At first sight it seems incredible that sailors who lead an active, healthy life in the open air should die in such large numbers of cancer. They die not only of cancer in undue numbers, but of many other serious diseases as well. The sailors have a very healthy occupation from the health point of view, but then they live chiefly on preserved, artificial foods, which have been scientifically deprived of the mineral elements and vitamins, and they consume huge quantities of meat.
Cancer is undoubtedly to a large extent a meat-eaters disease. Hence the large proportion of victims among butchers and in the catering trade. Of course it is by no means solely a meat- eaters disease. Chronic poisoning and chronic injury are apt to produce cancer. Boiling hot food and drink is undoubtedly responsible for the vast majority of cases of cancer of the stomach. Hundreds of people suffering from cancer of stomach have come to me and in practically every case I was told that they took their drink boiling hot. My last case of stomach cancer was a man of sixty-six who had hitherto been in perfect health and had never been to the doctor.
He had never suffered from indigestion, but now he suffered atrociously from what he called indigestion with violent pain which tormented him day and night. He had been to several doctors who had given him medicines to facilitate digestion, but they had never enquired about his diet. I heard to my horror that he had every day fifteen or sixteen cups of tea “as hot as hell and as black as ink”, with five or six lumps of white sugar in each cup, and the cup was brought to him in a basin of boiling water, from which he lifted it with a pair of tongs. In addition he took fantastical quantities of meat, salt, pepper, mustard, vinegar, pickles, alcohol and tobacco.
A man who wishes to buy a horse looks into the animals mouth. Mouth and teeth are considered representative of its health. Every savage has magnificent teeth, whether he is a vegetarian or whether he lives exclusively on meat and fish like the Eskimos, or whether he lives on a mixed diet. Judged by the test which we apply to horses and other animals, the condition of the civilized is pitiful.
The savage runs about as God made him or her, with a loin cloth. The civilized not only require boots, clothing etc., to shield them from the friendly elements, but glasses to see, and artificial teeth to chew their food, corsets and belts to disguise the disgrace of their figure, or to lift up sunken organs, special stockings to protect their varicose veins, steel supports to lift up the sunken arches of their feet, pills to help them to digest their food, salts to enable them to excrete it, medicines, such as Aspirin, to relieve their numerous pains, dope to soothe their nerve or make hem sleep, tonics to enable hem to keep going, and so forth. Besides, about half the civilized have been operated upon. According to those who live on mutilating our bodies, we ought to have our teeth pulled out, our tonsils cut out, our appendices removed, and there are other and more ghastly operations which are currently performed which are usually not mentioned in polite society.
Health is mainly a matter of nutrition. Cleanliness, exercise, fresh air, are of secondary importance. The animals in Nature are extremely careful about their food, but they take very little exercise, if any, for exercise sake and they care not much about fresh air. Most animals live in stuffy thickets, burrows, dens, etc., and our domestic animals sleep preferably under a piece of furniture, the nearest equivalent to a burrow or den, with their nose well tucked into their fur. However, all animals desire live food.
If you spade some worms and throw them on the path, warm-eating birds will not touch them because they are dead, exactly as you cat will kill and eat a live mouse or bird she has caught, but disdains a mouse or bird found dead unless she is starving. One of the healthiest men I know is the secretary of my club. He is well over eighty and for at least twenty years he has not taken a holiday and he never goes for walks. He travels in a taxi from his flat in the West End to the club and back, and rings for the lift when he wishes to go downstairs. However, he knows how to feed.
Some time ago I was in the country and saw in a meadow a horse, a veritable spectre of a horse, terribly emaciated, bones sticking out, with staring coat, a pitiful figure. I asked the man who owned it why the horse was not put out of its misery. He told me that the horse had been ill a long time, that the vet. had visited it ever so often, giving it medicines without result and that at last he had said: “Put him on the grass, perhaps that will save his life.” I told him that in my opinion the animal should be shot at once, because it was suffering.
