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WILLIAM HOWARD HAY, M. D. HEALTH via FOOD — BY — WILLIAM HOWARD HAY, M. D. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF MEDICINE, 1891 Medical Director EAST AURORA SUN AND DIET SANATORIUM, INC. SUN-DIET HEALTH SERVICE, INC. EAST AURORA, NEW YORK Copyright, 1929 SUN-DIET HEALTH SERVICE All Foreign Rights Reserved First Printing, June, 1929 Second Printing, March, 1930 Third Printing, December, 1930 Fourth Printing, June, 1931 Fifth Printing, January, 1932 THIS COPY OF PUBLIC DOMAIN MATERIAL WAS MADE BY THE SOIL AND HEALTH LIBRARY FOR THEPURPOSES OF STUDY ONLY, FOR THE USE OF ITS PATRONS. CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE INTRODUCTION 11 I. THE WORLD AT ITS WORST 15 II. WHAT DOES IT COST? 25 III. THE LAW OF COMPENSATION 37 IV. WHAT IS DISEASE? 47 V. HOW DISEASE ORIGINATES 56 VI. DISEASE AND CRIME 68 VII. MAN A TRINITY 77 VIII. INSANITY A PHYSICAL CONDITION 87 IX. WHAT IS AGE? 97 X. THE FOUR HORSEMEN 107 XI. PREVENTION BETTER THAN CURE 119 XII. WHAT CAN WE DO TO CURE DISEASE? 130 XIII. THE ROLE OF MEDICINE 142 XIV. THE ROLE OF FOOD 154 XV. VITAL AND DEAD FOODS 164 XVI. THE MECHANISM OF DIGESTION 176 XVII. COMPATIBILITY AND INCOMPATIBILITY OF FOODS 188 XVIII. DIGESTIVE ENERVATION 200 XIX. CONSTIPATION A SECONDARY CAUSE OF DISEASE 211 XX. APPETITE AND HUNGER 222 XXI. FASTING 234 XXII. HOW TO BREAK THE FAST 245 XXIII. NORMAL DIET 256 XXIV. MENUS FOR ONE MONTH 268 XXV. EVERYONE HIS OWN PHYSICIAN 277 XXVI. A MEDICAL MILLENIUM 289 DEDICATION THIS effort to teach the public the things it should know about self-help in illness and health is most respectfully dedicated to one of nature's noblemen, Oliver Cabana, Jr., of Buffalo. Realizing the benefits of a right understanding of the subject of food, he was not content to enjoy selfishly the fruits of this knowledge, but resolved that the general public should have the same opportunity, knowing too well the meagerness of the knowledge possessed by this uninformed public on this most vital question of foods and feeding. Possessed of great wealth he has undertaken a nationwide education of the public relative to foods and nutrition, willing to bear the great financial risk for the sake of his convictions. Through the Sun-Diet Health Service and the Sun-Diet Sanatorium, located at East Aurora, N. Y., he is attempting to educate the ailing public to a realization that health cannot be bought with money, neither can it be fully bequeathed, but must be earned by so living that the body will no longer manufacture and store the vast quantities of acid waste that result from wrong selection and combination of the daily foods. He is thoroughly convinced that when this public fully realizes that all of its diseases are self-created, and to exactly the same extent self-controllable, the present fear of disease as a great and dangerous mystery will have passed, and health will be restored in the simple and effective ways taught through both these institutions backed by his wealth and experience, the whole motivated by his burning desire to help those who need this help. May his tribe increase and his shadow never grow less! INTRODUCTION "Of the making of many books there is no end." Surely Solomon was right, and for making another book at the present time, especially a book that is an addition to the increasing flood of health literature, there should be both reason and excuse that will satisfy the reader that the occasion is opportune for just one more book. There is so much apparent disagreement among writers on the subject of health, particularly as this relates to foods, that the writer deems it timely to point the only seeming character of these discrepancies, and to draw particular attention to the fact that through all proposed systems that embrace the idea of foods as cause of disease and its cure, there is an unmistakable cable of truth that is nearly identical in all. Certain fundamental hypotheses are recognizable in all, even though this author stresses this phase, that author that phase, for truth is unchangeable through all time and in every circumstance, and only confusion of terms or lack of perception on the part of the writer or reader will keep the great truths of food as a primary factor in disease and health from being easily discernible. The writer himself was a physical bankrupt twenty-four years ago, suffering the very familiar trinity of troubles that now stands first in our mortality statistics as cause of death after forty years of age, the so-called cardio-vascular-renal condition, consisting of high blood pressure, kidney disease and dilated heart. He had for years weighed 225 pounds in street clothing, and was unable to lower this figure through exercise and what he supposed was a proper modification of diet. He was in a busy practice, chiefly surgical, and like most other physicians, he thought only of his work and not enough of his own physical equipment. While at Arts and Science College