The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure Part 5

My attendance upon the severely sick became more taxing because of the exceeding concern in the immediate environment, that the pangs of starvation were being added to the pangs of disease.

As none of my professional brethren ever manifested any desire to be enlightened on this subject, I did not volunteer, since I felt the wiser way would be to wait an adequate amount of evidence before making any public announcements of presumed important discoveries in practical hygiene.

My experiences in the rooms of the sick had convinced me, long before I gave up my morning meal, that death from starvation was so remote as practically to exclude it from consideration; hence with the great improvement that was the immediate result in my own case I could from the first speak with a "thus saith the Lord" emphasis on the safety of going through a forenoon "on an empty stomach."

As no one could come into my office without my being able to give the a.s.surance of at least some relief that would be immediately realized, that would be felt even to the finger-ends, my office became more and more a lecture-room, a school of health culture for the education of missionaries, for a friend-to-friend uplifting into higher life.

All I needed for my own sake was that missing link to clothe my words with all the desired power. With so much to enliven, to encourage, it was as if I were sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the storm of ridicule and epithet to which I was subjected.

Once in a while Nature would favor me with a miracle in the way of an inspiring change. A man in the early prime of life had reached a condition in which he habitually rejected every breakfast. Two trips to Europe and a year in the hands of a Berlin specialist for the stomach failed to relieve; and yet he was not so disabled as to prevent him attending to his ordinary business affairs; the stomach seemed to be eccentric in being merely irritable without structural disease.

I asked him if he felt that the breakfasts which would not stay down were doing him any good. To this he had to a.s.sent that they were not. I told him if the breakfast only to result in a heave-offering were omitted he would be better able for his duties of the forenoon. He began at once to raise his brows.

It was not difficult for him to see that if no breakfasts were put into his stomach none would have to be thrown up with sickening effort, and hence he could not but be better for the forenoon services if the sick spell were omitted. The fact was, the breakfast would soon be rejected, and then the hours of rest would enable the stomach to handle the dinner without the repet.i.tion of the morning sickness.

Only a few words from me of this kind, and thence on there were no breakfasts; and from the first all the complaints from the stomach ceased, and he used to remark that he began to get well as soon as I began to talk to him.

Now this man with his family was a recent arrival in this city, and his first intimate acquaintance was one who had been relieved of weekly headaches of a skull-bursting kind through the no-breakfast plan--thus the missionary contagion.

For many years I was content to allow people to have the morning coffee or tea as desired, with the largest liberty of dinner gluttony; and this was really the only means possible for the introduction of an innovation so radical. To have given nothing to relieve the morning want for something in the stomach to set the wheels of life in motion would have been a failure from the first. With all the coffee break of the fast was attended by so marked an increase of cheer and general strength, and the enjoyment of the general meal at or before noon was so immeasurably increased, that the method spread as a contagion against which professional denouncement and ridicule were in vain.

And with all converts I found that the experiences in the penalties of gluttony were so enlightening, so restraining, that there was apparently little need to say much more as to the quant.i.ty or quality of food, what and how to eat.

The enthusiasm of all over the forenoons of power and comfort, to be followed by a luxury of meals never before realized, fully satisfied my pride in professional success; and all the more because the penalties of gluttony were seldom charged to my account.

It was only after the missing link was found and added to the chain that I could fully realize the enormous waste of strength and the mental and moral degradation from eating food in excess, because the enticements of relish are taken for the actual needs of the body. Think of it! Actual soul power involved in ridding the stomach and bowels of the foul sewage of _food in excess_, _food_ in a state of decomposition, to be forced through nearly two rods of bowels and largely at the expense of the soul itself!!

Oh, gluttony, with its jaws of death, its throat an ever-open gate to the stomach of torment!

VII.

When I finally arrived at a point of vision where I could see the stomach as a mere machine, that it could no more act without brain-power than brawny arms with their nerves severed could wield a sledge, I began a study of digestion with new interest, with a view to save power from undue waste.

