IMPORTANT CONFIRMATION
COMMANDANTE CESARE AGNELLI
Commandante Cesare Agnelli, of His Italian Majesty's battleship, "Garibaldi," has been an earnest colleague of the authors in the Nutrition Study since the summer of 1900. Like the authors, he received in the course of experimentation such personal benefits that the continued observations have been a source of great pleasure ever since. I take from a letter, dated Taranto, Italy, some excerpts that are good evidence of the caprice of appetite under different climatic conditions together with some irrelevant matter, quoted for its good reading: —
"What a good, long, friendly letter! If it was your intention to spoil me, it certainly proved a success; and I feel so much obliged and thank you so much for the interesting description of all you saw and did during your absence from Venice this summer.
"You are too good in remembering the few words of encouragement I said to you when you first spoke to me about your experiments. The fact is that I have always regretted that my assistance in the experiments could not be of greater service; and, really, of us two I am the indebted for gratitude for the great service your discovery has done to me since the lucky day I had the pleasure of your acquaintance.
"My bad luck would not have it to allow my ship to go to England for the Coronation, though at first she was selected to be one of the three. Only two days ago I met one of our officers who was on the 'Carlo Alberto,' and he confirmed all that you wrote and all that has been printed about the magnificence of the naval review at Spithead.
"I wish now that I were with you, to be able to talk about what happened to me during this last cruise of ours, in relation to observations of nutrition. I can only report facts and feelings, and you may be able to connect them and assign the causes. You know I do not usually drink wine, only water; well, on the coast of Africa I had such a distaste for the latter that I was compelled to take beer to quench thirst, nor could I even endure mineral waters. My desire for food was quite changed, my physiological craving dictating to me quite plainly, as in a doctor's prescription, what I wanted. Even the best fish in the Mediterranean did not satisfy me. To-day it was eggs and to-morrow it was cocoa, but never meat that I felt the wish for. But what is a new caprice of desire relates to my smoking. I could not smoke a single pipe nor a cigar; only could I tolerate cigarettes, and those quite without pleasure. At Smyrna I almost fed on ices and lemonades, but always and ever I could eat (not drink) my cup of cocoa in the morning. The heat on the coast of Africa at Tripoli and Ben Ghari was intense, 108° and 110° Fahrenheit, with perspiration in proportion.
"So it seems to me that appetite is changed to suit latitude or climatic conditions, and all that we call our exotic pleasures of appetite, such as smoking, etc., are dependent on our nutrition. Anyhow, even in the hottest days, my strength never gave way, and I never felt that lassitude and general unfitness for work that was my companion in past years in hot climates, as in the West Indies in '86 and '87.
"I never miss an opportunity to spread the virtues of mastication, but most people are too indifferent to apply the practice long enough to get the habit established as we have acquired it.
"The first part of our cruise brought a great deal of suffering to those who are not assisted by a proper discrimination in nutrition. There was a scant supply of good food, and the bad food was very bad. I managed to get the best out of it with the assistance of my curious appetite, and did not suffer inconvenience as did the others. But we were largely rewarded in Turkish Asia, – a really blessed part of the world, – and especially at Smyrna. My day began in the bazaar and ended there, my eyes enjoying Turkish and Persian art in all their manifestations, from the rich Bokhara and Khorassan carpets to the Damaseo inlaid works, Rhodes embroideries, and so on. One sees that art has come from the East, and in every branch of it the influence of the meridian is always discovered and perceived. My great regret was not to be able to take it all away with me to Venice and divide it with my esteemed friends there for our mutual enjoyment. Curiously enough, at Smyrna I found a good bit of Italian pottery that I secured for almost nothing. It would have been a great thing if you could have been there to pass those ten days in Smyrna with me.
"I gave an order for some carpets to be made on measure, but it will take months to have them ready. Many people do not appreciate the old carpets, but to my taste modern ones do not have the velvety look or the souplesse and the softness of the old ones.
"I am sorry circumstances prevented my filling your commission. Had Dr. Van Someren been there, he is so fond of old things, I am sure he would have ruined himself.
"It seems as if we would remain here the whole of this month, and then I hope for a fortnight's leave to go to Venice; and I look forward to the pleasure of a long chat together.
