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Title: Good Health and How We Won It With an Account of the New Hygiene Author: Upton Sinclair and Michael Williams Release Date: August 17, 2021 [eBook #66077] Language: English Character set encoding: UTF-8 Produced by: Tim Lindell, Les Galloway and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.) *** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK GOOD HEALTH AND HOW WE WON IT *** Transcriber’s Notes Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected. Variations in hyphenation have been standardised but all other spelling and punctuation remains unchanged. The cover was prepared by the transciber and is placed in the public domain. GOOD HEALTH AND HOW WE WON IT Fig. A. Fig. B. “THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD” Micro-photograph of leucocytes (white and grayish bodies) in conflict with Germs (black dots and bodies). In Fig. A the germ is that of influenza, in Fig. B that of plague. GOOD HEALTH AND HOW WE WON IT WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE NEW HYGIENE BY UPTON SINCLAIR AND MICHAEL WILLIAMS WITH SIXTEEN FULL-PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1909, By FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY All rights reserved CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE Introduction 1 I. The Battle of the Blood 21 II. How to Eat: The Gospel of Dietetics According to Horace Fletcher 41 III. The Yale Experiments 69 IV. How Digestion Is Accomplished 95 V. How Foods Poison the Body 113 VI. Some Important Food Facts 127 VII. How Often Should We Eat 145 VIII. Health and the Mind 159 IX. The Case as to Meat 173 X. The Case Against Stimulants 193 XI. Diet Reform in the Family 203 XII. Breathing and Exercise 219 XIII. Bathing and Cleanliness 239 XIV. A University of Health 258 XV. Health Reform and the Committee of One Hundred 274 Appendix 287 ILLUSTRATIONS “The Battle of the Blood” Frontispiece FACING PAGE Mr. Upton Sinclair and Mr. Michael Williams 16 Mr. Horace Fletcher 42 Mr. Horace Fletcher Making a World’s Record 52 Professor Russell H. Chittenden, Ph. D., LL.D., Sc. D. 70 Professor Irving Fisher, Ph. D. 82 Mr. John E. Granger Breaking the World’s Record for Deep-Knee Bending 88 M. Elie Metchnikoff 114 Professor Lafayette B. Mendel, Ph. D. 138 Mr. Upton Sinclair’s Children 146 Mr. Sinclair’s Children 176 The Daily Swim 206 Fresh Air in Bermuda 220 Outdoor Exercise 236 Dr. J. H. Kellogg 2580 A Group at the Battle Creek Sanitarium 27 INTRODUCTION BY UPTON SINCLAIR Ten years ago, when I was a student at college, I fell a victim to a new and fashionable ailment called “la grippe.” I recollect the date very well, because it was the first time I had been sick in fourteen years—the last difficulty having been the whooping-cough. I have many times had occasion to recall the interview with the last physician I went to see. I made a proposition, which might have changed the whole course of my future life, had he only been capable of understanding it. I said: “Doctor, it has occurred to me that I would like to have someone who knows about the body examine me thoroughly and tell me how to live.” I can recollect his look of perplexity. “Was there anything the matter with you before this attack?” he asked. “Nothing that I know of,” I answered; “but I have often reflected that the way I am living cannot be perfect; and I want to get as much out of my body and mind as I can. I should like to know, for instance, just what are proper things for me to eat——” “Nonsense,” he interrupted. “You go right on and live as you have been living, and don’t get to thinking about your health.” And so I went away and dismissed the idea. It was one that I had broached with a great deal of diffidence; so far as I knew, it was entirely original, and I was not sure how a doctor would receive it. All doctors that I had ever heard of were people who cured you when you were sick; to ask one to take you when you were well and help you to stay well, was to take an unfair advantage of the profession. So I went on to “live as I had been living.” I ate my food in cheap restaurants and boarding-houses, or in hall bedrooms, as students will. I invariably took a book to the table, and ate very rapidly, even then; frequently I forgot to eat at all in the ardor of my work. I was a worshiper of the ideal of health, and never used any sort of stimulant; but I made it a practice to work sixteen hours a day, and quite often I worked for long periods under very great nervous strain. And four years later I went back to my friend the physician. “You have indigestion,” he said, when I had told him my troubles. “I will give you some medicine.” So every day after meals I took a teaspoonful of some red liquor which magically relieved the distressing symptoms incidental to doing hard brain-work after eating. But only for a year or two more, for then I found that the artificially digested food was not being eliminated from my system as regularly as necessary, and I had to visit the doctor again. He gave my ailment another name, and gave me another kind of medicine; and I went on, working harder than ever— being just then at an important crisis in my life. Gradually, however, to my great annoyance, I was forced to realize that I was losing that fine robustness which enabled me to say that I had not had a day’s sickness in fourteen years. I found that I caught cold very easily—though I always attributed it to some unwonted draught or exposure. I found that I was in for tonsilitis once or twice every winter. And now and then, after some particularly exhausting labor, I would find it hard to get to sleep. Also I had to visit the dentist more frequently, and I noticed, to my great perplexity, that my hair was falling out. So I went on, until at last I was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, and had to drop everything and go away and try to rest. That was my situation when I stumbled upon an article in the Contemporary Review, telling about the experiments of a gentleman named Horace Fletcher. Mr. Fletcher’s idea was, in brief, that by thorough and