ALBERT R. MANN
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The itinerary of a '''^^^''*^?|Vi,f||H[j!|'||j[
3 1924 003 495 953
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THE ITINERARY
OF A BREAKFAST
A Popular Account of the Travels of a Breakfast through
the Food Tube and of the Ten Gates aad Several
Stations through Which It Passes, also
of the Obstacles Which It
Sometimes Meets.
By J. H. :^ELLOGG, M.D.
Medical Director of tke^ Battle Creek Sanitarium
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
NEW YORK AND LONDON
1920
Copyright, 1918, by
J. H. KELLOGG, M.D.
(Printed in the United States of Amtrica)
PREFACE
Modern medical research has clearly in-
criminated the colon as the source of more dis-
ease and physical suffering than any other or-
gan of the body.
The artificial conditions of civilized life,
sedentary habits, concentrated foodstuffs, false
modesty, ignorance and neglect of bodily
needs, have produced a crippled state of the
colon as an almost universal condition among
civilized men and women.
Intestinal toxemia or autointoxication is
the most universal of all maladies, and the
source of autointoxication is the colon with its
seething mass of putrefying food residues.
A very special purpose in the mind of the
author in the preparation of this little volume
has been to combat some of the mischievous er-
rors which are everywhere current in relation
to the hygiene of the colon, especially with ref-
erence to the sufficiency of one daily evacua-
tion of the food residues. It s?ems to tl^?
4 PREFACE
author that no one can review the facts here
set forth without being convinced that food
residues and wastes should be evacuated at
least three times a day, or after each meal.
In the chapters, "The Ten Gates," "The
House-broken Colon" and "The Crippled
Colon," new facts brought forward by modern
research and discovery are grouped together in
a new way which it is hoped the reader will
find interesting as well as informing.
The call for information on the vital ques-
tion of "waste disposal" is steadily increasing.
It is hoped that the additional light which it is
believed this volume sheds upon this subject
will prove of interest and practical value to
every careful reader.
Practical assistance will be found in the
author's works, "Colon Hygiene," "Autoin-
toxication," and various other works on food
and diet issued by the pubhshers of this work
as well as in the monthly columns of "Good
Health."
TABLE OF CONTENTS
rACB
The Food Tube 9
Food the Natural Laxative 13
Stations along the road 14
Food principles 15
The Five Food Laboratories 18
The Mouth 18
The Stomach 20
The Intestines 20
The Liver 21
The Waste Disposal System 22
The Colon ^ 23
The Normal Intestinal Rhythm 23
Three Daily Evacuations 23
The Food Residues 29
The Digestive Time Table 30
Rhythmic Activity 30
Rate of Movement 31
Nature's Plan 32
Food Excites Peristalsis 34
Diagram of the Food Tube, and Digestive Time Table. . 37
The Ti!n Gates 38
Entrance Gate — the Mouth 40
Inspector's Gate — the Soft Palate 43
Food and Water Gate 49
The Stomach Gate S3
The Bowel Gate— the Pylorus 54
The Food Control Gate-^he Ileocecal Sphincter 61
The Colon Gate— the Ileocecal Valve 62
The Reversing Gate 66
The Discharging or Ejector Gate— the Pelvic Colon. . 68
The Exit Gate— the Anus 70
6 CONTENTS
fAOI
The House-Bkoken Colon...., 71
Normal Bowel Action 72
Hindrances to Normal Bowel Action 75
The Sitting Posture 75
Weak Abdominal Muscles 76
Concentrated Diet 79
High Protein Diet ,. 83
Reduced Quantity of Food 87
Horace Fletcher's Mistake 88
The Educated or House-Broken Colon 90
The Use of Laxative Drugs 93
The Food Blockade in the Colon 96
Qogging of the Colon 98
Bulk and Lubrication '. 103
How to Raise the Blockade 104
The Crippled Colon 106
Colon Hygiene 106
The Receiving Station 106
Bowel Habits of Wild Animals, Wild Men, and Idiots. 108
Injurious Conventionalities 109
Lesson from an Idiot Asylum 109
Interesting Japanese Colon Customs 112
One Daily Evacuation is Chronic Constipation 117
Abnormal Colon Conditions 117
Paralysis of the Rectum 117
Tight Sphincter 118
Colitis .118
Prolapse of the Pelvic Colon 119
Adhesions of the Cectim 119
Adhesions of the Appendix 119
Dilated or Pouched Cecum 120
Incompetent Ileocecal Valve 121
X-RAY Views of the Food Tube 123
X-ray Study of Motility 124
What the X-ray Expert Sees 124
Simple Motility Test 131
Rules for Case of the Colon 133
CONTENTS 7
Simple Constipation 134
Cumulative or Rectal Constipation 134
Latent Constipation 134
The Intestinal Flora— What It Is and Whv It
Must Be Changed 140
Two Classes of Germs — Fermentation and Putrefac-
tion 141
Poisoning from Putrefying Colon Contents 142
Protective Germs 144
Cause of Old Age 146
Reforming the Intestinal Flora 148
Results of Changing the Flora 149
Dangerous Germs Made Harmless ISO
How to Change the Intestinal Flora. 152
The "Fruit Regimen'' 154
Antitoxic Diet 155
Protective Acid-Forming Bacteria 156
Headaches 159
The Colon not Intended to be a Sewer 157
Nuts a Coming Food Staple. 165
The Origin of Peanut Butter 170
Food Economy 172
Advantages of a Nut Diet 175
A False Economy 177
Personal Experience 182
The First Mammals Were Nut Eaters 184
The World's Pedestrian Record Won by a Nut Eater. 185
Nuts May Save the Race 187
The Nut Is a Fruit with a Shell 187
Nuts a Good Food for Nursing Mothers and
for Infants. 190
The Blight on the Baby Crop 191
Interesting Experiments 192
Low Comparative Cost of ,Nuts 19S
The Best Nuts 203
ILLUSTRATIONS
Diagram of Food Tube Showing the Ten
Gates.
Cross Section of Intestinal Villi.
A Gastric Cycle.
Cross Section of Papilla Circumvallatae, show-
ing Taste Buds.
The Normal Colon. A Series of ten Colored
Plates showing the progress of the food and
food residues along a normal colon.
Crippled Colons (three colored plates).
Adherent Pelvic Colon.
Pelvic Colon Restored by Operation.
Reverse Peristalsis.
Incompetent Ileocecal Valve.
THE FOOD TUBE
The food tube, or prima viae, as it was
termed by the ancients, is a muscular tube
through which the food travels a distance of
about ten yards in its transit of the body.
This journey along the alimentary canal, how-
ever, is not at all comparable to the passage
of water or other liquid along a pipe. The
food canal is, in fact, not an open tube into
and along which liquids may be pom-ed, like a
water pipe or a rubber tube, but a soft, flexi-
ble, ever-changing hollow muscle which adapts
its size to its contents and tightly grasps and
manipulates them and continually pushes
them along by means of contraction waves
which travel rhythmically from above down-
ward so long as there is anything present in
the tube, either solid, liquid, or gaseous.
When solids or liquids leave the mouth,
then, they do not drop through a hollow tube
into our interiors, but are seized or grasped
by the muscular walls of the food tube and
are forcibly carried on from point to point by
purposive and rhythmical automatic muscular
movements.
10 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The mucous lining of the tube is so sensi-
tive that the smallest particles are noticed and
dealt with. This is well shown in the mouth.
A minute particle, as a seed or flake of bran,
will keep the tongue busy until it has been
dislodged and disposed of. A very small
particle lodged far back in the throat wiU pro-
duce gagging, coughing or other expulsive ef-
forts until swallowed or rejected.
This same sensitiveness to contacts exists
all the way along the food tube from entrance
to exit, although after the food is swallowed,
we are not, when in health, conscious of the
automatic efforts by which they are moved
along.
When the tube contents are bulky, dis-
tending or stretching its muscular walls, these
contraction waves, so-called peristaltic waves,
are vigorous and may even become painfully
violent as in colic. When no food has been
taken for twelve hours or more, the intestine
is inactive. During fasting there is practically
no intestinal activity.
The eminent English anatomist Keith has
shown that the movements of the stomach
and intestines are controlled by a mechanism
much the same as that which controls the heart.
THE FOOD TUBE 11
His "Serpent"
The intestinal movements are, moreover, di-
rected with such evident purpose and precision
as ahnost to suggest that the food tube is an
independent and intelligent creature, possess-
ing its own brain and will and ever perform-
ing its functions as a faithfvd body-servant.
The movements of the intestine are so
much like those which one sees executed by a
moving snake, that a noted writer very
naturally referred to his food tube as his
"serpent," and certain movements of the colon
are referred to in medical literature as snake-
like movements.
When the nerves of an arm, a leg, or al-
most any other organ of the body, are sev-
ered, so that connection with the brain or
spinal cord is cut oflp, the organ is at once
paralyzed. It is as powerless to act as though
it were actually separated from the body.
This is by no means the case with the food
canal. An experiment made by Professor
Roger, of Paris, will illustrate this. A stick
pin was placed in the intestine of an animal,
the point being directed downward. At once
a series of most interesting movements began.
12 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
As the point of the pin began to penetrate the
wall of the intestine, the tissues began to
thicken, thus preventing an immediate punc-
ture.
At the same time, a fold of the intestine
pushed up beneath the head of the pin and
pushed it over, so that in a short time the pin
was completely reversed, the head being di-
rected down stream in the intestine, and by the
contraction of the bowel pushed along until it
was discharged from the body. This wonder-
,ful action was seen to take place in the intes-
tine, even after all the nerves connecting the
intestine with the brain had been severed.
In an equally intelligent manner the stom-
ach and intestines deal with the food, moving
it along from point to point as is necessary to
perfect the work of digestion and absorption,
retaining it when necessary in various pouches
for special purposes, and even sending it back
from one point to another to meet certain exi-
gencies which may arise. But our habits of
eating are so unnatural, and our neglect of
our bodily welfare so great, that in spite of
Nature's elaborate precautions and marvelous
adaptations, very few persons reach adult age
without getting their colons so badly crippled
THE FOOD TUBE 13
that they are compelled to suffer almost con-
stantly from miseries and inconveniences from
which they seek relief in vain through the use
of cathartic pills, "salts," mineral waters, and
a long list of drugs, every one of which is de-
cidedly injurious and an aggravation of the
very conditions it is expected to relieve. Lax-
ative drugs are the most active of all causes
of constipation.
Food the Natubal Laxative
When food is taken into the stomach, the
movements of the tube become very vigorous.
Indeed, while the food is still in the mouth and
being chewed, and before a morsel has been
swallowed, the movements begin, and are foiu"
times as vigorous during the taking of a meal
as at other times. This is a very excellent rea-
son why constipated persons should eat delib-
erately, taking ample time at meals and chew-
ing long and well. Food is the natural laxa-
tive. The act of eating starts the action of the
muscular machinery by means of which first
the food and later the food residues are trans-
ported along the alimentary canal, and so long
as chewing continues new impulses are con-
tinually transmitted to the stomach and intes-
14 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
tines which quicken the peristaltic movements
and activity of the whole digestive machine.
The observations of Hirsch, Case and others
have shown that the colon contents advance as
far during the hour of eating as during four
hoiu-s just before the meal.
This interesting fact has heretofore re-
ceived no attention from writers in practical
hygiene, although the beneficial influence of
eating an orange or an apple at night has long
been recognized. This fact is no doubt also
the explanation of the beneficial effect of drink-
ing cold water before breakfast and at bedtime.
Stations along the Road
The food tube is like a street in London.
Although continuous, it bears different names
at different points along its course. Named in
their natural order, the several divisions of the
alimentary canal are as follows :
The mouth; the fauces; the gullet or
oesophagus; the stomach; the duodenum,
short upper part of small intestine; jejunum,
upper part of small intestine below the duo-
denum; ileum, lower half of small intestine;
cecum, the first part of the colon; ascending
colon, section of the large intestine extending
THE FOOD TUBE 15
from cecum to liver; transverse colon, middle
portion which passes across the abdominal
cavity from the liver on the right to the spleen
in the left; the descending colon, part w^hich
lies betvreen the spleen and the left hip bone;
iliac colon, the portion lying in the hollov\r of
the left hip bone; the pelvic colon, the free
loop which connects the iliac colon with the
rectmn; the rectum, the terminal part of the
large intestine, normally empty; the anus, the
exit of the food tube guarded by a circular or
sphincter muscle, the anal sphincter; fifteen
divisions in all.
Food Principles
The materials of which a breakfast is com-
posed are not homeogenous. Food is made
up of a variety of very diverse elements,
known as food principles of which there are
two groups:
1. Major food principles, which constitute
the bulk of our foods. These are :
a. Carbohydrates, that is foodstuffs made
up of the elements carbon, hydrogen, and oxy-
gen, or really, carbon and water. Starch,
sugar, dextrine and the acids of fruits and
vegetables make up this class.
16 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
6. FatSj, hydrocarbons, substances consist-
ing chiefly of carbon and hydrogen. All sorts
of edible animal and vegetable fats and oils be-
long to this class.
c. Proteins, food substances made up of
hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, with the addi-
tion of nitrogen, sulphur, and phosphorus.
White of egg, the lean of meat, the curd of
milk, and the gluten of wheat are examples of
protein.
All of these substances are combustible,
and they are burned in the body, but they are
not equally useful as fuel. In fact, proteins
are hardly to be considered as fuels. When
starch and fats burn, the combustion products
are simple, odorless and harmless carbon di-
oxide and water. When protein burns, the
products are highly poisonous and foul smell-
ing gases.
The purpose of protein is to supply mate-
rial for building and repairing the tissues, the
machinery of the body.
These major food principles may be classi-
fied then, as (1) Fuel food principles —
starch, sugar and fats, and (2) Tissue build-
ing food principles, the proteins.
2. Minor food principles.
THE FOOD TUBE 17
These are also three in number, viz., salts,
cellulose, and vitamines.
The salts consist chiefly of lime, soda, pot-
ash, magnesia and iron, combined with the
principal mineral acids.
Cellulose is found in vegetable food only.
It is highly important as a bulk forming ele-
ment and is necessary to stimulate the food
tube to proper activity.
Vitamines are subtle elements in the food
which are essential to good nutrition, and in
the absence of which various deficiency dis-
orders make their appearance, such as beri-
beri, scurvy, and probably pellagra and rickets.
Vitamines are easily destroyed by boiling
or baking and by long drying. This fact em-
phasizes the need of a daily and abundant sup-
ply of fresh fruit and vegetables which have
not been impaired by cooking.
It must also be remembered that vitamines
are chiefly found in the outer coverings of
seeds and in the germ, and so are not found in
fine wheat flour nor polished rice. Vitamines
aboimd in fruit and vegetable juices, espe-
cially the juice of the orange. Green leaves
(uncooked) such as lettuce, cabbage, and
spinach, are rich in vitamines.
THE FIVE FOOD LABORATORIES
The crude materials which we eat cannot
be used for blood making or tissue buUding
until they have been reduced to simple,
homogeneous elements and refined and modi-
fied by various chemico-vital processes which
take place in the mouth, stomach, small intes-
tine, liver and colon, each of which is a veri-
table food laboratory in which most remark-
able chemical fluids, the digestive juices, are
formed, by which the necessary changes are
produced in the several elements of the food.
These changes are absolutely essential to
Ufe, and must be complete and efficient or nu-
trition will fail, strength and energy will de-
preciate and finally the life processes will
cease.
The Mouth Laboeatoey — The Mhx
First in order is the mouth, the mill which
grinds the food by thorough mastication.
The chewing of agreeable food starts up
the whole digestive machinery. The saliva
flows freely, the gastric and other juices like-
THE FIVE FOOD LABORATORIES 19
wise begin to flow (appetite juice — Pavlov)
and the peristaltic waves which move the food
along the food tube from one laboratory to
another, start in the stomach and travel along
the whole thirty feet of the alimentary canal.
The saliva softens the food and also trans-
forms some of the starch into sugar (malt
sugar) by the action of a starch-digesting fer-
ment which it contains. The longer the food
is chewed the more completely the starch is
digested, and the larger the amount of gastric
juice produced in the stomach in readiness to
digest the food when it arrives.
Proper chewing of the food also serves a
useful purpose in regulating the food intake.
Thq thorough tasting of the food permits the
nerves of taste to judge the quality of the
food and to regulate the intake to suit the
needs of the body, a most important function.
Hasty eating and overeating go together.
Thorough mastication of the food helps to
preserve the teeth by giving them the exer-
cise they need.
Persons who suffer from sour stomach, a
condition due to an excess of hydrochloric
acid secretion, should chew little, and so should
eat soft food that needs little mastication.
20 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The Stomach Laboratory
The action of the saliva continues in the
stomach.
The stomach makes a strongly acid fluid,
the gastric juice, which breaks up and softens
the food by dissolving certain of the proteins;
but it does not complete the work, and very
little absorption takes place in the stomach.
Gastric digestion is a sort of preliminary
change in the food by which it is prepared for
the action of the digestive fluids of the small
intestine.
The Chief Food Laboratory
The small intestine is the great food lab-
oratory of the body. Here the main work of
digestion is done. Nearly all the digestible
food principles are here completely trans-
formed and prepared for blood and tissue
building.
In the small intestine absorption is sur-
prisingly active. There are 5,000,000 villi, the
special absorbents of the intestine, each of
which, working constantly, absorbs about
one ounce of liquid in a life time of sixty years.
The small intestine normally absorbs about
Cross-Section of Villi i'rom the Small Intestine
THE FIVE FOOD LABORATORIES 21
six quarts of liquid foodstuffs daily. The
colon absorbs only 10-20 ounces daily.
The food material which passes through
the intestine may be regarded as the soil out
of which the body grows. The villi are the
rootlets which suck up the nourishment by
which the body is developed and maintained.
The Liver Laboratoky — ^The Refinery
Outside the food tube, but directly con-
nected with it, is a wonderful laboratory to
which practically all of the food goes after
absorption and before entering the general
blood current. Here the various products of
digestion undergo the final delicate changes
needed to prepare them for the various parts
which they are to play in the repair and main-
tenance of the body. In this laboratory more
work is done, and a greater variety of work,
than is accomplished by any other gland in
the body, a fact which is the more surprising
as from an anatomical standpoint the struct-
ure of the liver is very simple, giving no sug-
gestion of the astonishing versatility of its
work.
22 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The Waste-Disposal, System
One more important laboratory remains to
be described, — the colon, the waste-disposal
system of the body. By the time the food-
stuffs have passed through the twenty-two
feet of small intestine, the digestible and ab-
sorbable matters have been practically all di-
gested and absorbed.
Out of the pound and a half of water-
free digestible food usually eaten daily, only a
small fraction is usually found in the ma-
terial which enters the colon from the small
intestine. The colon has little to do but to dis-
pose of the unusable food remnants and of
the excretory waste matters which enter the
colon from the blood. The food residues con-
tain billions of bacteria, which sometimes con-
stitute more than half of the whole mass of
the feces.
The first half of the colon acts as a reduc-
ing plant, absorbing a part of the water, by
which the bulk of the material to be disposed
of is reduced more than one half.
The second half of the colon, the terminal
part of the food tube, has no other function
than to transmit and eject from the body the
THE FIVE FOOD LABORATORIES 23
waste and poisonous matters which constitute
the feces or the stool.
The Normal Intestinal Rhythm — Three
Daily Evacuations
Under normal conditions, when all parts
of the digestive tube are doing their work
efficiently, the colon discharges its contents
at least three times a day. The residue of each
meal is dismissed after the second following
meal. That is, the food residues from the
daily breakfast should be discharged by a
bowel movement between supper and bedtime.
The following is the order of the food pro-
cession for the three daily meals:
Breakfast leaves the stomach and reaches
the lower part of the small intestine in four to
five hours (see diagram). The vigorous ac-
tivity set up by the taking of dinner pushes
the breakfast residue over into the colon, the
middle part of which is reached within nine
or ten hours. Between dinner and supper,
the breakfast residue slowly works along to
the lower end of the colon; and when supper
is eaten, the new and vigorous peristaltic
waves started in the stomach sweep the din-
ner residue into the colon, and should carry
24 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
out of the body the breakfast residue all ready
waiting close to the outlet to be dismissed.
During the night, the dinner residue
works slowly along the colon to the lower end,
and the supper residue passes over from the
small intestine into the colon. The stimulus
of awakening and the effort of rising often
produce a bowel movement before breakfast
by which the dinner residue is dismissed.
After breakfast, the supper residue is dis-
missed by the strong peristaltic waves set up
by the meal, which should completely empty
the colon.
When the colon is thus swept clean of all
body wastes and food residues once in twenty-
four hours, there is no time for putrefaction,
and the stools are free from the loathsome
odors of decay which are commonly present.
Under such circumstances, the blood remains
free from the pollution which must result from
the stagnation of food residues which have
been retained for many successive days until
putrefaction processes have reached a very ad-
vanced stage. The liver, lungs, kidneys, and
skin are not compelled to act as sewers in at-
tempting to carry off the filth which the colon
has failed to dispose of.
THE FIVE FOOD LABOEATOEIES 25
So long as the body wastes are disposed of
in this prompt and normal manner, the terri-
ble effects which arise from intestinal toxemia
or autointoxication are not seen. The skin is
clear, the tongue clean, the breath sweet, the
appetite keen, the mind active, optimistic and
serene, sleep sound and restful, endurance
great and resistance high.
Unfortunately, this happy state is seldom
met among civilized people who have advanced
beyond the age of infancy. The customs of
civilized life nearly all tend to render the
colon sluggish, and to cripple its function as a
waste-disposal system. The flesh-eating habit
loads the colon with the remnants of un-
digested flesh which undergo the same
changes which take place in the decaying car-
cass of a dead animal left to itself. Thus, the
body is flooded with the most horrible and
loathsome poisons, and the marvel is not that
human life is so short and so full of miseries,
mental, moral, and physical, but that civilized
human beings are able to live at all. The
civilized colon with its accumulated residue of
five to fifteen meals or more, is a Golgotha of
pollution, a veritable Pandora's box of disease.
Modern science has not only taught us
26 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
how the normal colon should act, but how
the diseased colon may be reformed. By
a proper diet and proper management, even
very obstinate colons may be made to act
three times a day. Even colons which have
become so badly twisted out of shape by ad-
hesions and kinks, and so paralyzed by over-
distension that they cannot be restored by the
simple means mentioned may, by the wonder-
ful resources of modern surgery, be made to
perform their function in a perfectly satis-
factory manner. And thus it may be said
safely that every case of constipation, no mat-
ter how obstinate, or what its cause, may be
substantially relieved.
In other words, the obstacles which bad
habits and resulting disease create along the
food tube may be removed, so that the delays
which produce intestinal toxemia with all its
horrible consequences may be prevented and
the normal itinerary reestablished.
The alimentary canal may be considered as
divided into four apartments, in each of which
the food is retained for a time to undergo
changes which are not only essential to the di-
gestive process, but are necessary to prepare
the way for the next succeeding series of
A Gastric Cycle
X-ra3" Motiuii Picture of the Stumacli, showing Action of
the Pvlorus
THE FIVE FOOD LABORATORIES 27
changes that the food must undergo before it
is absorbed.
In the mouth, food is reduced to a soft
pulp by the mechanical action of the teeth, the
tongue and cheeks. At the same time, the
food is mixed with the saliva, which acts upon
the starch, converting it into sugar. This ac-
tion begins in the mouth and continues for
one or two hours in the stomach after the food
is swallowed.
In the stomach, the food is mixed with
gastric juice, which, acting upon the food after
it has been acted upon by the saliva, reduces
it to a semi-fluid state. The mixing of the
gastric juice with the food is accomplished by
contraction waves, which pass along the
stomach at the rate of three to five waves per
minute.
These contraction waves also serve to pass
the digested food into the small intestine
through the pylorus in portions equal to about
one tablespoonful.
The work of the stomach, like that of the
mouth, is preliminary, having for its purpose
the preparation of the food for further action
by the digestive juices which it encounters in
the small intestine.
28 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
In the small intestine, which is some
twenty-two feet in length, is performed the
greater part of the work of digestion, and
practically the whole of the work of absorp-
tion. It is only in this part of the digestive
apparatus that digestion is carried to the
point of completion, by the action of the sev-
eral quarts of digestive juices, consisting of
gastric juice, pancreatic juice, intestinal juice,
and the bile.
The small intestine absorbs the eribrmous
quantity of five or six quarts of liquid daily.
