Dewey Edward Hooker
The No Breakfast Plan and the Fasting-Cure
My medical brethren considered the scheme only as they would consider an invasion of smallpox or a heresy whose methods were a danger to life. One physician, a woman specialist, informed me that she was continually importuned as to her professional opinion of the new craze that had invaded the city. That all other physicians were equally called upon, that they would condemn, was inevitable; and I permitted them the largest liberty without the least resentment; but there was the sustaining cheer of seeing the happiest faces that only increased as the heresy spread.
My attendance upon the severely sick became more taxing because of the exceeding concern in the immediate environment, that the pangs of starvation were being added to the pangs of disease.
As none of my professional brethren ever manifested any desire to be enlightened on this subject, I did not volunteer, since I felt the wiser way would be to wait an adequate amount of evidence before making any public announcements of presumed important discoveries in practical hygiene.
My experiences in the rooms of the sick had convinced me, long before I gave up my morning meal, that death from starvation was so remote as practically to exclude it from consideration; hence with the great improvement that was the immediate result in my own case I could from the first speak with a "thus saith the Lord" emphasis on the safety of going through a forenoon "on an empty stomach."
As no one could come into my office without my being able to give the assurance of at least some relief that would be immediately realized, that would be felt even to the finger-ends, my office became more and more a lecture-room, a school of health culture for the education of missionaries, for a friend-to-friend uplifting into higher life.
All I needed for my own sake was that missing link to clothe my words with all the desired power. With so much to enliven, to encourage, it was as if I were sitting at the very feet of Nature, so thrilled by her wonderful stories that I was utterly unconscious of the storm of ridicule and epithet to which I was subjected.
Once in a while Nature would favor me with a miracle in the way of an inspiring change. A man in the early prime of life had reached a condition in which he habitually rejected every breakfast. Two trips to Europe and a year in the hands of a Berlin specialist for the stomach failed to relieve; and yet he was not so disabled as to prevent him attending to his ordinary business affairs; the stomach seemed to be eccentric in being merely irritable without structural disease.
I asked him if he felt that the breakfasts which would not stay down were doing him any good. To this he had to assent that they were not. I told him if the breakfast only to result in a heave-offering were omitted he would be better able for his duties of the forenoon. He began at once to raise his brows.
It was not difficult for him to see that if no breakfasts were put into his stomach none would have to be thrown up with sickening effort, and hence he could not but be better for the forenoon services if the sick spell were omitted. The fact was, the breakfast would soon be rejected, and then the hours of rest would enable the stomach to handle the dinner without the repetition of the morning sickness.
Only a few words from me of this kind, and thence on there were no breakfasts; and from the first all the complaints from the stomach ceased, and he used to remark that he began to get well as soon as I began to talk to him.
Now this man with his family was a recent arrival in this city, and his first intimate acquaintance was one who had been relieved of weekly headaches of a skull-bursting kind through the no-breakfast plan – thus the missionary contagion.
For many years I was content to allow people to have the morning coffee or tea as desired, with the largest liberty of dinner gluttony; and this was really the only means possible for the introduction of an innovation so radical. To have given nothing to relieve the morning want for something in the stomach to set the wheels of life in motion would have been a failure from the first. With all the coffee break of the fast was attended by so marked an increase of cheer and general strength, and the enjoyment of the general meal at or before noon was so immeasurably increased, that the method spread as a contagion against which professional denouncement and ridicule were in vain.
And with all converts I found that the experiences in the penalties of gluttony were so enlightening, so restraining, that there was apparently little need to say much more as to the quantity or quality of food, what and how to eat.
The enthusiasm of all over the forenoons of power and comfort, to be followed by a luxury of meals never before realized, fully satisfied my pride in professional success; and all the more because the penalties of gluttony were seldom charged to my account.
