THE MIND POWER-PLANT
A USEFUL ANALOGY
All of the functions of the body are operated by something very much akin to electricity – mental energy – so that aside from the fermentation which gluttony makes possible, the mere drag of handling of dead material in the body, that the body cannot use, for two or three days, is a wasteful draught on the available mental capacity.
Using an electric power-plant as analogous to the Mind Power-Plant of the brain, and a trolley railroad as analogous to the machinery of the body – analogies which are very close by consistent similarity – the loading of the stomach with unprepared food, as in gluttony, is like loading flat cars with pig iron and running them around the line of the road in place of passenger cars, thereby using up valuable energy and wearing out the equipment without any profit resulting from the expenditure.
To those who are familiar with the modern electric power-plant the analogy between it and the human individual equipment, or Mind Power-Plant, seems very remarkable.
To those, however, who have not visited an electric power-plant a description is necessary.
DESCRIPTION OF A MODERN ELECTRIC POWER-PLANT
Fuel, of course, is the source of the power. Furnaces which are capable of producing heat with the least consumption of fuel, tubes within the boilers that permit the freest possible contact of the heat produced and the water to be turned into steam, steam pipes that are flexible and yet strong, machinery that moves with the least friction in order to concentrate and utilise the power of the steam, and dynamos out of which electricity is evolved, together with auxiliary pumps and hoists and blowers and whatnot other devices to help create, control and economise the energy, are the essential parts of an electric power-plant. To insure economy and accuracy these are made as nearly automatic as possible.
At one end of the furnace house there is sunk in the cement floor a large iron scoop or tray into which cartloads of lump coal are dumped. This scoop-shaped receptacle is also the platform of a weighing machine so that each load is weighed. In the bottom of the scoop there is a trap-door, which, being opened, permits the coal to drop through between the teeth of a crusher where the large lumps are reduced, usually to the size of a small nut.
From the crusher the coal falls into the buckets of an endless chain-hoist and is conveyed aloft to great hopper-shaped bins which occupy the entire space under the roof over the furnaces. Leading back from each bin to the constantly moving grate bars of the furnace underneath is a pipe which delivers the crushed coal to the grate bars and distributes it evenly over their surface as fast as it can be received into the furnace, regulated, of course, by the consumption that is going on inside the furnace.
To accomplish this automatic feeding each set of grate bars is constructed in hinged sections, and forms a wide endless iron belt which revolves and carries the coal within the cavity of the furnace.
The coal crusher, bucket hoist, movable grate bars, ash collectors and sifters, pumps, blowers, lights and all other utilities of the plant, as well as the great travelling crane which can hoist and carry many tons' weight – any part of the enormous dynamos – from place to place, are operated by electricity which is generated in the dynamos.
Automatic gauges that measure and indicate, and switch-boards that regulate the energy created and stored in the dynamos play important parts in the economy and working of the plant and are analogous to appetite and taste in man.
ANALOGY ILLUSTRATED
The full analogy may be best illustrated by arranging the similar functions of the two energy-creating machines opposite each other in parallel columns.
TELL-TALE EXCRETA
It is unfortunate that the perpetuation of early ignorant abuses of Nature's pure intentions has led to a too prudish attitude toward the one infallible evidence of health conditions as shown by the refuse of repair and digestion, as it is only by the excreta that ultimate indication of the results of nutrition are observable. They are the reliable report relative to the most important thing in health – digestion – and they must be understood in order to be read.
There is no knowledge so valuable in its relation to health as that which enables one to read health bulletins by means of the excreta.
Different foods contain different elements of waste material and to be able to identify or judge the economic value of food previously consumed a knowledge of its digestion-ash is essential.
A child should be taught the difference between healthy and unhealthy excreta in order to be on guard at the first warning of disorder, rather than be allowed to remain ignorant until disease has taken firm hold of the system. The knowledge is not complicated and can be easily acquired by even young children.
When the possibility of perfect protection in the matter of nutrition is generally known, one mission of the physician will be to teach prevention of abuses of feeding by evidence of the excreta.
