digestion is certain to be slower and impaired ? If starch is taken with sugar the secretions are too abundant and of a different kind and quality be- cause of the sugar, and the digestion of the starch is imperfect. If protein is taken with sugar it makes one of the worst combinations. None seems to produce more disastrous effects. The sugar seems to promote de- composition instead of permitting normal digestion. One of the first steps in the digestion of milk is the curdling of it by the acids of the stomach. The acids of fruit has a similar action on milk and when taken with it they make it easier for the stomach to digest the milk. The repulsive idea of sour milk and the curdling of milk on fruit are ideas resulting front wrong teaching. When one proves for himself that the combination is a suitable one and that no bad feeling results from eating sour fruit and milk to- gether the combination is pleasing. In the early history of the human race life was comparatively simple and food combinations were almost unknown. Now life is complex, depleting the nervous system and unfitting it for the work of diges- Food Fundamentals 141 tion, and at the same time the usual dietary is an in- discriminate hodgepodge. The study of proper food combination plays a great part in the return of the sick to health. It cannot be given a second place. The rich starchy foods and acids are not to be combined. And this statement must be taken at full value. Those who are well may do many wrong things for a time or all their life, but this fact does not enter into the matter at all. Those who are sick must not combine acids with starch if they would be well. Even the sick may not always be stricken with disturbance the minute after such a thing is done, but I am not so certain about many other things as I am about the bad results of mixing starch and acids. The world has been doing this for a long time. Scientific writers on dietetics recommend this com- bination. Physicians, nurses, hospitals, all use such mixtures. But it should be noted that the whole world is ill, and have been so for a long time. And what follows the breaking off of this combination should be observed very closely. I may not give scientific proof but the claims I make will bear investigation. The results of combining foods properly yet remains to be perceived by physicians in general, by scientific investigators, and the people. Even sick people are not ready to believe that a physician can mean that acid and starch in every form are a bad combination. They do not think it 142 Food Fundamentals is meant that such a statement should be carried out fully. They think that such combinations as orange to begin the breakfast followed by cakes or oatmeal, or bread and jelly, or bread and jam, or bread and fruit preserves, or raisin bread, or grape juice taken as a drink at a meal at which bread is eaten, or lemonade taken in the same way, — they think all such as these are exceptions, and because everybody do these things they cannot be wrong. But these are habits that are making people sickly; they are build- ing adenoids, bad tonsils, ear disturbances, headaches, and a thousand other ills. To break this habit works a hardship at first. There is no bad combination that is more universal and harder to overcome. Many who condemn others for hesitating to give up the tobacco or liquor habit will wince at giving up this bad habit, even after they are convinced it is a bad habit of eating. But the physician who knows the facts and results has no choice in the matter, he must advise the discontinu- ance of this combination. To make up meals without mixing acids and starches requires attention until the custom is established, then it requires no more atten- tion than making up meals in the usual way. Reasons For Not Mixing Starches and Fruit. Starch is best digested in an alkaline medium and the acid of fruit makes digestion slower and more imperfect. Food Fundamentals 143 Starch is a substance which ferments most easily of any food substance, and when combined with fruit acids in the heated stomach where digestion is pro- gressing slowly, fermentation to excess follows. It should be observed here that fermentation does not always mean digestion. Continuous excess of fermentation of acids and starch leads to excess of acids in the stomach and in all the fluids of the body including the lymph. This condition leads to inflammation or irritation of the nerve sheaths, and those nerves will be affected first which are deprived of full nutrition because of an osteopathic lesion. This, in part, accounts for local and general neuritis. Why Rich ProteiTis and Rich Starches Should Not Be Combined, The physiology of the digestion of these substances as given above stands out as a prominent and potent reason. Either of these classes of food affords a heavy tax on the digestive apparatus and nervous system. The two at one meal means overwork and a depletion of the nervous system, and indigestion of some nature. The combination leads to overeating when other- wise overeating might not occur. The taste and the palate are more likely to say "You have enough" at 144 Food Fundamentals a proper time, when one of these classes of food is taken, than it is when both are ingested. They have been wrongly taught; they have been imposed upon. The cellulose or refuse after digestion of either of these classes of food is but little. A large part of the bulk of a meal of either of them should be made up of non-starchy vegetables. But if the two are ingested in any quantity there is not enough room in the stomach for a proper amount of non-starchy vegetables without overdistention and overeating. We should not lose sight of the fact that starch and protein are combined by Nature in some articles of diet, like mature or dry beans and peas. But this does not alter the truth that people have digestive disturbances when they habitually eat the rich starchy foods and the rich protein foods together. There are no foods more easily taken to excess than these foods in which starch and protein is combined naturally. For this very reason special attention should be given to the foods taken at the same meal with them or taken on the same day in which they are eaten. I am not propounding some pet theory of my own. If I were I would work up a theory more pleasing to the whims of people. I am only recording observations. I am not to blame if the digestive organs show "symptoms'* when abused, but the Lord who made it holds me responsible for the truth about its action as He has given me power to discern that truth. Food Fundamentals 145 Why Fruit and Cooked Non-Starchy Vegetables Should Not Be Combined. Experience has taught me that cooked non- starchy vegetables do not combine well with fruits, and it does not matter if the fruit is raw or cooked. Un- doubtedly it is a result of the chemical change brought about by cooking of the vegetables, but the nature of this change is unknown, except that the juices are made less stable. Suitable Combinations With Rich Starchy Foods. The rich starchy foods combine nicely with the non-starchy vegetables, raw or cooked, with butter and sweet milk. The vegetables should be cooked as directed and not dressed with an acid dressing. Sour milk may be combined with starch by some people, but as a rule it is not a good combination. Suitable Combinations With Rich Protein Foods The rich protein foods combine well with the non- starchy vegetables, raw or cooked, with acid fruits, and especially well with tomatoes. Suitable Combinations With Non-Starchy Vegetables. Cooked non-starchy vegetables do not combine well if taken alone with fruit. If they are taken with meat and fruit as a meal they seem to do very well. This may be because of the greater stimulation af- forded by the meat. 146 Food Fundamentals With this exception cooked or raw non-starchy vegetables combine well with every other article of food. Suitable Combinations With Fruit, Fruit combines well with all the dairy products and in whatsoever form they may be taken ; with raw non-starchy vegetables ; sour fruits combine well with the rich protein foods. The combination of fruit with dairy products is a very healthful combination and is not likely to make one sick, as is usually supposed. The acid of the fruit is helpful in the digestion of the milk and tends to prevent the bilious condition that so often follows taking freely of milk. If milk is curdled by the addi- tion of fruit juice before it is eaten, it is no more un- healthful than to take it at a meal in which acid is taken, for the acid will be mixed with the milk in the stomach and the curdled mass would look just as bad in the stomach as out of it. There are people who would not think of putting sweet cream on cherries but will eat cherries at a meal in which they have taken cream in coffee or oatmeal. They should know that the cream in the coffee is mixed with the cherries in the stomach. These people will hold up their hands in horror when you tell them it will not kill them out- right to make a whole meal of cherries and milk, and they are more astounded when you tell them that one Food Fundamentals 147 bite of bread with a meal of fruit and milk might lead to trouble. Such an attitude is due to ignorance and wrong teaching. "There are people stupid enough to declare that milk and fruit are rank poison. These are the people who kept the world flat and fixed for ages. They will eat bread, butter, fruit, sugar and cream at meals; then more fruit between meals; and, when outraged digestion kills a child with convulsions, or gives them the *Jerry-go-mimbles' — the old-style tango dance — they throw up their hands and declare that fruit and milk, eaten together, are poison. Just what sort of a reasoning apparatus an individual has who can eat milk, fruit, and starch together, and then, when trouble comes, declare that fruit and milk caused it, I cannot tell, except that there must be something wrong with the steering gear." (Tilden.) Combination With Fats. Fats are most acceptable when taken in connec- tion with acids. But they combine well with all foods. It should be remembered that they cause the digestion of other foods to be more difficult. Miscellaneous Ideas On Combinations. Milk and meat do not make a good combination for a meal. All the reasons need not be enumerated. I cannot fully account for all the disturbance usually set up by this combination from the make-up of the two foods, but after trouble is