It was only after the missing link was found and added to the chain that I could fully realize the enormous waste of strength and the mental and moral degradation from eating food in excess, because the enticements of relish are taken for the actual needs of the body. Think of it! Actual soul power involved in ridding the stomach and bowels of the foul sewage of food in excess, food in a state of decomposition, to be forced through nearly two rods of bowels and largely at the expense of the soul itself!!
Oh, gluttony, with its jaws of death, its throat an ever-open gate to the stomach of torment!
VII
When I finally arrived at a point of vision where I could see the stomach as a mere machine, that it could no more act without brain-power than brawny arms with their nerves severed could wield a sledge, I began a study of digestion with new interest, with a view to save power from undue waste.
It is the sense of relish, of flavor, that is behind all the woes of indigestion, and not the sense of hunger. The sweetened foods; the pies, cakes, puddings, etc., that are eaten merely from a sense of relish after the sense of hunger has become fully sated, and generally by far more of the plainer foods than waste demands, is the wrecking sin at all but the humblest tables.
Rapid eating, by which there is imperfect solution of the tougher solids and a filling of the stomach before the hunger sense can naturally be appeased, is the additional evil to insure serious consequences to the stomach and brain.
For merely practical purposes, all that is necessary to know about the digestive process is that by a peculiar arrangement of the muscle forces of the stomach the food is made to revolve in such a way as to wipe the exuding digestive juice from the walls; that, therefore, the finer the division of the solids by mastication the more rapid the solution to the absorbing condition. That meat in finer particles will sooner dissolve than meat in large, solid masses is clearly seen.
It will be recalled that digestive conditions are really soul conditions, as if there were actual wires extending from the very depths of the soul itself to each individual gland, with power to ebb and flow as the mental condition shall determine.
It may be presumed that power to digest is the power to revolve food in the stomach and the power to generate the gastric juice as determined by the power of the brain, the glands themselves not holding their juice in mere reserve, but power to generate in reserve. Thus it is seen that food in excess is in every way exhaustive as the immediate result.
These may be called the subjective conditions of digestion. Now let us consider some of the objective conditions from the standpoint of moral science. What the sunshine of a warm day is to all growing things on the earth, so is that shining seen in other faces that reaches the depths of the human soul with brightness and life.
Overeating is so universal from the general ignorance of practical physiology that few stomachs have a time for a full clearing with the needed rest before the time of another filling arrives. It is therefore a matter of sheer necessity not only to attain and maintain the utmost possible cheer of soul, but it is also a necessity to have cheer in other souls with whom relations are intimate.
As a matter of extraneous digestive aid, a cheerful soul in a family is an abiding source of digestive energy to all in social contact. It affects the digestive energy of all, as the breeze the fire, as the clearing sky the low spirits from the gloom of chill and fogs. The eyes that do not glisten with higher life, the lines upon the face that are not alive with cheerful, kindly emotions, the frowning look, the word that cuts deeply, have their repressive effects upon digestive energy within their remorseless reach.
The moral science of digestive energy is a new study; it is not known as a factor in the process of digestion; but the time is coming when cheer of soul will become a study as of one of the finer arts, and then human homes will not be so much like lesser lunatic asylums without the restraining hands of a wise superintendent.
Life will be different in homes when all within the age of reason shall realize that their words without kindness, their looks without cheer, are forces that tend to physical and moral degradation, really nothing less than death-dealing energies upon all lives within their reach. The power of human kindness has ever been a favorite theme with the moralist, but it has not been considered with reference to its power upon digestion.
Anger is mental and moral chaos; it is insanity; it is revenge in the fury of a hurricane; and sensitive natures have the greatest need for the largest measure of health in order that these human tempests shall be under larger restraint.
The gloomy, the irritable, the dyspeptic Christian is a dispenser of death and not of the higher life, and his religious faith does not spread by the contagiousness of example: and because of the solemnity, of the exceeding importance of his sense of the possibilities of the life beyond death he has all the more need to have that physical and moral strength that his daily walk, conversation, and mien may be consistent, forceful, and uplifting.
