Dr. hay is an enthusiast for the Hay system of diet, which has become widely adopted. He is a born journalist and propagandist. He has published a considerable number of books, such as “Health via Food”, “New Health Era”, “The Hay System Pocket Guide”, The Hay System of Child Development”, “The Hay System Cookery Book”, The Hay System Manual Book”, and his latest work is the volume before us.
The Hay diet is based on theory. There have been many theoretical before the Hay Diet, and some of them have produced disaster. One of the most notable ones was the Fletcher Diet. Mr. Horace Fletcher, an American, was a sickly man who apparently recovered his health by eating small quantities of food, masticating them interminably, and rejecting all roughage. He benefited greatly, or imagined he benefited greatly, and travelled all over the world, lecturing and selling his books. He died prematurely through auto-intoxication. The theory of Horace Fletcher was excellent, and for a time he appeared derive benefit from endless mastication, and so did his followers. Over eating is impossible if one chews every mouthful interminably.
The principle of the Hay Diet is probably known to most readers. Anyway his book is readable, and contains much interesting material and challenging ideas. The best way to introduce this book to readers consists in some quotations. I would therefore give the following extracts:-.
I was once the attending physician to a county infirmary, where the inmates were chiefly the old and infirm.
These old people had very little to do, so meal-time was the principal event of the day and every day.
They spent most of their time in comparing symptoms, and the greatest ingenuity was developed in describing the symptoms of some wholly imaginary trouble. Each seemed to strive to outdo all the others in the recital of the most harrowing symptoms. Many vowed that not one single night did they close their eyes, but rolled continually in pain and nervous frenzy, yet when they were watched they were found to sleep about the usual time. Others complained of vague pains of the most distressing character yet showed no evidence of this.
If by any means they could induce me to believe them sick and actually prescribe some form of medicine for them, they seemed to feel that had achieved a victory.
I even devised some of the most atrocious mixtures imaginable in an effort to discourage this effort to obtain medicine that was not indicated and that would do no good even if the indications were of the classical variety, yet the more disgusting the mixture the greater did their faith in it seem to developed, and they would even come back and request some more medicine just like the last. From talking together and continually hearing and reciting their symptoms and those others in the home, their troubles seemed to grow until they actually believed themselves ill.
Many of these old people had been residents of the home for so long that it was hard to remember when they were not there, yet year after year they recited their symptoms and told of their great suffering and probably believed in them.
All seemed to wish to die, but if sickness actually came, they were terrified and to live.
Had they refused to talk of their suffering they could have forgotten them in most cases, and their recital of symptoms cased their hearers to begin a self-analysis in a search for something that would be even worse in themselves. And so the idea of sickness and suffering grew until almost the entire topic of conversation was sickness.
In my early investigations in nutrition I resolved to stop symptomatic prescribing, so instructed one of may drug house to make up for me coloured blank tablets in considerable variety, and for two years I gave out nothing but these in a wide variety of cases. It was not unusual for patients to return asking for the same kind of medicine given them the last time and telling of the wonderful effects, generally saying that they were well now and did not need any more at present, but for fear the symptoms would return, they wished always to have some of the magic remedy at hand.
Each pill-box was initialled with the first letter of thee colour used so as not to mix prescriptions, which would have spoiled the psychology. After two full years of this prescribing of placebos I was ashamed to continue longer, and then took no cases that would not promise to do just as directed without any pretence of remedies, and from that time, over twenty-five years, no pretence of medicine has been used, except opiates to relieve unbearable pain or purges to unload a torpid bowel, all remedies since that time being the correction of the causes that had led up to the present state.
Vegetable cooked, if cooked carelessly in much water and drained, have very little of their native alkaline salts left, while if cooked conservatively, which means baked or broiled, or steamed, they still retain most of other alkaline salts.
To make sure that the relation is not disturbed, it is wise to take as much of our vegetables raw as possible, and all of our fruits in the raw state.
If, when we are under the spell of of a depression of any degree, we stop the intake of all food, purge drastically for two or three days, flood the system with unsweetened fruit juices, or these and raw vegetable juices, then we find that the cycle of aggravation passes very quickly, and we are again on the pinnacle of health.
In attaining the normal state of health we should have periods during the year when we clean house and start all over again, thus obviating these periods when the pendulum is at the farthest form the normal part of its cycle, and promoting continually the health arc of the cycle,.
We never stand still in condition. We are either intoxicating or detoxicating all the time, which means that we are either building a disease state or we are lessening this continually. When we are eating too much of the concentrated and acid-forming foods, too little of the alkaline or base-forming bulky foods, when we are combining our foods in incompatible relation, neglecting the emunctories, getting behind in our elimination, then we are building a state of disease, which state is cumulative to the point of body tolerance.
When we are eating largely of the bulky alkaline or base-forming foods, such as the vegetables, salads, and fruits; when we are eating chiefly of the whole natural and unrefined types; when we are combing our foods with due regard to their chemical affinities; and when we are keeping our emunctories active, lungs, skin, kidneys, and bowels, then we are getting rid of disease; we are detoxicating.
If we make at least 80 per cent of our diet of the base forming foods and combine these correctly, we do do not have digestive troubles of any kind, for we have taken away every cause of these in so eating.
To make sure elimination by all four channels is equal to intake, we should take sufficient outdoor exercise every day to force deep breathing and free perspiration.
We cannot force the function of the kidneys in this way, but we can trim the intake of proteins and salt to a point at which any half-efficient pair of kidneys will have no difficulty in keeping up in the eliminative debris offered daily. The bowels under direct control, but are only slightly by bodily activity.
An enema used properly dose empty the colon much more thoroughly than will any laxative or even a drastic purge. But cure of the sluggishness in colonic action is a matter of general bodily rejuvenescence, a return to more vital condition of all the tissues of the body.
The colon merely a part of the body, and as such, partakes of the state of the entire body, and when we exhibit constipation, we also prove that the entire body tone has fallen bellow the normal.
The colon has a visible function, and we recognize the delay here, but we do. not see the internal function of the body, so do not realize that they too have declined in efficiency.
It is fair to state that appendicitis never occurs when the colon is normally active, though it may occur as a phase of colitis with much diarrhoea, and diarrhoea occurs as a phase of colitis, or constipation, merely a reaction from constipation an effort the body to get rid of wastes retained by a too sluggish colon until they have become intolerable to the body.
Diarrhoea is frequent interruption to constipation in many cases, and is merely another phase of the same thing.
If the colon is not delivering to-day all the residues from the food taken yesterday, it is constipated, which the average stool is a once-a-day affair, and the possessor of a once-daily habit is quite apt to thank whatever gods there be that he is not constipated.
Twenty-five years ago I analysed nearly or quite a hundred cases of once-daily habit, all of women would feel insulted if told that they were suffering from constipation.
With no change in feeding-habit these cases were fed a colour at each noon meal with their regular food, using carbon black, cochineal, or berries of dark colour, as blackberries or blueberries, the red colour interpolated between the two dark colours.
