How to Eat: A Cure for "Nerves"Hinkle, Thomas C. (Thomas Clark)
Science
How to Eat: A Cure for "Nerves"
Hinkle, Thomas C. (Thomas Clark)
Diet in disease; Nervous system -- Diseases; Nervous system -- Hygiene
I am certain that all human beings would be more efficient if they
chewed all solid food to a cream and sipped all liquids slowly. The late
Professor William James, the great Harvard psychologist, testified to
the value of such a habit, as did a number of other distinguished
Harvard professors. I regret that some physicians still hold out in
their belief that it does no good although the evidence stands out as
clearly before them as a tree along the roadside. But they are like the
physician who some years ago declared that bathing was bad for people. I
recall how hard we all bore down upon him, as he richly deserved, and
how the Journal of the American Medical Association printed a short poem
ridiculing him. I am quite certain that the members of the Regular
school of medicine have progressed infinitely farther toward the cure of
diseases than members of all the other schools combined. I do not say
this simply because I happen to be a physician of the Regular school; I
say it because a candid survey of what has been accomplished, and by
whom, proves it. But as to diet, we have done little compared with what
we should do. We have made no greater progress along this line because
so many of us have been blinded by prejudice--the curse of the human
race.
With regard to chewing all food to a cream, most modern writers on
dietetics, while acknowledging that this super-mastication is useful,
maintain that it does not increase the value of the food. But they err
greatly in this, as we can prove in a very few words: If a certain
amount of proteins, fats, and carbohydrates is bolted by a nervous man
suffering from a breakdown, it will cause intestinal toxemia as a result
of the bolted food, but if he chews the food to a cream it will be
digested in a normal manner and will not cause gas in the stomach or
intestines. The proper amount of food is absorbed and nourishes the man
as it should. Now did not the thorough mastication of that food increase
the value of the proteins, fats, and carbohydrates? The thing is a
self-evident fact. In the first case a man takes food which quickly
turns to a loathsome poison. In the second instance the same kind of
food is so thoroughly mixed with the ptyalin in the saliva that whatever
is eaten becomes of value as protein or fat or some other food element.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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