To this great end study, study to see cheer everywhere, and above all things to possess it. Good health is also contagious, and, no less than disease, has a reflex impression. Only above the chill dampness, the fogs, and clouds is the clear sky with the blazing sun. There are undreamed-of possibilities of getting above the worriments of life through an intelligent understanding and application of the physiology of cheer as the chief force in the life of the body, mind, and soul.
VIII
Having finally arrived at the conviction that from the first wink in the morning until the last at night strength departs, not in any way to be kept up by food, that from the last wink at night until the first in the morning strength returns, I became fully endowed to tell all the sick and afflicted in the most forceful way that with the strength of the brain recharged by sleep is all the labor of the day performed, and that no labor is so taxing upon human muscles that it cannot be performed longer without fatigue when the breakfast is omitted.
That this is possible came to me as a great surprise and in this way: a farmer with a large assortment of ailments came to me for relief through drugs. He was simply advised to take coffee mornings, rest mainly during forenoons, and when a normal appetite and power to digest would come he would be able to work after resuming his breakfasts. This man, who was more than fifty years old, was the first manual laborer to be advised to observe a morning fast.
Several months after, he came to me with news that his ailing had all departed, and that he had been able to do harder work on his coffee breakfasts than ever before with breakfasts of solids. And if he so worked with power during forenoons, why not others? Why not all?
This no-breakfast plan was so contagious that I was not long in finding that farmers in all directions were beginning to go to their labors with much less food in their stomachs than had been their wont, and in all cases with added power of muscle.
Only recently three farmers went into the field one hot morning to cradle oats, the most trying of all work on the farm; two of them had their stomachs well filled with hearty foods. With profuse sweating and water by the quart because of the chemical heat arising from both digestion and decomposition, these toiled through the long hours with much weariness. The third man had all his strength for the swinging of the cradle, the empty stomach not even calling for water; with the greatest ease he kept his laboring friends in close company and when the noon hour came he was not nearly so tired as they.
A man who had been a great sufferer from indigestion, a farmer, found such an increase of health and strength from omitting the morning meal that he became able to cradle rye, a much heavier grain than oats, during an entire forenoon "on an empty stomach." Later he went from one December to the following April on one daily meal, and not only with ease, but with a gain in weight in addition. During these months this man did all the work usual in farm-houses, besides riding several hours over a milk route during the forenoons.
In this city resides a carpenter, formerly subject to frequent sicknesses, who for the past five years has walked nearly a mile to the shop where he is employed without even as much as a drink of water for breakfast; and this not only without any sicknesses, but with an increase in weight of fifteen pounds also.
More than a dozen years ago a farmer who was not diseased in any way, but who had been in the habit of eating three times a day at a well-spread table, and at mid-forenoon taking a small luncheon for hunger-faintness, omitted his breakfast and morning luncheon, and has been richly rewarded since then in escaping severe colds and other ailings. He conclusively felt that his forenoon was the better half of the day for clear-headedness and hard labor; he has added nearly a score of pounds to his weight, and his case has been a wonder to all his farmer friends, who see only starvation in cutting down brain and needless stomach taxing.
I must now ask the reader to bear with me while I apply the principles of this new hygiene with a good deal of reiteration, trying to vary them in utterance as far as possible. The need of daily food is primarily a matter of waste and supply, the waste always depending upon the amount of loss through the general activities, manual labor being the most destructive.
Across the street from where I live a new house is being built: for many days during the chilly, windy month of March several men have been engaged high in the air, handling green boards, studs, and joists for ten hours each day; and yet these men are not eating more food daily than hundreds of brain-workers who never have general exercise. The workmen across the street eat to satisfy hunger; the brain-workers, to satisfy the sense of relish; and the meals of the latter are habitually in excess of the real demands because of wasted bodies.
