The New Glutton or Epicure

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.)

"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.)

"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."

"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."

" … 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.)

"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,

"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

"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.

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

"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.

"Sept. 17th, 1903."

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.

Redfield did not let up on the pace and I was determined not to beg for respite. Between fifty and sixty kilometers of distance only had been made when I felt that the day was not propitious for an endurance-test, and I fully expected to be compelled to return from Orleans leisurely in the afternoon and evening by wheel with only a slight addition to the century-run of the preceding Fourth of July accomplished. Before Orleans was reached, however, all sense of strain passed, and second-wind and second-strength had become installed for the day. When I left Redfield at Blois I felt stronger than any time before, and as eager to kick the pedals as when we started in the morning and as one always is prompted to do when one is filled with surplus energy. I had no objective point and was guided only by tempting roads and favouring breezes. The river road down the Loire was most promising at first, but a head wind sprang up and made a détour the other side of Blois more tempting by argument of a fair wind that blew down one of the roads leading away from the river. For a time I made full twenty-five kilometers an hour, but the wind died out and I returned to the river road and reached Tours in time for the enjoyment of a magnificent sunset effect and a most appetising and satisfying table d'hôte dinner. Before dining I jumped into a tub and had a good refreshing dip and a vigorous rub which made me feel like going out to take a walk or mount my wheel again. My appetite for dinner was not large, centred on a salad richly dressed with olive oil, and was quickly appeased; immediately after which I mounted my wheel again and proceeded down the beautiful road towards Saumur. My ambition was here raised to complete 300 kilometers and the distance to Saumur just about filled that ambition. I rode leisurely for a time after dining and then gradually increased the speed to about eighteen kilometers an hour, which brought me to my destination a little past ten, with a feeling of sleepiness that invited to a hasty falling into bed, but with surprisingly little or no sense of muscular fatigue. My cyclometer registered a little more than 304 kilometers, or 190 miles; not much for experts, under the conditions, to be sure, but a revelation of possibilities to a man of fifty who had once, not many years before, been denied life insurance on account of health disability. This was worth more than millions of money to me; and no one knows how much it will signify to the human family when the knowledge of a truly economic nutrition is attained and established.