he had gloried in his strength, and even years after his medical degree was attained he still considered himself a strong man, never dreaming that his very ordinary habits of life were laying the foundation for an early breakdown. It was not till a hurried sprint for an incoming train dilated his heart that he really began to think that perhaps he was not the man he had believed himself to be. At this point, where circulatory compensation was broken, his legs swelled to the capacity of the skin, he was unable to lie down and sleep for fear of drowning in his own fluids, yet he continued to work at the same rate, catching what sleep he could in a chair at night, or sitting upright in bed. The same condition was very familiar to him in his daily practice, and he had always told those in a similar state to prepare for the final hop-off, which was never far in the future. Remembering his own consistent failures in treatment of this condition, the future did not look over-long or very bright, and realizing the utter failure of medical treatment in this class of cases he did not take any medicine whatever,—for what was the use? It was at this point that during many a long night, he made a careful analysis of his own previous habits—habits that might have led a strong man of splendid heredity to such a woeful pass—and finally developed the fact that since his graduation in medicine, sixteen years previous, he had eaten at hotels, boarding-houses, restaurants, and only the past five years had he lived as a married man in his own home, with controllable conditions at table. This meant eleven years of public eating; surely a long enough period to form permanent habits that undoubtedly ruled the selection and combination of foods at his own table afterward, for each man's wife seeks to cook and serve the things that please her mate. Analysis of the food situation at this time showed that he had been eating meat or other concentrated protein food at each meal, usually combined with white bread and generally potato in some form; the "plain food" of the American table. He had been eating pastries freely as a top dressing for this incongruous mixture of incompatible foods, the whole washed down with two or three cups of coffee, sweetened thoroughly with white sugar and well aulaited with rich cream. He had been smoking like a veritable chimney, and drinking stimulants freely—the usual man's idea of how a man should live— when he can afford it. No effort was made to change the habits in regard to either stimulants or tobacco, but the table was changed all around, two meals a day being totally deleted and the third consisting of vegetarian food, wholly. The coffee also was discontinued, and in a few weeks the stimulants cured themselves through loss of desire for them. In a few months the tobacco was given up, and for four years there was no desire to smoke, even after many years of heavy smoking. Then followed a period of rejuvenation that was truly remarkable, especially to a physician who had always looked on disease from the conventional professional standpoint as a great mystery, as the eminent ones have always described it. In two weeks there was not a sign of dropsy anywhere in the body. In three months the weight had gone down to normal, 175 pounds in street clothing. At about the same time he discovered that he could again run as fast and as far as he desired without disturbing the rhythm of his heart, and there was surprising endurance and long-windedness. This meant a complete come-back for a dilated heart, a thing not in the books, scarcely to be believed, and a test of the blood pressure showed 120 mm. systolic, the low, normal figure. Then followed four years of study, questioning, and experimenting, ending in a period in a New York post-graduate medical course, to correlate these surprising facts, and it was not till after four full years that he was forced to the conclusion that man is an exact composite of what he eats daily, yearly, and as a life habit. During these four years he read everything he could find on the subject of foods, health, exercise, natural cure of disease and everything formerly regarded as taboo reading, from the orthodox standpoint, and it was then that he discovered this great cable of truth running through many apparently contradictory treatises on health, from the angle of correct diet, and was able to pick out this cable (not a thread) of truth from all systems, and to disregard the trivial differences in opinion, theory or viewpoint of the mass of writers, each of whom was seeking to put over his own peculiar view. This experience so changed the character of the writer's practice that he dropped surgery entirely, and as completely also the administration of drugs, for if man is a composite of what goes into him daily in the form of nourishment, then what is the use of drugging him or cutting him for the results of wrong feeding habits? It is much more to the point to change the wrong habits and