This Famishing World

By Alfred W. McCann

Five: Amazing Confusion of Clinic and Classroom

§ 66 -- Ignoring the Commonplace

WE have reviewed the results of hundreds of experiments conducted by scores of investigators working independently of each other upon the problems of nutrition.

We have seen how all efforts to square the academic theories of dietitians with the simplest and most obvious of food facts end in complication and confusion.

This chaos, for it is chaos indeed, broods as frequently in high places as among the plain people. It is largely the result of the materialistic spirit of the twentieth century, now happily undergoing a change.

Men who fondly cherished their intellectual accomplishments as the chief glories of progress and the loftiest pinnacles of civilisation, were prone to ignore the commonplace.

Intellectual pride seemed to develop in them a sort of spiritual astigmatism. In their earthly pursuits they abandoned altogether the old-fashioned idea that God is the author of life, and that all manifestations of life are the expressions of fixed laws.

They forgot that a hen's egg laid in China is identical in physical and chemical properties with a hen's egg laid in Texas, or if admitting the fact, they promptly explain it away in ponderous phraseology.

They forgot that the flavour of the elderberry and the peach are the same to-day as when they were boys; that the seed is always true to type, and that from the acorn springs only the oak.

They forgot that cow's milk produced in the isle of Guernsey or the state of Delaware is always physiologically the same and that the milk of the normal human mother, whether she be Eskimo, Filipino, Armenian, Spaniard, Turk, Pennsylvania Dutch, Nordic, Alpine or Mediterranean, is always identical in composition.

They did not stop to ponder over this constancy and fidelity of adherence to a never-changing standard, when all human standards about them are changing, even as the colors of the chameleon.

They saw in them nothing of the operation of a divine law.

They failed to note that the first food of every human being is colostrum, and that for the first three days of every normal infant's life the one and only food it requires is colostrum.

They failed to see any active providence in the second food of the normal babe, which suffices it for at least a year.

They could not admit that the appearance of colostrum and milk in their proper turn and at their proper time, without conscious effort on the part of mother or child, is an expression of nature's august obedience to the will of God.

They could not believe that if, as the result of the control of a fixed law, the food of the first three days and the food of the first year of the life of a human being have been pre-arranged and elaborated according to fixed standards, there must also be some similar pre-arrangement and control exercised in the production of the foods that follow during the second, the tenth and the fiftieth years of life.

Such propositions as these they described as mysticism, failing to note that the grasses and the seeds of grasses prescribed in the book of Genesis, are the expressions of a law, and that there-fore these grasses and their seeds are to be accepted by man without change, manipulation, modification or refinement, even as colostrum and mother's milk are accepted by the infant without change, manipulation, modification or refinement.

The very thought of refining mother's milk at the breast would be abhorrent to the modern infant specialist. He knows where nature's laws have not been violated through ignorance or caprice, the milk of the healthy mother, just as it is compounded by her tissues, is the one food on which her infant thrives best.

When such milk is examined chemically the reason for this phenomenon becomes obvious, and upon man's understanding of it he bases all his efforts in cases of necessity to modify the next best food for the babe -- cow's milk, which must be made to resemble physiologically the milk of the human by a marked change in its protein, fat, sugar and mineral content, in order that it may be in some measure adapted to the requirements of the infant.

These commonplace phenomena which rarely inspire the serious contemplation of science and never the sonnets of a poet, are not interpreted by materialists as indices of a vast, beautifully ordered and sublimely executed scheme in the creation and maintenance of life and health on this planet.

Science, examining not the whole but its parts, does not as a rule arrive at the conviction that any capricious departure from the normal represents a trespass against laws of nature that must inevitably lead to physiological discord -- disease. Break the law if you can get away with it; otherwise don't break the law is the advice of science, viz., the prophylactic kit.

Man's failure to heed the laws of life is responsible for all the confusion and preventable misery suffered by him in the physical order. This confusion and misery is everywhere apparent.

The more materialistic the nation the more vigorously it treads the paths of luxury, and the more violently it departs from normal.

Great is the price paid for its caprices in painful infirmity and untimely death.

By a curious mockery of modern civilisation, the scientist and the teacher are found among the chief victims of this confusion, as we shall see.

