Chapter II: Part 2

The several extracts from the letters of Drs. Kellogg and Dewey; the statement relative to an endurance-test made on the author's fiftieth birthday, on a bicycle in France, volunteered by Edward W. Redfield, last year's Medal-of-Honorist at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, as well as medalist of last Exposition Universale, Paris; are appreciated and accepted for the subject they endorse; and, as before stated, are entirely impersonal. Instead of using dumb animals for test subjects and getting their unwilling, and sometimes abnormally deranged, participation, the author takes pleasure in submitting to the tests himself, and is thus able to state "symptoms" and "feelings" more accurately, perhaps, than any dog could do. Were vivisection necessary the author would willingly submit to that inconvenience also; but thanks to the skill of a Pawlow, and the ingenuity of a Bowditch coupled with the patience and persistence of a Cannon, as fully related in the "A.B.-Z.," we not only get the economic results but we are able to know and even see some of the "reasons for things" as well.

Interesting testimony and comment relative to the present study will be found at the end of the volume in communications from Commandante Cesare Agnelli, Clarence F. Low, Esquire, Baron Randolph Natili, and one of unusual suggestiveness, as evidence of the need of further study of nutrition, from Dr. Hubert Higgins of Cambridge, England.

MILITARY-SCIENTIFIC COÖPERATION

With the evidence and interest just outlined, it was not difficult for the author to enlist the coöperation of Surgeon-General O'Reilly of the United States Army and the endorsement of General Leonard Wood for larger investigation of the subject. These officers, both of them surgeons and medical doctors, had supported the militant-martyr-scientist, Dr. Major Walter Reed, in his great sanitary accomplishment; had fought yellow fever to a finish together in Cuba; had traced its spread to a specific cause; and were thereby encouraged to tackle even so common and powerful enemies as Indigestion and Mal-Assimilation.

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., Feb. 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., March 16, 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., March 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., June 24, 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., July 23, 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., Aug. 13, 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., August 21, 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., Sept. 30, 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."

EXTRACTS FROM DR. EDWARD HOOKER DEWEY

(At the first writing Dr. Dewey had had the method of treating food commented on in his letters under trial for three years; it having been communicated to him by the author among the first.)

"MEADVILLE, PENN., Nov. 17th, 1901.

"MY DEAR MR. FLETCHER:

"In the line of dietary form you have done better work than the entire medical profession has done from the dawn of History. This matter of eating the way you preach and practise, serves wonderfully to save the waste of energy, which is a direct robbery of brain power, in the stomach. It also saves an undue waste of food, the burden of over-weight, and above all things, the _waste of disease_. You should enlarge 'Glutton or Epicure' and push it. My allusion to this little book in my last book has brought me many letters of inquiry, and I always commend it as a work of the highest practical importance.

"I have received the article of Dr. Van Someren, and I wish I had scores of them to send to my patients. I have read it with the greatest interest, and shall keep it most of the time in the mail pouches.

"In these latter times I am becoming more and more impressed with the results of over-food even with the well, until now I feel that the pussy belly is a matter so clearly attributable to gluttony as to be a cause of shame, at least, in the physiological sense....

"I hope you will feel it a duty to enlarge and expand the usefulness of 'Glutton or Epicure.' The people are ripe in this country for just such a book.... I feel that you are doing the most important work in physiological investigation of any living man, and we in this country, especially, need all your new material as an addition to the book...."

(Two years later; after five years' test.)

July 20th, 1903.

"What you have done to unfold physiologic mastication means more for human weal than all the mere medical prescribers have given the world from Adam to the present moment. I have tested the method you advise with the ailing, as you could not have had so large an opportunity to do. I have been having the care of fasters for the past twenty-six years, and now all of them, when they return to their healthy appetite and feeding, have to 'Fletcherise' every morsel. Just now a man has ended a thirty-two day fast under my care, and has begun taking food again, with an appetite and a relish that his memory does not recall having enjoyed before. He swallows nothing that is not reduced to thin liquid. Only occasional abstinence from food for a time and such attention to mastication, makes health possible with the majority of people, tempted by quantities of soft and rich foods. No other one has taught so wisely how available brain power can be saved from wastage in the stomach, as have you--the value is beyond all estimate.

"It has been given to me to become a teacher among those who have neither time nor means to cultivate health; mine to teach them how to get all the health possible, without the use of any of the health arts. In dispensing the new physiology of dietary rest I have had need of all the time possible, with none left for the experiments of science, hence I have done little or nothing to speak of in the experiment way suggested in your letters.

"I am very glad to hear from you again, and shall be pleased to have you indicate the number of the _Popular Science Monthly_, in which Professor Chittenden's article on your work at Yale appeared, so that I can send for it. Think of this, my dear Mr. Fletcher, what a conservation there is of energy, brain-power-reserve and even soul-force, in saving it from waste in worrying about and literally pushing quantities of avoidable rubbish through thirty feet of the alimentary canal; and this is just what is accomplished by your method of making the jaw muscles and salivary glands do all their whole duty in the matter of daily food."