Of the solid matter taken at an ordinary meal,
less than an ounce finds its way into the colon.
Practically all the digestible and usable por-
tion of the food is absorbed by the small in-
testine.
The total volume of material which passes
from the small intestine into the colon each
twenty-four hours is only about one pint.
It is evident, then, that the small intestine
does practically all the work of digestion and
absorption. The work performed by the
stomach, while important, can be dispensed
with. There are many persons living whose
stomachs have been removed and who have
good digestions, and enjoy good health.
THE FIVE FOOD LABORATORIES 29
The Food Residues
The small amount of matter that passes
into the colon consists of indigestible food
residues, excretory products and intestinal
mucus. These substances are of no use to the
body and may do much harm if retained be-
cause of the readiness with which they
undergo putrefaction. It is the duty of the
colon to receive these waste matters and dis-
miss them from the body.
During transit along the colon, a little
more than half of the water content of the
fecal matters is absorbed, but the amount of
absorption which takes place from the colon
represents only about one-twentieth of the
work of absorption done by the small intes-
tine.
THE DIGESTIVE TIME TABLE
Now that the work of the several depart-
ments of the alimentary" canal has been de-
fined, we are better prepared to understand
the rhythmical processes by which nature
moves the foodstuffs along from one part to
another until all the usable material has been
absorbed, and then disposes of the unusable
residue.
Rhythmic Activity
The work of the stomach is completed in
three to five hours, at the end of which time
it is found empty.
The work of the small intestine, which
begins within a few minutes after food is
taken into the stomach, when the first small
portions of liquid material begin to pass out
through the pylorus, is finished at the end of
eight or nine hours from the beginning of the
meal.
At the end of eight hours in a normal per-
son, the indigestible and unusable remnants
of the food are found in the first part of the
colon. Tests made by means of carmine.
THE DIGESTIVE TIME TABLE 31
swallowed in a capsule, show that in normal
persons, discharge of the unusable residues
of the meal begins seven to ten hours after
the meal is taken and may be completed in
twelve to fourteen hours.
Rate or Movement
If the food can pass from the mouth to
the colon, a distance of nearly, twenty-five feet
in eight hours, in the meantime undergoing
the various complicated processes of gastric
and intestinal digestion, there certainly seems
to be no good reason why the food residue
should not complete the transit of the colon,
a distance only one-fifth as great, in one-half
the time, or four hours, especially since the
work done by the colon is almost exclusively
mechanical, the work of digestion and absorp-
tion having been completed in the smf^U intes-
tine.
There seems to be no reason why the un-
usable remnants of the food should remain for
many hours, even days, in the colon, under-
going putrefactive changes and contributing
in no way whatever to the welfare of the
body, but, on the contrary, serving as a tre-
32 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
mendous vital handicap and a cause of multi-
tudinous miseries, maladies, and degenera-
tions.
Those who maintain that the normal time
required for a meal to make the transit of the
alimentary canal is forty-eight hours or more,
should explain why it is necessary that the
unusable remnants of a meal, the usable por-
tion of which has been digested and absorbed
in eight hours, should lie about rotting, pu-
trefying and festering in the colon for forty
hours or more, or five times the length of time
required for digestion and absorption.
This long delay affords an opportunity
for the development of putrefactive poisons,
which not only Metchnikoff, but many other
investigators, have shown to be the prime
factors in the development of chronic disease
and premature senility.
Nature's Plan
The writer has gathered from various
sources a considerable amount of evidence
that indicates that under normal conditions, a
normal man, living upon a normal diet, which
will include a sufficient amount of cellulose
to furnish the normal stimulus to the muscular
THE DIGESTIVE TIME TABLE 33
walls of the intestine, wiU experience an evac-
uation of alimentary wastes at least three times
a day, and, in many cases, four times.
Three bowel movements a day, indeed, is
the prevailing habit among primitive people
and the higher apes. The chimpanzee and the
orang-utan move their bowels four to six
times daily.
This statement is made on information ob-
tained by the writer direct from the keeper
in charge of the London Zoo, to which sev-
eral visits were made for the express purpose
of inquiring into this matter and from others
well acquainted with the habits of the big apes.
Doctor Hornaday, superintendent of the
Bronx Park, informed the writer that the big
monkeys of the Bronx zoological collection
move their bowels three times daily.
When the intestine is empty, it is entirely
quiet. When food is introduced into the
stomach, contractile movements at once be-
gin. These so-called peristaltic movements
are not confined to the stomach, but simulta-
neously with the beginning of contractile
waves in the stomach similar waves appear
all along the intestinal tract, from stomach
to colon.
34 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Food Excites Peristalsis
Food is the natural laxative and the ac-
tivity set up in the stomach by the taking of
food is communicated to the entire intestinal
tract.
The result is that the intestinal activity set
up by the taking of food into the stomach,
not only serves to pass digesting food out of
the stomach into the intestine but at the same
time serves to move forward collections of food
or food residues at various points in the ali-
mentary canal.
When, for example, a mid-day meal is
taken, a portion of the breakfast is stUl in the
small intestine. The effect of peristaltic ac-
tivity set up by the taking of the mid-day
meal is to cause the small intestine to rapidly
empty itself into the colon.
During the activity excited by luncheon
or dinner, the residues of the breakfast, vphich
have reached the colon, are gradually pushed
farther along until at the end of eight or ten
hours they reach the lower part of the colon.
When the morning meal is taken, a new
series of vigorous peristaltic waves is set in
motion. These not only push the unusable
THE DIGESTIVE TIME TABLE 35
remnants of the last meal forward into the
colon, but at the same time carry the residues
of the breakfast to the lower part of the colon
and thus create a desire for evacuation. This
discharge of the xmusable remnants of the
breakfast should normally take place between
dinner and supper or supper and bedtime.
That this rarely occurs is doubtless the
result of too little roughage and neglect to
attend promptly to the call of nature.
During the night, the residues of the last
two meals of the day gradually work their
way farther down and in the morning the in-
testinal activity naturally set up by the move-
ments of the body on rising, should result in
the discharge before breakfast of the residues
of the mid-day meal of the day before. In
the same way the vigorous peristaltic activity
awakened by the taking of breakfast should
result in the disraissal of the residues of the
evening meal of the previous day.
In other words, the peristaltic wave set
up by each meal should cause the advance-
ment of the preceding meal from the small
intestine into the colon, and, shortly after-
ward, the discharge of the unused remnants
of the next to the last meal.
36 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
This is the normal intestinal rhythm and
the nearer it can be approximated in actual
experience, the better.
The writer is convinced that the highest
degree of health, comfort, efficiency and
longevity, can only be obtained by maintain-
ing such a degree of intestinal activity as will
prevent the accumulation in the colon of pu-
trefying food residues and other poisonous
wastes ; for these putrefying materials contam-
inate the blood, and, by unnecessary and ex-
cessive work, wear out the liver, kidneys and
other poison-destroying organs; damage the
blood vessels by constant contact with a
poison-laden blood current; and intoxicate
and irritate, and ultimately render pre-
maturely infirm and senile the body cells.
THE DIGESTIVE TIME TABLE
37
Normal Itinerary of a Meal Passing Through
the Alimentary Subway
TIME TABLE
Arrival
Gate
Stahok
Depasture
g:00 A.u.
No.
1.
Food Administrator
Month
8:30 A.M.
No.
2.
Inspector
No.
3.
Food and Water
8:30 A.H.
No,
4.
Stomach
Stomach
12:00 NooH
No.
5.
Bowel— Pylorus
12:00 Noon
No.
6.
Ileo Sphincter
Small Intestine
4:00 p.m.
4:00 p.a. No.
7.
Colon — Ileo Valve
Cecum
6:00 P.M.
6:00 p.m. |No.
8.
Reversing Gate
Transverse Colon
8:00 P.M.
8:00 p.m.
No.
9.
Ejector
Pelvic Colon
10:00 P.M.
No.
10.
Exit
Rectum
10:00 P.M.
SPECIAL NOTICES
Train Late: Held at Stomach Station for 2 hours. Bowel
Gate (No. 5) refused to open.
Losing Time: Wreck at Colon Gate (No. 7). Ileocecal valve
refuses to close, track obstructed with rubbish.
8 hours late.
Losing Time: Collision with heavy train backing up. 10 hours
late.
Losing Time: Obstruction on the track. Ejector Gate (No.
9) refuses to open. 20 hours late.
Losing Time: Serious obstruction. Track buried with rub-
bish. 35 hours late.
Train arrives at last, after clearing track with
dynamite (castor oil), forty hours late.
(This is the usual program when the bowels move only
once a day or occasionally.)
THE TEN GATES
The study of the food gates is a new and
highly interesting chapter in physiology which
has been brought to light by the remarkable
discoveries made by means of that magical
revealer of secrets, the X-ray.
The movement of the food along the ali-
mentary tube is not at a regular rate.
Numerous pauses occur. The arrangement
is similar to that of a well organized factory,
in which a piece of mechanism, such as a
watch for example, is passed from one to an-
other of a long line of experts, each of whom
does a particular part of the work, adding a
wheel or a pinion, or some other necessary
part, then passing the device along to the
next workman, who advances the work an-
other step towards completion.
The pauses essential for these special
processes are secured by means of what may
be called "gates," by which the progress of
each morsel of food is temporarily checked
while some special work, as of digestion, ab-
sorption, or selection, is being accomplished.
We are now somewhat acquainted with
THE TEN GATES 39
the food tube and its work, which consists
essentially in passing the food along from one
laboratory to another, finally gathering up
the wastes and unusable residues and reject-
ing them from the body.
Let us now trace the progress of a test
breakfast along the food tube and observe
the ingenious devices by means of which the
several processes are coordinated and the
procession of body building and energy-feed-
ing material maintained.
Many of the most serious disorders of di-
gestion, recent physiological research has
shown, are the result of disturbances which
occur at the food gates, so that it is a matter
of very great practical interest to discover the
relation of these gates to healthy digestion,
and to associate the various disturbances which
occur in conditions of disease each with its par-
ticular gate.
The gates are ten in number. Their loca-
tion and relation will be readily imderstood
after a glance at the accompanying diagram.
The names of the several gates are as fol-
lows:
1. Entrance or Food Dictator's gate,
the mouth.
40 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
2. Food Inspector's gate, the soft palate.
3. Food and Water gate.
4. Stomach gate.
5. The Bowel gate. Pylorus.
6. Control gate, ileocecal sphincter.
7. Colon gate, ileocecal valve.
8. Reversing gate, middle of transverse
colon.
9. Discharging or ejector gate, pelvic
colon.
10. Exit gate, anus.
FOOD GATE NO. 1
The Entrance Gate — The Mouth
One purpose of the entrance gate is to
guard the food tube and to keep out of it all
harmful substances, rejecting of course, all
things known to be poisonous, such as alcohol
and tobacco, as well as tea and coffee and all
other habit-forming drugs.
Just beneath the skin of the lips there is
found a muscle entirely surrounding the
mouth. This muscle is brought into strong
action in whistling or puckering the lips. It
normally acts with just sufficient force to
keep the lips in contact when they are not
THE TEN GATES 41
open for the purpose of eating, drinking, or
speaking. This is very necessary for main-
taining a healthy condition of the mouth.
When, for instance, the lower jaw drops
down during sleep and the lips are parted,
the air is drawn in through the mouth. The
eflPect may be serious injury to the throat
through the excessive drying of the mucous
membrane at the back of the throat, and still
greater injury probably results from the in-
fection through the deposit of numerous
germs on the surface of the tongue and
pharynx.
The nose, which is the natural channel for
the air in breathing, is provided with means
for filtering and moistening air that is lack-
ing in the mouth. In mouth breathing, nu-
merous bacteria and microbic forms found in
the air are deposited upon the tongue, soft
palate, and the tonsils, and grow rapidly
and produce overnight a thick foul coat upon
the tongue, a disagreeable, unpleasant tasting
slime which covers the teeth and all parts of
the mouth.
On examination under a microscope this
slime from the coating of the tongue shows
bacteria in enormous numbers. Some of
42 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
these are capable of living in the stomach
when swallowed, as sometimes occurs during
sleep, so infection may extend to the stom-
ach and thence to the small intestine and the
colon. These germs modern investigators
have shown to be the cause of a large share
of the maladies which afflict human beings in
the civilized state, and are the cause of old
age, as shown by Metchnikoff. In the Arctic
region, where the air is free from germs, the
intestines of animals are found to contain no
bacteria.
The character of the material which
passes along the food tube depends absolutely
and wholly upon the action of the entrance
gate in accepting or rejecting the various ma-
terials offered. The mouth is aided in its de-
cisions by the sense of smell, by the memory
of previous taste experiences and sometimes
by common sense and reason. More often,
the mouth lets in whatever is offered, or what-
ever a perverted appetite may caU for.
Civilized people everywhere have culti-
vated many artificial and harmful appetites
which call for the passage through the en-
trance gate of a multitude of substances
which were never designed by nature to be
THE TEN GATES 43
eaten by human beings, as shown by the fact
that they are not eaten by other animals be-
longing to the same biologic class with our-
selves, that is the higher apes.
All horses adhere absolutely to a common
bill of fare, that which has nourished their an-
cestors ever since horses appeared in the ani-
mal world.
Man is a primate, a member of a rather
small family of animals which possess among
other striking and peculiar characteristics, a
pair of hands instead of feet attached to their
anterior hmbs. Nothing could be more evi-
dent than that man should adhere to the same
dietary as his near relatives, the big apes, viz.,
fruits, nuts, tender green shoots, grains and
succulent roots, adding milk and eggs.
FOOD GATE NO. 2
The Inspectob"'s Gate — The Soft Palate
AND Nerves of Taste
At the back of the mouth the palate and
fauces combine to close the passage between
the mouth and the pharynx, a small cavity in
the upper part of the alimentary canal. This
gate performs three important functions.
44 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
1. It insures thorough mastication of the
food. The soft palate possesses peculiar
sensibility to contact with solid objects. When
such an object comes in contact with the
uvula a reflex action is at once produced, as
the result of which the base of the tongue is
drawn up and the object thrown forward
into the mouth. Strong stimulation of the
fauces produces coughing and gagging, by
which solid materials may be projected for-
ward with so much force as to be ejected
from the mouth. This is the reason why it is
difficiilt to swallow a piU, for which, indeed,
some practice is necessary in the case of many
persons.
Now below the mouth the alimentary
canal provides no means for the mechanical
reduction of the food. Certain birds are
provided with a mill lower down — ^the giz-
zard, — ^and in some lower species of animals
more complicated mechanisms are provided
for grinding the food. Such animals natur-
ally swallow their food entire, but in human
beings, as well as in the horse and most other
mammals, the mill is located in the mouth,
and it is the duty of the soft palate to see that
the food is completely ground and reduced to
iTMMi'wfiMI
Cross-section oV Papilla from Back of Tongue
Showin" Taste Buds at A.
THE TEN GATES 45
a semi-liquid state before.it is permitted to
proceed further along the digestive tract.
Thorough mastication is necessary in order
that the saliva and the juices of the stomach
and intestine may be readily brought into con-
tact with every particle of food, so that each
may do its work upon the individual food ele-
ments promptly and completely.
That the jaws were intended for powerful
action is shown by the extraordinary power
which their muscles possess. The strength of
the bite is seldom less than eighty pounds and
sometimes reaches two hundred and fifty
pounds.
2. The inspector's gate holds the food in
the mouth long enough for the nerves of taste
to exercise their functions. Pavlov, of
Petrograd, discovered that the nerves of
taste with which the food is brought in con-
tact in the mouth, perform a most important
function in relation to the digestion of food
in the stomach. At the back of the tongue
there is found an interesting arrangement by
which the nerves of taste are brought in di-
rect contact with dissolved particles of food.
It is evident, however, that the food must be
finely divided in order that such contact may
46 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
be made. These extraordinarily sensitive taste
nerves detect the special properties of food,
and when stimulated, arouse the activity of
the nerve-centers in the brain, so called
"psychic centers," and send messages to the
stomach, in response to which the gastric
glands produce "appetite juice,'"
The amount of appetite juice depends
upon the extent to which the gustatory nerves
are stimulated, and this depends wholly upon
the thoroughness with which the food is masti-
cated, for the flavor of the food cannot be de-
tected by the gustatory nerves unless the food
has been dissolved. The sweetness of a lump
of sugar, for instance, cannot be appreciated
until the sugar has been brought into solution.
Nature has given to the various natural
foods just the flavors required to stimulate
the gustatory nerve sufficiently to cause the
production of the proper quantity and qual-
ity of gastric juice required to digest the
food. In other words, when the food is swal-
lowed in masses, as one might swallow pills
or capsules, the flavors are swallowed with it,
and the gustatory nerve has no opportunity
to inspect and become acquainted with the
food ; the stomach, accordingly, receives no in-
THE TEN GATES 47
timation of what sort of food is coming, and
is unprepared to receive it.
3. Still another function of the inspector's
gate is to regulate the quality of food. Our
food is a complicated substance. It consists
of combinations in various proportions of
proteins, fats, and carbohydrates, together
with flavoring materials and various mineral
salts, which, while essential, play a minor
part in nutrition. The proportion of these
food elements is constantly varying, even in
foodstuffs similar in character; for example,
wheat flour consists chiefly of gluten, protein,
and starch (a carbohydrate), but no two
flours contain the same proportion of gluten
and starch, and so every loaf of bread diifers
from every other loaf. Chemists can make
an analysis by which the composition of every
foodstuff or every particular particle of food
may be exactly known, but such an analysis
could not be made for every meal.
The body requires a more reliable guide
than can be afforded by the chemical labor-
atory, or the most exact dietetic knowledge,
and so we find that so long as an animal sub-
sists upon those articles of food which are
natural to it and normally adapted to its di-
48 THE ITINEEARY OF A BREAKFAST
gestive organs and constitution, the gustatory
nerves, cooperating with Food Gate No. 2, are
able to meet the nutritive needs of the body
in a manner incomparably better than could
be done by the most astute dietitian.
When the food is swallowed in haste with-
out thorough mastication, there is no oppor-
tunity for regulation. Regulation is, indeed,
impossible. When, however, the food is mas-
ticated thoroughly so that the gustatory
nerves have an opportunity to inspect every
particle of food, then regulation will be most
complete. One who uses his palate gate nor-
mally, eating natural food and chewing it so
thoroughly that it may be completely tasted
before it is swallowed, does not need to as-
certain by means of scales or chemical
analysis how much fat or protein or carbo-
hydrates he is taking at a meal. He can de-
pend with confidence upon the efiiciency of
automatic regulation through his gustatory
nerves.
The inspector's gate should be given a
chance to examine the foodstuffs and its man-
dates should be obeyed.
When the food has been properly chewed,
that is, brought to a soft, liquid consistency,
THE TEN GATES 49
it slips by the food inspector's gate so easily
that it appears to be swallowed automatically
and without effort.
The nerves of the soft palate seem to pos-
sess extraordinary wisdom in relation to the
needs of the body and not only observe the
way in which the food has been chewed, but
also its various dietetic properties, and in a
marvelously eflBcient way cater to the real
needs of the body. By this means the in-
spector gate becomes, to a very large degree,
the regulator of the body's nutrition.
FOOD GATE NO. 3
The Food and Watee Gate
There are at the back of the throat two
gates, one, the epiglottis or air gate, which
controls the passage of air to the lungs and
excludes water or solid substances; a second
gate which closes the upper end of the
esophagus or gullet and only opens for the
passage of food and drink in swallowing, and
excludes air from the stomach.
The food and water gate is formed by the
pressure of the larynx against the gullet,
compressing it against the spinal column.
50 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The gate is opened by the act of swallowing.
This act is normally executed only when food
or drink is brought in contact with the mu-
cous membrane of the back of the throat.
Foreign or obnoxious substances provoke
gagging, coughing, or choking, by which the
objectional matters are ejected. The food
and water gate refuses to open to receive
them unless forced to do so by a violent eflPort.
This gate thus affords important and in-
telligent protection against injury from for-
eign substances not intended by nature to be
taken into the body. The protest of the gate
is so strong that sometimes vomiting may
be induced. Tickling the throat with the fin-
ger or a feather is a common means of pro-
voking vomiting when it is desirable to empty
the stomach.
On the other hand, the readiness with
which wholesome foods and drinks are re-
ceived is quite remarkable. A partial
vacuum is maintained in the gullet just within
the gate, by the elasticity of the lungs, so that
the instant it is opened by the act of swallow-
ing which lifts the larynx forward and up-
ward and so removes the pressure on the gul-
let, the food is drawn in instantly by the sue-
THE TEN GATES 51
tion, and with so much force that it is some-
times carried nearly to the lower end of the
gullet. This remarkable arrangement ac-
counts for the suddenness, often very sur-
prising, with which substances which reach
the back of the throat are sometimes snatched
away from voluntary control, and even when
imperfectly masticated, so that more or less
distress may be felt as the mass is slowly
passed along the gullet to the stomach.
The act of breathing is always arrested
during the swallowing of food or liquid, this
being necessary not only for the protection
of the lungs, but also to prevent the entrance
of air into the stomach with the food, since
the opening of the esophageal gate permits
the suction effect to operate through the esoph-
agus as well as through the larynx. If the
breath is strongly drawn in at the same time
the gate is opened by swallowing, air may be
drawn into the esophagus. After the gate is
again closed, the air taken into the esophagus
is gradually forced into the stomach, into
which it enters with a characteristic sound,
which is usually audible at a distance of some
feet.
Nervous persons suffering from dis-
52 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
ordered digestion often acquire the habit of
pumping air into the stomach in this way, a
symptom technically termed "aerophagy."
Horses often acquire this habit and in farm
parlance are called "cribbers," "wind suckers,"
or "stump suckers," for the reason that they
forcibly seize some object with the teeth when
swallowing air.
Air swallowing is somewhat akin to hic-
cough, but it is more subject to voluntary con-
trol than is hiccough. It is induced by a feel-
ing of fullness in the stomach which is mis-
taken for an accumulation of gas, whereas it
is an irritation often due to excessive acidity
of the gastric secretions. Temporary relief
is obtained by forcing air into the stomach,
but soon the stomach becomes distended and
then belching occurs, which confirms the idea
that the trouble is due to "gas on the stom-
ach," whereas there is usually no considerable
amount of gas in the stomach until air has
been swallowed.
The disposition to swallow air should be
restrained.
When the unpleasant sensation is experi-
enced, the mouth should be held widely open
while ten deep breaths are taken. It is also
THE TEN GATES 53
well to drink a glassful of hot water. The
symptom is often due to hyperacidity from
excessive secretion of gastric acid, which
should be relieved by the proper measures.
FOOD GATE NO. 4
The Stomach Gate
At the lower end of the gullet is a circular
muscle which surrounds the tube and tightly
closes the gullet after food has passed through
it into the stomach. When food coming
down the gullet approaches the stomach gate,
the muscle relaxes; that is, the gate opens to
allow the food to pass into the stomach, then
instantly closes.
This circular muscle sometimes becomes
relaxed to such a degree that portions of food
may be forced back into the esophagus by
movements of the stomach, and thus find their
way back to the mouth. This usually happens
when the contents of the stomach are too
highly acid, because of the excessive secretion
of hydrochloric acid by the gastric glands. In
some persons the muscle appears to be weak-
ened and relaxed through the habit of drink-
54 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
ing large quantities of warm water, which
produce nausea and regurgitation, or even by
vomiting as the result of tickling the throat
with the finger or a feather.
Eructations of gas from the stomach are
usually due to the fact that the cardiac orifice,
or upper stomach gate, is not sufficiently
strong to resist the violent movements of the
stomach induced by an excess of acid in the
stomach and resulting too tight closure of
the pylorus. When the stomach is in a state
of inflammation, and ulceration exists in the
upper part of the stomach, this gate becomes
abnormally sensitive and pain is experienced
after the swallowing of food or drink, due to
the passage of the food over the irritated sur-
faces.
FOOD GATE NO. 5
The Bowel Gate — the Pylorus
This is a most remarkable structure. It
consists of a circular muscle which surrounds
the food tube at the point of junction fjetween
the stomach and the small intestine. From
the most ancient times some knowledge of the
function of the pylorus has existed, hence its
THE TEN GATES 55
Greek name, which translated into English is
simply gate keeper.
This, of all the gateways through which
the food passes, has been the subject of the
greatest amount of study, but it is only within
recent years that the function of the pylorus
has been properly understood.
The pylorus inspects the digesting food-
stuffs, opening at proper intervals to allow
the passage into the bowel of such portions
of the food as have been prepared by the
stomach for the more complete digestion in
the small intestine.