careful chewing of the food, one extracted from it the maximum of nutriment, and could get along upon a much smaller quantity, thus saving a great strain upon the bodily processes. This article came to me as one of the great discoveries of my life. Here was a man who was doing for himself exactly what I had asked my physician to do for me so many years previously; who was working, not to cure disease, but to live so that disease would be powerless to attack him. I went at the new problem in a fine glow of enthusiasm, but blindly, and without guidance. I lived upon a few handfuls of rice and fruit—with the result that I lost fourteen pounds in as many days. At the same time I met a young writer, Michael Williams, and passed the Fletcher books on to him—and with precisely the same results. He, like myself, came near killing himself with the new weapon of health. But in spite of discouragements and failures, we went on with our experiments. We met Mr. Fletcher himself, and talked over our problems with him. We followed the course of the experiments at Yale, in which the soundness of his thorough mastication and “low proteid” arguments were definitely proven. We read the books of Metchnikoff, Chittenden, Haig and Kellogg, and followed the work of Pawlow of St. Petersburg, Masson of Geneva, Fisher of Yale, and others of the pioneers of the new hygiene. We went to Battle Creek, Michigan, where we found a million-dollar institution, equipped with every resource of modern science, and with more than a thousand nurses, physicians and helpers, all devoting their time to the teaching of the new art of keeping well. And thus, little by little, with backslidings, mistakes, and many disappointments, we worked out our problems, and found the road to permanent health. We do not say that we have entirely got over the ill effects of a lifetime of bad living; but we do say that we are getting rid of [Pg 1] [Pg 2] [Pg 3] [Pg 4] [Pg 5] [Pg 6] them very rapidly; we say that we have positive knowledge of the principles of right living, and of the causes of our former ailments, where before we had only ignorance. In the beginning, all this was simply a matter of our own digestions, and of the weal and woe of our immediate families. But as time went on we began to realize the meaning of this new knowledge to all mankind. We had found in our own persons freedom from pain and worry; we had noticeably increased our powers of working, and our mastery over all the circumstances of our lives. It seemed to us that we had come upon the discovery of a new virtue—the virtue of good eating—fully as important as any which moralists and prophets have ever preached. And so our interest in these reforms became part of our dream of the new humanity. It was not enough for us to have found the way to health for ourselves and our families; it seemed to us that we ought not to drop the subject until we had put into print the results of our experiments, so that others might avoid our mistakes and profit by our successes. Historians agree that all known civilizations, empire after empire, republic after republic, from the dawn of recorded time down to the present age, have decayed and died, through causes generated by civilization itself. In each such case the current of human progress has been restored by a fresh influx of savage peoples from beyond the frontiers of civilization. So it was with Assyria, Egypt and Persia; so Greece became the wellspring of art and the graces of life, and then died out; so Rome conquered the world, built up a marvellous structure of law, and then died out. As Edward Carpenter and others have shown us, history can paint pictures of many races that have attained the luxuries and seeming securities of civilization, but history has yet to record for us the tale of a nation passing safely through civilization, of a nation which has not been eventually destroyed by the civilization it so arduously won. And why? Because when ancient races emerged out of barbarism into civilization, they changed all the habits of living of the human race. They adopted new customs of eating; they clothed themselves; they lived under roofs; they came together in towns; they devised ways of avoiding exposure to the sun and wind and rain—but they never succeeded in devising ways of living that would keep them in health in their new environment. The old struggle against the forces of nature once relaxed, men grew effeminate and women weak; diseases increased; physical fibre softened and atrophied and withered away; moral fibre went the same path to destruction; dry rot attacked the foundations of society, and eventually the whole fabric toppled over, or was swept aside, to be built up again by some conquering horde of barbarians, which in its turn grew civilized, and in its turn succumbed to the virulent poison that seemed inherent in the very nature of civilization, and for which there seemed to be no antidote. So much for the past. As to the present, there do not lack learned and authoritative observers and thinkers who declare that our own civilization is also dying out. They point out that while in many directions we have bettered our physical condition, improved our surroundings, and stamped out many virulent diseases (smallpox, the plague and yellow fever, for instance), and have reduced average mortality, nevertheless we have but exchanged one set of evils for another and perhaps more serious, because more debilitating and degenerating set: namely, those manifold and race- destroying evils known as nervous troubles, and those other evils resulting from malnutrition, which are lumped together vaguely under the name of dyspepsia, or indigestion—the peculiar curse of America, the land of the frying-pan. It is also plain, say the critics of our civilization, that society to-day cannot be regenerated by barbarians. To-day the whole world is practically one great civilization, with a scattering of degraded and dying little tribes here and there. Modern civilization seems to have foreseen the danger of being overrun some day as the ancient civilizations were, and to have forestalled the danger