The healthy fæces of many wild animals is comparatively dry, odourless and cleanly; and a farm barn yard or a decently kept city stable is not an offence to even prudish prejudice.
Not so the vicinage of an open receptacle for the waste of human indigestion.
In animals, offensive egesta are evidence of digestive disturbance owing to some unintelligent feeding on the part of attendants; in humans the cause and effect of offensive excreta are the same.
When a race-or work-animal shows digestive disturbance the least intelligent owner or keeper knows that it is not fit for work or racing, and yet this symbol of unfitness is common to the human race.
One of the most noticeable and significant results of economic nutrition gained through careful attention to the mouth-treatment of food, or buccal-digestion, is, not only the small quantity of waste obtained but its inoffensiveness. Under best test-conditions the ashes of economic digestion have been reduced to one-tenth of the average given as normal in the latest text-books on Physiology. The economic digestion-ash forms in pillular shape and when released these are massed together, having become so bunched by considerable retention in the rectum. There is no stench, no evidence of putrid bacterial decomposition, only the odour of warmth, like warm earth or "hot biscuit." Test samples of excreta, kept for more than five years, remain inoffensive, dry up, gradually disintegrate and are lost. The following observation by an eminent eye specialist and litterateur illustrates the opening paragraph of this chapter.
PERIODICITY
The question of "when" or "how often" the solid excreta should be voided or released is one that immediately presents itself when the subject is under discussion. The common opinion is that "once-a-day" periodicity is the proper and only healthy thing, and should a day pass there would be immediate fear of "constipation."
Under the best test conditions, before referred to, the ash accumulated in sufficient quantity to demand release only at the end of six, eight, or ten days, the longer periods of rest being the evidence of the best economic and health results.
Under ordinary conditions of carelessness and strenuous environment, say an exciting and exacting city occupation, twice a week is as often as one should accumulate a deposit of digestion-ash and feel sure that the strain on the system is not excessive and dangerous. Young people seem to thrive even when delivering daily a large quantity of smelly excreta; but it is an abuse of the "ten-horse reserve"10 with which the human engine is supplied; and along in the "forties" or the "fifties" or the "sixties" the body shows signs of premature wear when it should be but in its prime.
Another important matter should be mentioned in this exchange of sanitary confidences. When the ashes of digestion are dumped the body should assume the shape of the letter Z. It is the natural position of primitive man (squatting on his heels), and the body was originally constructed on that plan. If otherwise poised (sitting erect) the delivery of digestion-ash is performed with the same difficulty as would be experienced when trying to force a semi-solid through a bent or a kinked hose.
The publication of the observation of Dr. – , here following, is a breakaway from the prudery of a diseased and disgusting age, – a protest jointly shared by the scientific observer and the voluntary test-subject, whose only aim in the pursuit of the study to "a finish" is the ultimate benefit of the human race.
SCIENTIFIC OBSERVATION OF A LITERARY TEST-SUBJECT
"During his sojourn in Washington in July, 1903, I saw much of Mr. – , and in a very intimate way. The weather at that period was very hot, sometimes near 100°, and very sultry. For ten days or two weeks in the midst of this season he was busily engaged in constructive writing, turning out on an average some eight thousand words on his typewriter daily, which meant a close application for ten or fourteen hours each day. He usually began his work at from two to five o'clock in the morning, continuing often until three or four o'clock in the afternoon, when we would commonly go together to a ball game, which he enjoyed with the enthusiasm of a boy of twelve. Later in the evening he would resume his work for from one to three hours, retiring at from ten to about midnight. His food consisted of a glass of milk with a trace of coffee, and corn 'gems,' four of which he consumed in the twenty-four hours. Occasionally he would add in very hot weather a glass of lemonade. There was at no time any evidence of mental or physical fatigue. That such an amount of work, with the maintenance of perfect health, could be accomplished on such a small quantity of food can be accounted for only on the assumption of a complete assimilation of the ingested material. As the degree of combustion is indicated by the ashes left, so the completeness of digestion is to be measured by the amount and character of the intestinal excreta. A conclusive demonstration of thorough digestion in Mr. – 's case was afforded me. There had, under the régime above mentioned, been no evacuation of the bowels for eight days. At the end of this period he informed me that there were indications that the rectum was about to evacuate, though the material he was sure could not be of a large amount. Squatting upon the floor of the room, without any perceptible effort he passed into the hollow of his hand the contents of the rectum. This was done to demonstrate human normal cleanliness and inoffensiveness; neither stain nor odour remaining, either in the rectum or upon the hand.11 The excreta were in the form of nearly round balls, varying in size from a small marble to a plum. These were greenish-brown in colour, of firm consistence, and covered over with a thin layer of mucus; but there was no more odour to it than there is to a hot biscuit.
