The investigation now in progress at Yale University, under the direction of Professor Chittenden and under the fostering auspices of the Trustees of the Bache Fund, which is administered by the National Academy of Sciences, and other contributed support, is a Militant-Scientific campaign which will not cease until we know as much about human nutrition, at least, as we know about the nutrition of our domestic animals.
In this little book, however, is an account of the first distress and war cry, (to appropriate an expression of the Salvation Army), and while the workers in Science may take a considerable time to make observations and investigate the "reasons for things," the underlying claims herein stated will, it is believed, ultimately be established as fundamental facts of both Hygiene and Physiology.
The psychic factor in digestion is even more important than originally claimed by the author, and fully accounts for the strength attained by the Christian Science movement.
In the "A.B. – Z. of Our Own Nutrition" are reprinted, for recent scientific reports, in addition to the papers of Dr. Van Someren and Professor Chittenden, before mentioned, articles and lectures by Dr. Professor Pawlow, the great Russian physiologist and one of the Board of Assessors in the International Nutrition Investigation, described in the "A.B. – Z.," (reprinted from the fine English Translation by Dr. W. H. Thompson, of Trinity College, Dublin; English publishers, Griffin & Co.; American publishers, Lippincott & Co.), on the mental influence over the salivary, gastric, and intestinal secretions. Also, nearly an hundred pages of most virile, readable, and important "Observations on Mastication," by Dr. Harry Campbell, M.D., F.R.C.P., of the North-west London Hospital; reprinted by courteous permission of the author and of the editor of the Lancet. Also, a description of the digestive process in animals as seen by aid of the Röntgen, or X-Ray; a most readable account of the infinite patience and application of Dr. W. B. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, devoted to learning the "reasons for things" done in the closed and secret laboratory of the stomach and intestines.
The above is a necessary advertisement of another volume in the A.B.C. Life Series; because the details of this particular attempt to reduce the philosophy of every-day life to profitable simples is linked-up in several volumes developed in the course of study of the subject for location of the germinal causes.
"Menticulture" was the first of the series and relates to the individual. "Happiness" came next and located the chief enemy of happiness in Fearthought, the unprofitable element of forethought. "That Last Waif" treated the question as related to the Social Whole, children in particular, and recommended Social Quarantine; by extension of infant education to the extreme of allowing no child to escape educational care. This present treatise deals with the first requirement of such infantile care and education, right feeding.
DR. KELLOGG'S APPRECIATION
The great Battle Creek Sanitarium, under the inspiration and direction of Dr. J. H. Kellogg, has grown to enormous proportions in thirty-seven years. It began with one patient in a two-storey frame house in a country village, and has been largely influential in creating the present proud distinction of Battle Creek, Michigan, with its millions upon millions of invested industrial capital.
The "cure" is based upon the establishment in the patient of right nutrition, right functioning of the bodily organs and secretions, and thereby assisting Nature to perform the cure in a natural manner. Pure foods and other conditions of right nutrition have been the particular study of the institution staff, and large and finely furnished chemical and bacteriological laboratories have been installed for the study of nutrition in a scientific manner.
The Battle Creek Sanitarium is a purely humanitarian and philanthropic institution. By perpetual charter, all of the profits of the concern in all of its ramifications are dedicated to the extension of the American Medical Missionary Cause, and there have been already established more than sixty branches of the parent institution in different parts of the world, principally in or near the chief cities of America, and all are occupied with saving and regenerating the physical body of the sick as a foundation for possible moral awakening and spiritual cultivation.
The work done by these humanitarian institutions is most practical, and the best evidence of the practicality is their growth. Patients are charged what they can conveniently pay, but none who need are refused attention. Branches are made self-supporting as soon as possible, but are first nurtured by the parent sanitarium. There are some hundreds of physicians, nurses, and other attachés of the different institutions, and these are enthusiasts in the humanitarian work, taking as wages only what they need for most economical support, "a mere pittance," and deriving their chief compensation from satisfaction gained in the service. All in all, it is an expression of inspirational altruism worthy of the example of the Good Samaritan and a practical demonstration of the Sermon on the Mount.