A very interesting point about this gate
is the manner of its closing or control. When
the stomach is empty, the gate remains open.
This is also true in cases in which the stom-
ach has through disease lost the power of
making gastric juice, so-called cases of
achylia.
Water or other liquids with a tempera-
ture near that of the body when taken into
the stomach quickly flow out through the py-
lorus into the intestine. The normal position
of the stomach is known to be perpendicular,
obviously to facilitate the downward move-
ment of the liquid contents.
56 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
When, however, food is taken into the
stomach, even whUe it is stUl undergoing mas-
tication in the mouth, the acid gastric juice
entering the duodenum causes the pylorus
to contract. This closure of the lower food
gate is necessary to cause the retention of
the food in the stomach until it has been
acted upon by the saliva and gastric juice,
and thus prepared for the digestive processes
which later on take place along the alimen-
tary canal at certain intervals.
In normal persons, when the acid contents
of the stomach begin to pass out into the
small intestine, a reflex action occurs which
closes the pylorus. The contact of the acid
with the mucous membrance causes contrac-
tion and closure of the pylorus which con-
tinues until the gastric acid has been neutral-
ized by the alkaline bile and pancreatic juice,
then the pylorus relaxes and lets out into the
intestine another small quantity of gastric
contents.
By this wonderful arrangement the food
which has undergone digestion in the stomach
is doled out into the intestine in very small por-
tions, a provision entirely in harmony with the
now known fact that this function is chiefly
THE TEN GATES 57
preparatory, the complete and finished work
of digestion being accomplished only in the
intestine.
The stomach was formerly supposed to be
the chief organ of digestion. It is now known
that this idea was erroneous. The stomach is
a highly useful organ, but not essential. In
many cases practically the whole stomach has
been removed in cases of cancer involving a
large part of the organ, and a considerable
number of persons have lived in this condi-
tion for years in comfortable health.
Nxmierous digestive disorders may be
traced to the pyloric gate, through which all
foodstuffs must pass before they can take
part in the nutrition of the body. When the
contents of the stomach become excessively
acid, the pylorus contracts so forcibly that the
digested portions of the food are not passed
on, but are retained in the stomach. This is
a difficulty which serves to aggravate itself.
A vicious circle is formed. The excessive
acidity of the gastric contents causes too long
a retention of the foodstuffs in the stomach,
and the long delay of food in the stomach
irritates the gastric glands, causing an ab-
normal secretion of acid. Thus, the difficulty
58 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
once begun tends to become worse. The
stomach muscles contract with increased vigor
as the acidity increases, and not infrequently
the movements become so violent that a por-
tion of the acid contents of the stomach is
forced upward 'through the esophagus into
the mouth, giving rise to eructations of gas,
and even liquid or solid food materials, ac-
companied by a burning pain. Here we
have the explanation of so-called "heartburn,"
[which has been erroneously attributed to fer-
mentation in the stomach — a rare condition.
There are thus many causes which may
disturb the passage of food through the py-
loric gate, all of which give rise to serious dis-
turbances of the digestive processes. Many
chronic dyspeptics suffer from some of these
conditions, which, however, in most cases can-
not be remedied by the use of drugs or in-
ternal remedies of any sort, since the obstruc-
tion is due to spasm of the pylorus, the result
of excessive acid secretion by the stomach.
Regulation of the diet and other proper modes
of treatment will almost certainly give relief.
In cases in which the stomach is prolapsed,
the restoration of the stomach to its normal
place and the use of a suitable bandage will
THE TEN GATES 59
often secure very great improvement. It is
not possible to say in many cases just which
one of various causes exists, without a thor-
ough examination of the stomach by means of
a test meal and careful chemical examination
of gastric contents, together with an X-ray
bismuth meal examination, by means of which
the stomach may be clearly outlined and its
movements, together with its location and the
action of the pylorus, clearly seen.
X-ray examinations have clearly estab-
lished the fact that in a great number of cases,
distress and other symptoms attributed to the
stomach are due to causes outside of the stom-
ach altogether. For example, gall stones, in-
flammation of the gallbladder, ulcer of the
duodenum, and inflammation of the pancreas,
and even infection of the appendix and colitis,
often give rise to gastric pain and other dis-
turbances of the stomach. These extrinsic dis-
orders constitute possibly one-half of all gas-
tric cases. These cases are, in fact, so common,
it may be regarded as a very wise and helpful
procedure to submit every case of chronic gas-
tric disease to a critical X-ray examination by
the aid of the "barium meal," in addition to
the ordinary gastric test meal.
60 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
One of the functions of the acid gastric
juice is to cause closure of the pylorus and
regulation of the action of this remarkable
structure in "spooning" the food from the
stomach into the intestine. In cases in which
the gastric glands have degenerated so that
no hydrochloric acid is produced, the pylorus
remains open. In cancer of the stomach and
in certain cases of ulceration of the stomach,
the disease may be located in such a position as
to prevent the normal closure of the pylorus.
Similar conditions are sometimes produced
by adhesions of the pylorus to the liver or gall
bladder, a result of inflammation of the gall
ducts or gall bladder.
A relaxed c6ndition of the pylorus gate
that prevents its proper closure may be a
cause of serious disturbance. When this con-
dition is present, bile frequently flows back
into the stomach, especially when the stomach
is prolapsed. The food passes out of the
stomach so quickly that the work of the stom-
ach upon the food is not properly performed,
and in consequence digestion in the intestines
is deranged. In such cases a movement of the
bowels sometimes occurs within a half hour
after eating, discharging food of the last meal.
THE TEN GATES 61
FOOD GATE NO. 6
The Food Control Gate — The
Ileocecal Sphincter
A muscular ring much like the pylorus
surrounds the lower end of the small intestine.
This structure, the ileocecal sphincter, per-
forms very much the same function as the py-
lorus. The pylorus holds the food in the
stomach until gastric digestion is completed
and the food prepared for intestinal digestion.
The ileocecal sphincter holds the food in the
small intestine until the work of digestion is
completed and the digested food stuffs ab-
sorbed. The matters passed into the colon by
the sphincter are the undigested and unused
or unusable food remnants and wastes, along
with a considerable amount of water (90%)
and very smaU amounts of digested or partly
digested foodstuifs, with mucus and certain
excretory substances eliminated by the liver
in the bUe, and by the intestinal mucous mem-
brane.
If this gate did not exist, the liquid food-
stuifs which leave the stomach would pass
rapidly through the whole food tube and
62 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
would be discharged before opportunity had
been given for absorption.
The intelligent and efficient regulation of
the flow of waste matters into the colon, is
highly essential for, the proper nutrition of the
body and render this little muscle wholly de-
serving of the very honorable title of food con-
troller or control gate,
FOOD GATE NO. 7.
The CoiiON Gate oe the Ileocecai, Valve.
This is a very simple and at the same time
an exceedingly important and interesting
structure. The ileocecal valve was discovered
and described by anatomists more than 300
years ago (1579A. D,). The discoverers rec-
ognized at once the fact that this curious
structure was designed to act as a check valve,
that is, a gate opening in but one direction.
Modern anatomical studies have shown that
all animals possessed of a backbone, that is,
all vertebrate animals, are furnished with an
ileocecal valve.
This gate is necessary for two highly im-
portant reasons. First, to maintain a definite
^nd steady forward movement of the intes-
THE TEN GATES 63
tinal contents; and second, to prevent the re-
turn into the small intestine of waste and
excretory matters after they have been re-
jected by the small intestine and pushed into
the colon to be cast out of the body as refuse.
The importance of this wise provision of
nature grows out of the fact that the waste
matters passed into the colon very readily
take on putrefactive processes and thus be-
come highly offensive and poisonous.
The colon is provided with means of de-
fense against these poisons and is thus pre-
pared to serve the purpose of a sewer for the
body without serious injury either to itself
or the body. But this is not true of the small
intestine with its highly dehcate mucous mem-
brane and exceedingly active absorbing
structures. The result, in fact, when foul,
putrefying fecal matters enter the small in-
testine from the colon, is not much different
from what might be expected if feces were
mixed with the food and taken in by the
mouth. The small intestine not only rapidly
absorbs the poisonous matters but becomes in-
fected by the virulent bacteria which are
present.
The infection travels upward and may
64 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
reach the gall bladder, causing inflammation
and gall-stones or disease of the pancreas and
may cause ulcer of the stomach or duodenum.
More common results of the entrance of
fecal matters into the small intestine are at-
tacks of headache, skin eruptions, depression,
nervous exhaustion, asthmatic attacks, so-
called "bilious" attacks, a coated tongue and
bad breath and probably chronic disease of
the blood vessels, heart, kidneys and other
vital organs.
All these and other troubles follow when
the colon gate fails to shut through becom-
ing incompetent, a condition which often re-
sults from chronic constipation, as will be
shown later on.
The action of the colon gate is very
simple. It is in fact quite mechanical in its
action. The valve consists of two mem-
branous lips which project into the colon
from the borders of the junction of the small
intestine with the colon. When matters pass
from the small intestine into the colon, the
lips separate, offering no resistance to the for-
ward movement. But when the slightest back
pressure occurs with a movement of matters
toward the small intestine, the lips fall to-
THE TEN GATES 65
gether and form an impassable barrier. In
other words, the colon gate is highly efficient
as a check valve.
This is true, however, only when the
valve is intact. It is apparently more liable
to injury and derangement than any other of
the several gates which regulate the move-
ment of material along the food tube. When
waste matters are allowed to accumulate in
the lower half of the colon, which occurs in all
cases of constipation, the right half of the
colon is over-filled with feces and over-dis-
tended with gases, and the csecum in time be-
comes dilated and pouched and the colon gate
is so damaged that it does not close.
The foul fecal matters in the colon pass
back into the small intestine and all the seri-
ous consequences which have been traced to
autointoxication or intestinal toxemia are the
natural consequence.
It is quite possible that more human suf-
fering, physical and mental, has resulted from
the brealdng down of the colon gate than
from any other common injury.
The chief cause of injury to the colon gate
is constipation, a disease which is practically
universal among civilized himian beings, and
66 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
equally universal among house dogs. "House-
broken" dogs are usually constipated, and for
the same reason as their house-broken masters,
viz., voluntary interference with the normal,
rhythmical and automatic action of the food
tube by which its contents are moved along
and imusable residues rejected. More will
be said on this phase of the subject later.
By appropriate diet and treatment, the
evil effects of incompetency of the ileocecal
valve may be very largely overcome and a
radical cure may be effected by means of a
simple and safe but somewhat delicate opera-
tion.
FOOD GATE NO. 8
The Reversing Gate
Near the middle of the transverse colon
there is located a remarkable structure which
originates rhythmical movements in the intes-
tine just as a similar nerve structure near the
heart produces the regular beating of the
heart.
A most remarkable characteristic of the
movements starting at the middle of the
transverse colon is the fact that they extend
THE TEN GATES 67
in both directions. That is, a series of con-
traction waves moves forward toward the
exit while another series moves at the same j
time in the opposite direction, toward the
cascimi. These latter, known as antiperistal-
tic waves, hold the liquid wastes in th6 caecum
until a large part of the water which they
contain has been absorbed. This reduces the
volume of the feces and secvu-es periodical
emptying of the colon instead of continuous
or very frequent discharge of the thin liquid
matters which enter the colon from the small
intestine.
At intervals the antiperistaltic waves cease
and the contents of the caecum and ascending
colon are pushed forward by strong contrac-
tions of the caecum. That portion which
reaches a point far enough beyond the center
of the transverse colon to be caught in the out-
going current is carried on to the exit; but a
considerable portion does not reach this point
and is swept back into the caecum by the anti-
peristaltic waves.
The action of the antiperistaltic waves
brings pressure against the colon gate, the
ileocecal valve. A normal valve easily resists
the pressure and prevents the antiperistaltic
68 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
waves from forcing fecal matters back into
the small intestine. But when the valve has
been broken down and rendered incompetent
by chronic constipation, nothing hinders the
reflux into the small intestine produced by the
antiperistaltic contractions which are almost
constantly active in the right half of the colon,
especially during and for some time after a
meal.
When fecal matters accumulate in the
lower half of the colon, the antiperistaltic ac-
tion is much increased. This is also true in
case of colitis and after the use of laxative
or cathartic drugs.
FOOD GATE NO. 9
The Discharging oe Ejector Gate
— The Pelvic Colon
Here is another most interesting gate
which is charged with a highly important
function, the periodical discharge of the food
residues and other wastes.
The Pelvic Colon is the loop of the large
intestine which joins the rectum. It is not
closely attached to the abdominal waU as are
the descending and the iliac colon, but has a
THE TEN GATES 69
long mesentery (the membrane by which it
is attached to the back of the abdominal cav-
ity). This arrangement permits considerable
freedom of movement. The bowel falls down
collapsed after a bowel movement, then
gradually rises as it fills and when sufficiently
distended pushes some of its contents into
the rectum and so evokes the act of defecation.
In this way the pelvic colon operates a
periodical discharging process, an automatic
"dumping" or ejection of the body wastes,
and so may be very properly termed the dis-
charging or ejector gate. As we shall see
later, this important gate is sometimes
crippled so that it does not operate efiiciently.
When fallen down after defecation, it be-
comes caught and may even become adherent
so that it cannot rise and thus the discharg-
ing apparatus of the colon is thrown out of
commission and a very obstinate form of con-
stipation is the result. Fortunately the diffi-
culty may be radically remedied by an appro-
priate surgical operation. In most cases pal-
liative measures give practical relief.
70 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
FOOD GATE NO. 10
The Exit Gate — the Anus
The anal sphincter is controlled by nerve
centers which maintain it in a state of con-
stant contraction except during bowel move-
ment. When an expulsion wave travels dpwn
the pelvic colon, the center controlling the
anal sphincter causes it to relax so that it
offers no resistance to the discharge of the
bowel contents.
The presence of hemorrhoids, ulcer, fis-
sure, catarrh of the rectum, and other causes
may so irritate the anal muscle that it will
contract with too great vigor, or even spasm
may be produced, and thus a "tight sphincter"
may become a cause of constipation by closing
the exit gate so tightly that it will not open
under the stimulus of the normal reflex. It
is possible that ovarian, bladder, prostatic
and other pelvic disorders may cause anal
contraction and so oppose normal bowel
movement.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON
We are all born wild.
Civilization is a process of taming and is
often so overdone as to become destructive.
No other animal except the house-dog suf-
fers from constipation as does man; and the
dog suffers from colon troubles for the same
reason the man does, namely, because he is
"house-broken."
The wild man and the wild dog, as well as
man's nearest relatives, the big apes, of the
African jungles, know nothing of the miseries
of constipation, colon stasis, or constipation,
a product of civilization. It is the result
of perverted habits, neglect, and pernicious
training and education.
The civilized colon is a poor cripple,
maimed, misshapen, overstretched in parts,
contracted in other parts, prolapsed, ad-
herent, "kinked," infected, paralyzed, ineffi-
cient, incompetent. It is the worst abused
and the most variously damaged of any organ
of the body.
Before the advent of the X-ray, no one
72 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
had more than a suspicion of the sad condition
of the poor colon. It was known to be gen-
erally inefficient, but this was charged to in-
ertia, a sort of constitutional laziness rather
than to definite disease or structural damage.
But the X-ray, that marvelous revealer
of secrets, has given us a look inside and has
revealed a state of depravity in the colon
never dreamed of. In the light of modern
X-ray revelations, the colon appears to have
more different and serious things the matter
with it than any other bodily organ.
Now that the X-ray has made clear to us
the physiology of the colon and has shown us
the numerous deformities and incompetences
of the average civilized colon, thanks to the
exhaustive studies of Cannon, Hirsch, Case,
and other roentgenologists, we have come to
know that constipation is not a simple disease
but is instead, a highly complex condition or
rather a symptom which may result from a
very considerable number of clearly defined
diseased conditions and combinations of con-
ditions.
8:00-9:00 A. M.
Breakfast (blue) just Eaten.
12:00 Noon
Breakfast (blue), four hours after eating, has reached
lower end of small intestine and ileocecal sphintter. Diges-
tion and absorption of food are completed, and the unusable
residue is ready to be passed into the colon.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 73
NoEMAii Bowel Action
Evacuation of the bowels is the result of
two forces acting upon the bowel contents,
viz.:
( 1 Compression of the bowels by the ab-
dominal walls and the diaphragm,
(2) Contraction of the bowel itself.
In natural bowel movement the squatting
position is assumed. In this position the
pressure of the thighs upon the abdomen com-
presses the bowel. At the same time the dia-
phragm is forced downward by a deep, pro-
longed breath and the abdominal muscles are
voluntarily contracted.
These are the preliminary movements
which precede actual evacuation. They often
fail, and usually do in cases of marked con-
stipation. Under normal conditions, however,
evacuation quickly follows the preliminary ef-
forts through actions set up by the defecating
center. When the voluntary efforts result in
forcing fecal matter from the pelvic colon into
the rectum, a new series of movements begin.
The presence of feces in the rectum sets up a
reflex nerve action through the defecating
center by which the abdominal muscles are
74 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
made to contract with greater force, the colon
itself contracts either in part or in its entirety,
the anus relaxes, and finally the levator ani, a
muscle attached to the rectal walls, contracts
in such a manner as to insure complete empty-
ing of the rectum.
This normal bowel movement should leave
the rectum and at least the left half of the
colon, completely empty. And this complete
emptying should take place after every meal
for the reason that after each meal the unused
residues of the preceding meal but one, are
normally deposited in the pelvic colon ready
to be dismissed from the body. That is, the
discharge gate or dumping device of the colon
is loaded and ought to be "dumped." There
is no possible benefit to be derived from re-
taining the excretory and unusable residues,
and if retained they do harm through the
absorption of putrefaction poisons which are
thus produced. Besides, these wastes are the
best sort of soil for the growth of highly active
pathological or disease-producing species of
germs, streptococci and other pus forming
germs which attach themselves to the wall of
the bowel and set up that very serious and
very common disease, colitis.
' THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 75
Hindrances to Noemai, Bowel Action -^
Now that we know how the bowels should
move, let us see what causes interfere with
normal bowel action, that is, let us seek an
answer to the question. Why is the civilized
man unable to evacuate his bowels three or
four times daily or after each meal, as does
the savage or the semi-civilized man and our
near relatives, in the family of primates, the
orang and the chimpanzee?
There are many causes, chief of which,
perhaps, are the following, referred to in the
order in which they operate rather than their
relative importance:
1. The Sitting Posture: The savage
evacuates in a crouching or squatting position.
Semi-civilized people and the peasantry of
civilized nations do the same. In the homes of
the poor classes and in country inns and even
in the small city hotels of France and Italy, as
well as countries farther East, the toilet con-
veniences consist simply of a hole in the floor
and a large pipe connecting it with a recep-
tacle below.
The toilet seat which civilization has pro-
vided as more elegant and convenient, has
76 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
proved to be a prolific cause of constipation
with all its miseries and inconveniences
through loss of the thigh pressure against the
abdomen, one of the important initial efforts
in bowel movement.
It is not necessary to return to the primi-
tive form of toilet convenience, but toilet seats
should be low and should have a backward
slope. An efiicient remedy for the defects of
the ordinary closet seat is found in placing
before the seat a stool about eight inches high
to support the feet.
2. Weak Abdominal Muscles: A seden-
tary' life, general lack of muscular develop-
ment, and especially the "slumped" or
"stooped" position in sitting and working, re-
sult in a weak and relaxed condition of the
abdominal muscles so that they are not able
to do their part in pushing forward the con-
tents of the lower colon into the rectum and
thus starting the automatic process by which
the colon itself contracts and empties itself.
This condition is practically universal among
civilized women because of their mode of dress
and deficient muscular activity. Professional
men, clerks, students, bookkeepers and fac-
tory workers suffer from the same cause.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 77
One very serious result of weakness of the
abdominal muscles is the prolapse of the
colon, stomach, liver and other heavy organs
of the abdomen. While it is true, as shown
in recent years, that these organs are able to
do their work quite efficiently even though
prolapsed, great mischief results from the fact
that in falling they drag down with them the
diaphragm, the great muscle which forms the
floor of the chest and is the great air pump of
the body. In doing its work the diaphragm
rises and falls. The broader its swing the
greater the amount of air moved.
When held down by prolapsed viscera, the
diaphragm cannot rise high into the chest as
it should and consequently the lungs cannot
be well emptied.
On the other hand, not being able to rise
properly, it has not room for downward
movement, and so the low-standing diaphragm
not only fails to fill the lungs but also fails to
do its part in emptying the bowels. So per-
sons with weak abdominal muscles easily get
out of breath and are constipated.
Weak abdominal muscles may be made
strong by such exercises as raising both legs
whUe lying on the back, repeating the move-
78 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
ment thirty or forty times morning and night.
The chest must be held high so as to keep the
abdominal muscles stretched to their ftill
length and thus afford them an opportunity
for action. This requires constant attention
to posture when at work and the use of a
chair which properly supports the hollow of
the back and holds the chest up when the body
is relaxed.
Deep breathing, wearing a spring ab-
dominal supporter, exercises with the head
low (inclined plane exercises) and the use of
the weighted compress, are the means by
which this cause of constipation may be com-
bated.
Vigorous bodily exercises of aU sorts, in-
cluding walking, and especially hill climbing
and such sports as golf, volley ball, lawn ten-
nis, rowing and swimming, are excellent aids
to bowel action. It should be remarked, how-
ever, that the excessive perspiration produced
by vigorous exercise tends to cause constipa-
tion.
The importance of the above named faulty
habits as causes of constipation will be appre-
ciated only when it is remembered that in
health the rectum is always empty. The pel-
1 :00 P. M.
Breakfast Residue (blue) is passing into the Colon.
Dinner (red), just eaten, is in the Stomach.
T
5 :00 P. M.
Breakfast Residue (blue) all in Colon. Dinner Residue (red)
Ready to enter Colon.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 79
vie loop which lies just above the rectum is the
end of the colon reservoir. In normal de-
fecation the fecal matters are pushed for-
ward from the colon into the rectum by vol-
untary effort. When this fails, the feces re-
main in the colon and in time become hard
and dry by the absorption of moisture. When
this stage is reached the feces can not be
pushed along by compression of the bowels
and an enema or a laxative is required to
empty the colon. If the retention and drying
is less prolonged, the result is the so-called
"well-formed stool," which is positive proof
of constipation as it can only be produced by
retention and drying of the colon contents.
The "well-formed stool" has become almost
a fetish with many persons, even some doctors.
A western doctor actually advises his patients
to resist a disposition to bowel movement in
the evening, "to save it 'till morning" so as
to secure a well-formed stool. Such notions
are based upon ignorance. Nature's sugges-
tion of the need of bowel movement should
never be resisted or thwarted except in emer-
gency and when unavoidable.
3. A Concentrated Diet: The human
food tube is adapted to a rather coarse and
80 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
bulliy diet, less coarse and bvilky than that
of the herbivorous animals, such as the ox and
the goat, but much more bulky than that of
the dog, cat and other carnivora. This is
shown by the long alimentary canal and capa-
cious colon. The intestine of the sheep is
thirty times its body length, that of the cat
only three and a half times, and that of the
shark merely the length of the body, simply
a straight tube with a single short loop.
The human food tube is ten times the
length of the body, and the colon is of large
proportions. In animals the diet of which is
very concentrated, the colon almost disap-
pears.
Man is a primate, that is a relative of the
chimpanzee, orang and gorilla. These ani-
mals, like man, have intestines eight to ten
times the body length, and their diet con-
sists of bulky foodstuffs, nuts, fruits, tender
shoots, juicy roots, and other vegetable foods.
This is the natural diet of man, the diet of
his primitive ancestors.
A bulky diet of this sort stimulates the
movements of the intestine and so moves along
so rapidly that there is little drying out and
not sufficient time for putrefactive changes.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 81
Such a diet also insures a sufficient amount
of indigestible material to distend the colon
and keep its several gates in active and efficient
operation.
When the diet is concentrated, leaving
little residue, the residue packs firmly to-
gether, adheres to the intestine wall, gets
caught in folds, and by retention becomes
highly putrescent and contaminates the blood.
Another still more serious difficulty arises.
