CONFESSIONS OF A NEURASTHENIC
WEBMASTER'S NOTE: This work is presented for historical interest and subject background only. Many of the conclusions, attitudes, and treatments discussed here are those of an "expert" of another era, many of which have been overturned by science or are not acceptable in today's world.
CHAPTER X.
DIETING FOR HEALTH’S SAKE.
Next I must say something about my dietetic ventures. I have at one time and another eaten everything and again eschewed everything in the way of diet, all for the sake of promoting health and longevity. I had read somewhere that a man is simply a reflex of what he puts into his stomach, and also that by judicious eating and drinking he may easily live to be one hundred years old. I started out to reach the century milestone. Why I wanted to attain an unusual age I am unable to explain, for I am sure that my life was not so profitable to myself or to anybody else. But that is another story.
I dieted in various ways. It seemed to be on the “cut and try” plan, for when one course of regimen proved disappointing, I very promptly tried something else—usually the very opposite. I was very fond of coffee, but I read that it was the strongest causative factor in the production of heart disease. In medicine advertisements in the newspapers I[Pg 64] saw men falling dead on the street as a result of heart failure—always the same man, it is true; but that made little difference to me. I cut out both tea and coffee and drank only milk and water. When I got to reading about tuberculous cows and the action of State Boards of Health and public sanitarians in the matter, I became afraid to continue drinking milk. Next I drank only cocoa for a short season.
I took two or three health magazines, but the opinions contained therein were so conflicting that it was a difficult matter for me to follow any of them. For example, in one of them I read that no person who ate pickles, vinegar and condiments could hope to live to a healthy, green old age. Another stated that good vinegar and condiments in moderation caused the gastric fluids to flow and thus materially aided in the process of digestion.
For awhile I was a confirmed vegetarian. The idea of man slaughtering animals to eat was repulsive to me in the extreme. I recalled that the good Creator had in Holy Writ spoken of giving His children all kinds of fruits and herbs for food, but had not said much about[Pg 65] edible animals. An argument against flesh-eating was the fact that some of our strongest animals, the horse, the ox and the elephant, never touch meat. I followed the vegetarian system of dietetics for some time, and while it seemed to agree with me, I had some misgivings as to whether or not it was the best thing for me. The thought happened to occur to me that, after all, we had a few powerful animals that subsist almost wholly upon the animal kingdom. Among these were the lion, the tiger and the leopard. The argument that all the strong animals eat only herbs and fruits was here knocked galley-west. I began eating meat again, although as I now look at my actions in this matter I can see no earthly reason why I should have turned either herbivorous or carnivorous. There was certainly no sense in trying to make a horse or a tiger out of myself.
One day I thought I would look up a few points regarding the relative value of foods from a scientific basis. In my chemistry I ran across a table giving the quantity of water contained in certain foods. I found that about everything I had been eating was the aqueous[Pg 66] fluid served up in one way or another. Here is a part of the table:—
Per cent. water Watermelon .98 Cabbage .92 Carrots .83 Fish .81 Cucumbers .97 Beets .88 Apples .80 Meat .75 That was an eye-opener. I was getting less than 10 per cent. of nourishment in nearly everything that I ate. Thus, I should be obliged to eat nearly a hundred cucumbers and as many heads of cabbage to get one of the real thing. I was afraid that I was imposing upon the good nature of my stomach in asking it to digest so much water and debris in order to get a little nutriment into my system. I thought it would be better to drink the water as such and take my food in a more concentrated form. The body being composed of proportionately so much more fluids than solids, I concluded that plenty of pure water with a minimum quantity of food would be[Pg 67] worthy of trial. For a little while I drank water copiously, and each day ate only an egg and a small piece of toast, with an occasional apple or orange thrown in mainly to fill up.
When a new kind of food—a cereal product, it was supposed to be—appeared on the market and was heralded as a great life-giver, I became one of its faithful consumers. There were some fifteen or twenty of these and I had eaten in succession nearly all of them—I mean my share of them. It read on the boxes: “Get the habit; eat our food,” and I was doing pretty well at it until I met with a discouragement. One day I met a traveling man who told me that in a town in Indiana where there was a breakfast-food factory, hundreds of carloads of corn-cobs were shipped in annually and converted into these tempting foods. My relish for this article of diet left me instanter.
I partook of one kind of dietary for a while and then changed to something so entirely different that my stomach began to rebel in earnest. My appetite became very capricious. Sometimes I got up at one or two in the morning and went to a night restaurant nearby and would try my hand, or rather my stomach, on[Pg 68] a full meal at this most unseasonable hour. Then at times quite unseemly I would get such an insatiable appetite for onions, peanuts, or something, that it was only appeased by hunting up the thing desired. I began taking syrup of pepsin to artificially digest my food and thus take some of the burden off my stomach. A friendly druggist took sufficient interest in me to inform me that there was not enough pepsin in the ordinary digestive syrups and elixirs to digest a mosquito’s dinner. When asked why this ferment was omitted from such preparations, the druggist confided to me in a whisper: “Pepsin is a drug that costs money, while diluted molasses is cheap.”
As I had apparently not made much of a success at dieting myself, I thought I would consult a physician who called himself a specialist on “metabolism.” I first thought the name had some reference to metals, but I found out differently. This man gave me what he was pleased to term a “test breakfast,” for the purpose of diagnosing my case. Now, good friends, if you never had a “test breakfast” from one of these ultra-scientific men,[Pg 69] you are just as well off in blissful ignorance of it. Take my word for it, it is also calculated to put your good nature to the test. This doctor found out everything that I was eating and then told me to eat just the opposite.
A few weeks later I went to see another specialist of the same kind. I wanted to compare notes. This man, too, inquired carefully into what I was eating. I knew at once that he wanted to prescribe something different. Sure enough, when I told him what my bill-of-fare now was he threw up his hands and said: “Man, those things will kill you!” He told me to go back to my former diet.
So many doctors act on the presumption that we are doing the wrong thing. It reminds me of this little conversation between a mother and her nurse-maid:—
Mother—“Martha, what is Johnnie doing?”
Martha—“I don’t know, mum.”
Mother—“Well, find out what he is doing and tell him to stop it this very minute.”
By the way, I learned a few things in an experimental process about the great subject of alimentation. No matter much what we eat, the system appropriates what elements it[Pg 70] wants. The taste bulbs were planted in our mouths for a useful purpose. Our taste is about the surest index to the body’s requirements in the matter of nourishment. If our appetite calls for a thing and it tastes all right, it will do us good whether it be carbo-hydrate or hydro-carbon or something else.