by the inventions of gunpowder and rum, syphilis and tuberculosis. Are these critics right? I believe that they are, as far as they go; I believe that to-day our civilization is rapidly degenerating; but also I believe that it contains within itself two forces of regeneration which were lacking in old societies, and which are destined ultimately to prevail in our own. The first of these forces is democracy, and the second is science. To whatever department of human activity one turns at the present day, he finds men engaged in combating the age- long evils of human life with the new weapon of exact knowledge; and their discoveries no longer remain the secrets of a few—by the agencies of the public school and the press they are spreading throughout the whole world. Thus, a new science of economics having been worked out, and the causes of poverty and exploitation set forth, we see a world- wide and universal movement for the abolition of these evils. And hand in hand with this goes a movement of moral regeneration, manifesting itself in a thousand different forms, but all having for their aim the teaching of self-mastery—the replacing of the old natural process of the elimination of the unfit by a conscious effort on the part of each individual to eliminate his own unfitness. We see this movement in literature and art; we see it in the new religions which are springing up—in Christian Science, and the so-called “New Thought” movements; we see it in the great health movement which is the theme of this book, and which claims for its leaders some of the finest spirits of our times. In the state of nature man had to hunt his own food, so he was hungry when he sat down to eat. But having conquered nature, and accumulated goods, he is able to think of enjoyments, and invents cooks and the art of cookery —which is simply the tickling of his palate with all kinds of stomach-destroying concoctions. And now the time has come when he wishes to escape from the miseries thus brought upon him; and, as before, the weapon is that of exact science. He must ascertain what food elements his body needs, and in what form he may best take them; and in accordance with this new knowledge he must shape his habits of life. In the same way he has to examine and correct his habits of sleeping and dressing and bathing and exercising, in accordance with the real necessities of his body. [Pg 7] [Pg 8] [Pg 9] [Pg 10] [Pg 11] [Pg 12] This is the work which the leaders of the new movement are engaged upon. To quote a single instance: while I was “living as I had been living” and eating the preparations of ignorant cooks in boarding-houses and restaurants, Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek was bringing all the resources of modern chemistry and bacteriology to bear upon the problem of the nutrition of man; taking all the foods used by human beings, and analyzing them and testing them in elaborate experiments; determining the amount of their available nutriment and their actual effect upon the system in all stages of sickness and health; the various ways of preparing them and combining them, and the effect of these processes upon their palatability and ease of digestion. Every day for nine years, so Kellogg told me, he sat down to an experimental meal designed by himself and prepared by his wife; and the result is a new dietary—that in use at the Battle Creek Sanitarium—which awaits only the spread of knowledge to change the ways of eating of civilized man. This new health knowledge has been amassed by many workers and, as in all cases of new knowledge, there is much chaff with the grain. There are faddists as well as scientists; there are traders as well as humanitarians. It seemed to us that there was urgently needed a book which should gather this new knowledge, and present it in a form in which it could be used by the average man. There have been many books written upon this; but they are either the work of propagandists with one idea—containing, as we have proved to our cost, much dangerous error; or else the work of physicians and specialists, whose vocabulary is not easily to be comprehended by the average man or woman. What we have tried to write is a book which sets forth what has been proved by investigators in many and widely-scattered fields; which is simple, so that a person of ordinary intelligence can comprehend it; which is brief, so that a busy person may quickly get the gist of it; and which is practical, giving its information from the point of view of the man who wishes to apply these new ideas to his own case. Michael Williams was recently persuaded to give a semi-public talk on the subject before an audience of several hundred professional and business people. He was compelled to spend the rest of the evening in answering the questions of his audience; and listening to these questions, I was made to realize the tremendous interest of the public in the practical demonstration which Mr. Horace Fletcher has given of the idea of Metchnikoff, that men and women to- day grow old before they ought to do so, and that the prime of life should be from the age of fifty to eighty. A broken- down invalid at forty-five, Mr. Fletcher was at fifty-four a marvel of strength—and at fifty-eight he showed an improvement of one hundred per cent. over his tests at the age of fifty-four; thus proving that progressive recuperation in the so-called “decline of life” might be effected by followers of the new art of health. As a result of this address, Williams was invited by the president of one of the largest industrial concerns in the country to lecture to his many thousands of employees on the new hygiene; his idea being to place at their disposal the knowledge of this new method of increasing their physical and mental efficiency. For business men and women, indeed, for workers of all kinds, good health is capital; and the story of the new hygiene is the story of the throwing open of hitherto unsuspected reserve-stores of energy and endurance for the use of all. In writing upon this subject, the experiences most prominent in our minds have naturally been those of