(Signed) "C. Agnelli."
CLARENCE F. LOW, ESQUIRE
THE VEGETARIAN TENDENCY CONFIRMED
The relator of the following experience was conversant with the early researches of the elder author and gave mastication a trial for a time. He gave it too painful attention, as is apt to be the case with beginners, and the strain made the practice tedious and undoubtedly inhibited the secretion of the digestive juices, the same as worry and other distractions are known to do. After a very short trial Mr. Low declared that he could not get enough nourishment within reasonable time and came to the conclusion that much chewing did not agree with him although it might with others. With the issue of the reports of the Cambridge and Yale tests, however, the suggestion was given another trial, with the result, up to date, as reported below:
"I thank you very much for the copy of Dr. Kellogg's book, the 'Living Temple,' just received. I have not had time to read it, but in looking over the chapter headings and knowing Dr. Kellogg's worth as an authority on matters of foods and diet I know that there is much of value for me in the book. I am much interested in that 'Chewing Song' that has been dedicated to you by Dr. Kellogg and think the idea an excellent one.
"I have for some time been chewing à la Fletcher and find it of great advantage. It is getting to be automatic and is losing its irksomeness. Indeed it already seems natural and produces some results not 'set down in the book.' For instance, I have no desire for meats and foods which do not lend themselves to the Fletcher method. This in itself is a great advantage.
"By the way, I have not eaten meat since the 20th of last October (nearly a year), and I find I have gained greatly. I only desire two meals a day except when the exigencies of travel make a light breakfast agreeable and desirable. By these means I have gained nerve force wonderfully and my muscular strength and endurance have increased so that I walk long distances and climb mountains easily. In fact, I do now with pleasure and avidity what I could not formerly do at all. They are the sort of things that are supposed to require a 'strong meat diet' but which under such a diet were impossible to me. Mastication and thorough mouth-treatment seem to allow the appetite to prescribe what my body needs and this is the essence and substance of your discovery. It pleases me very much that Drs. Kellogg and Dewey have confirmed your researches and find that your claims are not over-drawn. They have such splendid opportunities to test things dietetic and are such open-minded, natural-born altruists that their confirmation counts for even more than that of the very conservative men in Science who stand for scientific authority and who want a thing thrice proven before they give it endorsement.
"I think my experience will be especially comforting to you because of my repeated trials and lapses. I can see now how important it is for one to practise careful mouth-treatment until the habit is acquired and the performance becomes automatic. There is no doubt in my mind but what there is a natural protection given us by nature which has been lost by perversion. I feel confident that you will get ultimate credit for the re-establishment of a rational habit of eating which, under normal conditions of food supply, is a protector against premature swallowing of food.
"G – has seen the result in me and he is dropping meat to a great extent and his breakfasts have dwindled to a mere fraction of what they formerly were. The same is true of M – ."
A FIVE YEARS' LAY EXPERIENCE
The good fortune of yesterday, July 29, 1903, brought a telephone message from an old and very dear friend who has been impressed with the virtues of buccal digestion for the past five years. Five years ago my friend was a sick man, past fifty years of age. During his youth and early manhood he had been an optimist among optimists, leading a congenial life among agreeable friends, with the best the world had to offer in the way of recreation and fare. His great misfortune at the time was indigestion and the troubles that accompany indigestion. If he drank a small cup of coffee at night he could not sleep, and he was subject to the constant uncertainty of health and frequent recurrence of acute diseases that are common to the victims of luxury.
The very ill-health emergency and dilemma of my friend led him to catch at any stray straw of hope or comfort. When we met, some months after the beginning of my experiments, he was compelled to note a great difference in my appearance; the portly and robust but heavy, short-winded and unwieldy friend of bygone years in sumptuous New Orleans had become "spare" and active, and told of improvement in health-conditions that seemed almost miraculous. The still-suffering friend was interested to the point of listening and trying the remedy. Half as a joke and half in earnest the regimen recommended by me was adopted and carried forward far enough to secure some noticeable good results. Following up these favourable results with continuance of the regimen brought progressive improvement of health and increasing conviction of the merits of thorough buccal digestion.
