Fletcherism: What It Is; Or, How I Became Young at SixtyFletcher, Horace
Science
Fletcherism: What It Is; Or, How I Became Young at Sixty
Fletcher, Horace
Mastication; Nutrition
I really believe, from the results of my experiences for the past
fifteen years in getting tips from Mother Nature, and trying to induce
mankind in general and my friends in particular to accept them as
"straight" from Mother Nature, that persons who have enough respect for
themselves to be interested in physical culture must come to the rescue
of the pseudo-scientists who are dulled by their own dope, and who are
suffering from the malaria which collects in the dark ruts they are
following in the tortuous complications of the alimentary canal. The
physical culturists must build models of normality for the scientists
to study.
When giving information as to what happens in the mouth, and as to
what happens as a result of proper head digestion, I feel as if I am
sitting on the upper lip of Mother Nature herself, and entrusting her
messages to the current of her own sweet breath for distribution among
her human children.
CHAPTER VI
WHAT IS HEAD DIGESTION?
My Study of the Subject--The Mouth as a Digestive Organ--Dr. Cannon's
Researches--Pawlow's Proofs
In the latest comprehensive treatise on human nutrition, under the
title of "Food and the Principles of Dietetics," by Dr. Robert
Hutchinson, of London, more than six hundred pages are devoted to the
subject. Of these, just fifty lines are given to "Mouth Digestion."
In a footnote of sixty-four words Dr. Hutchinson has stated the case
of the importance of careful eating, with admission of a fact that
would mean emancipation from most of the human disabilities if it were
repeated in nurseries and primary schools as religiously as are the
ordinary rules of "polite conduct," and held by Society to be the basis
of respectability, which it really is.
When I first took up the study of dietetics in academic circles, nearly
fifteen years ago, physiologists did not concede that there was any
mouth digestion at all. Putting food in the mouth was for the purpose
of mixing it with saliva so that it could be formed into a "bolus" for
convenient swallowing. Now it is recognised that there is some mouth
digestion. In the meantime Pawlow[J] has demonstrated that the psychic
influence has much to do with digestion. Cannon, also, has shown by the
evidence of the Röntgen rays that mental states retard and even stop
entirely the digestive processes that are going on in the stomach, and
has asserted, as has also Pawlow, that the stomach digestive juices
flow in response to the reports and stimulation of taste, pouring out
into the cavity of the stomach juices appropriate for the digestion of
the particular food being tasted, in advance of its arrival in the
stomach.
[J] Dr. Prof. J. P. Pawlow, Director of the Department of Experimental
Physiology in the Russian Imperial Military School of Medicine, &c.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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