"Gastro-intestinal disturbance, indigestion, intestinal toxaemia, liver troubles, bilious attacks, gout, rheumatism, to say nothing of many other ailments, some more and some less serious, are associated with the habitual overeating of proteid food."23

"The minimal proteid requirement of the healthy man under ordinary conditions of life is far below the generally accepted dietary standards, and far below the amount called for by the acquired taste of the generality of mankind," is Professor Chittenden's conclusion. "Expressed in different language, the amount of proteid or albuminous food needed daily for the actual physiological wants of the body is not more than one-half that ordinarily consumed by the average man. Body-weight (when once adjusted to the new level), health, strength, mental and physical vigor, and endurance can be maintained with at least one-half of the proteid food ordinarily consumed; a kind of physiological economy which, if once entered upon intelligently, entails no hardship, but brings with it an actual betterment of the physical condition of the body. It holds out the promise of greater physical strength, increasing endurance, greater freedom from fatigue, and a condition of well-being that is full of suggestion for the betterment of health."24

23 Chittenden: "Physiological Economy in Nutrition," p. 475.

For a man of average weight, Professor Chittenden declares that 60 grams or two ounces of proteid food a day are ample to meet all the needs of the body. A larger man requires somewhat more, since it is obvious that he has more proteid tissue to nourish.

"The long-continued experiments on many individuals, representing different degrees of activity," says Professor Chittenden, "all agree in indicating that equilibrium can be maintained indefinitely on these smaller quantities of food, and that health and strength can be equally well-preserved, to say nothing of possible improvement. The lifelong experience of individuals and of communities affords sufficient corroborative evidence that there is perfect safety in a closer adherence to physiological needs in the nutrition of the body, and that these needs, so far as proteid food is concerned, are in harmony with the theory of an endogenous metabolism, or true tissue metabolism, in which the necessary proteid exchange is exceedingly limited in quantity. There are many suggestions of improvement in bodily health, of greater efficiency in working power, and of greater freedom from disease, in a system of dietetics which aims to meet the physiological needs of the body without undue waste of energy and unnecessary drain upon the functions of digestion, absorption, excretion, and metabolism in general; a system which recognizes that the smooth running of man's bodily machinery calls for the exercise of reason and intelligence, and is not to be intrusted solely to the dictates of blind instinct or to the leadings of a capricious appetite."25

24 Chittenden: "Nutrition of Man," pp. 337-228.

These facts - particularly the ones which represent the most recent discoveries in the physiology of nutrition - would seem to constitute a sound scientific basis for the theories of the layman, Mr. Horace Fletcher. If it is true - and there seems to be no longer any dispute about it - that the starches and sugars are capable of being almost wholly digested by the action of the saliva alone, it is clear that the degree in which these foods can be utilized by the body must be in proportion to the mouth-treatment they receive.

In his insistence upon the importance of appetite and taste, Mr. Fletcher seems only to have forestalled the scientists. Before Professor Pavlov was awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering that primarily it was the appetite for and the taste of food that caused the secretion of gastric juice in the stomach, Mr. Fletcher was being laughed at for his appeals to his fellowmen not to eat until they were hungry and not to swallow their food until they had extracted every vestige of taste from it. To-day all up-to-date physicians and physiologists recognize the fact that the thoroughness with which normal digestion is effected depends primarily upon the keenness of the desire for food, and the zest with which it is eaten. While the fact that sick people without appetites and lunatics with insane fears of food can be kept alive by forced feeding indicates that the mere presence of food in the stomach will cause enough gastric secretion to insure some sort of digestion, it does not affect the argument that the secretion necessary to perfect digestion is secured only through the operation of appetite and taste.

Dogs whose stomachs have been removed have been known to live and even flourish, but no sane person would conclude from this fact that he could get along just as well without a stomach as with one.

25 Fletcher: " New Glutton or Epicure," pp. 144-145.

When Mr. Fletcher launched his dictum: "Never eat when you are mad or sad; only when you are glad," he was unknowingly applying the scientific truth, proved by Dr. Cannon through the Röntgen Ray experiments previously alluded to, that pleasure accelerates and distress inhibits all the digestive secretions.

The observations and experiments upon Mr. Fletcher have given convincing demon-tration that his method of eating produces naturally the aseptic condition in the lower intestines which the physicians and physiologists have been trying to effect by artificial means. His excretions, when analyzed, were found to be made up of an inoffensive deposit of dry cellulose and other unabsorb-able matter, that was absolutely free from the slightest trace of bacterial decomposition, and that was collected in the lower intestines so slowly and in such extremely small quantities as to require release only once in every eight or ten days.

"One of the most noticeable and significant results of economic nutrition gained through careful attention to the mouth-treatment of food, or buccal-digestion, is," says Mr, Fletcher, "not only the small quantity of waste obtained, but its inoffen-siveness. Under best test-conditions the ashes of economic digestion have been reduced to one-tenth of the average given as normal in the latest text-books on physiology. The economic digestion-ash forms in pillular shape, and when released these are massed together, having become so bunched by considerable retention in the rectum. There is no stench, no evidence of putrid bacterial decomposition, only the odour of warmth, like warm earth. Test examples of excreta, kept for more than five years, remain inoffensive, dry up, gradually disintegrate and are lost." 26

Last, and by no means least, as has been pointed out before, Mr. Fletcher's practice seems to have furnished a natural and automatic method for reducing the amounts of food demanded by the appetite - particularly proteid food - to amounts which Professor Chittenden has shown to be in accord with true physiological needs.

26 Fletcher: "New Glutton or Epicure," pp. 176-177.