In this note I propose to do little more than record a few instances, out of many, of persons who have lived for longer or shorter periods, and continue to live, on one meal a day, and let my readers draw their own inferences, merely remarking that these cases have a very great significance as bearing upon the question of the quantity of food best suited to nourish the body and promote health. Dr. Abernethy, a celebrated English physician, affirmed that “one-fourth of all a man eats sustains him; the balance he retains at his risk”; but his countrymen eat four meals, at least.

The case of Mrs. Solberg, an emaciated dyspeptic, whose restoration to health was accomplished by the one-meal vegetarian diet and “a change of air” (at home), is mentioned in the chapter on Malaria.

S. N. Silver,[64] of Auburn, Me., a hard-working mechanic, has, for upwards of three years, lived on the one-meal-a-day plan. He eats at night, after resting sufficiently from his day’s work. He never eats more than seven meals per week, not even so much as an apple between meals; and on Sundays, unless he takes considerable exercise, his “meal” consists of fruit only—three or four apples, for example. He is a typically healthy young man, and has not in three years experienced a moment of physical inconvenience. He is a vegetarian, and lives wholly on simple, pure food, chiefly bread and fruit.

Mrs. Wieman, a sister of the above, has, for upwards of a year, taken but one meal a day, although she prepares three hot meals for her husband and several boarders. She does the entire household work for her family, which during the past summer consisted of nine adults. Her one meal (taken at noon because the regular dinner is at that hour and furnishes a better variety) is no more in amount than her dinner formerly, when she took breakfast and supper in addition. She is a perfect specimen of robust health, and finds that she can now perform with ease an amount of labor which formerly would have been a severe tax, even if possible to accomplish. Her diet is mainly vegetarian; she eats but little meat, and that only because it is constantly before her; and she avoids white flour and most forms of pastry altogether, as well as hot stimulating drinks, condiments, spices, etc., although her table is bountifully supplied with all such things.

Still another of this family, a busy milliner, has lived in this manner for several months, and finds herself improved in health by the means.

Aside from the immense amount of knowledge gained through vivisection—through dead animals, I may say—the lives of the lower animals teach us what to do, in some respects, as well as what to avoid. Alas, for humanity—claiming such superiority—in both classes there are important lessons which are not generally learned and practiced. As bearing upon the one-meal system, I will let Capt. B., an old hunter, tell his experience with his fox-hound: “The old fellow,” said the Captain, “knows when I am going on a tramp as well as my wife does—when I turn out for a hunt, in the morning—and he won’t touch a mouthful of food.[65] I used to try and ‘fool’ him, by acting as if I wasn’t going out at all, and sometimes I could get him to eat breakfast. But I never try that game now, for I noticed, after a while, that when he fixed himself, he did better work than when I managed to get a breakfast into him.” “How so?” I asked. “Why, he is a better dog; he runs better, scents better, barks better, and comes in at night in better shape. And then, if we walk home, he gets pretty well rested and has his ‘breakfast’ before a great while; or, if we ride, he has it as soon as we get home; and (if it is cold weather) I let him lie in the sitting-room an hour or two after he eats, and then he will go to his kennel and sleep all night, and without trembling; and he turns out next morning in good shape for another tramp, if called on.” “Do you ‘fix’ yourself in the same manner?” I could but ask. “Not much,” he replied; “I eat before I start, and take a lunch along; but I don’t know but the old dog has the best of it, after all.” As a matter of fact, the aged dog is like a sprightly youth still, while his master, at middle-age, is a decrepit old man.

The importance of rest after meals has never been fully appreciated by people in general. Even those who advocate the need of it, have usually,—perhaps because of the difficulties in the way of demanding more,—asked for only a half, or a whole hour; while it is the popular belief that “exercise after eating promotes digestion,” and the fact is cited that Sunday is, to the laborer, the worst day of all the week,—a day of leisure, affording ample time for digestion, if that is all that is required. But that is not all. The “bad feeling” which comes on after the second meal on Sunday—the “Sunday headache,” of which so many complain—results from the radical change of habit from the six days of hard labor: accustomed as he is to digesting a large part of his three meals together, at night, after he has earned them, physiologically speaking,—that is, after his labor has provided the digestive fluids in the blood, by means of which his food is dissolved, and made ready for absorption into the circulation,—when Sunday, with its leisure, and possibly even more than usually excessive indulgence, comes, instead of having the blood diverted to the general muscular system, as the result of active labor, it is called to the stomach and the circulation becomes overcharged with nutritive material. Hence lethargy, tendency to sleep, headache, etc.