§ 67 -- Hutchinson's Teaspoon

Ignoring the extent to which patent medicines, headache powders, nerve tonics, constipation cures, "blood-builders," and the thousand and one self-administered doses are consumed by the ton, and denying outright that these physical infirmities owe their existence to modem "food refinement," many popular authorities persist in preaching the almost supernatural virtues of white bread.

In a widely circulated article on this subject, published in the American Magazine, under the caption "The Color Line in Foods," Dr. Woods Hutchinson said:

"The whitest possible of white bread was overwhelmingly proved to be not only more appetising but weight for weight and price for price, more nutritious and more wholesome than any black, brown, or brindled staff of life.

"It is quite true that patent processed flour does not retain the yellowish and nutritious germ of the wheat berry and that this germ contains small amounts of 'fat' and 'phosphorus' which are not present in the remainder of the wheat and grain. But when the trouble was taken to weigh and measure the exact amount of this 'fat' and this 'phosphorus' it was found to be exceedingly small, and a single teaspoonful of egg and a mouthful of meat or fish or a teaspoonful of milk would more than make good the amount lost in an entire pound loaf of bread."

The error of Hutchinson's gospel is a matter of arithmetic.

A pound loaf of whole wheat bread contains approximately eight ounces of water and eight ounces of whole wheat meal. In the whole wheat meal the total quantity, not of "fat" and "phosphorus," but of fat, phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, manganese, calcium, silicon, sulphur, sodium, iodine, iron, and other bodies of unknown nature, approximates 2 percent of the entire grain.

The eight ounces of whole wheat meal in a one-pound loaf weigh 5,500 grains. Of this amount 2 percent or seventy grains consist of the mineral substances described.

Hutchinson asserts, "These substances are present in a teaspoonful of egg, a mouthful of meat or fish, or a teaspoonful of milk."

The eight ounces of patent flour in one-pound loaf of white bread weigh 3,500 grains. Of this quantity much less than one-half of 1 percent, or, to be exact, eighteen grains, consists of the mineral substances described.

The difference between seventy grains, found in the whole wheat bread, and eighteen grains, found in the white bread, is fifty-two grains. These fifty-two grains, according to Hutchinson's declaration, are found in a teaspoonful of egg or milk, "which, therefore, more than offsets the loss sustained in white bread."

In milling the grain at least four of the mineral substances are entirely lost and many of the others reduced to a mere trace.

Let us see how these substances are restored by a spoonful of egg. Eight ounces of eggs weigh 3,500 grains. Of this amount but sixteen grains consist of the mineral elements described.

To offset the deficiency of fifty-two grains a quantity of eggs yielding fifty-two grains must be consumed.

Eight ounces of eggs yield sixteen grains. One ounce of eggs yield two grains. To supply the missing fifty-two grains, twenty-six ounces of eggs, or approximately two dozen, must be consumed.

There remains a vast difference between a spoonful of egg and two dozen eggs.

Let us see now what would be required of a teaspoonful of milk in order that it might perform the miracle which Hutchinson asserts it does perform.

One pint of milk weighs 3,500 grains, approximately, and as seven-tenths of one percent of milk consists of the mineral substances described there are found in an entire pint but 24 grains of the missing 52 grains.

Thus, in order to offset the 52 missing grains, considerably more than two pints of milk must be consumed, just about three hundred times more than the resourceful teaspoonful of Hutchinson.

As for a mouthful of meat little need be said. The Madeira-Mamore poison squad had plenty of white bread, but no meat. The Kronprinz Wilhelm poison squad had plenty of white bread and all the meat its members could consume. The results in both cases were identical. Neither the absence of the meat nor its presence in any manner diminished or increased the nutritional value of the white bread consumed.

Had that bread been black, brown, or brindle it would have needed no such addition as "a single teaspoonful of egg, a mouthful of meat or fish, or a teaspoonful of milk."

This is a sample of the confusion of "learned" men. We shall now examine another.

§ 68 -- Strange Conclusions of Lusk

The extraordinary manner in which purely speculative theorising concerning carbohydrates, proteins, fats and calories clashes with actual fact was demonstrated at the anniversary meeting of the New York Academy of Medicine, November 20, 1913, when Graham Lusk made the statements that follow:

"It is necessary that the body have a constant replenishment of its protein store. There is no doubt of the superior value of meat, fish, egg and milk proteins to that of bread, beans and Indian corn.

