FLETCHERISM.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2764, 19 March 1910, Page 2 (Supplement)

FLETCHERISM.

A NEW SYSTEM OF FEEDING.

W “HOW I MADE MYSELF YOUNG AT SIXTY.”

“Fletclierism” has become a fact. Ten years ago it was laughed at * today the most famous men of science endorse it and teach its principles. Scientific leaders at Cambridge, the University of Turin, the University of Berne, the University de la Sorbonne, the Universities at Berlin. Brussels. and f St. Petersburg, as well as Harvard. Yale, and Johns Hopkins Universities in America —all enclor.se and teach its principles. The American Association for the Advancement of •Science has made Mr Fletcher a Fellow. It has been estimated already that more, than two hundred thousand families in America are living according to ‘.‘Fletcherism.” It is no longer a question of doubt that of all the many current movements for sane eating and living Mr Fletcher and his principles have emerged at the, very front. Mr b Letcher for the first time tells in print, in the December “Strand, the full story of the discovery of his principles and how lie rescued himself from tho prospect of an early grave to his present splendid physical and mental condition at the age of sixty. He says: OLD AT FORTY. “Twenty years ago. at forty years of age, my hair was white, I weighed 217ibs. (about 501 b. more than I should for my height of sft Gin.), every six months or so I had a bad attack of ‘influenza/ I was harrowed by indigestion—l was afflicted with ‘that tired fceling.' I was an old man at forty, on the way to a rapid decline. “I realised that the first thing to do was, if jiossible, to close up my business arrangements so that I could devote myself to tlie study of how to keep on the face of the earth for a few more years. This I found it possible to do, and I retired from active money-making and began my quest for health. WHAT NATURE REQUIRES IN EATING. “I began by trying to find out why Nature required us to eat. and how and when. I argued that if Nature had given us personal it •was not hidden away in the dark folds and coils of the alimentary canal where we could nob control it. The fault or faults must be committed before the food was swallowed. I felt instinctively that here was the key to tho whole situation. The point then was to study the cavity of the mouth; and the first thought was: ‘What happens there?” “The answer was: Taste, 6inell ■(closely akin to taste, and hardly to he distinguished from it), feeling, saliva, mastication, appetite, tongue, teeth, etc. I up the careful study of taste, necessitating keeping food in the mouth as long as possible to learn its course and development, and as I tried it myself wonders of new and pleasant sensations were revealed. New delights of taste were discovered. Appetite assumed new leanings. “Then came the vital discovery, which is this: I found that each of us has what I call a food-filter—a discriminating muscular gate located at tho hack of the mouth where the throat is shut off from the mouth during the proCass of mastication. Just where the tongue drops over backward toward its so-called roots there are usually five (sometimes seven, we are told) little teat-like projections placed in the shape of a horseshoe, each of them having a trough around it, and in these trou y ../s or depressions terminate a great /lumber of taste-buds, or ends of gustatory ■nerves. Just at this point the roof of the mouth, or the ‘hard palate/ ends; I and the ‘soft palate./ with the uvula at the end of it, drops down behind the heavy part of the tongue.

THE ACT OF CHEWING. “During the natural act of chewing the lips are closed, and there is also a complete closure at the back part oi the mouth by the pressing of the tongue against the roof of th© mouth. During mastication, then, the mouth is an air-tight pouch. “While the food is being masticated, so that it may bo mixed with the saliva and chemically transformed from its crude condition into the chemical form that makes it possible of digestion and absorption, this gat© will remain tightly shut, and the throat will be entirely cut off from the mouth. •■’iiut, as the food becomes creamy, so t-o speak, through being mixed with saliva, or emulsified, or aikalisod, or neutralised, or dextrinised, or modified in ‘whatever form Nature requires, the creamy substance will he drawn up tho central conduit of the tongue until it reaches the food-gate. “If it is found by the taste-buds there located around the ‘circumvallate papillae’ (the. teat-like projections on the- tongue which I mentioned just now) to b© properly prepared for acceptance and further digestion, the foodgate will open, and the food thus toady for acceptance into the body “will be sucked back and swallowed unconsciously—that is, without conscious effort “I now r started to experiment on myself. I chewed food carefully until I had got everything out of it that there was in and until it slipped unconsciously down my throat. When the appetite ceased, and I M r as thereby told I had had enough, I stopped, and I had no desire to eat any more until a- real appetite commanded me again. Then I again chewed carefully, eating always whatever the appetite craved. “FLETCHERISM ”

•‘I had now found out five things—all that there is to my discovery, and to the fundamental requisite of what is called ‘Fletcherism’: ■'‘First: Wait for a true, earned appetite. ‘•'Second: Select from the food available that which appeals most to appetite. and in the order called for by appetite. “Third : Get all the good taste there is in the food out of it in the mouth, and swallow only when it practically ‘swallows itself.’ “Fourth: Enjoy the good taste for all it i.<? worth, and do not allow any 'depressing or diverting feeling to intrude noon the ceremony. “Fifth: Wait, take, and enjoy as touch as possible; Nature will do the WHAT I EAT. “What do I eat? When do I cat? How much do I eat? “My answer to all these questions Is very simple: I eat anything that mv anpetite calls for; I eat it only when it does call for it. and I eat until mv appetite is satisfied • and cries ‘Enough!’ ‘With my New England food-prefer-ences. my range of selection circulates among a very simple and inexpensive variety— namely, potatoes. bread, beans, occasionally eggs, milk, cream, tpnst and butter,' etc., and combinations of these, such as browned potatoes. potatoes in cream, potatoes au gratin, baked potatoes, fish-balls mainly composed of potato, occasionally to-

mato stewed with plenty of powdered sugar, oyster stew with the flavor of celery, escalloped oysters, etc. THREE RULES FOR EATING. “First rule: Don’t take any food until you are ‘good and hungry/ “Second rule: From the food available at the timo take that which appeals most strongly to the appetite. “Third rule: The moment appetite begins to slack up a bit, the moment saliva does not now so freely as at first, the moment there is any degree of satisfaction of the appetite, stop. Rest is the antidote of ‘that tired feeling.’ ”