How to Eat | Page 8

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 result of this habit many nervous people have dilated
stomachs. But if they would correct their manner of eating there is
usually enough tone in the muscular walls of the stomach to get it back
to normal. I marvel again and again over how miraculously nature
restores herself even after she has been terribly abused, if only she is
given a chance.
I am certain that all human beings would be more efficient if they
chewed all solid food to a cream and sipped all liquids slowly. The late
Professor William James, the great Harvard psychologist, testified to
the value of such a habit, as did a number of other distinguished
Harvard professors. I regret that some physicians still hold out in their
belief that it does no good although the evidence stands out as clearly
before them as a tree along the roadside. But they are like the physician
who some years ago declared that bathing was bad for people. I recall
how hard we all bore down upon him, as he richly deserved, and how
the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a short poem
ridiculing him. I am quite certain that the members of the Regular
school of medicine have progressed infinitely farther toward the cure of
diseases than members of all the other schools combined. I do not say
this simply because I happen to be a physician of the Regular school; I
say it because a candid survey of what has been accomplished, and by
whom, proves it. But as to diet, we have done little compared with what
we should do. We have made no greater progress along this line
because so many of us have been blinded by prejudice--the curse of the
human race.
With regard to chewing all food to a cream, most modern writers on
dietetics, while acknowledging that this super-mastication is useful,
maintain that it does not increase the value of the food. But they err
greatly in this, as we can prove in a very few words: If a certain amount
of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates is bolted by a nervous man
suffering from a breakdown, it will cause intestinal toxemia as a result
of the bolted food, but if he chews the food to a cream it will be
digested in a normal manner and will not cause gas in the stomach or
intestines. The proper amount of food is absorbed and nourishes the

man as it should. Now did not the thorough mastication of that food
increase the value of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates? The thing is
a self-evident fact. In the first case a man takes food which quickly
turns to a loathsome poison. In the second instance the same kind of
food is so thoroughly mixed with the ptyalin in the saliva that whatever
is eaten becomes of value as protein or fat or some other food element.
After many years of sad experience with this malady we call "nerves" I
am convinced that the reason why people have this disease is because
they are literally "food drunk." I have treated men who had been on an
alcohol debauch and I know how terribly depressed they are after such
a spree is over. It is exactly the same way with the pre-nervous people
that break down. They sit down to a big meal and overeat. There is a
temporary stimulus, just as in the case of the person who takes
intoxicants, followed by that terrible mental depression that all who
have suffered from "nerves" know. And because the individual with the
"nerves" is overeating two or three times each day, he stays drunk with
the poisons that form in his stomach and intestines. Such people
over-assimilate the poisonous products of proteins, especially of sugars.
Of course this may seem oddly stated because we would not want any
absorption of the poisons in the intestines, but it is probable that nature
can and does take care of a little of it there in the healthy individual.
It is perfectly absurd to say, as some physicians still continue to say,
that no poisonous matter is ever absorbed in the intestinal tract. Give a
child something that causes intestinal indigestion and see how quickly
he has a rise in temperature. This fever is the direct result of poisons
absorbed in the intestines. In the case of the nervous adult,