"The proteins of rice and potatoes hold an intermediate position between the two classes of proteins above mentioned. Such facts make it possible to classify proteins according to their physiological value and they may be sold, therefore, as milk in three classes -- A, B, and C. In a fourth grade, D, might belong gelatine and some other proteins which cannot replace the body protein which is continually wearing away.

"Experiments with wheat protein show that gliadin, which represents nearly one-half of the protein of wheat, is of inferior food value. It requires more protein in the form of bread to protect from protein loss than it does when meat or milk is ingested. The same is true of other proteins derived from grains."

In making these extraordinary statements before a group of learned scientists, Lusk entirely ignored the fact that meat protein, which he referred to in such extravagant terms, when deprived of its mineral salts, destroys life.

It is evident, therefore, that he did not establish his value of meat protein upon processed meat which we have seen, after having been immersed in distilled water and then fed to dogs, kills the animals.

Why, therefore, should he estimate the value of wheat proteins or the protein of any other grain upon the demineralised white bread protein or the demineralised Indian corn protein which he used as a base for his comparisons?

We have seen how, in the absence of the mineral salts, colloids and vitamines, natural to all foods, no kind of protein is of any value to any living animal.

We have not only seen that such protein possesses no value but is actually harmful. Reversing the order of Lusk's experiment it can be established that meat proteins from processed or exhausted meat are worthless compared with wheat proteins or corn proteins containing all of the mineral salts and colloids of the unbolted grain.

At the same meeting Lusk also said, "The Eskimo consumes large quantities of meat, even as much as nine pounds a day, and yet health and strength are not wanting among these meat-eaters, and they are not the victims of uric acid diseases."

Contradicting this declaration of Lusk, the Journal of the American Medical Association, March 28th, 1913, said:

"We have previously noted the poor condition of health and sanitation obtaining among the natives of Alaska. In 1900 the census figures placed the native population of Alaska at 29,536, while in 1910 it had fallen to 25,331, a decrease in ten years of 14.5 percent.

"Surgeon M. H. Foster of the public health service reported, August 11th, 1911, that at Sitka fairly reliable statistics placed the annual birth rate for a period of five years and seven months at 72.3 per thousand, and the annual death rate for the same period at 85.4 per thousand, an actual decrease in population of thirteen per thousand.

"On request of the Secretary of the Interior, Past-Assistant Surgeon Emil Krulish of the federal public health service was detailed to investigate the health and sanitation of the Alaskans under the commissioner of education. His report, under date of January 22nd, 1913, after a study of nine months, was filed with the Secretary of the Interior, January 25th, 1913.

"The report corroborates all the findings of Surgeon Foster. The most serious menace is tuberculosis, which, if not eradicated in the near future, will exterminate the native population of Alaska in the course of sixty or seventy years. This disease is present in all forms, especially in the pulmonary, osseous, and glandular types."

It is not surprising that the flock should be bewildered when the shepherd brings to the sheep-fold such an amazing assortment of fodder.

§ 69 -- Disease Germs Bad where they Do Not Belong

Charles Clyde Sutter, referring to the natural defence of the body against disease, says:

"We are continually in the presence of disease germs; almost daily we are exposed to contagious or infectious diseases, yet the body in health is able to protect itself and ward off the casual agents of disease. Any disturbance of perfect equilibrium in the functions of the body may be described as disease.

"The severity of the disease is determined by the intensity of the cause and by the state of the organism and its power of defence. The first general biological law or general attribute of living matter is that of self-preservation. The first biological acts of living protoplasm are therefore nutritional. For perfect health there must be complete appropriation, assimilation, and elimination.

"It is impossible to prevent the entrance of bacteria into the digestive tract with our food. Against this invasion the normal human individual is protected by the secretions of the stomach. The body is protected against the poisonous substances formed in the intestinal tract by the internal secretions, the influence of the lining membrane of the intestines, the liver, which alone destroys two-thirds of the poison, and by the various glands throughout the body which have the power of destroying toxic substances, and also by the organs which aid in their elimination.

"It will thus be seen, in accordance with natural law, that the organism is supplied with powers of nutrition which induce resistance, which enable it to protect itself by the destruction, by the counteraction, and by the elimination of deleterious agents, and thus, by adaptation, provide for the re-establishment of the disturbed equilibrium."