September 3d, 1903.

"I send you a whole cargo of thanks for the fine book you sent me (Dr. J. H. Kellogg's 'Living Temple') and the 'Chewing Song' (taught and used as a reminder at the Battle Creek Sanitarium). The latter is the most important kind of a song ever voiced during the age of man. I have been trying to get time to write you some physiology, but am very busy with my correspondence with distant patients. Will do so soon."

September 12th, 1903.

" ... What I would like best to express to you is my appreciation of the exceeding good you have done me in teaching how to save energy available for brain-power by 'Fletcherising' all foods before swallowing. In the case of dropsy, I have previously written about, I am confident the sole means of success that is being accomplished now, is due to the 'Fletcherising' of all morsels. The patient spends never less than an hour and a half over his one meal a day. At the end of his former fast, with his weight of 250 lbs. cut down to 125 lbs., he was permitted to take six meals a day, and in a few weeks he was nearly as bad as ever, with his weight raised to 180 lbs. Under my care, and after only a seventeen-days' fast (dietary rest), he was reduced again to 122-1/2 lbs. There has since been a month of feeding one meal a day by your method, with weight restored to 156 lbs. and no hint of returning dropsy--and you are guilty of this, for no other than the practice of thorough mastication has been capable of such curing work.

"Your experiences, as detailed in the _Popular Science Monthly_ (June, 1903), were read with absorbing interest. There is no more important work for man to do than that which you are doing. I have not the patience for details, and since the 'No Breakfast Plan' has become somewhat known to the world, I have been too busy; but the more I study, and study you in particular, the more I see and realise what of crimes and of evil desires are due to over-food--to bolting food.

"Now for something new! In an article on 'The Mystery of Migrations' in the _Saturday Evening Post_ of August 22d (1903), it is given out that all migrating birds let their last meal get thoroughly digested, that they may start on their long flight with empty stomachs; that no power may be diverted to the digesting machinery of their stomach. What is the significance of this in relation to the 'No Breakfast Plan?' It is the true physiology of Instinct!"

(In response to a request for permission to quote his appreciation.)

September 17th, 1903.

"DEAR MR. FLETCHER:

"You may freely state my views of the value of the work you have done for humanity better than I have done. Know this; I am not able to adequately express my own appreciation of it, as revealed in the rooms of the ailing throughout several years of experience, by any language at my command. Here is something formal, if you like to use it.

"Yours with admiration and gratitude,

"E. H. DEWEY."

"P. S. The matter of thorough mastication, as unfolded and insisted on by Horace Fletcher, is the greatest practical physiology that a dyspeptic, gluttonous world ever has received. The mouth-work, in saving the strain of overwork in the stomach and in the intestines, will do more to prevent disease than all other precautions. This is all the more wonderful when it is considered that Mr. Fletcher is a layman.[4]

[Footnote 4: Dr. Dewey's expression of surprise at the lay incompetence of the author is interesting in view of the fact that he himself is responsible for the untitled, unprofessional deficiency at which he wonders. When the author met Dr. Dewey, in Dayton, Ohio, where he was conducting some experiments, in 1898, he was then on the point of taking up a complete medical course with a post-graduate course of research-physiology in order to give character to his authority in advancing the cause of his amateurish discovery, as related in this book. There were the time, the energy, the means and the inclination of a student's craving inviting him to take the whole course to M.D. degree; but Dr. Dewey advised "no." "Don't you do it," said he, "you are doing good work as it is; you will be more or less influenced by existing standards which may be errors, and you may get switched off the natural track. Study your physiology _after_ you have made your observations." Dr. Dewey has forgotten his advice of five years ago, but it was followed. Living almost constantly in an open-air and open-mind atmosphere of research in alimentary physiology ever since, thanks to Dr. Dewey's suggestion, the author has escaped the abnormal physiology which medicine deals with, and he is more and more thankful for the escape as time reveals that open-air and open-mindedness are good, both for the soul and for bodily comfort and health.]

"Here is the physiology involved, as I find the effect of it in the sick-room. Theoretically, digestion may take place far down in the digestive tract, but it is practically found that when this possibility is resorted to, by reason of neglect of the earlier buccal or gastric digestion, trouble soon happens, and we doctors are called in to try to effect cures by medicine or otherwise. For every one horse-power of work, as it were, that is slighted in the mouth, it requires perhaps ten horse-power of energy to repair the neglect further on, and all of this waste of energy is charged against the brain-power, pleasure-power reserve on storage.

