II. HOW TO OVERCOME THE TROUBLE
We have now come to the second step in the cure of "nerves"—eating the right food in the right way. You must chew all food until it is of the consistency of cream, and you must also sip all liquids slowly. And now, as you read these things that I have set down, I want you to remember this: doing any one thing—and doing that alone—will not cure this malady. No, it is doing a number of things at the right time. I know this is true because I have tried it. For a time I chewed my food to a cream, but that was the only thing I did in an endeavor to get well. I was doing none of the other things that are absolutely necessary for a cure. This is one great trouble with all such people. They will Fletcherize for a time and then say there is nothing to that because it does not cure them. Well, as I've said, that alone will not, and I want to dwell at length on this because nobody knows as well as I do, what harm such a belief does the nervous sufferer.
Trying out Fletcherizing alone, which I say must be done together with other things if you want to get well and stay well, is like taking the handle of an axe and going out into the woods to cut down a tree. Now with Fletcherizing you have a perfectly good handle, but you know very well that you can't cut a tree down with only an axe handle. But that is not the fault of the handle. The fault is obviously your own. Now suppose you get the axe and fit the handle to it. You can then cut the tree down if you work hard enough at the task. Again, suppose you cut the tree half way through and quit. Will the axe keep on until the work is done? You know it will not, and you very well know if you wish to be cured you must keep on doing your part of the work or dieting will be of no value whatever to you. Now suppose a man comes along and tells you that the axe you have is no good and therefore it is no use for you to keep on trying to use it. That is exactly what some physicians still say about Fletcherizing.
But you say, "I must cut this tree down. Nobody will do it for me; how shall I get it down? Can you give me an axe that will cut it down?"
"Oh, no," he replies, "but anyway there's no use fooling with that one."
Then, if you are determined to do the work, you say, "I have to cut the tree down. You have no other axe to offer me, so I'm going to try the one I have." And you go ahead and cut down the tree. Then just as you have finished, the man comes your way again, and in great delight you call out to him: "Come and see! I cut this tree down with the axe you said was no good!"
The man comes over to you and says, "Where's the tree? I don't see it!"
You are astonished and you tell him, "There it lies on the ground right before your eyes! Can't you see it?"
But he turns and walks away saying: "There is no tree there; it is all in your mind."
This is exactly what people with "nerves" have been told again and again by physicians, by relatives, and by most other people who have never had "nerves."
I tell you these things so that when you begin to eat sparingly and chew your food to a cream you may fortify yourself against well-meaning but mistaken friends and relatives. And, oddly enough, it does seem that the individual with "nerves" has more friends and relatives than any other person in the world.
Remember you must not only chew your food to the consistency of cream for one or two months, you must make this practice a lifelong habit. If you cannot take time to eat a meal in this way, you had much better go hungry. To people who travel and must frequently take their meals in railroad eating houses, I would say, get some bread and butter sandwiches and eat them slowly while on the train. There is always a chance to secure all you need to eat, too. You may not always be able to sit an hour at the table—the time we should give to a meal if we eat as we should. I know many object to this rule on the ground that if we followed it we should get nothing else done. But that is nonsense. Did not the Master of us all say, "Are there not twelve hours in the day?" Then can we not devote three of the twelve to our food? If we have nine hours in which we are at our highest efficiency, is it not good sense, if we eat three meals a day, to give three hours to these meals? There is only one sane answer to the question; we should take an hour for a meal.
Every now and then some magazine writer will state that the chewing of food to a cream does not help anybody. He will tell you that you can swallow your food any old way and it will not hurt you in the least. In fact, I actually saw an article in one of our leading periodicals containing just such statements. We should, I suppose, have only pity for an editor who would give space to such stuff, and should also pity the poor wretch who by writing it is striving to attain notoriety. At any rate there is one excellent thing about such lies, they do harm for only a little while. When people find out that a thing is harmful to them, they usually quit it, no matter how many notoriety seekers are urging and encouraging them to keep on.
Usually the sufferer with "nerves" is the only one in the household who will eat sparingly and chew his food slowly. But now and then I find an intelligent, sympathetic man who will do so because it is helpful to his wife. He sympathizes with her infirmity, and with fine self-denial eats as she does. And note this: he usually derives benefit from so doing. Time after time when I have put a nervous woman under this regimen, and then her husband elected to go along with her, I have had the man come to me and say: "Well, 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 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, however, this poison does not as often result in fever as it does in a horrible mental depression and a complete inability to perform any sort of work.