Notwithstanding the certitude of these frequently demonstrated truths the school teachers of the United States, who are also the victims of confusion in high places, make no attempt to influence the young to a proper understanding of the laws of nutrition.

Most of them are familiar with the erroneous but popular doctrines of Hutchinson and Lusk, but few, if any of them, know that refined foods of high caloric value, cause a disturbance of the functions of assimilation and elimination.

They do not know that calcium salts, so wantonly removed from most natural foods, act upon the blood and blood vessels by tightening the unduly permeable vascular wall, thus promoting coagulation and stopping exudation.

They do not know, as summed up by Kayser in his review of the importance of calcium salts for the therapy of internal affections, that these salts influence the excitability of the nervous system by depressing the latter, especially the vegetative and autonomous, and are therefore indicated in internal medicine especially for tetany, epilepsy, hay fever, and asthma, in all of which they are used with success.

They do not know that through there ability to increase the phagocytic power of the blood, calcium salts appear to come into question for the therapy of infectious diseases, like pneumonia and tuberculosis, and that they also prevent oxalic acid poisoning.

Not knowing the importance of calcium in the diet, they can have no suspicion of the importance of phosphorus, potassium, manganese, iron, or any of the other mineral salts, colloids, and vitamines so indispensable to the normal physical and mental developments of their pupils.

In consequence of their ignorance of these fundamental truths they are unable, while learnedly discussing many of the ornamental isms and ologies of the class room, to direct the growing child in matters that have a greater bearing upon its future life than all botany, geology, geometry, geography, and astronomy combined.

The missing link in our modern system of education is to be found in the darkness which thus separates teacher from child.

§ 70 -- Ailing Instructors in "Isms" and "Ologies"

According to records compiled by a committee, headed by Dr. Oswald Schlockow at the behest of the Brooklyn Teachers' Association, and made public November 14th, 1915, 20 percent of the teachers during the school year of 1913-1914 were absent from illness.

All the data in the report were obtained from application blanks submitted by teachers to the board of superintendents for the refund of salaries deducted for absence caused by illness.

Illness usually affects the pocket book as well as the health of its victims, a fragment of human wisdom which the school teachers have obviously acquired. "That 20 percent of absences from duty is far too low is proved," says the report, "by the fact that refund blanks are not generally submitted for brief periods of absence. And, moreover, it must be assumed," continued the report, "that many teachers, who, under normal conditions would and should have remained at home, because of physical disability to teach, forced themselves to report for duty which they could not properly perform."

In other words, the pocketbook compelled these sick teachers to subordinate the hazards of doing those things which their physical condition made next to impossible to the stern necessity of earning money.

The total number of applications for excuse of absence for all causes in the year 1913-1914 among this one group of teachers was 4,148. The total time lost by their illness was 68,442 days. The four prevalent ailments responsible for this loss were diseases of the respiratory organs, infectious diseases, diseases of the nervous system, and diseases of the digestive system.

The throat and lung troubles it was found constituted 35 percent of the diseases, acute contagious diseases 16 percent, nervous diseases 15 percent, and digestive disorders 11 percent.

These four diseases follow loss of resistance and immunity. "The fact disclosed by our investigation," declared the committee headed by Dr. Oswald Schlockow, "that over one-fifth of the entire teaching corps of the city was absent because of illness during one school year indicates the existence of an administrative problem of great moment. "The teachers' health ultimately determines the efficiency of the entire educational system of the community. "The heavy morbidity rate ascribable to respiratory diseases," it declared, "deserves an investigation by the school authorities into the system of ventilation."

Here, again, is a striking symptom of the confusion of the times. "It is evident that we must know what kind of air our teachers and their pupils breathe," assert the investigators, but there they stop.

The crew of the Kronprinz Wilhelm lived in the open air of the open sea. The convict poison squad of Mississippi breathed the purest air under the most hygienic and sanitary conditions which the state could provide. The railroad laborers of the Madeira-Mamore poison squad breathed an air uncontaminated by the fumes of the modern industrial settlement. Pure air and debased foods are not compatible.

The school children of the country will never learn this fact until their teachers learn it.