The fact is,

EXERCISE AFTER EATING

by preventing digestion, often delays or modifies the ill-feeling which would otherwise be experienced shortly after over-indulgence at the table. Hence gentle exercise in the open air will prove the least of two evils; an emetic, the best of all remedies. The liquids[66] being to a great extent absorbed, plethora is prevented or delayed because the solids remain undigested in the stomach! But this solid residue, favored by the internal temperature, begins to ferment, after a time, and causes more or less irritation and congestion of the mucous lining of the stomach, which gives rise to the sensation popularly called “hunger”; and thus every few hours, and when the patient impatiently awaits the call to dinner and thinks himself most in need of food, he is, in fact, in the very worst condition to take it. Ninety-five persons in every hundred have this disease (for it is nothing less than chronic dyspepsia) throughout life. The fact that the meal affords immediate relief argues nothing against this position; it is the seventy-five or eighty per cent. of water contained in and taken with the meal that relieves the congestion. It forms a poultice, so to say, for the congested mucous membrane of the stomach; but unfortunately it can not, as when applied externally upon a throbbing sore thumb, for example, be removed when it becomes dry. We see this disease at its worst in infancy, when meals are most frequent and excessive.

Jules Virey settled the question, as it seems to me, regarding the effects of work after eating. He took two dogs of same size, age, and general physique; gave both a fast-day, and then treated them to a square meal, alike in quantity and variety. One was sent to his kennel, while the other was permitted to follow the carriage which conveyed the doctor on his rounds. After the coach-dog had had two hours and a half of (not vigorous, but gentle) exercise, and immediately on his return, the doctor had both dogs slain and dissected. The kennel-dog had thoroughly digested his breakfast,—not a trace of it was found in his stomach,—while with the other, the work of digestion had not even begun; the mutton cubes and potato chips remained intact, precisely as when first eaten. It is evident from this that the rule, “Never eat until you have leisure to digest,”[67] is a good one, and that for a hard-working person (what man or woman works as hard as the enthusiastic hunting-dog?) the one-meal-a-day system would often prove the best,—indeed, in some instances, this would be the only means of preventing sickness. We may not know in how many instances the laborer digests his breakfast, dinner, and supper together (or about all that he does digest) after he is in bed for the night. Any approach to such a state is provocative of disease.

The dyspeptic’s dreams, which disturb his sleep, rob him of needed rest, and often cause him to wake more tired than when he went to bed, would be banished, or at least favorably modified, if, at the close of his day’s work, after sufficient rest from the fatigues and cares of the day, he were to take his well-earned ration, and, after a period of recreation, if there still remained time for this, go to his bed.

Another instance I will mention, that of the man who may almost be called the father of hygiene in this country. He says: “I have tested the sufficiency of eating once in twenty-four hours [he has himself lived on this system for eleven years, and continues so to live; and has, besides, tested its advantages upon patients in certain forms of disease] and have done work enough to put a much younger man to his trumps if he had to do it. My food is very simple; I do not eat more at one meal than almost any person eats who takes three meals a day; I keep my body well built up in flesh and in vigor of muscle, considering that incurable organic difficulties render great muscular activity impracticable. I keep up my own strength, and have held in check my constitutional conditions so that I have reached old age” [72 years].

I could mention a score or more of similar instances; and, as stated elsewhere, no person ever tried the plan and found occasion for abandoning it, except from considerations utterly remote from health. In fact, under certain circumstances, as in travelling, this system is a most beneficent one; it makes a person independent of railway restaurants and lunch-counters; for at some time during the day, usually, as at night in a good hotel, one can obtain, if not always a really hygienic meal, still a comparatively good one.

With reference to the amount of food to be taken at the single meal, I have observed this: those who would be termed hearty eaters, on the three-meal system, will usually eat no more at their one meal than formerly at dinner alone; some, indeed, find much less than this suffices to sustain them in the best manner. This is largely due, however, to the superior quality of their diet, since people of this class invariably become, practically, vegetarians and, withal, use a large proportion of bread, a pure nutrient, instead of flesh, a nutro-stimulant. The amount of food taken, under any circumstances, will depend largely upon one’s views as to the true office of eating.

In the case of a certain class of dyspeptics who, while going to the table three times every day, yet do not eat, all told, a single satisfactory meal; who in the entire year, perhaps, scarcely know the comfort of eating a full meal, and who live on in this manner year after year, the one-meal system would banish their nausea and lack of appetite within a reasonable time, and, in some instances, such persons would eat, and with a relish long unknown to them, more food every day than they now force down at their three or more attempts at eating. There would also result a corresponding improvement in their general health, more especially if this reform were accompanied by others, when needed, as to fresh air and exercise.

Says Dr. Nichols, of London, who speaks with knowledge, from having tested it: “The one-meal-a-day system will largely increase any person’s working capacity.”