In spite of the apparent overeating of the brain-worker, I believe the farmer and the manual laborer break down at an earlier age, for the reason that they overwork and generally eat when too tired to digest fully: the farmer is rarely content to do one day's work in one day when the crop season invites him to make the most of fair days.
With successes rapidly multiplying in all directions within my circuit, the desire became urgent for some way to make my new hygiene known to the public. My first thought was to get some eminent divine interested through a cure that would compel him to a continual talk as to how he became saved.
At a great denominational meeting in Chicago I chanced to hear a splendid address from a sallow-faced professor of a divinity school, the Rev. Dr. G. W. N.; and after a great deal of reflection I resolved, without consulting him, to write him a series of letters on health culture, hoping that he would become so immediately interested as to permit me a complete unfolding of my theory and practice.
I began the series, taking all the chances to be considered a crank; they were continued until the end without response, when later I received a brief note with sarcasm in every line. At least my letters had been read; for he informed me that he had no confidence in my theory, giving me a final summing up with his estimate that there were more "cranks" in the medical profession than in any other. I was not in the least cast down at this long-range estimate, since I had become quite used to close-at-hand ridicule.
There was before me the unknown time when a still more eminent D. D. would both accept and practise my theory, and also give the world his estimate in an elaborate preface to a book that in the fulness of time the ways opened to me to write and have published.
I was sent for by a man who had become a moral and physical wreck, his body being reduced to nearly a skeleton condition from consumption. As he was taking an average of two quarts of whiskey per week, I accepted the charge of his case with reluctance.
I was not able in any way to change his symptoms for the better; there had been no hint of hunger for many weeks, and the mere effort to swallow or even taste the most tempting dainties was painful to witness. He was taken with a severe pain in his side, which was fully relieved with the hypodermic needle, and there followed several hours of general comfort and no desire for the alcoholic. Seeing this I was strongly impressed that by continuing the dosings for a time the seared stomach might get into a better condition and the fast be followed by a natural hunger.
This is what actually followed: in about a week the dosings were reduced to mere hints, and without any desire for stimulants there came a desire for broiled steak and baked potatoes, which were taken with great relish. Thence on this was mainly the bill of fare, and the half-filled bottle remained on his table untouched, undesired; and in time there were added more than a score of pounds to his wasted body.
Now it chanced that this regenerative work was seen day after day by his friend, who was badly in need of an all-round treatment to meet the needs of his case; he was a man of keen intellect, of real ability of both mind and muscle. Becoming deeply interested in the theory behind the miracle he saw unfolding day after day, and all the more because of a total extinction of the drink-habit that was deep seated through long duration, he began to omit his morning meals.
He saw more than his own case. He had been a manager of book agencies, and when he found also his desire for the cigar undergoing a rapid decline, he became possessed with the idea that a book might be written on the subject. The time came when he could sit down in the office of the Henry Bill Publishing Company, Norwich, Conn., a picture of health, to interview Mr. Charles C. Haskell on the subject of publishing a book. Mr. Haskell had known him in less healthful years, and he marvelled at the change.
I had duly suggested, and with great emphasis, that no publisher would listen to him unless he were sick enough to be interested in the theory and would give a test by actual trial. He found Mr. Haskell in very low health. Experts had sent him on a tour through Europe in search of that health he failed to find; his body was starving on three meals a day that were not digested, and he began to arrange his affairs with reference to a near-at-hand breakdown.
To this man was made such an appeal as men are rarely able to make, because a regenerated life was also vocal in utterance. To him a miracle seemed to have been wrought, and he listened to each word as if to a reprieve from a death seemingly inevitable.
As there was no disease of the stomach, it required only a few days for Mr. Haskell to acquire so much of new life that he felt as one born again, and a week had not passed before I had his earnest request to put my hygiene into a book, he taking all chances of failure.
He began to advise all ailing friends to give up their breakfasts or to fast until natural hunger came, getting many marvellous results. One of his first thoughts was to have the forthcoming book introduced by some eminent divine who could write through the inspiration of experience.
