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
While the area considered was right out in front, and open to visual
inspection all the time, the opportunity to study its most important
features having to do with nutrition was not continuous. Mr. Edison
may rivet his attention on an electrical problem and stick to it for
forty-eight hours on a stretch, but Taste is only occasionally on
exhibition for observation and cannot be pressed into long service
at any one time. For test of normal Taste only the time required for
the most economic nutrition is available. A real body-need with keen
appetite is the first healthy excuse for calling on Taste to perform.
Normal appetite, too, being satisfied with appetising foods, is of
brief duration. One may linger over a meal as long as desired, enjoying
the intimate memory of the gustatory gratification in leisurely
process, but in case of a first-class labouring man's hunger and
the exigency of a railway station dinner in the midst of a desert,
industrious application of faithful Fletcherizing for fifteen minutes
will usually supply the real needs of the moment for eight hours at
least. This estimate involves a healthy condition of the nutrition
department, including an abundance of powerful saliva for the hastening
of the mouth treatment, but such a beatific facility can be secured
in a very short time by the faithful and intelligent employment of all
departments of head digestion.
A person who specialises on the mouth end of the alimentary canal has
plenty of time to rest between inspections. He will naturally watch for
any feeling of results that may happen while Mother Nature is doing her
twenty-five feet of digestion and absorption, but if his part has been
performed properly, there will be no news of the process until there
is something to excrete from the material ingested. When this occurs,
if a microscope is handy for minute inspection, it will be found that
most of the excreta is composed of what I think of as the dandruff of
the alimentary canal. It is composed of shapeless particles of skin
which have been discarded by the mucous surface of the canal in the
same manner that dead skin is being continually detached from the head
and all parts of the external surface of the body. Depending on the
nature of the food, there may be small particles also of indigestible
cellulose from vegetable foods and the condensed solids of the
digestive juices when they have been used and worn out.
THE EFFECT OF PREJUDICE
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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