§ 71 -- Thin-Haired Women and Bald-Headed Men

As school teachers take their classes on inspection tours through the patent flour mills of Brooklyn the commerical chemists who pilot them from grinder to sifter and from sifter to bolter always volunteer the information that white patent flour is incomparably superior to whole wheat meal.

"White flour is far more nutritious than any mulatto-coloured product ever milled," they say. "Professor Harry Snyder says so."

The teachers, impressed by the immensity of their surroundings, and the really extraordinary experience of watching a battery of mills in operation in a large plant, go back to their classes perfectly satisfied that white bread will do after all.

It never occurs to them that should Professor Harry Snyder speak out in meeting the money invested in so-called patent flour mills would have little use for him.

Any school teacher who wants the truth can have it for herself without reference to Professor Harry Snyder. All she needs are three pieces of grits gauze known as No. 30, No. 50 and No. 60, three pieces of silk bolting cloth, known as No. 9, No. 10 and No. 13, a small Fairbank scale with weights measurable by the one-thirty-second of an ounce for rough estimates and one grain weights for finer estimates, a magnifying glass that will enlarge ten diameters or a small microscope that will enlarge 100 diameters.

With this outfit if the school teacher will take eight ounces of Whole Wheat Meal and put them through the simple operation suggested here some disclosures will be made that will prove little short of startling.

I have capitalised Whole Wheat Meal because every city in the United States gives shelter to hundreds of packages of so-called entire wheat flour which, not being entire wheat at all, will not serve our purposes.

Carefully sift the eight ounces of whole wheat meal through the No. 30 grits gauze. All the meal except approximately one 16-32 of an ounce passes through the gauze.

With the magnifying glass it will be seen that the one 16-32 of an ounce left on the No. 30 grits gauze consists of large particles of bran and germ with the "brush flour" that adheres to the bran.

The bran is found to consist of rough, canvas-like, brownish particles, with a very remarkable suggestion of woof and warp. The germ, difficult to distinguish from bran with the naked eye, will be found to consist of rich, oily, cream-coloured particles.

A chemical analysis of this bran and germ, which take up large quantities of water and hold it in the intestines for lubricating purposes, shows they contain the mineral salts, colloids, and vitamines. Both bran and germ are rich in silicon, sulphur, nitrogen, iron, iodine, potassium, manganese, phosphorus, nucleo proteins, or phosphorised albumens, lecithins, or phosphorised fats, and the simple phytin compounds and phosphates without which, as proved in the St. Petersburg experiment, no animal can be properly nourished.

The woman who values the thin and lustreless hair that remains to her, and the bald-headed man who wishes he had some hair to value, even thin and lustreless, will look dejectedly upon the discarded silicon, and the anemic creature who seeks in vain for solace in beef-iron-and-wine will pray for the miller who throws all this elemental food to the hogs.

The teacher is now ready for operation No. 2. By sifting the balance of the wheat through grits gauze No. 50 it will be found that one and 5-32 of an ounce will remain on the gauze. Under the magnifying glass these particles, less coarse than those that were sifted out first, will be identified as bran, germ, and middlings. No handsomer breakfast food ever appeared on the market, and yet such breakfast food is know only to swine.

The calcium, so necessary to Mother Nature in her calcification of tuberculous areas, will be disclosed under chemical analysis in these rejected keystones of the human arch.

The school teacher's pupils will say, "Do we not eat this beautiful stuff held by grits gauze No. 50?" and the school teacher will say, "No, dear children, this is cattle food."

§ 72 -- A Pretty Test

The school teacher, carefully sifting the balance of the wheat through grits gauze No. 60, finds that one and 29-32 of an ounce remain on top of the gauze. This rejected material consists of fine particles of germ, branny specks and middlings with their precious salts and colloids.

A chemical analysis of the contents of grits gauze No. 30, No. 50, and No. 60, shows that about two-thirds of the mineral salts of the original whole wheat have been removed and thrown away.

She will now take No. 9 silk bolting cloth and pass the balance of the wheat through it, whereupon she will find that two and 18-32 ounces remain on the silk. Again the magnifying glass is applied. The rich, cream-coloured particles consist of fine middlings, fine germ, and a few branny specks.

In this intimate mixture the bran is brown, the germ yellow, and the middling white. The combination is very beautiful but it is not sufficiently anemic for human food.