ourselves, of our wives and children, and of friends who have followed in our path. As the setting forth of an actual case is always more convincing than a general statement, we have frequently referred to these experiences, and what they have taught us. We have done this frankly and simply, and we trust that the reader will not misinterpret the spirit in which we have done it. Mr. Horace Fletcher has set the noble example in this matter, and has been the means of helping tens of thousands of his fellow men and women. MR. UPTON SINCLAIR AND MR. MICHAEL WILLIAMS Resting from their favorite exercise. I have sketched the path by which I was led into these studies; there remains to outline the story of my collaborator. Williams is the son of a line of sailors, and inherited a robust constitution; but as a boy and youth he was employed in warehouses and department stores, and when he was twenty he went to North Carolina as a tuberculosis patient. Returning after two years, much benefited by outdoor life, he entered newspaper work in Boston, New York, and elsewhere, and kept at it until four years ago, when again he fled South to do battle with tuberculosis, which had attacked a new place in his lungs. After a second partial recuperation, he went to San Francisco. At the time of the earthquake he held a responsible executive position, and his health suffered from the worry and the labors of that period. A year later there came the shock and exposure consequent upon the burning of Helicon Hall. Williams found himself hovering upon the brink of another breakdown, this time in nervous energy as well as in lung power. A trip to sea failed to bring much benefit; and matters were seeming pretty black to him, when it chanced that a leading magazine sent him to New Haven to study the diet experiments being conducted at Yale University by Professors Chittenden, Mendel and Fisher. He found that these experiments were based upon the case of Horace Fletcher, and had resulted in supporting his claims. This circumstance interested him, suggesting as it did that he himself might have been to blame for his failure with Mr. Fletcher’s system. So he renewed the study of Fletcherism, and later on the same magazine sent him to Dr. Kellogg’s institution at Battle Creek, with the result that he became a complete convert to the new ideas. Like a great many newspaper men, he had been a free user of coffee, and also of alcohol. As one of the results of his adoption of the “low proteid” diet, and of the open-air life, he was able to break off the use of all these things without grave difficulty. A bacteriological examination recently disclosed the fact that his lungs had entirely healed; while tests on the spirometer showed that his breathing capacity was far beyond that of the average man of his weight and size. In less [Pg 13] [Pg 14] [Pg 15] [Pg 16] [Pg 17] [Pg 18] [Pg 19] than three months, while at the Battle Creek Sanitarium, tests showed a great gain in the cell count of his blood, and in its general quality. Also, his general physical strength was increased from 4635 units to 5025, which latter figure is well above the average for his height, 68.2 inches. In conclusion, we wish jointly to express our obligation to Mr. Horace Fletcher, to Dr. J. H. Kellogg, to Professor Russell H. Chittenden, to Professor Lafayette B. Mendel, and to Professor Irving Fisher for advice, criticism and generous help afforded in the preparation of some of the chapters of this book. The authority of these scientists, physicians and investigators, and of others like Metchnikoff, Pawlow, Cannon, Curtis, Sager, Higgins and Gulick, whose works we have studied, is the foundation upon which we rest on all questions of fact or scientific statement. They are the pathbreakers and the roadbuilders,—we claim to be simply guides and companions along the journey to the fair land of health. The journey is not long, and the road is a highway open to all. [Pg 20] I THE BATTLE OF THE BLOOD The new ideas of living which are the subject of this book have proceeded from investigation of the human body with the high-power microscope. The discoveries made, which have to do, not so much with the body itself as with the countless billions of minute organisms which inhabit the body, may be best set forth by a description of the blood. “The blood is the life,” says Exodus, and modern science has confirmed this statement. From the blood proceeds the life of all the body, and in its health is the body’s health. If you should prick your finger and extract a drop of your own blood, and examine it under a microscope, you would make the fascinating discovery that it is the home of living creatures, each having a separate and independent existence of its own. In a single ounce of blood there are more of these organisms than there are human beings upon the face of the globe. These organisms are of many kinds, but they divide themselves into two main groups, known as the red corpuscles and the white. The red corpuscles are the smaller of the two. The body of an average man contains something like thirty million of millions of these corpuscles; a number exceeding the population of New York and London are born in the body every second. They are the oxygen conveyers of the body; the process of life is one of chemical combustion, and these corpuscles feed the fire. No remotest portion of the body escapes their visitation. They carry oxygen from the lungs and they bring back the carbon dioxide and other waste products of the body’s activities. They have been compared to men who carry into a laundry buckets of pure water, and carry out the dirty water resulting from the washing process. The other variety of organisms are the white cells or leucocytes, and it is concerning them that the most important discoveries of modern investigators have been made. The leucocytes vary in number according to the physical condition of the individual, and according to their locality in the body. Their function is to defend the body against the encroachments of hostile organisms. We shall take it for granted that the reader does not require to have