“But that is not all. Cattle are kept tied, day and night, in stable stalls, often entirely unventilated, their excrements allowed to accumulate about them until it is all but impossible for the unaccustomed human, at all sensitively constructed, to breathe in the horrible foetor.
Think of this! Animals intended by nature to run wild over the open hills and meadows inhaling the pure ozone of wide open nature, browsing upon the foodstuffs of God as they come from His hand, fed, at least partly, upon trash and chained to this ignominy ! Would you function as nature intended you to function in life if you were thus treated? Of course you would not. No, you would not, for you could not.”.
“Ignorant savages are able to live disease-free, while in civilization some of our greatest public institutions –hospitals — are for the taking care of the sick and diseased. And ever and ever these hospitals grow larger and more numerous, and ever and ever the cry is for still more and still bigger hospitals, sanatoria and nursing homes. What can be the reason?.
“Is it likely God planned that the very apex of His creative achievements, civilized mankind, should be the only part of His creation that would manifest this imperfection of disease? Why it seems almost a blasphemy even to ask the question.
“If all wild things, including wild men, are practically disease-free, and only civilized mankind are diseased, it must seem some intervention by civilization itself and not by God has caused the diseases of civilization. Neither is it necessary to assume in intervention by God to save savage mankind and the lower animals from disease.
It is only necessary to assume that they live as God intended them to live, or according to the laws of nature. And if it is civilization that has thus intervened to induce disease where none was intended by God, then it must be in the institutions, the habits, of civilization, or some of them, that we must seek for the cause or causes of civilizations multitudinous and multiform diseases.”.
“The reason that the Greeks developed a beauty of body of such wonderful excellence that its glory in effigy and statue has ever since remained the acme of human beauty, was that they respected no other kind. They admired and respected the fat, the scrawny, the flat-chested, stooped-shouldered, shambly, shuffle-gaited human about as much as we admire lunacy. About as much is said advisedly, since we have a sympathy for the lunatic, while the Greeks despised as monstrosities the over-fat, the cadaverous, and the mis-shapen, because they attained not to the ideal that they knew was realizable.”.
“And, because Greek thought held the possessor of an unbeautiful body in such despite, and thus placed the responsibility upon the owner of such a body, the guiding thought of Greek life was not greed and gluttony and sensuality– the dominating thought- influences in modern life — but that chastity and love of beauty without which their general level of beauty appreciation and culture never can be attained.”.
“When a Greek male saw the undraped curves and rotundities of the female form, no unholy fire kindled in his pupils nor mantled with mounting colour his cheeks, but a softened glow of warmth suffused him and widened his admiring glance and set him as chastely tremoring as we who are sensitive might tremor over an orchid or a rose. That was because, in his conception, only divine beauty, the antithesis of the vile, inhered in the female form.
“It is not needed to point out the comparatively more lecherous conception of modern so-called Christian peoples who are shocked at the exposure of a flappers knee.
“Surely our conception must be all wrong when, upon the accidental view of a generally draped portion of a human form, we are stimulated to think unchastely. And it is easy to understand how our wrong conceptions have been derived.
“We have wrongly conceived ourselves as bodies possessing souls, whereas just the reverse is true. We are souls empowered to build for ourselves temples — bodies –out of the dust of the ground”.
“The Greeks idealized the human body.; we treat it as little better than an animated garbage can. They gave it veneration, devoted care, their most penetrating thought, we condemn it, think of it only to gratify its desires, decorate it with tinsel finery, cosmetic it and camouflage it to cover up its symmetrical deficiencies resulting from our sensualism and our lack of structural care and responsibility and call in the repair man– the physician– to patch it up, not to rebuild it in most cases, just to plug a leak here, replace a shingle there, re- solder a broken brace or re-hang a sagging door.
Their bodies thrilled them as we are only occasionally thrilled by the contemplation of some sublime vista, edifice, spectacle, statue, poem or melody. Most of us are thrilled by our bodies about as much as a potato or a cabbage may be supposed to be thrilled by its body.
