[9] Five years of Epicurean enjoyment and study of the food instincts and food economics have taught the author to like many things better than slices of dead pig sandwiched between slices of delicious bread. Vegetarian extremist and faddist the author is not, but an attention to natural leadings inclines one away from dead meat, which is believed to induce much uric acid, and in favour of first-hand food elements as fresh from the heart and the breast of Mother Nature as possible, leaving the second-hand, once-digested, already decaying, natural food of the savage carnivora and the emergency food of savage man for emergency occasions or a vegetable famine. Much meat excites lust, intemperance, and savagery in man and gives explosive, non-enduring force. The question is, do we need such force in the twentieth century, especially when we know that it tends to shorten life and predispose to disease?
[10] Dr. Meltzer's estimate of human reserve strength and resistance which must be out-worn or over-strained before death calls a settlement.
[11] Similar specimens of digestion-ash have been kept for five years without change other than drying to dust.
[12] "Glutton or Epicure" was originally composed of two smaller booklets entitled "Nature's Food Filter; or, What and When to Swallow" and "What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition;" bound together. In this revision the order has been retained with some repetitions, but with different applications.
[13] The rejuvenated patriarch is still alive in 1903.
[14] Dr. George Monks of Boston, Massachusetts, has recently called the attention of the author to the fact that the length of the intestines in man have been known to vary from nine feet to twenty-nine feet.
In the longer ones the papillæ convenenti which serve for absorption and which line the inside of the intestines extended only part way down the channel, but in the shorter ones they lined the channel throughout its entire length, giving inferential evidence that the strain of continued excess of waste material had lengthened the intestines for the sole purpose of providing storage room for the waste. Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, has even proposed removing some eighteen feet of intestine by surgical operation, including the troublesome vermiform appendix, as being unnecessary in connection with cooking and the prevalence of partly predigested foods.
[15] At the present time, five years after this promise was made, the author is happy to say that it has been faithfully kept and with important results steadily accruing.
[16] The "symptoms" in the personal case of the author described above persist after five years' test and experience. The endurance-test of the half-century birthday in France, the observations of Dr. Burnett in Washington, and the examinations in the laboratories of Cambridge and Yale all tell the same story of a reformed and increasing efficiency even with five years of added age handicap, so that the logic of the advice originally given in this book stands proved, so far. I have had my weight reduced from 217 pounds to 130 pounds and felt best when lightest. I carry my weight at any figure desired, but most of the time carry a 20-pound handicap in winter and sometimes in summer to calm the fears of solicitous friends, who think I must be ill when I am not looking "robust." Extreme robustness is a great danger to life. A partner of the author in early days in California, several years his junior and just in the prime of life and fortune, passed away from over-robustness, as have many of the world's brightest and best citizens. Six of the author's chums of ten years ago have died because of too much robustness and worry. They heeded not. The author may follow them, any moment, but meantime he is enjoying life as never before.
[17] Thus ended the first edition; but in the revision its position has been changed.