proven to him the so-called “germ theory” of disease. The phrase, which was once accurate, is now misleading, for the germ “theory” is part of the definite achievement of science. Not only have we succeeded in isolating the specific germ whose introduction into the body is responsible for different diseases, but in many cases, by studying the history and behavior of the germ, we have been able to find methods of checking its inroads, and so have delivered men from scourges like yellow fever and the bubonic plague. THE DEFENSES OF THE BODY An experiment that is often tried in operating rooms furnishes a vivid illustration of the omnipresence of these invisible, yet potent, foes of life. In order to impress upon young surgeons the importance of maintaining antiseptic conditions, they are instructed to thoroughly wash their hands and arms in antiseptic soap and water; then they are told to leave their arms exposed for a few minutes, after which a microscopic examination of the bared skin will result in exposing the presence of myriads of germs. Many of these are, of course, harmless; some are even “friendly”—since they make war upon the dangerous kinds. But others are the deadly organisms which find lodgment in the lungs and cause pneumonia and tuberculosis; or the thirty odd varieties of bacilli which cause the various kinds of grippe and influenza and “colds,” which plague the civilized man; or others which, finding entrance into the digestive tract, are the cause of typhoid and other deadly fevers. So it appears that we live within our bodies somewhat in the same fashion as isolated barons lived in their castles in the Dark Ages, beleaguered constantly by hordes of enemies that are bent upon our destruction—these being billions upon billions of disease germs. Every portion of the body has its defenses to protect it against these swarms. The skin is germ-tight in health; and each of the gateways to the interior of the body has its own peculiar guard—tears, wax, mucous membrane, etc. As Dr. Edward A. Ayers points out,—“Many of these entrances are lined with out-sweeping brooms—fine hairs similar to the ‘nap’ or ‘pile’ of carpet or plush—which constantly sweep back and forth like wheat stalks waving in the breeze. You cannot see them with the low-powered eye, but neither can you see the germs. They sweep the mucous from lungs and throat, and try to keep the ventilators free from dust and germs. Behind the scurf wall and the broom brigade of the mucous membranes, the soldier corpuscles of the blood march around the entire fortress every twenty-eight seconds” (the time occupied by the blood in its circulation through the body). HEALTHY BODIES ARE GERM-PROOF And again (to quote another authority, Dr. Sadler), “All the fluids and secretions of the body are more or less germicidal. The saliva, being alkaline, discourages the growth of germs requiring an acid medium. The normal gastric juice of a healthy stomach is a sure germ-killer. In the early part of digestion, lactic acid is present, and there soon appears the powerful hydrochloric acid, which is a most efficient germicide.... “The living, healthy tissues of the body are all more or less germicidal; that is, they are endowed with certain protective properties against germs and disease. This is true of many of the other special secretions, like those found in the eye and elsewhere in the body, when they are normal. The blood and lymph, the two great circulating fluids of the [Pg 21] [Pg 22] [Pg 23] [Pg 24] [Pg 25] [Pg 26] body, are likewise germicidal. In some conditions of disease, there may be found various substances in the blood which can destroy germs.” THE WHITE CELLS ON GUARD And this definitely brings us to the other kind of inhabitants of the human blood, the leucocytes, or white blood corpuscles,—and so to the germ theory of health, which science is showing to be no less true than the germ theory of disease. In their natural state these cells are transparent, spherical forms of the consistency of jelly drops, which float in the bloodstreams or creep along the inner surface of the vessel. Their function was for a long time not understood; the discovery of the real facts, perhaps the most epoch-making discovery ever made concerning the human body, the world owes to the genius of Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute of Paris. These cells are the last reserves of the body in its defense against the assault of disease. Whenever, in spite of all opposition, the hostile germs find access either to the blood or to the tissue, the white cells rush to the spot, and fall upon them and devour them. In their fight against the hordes of evil bacteria that invade the blood, where the battles are waged, the body’s defenders have four main ways of battling. Again we quote from Dr. Ayers: “The blood covers some germs with a sticky paste, and makes them adhere to one another, thereby anchoring them so that they become as helpless as flies on fly paper. The paste comes from the liquid of the blood, the plasma. Another blood-weapon (the ‘lysins’) dissolves the germs as lye does. A third means of defense is the ability of the white blood corpuscles to envelop and digest the living germs. One white cell can digest dozens of germs, but it may mean death to the devouring cells. The fourth and recently discovered weapon, or ammunition, of the blood is the opsonins. Wright and Douglas in London in 1903 coined the word, which comes from the Latin opsono: “I cook for the table,” “I prepare pabulum for.” This is precisely what the opsonins do in the blood. They manifest this beneficial activity when invading disease germs appear. They attract white blood cells to the germs and make the bacteria more eatable for the cells. They are appetizers for the white blood cells; or sauces, which help the white blood cells to eat more of the bacteria than they could do without this spur to their hunger. Wright and Douglas demonstrated beyond peradventure the ability of the white blood cells to eat a larger number of bacteria when the latter are soaked in opsonins. They also showed that this opsonic sauce, or appetizer, which