As already explained, the pelvic loop, the dis-
charging gate of the colon, collapses and falls
down in the pelvis after discharging its con-
tents. The pelvic loop remains prolapsed un-
til it is lifted by filling. If it does not fill it
does not rise and hence does not discharge,
and the bowels do not move. If the food resi-
dues are so small that two days are required
to supply material enough to fill the pelvic
loop, then the bowel movement will occur only
every other day. A water wheel will not turn
without water; the colon will not act normally
without the stimulus of roughage. A bulky
food residue is necessary to fill and raise the
pelvic loop so that it can discharge its contents.
The more bulky the diet, the more rapidly
the pelvic colon will fill and the more fre-
82 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
quently the bowels will move. The more fre-
quent the movements, the less putrefaction and
hence the less autointoxication, as shown by
absence of headache, depression, coated tongue,
foul breath, dingy complexion, skin troubles,
chronic weariness, etc., etc.
Cellulose is the only indigestible element
of the diet. Cellulose is the basis of wood;
cotton is pure cellulose. Bran consists very
largely of cellulose.
Starch, fat, protein, — the food materials
furnished by milk, eggs, meat, fine flour
bread, sugar, potatoes, and most of the break-
fast foods, are completely digestible and ab-
sorbable. They disappear in the small intes-
tine leaving no residue to fill and distend the
colon and stimulate it to action. The small
residues from such foods fail to fill the pelvic
colon often enough to maintain frequent bowel
action.
It is thus evident that we have but one
alternative; we must choose our bills of
fare from the coarse products on which our
primitive ancestors subsisted and on which
our forest cousins still live, or we must add to
our ordinary diet sufficient indigestible cellu-
lose to supply the bulk required.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 83
Convenient forms of cellulose are bran
and agar-agar, or Japanese isinglass, a pe-
culiar form of cellulose obtained from a sea
weed which grows on the coast of Japan. One
or the other of these products or combinations
of the two, must be added to every meal to in-
sure its expeditious transit along the food
tube.
The idea that bran is irritating is a perni-
cious error. Wet bran is like wet paper, it
does not and can not irritate. Bran does not
irritate the mucous membrane of the mouth.
The mucous membrane of the stomach and
intestine are no more sensitive nor delicate
than is that of the mouth. These membranes
are, in fact, less sensitive and less liable to in-
jury than is the mouth mucosa.
Bran does not irritate, it titillates. The
tongue keeps at work after a meal until every
particle of food has been gathered up and dis-
posed of. In like manner the stomach and the
intestine keep at work untU each little particle
of bran has been passed along toward the exit.
4. A High Protein Diet. — By a high-.
protein diet is meant a diet which contains an
excess of the nitrogenous element of the food.
Practically, such a diet will consist largely of
84 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
flesh food, though an excess of protein may
be taken in the form of eggs, or even in such
foods as beans or certain varieties of nuts.
Man is by nature a low protein feeder.
He belongs to a nut and fruit eating tribe,
the primates, along with the orang and the
chimpanzee. Carnivorous or flesh-eating ani-
mals have short intestines and especially very
short colons.
The short intestine of the flesh eating ani-
mal is necessary to prevent the long retention
of undigested food residues. Putrefaction de-
velops very rapidly at the temperature of the
body. A bit of dead flesh in a wound soon
acquires a very unpleasant odor. Even frag-
ments of food left in the mouth in a few hours
taint the breath with decomposition products.
In the colon, these putrefaction changes take
place much more rapidly, because of the pres-
ence of active putrefaction germs and the de-
gree of warmth and moisture which especially
favor putrefaction.
But some kinds of food do not putrefy.
Practically, meat and eggs are about the only
foods that undergo putrefaction or decay.
Milk, cereals, vegetables, fruits, ferment, but
do not putrefy. The products of fermenta-
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 85
tion are acids, chiefly lactic acid, which is non-
poisonous, and even serves a useful purpose
in preventing by its presence the growth of
putrefaction germs and hence the decay of
putrescible substances. A raw beefsteak will
not decay when immersed in buttermilk or
fruit juice. Sugar is a well-known preserv-
ative.
The acids formed by the fermentation of
the residues of vegetable foodstuffs in the
colon are the natural stimulants of the colon,
an interesting fact pointed out many years
ago by the eminent specialist, Prof. Ad.
Schmidt. When the fermentation is excess-
ive, it may even give rise to looseness of the
bowels as in some forms of diarrhea, in which
a strong sour smell is present, common in in-
fants.
On the other hand, putrefaction has ex-
actly the opposite effect. The ammonia and
various ptomaines and other poisons produced
by the decay of meat, paralyze the colon and
so cause constipation.
It is practically impossible to cure consti-
pation so long as putrefaction is active in the
colon. It should be remembered that in latent
constipation there may be regular bowel
86 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
movements, but the colon is never emptied.
The daily evacuations represent simply the
overflow of an over-distended colon filled
with decaying and highly poisonous and of-
fensive food residues.
Undigested fragments of decaying flesh
are always found in the colon of meat-eaters
and supply the best possible soil for the luxu-
riant growth of disease producing germs. In-
deed, the germs which cause putrefaction, the
colon bacillus, Welch's bacillus, B. putrificus
and other putrefactive organisms, are all
poison-forming and disease-producing germs.
They cause inflammation, suppuration, ab-
cess, gangrene, and death when their growth
is unchecked. These very germs are the cause
of colitis, the almost universal accompaniment
of chronic constipation.
Colitis causes spasm or contraction of the
lower half of the colon and exaggerated anti-
peristalsis, that is, reversed action of the colon,
so that putrid fecal matters accumulate in the
CEecum, overstretch this part of the colon, and
produce appendicitis, incompetency of the ileo-
cecal valve and autointoxication.
It is evident, then, that the flesh-eating
habits of Americans must be one of the great
6:00 P. M.
Breakfast Residue (blue) mostly in Descending Colon.
Dinner Residue (Red) passing into Colon, mixing
with Breakfast Residue. Supper just
eaten (yellow).
9:00 P. M.
Breakfast Residue (blue) mostly in Pelvic Colon, ready to
be discharged. Dinner residue (red) in Right Half of
Colon. Supper Residue (yellow) nearly
ready to enter Colon.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 87
causes of the universal constipation which has
become a national curse and perhaps the
greatest cause of natfonal inefficiency and phy-
sical unpreparedness.
5. Reduced Quantity of Food. A reduc-
tion of the quantity of food eaten lessens the
bulk of the residue and so leads to constipa-
tion. Fasting, or even the omission of a meal
interrupts bowel movement. _Hence the need
of regularity in diet. Meals must not be
omitted. If there is lack of appetite or no
time for the regular meal, fruit should be
taken with bran or agar-agar and paraffin oil
to keep up the normal rhythm, and to prevent
a blockade in the lower colon.
An extra meal of fruit is an undoubted aid
to bowel action. An orange or an apple eaten
at bedtime is often effective in aiding the ad-
vance of the food residues so that a good
evacuation is secured on rising the next morn-
ing. The activity of the colon is four times as
great during the eating of food, doubtless be-
cause of the stimulating effect of food upon
the controlling nerve centers through the gus-
tatory nerves.
Even a glass or two of cold water at bed
time and on rising has a similar effect. Water
88 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
causes the secretion of gastric juice and ex-
cites peristaltic waves and thus aids the prog-
ress of waste along the colon.
Horace Fletcher's Mistake
6. It is evident that long chewing of the
food must tend to aid bowel action, and that
hasty eating has the opposite effect. It must
be remarked, however, that by thorough mas-
tication we do not refer to the mode of eating
known as Fletcherizing. Mr. Fletcher urged
that the food should be well masticated and
in this many old writers as well as modern
authorities are in accord with him. The writer
has urged the same for more than forty years.
But Mr. Fletcher also insisted that all mate-
rials which could not be reduced to a liquid in
the mouth should be rejected. That is, he ex-
cluded roughage entirely from his dietary,
thinking it a virtue to reduce the quantity of
food residues to the smallest limit possible as
a measure of economy, even to the extent of
one or two bowel movements weekly. In this
Mr. Fletcher was greatly in error. He evi-
dently overlooked the fact that the body
wastes which are eliminated by way of the
colon are only in small part composed of food
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 89
wastes, the greater and more important con-
sisting of bile, a highly poisonous excretion,
mucus, and special excretory products which
are normally eliminated by way of the large
intestine.
The writer labored very earnestly with
Mr. Fletcher personally on many occasions to
convince him of his error, and at last accounts
he seems to have in some degree corrected the
error as far as his own personal habits are con-
cerned, but so far as the writer knows, he has
made no attempt to correct or counteract the
teaching of his books and lectures in which con-
stipation was made to appear as a physiologic
virtue, an evidence of "economy of nutrition."
This was the rock on which Fletcherism
split and went to pieces as a system. It must
not be forgotten, however, that Mr. Fletcher
made a contribution to the science of nutrition
of priceless value in compelling by his earnest
and active propaganda and his tactful promo-
tion among scientific men and physiologists,
recognition of the low protein idea in diet. He
went farther and contributed not only much
time, but many thousands of dollars to en-
courage scientific investigation of the question
of the protein ration.
90 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The famous research of Chittenden which
demonstrated the great advantages of low
protein feeding, was undertaken by the sug-
gestion of Mr. Fletcher and the large ex-
pense was in part borne by Mr. Fletcher.
Thorough chewing, long chewing, aids the
progress of food residues along the garbage
canal, the colon, but only when a sufficient
amount of roughage is swallowed with the di-
gestible and nutrient portion of the food-
stuffs. So one should not follow Mr.
Fletcher's instruction to return to the plate
everything that cannot be reduced to liquid
in the mouth, but should masticate well and
swallow natural foodstuffs as nearly as pos-
sible in their complete entirety as nature pro-
vides them.
6. The Educated or House-broken Co-
lon. — The house dog is necessarily trained
to avoid evacuating his bowels in the house.
In other words, he is taught to restrain his
bowels from moving when they are so dis-
posed, until it is convenient for his owner to
turn him out of doors. A dog so trained is
house-broken.
If dogs were the only house-broken
creatures, what a world of wretchedness, suf-
THE "HOUSE-BEOKEN" COLON 91
fering, even crime and human wreckage
would be saved.
All civilized people are house-broken, and
like poor house-broken dogs, pay for this
sinister education an infinite price, not only
in misery and inefficiency, but in deadly
disease and shortened life.
The whole civilized portion of the hirnian
race is house-broken. The mother or nurse of
every infant begins the work of training the
child to control its bowels, which means to
thwart the automatic process by which the
wastes are normally dismissed from the body,
and by the time the child is two years old it is
well house-broken and hence constipated. In
this respect the infant house dog learns faster
than the human infant.
A house-broken colon is a damaged colon.
The natural automatic process of discarding
the body wastes demands a prompt response
to the "call" for evacuation. As soon as the
pelvic colon, the discharging gate, is filled and
lifted ready for action, a desire for evacuation
is experienced. When the fecal matters be-
gin to pass into the rectum the desire becomes
so pronounced that it must be firmly resisted
to avoid immediate evacuation. After a time
92 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
the desire disappears, but the fecal wastes re-
main in the rectum. The "call" is now lost.
It may return later when the rectum is still
more distended by the advance into it from the
pelvic colon of additional waste matters.
This "caU" may be resisted also, and so the
rectum may become distended to the extreme
limit and will no longer give notice of the
entrance of feces even when it has been arti-
ficially emptied. In other words, the "call"
is permanently lost, the rectum is paralyzed.
Thousands of sufferers from constipation
never have a desire for evacuation except
when a laxative drug has been taken.
When the call is lost, no warning is given
of the condition of the colon and accumula-
tion of waste matters may occur to an aston-
ishing extent. Once or twice a week, per-
haps, a dose of salts or of some other cathartic
is taken for a sort of housecleaning and the
rest of the time, filthy, putrefying wastes fill
and distend the colon and cause injuries
which in many instances can never be re-
paired.
Semi-civilized people and savages have a
keen appreciation of the importance of
prompt attention to the automatic demands
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 93
of the body. A medical missionary who had
spent many years in Arabia told the writer
that a common objection offered by the tribal
Arab to living in Aden was the necessity for
looking up a suitable place for evacuation in
compliance with the law.
A new and sensitive colon conscience must
be developed among civilized people if the
world is to be saved from the soul- and body-
and even race-destroying effects of universal
constipation and world wide autointoxication.
The universally prevalent idea that one
bowel movement daily is sufficient is proof of
the imiversal prevalence of constipation. One
bowel movement means constipation of a pro-
notmced degree. X-ray examination after an
opaque meal shows that persons whose bowels
move once a day are constantly carrying in
their colons the putrefying residues of five to
ten meals or even a larger number. The colon
is never empty even after a movement, and
toxemia is present and often shown in the
coated tongue, foul breath, headache, depres-
sion, and other indications usually present.
One bowel movement a day is very marked
constipation.
7. The Use of Laxative Drugs. — It must
94 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
be admitted that the use of laxative drugs is in
every way preferable to constipation. Never-
theless it must be recognized that drugs are at
best only palliatives. They afford temporary
relief which is sometimes highly necessary.
But it must not be forgotten that at the same
time they inflict grave injury upon the colon,
to say nothing of injuries to the stomach, liver,
kidneys and other organs, sometimes even in-
cluding the heart.
Every laxative drug which acts by irrita-
tion of the colon, in time causes colitis or infec-
tion of the bowel. The congestion of the colon
mucous membrane caused by the drug, destroys
the filtering power of the membrane so that
the poisons developed in the colon by putre-
faction are readily taken into the blood, thus
intensifying the effects of the intestinal toxe-
mia always present with constipation.
Colitis is accompanied by a spastic condi-
tion of the colon. That is, the colon contracts
so that the contents cannot be pushed forward
en masse, but must be slowly carried along in
lumps. The occurrence of round, hard lumps
in the stool is proof of this spastic condition.
Obstructive adhesions of the pelvic colon,
pouching and hindering adhesions of the
T
6:00 A. M.
Morning of Second Day. Dinner Residue (red) in
Pelvic Colon, ready to be discharged.
10 p. M.
Breakfast Residue Discharged (bowel movement at bed time).
Dinner Residue (red) in Colon, and Supper Residue
(yellow) ready to pass into Colon.
THE "HOUSE-BROKEN" COLON 95
caecum, incompetency of the ileocecal valve,
are only a few of the mischiefs arising from
the "laxative" habit.
Still another, and one of the most damaging
effects of the laxative is a great exaggeration
of the antiperistaltic action of the transverse
colon, causing overdistension of the caecum,
which in time is followed by pouching of the
csecum, appendicitis and other grave condi-
tions.
AU laxative drugs are harmful. There are
no exceptions. They all produce colitis and
thus intensify the mischievous effects of the
constipation which they temporarily remove.
THE FOOD BLOCKADE
The American people are almost uni-
versally suffering from a food blockade in the
colon. Constipation, the common term ap-
plied to this condition, is generally regarded
as an inconvenience rather than a menace to
life and health. It is one of the most prolific
of all causes of disease.
Thousands of men and women think them-
selves in good health because their boweis
move once a day, regardless of the fact that
they have coated tongues, a foul breath, and
many other indications of autointoxication.
The fact is that the bowels should move three
or four times a day — or at least once after
each meal.
The normal ahmentary cycle is twelve to
fourteen hours. Here are the simple facts, as
shown by means of X-ray examinations, ex-
periments upon animals, and other scientific
modes of investigation:
The work of digesting and absorbing the
food occupies about eight hours. At the end
of this time the unusable food residues is found
deposited m the colon, ready to be dismissed
THE FOOD BLOCKADE 97
from the body as waste and useless material.
The process of gastric digestion is finished in
four hours; the small intestine completes the
work of digestion and absorption in four
hours more.
During this time the foodstuffs have been
completely digested and absorbed, or prac-
tically so, leaving a small residue of indi-
gestible and unusable remnants, together with
mucous, bile and certain other waste matters
to be dismissed from the body by the colon, a
wonderful mechanism provided by Nature to
serve the body for waste and garbage disposal.
There is in many ways close analogy between
"the house we live in" and an ordinary domi-
cile. It is almost literally true that the stom-
ach is the kitchen of the body, the small intes-
tine the dining room, the colon the garbage
and waste disposal system — ^more than a mere
waste receptacle.
The stomach prepares the food materials
for digestion, but really digests and absorbs
very little of the food.
The small intestine is the great digesting
and absorbing department of the human econ-
omy. On its seven square feet of mucous
membrane are found five millions of absorbing
98 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
rootlets — the "villi" — ^that hang out into the
cavity of the intestine. The contents of the
intestine, vi^hich bathe these absorbing rootlets,
constitute the soU out of which the body
grows. As the soil is exhausted, the worth-
less remnant is pushed on into the colon, to
be dismissed from the body as unusable and
undesirable.
The great work of the stomach and small
intestine, involving marvelous changes that
fit the food to enter the blood and become part
of the living structure of the body, is done in
eight hours. During this time the length of
intestine passed over is nearly twenty-five
feet.
Clogging of the Colon
At the end of eight hours the residues are
in the colon and within two or three feet of the
lower outlet. If the whole mass of food,
weighing several pounds in all, has been able
to travel twenty-five feet in eight hours, or at
the rate of three feet an hour, it certainly
would seem that the small residue of waste,
amounting to only a few ounces, ought to fin-
ish the journey in four hours more.
And that is exactly what occurs in the wild
THE FOOD BLOCKADE 99
man who lives a natural life in the forest and
in those man-like beasts, the higher apes. But
jtmong civUized people a blockade develops in
this lower region of the digestive tube, which
is the worst sort of obstruction to the com-
merce of the body and to all its activities.
X-ray studies by Dr. James T. Case have
shown that the food residues of a meal reach
a point beyond the middle of the colon in less
than ten hours from the beginning of the
meal. In two hours more, or at the end of
twelve hours, these imusable materials should
be cast out of the body. Certainly two hours
ought to suffice for a journey of only two feet,
when nearly thirty feet have been traversed in
ten hours.
But the astonishing fact is that the time
required for the food residues to travel the
last two feet of the colon is, in the average
person whose bowels move once a day, about
forty hours, or twenty times longer than it
should be.
In this astonishing fact is to be found the
secret of nine-tenths of all the chronic His
from which civilized human beings suffer, and
perhaps not a small part of our moral and
social maladies.
100 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
In the last two feet of the colon is found
the seat of the most destructive blockade that
has ever opposed human progress. Let us
look a moment at the real situation. The
accompanying diagrams will help to make this
clear. (See colored plates.)
Suppose a test meal is given at breakfast
on Monday morning. Within the fifty or
more hours that elapse before the residues of
the meal are dismissed on the following Wed-
nesday, at least six more meals are eaten.
The residues of all these meals as well as
those of the test meal are packed away in the
colon. The residue of the test meal is shown
in the accompanying colored diagrams in
black. The succeeding meal residues are
shown in red, blue and yellow colors.
How far different this condition is from
a normal or ideal state will best be appre-
ciated by reference to the second diagram.
When the colon acts normally the food resi-
dues are moved along in a procession with in-
tervals between the meals which afford the in-
testine an opportunity for rest, and, still more
important, a chance to cleanse itself by means
of its lubricating and disinfecting mucus.
Each residue should be moved along by itself
THE FOOD BLOCKADE 101
and discharged at once when it reaches the
end of the colon. Here is the normal pro-
gram of the procession along the food tube :
Breakfast at 7 a. m.
At 11 a. m. the stomach is empty and has
an opportimity to rest and disinfect itself be-
fore dinner. The breakfast is all in the small
intestine and beginning to pass into the colon.
Dinner at noon.
The new peristaltic impulse given the
whole food tube by the new intake of food car-
ries the breakfast over into the colon and by
five o'clock p. m. the breakfast has begun to
enter the descending or last half of the colon,
the dinner is in the lower part of the small in-
testine, and the stomach is again empty, rest-
ing and disinfecting itself in preparation for
supper.
Supper at 6 p. m.
The new food intake makes another vigor-
ous move all along the line, the result of which
in four hours should be to dismiss the whole
residue of the breakfast, to move the dinner
residue into the colon, and to carry the sup-
per to the lower end of the small intestine,
leaving the stomach empty and so prepared
for rest during the night.
102 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
During the hours of sleep the intestinal
movements are much slower. By morning
however, the dinner residue of the day before
will have reached the lower colon, so that the
intestinal activity set up by the act of rising
should lead to a before-breakfast bowel move-
ment.
The breakfast intake should cause the dis-
missal of the residue of the supper of the day
before; or if the after-breakfast movement
fails or is incomplete, the dinner intake should
lead to a complete clearance of all the residues
accumulated from the food intakes of the day
before.
When this program is carried out with-
out interruption, no part of the food tube is
over-burdened with an undue accumulation of
waste material, and the food residues are
moved along so rapidly that there is no time
for harmful putrefaction.
It is known that the first changes that oc-
cur in the foodstuffs are simple acid fermenta-
tions that are harmless. It is only after the
lapse of twenty-four hours or more that putre-
faction and poison-forming processes begin.
It is thus evident that the maintenance of the
normal alimentary cycle is a matter of the ut-
6:30
Half Hour after Rising, Second Day, after Bowel Move^ment.
Only Residue of Supper (yellow) left in Colon.
T
8:00-9:00 A. M. (Second Day)
Setond Morning after Breakfast. Bowels have moved, the
Colon has been emptied of vjfastes and residue, and
is ready for a new series of meals.
THE FOOD BLOCKADE 103
most consequence for health preservation, and
that the restoration of this function when lost
is a matter of fundamental importance.
X-ray studies have clearly shown that in
by far the great majority of cases of consti-
pation, perhaps in nine-tenths of all cases, the
real diffictilty is to be found in the lower part
of the colon.
A common and most valuable remedy
which has been resorted to even by the most
primitive people and from the most ancient'
times, is the enema, by which the crippled
colon is mechanically emptied. This harmless
measure aifords only temporary relief, and
to be effective must be repeated daily, and
twice a day when natural movements do not
occur without.
Bulk and Lubrication
The most valuable remedies, measiwes
that actually succeed, even in very obstinate
cases, are found in two very simple substances
— bran and paraffine oil. One affords bulk,
the other lubrication.
By the proper use of bran, or agar-agar,
and paraffine oil at each meal, the bowels may
be made to move normally, or at least in a
104 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
manner approximating the normal rhythm —
that is, three times a day, or after each meal.
The amoimt of bran or other bulk material
must be large, tvro ounces daily being re-
quired in some cases.
The amount of paraffine required also dif-
fers. In some cases the dose must be quite
large — even so much as an ounce and a half
at each meal. The amount of bran and para-
ffine should be gradually increased until suffi-
cient to accomplish its purpose.
How TO Raise the Blockade
When the tongue is coated and the breath
bad, it is well to begin the battle for raising
the blockade with a few days of fruit regimen.
This consists of a dietary composed wholly of
fruits, with bran and paraffine. Under this
regimen the tongue becomes clean, the breath
sweet and the bowels move three or four times
a day. By careful management of the diet,
this improved condition may be rendered per-
manent, but a never-ending battle must be
waged against constipation. The colon is
crippled and will always need special atten-
tion and help. It has become overstretched
and half paralyzed, and so an extra amount
THE FOOD BLOCKADE 105
of roughage or bulk-making material in the
shape of fruits, vegetables, bran or agar-agar
will always be needed. The mucous glands
have atrophied and perhaps the appendix has
been removed, and so the lubricating system
of the intestine is damaged, and it may be
necessary to make permanent use of an artifi-
cial lubricant — paraffine oil in some form.
Bulk and lubrication must be provided for
every meal.
THE CRIPPLED COLON
Crippled colons may be responsible for
half the ills of life. They are the cause of
most of the headaches, the insomnia, depres-
sion, nerves, neuralgia, hypochondria and
"biliousness," to say nothing of neuritis, rheu-
matism, and a score of other painful or dan-
gerous maladies. Many diseases, the origin of
which has long been a mystery, are now be-
lieved by able physicians to be due to the poi-
sons generated by putrefactive processes in
the colon.
Colon Hygiene
We hear much now-a-days about the hy-
giene of the mouth, and the newspapers teem
with wise and unwise advice about the care
of the stomach, but rarely do we hear any-
thing really helpful or sensible about the
hygiene of the colon, the terminal portion of
the alimentary canal.
The mouth is the receiving station, the
colon is the waste disposal plant. The wastes
with which the colon deals are only in part
composed of food residues, The larger part
A CRIPPLED COLON
Diagram showing tlic condition of the colon in chronic
constipation as revealed by the X-ray. Spastic contraction of
the colon due to colitis. Dilated cecum, incompetent ileocecal
valve, ileac and gastric stasis, inflammation of gall-bladder.
