5 [NOTE TO PAGE 232.]
The Long-sought Principle.-It is confessedly a standing disgrace to our profession that, after all the boasted “progress in medicine” during
these hundreds of years of research and experimentation, not one great principle has been established by means of which the people can be, even if disposed (and it can hardly be said that they are, generally), guided toward perfect health. It is charged that vegetarianism, even, has failed to speedily make sound, bright-eyed, clear-skinned, healthy and therefore handsome men and women, out of life-long “sinners” against the laws of life; and it must be admitted that not all its promises are verified in practice, although it seldom fails to greatly improve all who adopt the regimen (imperfect as it is—and it is very imperfect) as practiced at the various hygienic Cures at home and abroad. The trouble is that food-reformers have only undertaken to modify, with half-way measures—to change a very bad diet for one far from good, one form of “mush” for another less harmful, but by no means physiological. I would assert here as the one all-sufficient principle, so far as physical health is concerned, looking to the rearing of children, that if we were to take a thousand new-born infants—good, bad, and indifferent, as to inheritance—and give them pure cow’s milk, avoiding the cramming that is universally practiced; say, give them two full meals, or three moderate ones a day (the quantity altogether gauged by the individual’s digestive capacity); and, as they should arrive at suitable age (i. e., as teeth began to develop), feed them on strictly natural food—the natural diet—fruits, and grains (in winter, soaked twelve hours in little water[95]), the fruit in large proportion; give them a
chance to develop normally, such as other young animals have—i.e., give them freedom from holding, tending, baby-carting, and the like, except in the smallest measure; dress them lightly, keep them free from foul air, by sufficient ventilation of all living rooms; give them the utmost freedom of the lawns or the ground—outdoor exercise—give them this sort of treatment, and not five per cent. would die under five years of age, nor, with fair regard for the known laws of life, would many fail to reach old age in health. The at present supposably-inevitable “diseases of infancy and childhood” could not exist. The influence of the constant tending and holding to which all infants are subjected is disastrous in a twofold degree: (1) for many months they are prevented from taking much voluntary exercise, and (2) this makes the involuntary cramming relatively more excessive; hence they grow fat and disordered in every way, and predisposed to all manner of sicknesses. Children scarcely ever have occasion to use their teeth. The food in use requires no chewing. Little demand is made upon the salivary glands (for food is hot, moist, and “goes down itself”); hence these glands, which consequently fail to develop normally, become at some time acutely diseased, or finally almost if not entirely useless. Hollow, sunken cheeks result from this cause. It was never designed to remedy this defect with fat. The parotid glands and the cheek muscles should be developed and maintained by physiological eating. The teeth for want of use fail, as the muscular system declines through
indolence. Unnatural food, fast eating, overeating, poor teeth, dentists, “mumps,” plethora, and febrile diseases, or chronic dyspepsia, and all manner of ailments—this is the present order of things (see advertisement of “How to Feed the Baby”).
[95] This treatment restores the flinty grain (wheat, rye, barley, maize, sweet corn) to its natural plumpness and masticability. There should be little or no liquid to turn off.