"As I read the account of Mr. Fletcher's showing of heat-economy, reported by Professor Chittenden in his _Popular Science Monthly_ article, and which was verified in the calorimeter measurement at Middletown, I see at once, from my own observations, that half the heat commonly used in the human engine is occupied in forcing the unnecessary waste through thirty feet of intestinal folds and convolutions."

The author feels very grateful to Dr. Dewey, not alone for his encouragement, but for the service he has rendered humanity by his heroic stand for temperance in feeding. He is one of the sturdy Esculapian Luthers, whose cry of reform comes from the impulse of an inborn Christian Altruism.

When it becomes generally known, as it some day will be, that overeating and wrong-eating are the prime causes of temptation to intemperance in drinking, the measure of Dr. Dewey's service to the Temperance Cause will be better appreciated.

AN AGREEABLE ENDURANCE TEST

After this volume was published in 1898, the field of experiment was changed from the United States to Europe. The physical exercise and mental recreation of the summer of 1899 consisted partly of bicycling. We landed in Holland, toured Holland, Belgium, and Northern France, and reached Paris in the course of about two months and with upwards of five hundred miles' wheeling. For another month we bicycled leisurely around Paris and added two or three hundred miles to our cyclometer record. During the month of July the author further rode some seven hundred miles in and about the Forest of Fontainebleau.

The idea of an endurance-test was suggested to the author by the ease with which he accomplished a century of miles on the Fourth of July, 1899. Being in Paris, and wishing to celebrate a most beautiful summer day and our National Holiday at the same time, an early start was made and the beauty of the day, the charm of the golden harvest fields lying between Paris and the Forest of Fontainebleau, and the noble forest itself, led us on and on until the cyclometer showed a distance, for the forenoon run, of slightly more than eighty kilometers (fifty miles) in a straight-away line from hotel and home in Paris. Two years before, fifty miles on bicycle, even when accustomed to riding daily during the craze for bicycling, which was then at its zenith, if done in one day, would have completely "done the author up" and would have called for several days of rest for recuperation. In the present case, however, no fatigue had yet been experienced and the day was still young.

The forest studio-home of friend Redfield, the Philadelphia landscapist, was found on the edge of the forest bordering the Seine at Brolles, and we went for a spin together and finally returned awheel to Paris. To make a "century run" in a day had always seemed to the author a feat for athletes and experts only, and when he found that he had made it without any inconvenience and was in no way painfully conscious of it next day, the ambition to see _what really could be done_ was born. It would give practical measure of the improvement due to an economical nutrition. It was known what the newly ambitious contestant for a record _could not do_ two years before, but it was now uncertain what he _might be able to do_ under changed condition of health even with two years' additional handicap of age; besides, it happened to be the half-century year of the author's life and a good time to jot down a record of a new start in life.

Reference to "economical nutrition" in connection with a full measure of recreation needs some explanation. To be economical means to most persons privation of pleasure. It is true that the economic standard attained by Luigi Cornaro had been maintained with ease by the author since the beginning of his experiments in the summer of 1898. This was not accomplished by trying to emulate Cornaro's example, but was reached by a method of taking food, and developed in the course of a special study of the economic natural requirements. The author ate _just what his appetite called for_, as nearly as circumstances of supply permitted, he ate _all that his appetite would allow_; enjoyed a gustatory pleasure that _had never been equalled_ under old habits of taking food, and was a distinct epicurean gainer by the economy learned and practised. But--and in this "but" lies the secret--the solid food had been munched appreciatively until it was liquefied and a strong Swallowing Impulse compelled its deglutition. The sapid and nutritious liquids were tasted as the wine tasters taste wine, as tea tasters taste tea, and as all experts test, or "Get the Good" out of, anything. Instead of being drunk down in a flood like water, which has no taste and no reason to stay in the region of taste, delicious country milk was sipped and tasted with the end of the tongue, where the best taste-buds are, until it disappeared by natural absorption. In this way the milk was fully enjoyed, largely assimilated, and, as the result of almost subsisting on bread and milk alone, at times, in response to the country appetite, the disproportionately excessive waste usually encountered when pursuing a milk-diet was not experienced; the digestion-ash (solid excreta) was extremely small and averaged only about one-tenth of the amount commonly wasted in the digestive process in ordinary habits of taking bread and milk hastily and carelessly.

It is significant that, while the quantity of food habitually taken was about one-third of the text-book normal-average prescription, the solid waste was _only a tenth_ of the usual amount, showing a much more economical digestion and a better assimilation. This possibility of a profitable and an agreeable economy was afterwards verified in the Venice experiments.

An æsthetic result was attained in connection with these experiments which cannot be too often advertised. All putrid bacterial decomposition was avoided in the process of digestion, and all sense of muscular fatigue was absent, even following strenuous and unusual exercise.