stimulates the blessed hunger of the white blood cells for disease bacteria, could be artificially produced, and hypodermically introduced into a patient’s blood, thus increasing that blood’s power of defense by raising the quantity of opsonins. They also worked out a practical laboratory technique by means of which the opsonins can be measured, or counted, with a considerable degree of exactitude, thereby making it possible to estimate within limits of accuracy any one’s ability to resist bacterial invasions. If the blood is rich in opsonins, its power to fight disease is strong. Opsonins are now inoculated into the blood at several institutions, notably McGill University in Montreal, and at the Battle Creek Sanitarium. HOW THE WHITE CELLS DO THEIR WORK The process by which the white cells fight for us may be watched in the transparent tissue of a frog’s foot or the wing of a bat. If a few disease germs are introduced into this tissue, the white cells may be seen to accumulate on the wall of the blood vessel just opposite where the germs have entered. “Each cell begins to push out a minute thread of its tissue,” writes Dr. Kellogg, in describing the process, “thrusting it through the wall of its own blood vessel. Little by little the farther end of this delicate filament which has been pushed through the wall grows larger and larger, while the portion of the cell within the vessel lessens, and after a little time each cell is found outside the vessel, and yet no openings are left behind. Just how they accomplish this without leaving a gap behind them is one of the mysteries for which Science has for many years in vain sought a solution. The vessel wall remains as perfect as it was before. Apparently, each cell has made a minute opening and has then tucked itself through, as one might tuck a pocket handkerchief through a ring, invisibly closing up behind itself the opening made. Once outside the vessel, these wonderful body-defenders, moving here and there, quickly discover the germs and proceed at once to swallow them. If the germs are few in number, they may be in this way destroyed, for the white cells not only swallow germs, but digest them. If the number is very great, however, the cells sacrifice themselves in the effort to destroy the germs, taking in a larger number than they are able to digest and destroy. When this occurs, the germs continue to grow; more white cells make their way out of the blood vessels, and a fierce and often long-continued battle is waged between the living blood cells and the invading germs.” Now, it must be understood that this description is not the product of any one’s imagination, but is a definitely established fact which has been studied by scientists all over the world. Because of the importance of the discovery, and of the new views of health to which it leads, we have placed a picture of this “battle of the blood” at the front of this book. It shows the leucocytes of the human body in conflict with the germs of influenza: the black dots being the germs, and the larger grayish bodies the leucocytes. We have chosen a photograph rather than a drawing, so that the reader may realize that he is seeing something which actually has existence. We request him to study the picture and fix it upon his mind, for it is not too much to say that from it is derived every principle of health which is set forth in the course of this book. THE PROBLEM OF HEALTH The human body is a complex and intricate organism, in some wonderful and entirely incomprehensible way [Pg 27] [Pg 28] [Pg 29] [Pg 30] [Pg 31] [Pg 32] integrating the activities of all these billions of other living organisms. Each and every one of these latter has its function to fulfill, and the life of the individual body is a life of health so long as the unity of all its organisms is maintained. Outside of the body are millions of hostile organisms assaulting it continuously; and the problem of health is the problem of enabling it to make headway against its enemies for as long a period as possible. Every act of a human being has its effect upon this battle; at every moment of your life you are either strengthening the power of your own organism or strengthening your enemies. Once the organism is unable to beat back its enemies, health begins to fail and death and complete disintegration is the ultimate result. It must be understood that the peril of these hostile germs is not merely that they devour the substance upon which the body’s own organisms have to be nourished. If that were all, they might remain in the body as parasites, and by taking additional nourishment a man might sustain life in spite of them. Nor is it even that they multiply with such enormous rapidity; the peril is that they throw off as the products of their own activity a number of poisons, which are as deadly to the human body as any known. These poisons are produced much more rapidly than they can be eliminated from the system, and so they fill the blood, and death ensues. Thus the problem becomes clear. In the first place, what can we do to keep disease germs from securing entrance to the body; and second, what can we do to strengthen the body’s army of defense so that the fate of any which do find entrance may be immediate destruction? HEALTH, LIKE DISEASE, IS CATCHING In actual practice it is found that the second problem is by far the more important one. Some germs we can avoid. If we boil all the water that we drink we will not be very apt to have typhoid. If we exterminate rats and mosquitoes and flies and fleas, we will not have yellow fever, or malaria, or plague. But we cannot hope to do this at present in the case of such diseases as, for instance, consumption, grippe, and influenza. If we live in a city, we take into our lungs and throat millions of the germs of these diseases every day. Therefore the one hope that is left is to keep ourselves in such a condition of health that the army of our bodies shall be able to destroy these germs. When the blood is in a healthy condition, the white cells are numerous, powerful, and active, but when the blood flows stagnantly, or