It is the _sense of relish_, of flavor, that is behind all the woes of indigestion, and not the sense of hunger. The sweetened foods; the pies, cakes, puddings, etc., that are eaten merely from a sense of relish after the sense of hunger has become fully sated, and generally by far more of the plainer foods than waste demands, is the wrecking sin at all but the humblest tables.

_Rapid eating_, by which there is imperfect solution of the tougher solids and a filling of the stomach before the hunger sense can naturally be appeased, is the additional evil to insure serious consequences to the stomach and brain.

For merely _practical purposes_, all that is necessary to know about the digestive process is that by a peculiar arrangement of the muscle forces of the stomach the food is made to revolve in such a way as to wipe the exuding digestive juice from the walls; that, therefore, the finer the division of the solids by mastication the more rapid the solution to the absorbing condition. That meat in finer particles will sooner dissolve than meat in large, solid ma.s.ses is clearly seen.

It will be recalled that digestive conditions are really soul conditions, as if there were actual wires extending from the very depths of the soul itself to each individual gland, with power to ebb and flow as the mental condition shall determine.

It may be presumed that _power_ to digest is the power to revolve food in the stomach and the power to generate the gastric juice as determined by the power of the brain, the glands themselves not holding their juice in mere reserve, but power to generate in reserve. Thus it is seen that food in excess is in every way exhaustive as the immediate result.

These may be called the subjective conditions of digestion. Now let us consider some of the objective conditions from the standpoint of moral science. What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing things on the earth, so is that shining seen in other faces that reaches the depths of the human soul with brightness and life.

_Overeating_ is so universal from the general ignorance of practical physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in other souls with whom relations are intimate.

As a matter of extraneous _digestive aid_, a cheerful soul in a family is an abiding source of digestive energy to all in social contact. It affects the digestive energy of all, as the breeze the fire, as the clearing sky the low spirits from the gloom of chill and fogs. The eyes that do not glisten with higher life, the lines upon the face that are not alive with cheerful, kindly emotions, the frowning look, the word that cuts deeply, have their repressive effects upon digestive energy within their remorseless reach.

The _moral science_ of digestive energy is a new study; it is not known as a factor in the process of digestion; but the time is coming when cheer of soul will become a study as of one of the finer arts, and then human homes will not be so much like lesser lunatic asylums without the restraining hands of a wise superintendent.

Life will be different in homes when all within the age of reason shall realize that their words without kindness, their looks without cheer, are forces that tend to physical and moral degradation, really nothing less than death-dealing energies upon all lives within their reach. The power of human kindness has ever been a favorite theme with the moralist, but it has not been considered with reference to its power upon digestion.

_Anger_ is mental and moral chaos; it is insanity; it is revenge in the fury of a hurricane; and sensitive natures have the greatest need for the largest measure of health in order that these human tempests shall be under larger restraint.

The gloomy, the irritable, the dyspeptic Christian is a dispenser of death and not of the higher life, and his religious faith does not spread by the contagiousness of example: and because of the solemnity, of the exceeding importance of his sense of the possibilities of the life beyond death he has all the more need to have that physical and moral strength that his daily walk, conversation, and mien may be consistent, forceful, and uplifting.

To this great end study, study to see _cheer_ everywhere, and above all things to possess it. Good health is also contagious, and, no less than disease, has a reflex impression. Only above the chill dampness, the fogs, and clouds is the clear sky with the blazing sun. There are undreamed-of possibilities of getting above the worriments of life through an intelligent understanding and application of the physiology of cheer as the chief force in the life of the body, mind, and soul.

VIII.

Having finally arrived at the conviction that from the first wink in the morning until the last at night strength departs, not in any way to be kept up by food, that from the last wink at night until the first in the morning strength returns, I became fully endowed to tell all the sick and afflicted in the most forceful way that with the strength of the brain recharged by sleep is all the labor of the day performed, and that no labor is so taxing upon human muscles that it cannot be performed longer without fatigue when the breakfast is omitted.