started it is easy to see how it becomes serious. Milk is alkaline and requires abundant acid for digestion. Meat likewise requires abundant acid for its digestion. I think the presence 148 Food Fundamentals of milk retards the digestion of meat, and anything that retards the digestion of meat promotes its decom- position. If this combination is used it should be ac- companied with plenty of fruit acid, preferably that of lemon juice. Those who are of a "bilious temper- ament,'' that is, have an overworked liver, should ob- serve how quickly they suffer after eating milk and meat at a meal. Milk and eggs are a combination on the same order as meat and milk. If taken with plenty of fruit acid it will be found acceptable to those in fair health. But the sickly and the bilious will have trouble if they eat milk and eggs. Observe how the tubercular people who are of a bilious temperament lose their remaining health under a routine of this kind. Mature beans or peas contain starch and protein in abundance. It does not matter if the beans are baked or stewed, or how either of these foods are pre- pared, their nature should be kept in mind.. They are a strong food and should form the basic part of the meal of which they are a part. Raw or cooked non- starchy vegetables combine well with them, and are about the only foods that should be taken with them. Suggestions for Daily Dietary. It does not matter what the kind of labor or how hard it is no one needs three full meals in a day of Food Fundamentals 149 twenty-four hours. Two full meals with one light one, or two light ones with one full meal answer all the needs of the body for food that may arise in twenty- four hours. By light meal I mean what is spoken of elsewhere as a fruit meal, or vegetable meal. When the winter season is breaking into spring and the system is ladened with an oversupply of heat- forming foods because the supply of green or non- starchy vegetables has been scarce or neglected, fruit meals or non-starchy vegetable meals should be taken twice a day until all evidence of accumulating poisons has disappeared. That my use of certain terms may not be confus- ing I will define them : A starch meal is one made up of the rich starchy foods combined properly with other foods. A protein meal is one made up of a rich protein food properly combined with other foods. A fruit meal is made up of fruit and other foods combined properly. A vegetable meal is one made up of non-starchy vegetables, or non-starchy vegetables and sweet milk. A full meal is a starch or protein meal. A light meal is a fruit or vegetable meal. When the summer heat is trying and reduces the vitality of the nervous system, but one full meal a day should be taken with one or two light meals. It is a most excellent plan to take but two meals a day, but this plan is not to be followed by those who overeat as a result of it. When eating two meals a day one 150 Food Fundamentals should be a full meal and one a light meal. For one day the full meal should be a starch meal and the next day the full meal should be a protein meal. And when one is not in full health, when they are trying to overcome disease and at the same time carry on the usual duties of life, a plan of full and light meals must be adjusted to the needs of the case. If one eats a heavy meal of any kind the next meal should be omitted or be a light one. A full meal of starch may follow a full meal of protein, or the reverse, provided that a light meal of fruit or non- starchy vegetables precedes and follows these two full meals. But two successive full meals of protein or of starch should be avoided. On a day when one eats of heavy food like corn bread or baked beans the other meals should be light, unless the amount of such heavy food eaten is small. A heavy meal of any kind of food or a lighter meal of some heavy food may unfit the stomach and digestive apparatus to receive food for a longer period than to the next meal time, and if it does, no matter what is taken it will become a poison instead of food. If the stomach is not in condition to receive food noth- ing can be put into it that will be properly digested. Fruit Meals. The following ideas are merely suggestions and only a limited number are given in order to clarify Food Fundamentals 151 some point that otherwise might be obscure to some reader. These are called fruit meals because the basis of the meal is fruit. Not everything mentioned need be used for the meal, but if anything is to be omitted it is not the fruit. Such a meal may be used for break- fast, luncheon, or the evening meal. But it is the opinion of the author that the lightest meal of the day should be the breakfast. No rule of this kind can be made to fit the needs of all. There are individuals who may better adjust themselves to circumstances by making the breakfast the heavy meal. When fruit is such that it is relished without sweetening no sugar or sweetening should be added. When sweetening is necessary, honey is to be pre- ferred to cane sugar. If much sugar is added to fruit it becomes an irritant and unfits the stomach to re- ceive food at the next meal time. It is best to make a meal of one kind of fruit though a mixture of different fruits is not to be re- garded as a bad combination. A very sweet fruit will combine with another sweet fruit better than with a very acid fruit. But the real danger in mixing dif- ferent kinds of fruit to form a meal is that one is more likely to overeat. As much fruit as is desired should be used, if overeating is avoided. When milk is taken with fruit it may be used on the fruit or sipped sep- arately. 152 Food Fundamentals 1. Sliced oranges, all that are desired. One glass of milk. 2. Uncooked prunes, milk, and cottage cheese. 3. Baked apples, uncooked raisins, milk. 4. Oranges, apples, andi pineapple cut up to- gether. Buttermilk, as much as desired. 5. Cherries, sweet or sour milk, or cream. 6. Stewed prunes, sweet milk, cream cheese. 7. Baked bananas and sweet milk. 8. Strawberries, cream, lettuce dressed with salt. 9. Raw apples, raw tomatoes, raisins, cream or milk. ^ 10. Berries, jelly, cream. 11. Plain tomato soup, and cooked fruit of any kind with or without sweet or sour milk. 12. Dewberries, tomatoes, lettuce; eaten sepa- rately or combined and dressed with sour cream, or with milk and lemon juice. 13. Cantaloupe, berries, and whipped cream. 14. Watermelon, all that is desired. 15. Watermelon, lettuce, and tomatoes. 16. Any raw fruit and any raw non-starchy veg- etables. 17. Raisins can be added to any of the above menus. Food Fundamentals 153 18. Cheese of any kind can be added to any of the above menus, provided the quantity is limited, and provided, further, that if any discomfort or ill-feeling follows it serves as a warning against the continuance of the use of cheese. 19. Properly made ice cream may be used with any of the above menus. Vegetable Meals. 1. Vegetable soup made as directed and eaten without the addition of anything. 2. Vegetable soup to which is added raw cab- bage chopped fine. 3. Cabbage, carrots, and lettuce chopped to- gether and dressed with salt and cream or cream and lemon juice. 4. Cabbage and sweet onions chopped together and dressed with any fruit juice desired. Pineapple juice or grape juice are pleasing. 5. Lettuce, celery, tomatoes and cucumber dressed as in three or four. 6. Lettuce, sweet onions, radishes^ and fresh grapes chopped together. 7. Any group of cooked vegetables. They may be cooked together if desired, especially those that are known to improve in taste when cooked together. Parsnips may be stewed until done, then browned in the oven and eaten with butter as the basis of a veg- 154 Food Fundamentals etable meal, the parsnips to assume the place of the usual bread. 8. Raw turnips sliced and spread lightly with pimento cheese, or cottage cheese. 9. Turnips and apples spread lightly with jelly. 10. Sour milk or a slight amount of sweet milk may be combined with either of the above menus. Protein Meals. 1. Stewed chicken, creamed onions, green beans, and a salad of lettuce, celery, cucumbers and lemon juice. Dessert of berries. 2. Roast lamb, corn on cob, cauliflower, and a salad of lettuce, pineapple, and raw apple, dressed with salt and lemon juice. 3. Vegetable soup, two eggs, stewed turnips, spinach and slaw. 4. Roast beef, sliced tomatoes, carrots either raw or cooked, asparagus, cranberries. 5. Baked beans and a vegetable salad. 6. Baked fish, tomatoes, egg-plant, and a veg- etable salad. 7. Custard, canned corn, green peas, vegetable salad, and a dessert of any fruit-whip. 8. Nuts, a vegetable salad to which is added grapes or berries and a dressing of sour cream. 9. Vegetable soup, cream cheese, cooked non- starchy vegetables, and a vegetable salad. Food Fundamentals 155 10. Occasionally ice cream may be used as a des- sert for a protein meal, but the usual dessert should be sour fruits or a salad. 11. A fruit salad may be used instead of a veg- etable salad when desired, if one keeps in mind that the raw vegetables are quite necessary in a diet. Starch Meals, 1. Toasted, yeastless bread, butter, green corn, green peas, lettuce with salt dressing. 2. Fresh soda biscuit, butter, honey and milk, which is sipped after eating the bread. 3. Baked potato, butter, cooked onions, cooked turnips, a salad of lettuce, celery, and cucumbers dressed with salt. 4. Hot baking-powder biscuit, asparagus, cauli- flower, dessert of ice cream. 5. Dry toast, creamed new potatoes, spinach, asparagus, chopped cabbage and lettuce. 6. Shredded wheat biscuit, butter, cooked corn, cooked onions, raw cabbage dressed with juice from the cooked com and onions. 7. Corn bread, butter, egg-plant, beets, lettuce, dessert of ice cream. 8. Plain cake of any kind, salad of lettuce, cab- bage, cucumbers, dressed with salt, glass of milk. 9. Toasted bread, butter, bacon, glass of milk. 156 Food Fundamentals 10. Cookies, two cooked non-starchy vegetables, ice cream. 11. Cereal flakes eaten dry with melted butter, raw vegetables, dessert of cup-custard, or banana pie. 12. Three medium sized hot griddle cakes, syrup or honey, milk. Lettuce may be added if desired. 