In the place of thrills, we have the pains of Divine lashings in chastisement for our neglect to care for and adorn and beautify our bodies through the inadequacies of what we put into them as building materials, foods cast into the matrix of our bodies with no more thought in their selection for their high calling in the building of a temple of soul than that they appeal to one or more of our material senses, sight, taste or smell”.
“It is most astounding that physicians have not, with rare exceptions, realized even in thought the potentialities in the human body for the development of beauty, nor have they even dreamed of the extent to which normalizing foods and a systematized regime of living may enter into the effloration of that body beauty”.
“It seems strange that for almost two generations it has been recognized by science and the interested stockman or farmer that the quality or kind, as well as the quantity, of an animals food, have a great deal to do with the quality of the animal; that the quality as well as the health of an animal depend, aside from the influences of heredity, almost entirely upon the character or quality of its foods, and what may be termed animal hygiene. To get the best out of an animal it must be treated according to certain known rules.
When these rules are implicitly obeyed certain definitely beneficial results will surely follow. These rules are not made by man or the animal, but by God. We call them natural rules or natural laws. But natural laws are made to be obeyed, and they will be obeyed. The stockman profits by obedience to them. All very simple; all very natural; just what we expect when animals are concerned. But we rarely apply these rules or natural laws to ourselves.
“If we make a survey of the races of mankind inhabiting the earth, we find that those simple races that we call savages are almost, if not entirely, free from diseases which play such havoc with civilized races: if they have no contacted civilization, and been influenced in their living habits by that contact, and been influenced in their living habits by that contact, through taking on civilized peoples habits. It is well known that savage races may contact civilized races and yet remain disease free, so long as they do not take on civilized habits, especially civilized peoples food habits.
“If we make a survey of the animal life of the world, we find that only the animals that are to some degree controlled by civilized man are diseased.
“It, therefore, appears that wherever animals, human, avian or brute, are free to live their lives according to the health laws of their Creator, that is, are free to live natural lives, there is no disease. This is particularly true of instinct-guided animals. Disease, therefore, appears to be associated with, and dependent upon, some institution connected with civilization.”.
“It is difficult for the layman, and also for the physician who has had no training in dietetics, to appreciate the difference between acid and acid-forming and the similar difference between alkali and alkali-forming. Since this distinction is important, I shall attempt to elucidate it. Acid refers to a substance which when brought in contact with a chemical re-agent will shown an acid reaction.
For example, an acid solution, regardless of its colour, will turn blue litmus paper red, a proof of its acid nature. Acid-or alkali-forming, on the other hand, relates to what is formed out of any substance after it has been for some time in contact with the digestive fluids.
“The subject will be more easily understood by considering the citrus fruit juices. Take orange or lemon juice. Either brought into contact with a chemical reagent will give a strong acid reaction, yet these are among our very best alkali-formers.
“The explanation of this procedure is as follows:.
“The acid present in citrus fruit is citric acid, but this is never present in a free state. It always is present as a salt of citric acid, which means this acid has combined with an alkaline substance to form another substance quite different from either, a soluble salt. The substances with which the citric acid has combined are the alkaline minerals, sodium, potassium, calcium, magnesium, etc.
In 1914, when Dr. Robert G. Jackson M.D. was in his 40s, he developed a severe case of arthritis (probably rheumatoid arthritis) and when he was 49, his doctors gave him four years to live. He refused to accept the diagnosis and began to exercise more and sleep with his bedroom windows open. Long before such things were popular, he developed a health food diet of fruits, vegetables and his own line of health foods including Roman Meal bread. This bread was fashioned after the multi-grain bread ate by the Roman legions and included wheat, barley, oats, spelt and rye. Disease,” he said, “was due solely to man’s stupidity.”
Jackson started the Roman Meal Co. to manufacture his special diet foods. He went on lecture tours where he attracted large audiences. He bragged that “I am growing younger every year.” By 1930, at age 72, and in good health, he was a millionaire. He died in 1941 from complications of a broken hip. Roman Meal bread is still available in the United States.