The chemical test is again applied. It is discovered that on silk bolting cloth No. 9 and grits gauze No. 30, No. 50 and No. 60, three-fourths or 75 percent of the total original mineral content of the whole wheat has been deposited. This mineral deposit represents the loss all white flour sustains.

The balance of the wheat is put through No. 10. Only 17-32 of an ounce remain on the cloth. The lens reveals this to be very fine middlings, sometimes known as farina, sometimes known as cream of wheat. It will not support life.

Now take the balance of the whole wheat meal and sift it through silk bolting cloth No. 13. One and ten thirty-seconds of an ounce remain behind. This is fine flour, the summum bonum of modern milling.

More refined, white, patent flour can be recovered from the middlings scattered through the other separations, so that out of the eight ounces of whole wheat about five ounces of flour, minus the minerals of the wheat, can eventually be recovered.

This flour is subdivided by the millers into patent, straight, and low-grade. When patent flour was selling for $7 a barrel of 196 pounds, straight flour sold for $5 a barrel of the same weight, and low-grade flour for $4.25 a barrel.

The high-grade flour, consumed by the baker, costs just half as much as the low-grade flour going to the dear people who don't know a thing about it.

The phrase "high grade" is not employed in the significance of nutritional value. The higher grade the flour the more it has been robbed of the elements indispensable to health.

As our school teacher becomes skilful enough in her use of the grits gauze and silk bolting cloth it will be easy for her to separate the low grade, the inferior flour and the siftings and tailings from the so-called patent flours.

After having sifted the patent flour through the silk bolting cloth, the school teacher will obtain a few slides of window glass, six or eight inches long by two inches wide. On one of these slides she will arrange a few little hills of the different siftings of the patent flour upon which she is experimenting.

Placing these little hills side by side she will carefully slick them off with another piece of glass until with one steady downward pressing pull she has levelled all the little hills and given them a smooth surface.

She will then immerse the glass slide with its layers of patent flour in a pan of cold water. This operation will bring out the bloom of the so-called high-grade flour and the grey of its low-grade neighbours.

The lines of difference between each of the separations will be as plainly marked as a hedged fence. The school children will not be satisfied to stop when they witness these exhibitions. They will want to jump the fence, and explore the field beyond.

§ 73 -- Experiments with Chickens for Boys and Girls

When school teachers manifest an interest in the definition of the word "food" the school children will begin to learn something about themselves not now taught through any text books.

They will learn that the school girls of to-day are destined to be the mothers of the race ten or twenty years hence and they will understand why the school room is the place to study foods in their relationship to health and disease.

In the basement or on the roof there will he ten cages divided into two groups of five each.

There will be four chickens in each cage of the first group. The cages of the second group will be empty. The school children will feed the chickens.

The chickens in cage No. 1 will be fed whole corn, whole oats, natural brown rice, whole wheat, unpearled barley, grass or greens of any kind, and water. The children will note that on this diet the chickens in cage No.1 will be proud and spirited. Their feathers will be brilliant, their flesh firm, and their bodies well developed.

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 2 with simple mixtures of whole grains and denatured grains, the remainder of the diet being the same as that of cage No. 1. They will note that at the end of a period of six months there will be a marked superiority in the appearance of the chickens in cage No. 1 .

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 3 with pearled barley, polished rice, processed oats, degerminated corn meal, and dough balls made of white flour and water with the same quantity of greens fed to the chickens in cages No. 1 and No. 2.

In a few months the marked physical degeneracy of the health of these chickens will teach the children its own lesson.

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 4 with beet pulp, from which some of the mineral salts have been extracted by leaching in distilled water. In addition to this they will feed the chickens with soda crackers, white biscuits, gingerbread, gingersnaps, white bread, pie crust, and candy, plus water, with the usual quantity of gravel and greens.

The conditions of the chickens in a few months will be eloquently suggestive.

The same children will feed the chickens in cage No. 5 with white bread, white biscuits, white crackers and cakes, cream of wheat, farina, macaroni, corn flakes, caramels, soda water, and other fancy drinks.

As the feathers of these chickens begin to droop and the chickens begin to huddle in the corners of their cages, seeking for the darkness, miserable even unto death, the lesson of the relationship of food to animal life will be taught.