"The whole mass weighed 56 grams. The next day there was a further deposit of the same kind of dry-waste, making 135 grams (about 4-3/4 ounces) for the nine days. It seems to me there could be no more conclusive evidence of complete digestion and assimilation than this. The existence of perfect nutrition is indicated by his ability to continue, without fatigue and under trying conditions, work which could only be accomplished in an ideal condition of health.
"Washington, D. C., July 31, 1903."
WHAT SENSE? TASTE 12
The Sense of Taste has a value in relation to nutrition that has not fully been appreciated.
Taste has been considered the lowest, in usefulness, of all the senses.
On the contrary, if properly understood, taste is one of the most important of all the faculties man possesses.
Taste has lacked appreciation, for the reason that it has been supposed that it catered to sensuality, in the vulgar sense, and performed the function of devilish temptation rather than that of natural invitation and protection.
Upon an examination, that any one can make for himself, however, it is revealed that taste is the faithful servant of appetite; the sentinel of the stomach, of the intestines, of the tissues and of the brain, whose guidance and warning, if heeded, will give heretofore unknown enjoyment of eating, and at the same time insure perfect health and the maximum of strength.
TASTE IS THE GUIDE AND GUARD OF NUTRITION
The more we learn, the more evident it is that there is a Perfect Way locked, or, rather, enfolded, in all of Nature's secrets, and that it is intended that man shall sometime discover them.
Taste, in its normal condition, when allowed to direct or advise, serves several important functions, not the least of which is as first-assistant to Appetite. Appetite craves the kind of nourishment the body needs, invites to eating, gives enjoyment during the whole time needed for the fluids of the mouth and the stomach to do their part of the digestive process. Taste ceases when the food is ready for the stomach and thereafter fails to recognise the indigestible sediment which remains in the mouth after nutriment has been extracted; and, in these discriminations, if consulted and obeyed, Taste and Appetite prevent indigestible matter from entering the system to burden and clog the lower intestines, form deposits in bone, cartilage and kidneys, inflame the tissues, and otherwise create conditions favourable to the propagation of the microbes of disease.
The normal sensitiveness of taste can be recovered, if already lost, in the course of a week, or two weeks at most, by means of the stimulating and regenerating influence of natural body-repair, if the method of taste and appetite cultivation recommended in this book is followed.
Those who now enjoy good health will find a new joy in living when they have discovered the intelligent use of taste and submit the fuel of their Mind Power-Plant and strength to the analysis and selection of Nature's instinctive agents.
LATEST DEFINITION
Dr. William T. Harris, in his latest contribution to the "International Education Series," Psychologic Foundations of Education, defines the presently appreciated value of the sense of taste, as follows: "The lowest form of special sense is taste, which is closely allied to nutrition. Taste perceives the phase of assimilation of the object, which is commencing with the mouth. The individuality of the object is attacked and it gives way, its organic product or inorganic aggregate suffering dissolution – taste perceives the dissolution. Substances that do not yield to the attack of the juices of the mouth have no taste. Glass and gold have little taste as compared with salt or sugar. The sense of taste differs from the process of nutrition in the fact that it does not assimilate the body tasted, but reproduces ideally the energy that makes the impression on the sense organ of taste. Even taste, therefore, is an ideal activity, although it is present only when the nutritive energy is assimilating – it perceives the object in a process of dissolution.
"Smell is another specialisation which perceives dissolution of objects in a more general form than taste. Both smell and taste perceive chemical changes that involve dissolution of the object."
