"Munching Party Functions," then, reveal more possible pleasure and benefit than the mere tickling of the palate, so-called, and diffuse their benefits to cover the mechanical act and a long-continued feeling of satisfaction that is more subtly pleasing than the immediate physiological cause of the contentment.
The "Munching Party" scheme of education and enjoyment has been carried to America, and has received the name of the "Chewing Fad." As such it has been cartooned in the newspapers, but in no matter what form the suggestion is spread it can do only good.
Appreciation of the suggestion has been generously expressed in the letters of Dr. Kellogg of the great Battle Creek Sanitarium and by Dr. Dewey, the author of the "No Breakfast Plan," as well as by the author's intimate colleagues, Drs. Van Someren and Higgins, of Venice, Italy.
There are many physicians from whom the author has heard report, and perhaps thousands who have not yet been heard from, who are conveying the slow-eating and appreciative-attention suggestions to their patients; and as the reform in dietetic technique has sprung up since the publication of the booklets of the author—"What Sense? or, Economic Nutrition," and "Nature's Food Filter; or, What and When to Swallow," which were afterwards coupled together under the title of "Glutton or Epicure"—he has good reason to suppose that the spread of the idea originated with the publication of his discovery even where the personal influence had not been given direct.
While visiting recently in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the author met a distinguished professor of Harvard University who had been suffering from nervous prostration. He had spent some time in Europe consulting the most eminent neurologists, but with little or no relief. On his return to the United States he was advised to go to a sanitarium in Bethel, Me., under the direction of Dr. Gehring, where effective cures of cases of nervous prostration have been performed. The professor was given "Menticulture" and "Glutton or Epicure" to read, and was recommended to practise the advice of the books in connection with his treatment. These two books are an account of the way the author promoted his own salvation from the uncertainty relative to physical health and mental control, and it is by these means that the psychic, mechanical, and chemical necessities of nutrition are satisfied.
The author spent an hour with Dr. Alexander Haig, of London, while undergoing the Cambridge University Examination reported upon by Sir Michael Foster, and exhaustively argued the claims of thorough mouth treatment of nutriment to that distinguished dietetic specialist. The argument met with much incredulity, as has been the case in all first presentations of the idea. Dr. Haig pronounced the appeal to even a normalised appetite dangerous, and clung to the prescription theory of regulating food. He seems, however, to have since learned the efficacy of munching and tasting in assisting the empirical prescription method, and now recommends it as enthusiastically as do Drs. Van Someren, Higgins, Kellogg, and Dewey. He has even sent patients to a resort in the country in England to acquire the habit of munching where there was present in them the strong pernicious habit of nervous haste and inattention in connection with their ingestion of food.
This is bound to be the case with physicians where the subject is given attention and the method is accorded a fair trial without lapses. Credit for the origination of the suggestion is here taken to increase the effectiveness of the claims presented in the "A. B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition" and in this book. Readers are recommended not to imitate the prevalent error of thinking that so simple a suggestion is not important or otherwise scientists would have proclaimed it long before now. The ancient hypotheses of text-book physiology were mainly based upon the study of nutrition, beginning in the stomach, and after the danger of indigestion had been forced upon the alimentary system; and hence they often dealt with confused, abnormal, and pathologic conditions, and they rarely had opportunity to observe the normal condition intended by Nature.
Professor Pawlow, of St. Petersburg, confirmed the necessity of a right psychic environment; Dr. Cannon, of the Harvard Medical School, showed the influence of mechanical thoroughness and nervous shock upon digestion; and Dr. Harry Campbell, of London, explained the mechanical and salival efficacy of mastication in procuring good assimilation of nutriment and an economic nutrition. The work of Professor Pawlow and Dr. Cannon was independent scientific research, and so was that of Dr. Campbell; but the latter was undoubtedly suggested or stimulated by Dr. Van Someren's presentment of his paper to the British Medical Association. The investigations of Sir Michael Foster, Professor Chittenden, Drs. Higgins, Kellogg, and Dewey were directly inspired by the author in connection with his Venetian colleague, Dr. Ernest Van Someren. The papers, reports, articles, and lectures of these authorities are given in the "A. B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition," and are repeatedly mentioned in this volume because this book is revised and reissued as an extended explanatory companion of the larger scientific presentation.
In pursuit of true menticulture the personality of the individual should be completely suppressed. He becomes the agent of his inspirations, his revelations, or his altruistic convictions, and as such speaks for the ideas presented, and in no immodest spirit of vain egotism. In descending from the plane of high literary propriety to impress by simile and analogy, the object foremost in mind is to attract a variety of sympathies. The author reveres the dignified in art and in demeanour, and deplores the necessity of personal association to spread the merits of what he believes to be fundamental truths of the philosophy of true living. But so strong is the conviction of the author that he possesses fundamental truths which have been overlooked in the rapid progress of the race in the luxuries of living, that where it is seemingly desirable to employ unusual means to attract attention he feels compelled to do so.