Food Remedies | Page 2

weight under it.
The Herald of Health stated, some few years back, that in the South of
France where the "grape cure" is practised consumptive patients are fed
on grapes alone, and become quite strong and well in a year or two.
And I have myself known wonderful cures to follow on the adoption of
a fruitarian dietary in cases of cancer, tumour, gout, eczema, all kinds
of inflammatory complaints, and wounds that refused to heal.
H. Benjafield, M.B., writing in the Herald of Health, says: "Garrod, the
great London authority on gout, advises his patients to take oranges,
lemons, strawberries, grapes, apples, pears, etc. Tardieu, the great
French authority, maintains that the salts of potash found so plentifully
in fruits are the chief agents in purifying the blood from these
rheumatic and gouty poisons.... Dr. Buzzard advises the scorbutic to
take fruit morning, noon, and night. Fresh lemon juice in the form of
lemonade is to be his ordinary drink; the existence of diarrhoea should
be no reason for withholding it." The writer goes on to show that
headache, indigestion, constipation, and all other complaints that result
from the sluggish action of bowels and liver can never be cured by the
use of artificial fruit salts and drugs.

Salts and acids as found in organised forms are quite different in their
effects to the products of the laboratory, notwithstanding that the
chemical composition may be shown to be the same. The chemist may
be able to manufacture a "fruit juice," but he cannot, as yet,
manufacture the actual fruit. The mysterious life force always evades
him. Fruit is a vital food, it supplies the body with something over and
above the mere elements that the chemist succeeds in isolating by
analysis. The vegetable kingdom possesses the power of directly
utilising minerals, and it is only in this "live" form that they are fit for
the consumption of man. In the consumption of sodium chloride
(common table salt), baking powders, and the whole army of mineral
drugs and essences, we violate that decree of Nature which ordains that
the animal kingdom shall feed upon the vegetable and the vegetable
upon the mineral.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This was the original treatment; now other food is added, although
excellent results were obtained under the old régime.
Fruit and the Teeth.
I mention the above because one of the objections that I have heard
cited against the free use of fruit is that "the acids act injuriously upon
the teeth." Until I became a vegetarian I used to visit a dentist regularly
every six months. I had done this for ten years, and nearly every tooth
in my gums had its gold filling. The last time I visited the dentist I told
him that I had become a vegetarian, and he replied that he rather
thought my teeth would decay quicker in future on account of an
increased consumption of vegetable acids. But from that day, now
nearly six years ago, to the present time, I have never been near a
dentist. My teeth seem to have taken a new lease of life. It is a fact that
the acids in fruit and vegetables so far from injuring the teeth benefit
them. Many of these acids are strongly antiseptic and actually destroy
the germs that cause the teeth to decay. On the other hand, they do not
attack the enamel of the teeth, while inorganic acids do. Nothing
cleanses the teeth so effectually as to thoroughly chew a large and juicy
apple.

Fruit is a Food.
Until quite recently the majority of English-speaking people have been
accustomed to look upon fruit not as a food, but rather as a sweetmeat,
to be eaten merely for pleasure, and therefore very sparingly. It has
consequently been banished from its rightful place at the beginning of
meals. But fruit is not a "goody," it is a food, and, moreover, a
complete food. All vegetable foods (in their natural state) contain all
the elements necessary to form a complete food. At a pinch human life
might be supported on any one of them. I say "at a pinch" because if
the nuts cereals and pulses were ruled out of the dietary it would, for
most people, be deficient in fat and proteid (the flesh and
muscle-forming element). Nevertheless, fruit alone will sustain life if
taken in large quantities with small output of energy on the part of the
person living upon it, as witness the "grape cure."[2] The percentage of
proteid in grapes is particularly high for fruit.
Those people who desire to make a fruitarian dietary their daily régime
cannot do better than take the advice of O. Hashnu Hara, an American
writer. He says: "Every adult requires from twelve to sixteen ounces of
dry food, free from water,