The evidence of physical improvement resulting from five years' attention to buccal thoroughness in the ordinary course of an adventurous life is here given briefly from memory fresh from the telling:
"You remember the state of health I was in when we met here in the Waldorf five years ago. The benefit of the recovery that I had secured at Sierra Blanca had been gradually lost, and I was pretty well down to my last legs again. If I hadn't been struck by the marvellous alteration in your appearance from what it was when I had seen you last, I should have been terribly bored by your relation of your experience, for I was sick to death of mention of cures and diet-regimens of all sorts. But you astonished me so by your changed appearance, and I was in such a hopeless condition, that I thought I would give your scheme a trial. Next day, my breakfast, which was also my lunch, for I was feeling too badly to get up earlier, brought me some sweet corn as one of the several items I habitually ordered. In giving this corn thorough chewing before swallowing I noticed that, while the inside of the corn liquefied readily and was quickly swallowed, there remained in my mouth a collection of the hulls, and these invited the bad table-manners of 'spitting out.' I removed this collection of refuse as delicately as possible, and, on examination, found that it consisted of hard substance that I had never noticed before in connection with cooked sweet corn. This set me to thinking. What had I not been putting into my stomach all these years in my ignorance of the constituents of this one kind of common food, and what not in other foods that I had not yet observed?
"In continuing the observation further, I discovered that many of the foods that I was accustomed to take contained hard, insoluble ingredients or cottony fibre that got more and more cottony and refractory with mastication. In trying coffee, my favourite beverage, as you told me I might do if I handled it rightly in the mouth, I tasted it until it was absorbed or swallowed involuntarily just as you told me the expert wine-tasters and tea-tasters do. I sipped and enjoyed my small cup of coffee as I had never done before in my life, and knew afterwards that it had not hurt me as usual, as no immediate protest came from the stomach, which formerly had been the case. I slept the 'sleep of the just' that night, and awoke in fine form next morning. From that day to this I have not been troubled with indigestion, and during these five years I have not been sick a day or an hour or a moment, and have slept like a babe. I haven't kept my weight quite down where it ought to be for best comfort, but I have supported the burden with my general good health and digestion. My temptations to lapse have been enormous, for I have had the good fare of two continents thrown at me by most enticing invitation, and I have run the gantlet of extraordinary menus without phasing, with the results I have recounted.
"Do you remember the day of the public funeral of General Grant, when his tomb on the Riverside Drive – Morningside Heights – was dedicated? You remember that we had been invited to Mr. H – 's to witness the parade and take lunch? How we were caught on the wrong side of the procession on Fifth Avenue and were hurrying to get ahead of the column and across to the other side of the Avenue? Well! do you remember how we puffed and blowed when we had run a couple of blocks and how we were red in the face and nearly knocked up? We were both fat then and short-winded, and we never would have been able to get to our destination if I had not hypnotised a policeman and persuaded him to lead us across the Avenue like a pair of emergency hospital cases or disorderly arrests.
"Since then you have had your experience of recovery as the result of your deliberate experiment made for a purpose, and I have had mine as the result of noting the improvement in you, and for all of which I owe you my life, whatever that may be worth.
"At the time of the great Naval Review, or something of the sort – I have forgotten what – a party of us went to the pier of the Southern Pacific Company to see the show. There were Ned H – , and Captain H – , and two other men, and myself, with four ladies. On coming up town we were booked for another engagement, the time for which had not yet arrived. We were in the vicinity of the Hoffman House and drifted in there and into the ball-room. The floor was most tempting and the orchestrion willing. It was too suggestive a combination for the ladies, who were young and fine dancers, and they exclaimed with one voice, 'Oh, how lovely! I wish we might dance.' It proved that I was the only dancing-man among the men. I had been a dancer in my younger days, but I had let up on it since I had become stout. However, by way of a joke and to please the young ladies, I offered to be a partner. My offer was accepted, also as a joke, but the sequel was a surprise. We set the orchestrion going on a Waldteufel waltz, and I grabbed one of the young ladies for a round. Really, I was amazed. I danced as easily as I did when a youngster, and round and round we went. Finally, my partner begged for a rest, so I waltzed her to a seat, and, excited with the revelation of an endurance I did not know I possessed, I grabbed the next lady from her seat and repeated the tiring-out process as easily as in the first attempt. There were yet two ladies fresh and eager to assist in 'doing Uncle Nat up,' and I repeated the performance with them, also, dancing the last to a dead standstill on account of her determined obstinacy. She had to complete the 'doing up' of the old man, or Age would win a battle from Youth, which would never do. Well, to make a long story short, and to get to the illustration. I was warm and ruddy, but I was less fatigued than I remember to have been as a youngster when I had danced for a long time.