THE CRIPPLED COLON 107
consists of bile, mucus and other body wastes,
poisonous matters which must be eliminated
in order to keep the blood clean and the body
free from hindering refuse.
The mismanagement of the receiving sta-
tion is a prolific source of trouble and of
disease. This every one knows, most people
from personal experience. Not so many peo-
ple are aware of the fact that a still longer
list of ills' and still more serious disorders re-
sult from derangements of the waste disposal
plant. When the food residues, and other
wastes, are not promptly dismissed from the
body they undergo putrefaction. This is the
cause of the extremely offensive character of
the fecal matters, especially the bowel dis-
charges of dogs, cats, lions, and other animals
that eat meat. The undigested portion of
meat undergoing decay in the colon gives rise
to the same obnoxious odors and the same
rank poisons which are found in a dead rat or
the carcass of a dead cow decaying Jn a fence
corner.
It is necessary to take in food at frequent
intervals. It is equally necessary to dispose
of the food residues and body wastes at fre-
quent interva,ls. The kidneys remove poi-
108 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
sons which are temporarily deposited in the
bladder and discharged several times a day.
The liver excretes daily twenty ounces of bile
which, according to Bouchard, is six times as
poisonous as urine, and this needs to be dis-
charged along with other wastes as promptly
and as frequently as is the urine. In other
words, it is just as important that the colon
should be emptied several times a day as that
the bladder should be emptied several times
daily. In fact, the bowels should be emptied
at least after every meal.
Bowel Habits or Wild Animals^ Wild
Men and Idiots
Wild animals, wild men, healthy infants
and idiots move their bowels as often as they
are fed. WUd animals and wild men have bet-
ter sense than to interfere with the normal
promptings of nature. Infants and idiots
lack the intelligence necessary to disturb their
normal functions, and so the bowels move
automatically soon after food is taken. In
well-managed idiot asylums the inmates are
regularly taken to the toilet after each meal
and before going to bed. When this is done,
the soiling of beds and clothing is prevented.
THE CRIPPLED COLON 109
When the colon acts in this prompt and
regular way, there is little time for the putre-
faction of food residues in the colon, and the
stools are less offensive, especially when meat
is excluded from the dietary.
Injurious Conventionalities
Most civUized human beings, and some-
times pet animals, are less fortunate than wild
animals, wild men and idiots in relation to
their bowel functions. Almost from the first
dawn of intelligence the infant is systematic-
ally taught to restrain its bowel and bladder
functions. The demands of modesty and our
ignorance of the importance of frequent,
rhythmical and automatic bowel action lead to
restraint, delay, and neglect of the body's
waste disposal function to such a degree as to
make it an actual menace to the welfare of
the race.
A Lesson from an Idiot Asylum
Miss Keller, an inspector connected with
the health department of New York city,
sent the author the following highly interest-
ing observation respecting the bowel habits of
idiots which must of necessity be automatic.
110 THE ITINERAKY OF A BREAKFAST
and hence more likely to be natural than the
habits of those whose intelligence permits
them in obedience to the mandates of perni-
cious custom to ignore and set aside the warn-
ing of nature, and to thwart and finally de-
stroy important automatic functions:
"The following observation may interest
you. It was made whUe inspecting Randall's
Island's Children's Hospitals and Schools, the
place where New York City maintains its
feeble-minded public charges, about two thou-
sand in number, who range from rank idiocy
through imbecility and up to the moron grade.
There are also a few epileptics.
"In looking into sanitary conditions, and
finding both the inmates and the premises
clean, I asked the matron ia charge of one
cottage harboring one hundred and eighty-six
children of the lowest type of mentality, how
she managed to keep them continent. She
said the children are trained to evacuate their
bowels four times each day, once after each
meal and once before bedtime. Those whose
mentality is too low to form the habit of go-
ing to the toilet are placed on it by attend-
ants. The others are directed there after
meals. The results are quite mechanical.
THE CRIPPLED COLON 111
"It was interesting to note how many of
those who have been there for some time have
clear looking skins and eyes, while many of
the new arrivals are sallow and have pimpled
skins,"
Instead of training the child to restrain its
functions, to resist the call to nature for the
evacuation of poisonous wastes, it should be
taught that these functions are of greatest
importance and that the demand of nature
should be respected and should receive imme-
diate attention. To protect the child from
embarrassment and to ensure normal func-
tioning, the child should be trained from earli-
est years to visit the toilet at once after each
meal, before going to bed, and on rising in
the morning.
No possible harm can come from these fre-
quent bowel movements, and when the diet is
properly regulated, no difficulty will be ex-
perienced in establishing good bowel habits,
especially if the instruction is begun early and
if there is never any interruption of the normal
bowel rhythm.
The neglect of the colon is so common
among civilized people that constipation has
become an almost universal condition. It is.
112 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
indeed, so common that a wholly wrong con-
ception of the bowel function has become cur-
rent. It is almost universally believed by
physicians, as well as laymen, that one bowel
movement a day is quite sufficient to meet
natural requirements and "a well formed
stool" is the evidence of perfect "regularity."
Interesting Japanese Colon Customs
The Japanese are an exceedingly prac-
tical people, and although rapidly becoming
sophisticated are not yet so far away from the
influence of their primitive life as to have be-
come obtuse to their physical needs as are
the people of the older civilizations. A highly
intelligent American lady who has lived long
in Japan and become very intimately ac-
quainted with the habits and manners of the
people, has given me the following most inter-
esting accoimt of the very sensible manner in
which the Japanese deal with matters pertain-
ing to the evacuation of wastes : —
"The Japanese show no false modesty
whatever in answering the call of nature. For
no matter what the time, place or circum-
stances may be, they do not hesitate to excuse
themselves and go to the toilet whenever they
experience a
"call.
»>
THE CRIPPLED COLON 113
"The guests who visit us in our home, even
the gentlemen callers, think no more of asking
where the toilet is than of speaking of the
weather.
"In most of the houses of the Japanese
there are two toilets, one very near the recep-
tion room and the other nearer the living
rooms of the family.
"If you are a guest in a friend's home
and must go to the toilet, you cannot possibly
avoid observation for the toilet is in plain view.
"The toilets themselves are different from
ours in that there is no stool or chair but
simply a hole in the floor over a large jar so
that in evacuating the bowels one assumes a
squatting position, and the children are
taught from babyhood up to press the knees
against the abdomen when evacuating the
bowels.
"As to the convenient location of toilets,
they are not only in every railway station,
public building, etc., but on the corner of
every block or two in all the cities and towns.
These public toilets the natives use freely.
"As to their diet, not until the white man
came into their country and taught them to do
so, did they eat meat of any kind except fish.
114 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Even now in some of the Buddhist sects the
eating of the flesh of animals, except fish, is
prohibited.
"In the interior, most of the housewives
know nothing of how to kill and dress a
chicken, and in our cooking classes for the
women they beg us to teach them how to fry
a beefsteak and they think that we have meat
at every meal and many different kinds at
each meal.
"They eat a great many different kinds of
vegetables, especially greens of all kinds, and
seaweed (agar-agar) is a favorite dish. Fruit
is served at every meal. After a feast the last
thing served is not coffee but fruit.
"The Japanese say that we, the white man,
have a peculiar odor about us which is to them
very offensive, and that this odor is due to the
eating of the flesh of fowls and beasts."
The above most interesting observations
very fully confirm the author's views respect-
ing the normal intestinal rhythm when the au-
tomatic mechanism devised by nature for the
evacuation of the body wastes is allowed to
operate without interference by voluntary re-
straint.
ONE DAILY EVACUATION IS
CHRONIC CONSTIPATION
The truth is, one bowel movement a day
is serious constipation, and a "well formed
stool" is absolute proof of stagnation of the
colon contents and autointoxication. When
the bowels move with normal frequency there
is not time for the food residues to become
dried out and molded into a semi-solid mass.
X-ray examinations of the alimentary
tract have shown that when the bowels move
but once daily, the residues of a test meal are
not fully discharged until the third day, or
fifty hours or more from the time the meal was
taken. It is evident that in such cases not
only the residues of the test meal are in the
colon but also the residues of aU the meals
taken after the test meal during the two days.
That is, besides the test meal (breakfast)
residues, there are the residues of the dinner
and supper of the same day and the breakfast,
dinner, and supper of the next day, five meals
in addition to the test meal.
This is the constant situation with a person
whose bowels move once a day. When the
116 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
bowels move naturally only every other day,
or when stimulated by a laxative, the situa-
tion is very much worse. In such cases the
colon often contains the residues of a dozen
meals or more.
When the bowels move normally after
each meal there is never found in the body at
one time more than three meal I'esidues and
nothing remains in the colon longer than
twenty-four hours. It is probable that the
normal motility period of the human alimen-
tary canal is ten to fourteen hours. That is,
the residue of the breakfast should be dis-
missed before bedtime, the residue of dinner
on rising next morning, and the supper resi-
due after breakfast or dinner.
It is not to be expected that this ideal con-
dition can be established in all cases, nor even
in the majority of cases of chronic constipa-
tion, because in these obstinate cases the colon
has become so badly crippled, the delicate
nerves and muscular machinery, by which the
food residues and body wastes are disposed of
have been so greatly damaged, that the best
results that can be hoped for are only an ap-
proximation to normal conditions.
T
Diagram Showing Condition of the Colon when the Bowels
Move once Daily, containing the Residues of Six, Meals.
T
Diagram Showing Condition of the Colon in Chronic Consti-
pation, containing the Residues of Nine or more Meals.
CHRONIC CONSTIPATION 117
Abnormal Colon Conditions
The diseased conditions which are most
commonly involved in constipation are the
following:
1. Paralysis of the rectum from resisting
the promptings of nature. The "call" has
been lost by neglect.
Normally, the rectum is highly sensitive.
It is empty except during bowel movement.
As soon as a small amount of fecal matter en-
ters the upper part of the rectum, a desire for
evacuation is experienced. While this sensa-
tion calls attention to the need for evacuation
the same nerve stimulation operates a reflex
by which the colon is made to contract and
empty itself if given an opportunity to do
so. If, however, the "call" is resisted, the
sensation -ceases, the rectum becomes filled
with fecal matters but gives no sign of their
presence. The rectum becomes greatly dis-
tended and is really paralyzed.
This is rectal constipation and is by far the
most common sort. It is the natural conse-
quence of neglect. Fortunately, rectal con-
stipation is always curable, but very thorough-
going and prolonged treatment is required.
118 THE iTllSfERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The rectum must be kept empty by the aid
of the cool enema (80°-70° F) twice a day.
Paraffin oil in some form, bran, or agar-agar
and a laxative diet must be consistently ad-
hered to. Electricity is often useful in restor-
ing normal sensibility.
Regular times for evacuation are highly
important. An effort should be made after
each meal. The aid of the cool enema may be
resorted to with benefit in many cases to initi-
ate the normal habit of evacuating after every
meal.
2. A contracted or "tight" anal sphincter
may be the cause of delayed movements and
rectal constipation.
When ulcers, hemorrhoids, or other pain-
ful conditions of the rectum exist, or "tight"
sphincter, the anal sphincter should be
stretched and proper surgical treatment ap-
plied.
3. Colitis. — ^A spastic contraction, or
cramp of the bowel, occurs in colitis, causing
obstinate constipation, so-called "spastic con-
stipation." Hot fomentations to the abdomen
and the warm enema will temporarily relax
the spasm, but the colitis must be cured by
changing the intestinal flora, that is, driving
CHRONIC CONSTIPATION 119
out the putrefactive bacteria and establishing
the protective acid-forming germs, which not
only prevent putrefaction, but by means of
the acids which they produce stimulate the
bowel to normal activity. The ammonia and
other gases caused by putrefaction paralyze
the colon. Colitis is always curable by use of
modern scientific methods.
4. Prolapse of the pelvic colon, the last
loop of the bowel, is a very common cause of
obstinate constipation. When adhesions have
formed, an operation is sometimes necessary.
The pelvic colon must rise as it fills to enable
it to empty itself naturally.
5. Adhesions of the caecum. — The head
of the caecum receives the food residues from
the small intestine and should be able to con-
tract so as to push its contents up and around
the liver angle of the colon. When the cjecum
is adherent it cannot contract and the residues
accumulate in the bowel and only move along
the colon as pushed forward by accumulating
material continually entering from the small
intestine.
6. Adhesions of the appendix bind and
cripple the colon the same as adhesions of the
cfficum. This is perhaps the reason why
120 THE ITINEEAKY OF A BREAKFAST
chronic appendicitis is always accompanied
by constipation. Persons who have been ope-
rated for appendicitis usually sufiPer from con-
stipation perhaps because of adhesions of the
csecum resulting from the operation.
7. A dilated or a pouched caecum is
equally crippling. The over-stretched bowel
loses its contractile power.
It is to be remembered also that the ap-
pendix is an important part of the lubricating
system of the colon. The loss of the abundant
supply of lubricating mucus which it normally
furnishes may be a cause of constipation.
Constipation of a very obstinate sort is
found in most cases in which the appendix has
been removed or in which it is the subject of
chronic disease. In such cases the colon is per-
manently crippled by the loss of this very
essential feature of its lubricating mechanism.
In such a csecal pouch putrid matters ac-
cumulate and become extremely virulent.
The CEecum becomes a sort of cesspool in
which decomposable residues may remain for
several days or longer.
A proper change in diet and special meas-
ures of various sort greatly improve this con-
dition but in many cases it is necessary to
CHRONIC CONSTIPATION 121
wash out the colon by means of an enema daily
or at least every other day. These cases are
not relieved by laxatives. The enema is the
only unfailing method. The daily use of the
cool enema is not in any way injurious and
may be continued indefinitely without harm.
8. An incompetent ileocecal valve is both
a consequence and a cause of constipation.
This interesting structure acts as a check valve
and thus makes possible the uniform advance-
ment of the bowel content. When the valve
is broken down and incompetent the material
which enters the colon from the small bowel
returns to the small intestine when the bowel
contracts, and surges back and forth without
making definite progress. Gases are espe-
cially troublesome. When the colon con-
tracts, its contents are expelled at both ends,
at the lower externally, at the upper into the
small bowel.
Tumors, cancer, adhesions and obstructive
"kinks" are other recognized but rare causes
of obstinate constipation.
Fortunately, this long list of colon condi-
tions is really not so formidable as it looks.
Two very simple remedies will almost always
accomplish a cure. These are bulk and lubri-
122 THE ITINERAEY OF A BREAKFAST
cation. The bulk is found in sterilized bran
or agar-agar; the lubrication in paraffin oil.
These remedies must be systematically used,
at every single meal, unfailingly, and in such
quantity as may be needed to produce the
results required. Large amounts are some-
times necessary at first.
It is highly important to have an X-ray
examination of the colon made in all cases of
obstinate constipation so that the exact condi-
tion present may be discovered. Witljf this
highly important knowledge in his possession,
the up-to-date physician is now able to deal
successfully with practically every case of con-
stipation. Operation is sometimes required,
but only in very rare cases.
X-RAY VIEWS OF THE FOOD
TUBE
Since scientific observation has fixed the
normal time for the food transit and has
worked out the actual time table so that we
know when the food or food residues of a
meal should arrive at each particular station,
it becomes a matter of great interest to have
some method by means of which we may check
up the progress of a meal along the food tube
and note the time of arrival at the different
stations and the time occupied by the whole
journey from the entrance to exit, the so-
called "motility period." This has come to be
a matter of the greatest moment since we have
been made acquainted by Metchnikoff, Bou-
chard and others, with the terrible conse-
quences which result from delay" at way sta-
tions, through the putrefaction of food resi-
dues, secretions, wastes and partly digested
foodstuffs.
Modern science has provided two methods
of studying ^'motility" which are capable of
rendering the most signal service. These are
the X-ray test meal and the color test.
124 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
X-Ray Stuby of Motility
This test is based upon the fact that cer-
tain substances are opaque to the X-rays and
cause them to show a shadow on a specially
prepared screen or on a photographic plate.
The most elaborate and complete method
of X-ray examination of the colon was devised
by Dr. James T. Case, roentgenologist of
the Battle Creek Sanitarium (now Lieut.-
Colonel of the U. S. Army, Senior Consultant
in Roentgenology for the American Expedi-
tionary force in France) to whom the world is
greatly indebted for many important observa-
tions and discoveries in connection with the X-
ray study of the stomach and colon.
What the X-Ray Expert Sees
An X-ray examination of a person with-
out special preparation would usually show
very little respecting the stomach or intestine
for the reason that these parts are practically
transparent to the X-rays. Special prepara-
tion of the subject must be made. This spe-
cial preparation consists of two things; com-
lete emptying of the stomach and intestine
and second, the giving to the patient of a spe-
o
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u
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CL,
X-RAY VIEWS OF THE FOOD TUBE 125
cial meal, which usually consists of a pint of
gruel of some sort or a couple of glasses of
buttermilk to which has been added an ounce
or two of bismuth or barium in fine powder.
These mineral substances, as well as others,
are opaque to the X-ray. That is, they cast
a shadow. The stomach and intestines being
hollow organs, the shadow formed by the
opaque meal takes the form of the stomach
or of that part of the intestine in which it
appears.
When a person who has taken an opaque
meal is placed in the X-ray apparatus, the
shadow of the meal is thrown upon a screen
under the eye of the observer, who is thus able
to note the location of the meal, the form of
the part in which it is located and to compare
it with the normal, and likewise to observe the
changes in form and location which are always
taking place.
The observer begins his examination by
placing the subject between the X-ray tube
and a fluorescent screen and seats himself upon
a stool in front of the screen. The subject is
now given the test meal, and as he swallows it
the expert watches the behavior of the stomach
as each morsel enters. In health, everything
126 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
proceeds in the most orderly fashion. As one
morsel succeeds another, it passes along a
definite course until it reaches a state of rest
and is lost in the accumulating mass.
The reception of food into the stomach
starts up a series of movements which should
proceed in a definite and well known order.
Any deviation from the normal standard is
quickly noted and recorded.
The stomach movements are not so rapid,
however, that the X-ray cannot catch them
on the screen and record them on a photo-
graphic plate.
The observer notes with the greatest care
the behavior of the stomach as the food passes
out of the pylorus and of the small intestine,
the duodenum, as the food enters it. The ac-
tion of the pylorus is watched with special care
since it is at or near this point that many of
the most troublesome changes in the stomach
occur. There may be deformities due to ulcer
or cancer, obstruction, or other departures
from the normal.
The duodenum is carefully scrutinized for
the presence of ulcer or adhesions which may
obstruct or delay the passage of food througl^
jt.
X-RAY VIEWS OF THE FOOD TUBE 127
After a thorough initial scrutiny the sub-
ject is released and asked to return at stated
intervals during the day when the observa-
tions made show the progress of the test meal
along the road from stomach to colon.
The observations are renewed the next day,
at less frequent intervals, to note the length of
time the food residues remain in the colon and
any obstructive conditions that may exist.
The ileocecal valve, the csecum, the ap-
pendix, the several parts of the colon, ascen-
ding, transverse, descending, and pelvic colon
and the rectum, all are carefully inspected.
By means of pressure applied at various points
the absence or presence of adhesions is deter-
mined. When adhesions are present, the mo-
bility of the various organs is lessened; that
is, they cannot be moved about as freely as in
normal conditions. For example, when ulcers
of the duodenum of a serious character are
present, it is not uncommon for the X-ray ex-
pert to find adhesions about the duodenum
which bind the duodenum and restrict the mo-
bility of the stomach. In chronic inflamma-
tion of the gall-bladder, the adjacent parts,
stomach, liver, duodenum, and gall-bladder,
and sometimes the colon and other parts are
128 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
very likely to be bound tightly together by
adhesions.
The small intestines, the caecum, the ap-
pendix, the transverse colon, and the pelvic
colon are also studied with great care with re-
ference to adhesions, which in these parts are
often the source of great mischief and chronic
disorders, especially autointoxication from
most obstinate constipation.
The size and form of the various parts of
the colon are of great significance and are most
carefully noted as well as the position of the
several parts. The accompanying cuts show
better than any description some of the var-
ious wonderful things which a really expert
roentgenologist is able to see by means of the
X-ray.
The patient is examined at stated intervals
until the last trace of bismuth has disappeared
from the alimentary tract. Sometimes a dis-
eased appendix retains traces of bismuth for
several days after it has disappeared from
other parts.
Finally a bismuth enema is given while the
expert watches the behavior of the colon as
the enema enters. This part of the examina-
tion is highly important as it may reveal the
X-RAY VIEWS OF THE FOOD TUBE 129
presence of cancer or adhesions or other causes
of mechanical obstruction, as well as deform-
ities of the gut, pouches, dilations, "kinks,"
etc. and in many cases incompetency of the
ileocecal valve.
Besides these "fleuroscopic" observations,
plates are made, roentgenograms, which reveal
some things not otherwise discoverable, and
form a permanent record.
The information which may be obtained
by a careful X-ray study of the interior of the
body, especially of the abdomen, is often of
greater importance and value than what
might be learned by opening the abdomen
and viewing the parts with the eye. The X-
ray gives information about conditions which
are beyond the reach of the eye even with the
organs in sight.
But emphasis should be laid upon the fact
that an X-ray apparatus alone is not sufficient
to secure useful information. A well-trained
X-ray expert as well as an up-to-date appar-
atus must be on the job.
The X-ray only makes shadows. The ex-
pert must interpret the shadows. Long years
of training and education of the eye to observe
fine distinctions of light and shade, and deep
130 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
study of physiology and pathology as well as
of the physics and the technic of the X-ray
are essential to success. Only such an expert
can be trusted.
A tyro misinterprets what he sees. The
minute indications of disease he overlooks,
and unusual but perfectly normal appear-
ances he mistakes for cancer or some other
dreadful condition for which he urges imme-
diate operation.
Unfortunately the country is full of X-
ray tyros, thanks to the commercial activity
of X-ray machine manufacturers. It is safe
to say that at the present moment the conclu-
sions drawn from the majority of X-ray ex-
aminations of the colon are altogether unreli-
able and worthless, if not positively mislead-
ing, and a menace to the patient's welfare if
made a basis for active treatment or operation.
Prolapse of the stomach or of the colon does
not require surgical treatment. The applica-
tion of a suitable abdominal supporter and ex-
ercise to strengthen the abdominal muscles are
the only measures needed. Surgical proced-
ures which attach the stomach or the colon to
the abdominal wall and so-called "plication"
are worse than useless.
X-RAY VIEWS OF THE FOOD TUBE 131
A SIMPLE "MOTILITY" TEST
The time which elapses after a test meal
is taken before the discharge of the indigestible
residues is termed the motility period of the
food tube, that is, the time required for the
complete journey from entrance to exit.
Several writers have placed the motility
period at fifty hours. It is evident, however,
that these authorities were dealing with con-
stipated persons, those whose bowels move
once a day. When the bowels move in a nor-
mal manner, or three or four times daily, the
motility period is shortened. In the writer's
opinion, 24 to 25 hours should be regarded as
the outside limit for normal motility, and
really normal bowel activity, as elsewhere ob-
served, may be reckoned as 14 to 16 hours.
Thousands of persons whose bowels move
daily would be surprised to find on examina-
tion of their motility a period of two to three
days or even more. Not infrequently the
period is lengthened to five or six days.
The value of this information is so great
that in the writer's opinion every adult person
should have the test applied, especially if at^
all constipated.
132 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Fortunately we are in possession of a very
simple and efficient means of applying the
test. A capsule containing fifteen grains of
carmine is swallowed just before breakfast.
At each bowel movement thereafter the color
is observed. The time is noted when the red
color is first seen and also the time when it is
last seen. This test is so simple it may be ap-
plied by any intelligent person.
RULES FOR CARE OF THE COLON
The following rules have been tested for
years at the Battle Creek Sanitarium and
have been found to be efficient, although there
are occasionally found cases in which the
causes of the constipation are mechanical and
require surgical relief: —
1. Intestinal inactivity, or constipation,
results in autointoxication, and is one of the
most active of all causes of chronic disease.
Every chronic invalid should take special care
to secure frequent and regular action of the
bowels, at least three full movements daily.
2. An effort should be made to move the
bowels soon after breakfast, whether or not
there is a "call" for bowel movement, and at
any other time when even a slight "caU" is
experienced. A persevering effort should be
made to secure three movements daily and at
regular times.
3. Cellulose (the indigestible part of vege-
table food) is the only element which can in-
crease the bulk of the feces. One to two ounces
of cellulose are needed daily. Bran and agar-
agar are good forms of cellulose.
