How to Eat: A Cure for "Nerves"

by Thomas C. Hinkle

And just here I wish to say that there are some people who seemingly can eat almost anything and not suffer from so doing. Last summer I talked with Count Ilya Tolstoy, son of Leo Tolstoy, the celebrated Russian writer. The Count, who is also a lecturer, told me that he was obliged to have eggs and that he had eaten them all his life. He said his appetite was never satisfied unless he ate eggs. He is now past sixty, and apparently is strong and rugged. Now eggs no doubt are good for him. But right here is where infinite harm can be done to nervous people like myself. People who can eat everything—and among physicians seemingly there are many who can do so—will say to these poor sufferers:

"Why, it's all nonsense about things hurting you! Eat anything you want and all you want and then forget about it."

Physicians have said that to me and during the past twenty years I have heard them say it thousands of times to others.

Personally I do not believe in Christian Science—physicians of the Regular school do not believe in it; but do you know that when a physician says to a sufferer from "nerves," "It's all nonsense about what you eat hurting you; eat anything you want and then forget about it," that physician is fully endorsing Christian Science. He is telling the person to whom he is talking that there is no such thing as physical suffering. Of course, such a physician is nothing but a fool. Yet that's why so many of these people turn to Christian Science. Yes, that is exactly why they try it. It bolsters up a sufferer for a time just as contact with a magnetic and hopeful personality may for a time bolster one up. But such persons almost always go back to the sanitariums. "Nerves" is not a mental disease; that is, the seat of the trouble is not mental but physical, and the mental phase of "nerves" is only a symptom, or rather one of the symptoms of the disease.

We people who have gone down into the dark valley have experienced a million, more or less, different kinds of feelings. I fully believe one half of the American people are the offspring of nervous parents. This means that there are fifty-five million of this nervous type of Americans. This type includes people all the way from the man in an office who gets angry quickly, to the individual who is in a state of complete collapse. And the man who is afflicted with nothing more than a quick temper, or is living under high nervous tension, is liable to beget children who will suffer from the malady in a far worse degree than ever he will, unless, indeed, he eats only the things he should eat and observes a number of other rules besides the two I have already laid down.

Now, the ideal diet for nervous people is a slightly modified vegetarian diet. To be specific, it is a Lacto-vegetarian diet minus eggs. There are, however, two things included in this diet that I would warn one in the beginning to eat of sparingly. These are bananas and cooked cabbage. If they agree with you, well and good; but if they do not, let them strictly alone.

Eat all kinds of vegetables, both fresh and cooked. Eat all kinds of fruits, especially fresh fruits. There is an old saying and a good one, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away."

There are a thousand ways to prepare vegetables and fruits for the table, and there are a number of books that give good recipes. If a nervous individual has never yet had a breakdown I believe he can safely eat most of the vegetarian dishes that have eggs in them, but it would be a serious mistake to select the special dishes that contain eggs and live on those just because they contain eggs.

I believe, too, that after a nervous person is restored to health, if he strictly observes the rules of eating sparingly and of chewing all food to a cream, he may safely try out such courses as are found in Bardsley's Recipes for Food Reformers or Broadbent's Forty Vegetarian Dinners.

It may seem odd, but there are people who for some reason or other lack the instinct, or whatever is needed, to know that a certain thing they eat hurts them. I have had men and women sit in my office and say with the utmost sincerity that they were certain that it wasn't anything they ate that hurt them because they never had any pain in the abdomen. Sometimes these people were in a dreadful state of nervous breakdown. So you see the danger that lies here. If you know, you can always tell what special thing disagrees with you. For example, I know eggs disagree with me, and like John Burroughs and many others, I know when they harm me. Therefore, after you have recovered you might try being your own physician. But if you are not sure as to what disagrees with you, you would much better stick to a vegetarian diet and go without eggs the remainder of your days.