13. Well made and baked doughnuts, raw veg- etables, milk. 14. Ice cream is the choice dessert for starch meals. Occasionally custard or custard pie, chocolate pie, pineapple, prune-whip, baked apple, or baked bananas with whipped cream may be used as the des- sert by those who are not ill. Mentis for a Day, In general the proposition may be stated thus: One meal is to be a fruit meal, another a starch meal, and the other a protein meal. The starch and pro- tein meals to contain much of the non-starchy veg- etables. Breakfast: Fruit, or fruit and dairy products, or fruit and raw vegetables, or fruit, dairy products, and raw vegetables. Luncheon: Meat and non-starchy vegetables. Fruit. Dinner : Starch and non-starchy vegetables. The order may be changed, thus : Breakfast: Number 3 of the fruit meals. Luncheon: Number 4 of the protein meals. Dinner: Number 1 of the starch meals. Food Fundamentals 157 DRINKS AT MEAL TIME. If one chews the food well and eats deliberately there will be but little demand for liquid at meal time. Most certainly it is a serious fault to wash food down with any liquid. Many persist in thinking they are not guilty of this error when they are. If one swal- lows one morsel after another until there is a little discomfort which is immediately relieved by a swal- low of some liquid, he is washing the food down, he is not chewing enough nor eating deliberately. If one cannot eat a meal without taking fluid during the meal he is bolting the food. The liquid taken at meal time should be taken because it is relished and for no other reason. Plain water is the choice of drinks, and any other drink is a food-drink. Hot water two-thirds, milk or cream' one-third with a slight amount of honey as sweetening makes a pleasing and healthful drink. It is often called hot-water tea, or cambric tea. Postum is a cereal drink relished by some and may be used in reasonable quantities without harm. There is a ten- dency to sweeten it too much and then take too much of it. Milk may be used as a food-drink if it is sipped and not drunk like water. Milk should be used only with such meals as those with which it well combines to make a part of the meal. Malted milk can be used just as cow's milk. Fruit juices weakened with water 158 Food Fundamentals may be used as a drink when they form a part of a fruit meal. The sour fruit juices may form a drink to accompany a meat or protein meal. Lemonade may be used with a fruit meal but it should not be iced or ice-cold. All drinks should be taken either cool or warm but neither cold nor hot. There are other fruit drinks that are as palatable as lemonade. Pineapple juice, grape juice, apple juice, berry juice all make a delicious drink and go properly with a fruit meal. Jelly reduced to the consistency of a fruit juice by the addition of hot water, then taken hot or cooled, makes a tasty fruit drink. Any fruit juice, or jelly, melted in hot water, may be mixed with sweet or sour milk to make a tasty drink as a part of a fruit meal. Lemon juice stands out prominently as a favorite fruit juice to accompany a protein meal, and this is why it is invariably used on the salads. USE COMMON SENSE. Those who adopt any plan of living that differs essentially from the usual custom should do so with a perfect poise among their fellows in society. It should be observed that it is the habit that kills rather than the single act. No member of a family is justified in forcing his ideas of eating to the front to the dis- comfort of all the rest. People must be taught but the meal time is not the best time. If it is necessary to discuss food fundamentals at the table during a meal, Food Fundamentals 159 for the sake of teaching children and others, it should be done with kindness and consideration, and such a routine should be discontinued as soon as possible. There is no reason why one who is eating one meal with others cannot eat very much as they do and not suffer for it, unless his illness is such that they may know he dares not indulge. When one is in a physical condition to not permit any indulgence they should refuse invitations to dine with others, to attend ban- quets, social functions, etc. And when one is eating irregularly with others they should use such discretion as their good sense may dictate — they can combine their foods better than those with whom they are asso- ciating without their wisdom being observed. And if this is impossible, what is eaten should be taken with a relish instead of a grouch. A wrong combination eaten merrily is incomparable to a wrong or right com- bination with a grouch. The mental attitude is as much as right combinations. HOW TO USE DIET. It should be apparent to the thoughtful that no instructions for feeding the sick can be put down on paper. It can be stated as a general proposition uni- versally applicable that one who is prostrated with illness should have no food. But just when food should be administered in the course of an illness, and just what that food should be, and just how the chronic invalid should be fed, and the diet that should be given 160 Food Fundamentals to those who are not sufficiently ill to be in bed, are all matters that must be answered by the attending physician. There are so many things that enter into each case that cannot be foreknown or surmised that no rules can be given. It all means that the physician must prepare on the subject of diet and much of his information must be gained by experience. But the lines along which he can move in obtain- ing his information and in gaining his experience may be pointed out. In gaining experience with diet the physician need not "experiment on his patients." If he does not always know the best that can be done he can surely know what is better. His experience may be gained while doing constructive work. I should again emphasize that fragmentary infor- mation on the subject of diet does a great deal of harm. People are looking for a diet that will cure them. No one was ever cured by a diet. There is no food that will cure any known disease no matter how simple. The proper use of food may permit a person to get well where its abuse will make his immediate death sure. People don't expect to be given a diet that will cure them and use the same diet the rest of their life. They hope to be given a diet list or some special diet which they can follow for a time and be well ever after no matter how they may eat. I think it is just as great a mistake on the part of a physicfan to prescribe a special diet and then Food Fundamentals 161 not teach the individual how to live so as to avoid the trouble that has been relieved by the diet as it is for a surgeon to cut out an appendix, or tonsils, or adenoids, and then leave the patient without teaching him to get rid of the thing which caused the appendicitis, or the diseased tonsil, or the adenoids. People are too prone to be satisfied with getting rid of the disease product and still be in possession of the disease. Fasting and special diets may satisfy and benefit, but neither teaches how to live so as to avoid disease. Fasting is a measure that all physicians should learn to use and direct. No physician will serve some patients in the best way who does not know how to direct a short fast. There are times when a sick per- son should not be given one mouthful of food, not even fruit juice, but as a rule such conditions do not last long. Such occasions must be determined by the physician from his experience and knowledge. I was called to the bedside of a very sick man who had fasted himself for twenty-seven days. He recovered and was benefited by the fast, but in my opinion he could have carried on the fast for many more days without becoming prostrated, had it been carried on differently. I was summoned by a dan- gerously ill lady who had fasted for twenty-one days. She recovered and finally became stronger than for- merly, but there is no doubt she could have carried on the fast much longer had she done it wisely. I have personally conducted a number of fasts ranging from 162 Food Fundamentals thirteen to eighteen days, but I seldom do this any more. Why? Because I believe I can do better. I do not think much of a long fast. It is better and wiser than thousands of other things that are being done and accepted by the people daily, but it is not the best. When breaking a fast which has been carried on for fifteen or more days, it is better to make the first meal or the first two meals of white of egg rather than fruit juice of any kind. Then fruits may follow, but if for any reason they seem irritating use raw veg- etable juices or vegetable soup. The white of egg may be beaten, or strained through cloth and mixed with water. There are people and physicians who are preju- diced against an absolute fast even though it is a short one, and by a short fast I mean one extending from one to ten days. There are many people who have never missed a meal of food in their lives, not even when sick; they think something serious would result if they did. In my opinion there are many diseased conditions in which Nature compels a fast, though food is taken into the stomach. It is well to recall that the digestive tract from the mouth to the lower end of the intestine is a tube. It is collapsed unless distended with food or gas or some substance. It is enlarged at some places and coiled up at others. Were it straight and open one could look through it. And with these facts in mind Food Fundamentals 163 you can understand how food is outside of the body even though it is inside of the stomach or intestines. It is not a part of the body until it has passed through the intestinal wall. Now, when one is very ill the absorbing and assimilating mechanism of the mucous membrane of stomach and intestines is shut off and closed to all inquirers. It may be that not one particle of any kind of food material passes through these mem- branes. The fact that food is put into the stomach and is changed and passed on as so much poison, does not argue that any of the material is taken up by the system. It is an additional burden on the nervous system and that without recompense. This burden is placed on the nervous system when it is in most need of rest, and too often the price is death. How com- plete the refusal of the intestine to pass food through its walls at times of prostration depends on the severity of the condition and how capable and able the membranes are to respond to the dictates of the ner- vous system. But there is no doubt in my mind that not infrequently nothing but the water that may be a part of the food or that may be drunk is passed for days. And in conditions less severe some of the food may be received and the rest rejected, for it cannot be disputed that some of the cells of the body have a selective power. Unmindful