That this is possible came to me as a great surprise and in this way: a farmer with a large a.s.sortment of ailments came to me for relief through drugs. He was simply advised to take coffee mornings, rest mainly during forenoons, and when a normal appet.i.te and power to digest would come he would be able to work after resuming his breakfasts. This man, who was more than fifty years old, was the first manual laborer to be advised to observe a morning fast.

Several months after, he came to me with news that his ailing had all departed, and that he had been able to do harder work on his coffee breakfasts than ever before with breakfasts of solids. And if he so worked with power during forenoons, why not others? Why not all?

This no-breakfast plan was so contagious that I was not long in finding that farmers in all directions were beginning to go to their labors with much less food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and in all cases with added power of muscle.

Only recently three farmers went into the field one hot morning to cradle oats, the most trying of all work on the farm; two of them had their stomachs well filled with hearty foods. With profuse sweating and water by the quart because of the chemical heat arising from both digestion and decomposition, these toiled through the long hours with much weariness. The third man had all his strength for the swinging of the cradle, the empty stomach not even calling for water; with the greatest ease he kept his laboring friends in close company and when the noon hour came he was not nearly so tired as they.

A man who had been a great sufferer from indigestion, a farmer, found such an increase of health and strength from omitting the morning meal that he became able to cradle rye, a much heavier grain than oats, during an entire forenoon "on an empty stomach." Later he went from one December to the following April on one daily meal, and not only with ease, but with a gain in weight in addition. During these months this man did all the work usual in farm-houses, besides riding several hours over a milk route during the forenoons.

In this city resides a carpenter, formerly subject to frequent sicknesses, who for the past five years has walked nearly a mile to the shop where he is employed without even as much as a drink of water for breakfast; and this not only without any sicknesses, but with an increase in weight of fifteen pounds also.

More than a dozen years ago a farmer who was not diseased in any way, but who had been in the habit of eating three times a day at a well-spread table, and at mid-forenoon taking a small luncheon for hunger-faintness, omitted his breakfast and morning luncheon, and has been richly rewarded since then in escaping severe colds and other ailings. He conclusively felt that his forenoon was the better half of the day for clear-headedness and hard labor; he has added nearly a score of pounds to his weight, and his case has been a wonder to all his farmer friends, who see only starvation in cutting down brain and needless stomach taxing.

I must now ask the reader to bear with me while I apply the principles of this new hygiene with a good deal of reiteration, trying to vary them in utterance as far as possible. The need of daily food is primarily a matter of waste and supply, the waste always depending upon the amount of loss through the general activities, manual labor being the most destructive.

Across the street from where I live a new house is being built: for many days during the chilly, windy month of March several men have been engaged high in the air, handling green boards, studs, and joists for ten hours each day; and yet these men are not eating more food daily than hundreds of brain-workers who never have general exercise. The workmen across the street eat to satisfy hunger; the brain-workers, to satisfy the sense of relish; and the meals of the latter are habitually in excess of the real demands because of wasted bodies.

In spite of the apparent overeating of the brain-worker, I believe the farmer and the manual laborer break down at an earlier age, for the reason that they overwork and generally eat when too tired to digest fully: the farmer is rarely content to do one day's work in one day when the crop season invites him to make the most of fair days.

With successes rapidly multiplying in all directions within my circuit, the desire became urgent for some way to make my new hygiene known to the public. My first thought was to get some eminent divine interested through a cure that would compel him to a continual talk as to how he became saved.

At a great denominational meeting in Chicago I chanced to hear a splendid address from a sallow-faced professor of a divinity school, the Rev. Dr. G. W. N.; and after a great deal of reflection I resolved, without consulting him, to write him a series of letters on health culture, hoping that he would become so immediately interested as to permit me a complete unfolding of my theory and practice.

I began the series, taking all the chances to be considered a crank; they were continued until the end without response, when later I received a brief note with sarcasm in every line. At least my letters had been read; for he informed me that he had no confidence in my theory, giving me a final summing up with his estimate that there were more "cranks" in the medical profession than in any other. I was not in the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I had become quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.

There was before me the unknown time when a still more eminent D. D.