when it is impoverished, then the white cells are few and the forces of disease obtain a foothold. Healthy men can go through many epidemics with impunity. Because the Japanese army was an army of healthy men, its death rate from those diseases which usually follow in the wake of all armies was lower than the world had ever known before. Robert Ingersoll once said that if he had been God and had made the world, he would have made health “catching,” and not disease. As a matter of fact, health is catching. It abounds in the very air we breathe, in the water we drink, in the movements of every muscle and the play of every fibre and nerve of the body; it comes from and is nourished by each and every one of the bodily actions and functions; while disease is only secured by persistent transgressions of the proper way of living, and by injurious habits and customs that result in lowering the “vital resistance.” This vital resistance is the innate power of the body to keep itself strong; its very lifeforce. This is what we mean when we say that this or that person has “a good constitution,” or has “a weak constitution.” This is the capital in the bank of each individual life, placed there by Nature at the birth of that life, and increased or diminished by each and every action of our bodies, and also of our minds. As Rokitansky, the eminent German scientist, said, “Nature heals. This is the first and greatest law of therapeutics—one which we must never forget. Nature creates and maintains, therefore she must be able to heal.” Many of the most notable discoveries and experiments of modern science concur in demonstrating that the natural and innate healing power of the body is man’s greatest resource in combating disease and maintaining health. It is the body itself which cures the sick man; his own vitality, and not the drug or medicants which he may take. These may assist the healing process, but they do not set going the healing processes themselves. More often, indeed, they are distinct detriments. They stamp out or banish the distressing symptoms of ailments, and thus in effect they silence the signal bells of danger which the body rings at the approach of disease. Modern science has turned its forces upon this question of maintaining at its highest potentiality the ability of the body to resist disease. All the habits of the human race have been investigated in the light of this idea, and some have been found to be wise and others to be unwise. These conclusions, with the evidence therefor, are the subjects of our book. OUR FOOD IS THE CHIEF FACTOR It has been found that the most important problems connected with health are those of nutrition—the questions of what and when and how and how much food we ought to eat. Every language under the sun contains a prayer somewhat similar to that which we have in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, “Give us this day our daily bread.” If we stop to think for a moment, we realize that next to the air we breathe, and the water we drink, our food is the most important consideration in the maintenance of life. All this is the veriest commonplace; yet the fact remains that it is very rarely indeed that we do stop to think upon the subject of our food. It is something that we take for granted, like life itself. In the regular routine of our days our meals become fixed habits, and the taking of food an almost involuntary custom. It requires some extraordinary event to arouse us to a just [Pg 33] [Pg 34] [Pg 35] [Pg 36] [Pg 37] [Pg 38] appreciation of the importance of knowledge on this subject. Or else the coming of one of the myriad forms of digestive diseases will serve the purpose of introducing the subject to our notice. Our blood is made directly from what we eat, and that old Saxon proverb is true which says that every man has lain in his own trencher. Man is his food. Each human body is made by chemical action from its food. All our actions and all our thoughts come from what we eat, even as the movements of machinery proceed from the coal fed into the boilers of the engine which operate the machine. If we eat the right food, namely, the food which contains the elements our bodies require in the proper proportions, we repair all waste, replace broken down tissue and supply ourselves with physical and mental energy for our toils and joys in life; while if we eat the wrong foods we quickly injure our delicate though powerful physical and mental machinery. All this would seem to be obvious; yet most people would grant that they have still much to learn concerning what really constitutes the best foods, and about the best ways of preparing, or making, or using those foods. Few of us possess anything more definite to guide us in our eating than the habits we acquired as children, or habits picked up in later life from following the example of our friends, or the food fashions of the day—for there are such things as fashions in foods and in the eating of foods, even as there are fashions in clothes and the making and wearing thereof. In this place it is proposed to study the subject of food from one standpoint, namely, its effect upon the Battle of the Blood; its relation to the vital resistance of the body whereby health is maintained. [Pg 39] [Pg 40] II HOW TO EAT: THE GOSPEL OF DIETETICS ACCORDING TO HORACE FLETCHER We shall first of all see what modern science has to tell us concerning the question of how we ought to eat. It may not seem possible that anything essential remains to be said at this late day on the subject of one of the commonest and decidedly most necessary of all human acts. That there should be knowledge of the utmost importance to learn regarding the actions and movements of the tongue, the teeth, and the jaws, may come with as much surprise to the majority of our readers as it did to us when we first hit upon this disturbing, but illuminating, fact. The act of eating is the starting point of the long series of processes whereby our bodies are nourished. It is the only act of them all which lies within our control. We can directly supervise the work of our mouths; we can watch