of the fears of people and physicians, but solicitous for the welfare of the sick, Nature often 164 Food Fundamentals forces a fast. If food is not needed the system will hesitate about receiving it even if we see fit to put it into the stomach. If the system is so burdened with disease that it cannot make any use of food, it will do its best to reject it, though it often fails, because the protective me|chanism of the mucous membrane is broken down. This, together with the burden of getting rid of the unwelcome food, accounts for the loss of weight in sick people who continue to eat plenty of food ; for the loss of weight in those afflicted with tuberculosis while eating more than twice the usual amount of *'good nourishing food." If food given to a pneumonia patient is used to keep up the strength, why does the patient become weaker? If the food used in any fever illness is to keep up strength, why does the patient invariably become weaker until the condition which caused the fever has improved so there is no longer a fever? If food prevents weakness, why will one who has never missed a meal become weak and sick? Certainly it is not because of lack of food. The idea that missing a few meals will danger- ously weaken a sick person should be dissipated. The idea that food taken when one is feeling bad is of benefit should be corrected, for it is not the truth. If the reader will but observe closely the results in his own case, he will soon prove that food ingested when he is feeling poorly is received with a rebuke. Often a headache will disappear when food is taken; that Food Fundamentals 165 sense of weakness will vanish ; a certain buoyancy will follow, etc. The temporary stimulation and reaction gives the temporary rebound, and this is often wrongly interpreted to mean that the food was needed. A fruit-fast consists of making all the meals taken of fruit juice or the fruit itself and is a more efficient measure in every way than a long-continued, absolute fast. Many people think they are fasting when eat- ing fruit and milk regularly. I was called to the home of a patient who informed me she had begun fasting because she knew I had fasted her friend, who was sick like herself. On inquiry I learned that her breakfast was one fried eggy one slice of toast, an orange, followed by hot water. The luncheon con- sisted of one eggy one slice of bread, one-half of an orange and green onions. The dinner was one eggy one slice of bread, one-half of an orange. This was so different in quantity from her usual eating that she remarked with sincerity that she was fasting. Special Diets. Taking all food away but fruit juice or fruit is quite a different thing from no food at all. This is to be considered as a special diet or fruit-fast. There are many special diets and no one of them may be considered the best in every respect. How successful a physician is with either of them will depend upon his mastery of it. There are so many things to be learned about the reaction of food in health and sick- ness that when a physician has learned how to use any 166 Food Fundamentals one food as a special diet he has knowledge of great value, and he often concludes this special diet is a cure-all. Lemon juice diluted with water until there is no need for sugar is to be taken at the breakfast time, as much as is desired, and if none is relished, at least two glasses is given. Pineapple juice, half water, is given for the mid-day meal and the evening meal, using one- half glass or a full glass of the juice. Abundant water is to be taken between these meals of fruit juice, and a little lemon juice may be added to this water occasionally, if desired, to remove the mucus and taste from the mouth. While this measure is being carried on the bowels must be flushed with the enema of water if they do not move naturally and thoroughly. Plain water, or a little salt may be used in the enema, which should be used once or twice daily. This routine is used where the sickness is severe, but does not contradict the use of all foods. And it is used in the initial treatment of chronic conditions where a special diet is to be used for a short time, a few days or a week or two. Patients will often follow this routine and continue their regular work for a week or more. These fruit juices will keep up some activity of the intestines, and supplementing this with daily osteopathic treatment will usually insure thor- ough bowel movements. Where the patient is not confined to bed it is often wise to use bran with the fruit juices. It may be taken at meal time, one or Food Fundamentals 167 two tablespoons of it mixed with the juice. Laxa cakes may be used as is the bran — ^the quantity of bran to be determined by the needs. The physician using bran will frequently find it a nice question to decide whether emptying the intestines of waste products by the use of bran is placing more of a tax on the nervous system than the poisons that would be absorbed were the bran not used. Just as soon as the usual quantity of food is re- duced there will be a halt in the movement of the food and waste materials in the intestines. This will per- mit accumulation and absorption of poisons and may intensify the severity of the disease. To make any attempt to relieve this complication by using bran to afford bulk will be unwise if the nervous system and the muscles of the intestines fail in the task of moving the bran along. If food is taken away, or if no food is given but fruit, the waste material in the intestines will soon become comparatively free of poisons. This is why a patient, so ill that no food should be given, gets better without food. If no food is given at all the intestines will still act a little and often more than one would suppose. The waste will finally be carried into the colon and the enema will remove it. Then the further accumulation of waste will not be so full of poison, If fruit or fruit juices have been used as a special diet, when the time for a change is at hand the patient can be put on fruit for three meals a day, followed by 168 Food Fundamentals fruit for two meals and non-starchy vegetables for one, and this routine followed by fruit for one meal, buttermilk for another and starch and non-starchy vegetables for the other. Then protein may be added to the diet when suitable. But this is only one of many methods of pro- cedure. Not infrequently the patient can be put at once on a regular diet — one fruit meal, one starch meal and one protein meal. It is often a wise measure to keep the rich starchy foods away from some patients for one or two months, using fruit, vegetable and protein meals. One must understand that the patient gets some starch from the non-starchy veg- etables, so this is not a starch-free diet. Sometimes it is wise to keep the patient from rich protein foods for one or two months, using fruit, vegetable and starch meals ; and it should be remembered that there is some protein in the non-starchy vegetables, so this is not a protein-free diet. There are so many ways and details of changing a patient from a special diet of fruit that it would take a volume to enumerate many of them. There is no doubt a proper history of the way people have been living and a thorough determination of the diseased condition present often points the direction for carry- ing out the special diet and determines the foods to be eliminated for the longest time. It opens up a dis- cussion of the symptoms or diseases manifest when a patient is poisoned from decomposition of protein or Food Fundamentals 169 fermentation of starch, or a combination of the two, or whether the symptoms are governed at all by too much of one kind of food, etc. Here is a chance for research work. No one, as yet, can go very far in answering many questions of this character. Fruit and sour milk is a special diet of great value. This diet can be used for a long time and the patient remain at regular work, but it is none the less ap- plicable to some very sick patients. The fruit and sour milk may be used alternately, making a meal of one exclusive of the other, or they may be combined at each meal. There is no better sour milk than clabber. The cream may be taken from it and it may be churned with a cream-whipper into fresh butter- milk. Unquestionable buttermilk Ss quite satisfac- tory, but if it is too sour or otherwise faulty the results will not be gratifying. I do not agree with Kellogg that the results from such a diet is because the intestinal flora (germs) are changed, though, of course, that is a secondary result. The result gained by any special diet is primarily one of rest to the nervous and digestive system — it is one of rest to the whole body. There are other things that are accomplished, such as a rejuvenation of the mucous membranes and glands of the digestive tract, and one who centers their thought on germs will see any change in them as a primary good. This is a special diet of more universal applica- tion than any other. It is the special diet for many 170 Food Fundamentals chronic cases. There is much prejudice against sour milk among adults, and there are many children who reject it for one reason or another. Sometimes the mental attitude is such that it is not well to prescribe it. It is often quite possible to gain the confidence and then follow with the proper diet when the proper diet would have been refused at first. To refuse to direct a case that at first shows signs of antagonism, manifests a weakness, for often steadfastness of purpose with proper teaching is all that is needed. But the physician should be the physician ; if not, who is? He should also be a teacher of those of his clien- tele who are teachable. A patient can be taken off this special diet much as was suggested for taking them off of a fruit diet. A patient that is put on any special diet should be taught how to eat more conducive to health than their former eating was. They should be kept under ob- servation and instructions until they are following intelligently some healthful plan of eating that can be continued for the rest of their life. If no better is known, what I refer to as a regular diet — one fruit meal a day, and one starch meal, and one protein meal — may be used. This is only a central idea and when the many things that may be observed about carrying out this central idea are well understood it affords a very liberal general diet that does not build disease. Raw fruits and raw non-starchy vegetables may be used to