THE SENSES

GUIDING SUPPOSITIONS

The stomach and other hidden parts of the body have automatic functions independent of the will that perform digestion; these functions are beyond the scope of control, and hence means of preventing ill-digestion must be studied by the aid of the exterior sensations.

Sight, Appetite, Touch and Taste are the senses useful in selection of food and in the prevention of indigestion.

Sight and Appetite relate to invitation and selection, while Touch and Taste are discriminators and indicators of conditions.

Appetite and Taste are the sense functions that are most important to health, and hence they are the most important to study and understand. They are the guide in nutrition and the guard of the body machine—the Mind Power-Plant.

Smell also is an important aid in selection and discrimination and is an effective assistant of Appetite.

APPETITE AND TASTE ANALYSED

Appetite should be dignified and recognised as a distinct sense.

Normal Appetite is Nature's means of indicating her fuel and repair requirements for the Mind Power-Plant.

Study Normal Appetite and heed its invitation. It prescribes wisely. Its mark of distinction, to differentiate it from False Appetite, is "watering of the mouth" for some particular thing.

False Appetite is an indefinite craving for something, anything! to smother disagreeable sensations and frequently is expressed by the symptom of "faintness" or "All-gone-ness." [Vide the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition."]

Taste is the chemist of the body; of the Mind Power-Plant. More correctly, perhaps, it is the report of a chemical process relating to nutrition.

Taste is an evidence of nutrition. While taste lasts a necessary process is going on.

Taste should, therefore, be carefully studied and understood.

Both Taste and Appetite differ in different individuals and in the same individual under different conditions of thought or activity.

Taste is also dependent on supply of the mouth juices usually called saliva, and these differ materially in individuals, necessitating self-study, self-understanding, and self-care to insure prevention of indigestion and disease.

The most important part of nutrition is the right preparation of food in the mouth for further digestion.

The most important discovery in physiology is the relation of compulsory or involuntary swallowing to the right preparation of food for digestion.

Taste is evidence of nutrition.

Whatever does not taste, such as glass or stone, is not nutritious.[6]

Taste is excited by the dissolving of food in the mouth, and while it lasts a necessary process of preparation for digestion is going on.

The juices of the mouth have the power to transform any food that excites taste into a substance suitable for the body.

Nothing that is tasteless, except water and pure proteid, only by distinct invitation of appetite, should be taken into the stomach.

If we swallow only the food which excites the appetite and is pleasing to the sense of taste, and swallow it only after the taste has been extracted from it, removing from the mouth the tasteless residue, complete and easy digestion will be assured and perfect health maintained.

NATURE'S FOOD FILTER

Nature has provided an Automatic Food Filter which, if rightly used, will prevent the introduction of any harmful substance into the stomach.

At the entrance to the throat there are certain muscular folds or convolutions, including the palate, which, when in repose, form an organ that is nothing less than a Perfect Food Filter. This filter has also automatic qualities which compel it to empty itself by the process we call "Involuntary Swallowing."

Involuntary swallowing is really compulsory swallowing; unless a voluntary effort to restrain it is set up against it. The real Swallowing Impulse is so strong that it is practically compelling.

The Food Filter, when rightly performing its protective function, is impervious to anything except pure water at the right temperature for admission to the stomach and to nutriment which has been properly dissolved and chemically converted by salivation (mixture with saliva) into a substance suitable for further digestion.

IMPORTANCE OF MASTICATION

If we masticate—submit to vigorous jaw action—everything that we take into the mouth, liquid as well as solid, until the nutritive part of it disappears into the stomach through compulsory or involuntary swallowing, and remove from the mouth all fibrous, insoluble and tasteless remainder, we will take into the body, thereby, only that which is good for the body.

The first thought that will arise in the reader's mind on perusal of the above declaration will undoubtedly be, "What! masticate milk, soups, wines, spirits, and other liquids; nonsense! That is impossible!"

It is not, however, impossible, and, furthermore, it is absolutely necessary to protection against abuse of the stomach and possible disease.

Liquid for adults, for anyone after the eruption of teeth, is an artificial and unnatural sustenance; something not taken into consideration when the human body was planned. Liquid food (drunk without mixing with saliva) is a sort of nutritive self-abuse, and the only way to avoid the ill effect is to give it the same chance to encounter saliva that the constituent ingredients would have had in a more solid state. For the importance of this see Dr. Campbell's able treatise on mastication reprinted from the London Lancet in the "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition."

The only things necessary to life that we are compelled to take into the body that do not excite the sense of taste are pure air and pure water. These are necessary to life, but are not what is called nutrition. They do not, alone, replace waste tissue. They do not challenge the sentinel, Taste, and hence do not require retention in the field of taste.

If water be pure and tasteless you cannot masticate it, as it will not submit to more than one action of the jaw before causing involuntary swallowing. If it have taste it is a sign that it contains mineral or vegetable substance that needs treatment of some sort to render it suitable for the body, and it will then resist some mastication, some mouth-treatment, as in tasting, before compelling swallowing, just as the sapid liquids do.

Anything that has taste, even soup, wine, spirits or whatsoever is tried, will resist numerous mastications before being absorbed by the Food Filter. Above all things, milk, wines, etc., should be sipped and tasted to the limit of compulsory swallowing.

In considering the reasonableness of masticating everything that has taste until it is absorbed by Nature's Food Filter, it must be remembered that the only liquid food provided for man that is not artificial is milk, and the natural means provided for taking milk into the stomach is by sucking, which is like mastication.[7] The milk of fruits, such as cocoanut milk, for instance, is found, in liquid form, only in the unripe fruit, and remains liquid only while it is ripening into pulp.

Insalivation does not seem to be complete without jaw action, although saliva (sometimes only mucous) flows freely into the mouth without it under conditions which we term "watering of the mouth" excited by keenness of appetite. (See Pawlow's, Campbell's, Van Someren's, and other evidence in "A.B.-Z. of Our Own Nutrition.")

The normal perviousness or natural opening of the Food Filter for swallowing food is directly assisted and affected by movement of the jaws exercised in vigorous manner.

Mastication, or mouth-treatment, therefore, even of liquids that excite taste, seems to be a necessary part of thorough insalivation.

Nature has a good reason for everything she plans.

It is asserted by physiological chemists that saliva, taken from the mouth and kept at normal temperature, will dissolve breads and similar foods and convert the starch in them into maltose, glucose or sugar. The converted form is that which is suitable for further digestion. Saliva also converts some acids into alkali and readily neutralises all acids.

It is also asserted that saliva does not dissolve some things (proteid substances) nor chemically affect them as visibly as it does starch and acid, but, even if this be true, it is no less essential that the juices provided in the mouth should have an opportunity, through mastication, or, movement about in the mouth, to do what they are able to do in assisting digestion.

Experiment shows that if all foods are submitted to the examination and action of these juices until involuntary swallowing takes place, the results in aiding subsequent digestion are important in promoting healthy nutrition.

Separation, neutralisation, alkalination, saccharidation, of the proteid and carbohydrate elements of common foods and perhaps a partial emulsification of fats are all possible in the mouth and are more easily and quickly done there than inside the body. Much care in Mouth-Treatment is an assurance of economy and safety in Alimentation.