In a visit to Norwich of that evangelist of world-wide eminence, George F. Pentecost, D. D., then of London, Eng., the opportunity came, and for a case of "special conversion" he was made the guest of Mr. Haskell. He was easily persuaded to the system, and his need is expressed in the following from the introduction of The True Science of Living, which was actually written without his having read a single line of the manuscript.
"Taking the theory upon which this system of living is based into account – and even to my lay mind it seemed most reasonable – and the testimony which I personally received from both men and women, delicate and biliously strong, workingmen, merchants, doctors, and preachers, delicate ladies for years invalided and in a state of collapse, and some who had never been ill, but were a hundred per cent. better for living without breakfast, I resolved to give up my breakfast. I pleaded at first that it might be my luncheon instead, for I have all my life enjoyed my breakfast more than any other meal. But no! it was the breakfast that must go. So on a certain fine Monday morning I bade farewell to the breakfast-room. For a day or two I suffered slight headaches from what seemed to me was the want of food; but I soon found that they were just the dying pains of a bad habit. After a week had passed I never thought of wanting breakfast; and though I was often present in the breakfast-rooms of friends whom I was visiting, and every tempting luxury of the breakfast was spread before me, I did not desire food at all, feeling no suggestion of hunger. Indeed now, after a few months, the thought of breakfast never occurs to me. I am ready for my luncheon (or breakfast if you please) at one o'clock, but am never hungry before that hour.
"As for the results of this method of living, I can only relate them as I have personally experienced them:
"1. I have not had the first suggestion of a sick headache since I gave up my breakfast. From my earliest boyhood I do not remember ever having gone a whole month without being down with one of these attacks, and for thirty years, during the most active part of my life, I have suffered with them oftentimes, more or less, every day for a month or six weeks at a time, and hardly ever a whole fortnight passed without an acute attack that has sent me to bed or at least left me to drag through the day with intense bodily suffering and mental discouragement.
"2. I have gradually lost a large portion of my surplus fat, my weight having gone down some twenty pounds, and my size being reduced by several inches at the point where corpulency was the most prominent; and I am still losing weight and decreasing in size.
"3. I find that my skin is improving in texture, becoming softer, finer, and more closely knit than heretofore. My complexion and eyes have cleared, and all fulness of the face and the tendency to flushness in the head have disappeared.
"4. I experience no fulness and unpleasantness after eating, as I so often did before. As a matter of fact, though I enjoy my meals (and I eat everything my appetite and taste call for) as never before, eating with zest, I do not think I eat as much as I used to do; but I am conscious of better digestion; my food does not lie so long in my stomach, and that useful organ seems to have gone out of the gas-producing business.
"5. I am conscious of a lighter step and a more elastic spring in all my limbs. Indeed, a brisk walk now is a pleasure which I seek to gratify, whereas before the prescribed walk for the sake of exercise was a horrible bore to me.
"6. I go to my study and to my pulpit on an empty stomach without any sense of loss of strength mentally or physically – on the other hand, with freshness and vigor which is delightful. In this respect I am quite sure that I am in every way advantaged."
Rev. George Sherman Richards, after more than fifteen years of frequent severe headaches that were supposed to be due to heredity, has had entire freedom during the five years of the No-breakfast Plan. He can hardly be surpassed as a picture of perfect health.
One of the first prominent converts who finally surrendered to Mr. Haskell, whose persistence was beyond fatigue, was the editor of the Norwich, Conn., Bulletin, a special friend. There was no want of conviction on his part, but the evil day to begin the morning fast was continually postponed. Finally, one morning when he was specially busy and charged with impatience, the beaming and hopeful face of Mr. Haskell appeared. Said the busy man, "Mr. Haskell, if you will walk right out of that door, I will promise you to begin tomorrow morning to do without breakfasts." Mr. Haskell walked out – the breakfasts were given up, and some years later I was personally informed that he believed that his life had been saved thereby.