make a very excellent special diet. The Food Fundamentals 171 vegetables may be used alone for a special diet. Any of the non-starchy vegetables that are relished raw may be used; the more common are lettuce, celery, cabbage, turnips, onions, radishes and carrots. One or more of these may be cut up and eaten with a dressing of cream and salt. They should be chewed thoroughly and the entire meal made of this one dish. Alternate meals may be made of the raw vegetable and raw fruits, if desired. The juice of raw vegetables is very bland and non-irritating to delicate and inflamed mucous mem- branes. A diet of raw vegetables is most excellent for an irritable stomach. Dr. Tilden regards raw vegetables as constipating. The juices of raw veg- etables do not excite peristalsis very vigorously because of its bland nature and the vegetables require more work for digestion than the cooked ones. But these characteristics should not cause them to be regarded as constipating. If one does not overeat of them they will not constipate, though constipation may be present from other causes. Bran may be used with this as with other diets, but it is never to be used just because it may be used. One on a diet of this kind will find very great changes in the blood taking place rapidly, just as occurs when on a diet of fruit and sour milk. This change in the blood is not because of the change in the intestinal bacteria, but because of rest from fer- mentation, decomposition and absorption. There is 172 Food Fundamentals no particular virtue in the food or chemicals in them. They are wholesome and bland and palliative to the weakened mucous membranes, and their greatest value lies in supplying these things while giving the digestive system a much needed rest. They promote healthful secretions and permit the glands of the body to purify the blood. To make the point that they are death to germ life in the stomach and intestines is an error. Healthful secretions of the mucous mem- branes and good blood is death to the germs, if "death to the germs" is a necessary way of thinking. But I do not believe there is war between the germs and healthful secretions, nor between good blood and poisonous germs. There is war against the poisons. The germs appear in great numbers and multiply rapidly only in the extremity when the secretions and blood are overcome with work. Then they attack the poisons and multiply just to save the more important blood cells. Milk is used as a special diet by some with suc- cess. The author used it as a special diet for a year or more in his practice, and with benefit. He kept patients on it from one to six weeks. There is no doubt but what milk alone as a diet is much better than the hodge-podge diet used by many sick people. It has the advantage over other diets carrying a similar amount of nutrition of not changing to so violent poisons in the body. If milk does ferment and decompose the resulting products are not so detri- Food Fundamentals 173 mental as those of many other articles of food. But it requires special attention to give milk properly, if such a thing can be done. To get the best results it must be taken in large quantity, at regular intervals and with plenty of acid, preferably lemon juice. And while such results may be spoken of as the best to be obtained with milk, results obtained by the use of a large quantity of any food should be regarded with seasoned suspicion. I no longer use milk alone as a special diet. Why? Because I think I can do better. Those foods that are less complex, less nutritious, and which work the digestive apparatus but little, are more suitable. It is easier to teach the patient how to make a change from this kind of a special diet to an ordinary health- ful routine that can be followed for the remainder of the life, than it is to make such a change from a milk diet. A liquid diet is a special diet prescribed by many physicians and hospitals. It has as many different meanings as there are different people who attempt to use it. Just anything that is in liquid form will do. But it has its merits. There is no doubt that it results in giving in some degree the needed rest that I emphasize so much. But while giving the rest it very seldom is of such a nature as to palliate the irritated membranes, permit a favorable change in the secretions of the cells and glands, and avoid de- composition. For a physician to inadvertently lay 174 Food Fundamentals aside his most powerful therapeutic measure — proper withholding and prescribing of food — and direct a liquid diet the meaning of which cannot be known, and the nature of which is usually far from the best, is most pitiable, regrettable and sickening. TROUBLE. If the reader thinks the physician's trouble is at an end when the proper diet is outlined for a patient, it would be well for him to disabuse his mind of this fallacy at once. When the usual amount of bulk, the usual amount of stimulation, is taken away from people. Nature makes a protest and the individual emphasizes it. Fear, distrust and dislike for such measures always add very much to the real distress. A feelmg of languor, gnawing in the stomach, a heaviness of the stomach, an ache or knotting of the stomach, headache, nausea, and many other disagree- able symptoms will be found to follow a decrease in the amount of food or a fast. The patient will usually interpret most of these as hunger or weakness. And curiously enough food will usually relieve the distress. The physician should be able to properly interpret these disagreeable features of the treatment for the patient, and to so conduct the case that they will be the least disagreeable. Many of them may be relieved and palliated if understood. Food Fundamentals 175 It should be known that all these symptoms mean disease. If disease is not present there will be no dis- tress of any kind from taking away of food. Much of the distress is brought about by a catarrhal condition of the stomach membranes. The diseased stomach being empty its walls are in close contact and become hot and feverish and the glands and cells secrete a thick, sticky, tenacious mucus. The feverish condi- tion accounts for the distress and when the mucus is sufficient in quantity it accounts for the nausea. Dis- tention with water, preferably hot water in which is a little lemon juice, will give relief which will last but little longer than the water remains in the stomach, then the distention must be renewed and kept up until the next meal time. It usually requires three and sometimes six glasses of water to properly distend the stomach in these cases. If the complaint is of weakness this must be under- stood as more apparent than real. It is largely from lack of stimulation. When the weakness is from lack of stimulation or due to food-poisoning then the patient will do well to endure this until he is rescued. "The weakness that is persistent, and continually in evidence, even when the patient is in bed or sitting quietly, and the weakness known as getting up tired of a morning, are both produced by overstimulation — food-poison. A weakness that comes from lack of nourishment is not accompanied by ill-feeling. When the patient is lying down or sitting, he feels that he is about as capable of almost any feat of strength as he has ever 176 Food Fundamentals been ; yet, when he undertakes to do anything, he finds that he has scarcely strength to stand without support. This is the weakness that food will cure." (Tilden.) Not every one will experience a weakness, for there are a few who get stronger with the decreased amount of food. There is no reason to conclude that all the strength we have comes from the food we take. There are some very good reasons to believe that much of our strength is derived from a recharging of the nervous system. This recharging takes place when we rest, and the most of it comes about in that perfect rest which accompanies a natural sleep. Loss of the needed amount of sleep plays havoc with the nervous system and with health in general. Food replaces waste material, restores the wornout tissues, and if the body is deprived of food the nervous system soon loses any capacity for being recharged with nervous energy. Another important result of a decrease in the amount of food taken is to intensify any existing con- stipation or to uncover a latent constipation. If this is tolerated many of the symptoms from which the patient is complaining will be increased in severity. It is wise then to make plain to the patient before be- ginning the treatment what a latent constipation is, and to take such precautions as will prevent the con- stipation from becoming worse. This can usually be done. But there are cases where it cannot be done; where for a time some symptoms will be worse and the constipation may be one of them. Food Fundamentals 177 A common result that causes much uneasiness is loss of weight. This is inevitable in nearly all cases, and the amount depends on the condition and the total of the change in diet. But the loss of weight is tem- porary for those under weight and permanent for those over weight. Those under weight will begin to increase in weight just as soon as the diseased condition is suffi- ciently under control to permit the assimilation of food to become more normal than it was. I shall fail in the task set for myself if I do not make it clear that a short fast or a very much reduced diet — any radical diet measure — may lead to trouble that is very much surprising to both patient and phy- sician, but the onlookers are usually sure of it before it occurs, or their remarks afterward would lead one who took them seriously to believe they knew all about it. Nearly all cases will show nothing unusual that has not been pointed out. But some cases are like a gas bomb — already to explode — and it does not make much difference what is done it will be the match that lights the fire; and if something is not done a few hours' time will bring on the explosion. They will begin vomiting, or run a high fever, or be attacked by a deceptive and unexplainable pain, the heart rate may increase very greatly, sleep may be absent, and various other manifestations may occur which are more or less serious to the patient and confusing to the doctor who will consult his best authors on the subject to find their writings don't betray the fact that they ever had any trouble under such circumstances! The literature that 178 Food Fundamentals has grown up about the subject of fasting