The crackers with supper may be varied to suit the taste; they should be eaten dry, with butter, and chewed very thoroughly.
Nothing should be taken between meals, unless especially directed, and the life should be as simple and healthful as possible, with early and long bed hours.
This diet list has been carefully gone over by the dietitian of the hospital, and as presented represents an average of 2,100 calories per day, with 140 of vegetable protein. This is calculated for a person of about 150 pounds, either in bed or not taking active exercise. The quantity of each article may, of course, be increased if necessary, or diminished for lighter weights, but in the main this has sufficed, so that fat persons have come nearer normal weight, while thin persons have gained in flesh. You will remember the girl of 20 years whom I showed you last week, with the right upper jaw gone after an operation for sarcoma, who weighed 89½ pounds on entering the hospital, and weighed 130½ pounds when she sat before you, three to four months later, with the opening in the cheek perfectly cicatrized on the edges, and all trace of the disease gone, on this diet.
You will notice certain directions on the last page of the folded sheet which are of importance to remember: kindly look them over carefully. I wish to call your particular attention to that in regard to perfectly chewing, masticating, or Fletcherizing the food, even cereals, for at least half an hour. Note also that the latter are to be eaten with butter and salt, and not with milk and sugar, and with a fork, and not with a spoon, in order to encourage slow eating. You will remember that in my previous lectures I called your attention to the fact that the salivary secretion was found to be at fault even in early cases of cancer, and this perfect mastication is intended to stimulate these glands and facilitate the change of starchy foods into glucose; for our rapid eating in modern days may be one of the contributing basic causes of the perverted nutrition manifested in cancer.
I would also call attention to the preparation of the vegetable soup, which is to be employed in place of the stock ordinarily used, which naturally contains the most poisonous extract of meat, or with milk, which is not desirable. This vegetable stock contains all the salts and other valuable extracts of the vegetables, which are commonly thrown away, to the great detriment to proper nutrition; there is a great loss of nutritive elements also occurring in connection with very many of the so-called refinements of food which are the result of modern civilization. Thus, the United States Agricultural Experiment Bureau tells us that thirty per cent of the nutritive value of potatoes is ordinarily wasted in the common method of peeling and cooking them. This loss of vitamines is also true in regard to wheat and other articles. You will notice that a portion of this vegetable stock for soup, made from all the water in which all the vegetables are cooked for the whole family, daily, is each day to be thickened and flavored as desired, to which also chopped vegetables may be added and also various cereals, vermicelli, tapioca, sago, etc. I may remark that many patients in private practise have told me that their families pronounced this to be the best soup they have ever tasted. Pardon all these homely remarks, but as attention to details is of the utmost importance in dermatology, so it is particularly true in regard to the management of cancer.
It will be noticed in the menu that I encourage the use of butter, giving a quarter of a pound a day, in three portions. This contains 800 calories, or one third of the total amount required; a certain amount of sugar is also prescribed, as affording an additional carbohydrate which is completely oxidized under favorable conditions.
It is realized, of course, that this bill of fare may be improved on. But it has been compiled with considerable care and thought, and an experience with it for over two years, in dozens, or rather hundreds, of cases shows that it is workable and accomplishes results which are often surprising and most gratifying, not only in my own practise but also in the hands of other physicians. I have sometimes remarked to you, perhaps thoughtlessly, that if a person had lived for three or four years according to this card, and continued to do so, I could guarantee that he would never have cancer.
So much for prophylaxis. For, as stated before, I feel confident, after many years’ observation and experience, that if the principles and practise which I have tried to present to you in my former lectures and these were closely followed by the community at large, there would before long be a very gratifying diminution in the cases of cancer, and in the mortality therefrom.
You may remember that in a former lecture I mentioned that in an extensive trip I was not able to see or hear of any cancer in the rice eating countries of the East, in Japan, China, India, Siam, and Egypt; although I understand that there is some malignant disease among the natives who adopt foreign habits, or who eat more or less meat, pork, etc. With this experience in view I have sometimes placed certain cancer patients, for a longer or shorter time, on what you are familiar with as my “rice diet,” and with manifestly beneficial results. I would not, of course, push it or continue it too long, but as a means of making an impression on a full blooded person, with beginning cancer, and as a means of facilitating the exclusion and elimination of nitrogenous elements from the system, it has sometimes served a valuable purpose. I also continually rather urge the consumption of rice by cancer patients, as largely as possible, even daily, in place of other cereals.