“The later tests, given in June, 1907, were more taxing than those given in 1903, but Mr. Fletcher underwent the trials with more apparent ease than he did four years ago.
“What seems to me to be the most remarkable feature of Mr. Fletcher’s test is that a man nearing sixty years of age should show progressive improvement of muscular quality merely as the result of dietetic care and with no systematic physical training. The method of dietetic care, too, as given by Mr. Fletcher, is so unusual that the results seem all the more extraordinary. He tells me that during the four and a half years intervening between the first and the recent examinations he has been guided in his choice of foods and in the quality also, entirely by his appetite, avoiding as much as possible any preconceived ideas as to the values of different foods or the proportions of the chemical constituents of the nourishment taken.
“During this four year period he has more than ever catered to his body nourishment in subservience to instinctive demand. He has especially avoided eating until appetite has strongly demanded food, and has abstained from eating whenever he could not do so in comfort and enjoyment. Mastication of solid food and sipping of liquids having taste to the point of involuntary swallowing, according to his well-known theory of thoroughness in this regard, has also been faithfully followed.
“There is a pretty good evidence that taking food as Mr. Fletcher practices and recommends limits the amount ingested to the bodily need of the moment and of the day, leaving little or no excess material to be disposed of by bacterial agency. This might account for the absence of toxic products in the circulation to depress the tissue.
“The possible immunity from lasting fatigue and from any muscular soreness, resulting from the unaccustomed use, and even the severe use, of untrained muscles is of utmost importance to physical efficiency.
“My own personal observance and trial of Mr. Fletcher’s method of attaining his surprising efficiency, strengthened by my observation of the test-subjects of Professors Chittenden and Fisher who have come under my care meantime, lead me to endorse the method as not only practical but agreeable. As Mr. Fletcher states, both the mental and mechanical factors in selecting and ingesting food are important, the natural result of the care being a wealth of energy for expression in physical exercise.”
FLETCHERISM
So much for Horace Fletcher’s own case.
Yet when he first announced his discovery, his own family laughed at him, and the medical world called him crank. But by quiet, sane, persistent work—by applying to the propaganda of his idea the same methods that had brought him success in business, he succeeded in impressing the scientific world with the value of his method.
An extensive literature has grown up around Mr. Fletcher’s own books. The most important medical bodies in Europe and America have invited him to lecture before them. Hospitals in larger cities have printed his own code of the rules of mastication for distribution. And no large sheet of paper was required, for the whole system could be printed on a postal card, and room would be left for a picture of its author.