"Since then I have not balked at any feat of physical endurance, and I feel as young to-day as my white hair will let me. I have tried to get my friends to chewing their food persistently, and have gained many adherents to your cause, but I have had to stand an immense amount of chaffing meanwhile. I tried to get Mr. H – to chew his bread and milk, but he always laughed at me, and chaffed me constantly when I was with him about my chewing fad. One man, whom I saw much of, and who needed your advice more than anybody else, got so sick of the subject that when I received a letter from you, telling of some new discovery and some new triumph of the cause of chewing, I would attempt to read it to him; but he would not listen, and persisted in calling it rot, although he knew that I had become a remarkably well man, whereas I was formerly a very sick man. Both of these scoffers have gone and I am left, as chipper and as fit as a fiddle new-strung for the music of a happy life. If we don't catch up with Luigi Cornaro on our record it will not be for want of good digestion."
This is a little bit of intimacy that the good Baron Randolph Natili will not object to offer in evidence in our cause; for no one living has a heart and a will to do a favour or spread a benefit more than he. Only yesterday he said, in a burst of enthusiasm, "How is it possible for me to dislike any one, feeling the way I do? I have likes immensely stronger than other likes on account of similar or closer sympathies, but it seems to me now that to really dislike any one that the Creator has made, or anything that he has created, would do violence to the Memory of My Mother."
DR. HIGGINS' CASE AND COMMENT
"Dear Mr. Fletcher:
"You ask me to write you a short account of my experiences with economical nutrition with comments, and a few words about my physical and mental history.
"Previous History: – The best period of health that I can remember in my life was that between seventeen and twenty-one, during the time I was preparing for the medical profession. I had a small breakfast at about 7.30 A.M. and then went up to London to St. George's Hospital, which was about fourteen miles from my home. My parents gave me 2/6 for my midday meal but I fortunately economised and only spent 6d-10d of it on food. After finishing my work I usually arrived home at 5.30 and had a 'meat tea'; this allowed me to devote six hours to reading. During the whole of this period I was in excellent mental and physical condition. I was made house surgeon at twenty-one, obtained my degree in under four years besides obtaining several valuable prizes.
"After this I lived in the Hospital where three meat meals were provided. These I conscientiously ate 'to keep up my strength' during the performance of my exhausting duties. I consider that this period was the commencement of my degeneration. I put on twenty-four pounds in weight and lost much of my mental energy.
"To condense, as much as possible: my strong hereditary tendency to gout with the excessive meat eating, the hurried eating during some three and one-half years at St. George's Hospital, London, and at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, resulted in constant suffering from headache, lumbago, rheumatic pains, and all those distressing symptoms known under the generic name of 'goutiness.' After seven or eight years I weighed two hundred and twenty-four pounds and complained of increasing symptoms of gout. I then became a patient of Dr. H – , of London, whose system requires one to abstain from meat, fish, poultry, beans, tea, coffee, in other words, from foods containing uric acid or its equivalent. For about five years, till the end of 1901, when I first met you, I fluctuated considerably in health, on the whole I am bound to say, in a steadily downward direction, till I was overloaded with the excessive weight of two hundred and eighty-two pounds.
