Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917Lumholtz, Carl
History
Through Central Borneo; an Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters Between the Years 1913 and 1917
Lumholtz, Carl
Borneo -- Description and travel; Ethnology -- Borneo; Natural history -- Borneo
Modern research has established beyond doubt, that the outer layers of
grains contain mineral salts and vitamines that are indispensable to human
life. Facts prove that man, if confined to an exclusive diet of white
bread, ultimately dies from malnutrition. Cereals which have been
"refined" of their husks present a highly starchy food, and unless they
are properly balanced by base-forming substances, trouble is sure to
follow. Scurvy, beri-beri, and acidosis have been fatal to many
expeditions, though these diseases no doubt can be avoided by a judicious
selection of provisions that insure acid and base forming nutrition in the
right proportion. [*]
[Footnote *: For an illuminating example of poorly balanced food, see
_Physical Culture Magazine_, New York, for August, 1918, in which Mr.
Alfred W. McCann describes the disaster to the Madeira-Mamore Railway
Company in Brazil, when "four thousand men were literally starved to death
on a white bread diet." In the July number may be found the same food
expert's interesting manner of curing the crew of the German raider
_Kronprinz Wilhelm_, which in April, 1915, put in at Newport News, in
Virginia, with over a hundred men seriously stricken with acidosis. The
crew had enjoyed an abundance of food from the ships they had raided and
destroyed, but a mysterious disease, pronounced to be beri-beri, was
crippling the crew. As the patients failed to respond to the usual
treatment, the ship's chief surgeon consented to try the alkaline treatment
which Mr. McCann suggested to him. The patients rapidly recovered on a diet
consisting of fresh vegetable soup, potato-skin liquor, wheat bran,
whole-wheat bread, egg yolks, whole milk, orange juice, and apples. No
drugs were administered.
It may be added that Dr. Alfred Berg (in the same magazine, September,
1919) recounts the cure of an absolutely hopeless case of stomach trouble
by the vegetable juice prepared according to McCann's formula. He has
found the results gained by the use of this soup in diet "so remarkable as
to be almost unbelievable."
The formula in question, as taken from McCann's article, is: "Boil
cabbage, carrots, parsnips, spinich, onions, turnips together for two
hours. Drain off liquor. Discard residue. Feed liquor as soup in generous
quantities with unbuttered whole-wheat bread."]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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