Horace Fletcher - The New Glutton or Epicure

For more than a year Dr. Kellogg and his staff of earnest workers have been testing the suggestions offered in "Glutton or Epicure," and in the treatise of Dr. Van Someren, and appreciation of these suggestions and the work that has since been done to stimulate interest in the question in high scientific circles will be found in some extracts from Dr. Kellogg's letters which the author has received permission to print herewith.

"Battle Creek, Mich., Nov. 26, 1902.

"Dear Mr. Fletcher:

"I have your kind note of November 20th. Thank you very much for your appreciative words. Your visit here was a great inspiration to all of us. It is not often we find a man who enters into the things which we love so heartily as you have done. The thing that interested us especially was the fact that you are the founder of a new and wonderful movement, which is bound to do far more for the advancement of the principles for which we are working than all that we have done or anything we can do. I shall await with great interest the development of your work and shall expect to receive great light from your efforts. We are all in training to find our reflexes, and are expecting to make a great deal out of this."

"Battle Creek, Mich., Dec. 21, 1902.

"My dear Friend:

"I have received the beautiful book which you sent me, 'That Last Waif, or Social Quarantine.' It is a charming volume. I devoured it eagerly, and I find myself in the position of an eager disciple sitting at the feet of a master. Your ideas of social regeneration strike deeper than those of any other modern author, and I shall be glad to coöperate with you in any way possible in promulgating these principles. You have made your book talk in a most impressive way. From cover to cover it is simply admirable and must do a world of good. I shall write a little notice of it for my journal, Good Health .

"Again thanking you for this interesting volume, I remain,

"Most sincerely and respectfully

yours,

"J. H. Kellogg." "Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.

"Dear Friend:

"I have shamefully neglected you. I want to assure you how much I appreciate your encouraging notes. I read them to my colleagues, and they were so much affected that tears came into their eyes. I assure you we feel that you are indeed a brother to us in our work, and that God has providentially sent you to be a friend to us and to the principles which we represent.

"I had a letter from Dr. Haig a few days ago in which he mentioned you and your work, and said he was much interested in it. Dr. Haig, you know, has done a great deal in calling attention to uric acid in meats and other foods. His work has not all been accepted by great laboratory men, but Dr. Hall, of Owen's Medical College in Manchester, has recently reinforced his results. I have at different times repeated his experiments with interesting results.

"I assure you we shall be glad to receive any suggestions from any scientific authority who may visit us, and if there is any part of our work which can be improved, we shall be glad to put it there as soon as our attention is called to it.

"Again thanking you for your kindly interest in our work, I remain,

"Most sincerely yours,

"J. H. Kellogg." "Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.

"My dear Friend:

"I have yours of January 29th. I am much interested in what you write about your demonstration at New Haven. I want to give the widest publicity possible to your work. I find great good in it. I am talking to my patients continually about it. I know from my experience that you are right. For many years I have required my patients to give special attention to chewing, and have made it a written prescription for each patient to chew a saucerful of dry granose flakes at the beginning of each meal. I have seen great good from this method.

"With kindest regards, I remain, as ever,

"Most sincerely yours,

"J. H. Kellogg." "Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.

"Dear Friend:

"I am exceedingly interested in the facts which you communicate, especially Dr. Anderson's report. It is quite remarkable. I am verifying the same ideas in my own personal experience. I am confident you have discovered a great and important principle and I shall watch with interest future developments. I am going to get our students interested in it. If you feel disposed to do so, I shall be glad to have you make out a little line of experiments which will tally with the experiments which you have been conducting, so the results may be compared.

"I have in hand a translation of Cornaro's work which I have been thinking of publishing. It occurred to me that perhaps you would be able to write a little chapter for this work, or an introduction. I am going to get it out in nice shape, and I trust it may be the means of doing good in inclining those who read it toward a simpler life. I am greatly interested in the ideas which you present in your various books.

"I hope you will have a safe journey to Italy and back.

"I remain, as ever,

"Very sincerely and respectfully

yours,

"J. H. Kellogg." "Battle Creek, Mich., Jan. 22, 1903.

"My dear Mr. Fletcher:

"I have yours of March 19th. I thank you very much for promising to write an introduction for the edition of Luigi Cornaro's life. You are just the man to do it. I propose to get the book out in neat, tasty shape. Shall be glad to have suggestions from you on this point. The manager of a large denominational publishing house in Chicago is interested and wants to publish it with us. He has promised to help about the artistic features.

"As regards our medical college, I ought to have told you that we are incorporated in the State of Illinois. Our medical school is really legally located in Chicago. We always have one or more classes down there for dissection, clinical work, and doing dispensary and missionary work in the city. Our school is officially recognised. Our diplomas are recognised in this country and in most foreign countries; our diplomas are recognised, in fact, in all countries which recognise American diplomas. The work done in our school is recognised by the best schools. Jefferson accepts students from our third year into their fourth, the graduating year, without examination. Kings College in Kingston, Canada, does the same; also Trinity College in Toronto, and other leading schools in this country. Our College is a member of the American Medical Association along with Bellevue, University of Pennsylvania, University of Michigan, Rush Medical College, and other leading schools. We have placed our standard high so that no one could object to the reform features of our work on account of incompetency. Our students are admitted to practice in New York, having passed the examinations of the State Board. Our best reason for believing that our diplomas are recognised everywhere is because of students from the College having passed the examinations in nearly every State. One of our students recently graduated from the University of Dublin after having spent a year there, as they require five years instead of four years as with us.

"Your experiments are surpassingly interesting. Your performance with Dr. Anderson was phenomenal. I confess you are a physiological puzzle. If chewing accomplishes these wonderful things for you, it is certainly worth the while. I am training myself from day to day to masticate my food more and more thoroughly and I confess there is greater good in it than I ever imagined.

"I am sending you a little box of foods that I think you will like, especially the protose roast, the gluten biscuit, and the chocolates.

"I would like to get hold of a list of your books; I want to put them into the hands of our students to read. Kindly give me a list of the names and the publishers and I will esteem it a favour.

"I might have said further in reference to our College that it is listed by the New York Board of Regents as well as by the Illinois State Board of Health. We are going to make considerable improvement in our school the next year. We are trying to put up a new building. We need $100,000 very much, as our work has no endowment and it requires very great sacrifice and most strenuous effort to keep it going. Our teachers work for a mere pittance and our students are compelled to save and economise in every way to get through. Nearly all of them have to pay their way in work of some sort.

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