"Dear Mr. Fletcher:
"You ask me to write you a short account of my experiences with economical nutrition with comments, and a few words about my physical and mental history.
"Previous History:—The best period of health that I can remember in my life was that between seventeen and twenty-one, during the time I was preparing for the medical profession. I had a small breakfast at about 7.30 A.M. and then went up to London to St. George's Hospital, which was about fourteen miles from my home. My parents gave me 2/6 for my midday meal but I fortunately economised and only spent 6d-10d of it on food. After finishing my work I usually arrived home at 5.30 and had a 'meat tea'; this allowed me to devote six hours to reading. During the whole of this period I was in excellent mental and physical condition. I was made house surgeon at twenty-one, obtained my degree in under four years besides obtaining several valuable prizes.
"After this I lived in the Hospital where three meat meals were provided. These I conscientiously ate 'to keep up my strength' during the performance of my exhausting duties. I consider that this period was the commencement of my degeneration. I put on twenty-four pounds in weight and lost much of my mental energy.
"To condense, as much as possible: my strong hereditary tendency to gout with the excessive meat eating, the hurried eating during some three and one-half years at St. George's Hospital, London, and at Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge, resulted in constant suffering from headache, lumbago, rheumatic pains, and all those distressing symptoms known under the generic name of 'goutiness.' After seven or eight years I weighed two hundred and twenty-four pounds and complained of increasing symptoms of gout. I then became a patient of Dr. H——, of London, whose system requires one to abstain from meat, fish, poultry, beans, tea, coffee, in other words, from foods containing uric acid or its equivalent. For about five years, till the end of 1901, when I first met you, I fluctuated considerably in health, on the whole I am bound to say, in a steadily downward direction, till I was overloaded with the excessive weight of two hundred and eighty-two pounds.
"History of Period of Regeneration:—I commenced under your advice, masticating my food thoroughly at the end of December, 1901. After practising this method till the present date September, 1903, I have lost one hundred and four pounds in weight and consider that I have gained very considerably in mental and physical fitness. I prefer to divide this period into two parts: (a) The first eight months. During this time I followed my appetite, but with a strong mental bias in favour of keeping up as nearly as possible to the daily 'physiological ration' of nitrogenous food. I lost notwithstanding some sixty-four pounds in weight in spite of having an inordinate appetite for butter, and generally taking two pints of milk daily. During this period I undertook some very severe work in the Laboratory of Physiological Chemistry, with the object of trying to devise some method of measuring the extent of a person's departure from their optimum health. This led almost unconsciously to a stronger mental bias in favour of prescribing the amount of food one should eat, and to a certain number of experiments in feeding. Towards the end of this period I got rather exhausted in consequence of my severe work and complained of occasional headaches. Following the suggestions of some friends I added fifty grams of casein to my daily diet for two or three weeks. This was followed by a return of rheumatism and considerable sickness and inability to work. (b) The subsequent six months. I resolved to devote this period to a careful study of my desires for food—to take no notes—to make no experiments—in short, to allow my body to run itself, and to try to make my brain interpret the wants of the body. I had moved for the purpose of this experiment into a small house, with a boy and a woman who came daily to clean the house—(I mention these details because practically one finds that a woman has usually such quick sympathy about matters concerning food, that their agitation and fears are enough in themselves to cause you to modify your diet). I only kept bread, butter, and milk in the house, all other foods I was obliged to send for, and if I required a dish to be cooked, I first learned how to do it myself and then taught the boy. I had no fixed times for meals, and did not have a table laid, my food always being brought up on a tray; usually I did not interrupt the work I was doing. I deliberately adopted all these precautions because I had become aware by experience of the extraordinary influence suggestion, and other mind influences, such as habit, had in one's selection of food and the amount one ate. During the first two months in conscientiously eating what I wished, as much of it as I wanted and when my appetite demanded food, my desires were very irregular, ranging over meats and fish, (occasionally) chocolate, sweets, cream, cheese, butter, milk, bread, potatoes, oranges, bananas, sugar, etc., but during the final period my desires were much more simple and regular, confining themselves to bread, GruyÈre cheese, butter, cream, bananas, potatoes, occasionally milk. During and subsequent to this period I have become convinced that provided you eat your food slowly and follow your appetite, without guidance from any other knowledge whatever, one gets marked preferences for simple foods with increasing health and happiness, the contentment that comes from the inestimably valuable possession of simple desires.
"Comments on the System:—The great attraction the system has for me is its frank admission that: (1) One knows practically nothing of those chemical processes that occur during digestion. (2) The guidance for the conduct of life afforded by such vague phrases as 'the collective wisdom of mankind' leave one on the most superficial examination in a state of great doubt, to say the least of it. (3) The guidance afforded by the dogmas of science are open to the most disquieting criticism. (a) In the prescription of method without a knowledge of the mysteries of digestion. (b) In those observations on insufficient standards of mental and physical optimum efficiency, and of short periods of observation based solely on nitrogenous equilibrium and output of work that you have already shown to be fallacious and variable. (c) In short, that one can say that none of the physiological dogmas based on chemistry are not open to criticism.
"If this is admitted, and the choice of the quantity and quality of food thrown on taste and appetite, we are at once provided with a natural means of ascertaining the body's actual wants from day to day. The phenomena that have resulted from the more thorough insalivation and mastication of food can only be described as remarkable and of the highest importance for the progress of that most important of all sciences, the right conduct of life. The great advantage of finely dividing the food in the mouth so as to present as large a surface as possible for the action of the intestinal juices, is obvious when one reflects on the rapidity with which bacteria can and do act on pieces having a smaller area in consequence of their larger bulk. When one reflects that Dr. Mott attributes the main cause of insanity to the absorption by the body of the cleavage products produced by microbes in the intestines, and the increasing recognition of such poisons in the causation of chronic disease and disturbances of health, this factor alone would afford an explanation of some of the phenomena induced by the practice of economical nutrition.
"A method having the results that this has it need scarcely be said is revolutionary; all one's preconceived notions of the conduct of life are found to be based on grounds open to grave criticism and it throws a great responsibility on all those concerned in its study to endeavour by all the means in their power to present a more completely demonstrated and unanswerable case to those who are responsible for the world's guidance in these matters, with as little delay as possible,
"Yours faithfully,
Hubert Higgins, M. A. Cantab.
M.R.C.S., L.R.C.P.
"Late House Surgeon to St. George's Hospital, London, and the Addenbrooke's Hospital, Cambridge. Demonstrator of Anatomy to the University of Cambridge and Assistant Surgeon to Addenbrooke's Hospital."
