Having proved the efficiency of this system in his own person by being accepted for life assurance about a dozen years ago, he nevertheless found the greatest difficulty in getting scientists to accept his views or even to give him a patient hearing. That he finally succeeded is due probably to the conversion of Dr. Van Someren, who, in 1901, at the annual meeting of the British Medical Association, read a paper on the subject in the physiological section. Dr. Van Someren therein referred to some experiments in which the faecal discharge was as little as 18.9 grams, dry and inoffensive, and he contended that this must be infinitely healthier for the individual than the daily evacuation of 204 grams of humid, decomposing, offensive matter. He quotes Nuttall and Thierfelder's experiments on full-term guinea-pigs, obtained by Caesarean section and fed successfully on aseptic foods, to demonstrate that bacteria are not necessary to digestion. In the practice of efficient mastication he declares that the lower bowel ceases to be a putrefying sink, and that auto-intoxication thus becomes impossible.

This statement of Dr. Van Someren, made nine years ago, has now received confirmation, for in his recent remarks on the Pteropus medius, Metchnikoff has abundantly demonstrated that although bacteria play an important part in intestinal digestion, they are by no means essential. The Pteropus medius is a bat, with a very short colon, living chiefly on fruit. Of this it eats an enormous quantity, as its digestion is rapid, and the faeces contain a fair amount of undigested material. Practically no bacteria were found either in the small or large intestine, and yet cellulose was extremely well digested. Another chemical delusion is thus shattered, and further research must be undertaken to isolate the enzyme. No indol, skatol, nor phenol was found, proving that these products are the result of putrefaction due to bacterial action.

This paper of Van Someren's induced Sir Michael Foster to interest himself in Fletcher's practice, and in the autumn of 1901 an investigation was carried out at Cambridge under the supervision of Sir Michael Foster and Dr. Gowland Hopkins. This resulted in a complete confirmation of Fletcher's contention that the amount of food which he consumed was enormously lessened, being hardly one-half of what he had previously consumed, and, in particular, that his protein food was reduced to nearly one-third of the amount which had been held to be the minimum. Subsequently, in 1902 and 1903, Professor Chittenden subjected him at Yale to further tests, both in nutrition and muscular strength, with a like result. During thirteen days in which his weight of 165 pounds remained practically constant, Fletcher only metabolised a daily average of 41.25 grams protein.

His strength and endurance were repeatedly put to the test by Dr. W. G. Anderson, the superintendent of Yale Gymnasium, and although living on an extremely attenuated diet, both appeared to be on the increase. At any rate, some two years ago, at the age of fifty-eight, Mr. Fletcher lifted a dead weight of 300 pounds more than 350 times with the muscles of his leg below the knee. This is a remarkable feat of strength, and constitutes a record, as the previous best was 170 lifts, and only two men have exceeded 100 lifts. This mighty dynamometer, invented by Professor Irving Fisher, can still be seen at Yale University Gymnasium, and either the man who created the above record is a prodigy or the dietetic system which he advocates is miraculous in its results. He maintains the latter proposition, and contends that the system is capable of manufacturing muscle. He even refers to Dr. Anderson, in the article already quoted, as an example of this teaching, and states that although the' latter is well over middle-age he has been able, by adopting "Fletcherism" and systematic work of not very arduous character, to add 15 pounds to his weight. Dr. Anderson himself is inclined to attribute this improvement in health and growth of muscle to the low-protein diet, but as the system we are now considering is said to compel a low-protein diet, it is not incompatible with Fletcher's claims.