you have leisure to digest,”[67] is a good one, and that for a hard-working person (what man or woman works as hard as the enthusiastic hunting-dog?) the one-meal-a-day system would often prove the best,—indeed, in some instances, this would be the only means of preventing sickness. We may not know in how many instances the laborer digests his breakfast, dinner, and supper together (or about all that he does digest) after he is in bed for the night. Any approach to such a state is provocative of disease.
[67] It by no means follows that the man of all leisure, or the “loafer,” can, because of abundant rest after meals, digest the large quantity of food he may be tempted to swallow. On the contrary, he probably does not digest one-fourth of it. The balance is assuredly retained to work him injury at last. No man really digests, speaking strictly, in excess of the physiological needs of his organism; the fact that one man “carries off,” so to speak, an immense amount of food without apparent or immediate inconvenience, argues simply that he has greater excretory capacity—perhaps was endowed originally with a greater degree of vitality—than another who is constantly troubled though eating less and working more. Persons of the latter class still exceed their normal amount; hence their digestive troubles.
The dyspeptic’s dreams, which disturb his sleep, rob him of needed rest, and often cause him to wake more tired than when he went to bed, would be banished, or at least favorably modified, if, at the close of his day’s work, after sufficient rest from the fatigues and cares of the day, he were to take his well-earned ration, and, after a period of recreation, if there still remained time for this, go to his bed.
Another instance I will mention, that of the man who may almost be called the father of hygiene in this country. He says: “I have tested the sufficiency
of eating once in twenty-four hours [he has himself lived on this system for eleven years, and continues so to live; and has, besides, tested its advantages upon patients in certain forms of disease] and have done work enough to put a much younger man to his trumps if he had to do it. My food is very simple; I do not eat more at one meal than almost any person eats who takes three meals a day; I keep my body well built up in flesh and in vigor of muscle, considering that incurable organic difficulties render great muscular activity impracticable. I keep up my own strength, and have held in check my constitutional conditions so that I have reached old age” [72 years].
I could mention a score or more of similar instances; and, as stated elsewhere, no person ever tried the plan and found occasion for abandoning it, except from considerations utterly remote from health. In fact, under certain circumstances, as in travelling, this system is a most beneficent one; it makes a person independent of railway restaurants and lunch-counters; for at some time during the day, usually, as at night in a good hotel, one can obtain, if not always a really hygienic meal, still a comparatively good one.
With reference to the amount of food to be taken at the single meal, I have observed this: those who would be termed hearty eaters, on the three-meal system, will usually eat no more at their one meal than formerly at dinner alone; some, indeed, find much less than this suffices to sustain them in the best manner. This is largely due, however, to the superior
quality of their diet, since people of this class invariably become, practically, vegetarians and, withal, use a large proportion of bread, a pure nutrient, instead of flesh, a nutro-stimulant. The amount of food taken, under any circumstances, will depend largely upon one’s views as to the true office of eating.
In the case of a certain class of dyspeptics who, while going to the table three times every day, yet do not eat, all told, a single satisfactory meal; who in the entire year, perhaps, scarcely know the comfort of eating a full meal, and who live on in this manner year after year, the one-meal system would banish their nausea and lack of appetite within a reasonable time, and, in some instances, such persons would eat, and with a relish long unknown to them, more food every day than they now force down at their three or more attempts at eating. There would also result a corresponding improvement in their general health, more especially if this reform were accompanied by others, when needed, as to fresh air and exercise.
Says Dr. Nichols, of London, who speaks with knowledge, from having tested it: “The one-meal-a-day system will largely increase any person’s working capacity.”