THE NEW FOOD.

Gisborne Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 3693, 30 November 1912, Page 4

THE NEW FOOD.

ELECTRICITY IN SMALL DOSES.

In an address before a distinguished body of scientists in Paris Professor Bergonie described in full, with experiments, his theory that electricity can be made to take the place of food to a considerable extent in sustaining life. His idea is that the essential purpose of food is to supply the body with internal warmth. Some of Prof. Bergonie’s experiments were attended with no small degree of danger to him. He proved to his own satisfaction, and to that of S most of his hearers, that low tension, high frequency curernts of electricity can be passed through a man in such a. manner as to produce the required' energy—warmth of maintained life. The great thing to guard against is the- -production of a temperature high enough to be fatal. According to Prof. Bergonie, electric, “food” is much superior to vegetables and meat, inasmuch as it imposes no work on the digestive organs, the food being directly absorbed by the nerves. Thus is avoided, the savant asserts, the ordinary, fatiguing, wearing process of intestinal 'combustion which isso exhausting to invalids or to patients in a weakened state. “My plan of building up the body through the , application of electric food, he explained, “is directly opnosed to the method of curing fatness by electricity. In the latter, electricity is so applied as to produce the effect of exercise and thus build-up energy.

‘ One dose of electric ‘food’ will do a man as much good as three solid meals of ordinary food. More than that, electric food actually increases the patient’s weight. My experiments have been conducted on patients who j have not changed ordinary diet during I the electric treatment.” 43