The results of the competitive tests were all in favor of the flesh-abstaining athletes. In the first test, which was holding the arms horizontal, only two of the fifteen flesh-eaters succeeded in holding their arms out over a quarter of an hour; whereas twenty-two of the thirty-two abstainers surpassed that limit. None of the flesh-eaters reached half an hour, but fifteen of the thirty-two abstainers exceeded that limit. Of these, nine exceeded one hour, four exceeded two hours, and one exceeded three hours, the last going exactly two hundred minutes, or three hours and twenty minutes.
In the leg raising test the record showed little difference. None of the abstainers reached their absolute limits. The highest record for the abstainers was one thousand times. A flesh-eater reached one thousand, three hundred and two, but did so after the one-thousand mark had already been set for him by an abstainer, and he went into the test with the expressed intention of defeating his rival. Professor Fisher states that it was evident from his fatigue at the end of the test that he could not have repeated the performance on the next day, as did his flesh-abstaining rival.
In respect to deep-knee bending, Professor Fisher pointed out that of the nine flesh-eaters who went into this contest, only three went above three hundred and twenty-five times, while of the abstainers, seventeen surpassed this figure. Only nine of the flesh-eaters reached one thousand, as against six of the twenty-two abstainers. None of the flesh-eaters surpassed two thousand, while two of the abstainers did. One abstainer, an athlete, S. A. Oberg, did two thousand and four hundred dips or deep knee bends, almost doubling the highest figure set by the flesh-eating athlete, which was one thousand, two hundred and ninety-two. Most of the Yale flesh-eating athletes were so severely crippled by their efforts in this particular set of movements that Professor Fisher resolved not to employ them again, and went to work on his device for mechanically registering endurance. One of the Yale athletes, who in the deep-knee bending test had reached five hundred times, fainted. Several had to be carried down the gymnasium stairs, and others were made so stiff and sore that for days they could not walk up and down stairs with comfort, while in the case of the abstainers from flesh foods there were comparatively little painful after-effects. Two of the abstainers, one a Yale athlete, were almost free from physical after-effects. The Yale man ran on the track of the gymnasium after his performance, and took a long walk afterward; while the other athlete, Oberg, a Sanitarium nurse, who made the highest record of all, two thousand four hundred times, continued his duties and found little annoyance from stiffness or soreness. (Another flesh-abstaining athlete, John E. Granger, of Battle Creek Sanitarium, has since made a new record of five thousand and two dips in two hours and nineteen minutes.)
Professor Fisher tried many means to stimulate the flesh-eating athletes to do their very best. He called upon their “Yale spirit” to rally to their aid, and he states that the advantage of rivalry as between the flesh-eaters and the abstainers was decidedly upon the side of the flesh-eaters, for their tests, with two exceptions, came after all the records of the abstainers had been completed. The Yale men felt that their tests would go on record as tests of Yale athletes, and Professor Fisher states that the “Yale spirit” which aided them appeared to be as great a stimulus as any “vegetarian” spirit could possibly be.
THE RESULT OF THE MASTICATION TEST
As to the experiment with the nine healthy students, Professor Fisher says:
“The results of the experiment demonstrated so great an increase of endurance as to seem at first incredible. It certainly was a surprise, both to the men and to me. But statistics which I have been collecting during the last two years have prepared me to find great differences and changes in endurance. The special result of the present experiment is to show that diet is an important factor in producing such alterations. The fact that endurance, even among persons free from disease, is one of the most variable of human faculties—far more variable than strength, for instance—is evident to any one who has made even a superficial examination. Some persons are tired by climbing a flight of stairs, whereas the Swiss guides, throughout the summer season, day after day spend their entire time in climbing the Matterhorn and other peaks; some persons are “winded” by running a block for a street car, whereas a Chinese coolie will run for hours on end; in mental work, some persons are unable to apply themselves more than an hour at a time, whereas others, like Humboldt, can work almost continuously through eighteen hours of the day.
Mr. John E. Granger Breaking the World’s Record for Deep Knee Bending.
The spectator at the extreme right is Mr. Alonzo A. Stagg, coach of the Chicago University football team. Mr. Michael Williams is between the two.