Three weeks after, I went the same way, and I saw a beautiful young horse prancing about in the meadow. The owner was learning over the gate and I said to him: “I am glad to see you have such a beautiful young horse. What have you done with the poor spectre?” “That is the spectre. That is my dear old horse. I am glad I did not have him destroyed as you urged me.” Nature cure!
Most of our diseases and disorders are nutritional and most of them can be cured, or at least greatly relieved, by dietetic reform. I am often asked: “What is the best diet?” There is no uniform and universal best diet to suit everyone. A proverb says: “One mans meat is another mans poison,” and another one tells us: “What cures the smith kills the tailor.” There are people who must sleep ten hours a night. There are people who require much food and there are others who require little food.
Even standardized machines require often different quantities of fuel and different require often different quantities of fuel and different kinds of fuel. However, there are a few simple rules. Food should be as near to the natural condition as possible. All the mineral elements in the soil are found in the plant which lives on that soil. Animals and men flourish when living on these natural plants or plant products. The very elements which are found in the soil are found in the milk, the eggs and the meat which we eat if we are meat-eaters. I happen to be a vegetarian, and so is my friend, Mr. Cook.
The natural foodstuffs are unfortunately only too often de- naturalized by processes of refining which destroy or eliminate the most important food elements. Whole wheat, whole rye, whole barley, whole oats, whole rice, whole potatoes, whole milk, are complete foods, and so is whole sugar. The wheat is deprived of its outer skin, the bran, which is the richest it protein, in iron, lime, phosphorus, and other indispensable elements. The lime creates the substance of the bones within us and the substance of the teeth, and the phosphorus is necessary for creating the enamel which protects our teeth.
The whole wheat grain possesses not only the outer coating of bran, the finest food in the world, but it possesses the germ, the veritable egg of the plant, which contains the most valuable living elements. The millers sift the bran and the germ out of the wheat flour. The germ, like every living food, deteriorates in keeping and may turn the flour musty.
The foodless white flour, which produces dental decay and numerous other diseases, a fact which had been shown by experiments on animals, is chemically bleached by the millers, and sent to the bakers, who in baking add “chemical improvers” to make the bread look bigger, to blow it out. The essential food elements needed for our health are taken away and they are replaced by noxious chemicals.
In a similar criminal manner all the other grains are treated. Rice is polished with French chalk to make it look pretty, natural sugar is brown and is rich in iron and many other mineral elements, and is harmless to the teeth. It is chemically treated, it reaches us in the form of white sugar which is destructive to the teeth and acid-creating, a cause of ill-health. Milk is sterilized by heating, which deprives it of invaluable food elements. The cakes and jams which we buy are frequently coloured and flavoured with coal tar dyes and coal tar flavourings, and so are the weird bottles of “minerals” which ought to be called chemicals. Poisonous preservatives are used in countless processes.
Much of the food which reaches our houses is foodless, is apt to create deficiency diseases. Unfortunately housewives are guided by the cook book, which tells them to peel the potatoes before boiling them, and to preserve the colour of the greens by adding soda or bicarbonate to the water in which they are cooked. The wonderful anti-acid substances contained in the vegetables are leached out of them if they are cooked in soda and the vitamins are destroyed. The most valuable vegetable essence is thrown away with the cooking water, and the attractive looking fibre is put on our plates. The most valuable anti-acid contents of the potatoes are likewise extracted from them if they are boiled peeled. The most important food elements are either fed to cattle and pigs, who get the bran, or they are thrown down the sink.
James Ellis Barker wrote a very large number of books, both under the name James Ellis Barker and under his real German name Otto Julius Eltzbacher, The Truth about Homœopathy; Rough Notes on Remedies with William Murray; Chronic Constipation; The Story of My Eyes; Miracles Of Healing and How They are Done; Good Health and Happiness; New Lives for Old: How to Cure the Incurable; My Testament of Healing; Cancer, the Surgeon and the Researcher; Cancer, how it is Caused, how it Can be Prevented with a foreward by William Arbuthnot Lane; Cancer and the Black Man etc.