"History of Period of Regeneration: – I commenced under your advice, masticating my food thoroughly at the end of December, 1901. After practising this method till the present date September, 1903, I have lost one hundred and four pounds in weight and consider that I have gained very considerably in mental and physical fitness. I prefer to divide this period into two parts: (a) The first eight months. During this time I followed my appetite, but with a strong mental bias in favour of keeping up as nearly as possible to the daily 'physiological ration' of nitrogenous food. I lost notwithstanding some sixty-four pounds in weight in spite of having an inordinate appetite for butter, and generally taking two pints of milk daily. During this period I undertook some very severe work in the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, with the object of trying to devise some method of measuring the extent of a person's departure from their optimum health. This led almost unconsciously to a stronger mental bias in favour of prescribing the amount of food one should eat, and to a certain number of experiments in feeding. Towards the end of this period I got rather exhausted in consequence of my severe work and complained of occasional headaches. Following the suggestions of some friends I added fifty grams of casein to my daily diet for two or three weeks. This was followed by a return of rheumatism and considerable sickness and inability to work. (b) The subsequent six months. I resolved to devote this period to a careful study of my desires for food – to take no notes – to make no experiments – in short, to allow my body to run itself, and to try to make my brain interpret the wants of the body. I had moved for the purpose of this experiment into a small house, with a boy and a woman who came daily to clean the house – (I mention these details because practically one finds that a woman has usually such quick sympathy about matters concerning food, that their agitation and fears are enough in themselves to cause you to modify your diet). I only kept bread, butter, and milk in the house, all other foods I was obliged to send for, and if I required a dish to be cooked, I first learned how to do it myself and then taught the boy. I had no fixed times for meals, and did not have a table laid, my food always being brought up on a tray; usually I did not interrupt the work I was doing. I deliberately adopted all these precautions because I had become aware by experience of the extraordinary influence suggestion, and other mind influences, such as habit, had in one's selection of food and the amount one ate. During the first two months in conscientiously eating what I wished, as much of it as I wanted and when my appetite demanded food, my desires were very irregular, ranging over meats and fish, (occasionally) chocolate, sweets, cream, cheese, butter, milk, bread, potatoes, oranges, bananas, sugar, etc., but during the final period my desires were much more simple and regular, confining themselves to bread, Gruyère cheese, butter, cream, bananas, potatoes, occasionally milk. During and subsequent to this period I have become convinced that provided you eat your food slowly and follow your appetite, without guidance from any other knowledge whatever, one gets marked preferences for simple foods with increasing health and happiness, the contentment that comes from the inestimably valuable possession of simple desires.
"Comments on the System: – The great attraction the system has for me is its frank admission that: (1) One knows practically nothing of those chemical processes that occur during digestion. (2) The guidance for the conduct of life afforded by such vague phrases as 'the collective wisdom of mankind' leave one on the most superficial examination in a state of great doubt, to say the least of it. (3) The guidance afforded by the dogmas of science are open to the most disquieting criticism. (a) In the prescription of method without a knowledge of the mysteries of digestion. (b) In those observations on insufficient standards of mental and physical optimum efficiency, and of short periods of observation based solely on nitrogenous equilibrium and output of work that you have already shown to be fallacious and variable. (c) In short, that one can say that none of the physiological dogmas based on chemistry are not open to criticism.
"If this is admitted, and the choice of the quantity and quality of food thrown on taste and appetite, we are at once provided with a natural means of ascertaining the body's actual wants from day to day. The phenomena that have resulted from the more thorough insalivation and mastication of food can only be described as remarkable and of the highest importance for the progress of that most important of all sciences, the right conduct of life. The great advantage of finely dividing the food in the mouth so as to present as large a surface as possible for the action of the intestinal juices, is obvious when one reflects on the rapidity with which bacteria can and do act on pieces having a smaller area in consequence of their larger bulk. When one reflects that Dr. Mott attributes the main cause of insanity to the absorption by the body of the cleavage products produced by microbes in the intestines, and the increasing recognition of such poisons in the causation of chronic disease and disturbances of health, this factor alone would afford an explanation of some of the phenomena induced by the practice of economical nutrition.
"A method having the results that this has it need scarcely be said is revolutionary; all one's preconceived notions of the conduct of life are found to be based on grounds open to grave criticism and it throws a great responsibility on all those concerned in its study to endeavour by all the means in their power to present a more completely demonstrated and unanswerable case to those who are responsible for the world's guidance in these matters, with as little delay as possible,
"Yours faithfully,
Hubert Higgins, M. A. Cantab.M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P."Late House Surgeon to St. George's Hospital, London, and the Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Demonstrator of Anatomy to the University of Cambridge and Assistant Surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital."