Many of the most notable discoveries and experiments of modern science concur in demonstrating that the natural and innate healing power of the body is man’s greatest resource in combating disease and maintaining health. It is the body itself which cures the sick man; his own vitality, and not the drug or medicants which he may take. These may assist the healing process, but they do not set going the healing processes themselves. More often, indeed, they are distinct detriments. They stamp out or banish the distressing symptoms of ailments, and thus in effect they silence the signal bells of danger which the body rings at the approach of disease.
Modern science has turned its forces upon this question of maintaining at its highest potentiality the ability of the body to resist disease. All the habits of the human race have been investigated in the light of this idea, and some have been found to be wise and others to be unwise. These conclusions, with the evidence therefor, are the subjects of our book.
OUR FOOD IS THE CHIEF FACTOR
It has been found that the most important problems connected with health are those of nutrition—the questions of what and when and how and how much food we ought to eat.
Every language under the sun contains a prayer somewhat similar to that which we have in the Anglo-Saxon tongue, “Give us this day our daily bread.” If we stop to think for a moment, we realize that next to the air we breathe, and the water we drink, our food is the most important consideration in the maintenance of life. All this is the veriest commonplace; yet the fact remains that it is very rarely indeed that we do stop to think upon the subject of our food. It is something that we take for granted, like life itself. In the regular routine of our days our meals become fixed habits, and the taking of food an almost involuntary custom. It requires some extraordinary event to arouse us to a just appreciation of the importance of knowledge on this subject. Or else the coming of one of the myriad forms of digestive diseases will serve the purpose of introducing the subject to our notice.
Our blood is made directly from what we eat, and that old Saxon proverb is true which says that every man has lain in his own trencher. Man is his food. Each human body is made by chemical action from its food. All our actions and all our thoughts come from what we eat, even as the movements of machinery proceed from the coal fed into the boilers of the engine which operate the machine. If we eat the right food, namely, the food which contains the elements our bodies require in the proper proportions, we repair all waste, replace broken down tissue and supply ourselves with physical and mental energy for our toils and joys in life; while if we eat the wrong foods we quickly injure our delicate though powerful physical and mental machinery.
All this would seem to be obvious; yet most people would grant that they have still much to learn concerning what really constitutes the best foods, and about the best ways of preparing, or making, or using those foods. Few of us possess anything more definite to guide us in our eating than the habits we acquired as children, or habits picked up in later life from following the example of our friends, or the food fashions of the day—for there are such things as fashions in foods and in the eating of foods, even as there are fashions in clothes and the making and wearing thereof. In this place it is proposed to study the subject of food from one standpoint, namely, its effect upon the Battle of the Blood; its relation to the vital resistance of the body whereby health is maintained.
II
HOW TO EAT: THE GOSPEL OF DIETETICS ACCORDING TO HORACE FLETCHER
We shall first of all see what modern science has to tell us concerning the question of how we ought to eat.
It may not seem possible that anything essential remains to be said at this late day on the subject of one of the commonest and decidedly most necessary of all human acts. That there should be knowledge of the utmost importance to learn regarding the actions and movements of the tongue, the teeth, and the jaws, may come with as much surprise to the majority of our readers as it did to us when we first hit upon this disturbing, but illuminating, fact.