and radical diet measures has so unmistakably failed to meet squarely the issue that is raised by the protests of Nature against the sudden changing of a fixed habit that these measures are unjustly held in disrepute by physicians and laymen. "When the system has been poisoned for years with wrong eating — wrong combinations — the habit is fixed, and nature defends the habit by making a demand for its restoration when it has been suspended. When the food-poisoned are deprived of their foods, and food combinations that have brought on the ener- vation that is at the bottom of their diseases, many of them suffer greatly; they declare they will famish; that they will go all-to-pieces ; that they will surely starve to death ; that they feel faint — feel like collaps- ing; they declare they are so w-e-a-k, that they must have more food or they will die. When it is remembered how greatly all drug fiends suffer when the drug is taken from them, it takes but little imagination to realize that nerves must suffer more or less when deprived of any accustomed stim- ulation — less perhaps from foods than from drugs, but the line is not drawn very distinctly between foods and drugs; for coffee and tea, as well as condiments and spices, are drugs, and any food may be made to take the place of drugs under certain circumstances. The results of eating wrongly are the same as results from taking drugs ; the effect is to overstimulate until enervation takes place. What is the condition in ener- vation ? A general weakness that is in evidence all the time, except when the nervous system is under the influence of the poison that has brought it on, or under the effect of some other stimulant given as a relief or supposed cure. It is hard for people, and even many doctors, to understand that great lassitude, and even loss of appe- tite, follows the giving up of the disease-producing Food Fundamentals 179 foods, or the habits common to civilization, and the adopting of a natural, health-producing regimen. The disagreeable symptoms will be interpreted as coming from the change in food, and ignorance will advise a return to stuffing and erroneous food combinations, which, when done, will bring great relief! The same relief, however, that the whiskey and drug fiends expe- rience in returning to their stimulants. If the crime is using coffee until the disease re- sults, the victim must suffer the pain of want, and the nervous system must suffer the pain that must come at first from the giving-up of stimulants. The greater the poisonous action that the food or drug has had, the greater the suffering that must be experienced in giving up the habit. Why are people with diseases brought on from this manner of eating so incurable? Because it takes so long after the habit is changed to get to feeling right. Nature begins at once, as soon as the habits are righted, to get rid of the influences of wrong life, but, before the enervation is overcome and full strength returns, the patient suffers many hours from the dis- tress of weakness and longing for stimulation." (TiLDEN.) A short fast, a fruit-fast, a fruit and buttermilk diet are all radical measures. Not nearly so radical as many other therapeutic measures nor so dangerous as the usual drugging. Drugs so mask the symptoms of disease that the only clear picture one gets of disease is when drugs are out of the system. The truth of this cannot be successfully disputed. And what a wonder- ful revelation of the ignorance that must prevail about disease does it disclose, for how very few study disease in patients that are not taking drugs of some kind. In truth it is only the drugless healers that can have in- formation of this kind. There are many who stand 180 Food Fundamentals ready to condemn the radical measure of a change in diet because it may lead to disagreeable symptoms. But a knowledge of the condition of the patient and what has brought it about will change the views of those who denounce these measures. The symptoms that arise are not bad if under- stood. They can usually be quite satisfactorily ex- plained to the patient and all concerned, and the patient will proceed to show a more normal condition in so many ways that no other method of procedure will be countenanced by those interested. There is no phy- sician who is rewarded by a greater confidence of his clientele than the one who gets results along the line of correcting wrong habits of eating and living. FOLLOW THE IDEA ACCURATELY. In making an endeavor to follow the ideas out- lined, be sure you have gained your bearings, squared yourself with the situation, and that you know what it all means and what you are about. A short time ago these ideas were presented to a patient in written form when he at once gave assurance he had been on this diet for two years. A week after he gave the same assurance, that he had been on the diet for two years. Then I took occasion to ask how many times a day he had been eating bread during these two years. He replied, three. I also elicited further in- formation of this kind from this patient, but the thing to be emphasized here is that after reading and study- Food Fundamentals 181 ing these fundamentals he did not see that to eat bread three times a day was contrary to the ideas presented. The other day a man who had just given me assurance he was following my diet ideas, asked me what I thought of strawberries. I replied that they were a good food. He immediately said he ate them three times a day. He was supposed to be eating one fruit meal, one starch meal, and one protein meal a day. And this is about the way fifty per cent, of people follow a diet prescribed by a physician. They are used to being told, "Don't eat much meat," "Don't eat any sour fruit," "Eat plenty of lettuce," and they think they are on a diet when they do these specific things and eat just as usual in every other respect. There are those who look and act as though they were intelligent, who will read every word carefully and declare they are following out each idea in full, and yet will eat abundant bran and drink but little water ; they will put sugar on their breakfast oatmeal ; they will eat bran bread three times a day, or take a little coffee as usual, or a piece of cake with a meat meal, or take bran bread with fruit. I am frequently addressed in this manner: "Now, doctor, just tell me exactly what I should eat and I will follow your directions to the letter." The patient is sincere, but laboring under the im- pression that all that is necessary is to say: Eat much of this or that; this food is good for you, etc. 182 Food Fundamentals If given such instructions they simply add a goodly quantity of the food mentioned to what they are in the habit of eating, and they think they are following instructions to the letter. So it should be clear that such methods of eating are not methods of dieting. There is work attached to properly leading a sick per- son into healthful habits of eating. Their instruc- tions must be written out explicitly. Knowledge of this character is not being handed out by every physician. That sick person is fortunate who receives such information and lacks proper appreciation if he reluctantly pays extra for it. Patients are prone to demand immediate results. Results of some kind follow immediately, but they are not usually the ones the patients so much desire. It requires from one to three months to become used to eating a meal without bread or starch. It requires that long or longer for some people to become ad- justed to a lessened stimulation. If diseases have been years in the making, you can rest assured they will not be cured in weeks or even months. Relief may be obtained in hours, in some cases, but I find it well to let cases go to others rather than to give encouragement that a proper treatment will not justify. m Food Fundamentals 183 FEEDING CHILDREN. The space given here to a discussion of caring for children is very limited and the ideas are few and briefly stated. If enough has been said to lead to in- vestigation and to point out another way, the object of saying it is accomplished. These ideas are not original with the author but he has found by expe- rience that they work. The articles of Dr. J. H. Tilden on "Care of Children" should be consulted for details. They contain many confused and disconnected state- ments, and do not leave one with a clear idea of what is to be done, but they are the best I know of on the subject. Before a child is born and during its nursing period it is very much influenced by its mother's diet. If the mother eats too much and is too heavy the child will be too fat and too much stimulated. It will be bom accustomed to too much stimulation and will wel- come highly flavored foods and much seasoning. It will be precocious in many respects and a dullard in others. Because of overestimulation children develop sexually much earlier than they should. Eating to ex- cess of stimulating foods and those which unduly fer- ment and decompose on the part of the mother and later by the child, is the ruin of many a boy and girl. It destroys wholesome human impulses and exposes the flexible, developing nervous system to "all the storms of unsatisfied desire." And too often the inno- cent victim is not much at fault, for the deadly im- 184 Food Fundamentals pulses are forcefully thrust on him or her. Not a few children as they develop into womanhood or manhood overtax the nervous system in a futile attempt to main- tain self-restraint, and this lamentable condition is only too often the direct result of bad habits of eating taught in infancy and early childhood — a tremendous verdict against ignorance. A prospective mother should eat but three meals a day and those should be moderate in size. She does not have to "eat for two." That is some more wrong teaching. If she eats a bite more than she can prop- erly digest, she fails to eat properly for one. A little well digested will furnish nutritious material of a pure character while a little or much poorly digested supplies poisons. An infant should sleep nearly all the time. It should not be awakened for food or anything else. Handling it unnecessarily, showing it off, taking it on journeys and to parties are not measures that are con- ducive to health. "Mothers cannot heed the injunction too strictly of securing twenty-three and a half hours' sleep out of every twenty-four for the first few weeks, and at all times avoiding the silly practice of making a show