Instructions Issued by the United States Army Medical Department For the Students of the Army Medical Schools
METHOD OF ATTAINING ECONOMIC ASSIMILATION OF NUTRIMENT AND IMMUNITY FROM DISEASE, MUSCULAR SORENESS, AND FATIGUE
1. Feed only when a distinct appetite has been earned.
2. Masticate all solid food until it is completely liquefied and excites in an irresistible manner the swallowing reflex or swallowing impulse.
3. Attention to the act of mastication and insalivation, and appreciation of the taste thereby secured, are necessary, meantime, to excite the flow of gastric juice into the stomach to meet the food, as demonstrated by Pawlow.
4. Strict attention to these two particulars will fulfil the requirements of Nature relative to the preparation of the food for digestion and assimilation; and this being faithfully done, the automatic processes of digestion and assimilation will proceed most profitably and will result in discarding very little digestion-ash (fæces) to encumber the intestines or to compel excessive draft upon the bodily energy for excretion.
5. The evidence of this economy is observed in the small amount of excreta and its peculiar, inoffensive character, showing escape from putrid bacterial digestion such as brings indol and skatol into evidence offensively.
6. When the digestion and assimilation has been normally economic the digestion-ash should be formed into little balls ranging in size from a pea to a so-called Queen Olive, according to the food taken, should be quite dry, and have only the odour of moist clay or a hot biscuit. This inoffensive character remains indefinitely after excretion until the ash completely dries or disintegrates like rotten stone or wood.