over the action of the teeth, and tongue, and palate; but we can not supervise the work of the stomach, or of the intestinal tube. Once we have swallowed our food, our mastery over it has ceased—except for some hit-or-miss participation in the further processes of its digestion by means of pills or potions. Realizing this, we come to recognize the basic importance of knowing the right way of eating. THE STORY OF HORACE FLETCHER This knowledge the world owes to Horace Fletcher, the American business man who has made many of the greatest physiologists of our times embark upon years-long series of experiments and inquiries into the problems of man’s nutrition. As a result, the text-books of physiology are now being rewritten; and as a further result, tens of thousands of men and women, among them some of the best known authors, physicians, clergymen, military men, and business men of both Europe and America, have been restored to health by the knowledge of how to eat their food. MR. HORACE FLETCHER, Whose books on dietetics and good health were the forerunners of the present movement. This knowledge Mr. Fletcher gained at the very door of death, and in no more interesting and striking fashion could the importance of it be shown than by the relation of his remarkable case. At the age of forty-five, after a varied and adventurous career, as miner, and explorer, and sailor, and hunter, Mr. Fletcher had won wealth, and retired from his business in order to devote himself to long-cherished interests in art and philosophy. He was still comparatively young, he was a member of many clubs, he had warm friends in all the capitals and countrysides of the world (Mr. Fletcher being one of the most untiring of globe-trotters), and in all ways except one he was equipped and ready for a long life of ease and enjoyment. The one way in which he was not equipped was—in health. HOW A STRONG MAN BROKE DOWN Once he had been a man of robust physique, a champion gymnast and athlete; he had been president of the far- famed Olympic Club in San Francisco (which he founded, and where the pugilist Corbett was discovered), and had won plaudits even from famous professionals for his prowess with the gloves. But he had overdrawn his account at the bank of life. He had expended more vital resistance than he had stored up; to such an extent, indeed, that when Mr. Fletcher went to the insurance companies at the time he retired from business he was rejected by them all; he was obese; he was suffering from three chronic diseases, and he was dying fast. Such was the verdict given by the skilled and experienced medical examiners of the life insurance companies. And instead of entering upon a long life of ease and enjoyment, he was thus condemned, seemingly, to a short life of invalidism and suffering. FIGHTING FOR LIFE But Mr. Fletcher declined to accept any such decision as that. He decided that he would regain his health—not that he would try to regain his health, but that he would regain his health. He first turned to the physicians. Possessed of wealth, he was able to secure the services of many of the most able specialists of the world. He visited the most celebrated “cures” and “springs” and sanitariums of Europe and America. Nothing availed. He found passing relief now and then, but no permanent good. He gained no health, in other words, but obtained merely temporary abatement of this or of that disease. Then he turned to himself. He began the study of his own case. As he attributed most of his bodily woes to faulty habits of eating, the subject of nutrition became uppermost in his studies. He was, coincidentally, deeply immersed and interested in the study of practical philosophy; and in a very remarkable fashion these two subjects, these two interests, nutrition and practical philosophy, became fused into one subject, supplementing and completing each other and jointly forming the burden of the message of Hope, of the tidings of great joy, which it became the mission of Horace Fletcher [Pg 41] [Pg 42] [Pg 43] [Pg 44] [Pg 45] [Pg 46] to deliver to mankind. MR. FLETCHER’S DISCOVERY He discovered, or rather rediscovered, and applied, two great and simple truths: First, that the complete chewing of all food, both liquid and solid, whereby a process of involuntary swallowing is established, foods being selected in accordance with individual tastes, is by far the most important and most necessary part of human nutrition. It is the key that unlocks the door of health, and opens the way to the real hygienic life. Second, that nothing poisons the body, and aids the forces of disease, more than worry—which Mr. Fletcher has named Fearthought. It is our nature to look forward, to anticipate. We can anticipate in two ways— anticipate evil, or anticipate good. The first way is to use fearthought; the second way is to use forethought. Forethought will produce cheerfulness and health, even as unspoiled rose seeds will produce roses. Fearthought will produce disease and trouble, even as the germs of putrefaction will produce sickness and death. So great an authority in philosophy and psychology as William James has given the sanction of his use to Mr. Fletcher’s phrases; and has also named him as a shining example of those exceptional men who find in some mental idea a key to unlock reservoirs of hidden and unsuspected energy. While there is no doubting the fact that Horace Fletcher is decidedly an exceptional man, yet the records prove that his key is not merely for the use of exceptional people, but that it is one susceptible of being used by everybody possessing willpower enough to enable them to say “yes” when offered something good. Like other great discoveries, Mr. Fletcher’s discovery of the right way to eat came partly as an accident. Happening to be in Chicago at a time when his friends were all away, and being forced to stay in the city, he took to lingering over his meals in order to pass away the time. He began to taste every spoonful of soup, to sip every mouthful of anything liquid, with great deliberation, noting the different tastes and searching out new flavors. He chewed each mo...