How to Eat | Page 7

doctor, I declare I'm feeling a whole lot better myself! I don't get sleepy any more during the daytime, and that pain I used to have in the region of my liver is gone!" And so on and on.
The fact is just this: anybody who follows the rules that I learned to apply in my own case cannot fail to be benefited. And although those not inclined to "nerves" can eat a greater variety of food, it's greatly to be desired when there is a nervous person in a household of grownups that all other members of the family enter together into this thing. It could not fail to help every one of them. To be truthful, in the beginning you will all find it mighty hard to persist in chewing all your food to a cream. Mouthful after mouthful of food will get away from you when you are not thinking. This just goes to show how we are in the habit of bolting our food. At first people who Fletcherize or chew their food perfectly, usually lose weight. I most certainly did. I lost about twenty pounds because of it, but I was so well and felt so good I could almost have jumped over the North Star.
I know that, unfortunately, a lot of people with "nerves" have started to chew their food carefully and to eat sparingly, but the minute they found themselves losing weight they were frightened and quit. They went on carrying that ten or twenty or thirty pounds of flesh and all the time suffering the tortures of the damned just in order that they might keep it. But of what benefit are a certain number of extra pounds of flesh and how can a man explain such a senseless action?
The astonishing thing is that many physicians are willing to condemn a cure just as soon as they find the patient has lost a pound of beef. But as I said before, the primary mission of man in this world is not to raise beef. I do not find fault with the raising of beef in the feeding yards, but if beef must be raised let us confine the industry to the cattle pens and stock yards. Let us not worship it to the degree that we would rather live in hell than part with a few extra pounds that overload our own bodies.
Now just here I want it distinctly understood, as I have said before, that this text is primarily for functional nervous cases. Tubercular people belong to an entirely different class. They should live out of doors day and night and should, if possible, be treated at outdoor institutions established for such cases. But the individual with "nerves" will find what he needs and will find it abundantly if he has enough determination to take hold of it and keep at it.
On the part of many it will take all the determination they have to chew their food to a cream and always eat sparingly. In regard to the amount of food taken, judgment must of course be used. We all know that it is possible to eat too little. But you should always quit eating while you still feel you would like a little more. I know of no better guide than this to offer you. But I have observed that the person who eats slowly and chews his food to a cream never eats as much food as he would if he bolted it. It is just like letting a thirsty horse drink water. I remember, as a boy on the farm, when I led a very thirsty horse from the field to the water tank how rapidly he would swallow. If my father were with me, after the horse had drunk a while he would say, "Make him hold his head up." Frequently when I did so the horse would draw a long breath and drink no more. Had he gone right on drinking, as a thirsty horse will if you permit him to do so, he might have drunk twice as much as was good for him. And that's the way people eat. As a result the horse that drinks and drinks and drinks when he is very thirsty sometimes dies in a few hours. I have seen a horse die from drinking too much water and I have also seen people die in a few hours after a terrible gorge that they could not get rid of. Do you know that most nervous people have a way of sitting down to the table and eating until they are literally full? If you could take out the stomach of such a person and look at it, the sight would frighten you. And with good reason. For as a