HOW TO BE ALWAYS WELL V


Digestive function is under control of the reflex nervous system; it has no relation to the intelligence or will. When this function has been out of commission for several days through fasting, it can be restored only slowly to functional activity, and only the lightest burden should be placed upon it at that time, and very gradually increased from day to day.


(12th edition).

Publishers: Print-Craft, Ltd., Toronto. Price: 3 dollars. Obtainable from the Homoeopathic Publishing Co.

(Extracts continued from September issue.).

“My body, filled with food, is either a healthy-body-building factory or an unhealthy-body-building factory. If the foods eaten are natural, therefore possessed of life, therefore vitalizing or life-imparting foods, properly combined so as to be compatible with each other, and eaten in amounts sufficient for building and repairing and energizing the body, but never in quantities or kinds beyond the digestive, absorptive, assimilative, and eliminative powers of the body, the body so fed can do nothing else than build itself health, so far as its foods are concerned.

“But if the foods eaten area hodge-podge of all kinds of good nourishing foods thrown together at random, without the least thought as to their suitability for combining with each other; or of the possible quantitative needs of the body; or of the possible limitations of the digestive powers possessed by the body; or whether they are vitalizing foods –or mere dead building substance; or of the devitalizing effects that excess of food taken into the body must exercise if it is not digested, and the destructive effects which even well-digested food will have upon the organs that must get rid of it when taken in excess of the bodys needs, then the body can do nothing else than build for itself disease.

“Not that disease must in all cases appear with a short use of these irrational feeding habits, but always it is proceeding and will appear in time to shorten the life of the irrational feeder. And that is true even if the occasional irrational, hereditarily very vital feeder lives for one hundred years. Such a one might have lived to be 125 or even 150 years old and constantly been an inspiration to younger men than himself, had reason guided his feeding habits, had knowledge instead of haphazard suggested his foods.

“It must never be held against the foregoing conclusions that it takes a long while for these bad habits to get in their deadly work in some bodies, endowed by hereditary with an iron resistance; disease is building in such a mistreated body and that body must break years and years before it otherwise would, and often pay in years and years of suffering for the misuse it has made of foods”.

“Now, here is a conundrum ! Why does a man feel hungry when taking too much food and lose his hunger when he has been three days without any food?.

“O, you would not guess in a year, unless you already know the answer. So I shall tell you. Too much food causes intoxication which first stimulates and then depresses the nervous system; and that depression, coupled with an irritation of the nerve endings in the mucous lining of the stomach by e products of food degeneration, which takes place when the digestive power is overwhelmed with too much food, improper food, or too frequent meals, is the cause of the so-called hunger. Rest the stomach and eliminate the accumulated food poisons by fasting, and, within three days, the supposed hunger will disappear, the cause having been eliminated. Of course, if it had been real hunger that I experienced, I would have been really suffering for food after three whole days total abstinence from food, but I was not. I was feeling better, sleeping better and thinking with greater clearness, and my heart was beating with greater regularity, my nerves more steady than they had been for many years. Moreover, this improvement continued to be augmented for two whole weeks. It was at the end of those two weeks that I kicked the old man with the scythe off my porch and I have not seen him since; nor do I expect to see him for many years yet to come, barring accident.

“However, I kept up my fast for another week, merely adding the juice of an orange to the two glasses of water each hour that I had been drinking during the fast.

“At the end of that three weeks fast my tongue was clear, my mind was clear, my step firm, only a little heavy-footed and weak at the knees if I attempted to climb steps or hurry. But I could now climb the six steps up the terrace from the sidewalk to the level of my lawn without seeing black, and I could, and dared to, hurry– two things that had not been true when I began my fast, nor for years before.

“Why for five years I had been unable to climb the three steps from the sidewalk to the ground floor of my office without seeing black and my heart threatening to collapse.

“I then broke my fast upon dilute malted milk, two level teaspoonfuls to the glass of warm water every two hours; the next day three level teaspoonfuls; the next day four to the glass of warm water. On the fourth day after breaking fast I added four level teaspoonfuls malted milk to half a glass of dairy milk, then filled the glass with boiling water. Fifth and sixth days the same. Seventh day I added a dish of apple sauce, minus sugar, for breakfast; at noon I sipped a glass of warm, whole milk; at 6 p.m. another dish of apple sauce, minus sugar. Eighth day same as seventh only I added a teaspoonful of honey to the apple sauce at both meals. Ninth day same as eighth only I added a cupful of milk to the apple sauce and honey at both meals, chewing the milk and sauce well together. Tenth day same as ninth, only I doubled the amount of milk at noon meal. Eleventh day same as tenth, only I added to the noon meal one cupful of a combination of whole grains properly granulated and mixed with alkaline grain derivatives to make a balanced human food (now marketed under the name of Roman Meal). This was made into porridge and eaten with top milk and no sugar. After that I gradually changed my dietary until I was taking about the same foods as are shown in my dietary in chapter twenty-four.

“Let me say here that the breaking of a fast in the proper way is all important to its final success. Digestive function is under control of the reflex nervous system; it has no relation to the intelligence or will. When this function has been out of commission for several days through fasting, it can be restored only slowly to functional activity, and only the lightest burden should be placed upon it at that time, and very gradually increased from day to day. If this care be taken it never can be said that a fast is injurious; rather that it rejuvenates and revitalizes the whole body.

“All these weeks I had been taking one copious enema daily, and up until I broke fast two enemas daily, consisting of two quarts of cool water with four level teaspoonfuls of table salt dissolved in it. I now stopped the enemas entirely, since the Roman Meal and fruit kept my bowels active and thoroughly emptied three times a day– that is, after a few days I began to get this result. In addition, under the influence of this bowel exercise, this active muscular work upon the part of the bowel muscles which was made necessary by the cellulose in the Roman Meal, aided by the soothing effect of the bland and healing flax-o-lin which prevented any irritation from the harsh cellulose of the bran, my weakened intestinal muscles soon became strong, just as my arm and leg muscles did when I began to exercise them. And as the bowel muscles grew strong and the mucous lining of the bowel was healed by the soothing flax-o-lin all tendency to constipation disappeared”.

“So I left the old question there by concluding they did give an improper hint and that if the human canine teeth mean anything at all it is probably one other instance of the supper-provision of nature, a provision qualifying man the better to live off animal flesh in case of failure of is natural foods. And when I learned that some of the huge anthropoid apes, whose teeth are very much like those of man and exactly the same in number, have large canine fangs, several times as large as are those of man, yet they do not touch flesh as food but live upon fruits, roots and nuts, I knew that the meat bogey no longer existed for me. Nor should it for anyone.

Robert G. Jackson
Dr. Robert G. Jackson, was born in 1867. In 1903, he took admission in Jefferson Medical College of Philadelphia.
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.