The special attention of the writer was called to the work of the Battle Creek Sanitarium organisation by an American banker, Edwin C. Nichols, Esquire, in London, at the time of the last Coronation. The banker was conversant with the growth and methods of the Sanitarium, and had seen the result of its missionary and sanitary work. He exacted a promise from the writer to visit Battle Creek on his first opportunity, and Mr. Nichols has our everlasting gratitude for leading us to a more intimate acquaintance with so splendid an illustration of humanitarian possibilities when properly directed. It is not alone the great Sanitarium and its hospitals, and clinics, and shelters, and refuges, and baths, and reading-rooms, that are doing the greatest possible good work, in demonstrating their effective Christianity; but it is the private waif-family of Dr. and Mrs. Kellogg which shows what neglected children are capable of when given a chance, and which appeals to the author especially as giving support to his ideal of a possible effective Social Quarantine as presented in his book, "That Last Waif." Twenty-four neglected and sick children of unfortunate parents have been rescued from an almost hopeless condition, and have been adopted into the best of surroundings and culture, all promising to become splendid wealth-productive citizens and ornaments to society.
For more than a year Dr. Kellogg and his staff of earnest workers have been testing the suggestions offered in "Glutton or Epicure," and in the treatise of Dr. Van Someren, and appreciation of these suggestions and the work that has since been done to stimulate interest in the question in high scientific circles will be found in some extracts from Dr. Kellogg's letters which the author has received permission to print herewith.
"Battle Creek, Mich., Nov. 26, 1902.
"Dear Mr. Fletcher:
"I have your kind note of November 20th. Thank you very much for your appreciative words. Your visit here was a great inspiration to all of us. It is not often we find a man who enters into the things which we love so heartily as you have done. The thing that interested us especially was the fact that you are the founder of a new and wonderful movement, which is bound to do far more for the advancement of the principles for which we are working than all that we have done or anything we can do. I shall await with great interest the development of your work and shall expect to receive great light from your efforts. We are all in training to find our reflexes, and are expecting to make a great deal out of this."
"Battle Creek, Mich., Dec. 21, 1902.
"My dear Friend:
"I have received the beautiful book which you sent me, 'That Last Waif, or Social Quarantine.' It is a charming volume. I devoured it eagerly, and I find myself in the position of an eager disciple sitting at the feet of a master. Your ideas of social regeneration strike deeper than those of any other modern author, and I shall be glad to coöperate with you in any way possible in promulgating these principles. You have made your book talk in a most impressive way. From cover to cover it is simply admirable and must do a world of good. I shall write a little notice of it for my journal, Good Health.
"Again thanking you for this interesting volume, I remain,
"Most sincerely and respectfully
yours,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"Dear Friend:
"I have shamefully neglected you. I want to assure you how much I appreciate your encouraging notes. I read them to my colleagues, and they were so much affected that tears came into their eyes. I assure you we feel that you are indeed a brother to us in our work, and that God has providentially sent you to be a friend to us and to the principles which we represent.
"I had a letter from Dr. Haig a few days ago in which he mentioned you and your work, and said he was much interested in it. Dr. Haig, you know, has done a great deal in calling attention to uric acid in meats and other foods. His work has not all been accepted by great laboratory men, but Dr. Hall, of Owen's Medical College in Manchester, has recently reinforced his results. I have at different times repeated his experiments with interesting results.
"I assure you we shall be glad to receive any suggestions from any scientific authority who may visit us, and if there is any part of our work which can be improved, we shall be glad to put it there as soon as our attention is called to it.
"Again thanking you for your kindly interest in our work, I remain,
"Most sincerely yours,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"My dear Friend:
"I have yours of January 29th. I am much interested in what you write about your demonstration at New Haven. I want to give the widest publicity possible to your work. I find great good in it. I am talking to my patients continually about it. I know from my experience that you are right. For many years I have required my patients to give special attention to chewing, and have made it a written prescription for each patient to chew a saucerful of dry granose flakes at the beginning of each meal. I have seen great good from this method.