134 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
4. Normally, the bowels move after each
meal, and sometimes just after rising. The
largest movement generally occurs soon af-
ter breakfast.
5. Many persons are suffering from con-
stipation who are not aware of the fact. There
are several forms of constipation: (a) simple
constipation, in which the bowels are only
somewhat sluggish or irregular in action; (b)
cumulative or rectal constipation^ in which
normal movement of the bowels is prevented by
accumulation of masses of feces in the "rec-
tum" or "pelvic" colon; and (c) latent consti-
pation, in which the bowels move daily but
without complete evacuation of the colon, es-
pecially of the lower colon which always occurs
in normal defecation. 'Not infrequently, the
symptoms peculiar to latent and cumulative
constipation are found present together. It is
highly important in every case of constipation
that such examinations shall be made as will
determine the cause of the constipation. It is
only by the aid of such examinations that it. be-
comes possible to make a successful applica-
tion of curative means.
6. Meals must be regular in time and
amount of food taken. Food is the physiologic
RULES FOR CARE OF THE COLON 135
laxative. A scanty meal or the omission of a
meal usually results in the interruption of the
intestinal rhythm, — omission of a movement,
or an incomplete movement.
7. Fasting, a scanty diet (less than 1600
calories), a liquid diet (milk, gruels, por-
ridges), a diet chiefly consisting of such foods
as potatoes, rice, meat, eggs, tea, coffee and
condiments, are constipating.
8. Green vegetables (excepting the po-
tato) contain much cellulose, especially the
beet root, turnip, parsnip, spinach, cabbage,
brussels sprouts, and lettuce; these foods are
laxative.
9. Whole grain preparations are rich in
cellulose. Scotch brose (oatmeal cooked six
minutes) is an excellent laxative food.
10. Half the bulk of dried feces consists
of food residues, the other half of germs and
of poisonous matter excreted by the intestines,
which should be gotten rid of as soon as poss-
ible. This is especially important in cases of
colitis, since the intestinal mucous membrane
is diseased, and in all cases of chronic disease,
particularly in cases of autointoxication,
Bright's disease, arteriosclerosis, disease of the
liver, skin, thyroid gland, heart, and lungs.
136 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
11. Exercise promotes bowel action, espe-
cially walking, horseback riding, gymnasium
exercises, and such exercises as trunk bending,
leg raising and deep breathing. Exercises
and deep breathing movements taken on the
inclined table are especially helpful, and
should be practiced systematically and two or
three times daily.
12. The cold morning bath often aids
bowel action. Various other means are highly
beneficial, such as massage of the colon, vibra-
tion and kneading of the abdomen, and special
exercises of the abdominal muscles. In special
cases, application of electricity to the ab-
dominal muscles, also to the rectum and the
pelvic colon should be made.
13. In cases in which the abdominal mus-
cles are relaxed, and the colon and other por-
tions of the intestine are prolapsed, an efficient
abdominal supporter should be worn either
permanently or until the abdominal muscles
have become strong enough to hold the viscera
in position.
14. Drugs of all sorts must be avoided.
They do not cure, and do much harm when
repeatedly used. There is no such thing as
a harmless laxative drug. Mineral waters and
RULES FOR CARE OF THE COLON 137
saline laxatives as well as other drugs are
harmful, and produce enteritis and colitis
sooner or later. They congest the mucous
membrane and thus lead to autointoxication.
15. Agar-agar and paraffin are natural
and harmless and may be regarded as supple-
mentary foods. They are not digestible and
have no influence upon digestion, except to
encourage bowel action.
16. Agar-agar (cellulose) aids bowel ac-
tion by preventing drying and supplying
bulk. It also absorbs and carries off toxins.
Paraffin lubricates the colon, protects the
diseased mucous membrane and hinders ab-
sorption of poisons and dissolves and carries
off the toxins of putrefaction. These are
harmless substances, which may be used con-
tinuously without injury, and by regular use
render possible the training of the bowels to
normal action.
17. In cases in which the measures above
indicated do not secure prompt relief from
constipation, an X-ray examination by aid of
the bismuth meal should be made. By this
means, a minute inspection of every part of
the intestine is possible. In many cases
"kinks," folds, contractions, adhesions, dis-
138 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
placements, and other impediments to normal
bowel action are foimd, which may be cor-
rected by application of special measures.
Such an examination should be made in all
cases of obstinate constipation.
18. The squatting position, secured by
using a raised foot-rest in front of the closet
seat, is a great aid to bowel movement, espe-
cially in cases in which the abdominal muscles
are relaxed, a condition most common in
chronic constipation.
19. If the bowels do not move three
times a day constipation exists. The consti-
pation may be latent. It is necessary not
only that the bowels should move, but that the
colon should be completely emptied. A
simple test which any one may employ is
this: After a bowel movement, take a warm
enema, using about three pints of water.
About five minutes should be occupied in fill-
ing the colon. Note the quantity and char-
acter of the evacuation which follows. Often
a surprisingly large amount of black, very
foul smelling material will be brought down
from an enlarged or pouched ceecum where
it has been retained perhaps for days. Such
accumulations are an exceedingly common
RULES FOR CARE OF THE COLON 139
cause of headaches, "biliousness," coated
tongue, loss of appetite, and other toxic symp-
toms.
Do not forget that normal bowel action is
at least three full evacuations daily.
Food wastes should never be retained
more than twenty-five or twenty-six hours
at the longest and the normal period is prob-
ably sixteen hours or less.
Constipation is one of the greatest causes
of disease, misery, ineflSciency and premature
senility, and should be most earnestly com-
bated. By a persevering effort and the appli-
cation of known and well tested measures,
every case of constipation may he relieved.
THE INTESTINAL FLORA— WHEN
AND WHY IT MUST BE
CHANGED
Pasteur discovered that the intestinal
tract is swarming with bacteria. Strassburger
and other more recent investigators have
estimated the number of these organisms pro-
duced in the intestinal tract daily to be not
less than 150,000,000,000,000, and doubtless
the number is sometimes much greater.
Pasteur believed and taught that these covmt-
less millions of minute organisms were useful
and even necessary to the maintenance of the
body in health, that they rendered valuable
and essential assistance in the process of di-
gestion. More recent studies, however, have
shown that Pasteur was in error.
Levin, in the study of Arctic animals at
Spitzbergen, showed that more than 50 per
cent of the animals in that region have no
bacteria in the intestinal tract. Nuttall and
Thierfelder showed that guinea pigs brought
into the world by Caesarian section may be
made to grow without contact with bacteria.
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 141
Cohendy has quite recently shown that
chickens hatched from eggs free from bac-
teria may be raised and made to thrive on
food and drink in an atmosphere entirely free
from germs. It is now clearly established
that we do not live by the aid of the germs
that throng our intestines and swarm upon
the surface of the body, but rather that we
live in spite of these microbic enemies.
Two Classes — Fermentation Germs and
Putrefaction Germs
The germs that are ordinarily f oimd in the
human intestine may be divided into two
classes; namely, fermentation germs and
putrefaction germs. Fermentation germs
feed upon carbohydrates; that is, starch,
sugar and dextrin; while putrefaction germs
feed upon protein — such substances as the
white of eggs, the lean of meat, and the curd
of milk. Roughly speaking, we may say that
fermentation germs feed upon vegetable and
putrefaction germs upon animal substances.
These two classes of germs differ very
widely in their characteristics and their re-
lation to the himian body is in each case based
upon the substances which they produce by
142 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
their activity. Fermentation germs produce
for the most part acids, especially lactic and
acetic acids, which, in the small quantities
in which they are produced in the body, are
practically harmless. Putrefaction germs, on
the other hand, produce by the decomposition
of proteins, especially when acting upon ani-
mal proteins, highly poisonous toxins, many
of which closely resemble the venom of snakes
and minute quantities of which are capable of
producing the most alarming and distressing
symptoms.
Poisoning from Putkefying .Colon
Contents
A good illustration of the ill effects of
minute doses of these poisons is found in the
unpleasant symptoms experienced by contact
with putrescible substances; for example, the
odors arising from a dead rat in a closet or
under the floor, although greatly diluted with
air, may give rise to headache, loss of appe-
tite, nausea, and other unpleasant effects.
The sickening effects of the odors arising
from the fecal discharges of a dog or cat, or
of a person accustomed to the free use of
meat, clearly demonstrate the potency of these
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 143
subtle poisons. The bowel discharges of a
meat-eater, exposed in a closed room, would
in an hour or two render the place intolerable,
even to a very robust person. The writer has
known vigorous young men to be made very
ill with violent attacks of headache through a
few hours' contact with such material in lab-
oratory work. A moment's consideration
will show that such corrupt and putrescent
matters must be capable of producing much
greater mischief when in the body than after
removal from it. If the mere breathing of
the greatly diluted volatile poisons arising
from such putrescent matter will produce
highly unpleasant effects, how much more
grave must be the effects when through the
retention within the body of these foul sub-
stances all of their poisonous contents are ab-
sorbed and sucked up into the blood and circu-
lated throughout the body! In other words,
when a person through constipation throws off
through the lungs, kidneys and skin a large
part of the poisonous matters which ought to
have been discharged through the bowel, how
great must be the mischief done! There is
abundant reason for believing that the poison-
ing of the body, or so-called autointoxication.
144 THE ITINERAEY OF A BREAKFAST
which results from the absorption of poisons
from the intestine, is the chief cause of most
chronic diseases and of premature senility and
decay, as well as a very potent and predis-
posing cause of many acute maladies.
Peotective Germs
Normal human beings are born into the
world entirely free from bacteria. Not a
single germ is found in the interior of the
new-born infant. Within a few hours after
birth (four to six hours in summer, and
twenty hours in winter) the intestines of the
infant are found to be swarming with bac-
teria, the study of which, by Tissier, Esche-
rich and numerous other investigators has
shown them to be of the harmless sort — ^name-
ly, fermentation germs, or acid-formers. It
is the presence of these germs that gives to
the stools of a healthy young infant a slightly
sour odor. A portion of the bowel discharges
of the young infant added to milk does not
cause putrefaction of the milk, but simply
souring or fermentation. These acid-forming
germs play a protective role. Thanks to their
presence in the intestine, the putrefaction
germs cannot thrive, for these organisms can-
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 145
not grow in the presence of acids. An alka-
line medium is needed to promote their
growth. Hence, so long as acid-forming
germs keep possession of its intestine the in-
fant is safe from the destructive effects of the
putrefaction germs, or poison-formers, which
are the cause of diarrhea and most other in-
fant troubles. When by the use of cow's milk
(that is, ordinary commercial milk), or by
other errors in feeding, such as the giving of
meat or fish, overwhelming numbers of pu-
trefaction germs are introduced into the in-
testine and the infant's stools become dark-
colored and bad-smelling, then the experi-
enced mother or nurse, as well as the doctor,
knows that the child, if not already sick, will
soon be sick, and the sickness will be due to
the poisons produced by these enemies of life,
the germs of putrefaction.
As the child advances in years the putre-
faction germs increase in number in the intes-
tine. Through the use of meat, highly active
putrefaction germs are introduced into the
intestine and grow and multiply in great num-
bers, so that the stools become very offensive
and chronic autointoxication results. The
ultimate effects are constipation, colitis, so-
146 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
called biliousness, gastritis, inflammation of
the gall ducts, gall stones, skin diseases of vari-
ous sorts, neurasthenia, and in later years
Bright's disease, hardening of the arteries, high
blood-pressure, apoplexy, paralysis, insomnia,
mental depression, and even insanity.
The Cause or Old Age
Metchnikoff has clearly shown that these
putrefaction germs are the cause of early
degeneracy, premature old age and death.
Among the worst of the putrefaction germs
which are commonly found in the intestine in
the diseased conditions of adult life are the
bacillus colij, Welch's bacillus, bacillus prO'
teus, bacillus subtilis, streptococcus, entero-
coccus, bacillus putrificus, bacillus paracoli,
and sometimes the typhoid bacillus. All of
these germs produce most virulent poisons,
and when present in the feces in large num-
bers they are certain proof of the existence of
chronic intestinal autointoxication, even
though the characteristic symptoms of auto-
intoxicaton have not yet appeared. A coated
tongue, a sallow complexion, dark circles
around the eyes, appearance of brown spots
upon the hands or other parts (the so-called^
THE INTESTINAL FLOEA 147
liver spots), offensive breath and perspira-
tion, the discharge of foul-smelling gases from
the bowels, putrid stools, a thin, inelastic,
parchment-like skin, dullness of mind, inabil-
ity to concentrate the mind, mental irritability
or depression without cause, cold hands and
feet, perspiration of the hands and feet,
chronic headache, attacks of migraine or sick
headache — ^these and a score of other symp-
toms which might be mentioned are certain
indications of chronic pbisoning, prompt at-
tention to which may prevent the develop-
ment of later more serious conditions, such
as hardening of the arteries, Bright's disease,
with albumen and casts in the urine, or
apoplexy with paralysis. Grave symptoms
of autointoxication do not appear until after
the mechanism of the body, through which
nature deals with poisons, destroying and
eliminating them, has broken down and failed
to accomplish its purpose as a result of the
overwhelming amount of work which has
been thrown upon it. Hence, the appearance
of symptoms of autointoxication indicates
that the body has already become crippled and
that the matter must receive serious and im-
mediate attention.
148 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Reforming the Intestinal Flora
Eminent progressive medical men the
world over are rapidly coming to recognize
that changing the intestinal flora is an im-
portant factor in the treatment of all forms
of chronic disease and that in the great ma-
jority of chronic diseases it is the one es-
sential thing. Modern researches have clearly
shown that the great benefit that has been
known to be derived from those methods of
treatment which have been most successful
have really been due to the influence of these
measures upon the intestinal flora.
We may mention, for example, the tem-
porary benefit derived by the tens of thou-
sands of persons who annually visit mineral
springs, the waters of which possess laxative
properties. Such resorts are popular in all
parts of the world, and the benefit derived
from the use of their waters is sufficient to
attract countless multitudes of visitors year
after year; but that these patients are never
cured, no matter how much temporary benefit
they may derive from the thorough emptying
of their intestines and the unloading of ac-
cumulated poisons, is shown by the fact that
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 149
they always return, often being compelled to
return at increasingly frequent intervals, the
effect of mineral water as well as of other laxa-
tives being to produce colitis, or infection of
the colon, thus in the end doing great harm.
Results of Changing the Floba
Again, we find in the remarkable effects
which have been obtained by various special
dietaries an equally good illustration of the
curative value of means which influence the
intestinal flora. The grape cure, the apple,
peach, cherry and other fruit cures, the milk,
buttermilk and whey cures — all of these cures
operate through their influence upon the in-
testinal flora. The same statement may also
apply to the raw food cure, which acquired
considerable vogue some years ago.
Fruits and tatiilk are substances which fer-
ment but do not putrefy. Hence, when the
diet is exclusively confined to these articles,
fermentative changes rather than putrefac-
tion take place in the intestine, acids are
formed instead of poisons, and for the time
being the body is delivered from the destruct-
ive influence of the highly potent toxins pro-
duced by putrefactive germs when active
150 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
either within the body or outside of it. Raw
foods of a vegetable character are alive and
hence able to resist the action of bacteria.
Vegetable foods taken in raw or uncooked
state are digested before it is possible for
them to undergo destructive changes, and thus
their use discourages the growth of bacteria in
the intestine, especially those of the putre-
factive sort. There are also other benefits
from the use of uncooked food.
Dangerous Germs Made Haiimi.ess
Bienstock showed that the colon germs,
which, in the presence of protein (meat, eggs,
etc.), produce indol and other highly active
poisons capable of causing hardening of the
arteries, headache, probably Bright's disease,
and numerous other disorders, are, in the pres-
ence of sugar, incapable of producing these
poisonous substances, producing instead
harmless acids.
Sir Lauder Brunton, of England, and
more recently Kennan, in this country, have
shown that this is true of practically all putre-
factive germs; that is, the germs which cause
putrefaction when growing on protein wiU,
if supplied with a sufficient amount of sugar.
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 151
cease to produce putrefactive poisons and
produce fermentation with harmless acids in-
stead. In other words, putrefaction germs
may be reformed by simply feeding them
with sugar. This explains the fact that eggs,
which of all substances most readily undergo
putrefaction, may be perfectly preserved by
the addition of sugar. It also explains the
fact that the pioneer housewife and the no-
madic Arab are able to maintain a supply of
fresh meat by immersing cutlets in cow's milk
or camel's milk. The writer has in his posses-
sion a beefsteak which has been kept in a state
of perfect preservation for twelve years (since
June, 1906) , by immersion in buttermilk made
from a culture of the Bacillus Bulgaricus (the
buttermilk has been changed frequently).
It appears, then, that putrefactive organ-
isms, which are now recognized as among the
most comjnon and deadly enemies of human
life, may actually become harmless and even
useful by supplying them with sugar, pro-
vided this can be done at the proper time and
in the proper place. The proportion of sugar
must be at least two per cent.
152 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
How TO Change the Intestinal Floea
After studying this question for more than
twenty years, or ever since the appearance of
Bouchard's great work, "Autointoxication in
Disease, or Self -Poisoning of the Individual,"
the writer became fully persuaded that it is
possible to change the intestinal flora, and
that this change is one of the most practical
and most important means of combating the
great majority of the chronic diseases with
which the physician has to deal. A method
which has been thoroughly tested may be
briefly described as follows:
To change the intestinal flora, three things
are essential:
1. To so regulate the diet that there will
be left in the colon no putrescible food resi-
dues. This is accomplished by eliminating
from the diet for a few days aU animal pro-
teins, that is, meat, milk, and eggs, and also
vegetable foods rich in protein, such as beans,
peas, and cereals. Fats are also excluded be-
cause they delay the movement of the food
through the stomach and small intestine and
encourage putrefaction in the colon. A diet
consisting wholly of fruits or fruits and fresh
THE INTESTINAL FLOEA 153
green vegetables such as lettuce or cabbage,
celery, and other green things is best. Malt
sugar or milk sugar may be used freely.
2. The activity of the bowels must be in-
creased to such a degree that the food residues
will not be retained in the colon long enough
to undergo putrefaction. This requires three
or four efficient bowel movements daily, or at
least one bowel movement after each meal. By
the free use of bran or agar-agar and paraffin
oil in some form, spontaneous movements may
usually be secured. When necessary, the
colon may be emptied by a thorough enema
once or twice a day, using water at a tempera-
ture of 80° F. or warm water (100° F.), fol-
lowed by cool water.
In children and in some persons who enjoy
superb health, the bowels move four times
daily; before breakfast, after breakfast, after
dinner, and at bedtime.
The idea entertained by many persons that
frequent bowel movement is weakening, is
wholly erroneous. The bowels move often in
cases of diarrhoea for the purpose of carrying
away poisons produced in the intestine by in-
vading germs. The weakness felt is not due
to the bowel movements but to the poisons.
154 THE ITINERAEY OF A BREAKFAST
some portion of which is absorbed in spite of
Nature's vigorous efforts to eliminate them.
3. A third factor of importance, though
less essential than the preceding, is the intro-
duction of protective organisms, the lactic-acid-
forming ferments or so-called buttermilk
germs. There are several of these, and they
are more effective in combination than alone.
These ferments are best used at first in whey
cultures rather than in milk, and large
amounts of milk sugar (6-8 oimces daily)
should be used with them. In extreme cases
and when rapid results are desired, the cul-
tures should be taken by enema, as well as by
mouth, thus planting the protective germs
where they are most needed and may render
most effective service.
"The Fruit Regimen"
The combination of these methods consti-
tutes the "Fruit Regimen," a few days of
which rarely fails to clear the tongue, sweeten
the breath, and dissipate the foul odor of the
stools, which become odorless or acquire a
slight sour odor.
When the tongue has been cleared, the
"Milk Regimen" may be utilized with great
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 155
advantage as a means of fixing in the intestine
the protective germs which the "Fruit Regi-
men" has introduced.
The "Milk Regimen" is much the same as
the "Fruit Regimen" except that milk is sub-
stituted for fruit and is given every half hour
and to the extent of five or six quarts daily.
On this regimen, the bowels should move very
freely, and the stools should be much like those
of an infant.
After two or three weeks of the "Milk Regi-
men," the patient is prepared for the Anti-
toxic Diet or Regimen.
Antitoxic Diet
This diet consists chiefly of fruits, cereals,
and fresh vegetables, and should include a
considerable amount of uncooked vegetables,
such as lettuce, cucumbers and cabbage. The
experiments at the Pasteur Institute have
shown that potatoes and dates are partic-
ularly valuable as antitoxic foods, probably be-
cause the carbohydrates which they contain —
starch in the potato, and. sugar in the date —
are not fully absorbed in the small intestine
and reach the colon in larger amount than do
the carbohydrates of most other foods. Car-
156 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
rots also were shown by Metchnikoff 's experi-
ments to be a valuable antitoxic food. Another
specially valuable food of which the writer has
made much use with excellent success is oat-
meal prepared by short cooking. The steel-cut
oats or old-fashioned Scotch oats are better for
the purpose than rolled oats. Instead of cook-
ing a long time so as to insixre the complete
conversion of all the starch, the oatmeal
should be stirred into boiling water and cooked
for five minutes, then set aside for five
minutes more, and then served. Oatmeal pre-
pared in this way, constitutes the brose of the
Scotch Highlanders, and is most palatable.
Nevertheless, a considerable portion is im-
perfectly cooked and hence is not readily
acted upon by the saliva and intestinal juices,
and thus finds its way into the colon,
where it may feed the fermentation germs
and by its presence prevent the putrefaction
germs from making poisons by the decompo-
sition of protein. This protective action may
be increased by the addition of wheat bran to
the oatmeal in the proportion of one part to
three by volume measure. The bran will
hasten the passage of the oatmeal through
the intestinal canal and wiU thus increase the
THE INTESTINAL FLOEA 157
amount of carbohydrate which reaches the
colon.
An excellent breakfast food consists of
equal parts by measure of corn meal, steel-cut
oats and sterilized bran, cooked six to ten
minutes.
The free use of such saccharine fruits as
prunes, figs, and raisins is also a valuable
means of introducing carbohydrates in the
most available form, since the germs which
live in the colon thrive better on a diet of
sugar than any other form of carbohydrates.
Purple figs soaked in cold water for twenty-
four hours are a very palatable laxative food.
The Colon Not Intended to be a
Seweb
Nature never intended that the interior of
the human intestine should be degraded to
the condition of a privy vault or an obstructed
sewer, flooding the blood with brain-and-
ne^ve-paralyzing and disease-breeding poi-
sons. This is clearly evident, not only by the
observations of Levin at Spitzbergen, above
referred to, but also by the discovery in South
America of a parrot which lives wholly upon
bananas, and the fecal discharges of which
158 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
have the fragrance of bananas and are in-
oflFensive as bananas themselves. What nat-
ural reason can be shown that food that enters
the body clean, sweet and sterile should leave
the body in a state horribly loathsome with
corruption?
Clean blood is a first essential for health of
body and mind. Clean blood is impossible
without a clean colon. Constipation is a fim-
damental and almost imiversal evU which is
the root of more human ills and perhaps more
human misery, moral and mental as well as
physical, than any other cause. Fortimately it
is not an incurable condition. The average
civilized colon is badly crippled, but it may be
greatly helped. An intelligent application of
up-to-date knowledge of colon conditions may
attain success in the most discouraging cases.
Every case of constipation is curable, but
not by means of any panacea. Each case
must be studied and individual conditions
must be dealt with in an intelligent and
rational manner.
The successful treatment of chronic con-
stipation requires a careful study of each in-
dividual case in the light of modern knowl+
edge of the physiology of the colon, and in ob-
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 159
stinate cases the whole alimentary canal must
be inspected by means of the X-ray with the
opaque meal and enema.
The intestinal flora must be changed. This
is absolutely necessary to conquer constipa-
tion. Putrefactive poisons paralyze the colon,
while the harmless acids of fermentation are
the normal stimiilants of the intestine, hence
the necessity for exchanging the wild bacteria
for the protective germs which nature pro-
vides as a bulwark against disease.
The details of methods of treatment, diet,
how to change the intestinal flora, and other
matters that pertain to the practical manage-
ment of the colon are given in other works by
the author, especially "Colon Hygiene," and
"Autointoxication."
By the use of these methods, many per-
sons thought to be proper subjects for surgical
treatment may be wholly relieved and re-
stored to comfort and usefulness. The suffer-
ing of subjects of chronic autointoxication is
often so great that they are quite willing to
submit to any treatment, medical or surgical,
no matter how drastic, provided only that a
fair prospect of relief is held out to them.
