The New Glutton or Epicure. Fletcher Horace
the medical profession, at present forced by a lack of knowledge of the vital processes of nutrition to base their treatment on the veriest empiricism, will then be able to teach all and sundry how to live. At present, all we can do is to treat and perchance cure for a time certain symptoms, allowing the patient to return afterwards to a mode of life that is really responsible for his malady. 'Disease is an abnormal mode of life.' (Harry Campbell.) The three factors in its causation are:
"(a) Cell structure.
"(b) Internal cell environment.
"(c) External body environment.
"Heredity determines, to a very large extent, our cell structure, and consequently our body structure.
"Sanitary science regulates our external body environment as much as the artificial and noxious habits of so-called civilisation will allow. The mental and physical external body environments have also their effect on the organism.
"Your discovery of simple rules for an Economic Nutrition will control the internal cell environment. In doing this, the predisposition to disease is materially affected. The internal cell environment being free from toxic material, and the cell itself better nourished, the cell's resistance to disease is increased, the possible source of disease being limited to the external body environment.
"In concluding this endorsement I can promise, to each and all who may intelligently practise the principles of Thorough Buccal-Digestion, a complete knowledge of their body's food requirements, or, as a patient of mine tersely put it, they will learn the way to 'run their own machines.'
Dr. Van Someren and the author, assisted by Dr. Professor Leonardi, of Venice, as Consulting Physiological-Chemist, and several colleagues, pursued some experiments during the winter of 1900-1901; and Dr. Van Someren read a paper on our work, entitled, "Was Luigi Cornaro Right?", before the meeting of the British Medical Association the following August.
The paper is too long to reprint here but it will be found in full in another volume, entitled, "The A.B. – Z. of Our Own Nutrition."
The following "Note" by Dr. Professor, Sir Michael Foster, K.C.B., M.P., F.R.S. etc., is a further link in the chain of development of appreciation of the need of serious attention to the science of human nutrition excited by this initiative. (Dr. Foster is the Permanent Honorary President of the International Congress of Physiologists.)
EXPERIMENTS UPON HUMAN NUTRITION
"In 1901 Dr. Ernest Van Someren submitted to the British Medical Association, and afterwards to the Congress of Physiologists at Turin, an account of some experiments initiated by Mr. Horace Fletcher. These experiments went to show that the processes of bodily nutrition are very profoundly affected by the preliminary treatment of the food-stuffs in the mouth and indicated that great advantages follow from the adoption of certain methods in eating. The essentials of these special methods, stated briefly and without regard to certain important theoretical considerations discussed by Dr. Van Someren, consist of a specially prolonged mastication which is necessarily associated with an insalivation of the food-stuffs much more thorough than is obtained with ordinary habits.
"The results brought to light by the preliminary experimental trials went to show that such treatment of the food has a most important effect upon the economy of the body, involving in the first place a very notable reduction in the amount of food – and especially of proteid food – necessary to maintain complete efficiency.
"In the second place this treatment produced, in the experience of its originators, an increase in the subjective and objective well-being of those who practise it, and, as they believe, in their power of resistance to the inroads of disease. These secondary effects may indeed be almost assumed as a corollary of the first mentioned; because there can be little doubt that the ingestion of food – and perhaps especially of proteid food – in excess of what is, under the best conditions, sufficient for maintenance and activity, can only be deleterious to the organism, clogging it with waste products which may at times be of a directly toxic nature.
"In the autumn of 1901 Mr. Fletcher and Dr. Van Someren came to Cambridge with the intention of having the matter more closely inquired into, with the assistance of physiological experts. The matter evoked considerable interest in Cambridge, and observations were made not only upon those more immediately interested, but upon other individuals, some of whom were themselves medical men and trained observers.
"Certain facts were established by these observations, which, however, are to be looked upon as still of a preliminary nature. The adoption of the habit of thorough insalivation of the food was found in a consensus of opinion to have an immediate and very striking effect upon appetite, making this more discriminating, and leading to the choice of a simple dietary and in particular reducing the craving for flesh food. The appetite, too, is beyond all question fully satisfied with a dietary considerably less in amount than with ordinary habits is demanded.
"Numerical data were obtained in several cases, but it is not proposed to deal with these in detail here, as they need the supplementary study which will be shortly referred to.
"In two individuals who pushed the method to its limits it was found that complete bodily efficiency was maintained for some weeks upon a dietary which had a total energy value of less than one-half of that usually taken, and comprised little more than one-third of the proteid consumed by the average man.
"It may be doubted if continued efficiency could be maintained with such low values as these, and very prolonged observations would be necessary to establish the facts. But all subjects of the experiments who applied the principles intelligently agreed in finding a very marked reduction in their needs, and experienced an increase in their sense of well-being and an increase in their working powers.
"One fact fully confirmed by the Cambridge observations consists in the effect of the special habits described upon the waste products of the bowel. These are greatly reduced in amount, as might be expected; but they are also markedly changed in character, becoming odourless and inoffensive, and assuming a condition which suggests that the intestine is in a healthier and more aseptic condition than is the case under ordinary circumstances.
"Although the experiments hitherto made are, as already stated, only preliminary in nature and limited in scope, they establish beyond all question that a full and careful study of the matter is urgently called for.
"For this fuller study the Cambridge laboratories do not possess at present either the necessary equipment or the funds to provide it. For the detailed study of the physical efficiency of a man under varying conditions, elaborate and expensive apparatus is required; and the advantages claimed for the special treatment of the food just discussed can only be fully tested by prolonged and laborious experiments calling for a considerable staff of workers.
"It is of great importance that the mind of the lay public should be disabused of the idea that medical science is possessed of final information concerning questions of nutrition. This is very far indeed from being the case. Human nutrition involves highly complex factors, and the scientific basis for our knowledge of the subject is but small; where questions of diet are concerned, medical teaching, no less than popular practice, is to a great extent based upon empiricism.
"But the scientific and social importance of the question is clearly immense, and it is greatly to be desired that its study should be encouraged.
"April 26th, 1902."
The interest excited in Professor Foster was coincident with that espoused by Dr. Professor Henry Pickering Bowditch, Professor of Physiology of Harvard Medical School, and Dean of American Physiologists. Under the ægis of such encouragement the later developments are not at all surprising. In order to extend and verify the findings of Dr. F. Gowland Hopkins, of Cambridge University, England, as stated in the preceding note by Professor Foster, Professor Russell H. Chittenden, President of the American Physiological Society, Director of the Sheffield Scientific School of Yale University, and one of the leading chemico-physiological authorities of the world, as measured by accepted research work, volunteered to submit the author to further test.