"With kindest regards, I remain, as ever,
"Most sincerely yours,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"Dear Friend:
"I am exceedingly interested in the facts which you communicate, especially Dr. Anderson's report. It is quite remarkable. I am verifying the same ideas in my own personal experience. I am confident you have discovered a great and important principle and I shall watch with interest future developments. I am going to get our students interested in it. If you feel disposed to do so, I shall be glad to have you make out a little line of experiments which will tally with the experiments which you have been conducting, so the results may be compared.
"I have in hand a translation of Cornaro's work which I have been thinking of publishing. It occurred to me that perhaps you would be able to write a little chapter for this work, or an introduction. I am going to get it out in nice shape, and I trust it may be the means of doing good in inclining those who read it toward a simpler life. I am greatly interested in the ideas which you present in your various books.
"I hope you will have a safe journey to Italy and back.
"I remain, as ever,
"Very sincerely and respectfully
yours,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"My dear Mr. Fletcher:
"I have yours of March 19th. I thank you very much for promising to write an introduction for the edition of Luigi Cornaro's life. You are just the man to do it. I propose to get the book out in neat, tasty shape. Shall be glad to have suggestions from you on this point. The manager of a large denominational publishing house in Chicago is interested and wants to publish it with us. He has promised to help about the artistic features.
"As regards our medical college, I ought to have told you that we are incorporated in the State of Illinois. Our medical school is really legally located in Chicago. We always have one or more classes down there for dissection, clinical work, and doing dispensary and missionary work in the city. Our school is officially recognised. Our diplomas are recognised in this country and in most foreign countries; our diplomas are recognised, in fact, in all countries which recognise American diplomas. The work done in our school is recognised by the best schools. Jefferson accepts students from our third year into their fourth, the graduating year, without examination. Kings College in Kingston, Canada, does the same; also Trinity College in Toronto, and other leading schools in this country. Our College is a member of the American Medical Association along with Bellevue, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Rush Medical College, and other leading schools. We have placed our standard high so that no one could object to the reform features of our work on account of incompetency. Our students are admitted to practice in New York, having passed the examinations of the State Board. Our best reason for believing that our diplomas are recognised everywhere is because of students from the College having passed the examinations in nearly every State. One of our students recently graduated from the University of Dublin after having spent a year there, as they require five years instead of four years as with us.
"Your experiments are surpassingly interesting. Your performance with Dr. Anderson was phenomenal. I confess you are a physiological puzzle. If chewing accomplishes these wonderful things for you, it is certainly worth the while. I am training myself from day to day to masticate my food more and more thoroughly and I confess there is greater good in it than I ever imagined.
"I am sending you a little box of foods that I think you will like, especially the protose roast, the gluten biscuit, and the chocolates.
"I would like to get hold of a list of your books; I want to put them into the hands of our students to read. Kindly give me a list of the names and the publishers and I will esteem it a favour.
"I might have said further in reference to our College that it is listed by the New York Board of Regents as well as by the Illinois State Board of Health. We are going to make considerable improvement in our school the next year. We are trying to put up a new building. We need $100,000 very much, as our work has no endowment and it requires very great sacrifice and most strenuous effort to keep it going. Our teachers work for a mere pittance and our students are compelled to save and economise in every way to get through. Nearly all of them have to pay their way in work of some sort.
"By the way, I am taking liberty to send you with this, copies of some little booklets which I have just gotten out in reference to our work.
"I am, as ever,
"Your friend,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"My dear Friend:
"I have your kind note of June 21st. I am happy to be remembered by you tho I have neglected writing you. I was afraid my letter would not find you on your journeys.
"We are chewing hard out here at Battle Creek, chewing more every day. We are continually thinking and talking of you and the wonderful reform you set going. We have gotten up a little 'chewing song' which we sing to the patients. It is only doggerel but it helps to keep the idea before our people. We dedicated it to you and I am going to send you a copy of it as soon as the printers get it ready. If you feel too much disgraced I will take your name off.