let Nature perform the cure, as Nature alone is able to do. It is now twenty-four years since this breakdown and upbuilding occurred. After this long period, when the writer has already passed the average life-limit by many years, he has had the great pleasure of watching similar come-backs in many thousands of cases of apparently incurable conditions in every sort of individual and every sort of case, and now feels that the occasion is not strained when he presents a little book setting forth the theory of man's dependence on foods, their relation to the body in health and disease, and the discernible fact that in all the present successful systems of applying food to health there is always this great similarity that should far outweigh all seeming differences. This is the occasion and excuse. CHAPTER I THE WORLD AT ITS WORST After all, it isn't such a bad old world, all things considered, for we are alive, we see the sun, feel the air, hear the sweet singing of the birds and enjoy the beautiful in everything. The average citizen dresses well, enjoys the usual social functions, listens in on the music or the literature of the world over the radio, in fact, he is in a better position to enjoy life than ever before in the history of civilization. He has all the foods of the world from which to choose, instead of being limited to those peculiar to his locality. Food! Ay, there's the rub! For with all his blessings he has forgotten the true function of food, and he has made of his body a place unfit for the enjoyment of the glorious time in which he lives. We in America are the sickest nation on the face of the whole earth, yet we have the largest food markets of any. We have more physicians to the thousand population than has any other nation. We have the largest and best equipped hospitals, the best insane hospitals, and the most and best means for caring for epileptics, the feeble-minded, and the crippled. Our penal system is thoroughly organized and equipped for taking care of by far the most criminals of any other country on the globe. We need all these institutions. These are not things over which to enthuse; but rather they are things to condone, to excuse, to explain. Why should America, one of the most enlightened of all countries on this old ball of clay, supposedly the richest of any, the farthest advanced in science and manufacture, admittedly the most modern of all—why should she have this state of affairs? When we were unceremoniously hurried into the late world war and faced the necessity of recruiting quickly a very large army, we found to our national chagrin and dismay that our young men of army age, the most vital period of life, were nearly half of them unfit for military duty. They had poor teeth, poor eyesight, weak arches, varicocele, rupture, deficient chest expansion, rheumatism, various dyscrasic conditions, things that make a man unfit to carry the heavy equipment and stand the rigors of a campaign. Nearly half of these young men, the pride of their country, unfit to serve her in an emergency! The shock was so great that we did not then fully appreciate its significance, for we were in a hurry to raise an army, no one knowing how big it might have to be, and we took a great many of these young men that could not have passed under less urgent conditions; we made over others who did not have anything worse than weak arches, perhaps, and we got by this one time with a sizeable army of fairly good physique. Now that the smoke has cleared away and we have had time to think this over, we are humiliated to think that we are as a nation in such physical condition, for if this is true of the young man of military age, what of the older ones? Every year at any given time two million of our people are off the pay roll, sick, with perhaps half as many more also restrained from productive pursuit to care for these. What of those who are still carrying on? Are they enjoying life as they should? Are they fulfilling their full destinies? Are they cashing in fully on their opportunities, or are they in some degree handicapped by ill health that is causing them to fall far short of all that is coming to them? If the young men of army age were found fifty per cent deficient, it is fair to suppose that those at home and of more advanced age were still more deficient. With two million continually sick, all the rest come under suspicion of being only a little less sick, for it is not thinkable that these two million people are singled out of all the rest to bear the illnesses of the entire nation. 