With high hopes of relief from chronic
160 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
miseries, hundreds of persons have undergone
operations for removal of the appendix,
"shortcircuiting," or even removal of the colon,
or some other radical procedure, and have then
foimd themselves subject to the same miseries
as before, often with aggravated intensity.
The truth is that the "kinks," and most
other morbid conditions which are thought to
require surgical interference, are results rather
than causes of the fundamental mischiefs,
which must be corrected before any permanent
benefit will be secured.
The notion that the appendix is a useless
"relic" and the colon a handicap and a menace
which should have been long ago left behind in
the march of evolution, is not in harmony with
sound scientific principles. Nature is wise.
Because the purpose of an organ is not under-
stood, we should not feel at liberty to denounce
it as cumbersome and dangerous. It is but a
few years since the spleen was looked upon
as a superfluous organ, if not a burden to the
bodUy economy. Now, we know that the func-
tions of the spleen are of highest importance
to the body. AVhile it is possible for a person
to live without it, at least for several years, its
activity is known to be essential to the perfect
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 161
working of the bodily machinery, especially of
the defensive mechanisms.
The thyroid gland was for ages regarded
as of no use to an adult, though regarded of
use in the early periods of development be-
fore birth and during the fif st months of in-
\fancy. Now, we know that this gland has
most important duties to perform in connec-
tion with nutrition, especially in the proteo-
tion of the body against the poisons produced
in the colon by the putrefaction of protein.
Dogs whose thyroids have been removed die
when fed on meat, but thrive on a diet from
which meat is excluded, such as bread and
mUk.
A minute body in the brain, not larger
than a pea, once a mere anatomical curiosity,
thought by the philosopher Descartes to be
the seat of the soul, is now known to play a
very important part in regulating growth.
Disease of this minute structure may be ac-
companied by loss of bodily symmetry. The
hands and feet become gigantic in size, all out
of proportion to the rest of the body. The
nose or the lower jaw may become immensely
too large for the rest of the face.
The appendix vermiformis, long regarded
162 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
as a vestige and a trouble maker, is now known
to be a leading factor in the highly important
lubricating system of the colon. It is a great
mucous follicle and pours but its lubricating
mucus at just the point where it is most
needed. Prof. MacEwen, of Edinboro, an
eminent Scotch surgeon, and also the late
Prof. Andrews, a distinguished Chicago sur-
geon, called attention to this useful function
of the appendix many years ago. A person
who has had his appendix removed, has lost a
valuable part of his lubricating mechanism.
Such persons generally find it necessary to
make constant use of paraffin oil to replace the
function of the lost organ.
As a matter of fact, a very large propor-
tion of the appendices which are removed have
no direct connection with the complaints for
relief from which the operation is performed.
After the operation, the patient suffers the
same as before.
The same things may be said of the colon.
It is not a useless organ. Its purpose is to
secure regular and rhythmical discharge of
the food residues and body wastes instead of a
constant discharge as in some birds and fishes,
in which the colon is so short as to be of little
THE INTESTINAL FLORA 163
use as a reservoir. When the colon is removed,
nature proceeds to make a new reservoir by
dilating the lower end of the ileum until it
becomes as large as the normal colon.
It has become evident that the fault with
the modern colon is not that it is superfluous,
but that it has been systematically abused
by requiring it to deal with material which
it was never intended to handle, as pointed
out by the eminent Professor Keith of Lon-
don. Nature intended the colon of man,
as those of other primates, the orang and the
chimpanzee, to be used as a reservoir for hold-
ing for a few hours the residues of fruits and
roots and tender shoots, the indigestible seeds,
jekins, and fibres of vegetable foodstuffs, ma-
terial incapable of undergoing putrefaction or
giving rise to poisonous products of any sort.
But by becoming a meat eater man has com-
pelled his colon to deal with the putrescent
fragments of undigested flesh, highly offensive
material which the short colons of carnivorous
animals dismiss quickly and handle with little
injury, but which stored up in the capacious
human colon for many hours, even several
days, becomes a seething mass of corruption, a
veritable Pandora's box of disease.
164 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
And so the conclusion to which sound rea-
son and experience lead us is that the colon
does not need to be eliminated by evolution or
removed by surgery (except when hopelessly
diseased), but that it needs to be reformed by
proper training and return to a natural
dietary. That these measures are successful
has been demonstrated by the experience of
the Battle Creek Sanitarium where they have
been systematically employed in the treatment
of more than one hundred thousand invalids
within the last forty years, most of whom were
suffering from chronic constipation and its
consequences.
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE
In these days when the question of food-
stuflPs is daily becoming more urgent and ab-
sorbing it is natural that all available sources
of supplies to meet one of the most urgent of
aU our human needs should be made the sub-
ject of careful investigation. The exigencies
of the great European war have compelled not
only Germany but others of the belligerent na-
tions to study nutritive values and the econom-
ics of food more critically than ever before.
Every available source of food supply is being
drawn upon to the fullest possible extent- by
the nations of Central Europe. Efforts have
been made to extract nutrient material from
such unpromising sources as straw and saw-
dust, natiffaUy with no encouraging measure
of success.
The writer has followed these researches
and discussions with great interest. Numer-
ous important facts in relation to human nu-
trition which have been long known to scien-
tists but of which the common people have
been ignorant have been brought to the atten-
166 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
tion of the hungry masses and have received
practical application in the masterly efforts
which have been made for their relief. It is
probable that the problem of human nutrition
is at the present time being solved in a more
scientific and practical way by the German
people than the world has ever witnessed be-
fore.
In all this discussion, however, one of the
first and most striking facts upon which pub-
lic attention was focused after the beginning
of the great conflict was the necessity for lim-
iting the supply of flesh foods. The reason for
this is obvious. All the densely populated na-
tions of Europe depend chiefly upon outside
sources for their meat supplies. This must be
true of any densely populated country for the
reason that an acre of land that is devoted to
wheat, for example, will produce nearly ten
times as much protein, one of the most essen-
tial of aU the food principles, as the same area
of land devoted to pasturage for beef cattle
and, as will be shown later in this chapter, the
same land devoted to nuts may produce an
even greater amount of food protein together
with other essential food principles. Notwith-
standing this fact, the writer has seen no men-
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 167
tion made of nuts in the discussions of food
supplies which have grown out of the Euro-
pean war. The explanation doubtless is to be
found in the fact that nuts have heretofore cut
so small a figure in national food supplies that,
under the present emergency conditions, they
are naturally overlooked entirely.
As a matter of fact, nuts have been used
as a luxury rather than as a staple article of
food ; but as the public becomes better informed
respecting the high food value of nuts and
especially in view of the steadily rising cost of
flesh meats, the nut is certain to gain higher
appreciation. The writer has no doubt that
sometime in the future nuts will become a lead-
ing constituent of the national bill of fare and
wiU displace some of the common foodstuffs
which today are held in high esteem but which
in the broader light of the next century will
be regarded as objectionable and inferior
foods and will give place to the products of
the various varieties of nut trees which will
then be recognized as the choicest of all foods.
Botanically, a nut is a fruit ; but nuts differ
so widely both in composition and appearance
from the foods commonly called fruits that
they" are properly classed by themselves.
168 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
In nutritive value the nut far exceeds all
other food substances; for example, the aver-
age number of food units per pound furnished
by half a dozen of the more common varieties
of nuts is 3231 calories while the average of the
same number of varieties of cereals is 1654
calories, half the value of nuts. The average
•^food value of the best vegetables is 300 calories
per pound and of the best fresh fruits grown
in this country, is 278 calories. The average
value of the six principal flesh foods is 810
calories per pound or one-fourth that of nuts.
The superior nutritive value of nuts is
clearly shown by the following tables based
upon the analyses of Atwater and others:
TABLE I.
Csmpositlon and Fuel Valne of the Edible Portion of Nnts.
Protein Fats Carbohy- Ash Food value
drates per pound
per ct. per ot. per ct. per ct. Calories
Almonds 21.0 54.9 17.3 2.0 3,080
Brazil nuts 17.0 66.8 7.0 3.9 3,329
Filberts 15.6 6S.3 13.0 2.4 8,432
Hickory nuts 15.4 67.4 11.4 2.1 3,495
Pecan nuts 11.0 71.2 18.3 1.6 3,633
English walnuts ...16.7 64.4 14.8 1.3 3,805
Chestnuts, fresh ... 6.2 5.4 42.1 1.3 1,126
Chestnuts, dried ...10.7 7.0 74.2 2.2 1,875
Acorns 8.1 37.4 48.0 2.4 2,718
Beechnuts 21.9 67.4 13.2 3.5 3,263
Butternuts 27.9 61.2 3.4 3.0 3,371
Black walnuts 27.6 56.3 11.7 1.9 3,106
Oocoanuts 6.7 50.6 27.9 1.7 2,986
Cocoanuts shredded . 6.3 57.3 81.6 1.3 3,125
Pistachios, kernels.. 22.6 54.5 15.6 3.1 3,010
Pine nuts or pinons 14.6 61.9 17.8 2.8 3,364
Peanuts, raw 26.8 38.6 24.4 2.0 2,660
Peanuts, roasted ...80.6 49.2 16.2 2.5 3,177
Utcht nuts ^.9 .2 77.6 1.6 l,46t|
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 169
With the exception of smoked bacon, there,:
is no flesh food which even approaches the nut
in nutritive value, and bacon owes its high
value to the fact that it consists ahnost exclu-
sively of fat.
That the nut is appreciated as a dainty is
attested by the frequency with which it ap-
pears as a dessert and the extensive use of vari-
ous nuts as confections. That nuts do not
hold a more prominent place in the national
bill of fare is due chiefly to two causes; first,
the popular idea that nuts are highly indiges-
tible, and second, their comparatively high
price.
The notion that nuts are difficult of diges-
tion has really no foundation in fact. The idea
is probably the natural outgrowth of the cus-
tom of eating nuts at the close of a meal when
an abundance, more likely a super-abundance,
of highly nutritious foods has already been
eaten and the equally injurious custom of eat-
ing nuts between meals. Neglect of thorough
mastication must also be mentioned as a com-
mon cause of indigestion following the use of
nuts. Nuts are generally eaten dry and have
a firm hard flesh which requires thorough use
of the organs of mastication to prepare them
170 THE ITINERAR i' OF A BREAKFAST
for the action of the several digestive juices.
Experiments made in Germany showed that
nuts are not digested at all but pass through
the alimentary canal like foreign bodies un-
less reduced to a smooth paste in the mouth.
Particles of nuts the size of small seeds wholly
escaped digestion.
The Okigin of Peantjt Buttee
Having been for more than fifty years
actively interested in promoting the use of nuts
as a staple food, I have given considerable
thought and study to their dietetic value and
have made many experiments. About twenty-
five years ago it occurred to me that one of the
above objections to the extensive dietetic use
of nuts might be overcome by mechanical pre-
paration of the nut before serving so as to re-
duce it to a smooth paste and thus insure the
preparation for digestion which the average
eater is prone to neglect. The result was a
product which I called peanut butter. I was
much surprised at the readiness with which
the product sprang into public favor. Several
years ago I was informed by a wholesale gro-
cer of Chicago that the firm's sales of peanut
butter amounted on an average to a carload a,
NUjTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 171
week. I think it is safe to estimate that not
less than one thousand carloads of this product
are annually consumed in this country. The
increased demand for peanuts for making pea-
nut butter led to the development of "corners"
in the peanut market and doubled the price
and the annual production.
I am citing my experience with the peanut
not for the pin-pose of recommending this
product, for I am obliged to confess that I was
soon compelled to abandon the use of peanut
butter prepared from roasted nuts, for the
reason that the process of roasting renders the
nut indigestible to such a degree that it was
not adapted to the use of invalids, but simply
as an illustration of the readiness with which
the public accepts a new dietetic idea when it
happens to strike the popular fancy.
Delicious nut butters may be prepared
from true nuts such as the almond, filbert, and
pine nut, by blanching and crushing, without
roasting. Peanuts require steam roasting.
Ways must be found to render the use of
nuts practical by adapting them to our culin-
ary and dietetic customs and to overcome the
popular objection to their use by a widespread
and efficient campaign of education.
172 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Food Economy
It has long been predicted by economists
that the time would come when a densely pop-
ulated world would be compelled to derive its
sustenance directly from the soil. The present
high prices of meat were anticipated more
than twenty years ago by the officials of the
United States Department of Agriculttu-e.
The increase of our human population and the
decrease of our animal population have both
progressed more rapidly than was anticipated,
and the artificial conditions imposed by the
world war have still further increased the price
of meat and made meatless days a necessity.
Thus the question, Is meat essential to com-
plete human nutrition? has become most per-
tinent.
A fundamental error is embodied in the
popular faith in the high protein ration. The
physiologists are at least partly at fault. Lie-
big's dictum, which made protein the essential
food factor in supporting work, has misled the
whole civilized world for more than half a cen-
tury. The dietaries of institutions, armies,
whole nations have been based upon a concep-
tion which modern science has shown to be
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 173
utterly false, and the result has been an eco-
nomic loss which staggers belief, and a de-
struction of human life and efficiency which
over-shadows most other malign influences.
As an abstract scientific pitoposition this
question was answered by the physiologists
years ago by laboratory experiments. Ac-
cording to Magnus Levy, one of the world's
most eminent authorities, "It is indeed true
that the vegetable albuminous substances as
they occur in nature are equal in nutritive
value to an equivalent protein of animal
origin."
More recent studies, however, by McCol-
lum and others have shown that the selection
of the vegetable foodstuifs which shall com-
pose the biU-of-fare is not a matter of indif-
ference. There is a difference in proteins.
Every vegetable produces proteins which are
peculiar to itself. Animal proteins also differ,
but apparently less widely than do vegetable
proteins, and many vegetable proteins differ
very greatly in character from those which
compose the highly vitalized parts of the hu-
man body.
Fortunately, vegetable proteins do not all
diflPer in the same way. Some differ in one di-
174 THE ITINERAEY OF A BREAKFAST
rection, others in the exact opposite direction.
And so by the proper selection of vegetable
foodstuffs it is possible to make a combina-
tion which will supply the human body with
just the sort of material which it requires
for building purposes and for repairs.
Taking the protein of the human body
for a standard, it is found that the proteins
which are found in cereals, green and root veg-
etables, legumes and most other vegetable
products are incomplete. They are lacking in
certain elements which are absolutely essential
to the building of healthy human blood and
tissues.
Careful chemical analysis, however, has
shown in recent years that the proteins of nuts,
or at least of some of them, are complete pro-
teins. Nuts, in fact, furnish proteins of such
fine quality that they are capable of comple-
menting other foodstuffs. Their proteins
supply the elements necessary to render com-
plete the proteins of cereals and other vege-
table foods. This discovery is one of the high-
est importance since it opens a door of escape
for the race from the threatened extinction by
starvation at some future period, perhaps not
so very remote.
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 175
Advantages of a Nut Diet
This fact places the nut in an exceedingly
important position as a foodstuff. In face of
vanishing meat supplies it is most comforting
to know that meats of all sorts may be safely
replaced by nuts not only without loss, but
with a decided gain. Nuts have several advan-
tages over flesh foods which are well worth
considering.
1. Nuts are free from waste products,
uric acid, urea, carnine, and other tissue
wastes.
2. Nuts are aseptic, free from putrefac-
tive bacteria, and do not readily undergo de-
cay either in the body or outside of it. Meats,
on the other hand, are practically always in an
advanced stage of putrefaction, as found in the
meat markets. Ordinary meats contain from
three million to ten times that number of bac-
teria per ounce, and such meats as Hamburg-
er steak often contain more than a billion put-
refactive organisms to the ounce. Nuts are
clean and sweet.
3. Nuts are free from trichinae, tape-
worm, and other parasites, as well as other in-
fections due to specific disease. Nuts are in
176 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
good health when gathered and remain so un-
til eaten. The contrast between the delectable
product of the beautiful walnut, chestnut or
pecan tree and the abbatoir recalls the story of
the Tennessee school teacher who was told
when she made inquiry about a certain should-
er of pork which had been promised in part
payment for services but had not arrived,
"Dad didn't kill the pig;" "and why not?" said
the teacher. "Because," replied the observing
youngster, "he got well." Nearly all the
cows slaughtered are tuberculous. They are
killed to be eaten because too sick to serve
longer as community wet niu-ses.
It is also worthy of note that the fat of
nuts exists in a jfinely divided state and that in
the chewing of nuts a fine emulsion is produced
so that nuts enter the stomach in a form best
adapted for prompt digestion.
Another question which will naturally
arise is this : if nuts are to be granted the place
of a staple in our list of food supplies, will it
be safe to accept them as a substitute for flesh
foods?
Beefsteak with many people has become a
veritable fetish, but the experiments of Chit-
tenden and others have demonstrated that the
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 177
amount of protein needed by the body daily is
so small that it is scarcely possible to arrange
a bill of fare to include flesh foods without
making the protein intake excessive. This is
because the ordinary foodstuffs other than
meat contain a suiRcient amount of protein to
meet the needs of the body. Nuts present
their protein ia combination with so large a
proportion of easily digestible fat that there is
comparatively little danger of getting an ex-
cess.
It is also worthy of note that the protein
of nuts is superior in quality to that of ordi-
nary vegetables or meats. The careful an-
alyses made in recent years have shown that
the protein of nuts, at least of a number of
them, contain all the elements needed for build-
ing up complete body proteins ; in other words,
nuts furnish perfect proteins, which are not
supplied so abundantly by any other vegetable
product.
A False Economy
From an economic standpoint, the rearing
of animals for food is a monstrous extrava-
gance. According to Professor Henry, dean
of the Agricultural Department of the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin, and author of an author-
178 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
itative work on foods and feeding, one hun-
dred pounds of food fed to a steer produce less
than three pounds of food in the form of flesh.
In other words, we must feed the steer thirty-
three pounds of corn in order to get back one
pound of food in the form of steak. Such an
extravagant waste can be tolerated only so
long as it is possible to produce a large excess
of foodstuffs. It is stated, as a matter of fact,
that at the present time scarcely more than ten
per cent, of the corn raised in the United
States is directly consumed by human beings.
A large part of it is wasted in feeding to ani-
mals. This economic loss has been long known
to practical men but it has been regarded as
unavoidable since meat has been supposed to
be absolutely essential as an article of food;
but the experience of Germany since the be-
ginning of the present war, as well as of Ja-
pan, China, and India for many centuries, has
fully demonstrated the possibility of eliminat-
ing meat from the national bill of fare.
The use of nuts as a staple article of food
is not an experiment. All the higher apes,
man's nearest relatives in the animal world,
thrive on nuts. Many savage tribes live very
largely on nuts. The Indians of the foothills
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 179
of California gather every fall large quan-
tities of nuts which they store for winter use.
The early settlers of California reported
that many tribes of Indians in that part
of the United States lived almost wholly upon
acorns. Before the great oak forests of this
country were cut down, many millions of
hogs were fattened on mast, and the price of
pork depended more upon the acorn crop than
on the corn crop. The peasantry of southern
France and northern Italy during half the
year make two meals a day on chestnuts.
As a matter of fact, milk and eggs supply
essentially the same protein that is furnished
by meat, and mUk protein in some respects is
superior to that of meat; but mUk is rapidly
rising in price and will doubtless go still high-
er for the reason that for every pound of food
in the form of milk it is necessary to feed a
cow more than five times the amovmt of food
obtained; and for every pound of food in the
form of eggs we must throw away nearly
twenty pounds of good food. So it is more
than probable that the time may not be far
distant when the people of this country, like
those of some other countries, and like our
primitive ancestors who lived wholly upon the
180 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
products of the forests, and our modern bio-
logical relatives, the orang-utan, the chimpan-
zee, and the gorilla, must depend chiefly upon
the products of the vegetable kingdom with
the addition of eggs and milk for their suste-
nance.
It is important then to know that, if such
a time comes, it would be possible so to ar-
range the bill of fare that the race may lose
nothing of vigor or energy because of the re-
striction in diet. As a matter of fact, there is
J^ood reason to believe that if man had never
acquired his present omnivorous habits and
had adhered to his original vegetable regimen,
he might have escaped a very large proportion
of the multitudinous ills which have greatly
impaired his efficiency and are even threaten-
iHg extinction of the race.
The high price of meat of which so much
complaint has been made in recent years is not
likely to recede. The high price is not due to
manipulations of the market, but to natural
causes the chief of which is the limitation of
pasturage and consequently a great decrease
in the number of livestock. As the country be-
comes more and more densely settled, the difii-
culty of supplying the demand for meat will
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 181
increase, and in time the necessity for utilizing
every foot of ground in the most efficient man-
ner will necessarily bring about a change in
the dietetic habits of the people. Not one ex-
ample can be found in the world of a densely
populated country dependent upon its own re-
sources in which flesh foods constitute any con-
siderable part of the national bill of fare. Since
Germany has been nearly shut off from the
outside world by the present war, the govern-
ment has found it necessary to restrict the con-
siHnption of meat to one-half pound per week
for each adult. All other European countries
are equally dependent on outside sources for
their meat supply.
The time will certainly come when nuts
and nut trees will become a most important
food resource. If a reform in this direction
could be effected wjthin the next ten years, the
result would be a disappearance to a large ex-
tent of the complaint of the high cost of living.
James HiU said the basis for complaint was
not the high cost of living, but the cost of high
living. I should prefer to say that the real
cause for complaint was wrong living rather
than high living, or necessarily high cost.
With right living the cost will be, automatical-
182 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
ly reduced. For example, suppose a person
were content to choose the peanut as his chief
source of protein and fat, the elimination of the
butcher's bill for meat and the grocer's bill for
butter would at once cut out two-thirds of the
expense incurred for food.
A Personal Experience
When a student in college more than forty
years ago, the writer lived three months on a
diet such as has been above suggested, at an
aferage expense of exactly six cents a day.
This was the total amount expended for raw
foodstuffs. I paid my landlady five times as
much for preparing and serving the food, and
had reason for believing that some portion of
my supplies was utilized by others than my-
self. As evidence of the fact that the experi-
ment was not dangerous, I may add that I
have pursued the same meatless dietary dur-
ing my entire lifetime since, as I had done for
ten years before, and in my sixty-seventh am
still alive and hard at work.
Man is naturally a frugivorous animal.
According to Cuvier, the renowned French
naturalist, the natural diet of human beings,
like that of those other primates, the orang-
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 183
utan, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, consists
of fruits, nuts, tender shoots and grains.
A sturdy Scotch highlander told me that his
diet consisted of brose, bannocks, and potatoes,
and that he rarely ever tasted meat. When
asked what he fed his dogs, he replied, "The
same as I eat myself, sir." The highbred fox-
hounds of the Southern States are fed on corn-
meal, oatmeal and bread, and rarely taste fle;^
of any sort. Dogs thus fed are hardier, health-
ier, have more endurance, better wind, keener
scent, greater intelligence, and are more easily
trained than meat fed dogs. A diet which is
safe for carnivorous animals must certainly be
safe for human beings who belong to a class of
animals all representatives of which, with the
exception of man, are flesh abstainers.
Some years ago I experimented with vari-
ous sorts of carnivorous animals for the pur-
pose of ascertaining whether nuts could be
made a complete substitute for meat. Among
the various animals utilized for the experiment
was a yotmg wolf from the Northwest that had
never eaten anything but fresh raw meat. Af-
ter giving the animal one day to get accus-
tomed to its new surroundings and to acquire
a good appetite I gave him a breakfast of nuts
184 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
properly prepared and was delighted to find
that he took to the new ration without the
slightest hesitation and remained in excellent
health during the several months of the experi-
ment. I succeeded perfectly in substituting
nuts for meat with all the animals experi-
mented upon including a fish hawk, with the
single exception of an ancient bald-headed
eagle which refused to be converted.
The First Mammals Were Nut-Eaters
I have long had a suspicion that the so-
called carnivorous animals were aU at some
remote time nut-eaters; the so-called carniv-
orous teeth would be as useful in tearing off
the husks of cocoanuts and similar fruits as
for tearing and eating flesh.
It is gratifying to be assured by the emi-
nent Prof, Matthews that the first mammals
were nut-eaters and vegetarians and that om*
remote ancestors were nut and fruit eaters.