"That little book on 'Cornaro' is not out yet. We have been waiting for the introduction from you. We can wait as much longer as is necessary, as you are the man to furnish this introduction.
"I hope you will come West some time this summer so you can drop in and see us in our new building. We are not quite in perfect running order yet, but we shall soon be fixed in good shape and will be delighted to have you with us. You have helped us greatly in calling our attention to the great importance of chewing. We had known it for a long time but had not practised it. You demonstrated the thing in such a graphic way that the whole world is constrained to listen.
"Thanking you for your kind note,
"I remain, very sincerely yours,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"My dear Mr. Fletcher:
"I have your kind favour of July 14. You are doing me altogether too much honour. I am only a plodding, humble doctor, and have never had any opportunity to do any great thing, because of the limits of my abilities, and because I have not the opportunity to devote my energies to any one special thing; but have so many things to do that I can do nothing very well.
"I remember Dr. Krauss very well. He has for some years been assistant to Prof. Winternitz, the Professor of Nerve Diseases in the Medical Department of the Royal and Imperial University of Austria. He seemed a very able physician and a delightful gentleman. I was very glad to meet him.
"I have already sent you a copy of a little booklet entitled 'The Building of a Temple of Health.'
"We will be most happy to have a visit from you. I would like to know about what time you are coming, and I will endeavour to be here. I have a call to give an address at Chautauqua, N. Y., early in August, and if I do not know when you will be here, I might possibly be away, which I should consider a great misfortune.
"We have nothing here, I am sure, which will be new to scientific men, and I apprehend that they will have a very different opinion of our work than you have.
"I have a little book which I think I have not sent you, entitled 'The Living Temple.' I will send a copy to you; also a copy of the 'Chewing Song,' which is now out. It is nothing but a cheap thing, intended only for my own little folks; but it got out, and several people wanted it, so I have allowed it to be put in print. The purpose was, of course, simply to impress the chewing idea. Of course you are well, as you are apt to be well by chewing well.
"By the way, I met a disciple of yours a day or two ago. He was Senator Burrows, from Kalamazoo. He called with his wife and some other ladies, and Mr. Rose, the chief clerk of the U. S. Senate, to make us a little visit. I had a very delightful chat with them. On remarking to the Senator that he did not look any older than when I saw him last, but seemed to be very well, he told me he was in perfect health, and he expected to live for ever. He had recently gotten hold of something that was doing him so much good that he believed he should never be sick. I begged to know his secret, and found it was chewing. I asked him how he discovered it, and he told me he had learned it from your delightful book. You are certainly promoting the most important hygienic reform which has been brought forward in modern times. When you visit us again, you will see in our dining-room of our new building more Horace Fletcher disciples, and more hard chewers than you ever saw together in one place in your life before. Our doctors and helpers are taking hold of it with great enthusiasm, and I trust we shall be able to render you some good service in promoting this good idea, for which you certainly deserve the gratitude of the whole world.
"Hoping to have the pleasure of a visit from you soon, I remain, as ever,
"Yours most sincerely and respectfully,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"Dear Friend:
"Your kind notes of August 7th and 11th received. I have asked the Publishing Department to open an account with you and send you everything you order promptly at publisher's discount.
"'The Living Temple' is published for the benefit of the Sanitarium. Everything received from it goes toward paying for the new building. The cost of printing, paper, and binding is paid for by contributions, so all the money received goes toward the building fund for the Sanitarium. I hope by this and other means to get the building paid for before I die.
"I think your chewing reform is of more importance to the world than you realise. You must have a great fund of good cheer with you; doubtless because you chew! I told our patients here that I had heard from you that King Edward was chewing. It interested and amused them very greatly. The idea of 'munching parties' is a good one.
"As ever,
"Your friend,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"Dear Mr. Fletcher:
"I have yours of August 20th with the list of persons to whom you desire to have 'The Living Temple' sent. The books are already sent together with a little note calling attention to them.