of a baby. Children a year old should sleep half the day and all the night. After the second year, parents should see to it that children up to seven years of age sleep one or two hours each forenoon and two hours in the afternoon. They should be put to bed at seven or eight o'clock on summer evenings, and seven o'clock on win- ter evenings. Six o'clock is the proper time to get up Food Fundamentals 185 of a summer morning, and seven o'clock during the cold weather." (Tilden.) From the first day on a child should be offered water frequently. At any time there is a sign of rest- lessness between the regular feeding times a little un- seasoned warm water should be offered. Infants often suffer for water and take food because they are thirsty and the food is offered them. If an adult is given a liquid food instead of water it will make him sick, and this is just the treatment that is thoughtlessly handed out to many a helpless infant incapable of protesting. Water is the only thing that a child should be permitted to drink; any liquid food should be sipped or nursed from a nipple. From the first day on a baby should be fed but three times a day and not at all at night. The extreme number of times should be four, at six, ten, two, and six. If the child is doing well on the mother's milk, let well enough alone. Give it no other food until it is ready to wean, not even a taste of anything. If the child is not getting enough food from the mother's milk, a small amount of cow's milk may be given. But this should not be done until the proper attention has been given to directing the mother how to live, or the proper treatment administered. The cow's milk if given in very small quantities at first may be given undiluted, only a few spoons in addition to what is nursed from the mother. Or it may be diluted 186 Food Fundamentals with water. Or it may be modified in the usual man- ner. If for any reason other food is to be given it should be fruit or vegetable juices. If four feedings are given the fruit or vegetable juice may be given at ten or two. Fruit juice may be used one day and vegetable juices the next. Raw fruits and raw vegetables should be used, not cooked ones, and these should be used with- out any seasoning at all. Oranges, apples, grapes, pineapples, dewberries, blackberries, and raspberries are among the leading fruits for this purpose, and the pineapple, dewberry, and black berry are the choice of these. For the young child crush the juice out of these and permit it to take what it likes from a spoon, or from a nipple. For the next day crush the juice from any of the non-starchy vegetables and feed it without seasoning. Lettuce, celery, onions, carrots, turnips, and cucumbers are among the best, and don't omit the cucumbers. There are many mothers and physicians who will decry such feeding, but they will permit the use of mashed potatoes, eggs, and graham crackers, and then add soda and magnesia to help the baby digest the food. A little thinking will justify the conclusion that these vegetable and fruit juices are far more desirable for the infant stomach than any starch or protein. And a little experience along this line will convince one without thought or study. No exact rule covering the amount a child should > Food Fundamentals 187 be given can be made, but it can be truthfully asserted and with emphasis that most children are fed too much, and that this comes about from feeding too often. If but three or four meals a day be given then it is pretty safe to permit the child to eat what it wants. But if it is stuffed every two or three hours, including the night time, then it is overfed, even if the amount of each feeding is small. People don't live normal lives and for this reason a child will cry when young even if fed as I say. They suffer from nervous influences over which they have no control. They date back of birth. Diet is not every- thing, even if it is important. A bottle baby should be fed on the same plan. Cow's milk is the best substitute for mother's milk. It may be modified, but the best way to modify it is to dilute it with water, and keep on diluting it until it agrees with the baby. "Try first the addition of a quantity of water equal to the milk. It is quite rare that the proportion of water should be less than this. Frequently, the quan- tity should be three or four times as great as the quan- tity of milk. And if the little one still vomits, give instead of milk at every feeding, once or twice a day, buttermilk. This is particularly grateful to most sen- sitive stomachs. If, notwithstanding this management, there is derangement of the digestive apparatus, try, occasionally, diluted cream, for there are often found conditions of the stomach, in these half motherless ones, with which the cheese matter of cow's milk does not agree. The hundred and one substitutes which are sold at the drug stores and groceries are but poor, un- nutritious, unsatisfactory stuffs." (Dig Lewis). 188 Food Fundamentals The difference between mother's milk and cow's milk would not be so great if mothers lived a more normal life and if their food was more suitable to their needs. The infant should have to work for its food by- pulling hard on the nipple. They should not gulp it down in large mouthfuls. The food for the first year may be nothing but milk. But if anything additional is used it should be fruit and vegetable juices as explained above. And sometimes it is important to use them. In any case showing malnutrition or symptoms of rickets these vegetables and fruit juices should be used. In some cases of constipation they may be used to advantage. The rich starchy foods should not be used in any form until the child is about a year old. Dry, toasted, yeastless bread should be given them as the first food of this nature. This will teach them to chew starches, and they will eat but a small quantity at first which will be digested quite a little in the mouth. During the second year this will wisely constitute about all the rich starchy food they should have, and if for any reason any other is given it should be of a nature that requires chewing. Non-starchy vegetables, raw and cooked, and fruits, raw and cooked, may be added to the dietary of the child during the second year. But milk should compose the bulk of the diet of the second year and it should be the protein given. Eggs, nuts, meat or meat broths, cheese, etc., should not be given until the third year. Food Fundamentals 189 No sugar should be given to a child under three years of age, none at all; not in the form of candy, cake, ice cream, or in any other form. If you want to lay the foundation for trouble and disease in your child then feed it oatmeal or cream of wheat with sugar on them. These foods will build adenoids, dis- eased tonsils, enlarged glands of the neck, skin dis- eases, and all catarrhal and glandular conditions in young children. The rich starchy food as mentioned above should not be used more than once a day during the second year and that should be at regular meal time. The child should be given the bread to chew without mois- tening it with milk or juices of any nature. And it should not be hurried through its meal so the dishes can be cleared away or to accommodate the needs of adults. It should be given plenty of time to eat. In the third year the amount of starch may be increased, giving two meals of starch two or three days out of the week. And a few meals each week of the rich protein foods may be given in the third year, cottage cheese, eggs or meat. Meat broth, as it is usually made, is to be shunned as a food for children or for the sick. It is not nutritious and does not suit the needs of the body ; there are reasons to believe it forms toxins. In making up the meals of starch in the second year it is well in the early part of the year to have starch and milk compose the entire meal. When any 190 Food Fundamentals other foods are to be used in combination the com- bining should be as for adults. If children are given vegetable juices in early infancy and on they will not have to be trained to like the taste of vegetables. But it is necessary to do the training when the vegetables will not be eaten without it. Parents must control their children and teach them, and the parent who fails in this is not a friend of the child but hastens it on its way to sickness and ill-health. Lack of control of children builds disease just as surely as does wrong habits of eating. In the third year, when protein is given, combine as for adults. If started off in this manner a child will eat eggs without bread just as readily as with it. These things are largely habit. The egg should be used as the basis of a protein meal. But it is well to remember that a child raised in the manner suggested here will not use much of a variety of foods at one meal. They will frequently eat all they want of one thing and this is the proper thing to let them do, pro- vided, of course, that the same thing is not given them for the next meal and the next. When osteopaths give more attention to diet and general care of infants and children more of them will be placed in their care. No other physician will suc- ceed in scaring parents about the "heavy hand and killing treatment" of a careful osteopath. At the present writing the author is caring for six. Three of these are less than four years old and have bad hemor- Food Fundamentals 191 rhoid conditions. One is one month old and like all the rest is suffering from bowel disturbance. In all these cases the prominent feature of any treatment is care and diet. The osteopathic treatment for these little ones is helpful and welcomed by them, but any thoughtful person will know that the osteopathic lesion is not the cause of these troubles except in rare cases. Drugs are not indicated according to the best medical authorities, but physicians do not regard the best authorities in practice. Giving soda and magnesia to these children is drugging them in a harmful manner. "How are parents to know when children are well ? They will not be fat; they will not have a white line about the nose and mouth; they will not have a bad breath or a breath of irritation ; they will not be cranky and cross ; they will not be restless at night, calling for water; they will not be nervous, irritable, and ready to cry at anything and everything. The child that cries with pain in its legs, and is so nervous when tired — after a day of excitement and play — that it cannot