If this is the recognised estimate of taste, which is true as widely as I have been able to inquire, both among physicians and among the latest books on health, it is certainly a case of neglected appreciation such as the world has not witnessed up to the present time.
PRESUMED CAUSES OF DISEASES
On the undisputed authority of physiologists it is known that all diseases are made possible by derangement which is favourable to the propagation of the microbes of disease, or by deposits of inharmonious matter which are not thrown off.
Derangement of all the substance of the internal body is effected mainly, and probably entirely, by deposit of indigestible food or of tissue which is broken down and is not thereafter expelled from the system by the ordinary means provided for the discharge of waste.
These inharmonious deposits which cause so much direct and indirect trouble are mainly, and probably entirely, the result of excess of eating, or of wrong eating, so that the digestive organs of the body cannot take care of what is forced on them; or, of admitting substances which they are powerless to make into good blood or discharge by the regular means provided by nature.
Right eating and right food are, then, the all-important considerations of health, as far as the tissues are concerned; and, as the tissues are themselves the stored food or fuel of the brain and the nerve centres, the importance of perfect nutrition extends to the most vital functions and interests of life.
TARDY APPRECIATION
All experience warns against overeating and improper eating as the most common causes of disease; and troubles of the stomach and intestines are known to be the parents of all other bodily ills; yet no fixed guide has been set to determine what is "overeating" and what is "improper food." The reason for this is probably because no two bodies require the same quantity or kind of nourishment, and, "What is one man's food is another man's poison."
Nature has not been so unkind, however, as to leave man without a means of knowing just how to gauge the quantity of food required for her best service, and probably, when we learn the secret, has equally well provided us with certain discrimination relative to the quality of food that is best for harmonic development.
Investigation never fails to find provision for both guard and guide in all of Nature's plans and man's nutrition is of such importance that she surely has not left it out of the list of the protected.
Of the power of taste to discriminate accurately in the matter of comparative value of foods I am not sure as yet, although I am confident the power rests somewhere within our reach if we can only discover it; but I have the best evidence possible that taste has the power to advise accurately in the matter of the kind of food and the quantity required; and, having selected what it wants or needs out of a morsel of food, rejects the rest by ceasing to taste.
The message or warning which taste gives in connection with eating is, "THAT WHILE ANY TASTE IS LEFT IN A MOUTHFUL OF FOOD IN PROCESS OF MASTICATION OR SUCKING, IT IS NOT YET IN CONDITION TO BE PASSED ON TO THE STOMACH; AND WHAT REMAINS AFTER TASTE HAS CEASED IS NOT FIT FOR THE STOMACH."
WHAT SENSE?
When one comes to think about it, what sense is there in throwing away a palatable morsel of food when the taste is at its best, or while taste lasts at all, even if the purpose of the meal is merely to contribute to the pleasure of eating?
"Some people live to eat and others eat to live" is a saying that is familiar to everyone, and yet how few appreciate that the perfection of living includes the perfection of both these desiderata!
Such is the impetuosity of uncultivated or perverted human tendencies that the desire for acquisition, sometimes called greed, impels one to swallow one mouthful of food to take in another, without ever dreaming that the very last contribution of taste to the last remnant of a delicious morsel is like the last flicker of a candle, more brilliant than any of the preceding ones. In eating, the last taste, when saliva, the medium of taste, is most perfectly in possession of the solution, is better than all the other stages of the process. It is the choicest and sweetest expression of the incident, as related to each mouthful. Then why not court it and obey, thereby, Nature's first law of health?
Before proceeding further with a description of its functions it may be well to state briefly the certain result of following the guidance and heeding the warnings of taste.
Taste determines the mastication of food so that the requisite quantity of saliva and other juices of the mouth are added in transit, so that the stomach and the intestines will have the least possible to do in the matter of conversion of the food to blood, and so that the brain and nerve centres will be taxed the least possible to assist the stomach and intestines in their work.