At this stage of the experiment the healthy chickens in cage No. 1 will be transferred to cage No. 6 and there they will be fed on the diet of cage No. 5 until they, too, begin to show the same symptoms of dissolution and disease.

The chickens of cages No. 2, No. 3, No. 4, and No. 5 will then be transferred to cages No. 7, No. 8, No. 9, and No. 10, where they will be fed on the natural, undebased, unimpoverished, undenatured diet of cage No. 1.

The school children will see the sick chickens recover rapidly, and they will go through life with a lesson thoroughly learned. When they assume the responsibility of home life for themselves they will know that to abandon the laws of nature in the pursuit of some capricious food ornament will be at the expense of the health, happiness, and welfare of those dependent upon them.

§ 74 -- What the Children Will Learn

Having become familiar with the chicken-feeding experiments, the children will learn that it is possible to alter the resistance of animals at will, and to overcome the effects of one diet by combining it with another.

They will learn that the resistance of animals as determined by Hunt, even to certain poisons, differs greatly according to the character of their diet.

They will learn that Bulletin 69, Hygienic Laboratory, United States Treasury Department, declares "that in extreme cases mice after having been fed on certain diets, may recover from forty times the dose of acetonitrile fatal to mice fed on other diets."

They will learn that a diet of oats or oat meal usually leads to a marked resistance, and that the administration of certain iodine compounds with such a diet further increases an abnormal resistance.

They will learn that the experiments reported by the Government show that as far as resistance to acetonitrile is concerned, iodine exerts its action through the thyroid gland, and the resistance caused by an oat diet is in part an effect exerted upon the thyroid.

The result achieved with iodine in the Rotunda Hospital, Dublin; the thyroid researches of Victor Hoarsely and the discovery of thyroidine by Bauman, have led more than one pathologist to the conviction that iodine is a potent factor in the neutralisation of the toxic substances formed in the human body.

They will learn something of the most amazing developments of the war in the 1918 report from the British government laboratories at Cambridge, Glasgow and London, and various factories and hospitals in which government war bread experiments were conducted.

They may ask the question in the presence of that report, "Is it not strange that after a nation-wide campaign to discourage the use of whole grain bread in the United States, a campaign that received the backing of the Food Administration itself, there should come from the British government a declaration that it finds bread composed of whole wheat flour mixed with 20 percent of other cereals not only suited to all ages and digestion, but also yielding a higher percentage of energy ?"

They will learn that the British loaves used in the experiment were baked from flour milled under the personal supervision of A. E. Humphreys, president of the National Association of British and Irish Millers.

They will learn that no precaution was omitted to make the experiments complete, and that every result was worked out in a series of tables.

They will learn that at one factory in Yorkshire the tests were applied to a group of men, women and children, whose sole bread supply for two months was whole wheat bread.

They will learn that although under medical supervision throughout their experience, in no case did the whole wheat bread cause digestive troubles, but that the health of the subjects improved during its use.

They will learn that the people of New York City, now consuming more than 100,000 loaves of 100 percent whole wheat bread every week, could have told the British government this and much more several years ago.

"When the whole wheat bread was tried on various sufferers from tuberculosis," declares the British report, "most of them gained weight. The main fact established is that the human body can make better use of the parts of the wheat grain which have hitherto been discarded, than pigs and poultry to which these rich and nutritive by-products of milling have been given in the past. The country has gained enormously in food and energy from the compulsory inclusion in the loaf of these rejected by-products."

Well may the children ask, "What did the millers, the profiteers and the Food Administration officials say when this British report was made public?"

In the meantime they will learn, from such hints as these, that man is guilty of sin, when he knowingly and deliberately removes from his food supply, in order to make it commercially profitable, those profoundly active and indispensable substances that God has compounded not for the benefit of the food manufacturer, but for the benefit of little children, and the fathers and mothers who lovingly, anxiously, and in pain watch over them.

They will learn that all through nature are exhibited subtle hints that the fixed laws under which all unjuggled food comes to man's hands were intended with the co-operation of man's intelligence to serve his needs.

They will learn that nature demands of man that he shall accept her dispensations not as accidents, but as exquisitely rhythmical processes, as profound in their operation as they are benevolent in their functions.


Next: Six: How "Business" Muzzles Truth

Table of Contents

Back to the Small Farms Library

---