They may have gobbled an insect now and
then but their staple food was fruits and nuts
with tender shoots and succulent roots, which
is still true of those old-fashioned forest folks,
the primates, of which the orang-utan, the
chimpanzee and the gorilla are consistent rep-
NUTS A COMING FOOD STAPLE 185
resentatives, while their near relative, also a
primate, civilized man, has departed from his
original bill of fare and has exploited the bills
of fare of the whole aninial kingdom.
The keeper of the famous big apes of the
London Zoo informed me that they were never
given meat. Even the small monkeys, gen-
erally regarded as insectivorous, were confined
to a rigid vegetarian fare and were thriving.
Whole races of men, comprising many mil-
lions, live their entire lives without meats of
any sort, and when fed a sufficient amount are
wonderfully vigorous, prolific, enduring and
intelligent. Witness the Brahmins of India,
the Buddhists of China and Japan and the
teeming millions of Central Africa.
The World's Pedesteian Record Won by a
Nut Eater
Carl Mann, the winner of the great walk-
ing match between Berlin and Dresden, per-
formed his great feat on a diet of nuts with
lettuce and fruits.
Weston, the long distance champion, never
eats meat when on a long walk. The Tarahu-
mara Indians, the fleetest and most enduring
runners in the world, are strict vegetarians.
186 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
The gorilla, the king of the Congo forests, is a
nut-feeder. Milo, the mighty Greek, was a
flesh-abstainer as was also Pythagoras, the
first of the Greek philosophers, Seneca, the
noble Roman senator and Plutarch, the fam-
ous biographer.
The writer has excluded meats of all sorts
from his bill of fare for more than fifty years,
and has within the last forty years supervised
the treatment of more than a hundred thou-
sand sick people at the Battle Creek Sanitar-
ium on a meatless diet and superintended the
activities of a family of workers averaging for
many years more than 1000, who are also
flesh-abstainers, no meat being served at the
Sanitarium to either patients or workers.
Even carnivorous animals flourish on a diet
of nuts with other vegetable foods and cooked
cereals. The Turks mix nuts with their pilaff
of rice and the Armenians add nuts to their
boolghoor, a dish prepared from wheat which
has been cooked and dried.
With the addition of milk or eggs, a flesh-
less diet is not only absolutely safe and sufii-
cient but in every way superior to a flesh diet.
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 187
Nuts May Save the Race
In view of these facts it is most interesting
to know that in nuts, the most neglected of all
well known food products, we find the assur-
ance of an ample and complete food supply
for all future time, even though necessity
should compel the total abandonment of our
present forms of animal industry.
One of the great advantages of the nut is
that with few exceptions it may be eaten di-
rect from the hand of nature without culinary
preparation of any sort. Indeed, the com-
mon custom in offering nuts as dessert is an
acknowledgment that the refined chemistry
of nature's laboratory permits of no improve-
ment by the clumsy methods of the kitchen.
The Nut is a Fruit with a Shell
In the process of ripening, the actinic rays
of the sun digest the crude starch found in the
green fruit and convert it into dehcious fats
and sugars ready for prompt utilization. The
protein of the nut resembles the casein of milk
and requires no cooking to render it readily
digestible. The only preparation the nut
needs is thorough mastication to insure the
188 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
prompt admixture and action of the diges-
tive fluids. Mastication is chiefly a mechani-
cal process and may be very largely substi-
tuted by crushing the nut into a paste or grind-
ing it into a fine meal.
More than fifty years ago it had been
demonstrated that flesh foods are not an es-
sential part of the dietary of man. Cuvier,
the great French naturahst, had stated that
man's natural diet was the same as that of the
chimpanzee and the orang-utan and consisted
of fruits, nuts, soft grains and tender shoots.
The evidence of the scientific accuracy of
Cuvier's statement was so conclusive that the
writer adopted the natural diet and has fol-
lowed it since. He has, during this entire
time, very earnestly advocated the biologic diet
and thousands of people have been persuaded
to adopt it.
In the Battle Creek Sanitarium more than
100,000 sick people besides employees, stu-
dents, friends of patients and guests, number-
ing at least half as many more persons, have
been introduced to a fleshless bill of fare often
with very evident and very great benefit.
In this institution no small interest has
been taken in nuts as a part of nature's scheme
NUTS MAY SAVE THE EACE 189
of human feeding, and a conspicuous place has
been given them in our bill of fare. During
all this period extensive inquiries have been
carried on, having for their purpose the devel-
opment of the nutritive properties of all sorts
of foodstuffs and many thousands of experi-
ments with nuts have been made in food labor-
atories. In the course of these experiments
the simple process of making peanut butter
was hit upon which has since developed into a
great industry, A process for making a vege-
table substitute for mUk, malted nuts, was
also perfected. By request of the U. S. De-
partment of Agriculture, experiments were
carried on to find a vegetable substitute for
meat which resulted in the production of Pro-
tose,.a nut preparation, which to a considerable
degree, resembles meat in appearance, taste
and odor, having a slight fibre like potted
meat. Some hundreds of tons of these nut
foods have been made and used and they have
proved to be complete nutritive substitutes for
meat.
190 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Nuts a Good Food foe Nursing Mothers
AND Infants
The increasing incapacity of American
mothers to provide lacteal nourishment for
their infants has for years been the subject of
much discussion among physicians and has
come to be regarded as a just occasion for
alarm as an evidence of race degeneracy and
a potent cause of infant mortality.
Statistics show that the birth rate is rapidly
falling inJthe United States as well as in all
other civilized countries. At the present rate
of decline no babies wiU be born in the year
2,000.
The American woman is for some reason
losing the capacity for motherhood. It seems
that the maternal fount is drying up, and
with the loss of capacity for feeding her off-
spring the American woman is losing her fe-
cundity. The ability to bear and to feed off-
spring is a physiologic unity. With failure of
one function there is a corresponding decline
in the other.
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 191
The Blight of the Baby Crop
There are born in this country every year
2,500,000 babies. Of these 300,000 die before
they are one year old. The mortality of bot-
tle-fed infants is ten to twenty times as great
as that of those who are breast fed. In other
words, the failure of mothers to nurse their in-
fants is responsible for the death of scores of
thousands of infants annually. Every year
we lose babies enough to people a large city
because they are not supplied with their nat-
ural food, breast mUk, for which cow's milk is
by no means a complete substitute.
A matter of such serious moment has nat-
lu-ally received no small amount of attention.
We have a national society devoted to the
"Prevention of Infant Mortality." Numer-
ous experts have devoted much time to the
study of this question. Many theories and
conjectures have been presented, but few
facts. Dr. Chalmers Watson of Edinburgli
some years ago made extensive feeding experi-
ments upon rats which led him to the conclu-
sion that the increased consumption of meat
was the potent cause of the failure in the geni-
tive power of the British race. He found that
192 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
a meat diet caused in rats within two or three
generations marked degeneration of the sex-
ual glands, shriveling of the breasts and ster-
ility. This eminent physiologist noted that in
the British Islands the decline of the birth
rate had been simultaneous with the marked
increase in the consumption of meat within
the last fifty years.
Recently, additional light has been thrown
upon this subject which is of special interest to
those who are concerned with dietetics.
Interesting Experiments
At the Detroit, Michigan, Woman's Hos-
pital and Infants' Home there has recently
been conducted by Dr. Hoobler an extensive
series of experiments for the purpose of de-
termining the influence of diet upon the nulk
production of a nursing mother. It has long
been known that a simple increase of food or
of fat has no other effect than to make the
mother fat without increasing the flow of
milk. Dr. Hoobler's experiments had for
their purpose to determine the influence of
individual foods and specially arranged dietar-
ies upon the production of milk. Studies were
made of the effects of meat, eggs, cow's milk, a
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 193
strictly vegetable dietary (fruits, grains and
vegetables), and nuts.
The influence of the diet was judged by
the following points:
1. The amount of milk produced.
2. The food value of the milk.
3. The effect upon- the mother as regards
loss or gain of flesh.
It was found that a diet consisting largely
of nuts (fifty per cent.) was far superior to
any other dietary and in every particular.
The amount of milk was larger than the av-
erage (14.8%), the food valiie was greater
(30%), and the mother did better. It was
noted that the mothers "took the diet readily
and in fact enjoyed it." (Jour. Am. Med.
Assn. Aug. 12, 1917.)
The experimenter explicitly states in his
report before the American Medical Associa-
tion (June, 1917), that "nut protein seems
in every way as suitable for elaborating milk
protein as does animal protein." This is an
exceedingly important observation for it dem-
onstrates two very interesting and basic facts :
1. That animal protein may be wholly dis-
pensed with; that is, that a diet from which
meat, milk and eggs are wholly excluded is
194 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
capable of aflfording adequate nourishment
even for a nursing mother.
2. That nuts are necessary to give com-
pleteness to a diet from which mUk, meat and
eggs are excluded.
The special method of researcfi adopted
by Dr. Hoobler provides a most delicate bio-
logic test for the nutrient value of a food. The
test shows the nut to be superior to meat, milk
or eggs or all of these foods together in pro-
ducing the highest degree of nutritive efficien-
cy. It has heretofore been claimed that the
body can make body protein more easily out
of the protein of meat, milk, or eggs, that is,
animal protein of some sort, than from vege-
table protein. It now appears that this is not
true. Nut protein is the best of all sources
upon which the body may draw for its sup-
plies of tissue building and repairing material.
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 195
Low Comparative Cost of Nut»
The high price of nuts is constantly urged
as an objection to their use as a staple. It is
probable that a largely increased demand
would lead to so great an increase in the sup-
ply that the cost of production, and hence the
cost to the consumer, would be decreased.
But even at the present prices the choicest va-
rieties of nuts are cheaper than meats if equiv-
alent food values are compared. This is clear-
ly shown by the following table which indi-
cates the amoimts of various flesh foods which
are equivalent to one pound of walnut meats.
One pound of walnut meats equals in food
value each of the following:
Tounds
Beef loin, lean 4.00
Beef ribs, lean 6.50
Beef neck, lean 9.50
Veal .; 5.50
Mutton leg, lean 4.20
Ham, lean 3.00
Fowls 4.00
Chicken, broilers 10.00
Red Bass 25.00
Trout 4.80
Frogs' legs 15.00
Oysters 13.50
196 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Pounds
Lobsters 22.00
Eggs 8.00
Milk 9.5fi
Evaporated cream 4.00
But the great economic importance of the
encouragement of nut culture in every civil-
ized land is best shown by comparing the
amount of food which may be annually pro-
duced by an acre of land planted to nut trees
and the same area devoted to the production
of beef. The writer is credibly informed that
two acres of land and two years are required
to produce a steer weighing 600 pounds. The
product of one acre for one year would be one-
fourth as much, or 150 pounds of steer. The
same land planted to walnut trees would pro-
duce, if I am correctly informed, an average
of at least 100 pounds per tree per annum
for the first twenty years. Forty trees to the
acre would aggregate 4,000 pounds of nuts,
or 1,000 pounds of walnut meats. The high-
est food value which could be ascribed to the
150 pounds of beef would be 150,000 calories
or food units. The food value of the nut
meats would be 3,000,000 calories, or twenty
times as much food from the nut trees as from
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 197
the fattened steer, and food of the same gen-
eral character, that is protein and fat, but of
greatly superior quality.
One acre of walnut trees, 40 trees to the
acre, will produce every year food equal to any
one of the following items :
20,000 lbs. brook trout
5,000 lbs. beef (eight steers)
16,000 lbs. chicken broilers
34,000 lbs. lobsters
30,000 lbs. oysters
66,000 eggs (5,000 dozen)
7,000 qts. milk
A ton of mutton ( 13 sheep)
250,000 frogs.
And when one acre will do so much, think
of the product of a million acres.
Ten times the product of all the fisheries
of the country.
Half as much as all the poiiltry of the
country.
One-seventh as much as all the beef pro-
duced.
More than twice the value of all the sheep.
Half as much as all the pork.
And many millions of acres may be thus
utilized in nut culture.
198 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
And the walnut is not the only promising
tree. The hickory, the pecan, the butternut,
the filbert, and the pinon are all capable of
producing equal or greater results.
A single acre of nut trees will produce pro-
tein enough to feed four persons a year and
fat enough for twice that number of average
persons. So 25,000,000 acres of nut trees
would more than supply the whole people of
the United States with their two most expen-
sive foodstuffs. Cereals and fresh vegetables,
our cheapest foods, would be needed for the
carbohydrate portion of the dietary. Just
think of it. A little nut orchard 200 miles
square supplying one-third enough food to
feed one hundred million of citizens. The
trouble is the hogs and cattle are eating up
our food supplies. We feed a steer 100
pounds of food and get back only 2.8 pounds.
If we plant 10 pounds of corn we get back
500 pounds. If we plant one walnut we get
back in twenty harvests a ton of choicest food.
In nut culture there is a treasury of wealth
and health and national prosperity and safety
that is at present little appreciated.
Here is a great storehouse of wealth, a
potential food supply which may save the
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 199
world from any suggestion of hunger for cen-
turies to come if properly utUized.
Every man who cuts down a timber tree
should be required to plant a nut tree. A nut
tree has a double value. It produces valuable
timber and yields every year a rich harvest of
food while it is growing.
Every highway should be lined with nut
trees. Nut trees will grow on land on which
no other crop will grow and which is even
worthless for grazing. The pinon flourishes
on the bleak and*barren peaks of the Rockies.
The nut should no longer be considered a
table luxury. It should become a staple ar-
ticle of food and may most profitably replace
the pork and meats of various sorts which are
inferior foods and are recognized as prolific
sources of disease.
Ten nut trees planted for each inhabitant
will insure the country against any possibility
of food shortage. A row of nut trees on each
side of our 3,000,000 miles of country roads
will provide protein for a population of 100,-
000,000. With a vanishing animal industry,
nut-culture offers the only solution of the ques-
tion of food supply. As the late Prof. Virchow
said, "The future is with the vegetarians."
200 the itinerary of a breakfast
Something Must Be Done
When one contemplates the fact that the
meat supply of the world is rapidly diminish-
ing, and realizes that there is no probability
that the diminished supply of animal food-
stuflFs will ever be materially increased but
rather will steadily diminish, the importance
of encouraging nut-culture will be appreciated.
The human body must have for its perfect nu-
trition and maintenance, special proteins which
appear to be found only in a'nimal foods and
nuts. To nuts, then, we must look for the
future sustenance of the race. At least huts
must be used as a supplement to other vege-
table foods,^ and in increasing quantity as the
meat supply decreases.
It is certainly high time that governments,
state and national, were giving attention to
this highly important question. Millions of
nut trees should be planted on public lands,
along railroads and highways, in mountain
regions and other waste places which have
been denuded of their primitive forest growths.
Nut pines, of which, according to Dr. Morris,
there are thirty different species adapted to
all conditions of climate and soil, black wal-
NUTS MAY SAVE THE IlACE 201
nuts and hickories in the north, and in the
south pecans and other subtropical nut trees,
should be planted on an extensive scale. In
the near future vast forests of these precious
food-producing trees will be needed to supply
the nutriment required by teeming millions of
hungry people in this country and Eiu-ope.
Every farmer should prepare to plant a
few acres of nut orchard next spring. There
are millions of second growth hickories of the
pignut and' other worthless varieties growing
in pastures and by the roadside which by graft-
ing with shagbark cuttings may become pro-
lific producers of one of the best of nuts.
Nut growing is certainly destined to be-
come one of the most important of our agri-
cultural industries. Half a century hence the
nut crop will far exceed in volume and in value
our present animal industry.
If the U. S. Government will secure the
planting of ten nut trees for each of its 100,-
000,000 inhabitants, all the pastures may be
converted into corn or wheat fields and all the
packing houses into factories and the flocks
of sheep and herds of swine and cattle may
disappear, and yet no one will suffer from pro-
tein starvation.
202 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
Twenty million acres of land in walnut trees
would suffice to furnish daily one-fourth of a
pound of protein and half a pound of fat, the
equivalent of a pound of beefsteak, and more
than half a pound of butter for every man,
woman and child in the republic. To what
better use could we put our roadsides and a
small slice of our public lands of which hun-
dreds of millions of acres are lying waste and
idle? And lands not fit for other purposes
might be used for some species of nut trees.
Nuts should be eaten at every meal and
made a substantial part of the bill of fare. So
long as the nut is regarded as a dainty, suit-
ble only for dessert, the demand will be limited.
But as its merits come to be appreciated it will
be in greater demand and the industry will
rapidly grow in volume. It is important, how-
ever, that the public should be educated to
look upon this choicest of all nature's products
as a staple food and should give to it its proper
place in the national bill of fare.
The nut is the choicest aggregation of the
materials essential for the building of sound
human tissues, done up in a hermetically sealed
package ready to be delivered by the gracious
hand of Nature to those who are fortunate
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 203
enough to appreciate the value of thia finest
of earth*! bounties.
The Best Nuts
The family of edible nuts is small com-
pared with the great variety of luscious fruits
which abound in all parts of the world.
In this country, something more than a
dozen excellent nuts offer, however, a sufficient
variety to satisfy gustatory needs.
With two or three exceptions, nuts are rich
in fat and protein and low in carbohydrates,
whereas fruits, almost without exception, con-
sist chiefly of carbohydrates, containing very
little protein and almost no fats. Carbohy-
drates in nuts exist almost wholly in the form
of sugar and dextrine, whereas in fruits we
find, in addition, several varieties of acids.
Nuts are the most highly nourishing of all
foodstuflFs. With the exception of the chest-
nut, the peanut, and the litchi nut, the aver-
age nutritive value of nuts in general is about
200 calories to the ounce, or double the value
of an equal quantity of starch or sugar.
Of the nuts which grow in this country, the
most important are the almond, the English
walnut, the pecan and the peanut. The native
204 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
black walnut, the hickory nut, the pinon, the
hazelnut, and the beech-nut are all valuable
nuts which, by cultivation, might furnish enor-
mous additions to our food supply. This is
particularly true of the black walnut.
Among the imported nuts, the most im-
portant are the Brazil nut, the cocoanut, the
pistachio, and the recently introduced litchi
nut.
The Ajlmond
This delicious nut may be placed at the
head of the list as perhaps the finest of aU the
members of the nut family. One-fifth the
weight of the almond consists of protein of
the very finest quality, a larger proportion of
this food element than is found in the best
beefsteak, and it may be added that meat is in
other respects inferior.
Besides, the almond affords more than half
its weight of a most delicious and highly di-
gestible oil, together with about one-sixth its
weight of sugar, sufficient to give to it the
characteristic property which gave rise to the
ancient eulogistic phrase, "as sweet as a nut."
Besides these rich properties, the almond con-
tains a peculiar substance, emulsin, by the aid
of which it is possible to prepare from blanched
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 205
and crushed almonds, with the addition of
water, a most delicious milk or cream, which,
with the addition of a little sugar, very closely
resembles, not only in appearance but also in
nutritive properties, modified cows' milk.
The almond has the advantage over many
other nuts in the fact that the astringent, leath-
ery skin with which it is covered may be eas-
ily removed by the simple process of blanching.
An ounce of almonds blanched and slight-
ly roasted, or crushed and served as a nut
butter, is a most wholesome addition to any
meal, and may be used once or twice a day
with advantage.
The Hickoky Nut and the Pecan
The meat of the shellbark hickory nut is
a most delicious morsel. It is richer in fat than
any other nut with the exception of the pecan,
a variety of the hickory which contains two-
thirds its weight of easily digestible oil, with
15 per cent protein and 11 per cent carbohy-
drate. A pound of hickory nut meats is equal
in nutritive value to more than 4 pounds of
average meat. The pecan contains 4 per cent
more fat and 4 per cent less protein. In food
value, a pound of pecan meats exceeds the
206 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
hickory nut in food value by 200 calories, and
it is the most highly nutritious of all the na-
tural products of the vegetable kingdom. In
fact, with the exception of pure fat or oil,
there is no food substance which offers nutri-
tive material in so concentrated a form.
The Walnut
The native black walnut and its cousin, the
butternut, are among the finest food-produc-
ing trees indigenous to this country. The fat
of walnut meats is nearly three-fifths, and
the protein content is nearly 28 per cent, giv-
ing a nutritive value three times that of fat
meat. A pound of walnuts, in fact, contains
nearly 50 per cent more protein than the same
quantity of beef, and two-thirds as much fat
as a pound of butter. The butternut contains
a little more fat than the walnut, with the
same amount of protein, but barely 3 per cent
of carbohydrate, less than that of any other
nut, a fact which renders the butternut es-
pecially valuable for persons suffering with
diabetes.
The English walnut differs from the black
walnut in containing a little more fat and less
than two-thirds the amount of protein. It is
NUTS MAY SAVE THE RACE 207
also slightly richer in carbohydrates. The
culture of the English walnut is rapidly ex-
tending in California and recently some vari-
eties have been produced which have proveni
hardy in our Northern and Western States, so
there appears to be no reason why the English
or Persian walnut may not be made to grow
almost anywhere its black cousin flourishes.
The black walnut is certainly worthy of
much more attention than it has received. The
difficulty of removing the meat from the thick
shell may be overcome by grafting ordinary
stock with the newly produced thin-shelled
varieties. It is claimed that a walnut tree 10
years old will produce annually 100 pounds
of nuts from which 40 povmds of meats may
be obtained.
Pine Nuts. — The pine nut is a seed pro-
duced in the cones of certain species of pine.
More than thirty different varieties are known,
varying in size from that of a lentil to a horse
chestnut.
The Pinorij which grows in the western
Rockies and the foothills of California, is a
most delicious nut. In composition it is more
than three-fifths fat and contains about two-
thirds as much protein as the almond. As
208 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
foimd in the market, shelled pinons are dirty
and quite unattractive in appearance, but the
nut meats may be easily cleansed by washing
first with ordinary water then with water con-
taining half of one per cent of peroxide of hy-
drogen. This will not only cleanse but disinr
feet the nuts, destroying germs of any sort
with which the kernels may have become in-
fected in their peregrinations from the distant
forest to the dinner table. The nut meats may
be quickly dried by exposure to the heat of
an oven. The flavor of the nuts is improved
by very slight roasting.
The Peanut, when well dried, contains
50% more protein than the best beefsteak be-
sides half its weight of an excellent oil.
Slightly roasted in the shell, the nut is very
wholesome. The salted, roasted peanuts, how-
ever, found in the market, are often over-
roasted, and on this account rather indigestible.
In the form of peanut butter, first prepared by
the writer nearly thirty years ago, the peanut
has come to be used more extensively, per-
haps, than any other nut. When properly
prepared, peanut butter is easily digestible
and highly nutritious. Unfortunately, many
manufacturers increase their profits by using
NUTS MAY SAVE THE BACE 209
inferior and imperfect nuts. Through lack
of care in roasting a certain proportion of the
nuts are burned. The high temperature to
which the fat is exposed produces irritating
decomposition products which disturb diges-
tion.
Instead of roasting the nuts in ordinary
coffee roasters, the usual method, they shovdd
be treated by steam heat only, thus avoiding
a temperatiure high enough to decompose the
fats. Prepared in this way, nut butter is
wholesome as well as palatable and a valuable
addition to the diet.
The protein of the peanut has been shown
by chemical research to belong to the class of
complete proteins, which renders it equal to
the protein of eggs and nulk as a tissue-build-
ing element.
Peanuts are now largely used in the pro-
duction of Malted Nuts, a substitute for milk,
and Protose, a vegetable meat.
The Litchi Nut. — This nut, a native of
China, which has recently been introduced in-
to this country, is a most valuable product. It
is grown in China and Honolulu, and attempts
have been made through the efforts of Mr.
David Fairchild, of the Agricultural Depart-
210 THE ITINERARY OF A BREAKFAST
ment, to introduce the cultivation of the nut
in California. The nuts obtainable in our
market come from China. The characteristic
feature of the nut is the fact that it contains
practically no fat, only a trace of protein, and
nearly four-fifths its weight of carbohydrate
in the form of fruit sugar, similar to the sugar
of honey. It is most delicious in flavor and
supplies the elements generally present only
in very small proportion in other nuts.
The Cocoanut is so well known and so
widely used in confections and otherwise, that
scarcely anything need be said in its behalf. It
should be mentioned, however, that a most
excellent substitute for butter may be pre-
pared from fresh cocoanuts by cutting the
meat of the nut into strips and crushing in a
meat grinder, then soaking the mass for two or
three hours in several times its bulk of warm
water. A rich cream wiU rise to the top. This
is skimmed oflf and worked into a butter-like
mass with an ordinary butter ladle. Butter
prepared in this way is much used by Euro-
peans in tropical countries.
•^U. ^'Vi*-'-^^
