Dr. William T. Harris, in his latest contribution to the "International Education Series," Psychologic Foundations of Education, defines the presently appreciated value of the sense of taste, as follows: "The lowest form of special sense is taste, which is closely allied to nutrition. Taste perceives the phase of assimilation of the object, which is commencing with the mouth. The individuality of the object is attacked and it gives way, its organic product or inorganic aggregate suffering dissolution—taste perceives the dissolution. Substances that do not yield to the attack of the juices of the mouth have no taste. Glass and gold have little taste as compared with salt or sugar. The sense of taste differs from the process of nutrition in the fact that it does not assimilate the body tasted, but reproduces ideally the energy that makes the impression on the sense organ of taste. Even taste, therefore, is an ideal activity, although it is present only when the nutritive energy is assimilating—it perceives the object in a process of dissolution.
"Smell is another specialisation which perceives dissolution of objects in a more general form than taste. Both smell and taste perceive chemical changes that involve dissolution of the object."
If this is the recognised estimate of taste, which is true as widely as I have been able to inquire, both among physicians and among the latest books on health, it is certainly a case of neglected appreciation such as the world has not witnessed up to the present time.
PRESUMED CAUSES OF DISEASES
On the undisputed authority of physiologists it is known that all diseases are made possible by derangement which is favourable to the propagation of the microbes of disease, or by deposits of inharmonious matter which are not thrown off.
Derangement of all the substance of the internal body is effected mainly, and probably entirely, by deposit of indigestible food or of tissue which is broken down and is not thereafter expelled from the system by the ordinary means provided for the discharge of waste.
These inharmonious deposits which cause so much direct and indirect trouble are mainly, and probably entirely, the result of excess of eating, or of wrong eating, so that the digestive organs of the body cannot take care of what is forced on them; or, of admitting substances which they are powerless to make into good blood or discharge by the regular means provided by nature.
Right eating and right food are, then, the all-important considerations of health, as far as the tissues are concerned; and, as the tissues are themselves the stored food or fuel of the brain and the nerve centres, the importance of perfect nutrition extends to the most vital functions and interests of life.