One of the expedients was to send a circular about the book to every foreign missionary of every denomination, and as a result one of these fell into the hands of Rev. W. E. Rambo, in India. He had become a mere shadow of his former self from ulcerated bowels, the sequel of a badly treated case of typhoid fever. For seven months there had been daily movements tinged with blood; the appetite was ravenous, and large meals were taken without any complainings from the stomach. Before a well-spread table his desire to eat would become simply furious, and it was indulged regardless of quality and quantity. His brain system had become so exhausted that reason and judgment had no part in this hurricane of hunger.
There were seven successive physicians in this case, some of them with many titles. The first one he called on reaching New England cut his food down to six bland meals daily. All of them had tried to cure the offending ulcers by dosings. Think whether bleeding ulcers on the body would get well with their tender surfaces subjected to the same grinding, scratching process from bowel rubbish!
He was in condition on his arrival to lose six pounds during the first week of six "bland" daily meals. After reading the True Science of Living he discharged his physician and came under my personal care. These ulcers were treated with the idea of giving them the same rest as if each had been the end of a fractured bone. To relieve pain, to hold the bowel still, and to abolish the morbid hunger, a few doses with the hypodermic needle were a seeming necessity.
In less than two weeks this starving man of skin and bones was relieved of all symptoms of disease, and there seemed a moderate desire for food of the nourishing kind. Less than two weeks were required for all those ulcers to become covered with a new membrane: but for full three weeks only those liquid foods were given that had no rubbish in them to prove an irritant to the new, delicate membrane covering the ulcers. For a time after the third week there was only one light daily meal, with a second added when it seemed safe to take it.
In a little more than three months there was a gain of forty-two and a half pounds of flesh, as instinct with new, vigorous life as if freshly formed by the divine hand. My last word from this restored man was after he, his wife, and four children had been back in India for a year and a half, where they were all living on the two-meal plan without any sicknesses, and he had a class of one hundred and sixty native boys on the same plan.
Who can fail to see the science and the sense to relieve all diseases of the digestive tract? There are no cases of hemorrhoids not malignant in character, in which total relief will not be the result if fasts are long enough; no cases of anal fistula that will not finally close if they can have that rest from violence that is their only need; and equally all ulcers and fissures that make life a history of torture.
No case with structural disease of any part of the digestive tract not malignant has yet come under my care in which there has not been a cure, or in which there has not been a cure in sight. Through a fast we may let the diseased parts in the digestive tract rest as we would a broken bone or wound on the body.
Several missionaries have regained health on these new lines, who have returned to preach and practise a larger gospel than before. One returned from the Congo region of Africa with such wreckage of health as to make any active service impossible. Mr. Haskell met him in New York, and in time he returned with twenty-four missionaries, all as converts to the new gospel of health, and to have that sustained health only possible through a larger obedience to the laws of God "manifest in the flesh" – obedience that takes into account the moral science, the physics and the chemistry of digestion.
These and those others who have had their lives redeemed from lingering death through the simple, easy ways of Nature never suffer their enthusiasm to wane. Not to volunteer aid when unintentional suicide is going on seems nothing less than criminal.
As a means to better health the utility of the morning fast is beyond estimate. In all other modes of health culture there is a great deal of time consumed in certain exercises that are certain to be given up in time. What the busy world requires is a mode to gain and maintain the health that requires neither time nor thought – one that is really automatic.
We arise in the morning with our brain recharged by sleep, and we go at once about our business. If we take a walk or go to the gymnasium, we simply waste that much time, and we also lessen the stored-up energy by whatever of effort is called out. We can skip the dumb-bells and perform any other kind of exercise that is good for the health; and always with the certainty that we shall have more strength for the first half of the day if none is wasted in this way. As a matter of mere enjoyment, walks in fresh air are beneficial, but not as an enforced exercise for the reason of health.