And so there seems no question but that this terrible malady we call "nerves," or a nervous breakdown in any of its many forms, is in a majority of cases the result of the wrong eating habits of the individual. The chewing of all food to a cream will go far toward curing the trouble, but in most cases this alone will not effect a cure. It would not have done so in my own case, although I did see much improvement as a result of that practice alone.
And here I want to say this: There are many who say they cannot eat acid fruits because of the distress they cause. Now if such people would always chew an apple, a pear, or other fruit to a cream, no distress would result from eating fresh fruit. But such people must follow in detail the diet I shall give farther on.
Now, facts cannot be stated too strongly. It is certain acid fruits will cause distress if you do not chew them to a cream. I would swell up like a toad if I ate only one apple hurriedly. I don't dare think what might happen to me if I ate three or four in that way. I might possibly find myself transformed into a human balloon and float away into space. But I don't eat apples that way—not now. Some who read these pages may think it very strange, yet it is quite true that there really are persons suffering with "nerves" who have not gumption enough to follow this simple rule of chewing all food to a cream. I despair of ever helping those people. They still continue to dispose of a big meal in fifteen minutes, and then insist they have chewed all their food carefully. I have had that thing happen right before my own eyes. Then think of their complaining that they cannot eat apples because they cause so much gas in the stomach!
One reason why a large number of such people are troubled with gas, even though they do chew their food to a cream, is because they immediately follow a meal with one or two cups of tea or coffee. Now please remember this: An individual afflicted with "nerves" has no business drinking either tea or coffee. He should let them both alone. Plain hot water is the very best drink in the world for a nervous person. If you want a drink after your meal drink a cup of plain hot water. And you should also drink a cup of hot water half an hour before breakfast. If you do not care for breakfast, and feel you do not need this meal, drink the hot water anyway. The victim of "nerves" should never drink during the meal but after it, if he must drink anything at all. He should also drink a pint or more of cold water between meals every day.
Now, another thing with regard to chewing all solid food to a cream. It has been proved over and over again in my own case and in that of many others, that in doing this the brain and muscles are both made stronger and keener for work, that those who chew their food in this way have much greater endurance, both mental and physical, than those who do not.
Today if I should relax my vigilance in respect to chewing my food I should soon go down again. But with this aid, which I now so easily employ, combined with exactly the right things to eat, I find I need have no fear. It has been ten years since my last breakdown and in that interval I have done the very best work and by far the hardest brain work of a lifetime. I do not believe people break down from overwork. You may think that a perfectly absurd statement. But I have good grounds upon which to base my belief. If nervous people would eat sparingly and chew their food to a cream, eating the foods I shall mention later on, I am confident they would rarely, if ever, break down.
It is certain that in the last ten years, with the greatest mental strain on me, I should have gone down again, and perhaps more than once, if I had not found what caused "nerves" and how to prevent it. In the meantime I have written ten or more books, and every writer, at least, knows what a nerve-racking profession writing is. In addition to all this mental labor I have gone right ahead with my medical practice. Surely there is balm in this particular Gilead.
But if you will not chew your food to a cream you need not expect to win the entire reward. And you must do this not only one day or one week or one month or one year, but all the days, weeks, months, and years that you may live. And, alas! I know only too well all the trouble well-meaning but deluded people who sit at the table with a nervous individual will make him when they discover how much time he is taking to chew his food. At first, because of the length of time I spent at a meal, such people thought I must be eating as much as a horse. But, here and there, for I was in many places, when people found out what I was doing, they would only courteously deride me for being so gullible about what they termed fads.
We are all well aware that the vast majority of Americans do not chew their food to a cream or anything like it. And there are those, therefore, who advance as an argument that because the majority do not there must be something wrong with the minority who do. Well, let us follow this out a little: Not so many hundred years ago everybody believed the world was flat. But their theory did not make it flat. And so, even though thousands of people who crowd our eating houses do bolt their food, that does not prove there is no danger in the practice. And they who do it are digging their graves with their teeth.
Chew your food!