Instead of involving deprivation and asceticism, that mid-summer month in the Forest of Fontainebleau, occupied in making an _economy_ and an _endurance_-test, was a carnival of tempting plenty in the way of good food enjoyed to the full satisfaction of a healthy appetite. The endurance-test recounted in the letter following is evidence of the effect of such sumptuousness when approached by different methods of gratification. The powerful young artist who volunteers the story lived in the ordinary way and the aged reformer and research-dietetician, whom the young athlete paced, treated his food as recommended in this book.

EDWARD W. REDFIELD'S EVIDENCE

(In response to an invitation to recount his remembrance of the test after a lapse of four years.)

"CENTRE BRIDGE, PENN.

"MY DEAR MR. FLETCHER:

"My remembrance of the trip is as follows: On August 10th, 1899, I was spending the summer at Brolles, on the border of the Forest of Fontainebleau in France, when you came to visit me and enjoy the forest at the same time that you were conducting some chewing exercises and planning an endurance-test on bicycle on the fiftieth anniversary of your birthday. You were quietly living then according to the regimen with which your name is now connected and I was pursuing the ordinary habits of life which are common to artists abroad. The test was not only to determine the endurance of yourself, but to furnish a contrast with ordinary conditions of nutrition. We were eating at the same table, with the same food available to each, and were taking about the same amount of physical exercise. We turned in at night at the same time, as people are apt to do in the country, and it was my custom to rise at or before daylight. This habit of early rising came natural to me from my farmer education and habitual practice, and yet I never could surprise you early enough to catch you asleep. My first thought on getting out was to stop under your window and chant the refrain, 'Mr. Fletcher, are you up?' in imitation of the catch-line of a popular song of the year. Frequently the click of your typewriter warned me that you were already at work, but you were always awake and ready for 'anything doing.'

"I was, at the time, thirty years of age and thought myself in good condition and strong even for a farmer's boy; had previously done considerable long-distance road-riding, including League of American Wheelmen runs, etc., in competition with the 'cracker jacks'; and, to be frank with you, thought the agreement to pace you on that particular day a 'snap,' and I expected to lose you in the woods before long.

"The day was perfect, rather warm, as I remember it, and with little or no breeze. Our start was made at 3.55 A. M. (arose at 3.30). Course selected: To Fontainebleau and thence across country to Orleans, about one hundred kilometers distant from Brolles. I considered Orleans the limit and fully expected to have you return by railway from there.

"We were running at the rate of twenty to twenty-two kilometers the hour, and from time to time I would look back for Fletcher, but he was always at the same place at my rear wheel. A puncture delayed us for some fifteen minutes, but when the great cathedral bell of Orleans struck nine we were already there taking our first food of the day, coffee and crescent rolls.

"We again started, after a short rest, down the Loire, always holding the pace of twenty kilometers or better the hour in spite of the undulations. We stopped occasionally for water and milk, a single tumblerful of which satisfied both the thirst and the hunger of yourself.

"To me, the ride, at about this period, became a grind, but Fletcher seemed to get stronger and stronger and occasionally led the pace at a terrific clip. My condition, as we neared Blois, became more than bad with cramps in the legs. I had to dismount but couldn't stand up, and for awhile, I thought they would have to carry me home. I appreciated the kind inquiries sympathetically made and oft-repeated by yourself as to my condition, but had you known, at the time, how I was cussing your healthy appearance and impatience to proceed, you wouldn't have bothered me so much with your sympathy. After a partial recovery and the slow ride into Blois, six kilometers away, I left you, taking the train back to Paris, you having decided to go it alone for the rest of the day and thus complete the test.

"The arrival at Blois was about 1.30 P. M. (170 kilometers--a little above 100 miles) and took about nine hours, including stops, to accomplish. The next morning we received your dispatch from Saumur, nearly another hundred miles down the Loire, telling us that the run to that point had been completed by 10.10 P. M. that night, and Mr. Fletcher returned the next day as fresh and as strong as I had ever seen him at any time during the summer.

"Starting the day following with wife and daughter for a bicycle ride through France to Switzerland I accompanied your party as far as Geneva, and the only thing I couldn't discover was how a man who ate so little could travel so far and seem never to get tired.

(Signed) "Very sincerely,

"E. W. REDFIELD."

"Sept. 17th, 1903."

TEST COMPLETED

The experience of the author on that eventful fiftieth birthday, as registered in the successive sensations, is worthy of record.

In starting out in the cool of the morning as the day was dawning, and speeding through the beautiful Forest of Fontainebleau, the feeling of exhilaration was indescribable. An hour or two passed before there was any sense of unpleasantness attaching to the steady grind of duty which led us to pass reluctantly by inviting spots and scenes without stopping. In the beginning there was the keenest feeling of pleasure in the mere movement, without any exertion, over and among an enchanting landscape. It was what one might call a birdlike sensation of freedom of movement which bicycling and skating, among the common means of locomotion, alone give.