The New Health Guide.
The distinguished surgeon and founder of the New Health Society believes that prevention is better than cure, and that innumerable disorders and diseases are caused by faulty diet, constipation and the consequent poisoning of the blood stream with the putridity engendered in ones inside.
The present volume contains a valuable contribution by Sir Arbuthnot himself, from which I would quote the following passages:.
“Every tissue and organ in the body undergoes a degenerative change in proportion to the degree of contamination of the blood, and such degeneration renders them susceptible to the invasion by organisms, such as tubercle, rheumatism, rheumatic gout, and finally, when the process of degeneration has become sufficiently advanced, cancer finds a soil in which it can grow and flourish.
It is necessary to urge that cancer never affects a healthy organ, and that to avoid its incidence it is essential that your organs shall be healthy. The tissues of the brain, eye, ears, hair, skin, etc., all react to the infection of the material upon which they must depend for their nutrition and the manifestations and expressions of this poisoning are regarded as disease.
“We must remember that we die through the defects in our gastro- intestinal tract, or in other words, we dig our graves with our teeth.
“In the avoidance of constipation diet is the deciding factor. Dietetics, in the modern sense of the word, is a comparatively new science. Until about ten years ago doctors and medical scientists directed but little interest and attention to the food requirements of the human body. It used to be thought that so long as the dietary provided so many calories or food units and contained a certain amount of fresh vegetable or fruit, then all would be well.
Dietetics was a simple, straightforward matter, to be left to the discretion of so-called common sense. It was regarded as a subject beneath the dignity of the medical profession, and doctors left their training schools with the scantiest knowledge of nutritional theory and practice. With complete accuracy dietetics might then have been described as the Cinderella of the biological sciences.
“Happily for the welfare of humanity, in the last decade there has been a revolution in the attitude of the medical profession to the study of diet and all that pertains to it. The science of nutrition has come into its own and its vital significance in determining the welfare of the individual and the nation is being realized as never before – not only by physicians, but also by statesmen and legislators.
Dietetics has at last emerged from obscurity and it can be safely asserted that no other branch of physiological science is claiming more attention from research workers all over the world than the science of food in relation to health and disease. In the nineteenth century the great French bacteriologist, Pasteur discovered the nature of germ infection and infection became the master-word of pathology. To- day, it is not infection but nutrition which has become the master word, and more and more it will become so as our knowledge of the intimate relationship between diet and disease becomes more complete.
“To clear the air I will briefly enunciate certain of the basic principles of human dieting. If these are fulfiled in a common- sense fashion there need be no cause for anxiety as far as nutrition goes. A balanced dietary should be our aim. Quite simply this means that we must eat foods which supply the body with heat and energy: such foods include starches, sugars, fats, and animal products.
Also, we must have building and repair foods, and these are obtainable from animal and vegetable proteins, but it has to be kept in mind that meat, fish, milk and eggs provide certain essential elements not found in vegetable proteins. That is why the former are described as first-class proteins.
“We need, too, a supply of mineral salts and vitamins – indispensable elements which are found in a great many foodstuffs, but most abundantly in uncooked green vegetables, fresh fruit, milk, butter, and whole grain cereals. No single foodstuff (other than milk) is a complete food for a human being, and so the incompleteness of one food requires to be made good by some other kind.
In other words, we must partake of a mixed dietary. Actually, all the nutritional requirements of the body can be met by a dietary of milk, cheese, eggs, butter, wholemeal cereals, fruit and vegetables. Animal flesh is not an absolute essential of the human dietary.
“Where most people are apt to go wrong is in the balancing of the various items of the dietary. They eat too much of one and too little of another food, and so upset the bio-chemistry of the body. We may divide foods into the acid formers and the alkaline formers, and as all the tissues of the body are naturally slightly alkaline it is obvious that the consumption of the alkaline foods should be greater than that of the acid foods. Diminished alkalinity of the tissues renders them prone to numerous disorders of health.
Milk, fruit (including the acidic lemon, which in the body laboratory is burnt to form an alkaline residue), and vegetables are alkaline producers, while meat, eggs, and the cereals are acid producers. Fruit and vegetables vary in their acid neutralizing powers, but the most valuable in this respect are lemons, raisins, carrots, spinach, parsnips, and beans.
Clearly, then, to ensure the necessary alkalinity of health, an abundance of milk, fruit, and vegetables in relation to animal flesh and cereals should figure in the well-balanced dietary. In addition, the alkali-producing foods will provide ample amounts of roughage to facilitate bowel action and vitamins and mineral salts to ensure efficient functioning of all the body cells.
“Over-consumption of concentrated starchy food is one of the most prevalent dietetic sins of modern times. Too much sugar intake strains the sugar-controlling mechanism of the body and disturbs the chemistry of the blood. In children the ill effects of this are most marked, but they are also serious in the case of adults.
Modern medical opinions holds that over- consumption of sugar is to a large degree responsible for the prevalence of diabetes, obesity, catarrhal infections, high blood-pressure and dyspepsia. Also, in so far as sugar tends to spoil the appetite it leads to an insufficient intake of fats, fruit, and vegetables. It is a common experience that the sweet eating child is very liable to colds, catarrhs, and constipation.
“Excessive animal-flesh eating is the next most common dietetic error. A great many people have the idea that meat is strengthening and that they cannot do a hard days work unless they have had a large ration of butchers meat. Actually, as I have already indicated, eggs, milk and cheese are adequate substitutes, and animal flesh is no more strengthening than these foods.
Apart from diminishing body alkalinity, excessive meat eating tends to increase intestinal putrefaction, and may lead to severe intestinal self-poisoning. Extreme moderation in meat consumption should be the rule. Healthy persons, free from constipation, may eat meat-but once a day only and with not infrequent omissions. Those who suffer from constipation or dyspepsia would do best to avoid animal flesh altogether.”.
Lane pioneered internal fixation of displaced fractures, procedures on cleft palate, and colon resection and colectomy to treat "Lane's disease"—now otherwise termed colonic inertia, which he identified in 1908—which surgeries were controversial but advanced abdominal surgery.
In the early 1920s, as an early advocate of dietary prevention of cancer, Lane met medical opposition, resigned from British Medical Association, and founded the New Health Society, the first organisation practising social medicine. Through newspapers and lectures, sometimes drawing large crowds, Lane promoted whole foods, fruits and vegetables, sunshine and exercise: his plan to foster health and longevity via three bowel movements daily.