sleep, and, when it does sleep, moans, tosses, and kicks the covering off, has in- digestion, and is troubled daily with stomach acidity and more or less constipation. This acid state causes the rheumatism which is erroneously called growing- pains. Children can be in this state, and pass as in ordi- nary health, and excite no special notice from mother, teacher, or even doctor, unless said doctor happens to be school inspector; then he may find adenoids, en- larged tonsils, or eye-strain; all of which will mean surgical operations and eyeglasses. Most medical men of this class will see nothing behind the adenoids, en- larged tonsils, and eye derangements. Each of these diseases will be treated as a cause, and when the doctor 192 Food Fundamentals succeeds in having it removed he congratulates the parents on the cure of their children. I say there is no need of sick children being the rule, and healthy children the exception; and I know that this state exists because of criminal ignorance. And this ignorance is not confined to laymen; it has its origin among medical men, the majority of whom do not know enough about diet to be intrusted with the feeding of pigs, not to mention their incapacity for directing the feeding of children. No greater dietetic crime can be committed than to feed children fruit and cereals for breakfast. The desire of the child should be consulted, and if it pre- fers fruit to any other food, it may have all the fruit it wants, with milk, but positively no bread nor cereals of any kind. Parents should train children into eating very little salt. When food cannot be relished without a decided flavor of salt, it is time to reform ; a fast should be taken until a relish comes back for food slightly, or not at all, seasoned. Breakfast foods and fruit in some form, or fruit between meals following or preceding starchy meals, cause much sickness every year among children; in- deed, eating between meals and eating unsuitable mix- tures lay the foundation on which atmospheric, local, and domestic influences build endemics and epidemics. Close housing, or ill ventilation, and neglect of the skin by over-clothing and sleeping under too much covering, added to the consumption of too much food, prepare children, as well as grown people, for the grafting of environmental and atmospheric disease- producing causes upon them. Children must be fed, clothed, and housed right, if society would avoid building crime. Nervous irri- tations and mental perversions originate in gastro- intestinal derangements brought on from foods im- properly prepared and wrongly combined, plus bad air, improper clothing, and poor discipline. Food Fundamentals 193 Babies should be allowed to remain nude sev- eral hours daily. They must be inured to the cold- sponge bath and lots of dry-towel or hand-rubbing to the entire surface of their bodies. When the sun is not too hot, children should be allowed to play in it, or in a room with a glass roof and sides. Indeed, the playroom for winter should be on this order. Children can't eat bread and butter; there must be syrup, honey, or some sweet preparation of fruit, to please or coax the palate. The cause of overeating in childhood is the use that is made of sweet dressings. Few children will eat too much toasted bread and butter, followed with a glass of milk, and there are few who will not overeat on bread, butter and jelly, pre- serves, or syrup. Few will eat too much oatmeal mush, rice, or dry breakfast foods, when the mush and rice are dressed with milk, and the dry foods are dressed with a little melted butter and eaten dry, and followed with milk ; but, on the other hand, if sugar and cream are freely furnished, twice as much as necessary will be eaten. Three meals a day only, of milk from either a con- tinent mother, or a properly-cared-for cow or dairy herd, will bring a child to the end of the first year in good health. It may not be so large as convention's requirements, but it will be many degrees healthier and of more resistance. Milk and fruit three times a day, or milk, all de- sired, twice a day, and all the fruit desired once a day, is the proper feeding for the second year." (Tilden) . Dr. Tilden's statement about what should be fed during the third year would not be of use to any other than one who had followed the general trend of his ideas a long time. It is one of his characteristic par- agraphs in which the information cannot well be grouped for ready use. Without a knowledge of all his writings it is not intelligible, therefore it is not 194 Food Fundamentals quoted here. The following paragraphs were given without reference to age : "Breakfast: If children have porridge and milk for breakfast, they should make a meal of it. If toasted bread, butter, and milk is eaten, that and that alone should be given. It is a mistake to give two kinds of starchy foods for breakfast. Why? Because a child (as well as grown folk) will eat all the porridge it wants, and needs, and will not eat more unless tempted with toast and butter, or some other food. Lunch : Fruit, cooked or raw, with cottage cheese or ordinary cream cheese, followed with milk; or, if fruit is not wanted, or for an occasional change, sponge cake, or ginger bread, or cookies, all desired, followed with milk; in hot weather a dish of ice-cream twice a week, with the cake named, or pie, or a cup of custard. Dinner : A large plate of combination salad, with two cooked vegetables, one egg; if preferred, corn bread, butter, and milk. Milk toast made from old bread occasionally. It is not a good food to eat often, because it is swallowed without saliva. Breakfasts for school boys and girls should be: oatmeal mush, or cornmeal mush, and unskimmed milk ; or dry breakfast foods with butter, followed with milk; biscuits, butter, and honey, followed with milk, not oftener than twice a week; for Sunday morning, cakes or muffins or waffles, butter, maple syrup, and milk ; positively no sugar with the breakfast foods, and no eating between meals. Lunch: All the fruit desired; once a week, pie and milk ; once a week, plain cake and milk. Dinner : Meat, fish, chicken, cheese, or nuts, with non-starchy vegetables and a salad or a slaw, every other day; the alternate days, instead of meat: pota- toes, corn bread, navy or butter beans, with cooked non-starchy vegetables and salad or slaw, leaving lemon juice out of the salad. ^: Food Fundamentals 195 When whole-wheat bread, butter, and milk are preferred for dinner, it can be eaten in place of the meat and vegetables. When lessons are hard and the student is falling behind, eating should be light: fruit for breakfast; milk for lunch ; and toasted bread and milk for dinner. If necessary to fast a day or two, to clear the mind and help it to concentrate, it should be done; for it is dangerous to allow a pupil to drop behind his class because of a hazy state of the mind brought on by heavy eating. The majority of failures in life begin in the discouragement brought on by dropping behind in the studies at school. Wrong eating is the primary cause. If children's appetites are not pampered and spoiled by giving unsuitable foods, the amount of un- suitable foods may be given to full satisfaction. Gor- mandizing comes from eating too often, and of too great a variety, and of unsuitable foods." (Tilden) . INDEX A Accumulative poisoning 50 Air 127 Air baths 130 Amount to be eaten 35, 87 Appetite?. 47 Apples 120 Apple Dumplings 136 Autotoxemia 51, 54 A well balanced dietary 32 B Bananas 80 Bathing ^ 130 Balanced Dietary 32 Beans, mature 148 Beef 95 Beefsteak 96 Bran 126 Bread 84 Bread, yeastless 86 Broil any meat, how to 99 C Cabbage 112 Candy 137 Care of skin 130 Chicken 99 Children, when they are well 191 Chocolate 28 Choosing a physician 7 Clothing 128 Coffee 28, 30 Combinations 79, 80, 90, 91, 115, 118, 138-148 Condiments 30 Constipation 60 Constipating foods 66 Cooking of eggs 101-103 Cooking of fruit 114 Cooking of meat 95-100 Cooking of starch 83 Cooking of vegetables 107 Cucumbers HI D Daily dietary 148, 156 Deceptive nature of intestinal disorders 55 Diet, fruit 165 Diet, fruit and sour milk 169 Diet, how to use. 159 Diet, raw 170 Diet, regular 168 Dietary, well balanced 32 Digestion, physiology of 138-140 Disease not inherited 29 Drinks at meal time 157 Drugs 23, 179 E Eggs 100 Enema 65, 100 F Fasting 161 Fat 121 Fear 72 Feeding Children 183 Flour 84 Follow the idea accurately 180 Foods 76 Food drinks 131, 157 Foods rich in mature starch 76 Foods rich in protein 86 Food tables, value of 33, 34 Fragmentary information 3, 160 Fruit 113 Fruit diet 165 Fruit fast 165 Fruit meal 149,150 Fruit pie 136 Fruit and sour milk 169 Full meal 149 G Germs 11 Grief 73 H Hope 74 Hot Cakes 136 Hot-water tea 157 How to use diet 159 I Ice cream 123 Indulgences 136 L Light meal 149 Liquid diet 173 M Malted milk 123 Meal, a balanced 32, 34 Meal, fruit 149, 150 Meal, full 149 Meal, light 149 Meal, protein 149, 154 Meal, starch 149, 155 Meal, vegetable 149, 153 Meat 89-100 Melon 116 Mental attitude 72 Menus 152, 156, 193-195 Milk 122, 147, 172 Milk diet 172 N Nature of disease 29, 49 Non-starchy vegetables , 103 O Onions 112 Osteopathic Lesion 69 Overeating 36 P Pancakes 135, 136 Peach cobbler 136 Physology of digestion 138-140 Pickles 138 Pie 136, 137 Plum pudding 136 Poached eggs 103 Point of View 3 Pork 97 Pot Roast 96 Prepared foods 81 Preparation of starch 83 Protein foods 86 Protein meal 149, 154 Ptomaine poisoning 51 Pumpkin 138 R Radishes 113 Raw fruits and non-starchy vegetables 170 Regular diet 168 Rhubarb 119 Roast beef 95 Roast pork 99 Round steak 97 s Salads 90, 108 Salt 133 Sauer kraut 138 School lunches 83, 92 Scrambled eggs 103 Self-pity 74 Soda-fountain drinks 28 Soft-cooked eggs 102 Special diets 165-174 Squash 113 Starch meal 149, 155 Starch, raw 44, 45 Starchy foods 76 Steamed eggs 102 Stewed pork 98 Strawberry shortcake 136 Sugar 124 T Tea 28, 29 Tilden salad , 90 Tobacco 31 Tomatoes 120 Trouble 175 U Use common sense 158 V Vegetable meal 149, 153 Vegetables, non-starchy 103 Vegetable salads 90, 108 Vegetable soup 108 Ventilation 129 Vinegar 121 W Water 131 Water-drinking 131, 132 Worry 73 Y Yeast - 82 Yeastless bread 86 UNIVEKSITY OF CALIFOENIA LIBEAEY BERKELEY THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE STAMPED BELOW Books not returned ou.time are subject to a fine of 50c per volume after the third day overdue, increasing to $1.00 per volume after the sixth day. 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