If Taste is heeded in its invitation and its warnings, that which passes into the stomach will be so suitable and ready for nourishment of the body that the smallest possible quantity will serve the purpose and almost no waste will be left to tax and disease the lower intestines, while the absence of fatally inharmonious deposits in the tissue and bone will cease to exist in proportion to the skill with which one interprets the warnings of Taste, and in response to the care taken in following them.
DISEASE PREVENTED
It is said that none of the microbes of disease can live an instant, and hence cannot propagate, in a perfectly healthy human tissue. It is possible to secure the perfectly healthy human tissue, to both the generally healthy and to those who are afflicted, unless too far gone to reform, by keen attention to the direction of Taste, and the reward of the attention is manifold. The actual pleasure derived from eating under the direction of the method suggested herein cannot be equalled by any other means.
While cheerfulness, hopefulness, good nature, charity and all the mental good qualities are splendid forced-draughts of oxygenised impulse that assist the stomach in consuming and otherwise in taking care of any erratic or excessive food supply, and are able to help take care of a moderate glut of material; Taste, if allowed to serve its full purpose, furnishes its own draught of cheerfulness by means of the very pleasure it distributes, and at the same time it prevents, instead of inducing, gluttony.
There are two ways of putting a limit to a meal – to eating. One – the wrong one – comes in the shape of a protest on the part of a too full stomach while the appetite is yet ravenous. The right one comes naturally from a perfectly satisfied feeling – a ceasing of desire for anything more, no matter how previously alluring to the palate, before the stomach is overburdened. The former is evidence of glut, or gluttony, and the latter is Nature's way, for which there is every desired reward.
SOME EASY EXPERIMENTS
It is a very easy matter to prove for one's self that ample saliva is essential to the most economic and perfect digestion; and also, that no two mouthfuls of food require the same quantity.
Experiment will be doubly interesting in that it reveals pleasure of taste in eating that has not before been enjoyed.
The function of saliva in digestion has commonly been understood to be the lubrication of the food so as to enable it to be swallowed. The truth is that it is the first and most important solvent necessary to digestion, the good offices of which are to separate, make alkaline, neutralise, saponify, and otherwise render the succeeding processes within the delicate organs of the body as easy as their delicacy requires, and thus not to strain and inflame them into festering breeding grounds for the myriads of microbes of diseases which we are compelled to draw in with every breath of air we inhale.
Drawn into a perfectly clean and healthy organism, some microbes aid and are a part of life, but taken into a system clogged by dirt and strained by overwork, these same harmless creatures become agents of destruction. Bacilli may be either friends or enemies and we have the choice.
NATURAL LIFE LIMIT
It is said that the natural life of all animals, left to pursue a natural existence by being protected from the enemies of their species, and in reach of sufficient nourishment, is six times the growing period. If this is so no man need die or move his soul to another habitation until he has occupied the present one for from one hundred and ten to one hundred and forty years. If the proper use of the instincts and senses be conserved in children, the growing period may be prolonged to probably twenty-five years with a resultant tenure of life of one hundred and fifty years.
I have personally interviewed a patriarch, who, at sixty-five, was awaiting death with constant expectancy, and was helping to attain it by every sort of favourable suggestion. It happened that he had his portrait taken in a photograph gallery on his sixty-fifth birthday as a last souvenir to be distributed among his friends. Shortly after that, in the fruity and salubrious foothills of the Pacific Coast of California, he met with accidental suggestion which changed his habits of living, and, very soon, his attitude toward life and death.
I sat with the patriarch on his one hundredth birthday in the same photograph gallery, examined the portraits of sixty-five and one hundred years, conversed with the subject in a low tone of voice, looked upon a man who felt that he was yet in middle life, and in possession of an enjoyment of life that he said had never been equalled in the early years of his bondage to the ignorance and impatience of youth.13
STUDY NATURE
Watch good Nature, observe her methods, try to imitate them by way of experiment, and you will find that, as heretofore stated, there is a perfect way enfolded in all of Nature's problems and that man has only to discover the way to have it freely accessible to him.