"Your continued courtesies are putting us under obligations which we can never repay.
"There are a lot of devils of different sorts to be cast out, and I am sure the dyspeptic devil is about the worst and the meanest of them all.
"A quartette sang the 'Chewing Song' just before my lecture in the parlour last evening. The great parlour was filled to its utmost capacity. The people cheered heartily, not at the singing nor the song, but the sentiment. I took occasion to tell them I thought Mr. Horace Fletcher, in inaugurating the chewing reform, had done more to help suffering humanity than any other man of the present generation, and that I felt very much mortified that we had neglected this important matter to such an extent here that you had to come to the Sanitarium and be a missionary of good health and urge this important matter upon our attention. I feel that we are all greatly indebted to you, and seem to be getting continually more and more into your debt, and I do not know any way to discharge the obligation; but if any accident should ever happen to you so you get ill, it will certainly be a delight to us to have the opportunity to minister to you if you will permit us so to do.
"I am glad you have postponed your visit until October, as by that time we shall have many things in better working order, and our medical class will be here. I want to have our medical students meet you.
"I told Mr. Nichols the other day you were coming to visit us. He was greatly delighted to hear this. He feels as I do that the work which you have inaugurated is the most important movement which has been started in modern times.
"I remain, as ever,
"Fraternally yours,
"J. H. Kellogg.""Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.
"Dear Friend:
"I have your kind note of the 23d inst. I am sure that one of my letters to you has been lost. I wrote promptly telling you that you were at liberty to use anything I have written you respecting your work.
"I am more and more enthusiastic respecting the value of thorough chewing. I have read with great interest Dr. Harry Campbell's articles, and am republishing in Modern Medicine a large part of what he has written.
"I have been thinking whether I might dare ask permission from you to publish your article 'What Sense' as a tract. Possibly it is already printed in that way. I would like to circulate it widely among my patients, and our nurses and doctors. I am doing my best to get them all to chewing, and have had great benefit myself from thorough mastication.
"Our Medical School has just begun again, and I have one nice class of sixteen students who are going to devote themselves to the study of applied physiology, and all of them will experiment on the effects of thorough mastication in relation to the quantity of food; also in relation to the quantity of proteids. If you would like the details of the results of the experiments, I will give them to you later.
"By the way, if you have any written or printed outline of data which you think it desirable to collect, I will be glad to have it as a help to us in researches of this sort. We have prepared our laboratory to do almost anything that needs to be done, and we have a whole lot of enthusiastic young men and women who will enter into this thing with great zeal, and we will be glad to coöperate with you thoroughly as I feel that you have introduced a line of research and investigation which is of immense importance. I have read with great interest Prof. Chittenden's article in the Popular Science Monthly, and I can but feel that you are a heaven-sent missionary to the world in this matter of diet reform.
"I remain,
"As ever your friend,
"J. H. Kellogg."
"P. S. – I have for many years given a good deal of attention to the matter of mastication. It has been my regular prescription for all my patients for many years to eat at the beginning of each meal some Granose Flakes. The purpose of this was to secure increased activity of the salivary glands, and to encourage the habit of mastication. I have found immense benefit from this practice.
"I appreciate exceedingly all the good things you are sending me. What a delightful time you must have had in the Adirondacks! I have never had such a pleasure in my life, as I have had my nose continually on the grindstone at work since I was ten years of age, with no vacations at all. It is a remarkable spectacle that these great men, these learned professors and scientists, and army medical men, should be coöperating so enthusiastically with a layman to learn the true philosophy of life; but it has always been so. The great discoveries have not been made by great scientists and great doctors, but by men whose minds were above the bias of prescribed education, and who were able to learn from the great book of nature, which is the book of God.
"When you come again I hope you will have time to stay with us a little while so we can have some good chats. I would like to sit down and go into the heart of things with you, when I think we should find our ideas running very close together. We shall expect to see you next month. I have to be away for a few days sometime during the month, so I hope you will let me know a little while before you come about what time to expect you.
"J. H. K."