Fletcher performs this work with greater ease
and with fewer noticeable bad results than any man of his age and
condition I have ever worked with." "To appreciate the full significance
of this report, it must be remembered," writes Professor Chittenden, "that
Mr. Fletcher had for several months past taken practically no exercise
other than that involved in daily walks about town." Sir Michael Forster
had Mr. Fletcher and others under observation in his Cambridge
laboratories, and in his report he remarks on the waste products of the
bowel being not only greatly reduced in amount, as might be expected; but
that they are also markedly changed in character, becoming odourless and
inoffensive, and assuming a condition which suggests that the intestine is
in a healthier and more aseptic condition than is the case under ordinary
circumstances. If we can obtain sufficient nourishment, as Mr. Fletcher
does, on half the usual quantity of food, we diminish by half the
expenditure of energy required for digestion. By thorough mastication the
succeeding digestive processes are more easily and completely performed.
What is also of great importance is that there is not the danger of the
blocking up of the lower intestines with a mass of incompletely digested
and decomposing residue, to poison the whole body. Even where there is
daily defæcation, there is often still this slowly shifting mass; the end
portion only, being expelled at a time, one or more days after its proper
period. All this improved condition of the digestive tract, leaves more
vitality for use in other directions, a greater capacity for work and
clearness of brain.
Professor R.H. Chittenden, in "Physiological Economy in Nutrition,"
writes:--"Our results, obtained with a great variety of subjects, justify
the conviction that the minimum proteid requirements of the healthy man,
under ordinary conditions of life, are far below the generally accepted
dietary standards, and far below the amounts called for by the acquired
taste of the generality of mankind. Body weight, health, strength, mental
and physical vigour and endurance can be maintained with at least one-half
of the proteid food ordinarily consumed."
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