Watch a child take its nourishment in natural manner. The sucking action is like the act of mastication in that it excites the glands which supply fluids to the mouth. Whatever number of these fluids there may be, I will class them all as saliva. Certainly in the case of milk being taken into the stomach, saliva is not needed to lubricate it. It is, therefore, reasonable to suppose that saliva is intended as a part of the mixture necessary to digestion; that is, to the conversion of the food into nutriment.
In the case of children nourished at the breast of the mother – the only natural way – the food is already alkaline and ready for digestion in the stomach and intestines as related previously.
Remember also that, in the case of invalids with very weak stomachs, physicians recommend taking milk and broth through a straw or through a glass tube. Taking fluid this way requires a sucking action of the mouth and thereby induces a flow of saliva. Of course, the fluid is better digested than when drunk because Nature's way has been followed, and it is no wonder that milk and often soups of different kinds are indigestible, if taken contrary to the natural way, except in digestive systems which have not yet exhausted their ten-horse-power resistance capacity.
I have tried milk and soups upon a stomach trained down so fine that it was like a pair of apothecary's balances, sensitive to the least inharmony, to find that if they are drunk there is a mild protest – a sort of a shrug of the shoulders, as it were – and that when the same liquids have been moved about in the mouth for the time necessary to naturally excite the Swallowing Impulse, they have passed into the stomach without the owner being conscious afterwards of their presence except by feeling of complete satisfaction.
It would seem, therefore, that the perfection of nutrition requires the proper mixture of saliva added to all food substances, and that mastication is not only a means of separation in order to give saliva a chance but a valve opener for salivary glands in order to make the proper solution for the stomach; and, that taste exists, in one of its important functions, to indicate how long the process should continue and when it has effected its healthful purpose.
Any one who tries it, no matter how perverted the taste has become by abuse, will find that Nature is not only kind but alluring. Meat or bread, without sauces or butter, are tasteless, in a degree, when first taken into the mouth dry. It is for this reason that butter, sauces, salt, sugar, etc., are used to make them what is called palatable. It is the salt or the sugar or other spices in these which excites the palate immediately when the dry morsel would not do so in such marked degree.
If you take the meat or the dry bread and masticate sufficiently, allowing the nutriment to become thoroughly solved by the saliva and separated from the dirt, – the indigestible, tasteless remainder – the taste will become more and more delicious as the saliva gets possession of the solution, and will have a final delicacy which sauces cannot equal, as a reward for pursuing Nature's invitation and rendering her the appointed service.
An easy experiment that will prove the above statement to be correct is to take a variety of breads, white and brown, toasted and untoasted, crust and soft, and afterwards some of the same soaked in soup or milk, or, in the juice of whatever meat you happen to have at your meal.
Taken dry, toast will only reduce and disappear, without effort of swallowing, into the stomach, leaving no tasteless dregs behind, after about thirty actions of the jaw. This is probably the reason why toast is an invalid's best diet; because mastication is required to crush it, saliva is liberated by the acts of mastication, less saliva is required to prepare toast for the stomach than any other form of bread, and therefore, the proper conditions are attained perforce, and easy digestion is promoted. Crust of French bread will do the same by means of about forty jets let loose by mastication; the soft inside of French bread will require fifty, or more; crust and inside of biscuits and of "home-made" bread somewhat more than the French bread; while "Boston brown bread" requires as many as seventy to eighty jets turned on by action of mastication to dissolve it.
The above refers to moderate mouthfuls. The process is incomplete until all is dissolved, taste ceases, and natural swallowing occurs.
Will it not be observed that mastication, as far as crushing or mangling is concerned, has small part in the reduction of "Boston brown bread," and little seeming use except to turn on the jets of the solving saliva, for the material itself is soft, and sometimes "mushy"? Saliva has little use as a lubricant in this case, for the reason that the brown bread experimented with can be easily swallowed when first taken in the mouth. Abundant experiment has been made by those to whom "Boston brown bread" was formerly little less than a poison, to prove the assertion that, sufficiently mixed with saliva, it is perfectly digestible and that the delicious taste of the bread after forty or fifty bites (⅓ to ½ minute) gets sweeter and sweeter, and attains its greatest sweetness and most delicate taste at the very last, when it has dissolved into liquid form and most of it has escaped into the stomach.