400,000 children never see the tenth year of age, 200,000 of these never see the second year. Our percentage of deficient children is increasing with each generation, not only the actual number of incompetents, but a percentage increase. Our school reports show major or minor deficiencies in well over seventy-five per cent of American childhood. This state of affairs is not confined to the urban part of our population, as it was once supposed to be, for the same deficiencies in nearly the same ratio show in the suburban and district schools, showing that it is something more than the restricted life of the cities that is at the root of our troubles. Teeth have come to be looked on as a source of grave danger to any one, and tonsils are an admitted horror, while such a thing as a retained appendix in good working order is coming to be regarded as a sort of curiosity. Surgical operations have multiplied till our hospital requirements for surgery alone have quadrupled in the past twenty- five years. For a married woman to escape at least one surgical operation of major character is now considered remarkable, and the unfortunate sister who cannot show an abdominal scar is compelled to occupy a rear seat at the sewing societies and the afternoon teas, for she has nothing to talk about. We hear more and more of the wonders of modern surgery, but can it develop as fast as the seeming need for it, or must we make more surgeons out of our young men? It would seem to an inquiring mind as though the trouble is not so much in the rapid growth of surgical conditions as in the rapidly growing surgical equipment that must have more and more material. This subject will be referred to again, but for the present it is pertinent to quote Dr. Charles Mayo, of Rochester, Minn., who said in open meeting of the American College of Surgeons a very few years ago: "Nine-tenths of the internal surgery that is done today never should have been done, and the seemingly necessary tenth part should be done by some one who has some further evidence of surgical ability than merely a diploma in medicine." But leaving out surgery, there has been a tremendous increase in those diseases that we term degenerative, even though the zymotic group has for some unaccountable reason been less prevalent than formerly. What we seem to have gained in lowered mortality from tuberculosis is swallowed up by a far greater increase in cancer. What we have seemed to gain in lowered prevalence and mortality from the ordinary diseases of childhood has been more than offset by the increase in such conditions as heart failure (whatever this may mean), Bright's disease or other kidney degenerations, diabetes, which is still on the percentage increase, or the nerve degenerations, including insanity. Statistics show an average lengthening of life, but this is chiefly due to better infant conservation, better housing conditions, better environment, more appreciation of the outdoors, of exercise, and perhaps also to the great interest recently aroused in foods. All of this is offset by the far greater increase in degenerative diseases, more unfit living to greater ages than formerly, for which medicine takes credit, but it is a moot question whether this credit (if there be such) should go to medicine or whether it should be taken as evidence that the race is developing a tolerance for the destructive agencies of both medicine and surgery, for neither can by any stretch of the wildest imagination be considered constructive in character. With all our declining health rate, which none can doubt, we still take Olympic contests quite regularly, though not so regularly as formerly, showing that while the mass may be degenerating slowly, yet the individual young man can succeed in so developing athletic efficiency that we send abroad a set of athletes that any country may be proud to claim. The trouble is wholly with Mr. Plain Citizen, the man who stays at home and is satisfied with conditions as they are, or perhaps not wholly satisfied, but believing his circumstances prevent any effort at change. His father, his grandfather, lived as he does, at least in compliance with environment, for the average citizen is a well- meaning man, not inclined to kick unless stepped on ruthlessly, patient to the nth degree, uncomplaining even though he feels many times that he is somehow getting the short end of the stick. He was raised to accept what is offered at the table, perhaps quoting St. Paul's advice to one of his pupils: "Eat what is set before you, asking no questions for conscience sake." Too many people have quoted this same suggestion of St. Paul without reading what immediately preceded it, for he was asked for advice when eating at tables on which was served meat that had been offered to idols, and his reference to conscience shows that it was merely this phase to which he referred. When the average citizen realizes that he has the control of his almost entire destiny he will wake up to the fact that he is himself largely to blame for his state, whether this has been to his liking or not, for he is just what he eats daily. Perhaps his father ate all wrong and lived to a good old age, but did he transmit to this son as good a heredity as would have been the case had he known how to live? Look over the average family records and you will find that but few marriages ever result in anything beyond the fourth generation.