Diet and food : considered in relation to strength and power of endurance, training and athletics

Front matter

V and JPood ijti RiHation to

FOURTH EDITION.

DIET AND FOOD

Preface To The Fourth Edition

r ^

1. The call for yet another edition shows that this \ little book continues to meet a want.

! And the time that has elapsed since the last one

I ■ appeared in 1901 has not altered my opinion that in

V hospital work, where there is no selection of cases, something like seventy-five per cent, of the sorrow and suffering which I, as a physician, am asked to ^ relieve, could have been prevented by exclusion of the poisons.

p Yet only too often when it comes before us it is ^ too late, and fatal damage of structure cannot be repaired.

It is to me, for instance, always a painful experience I to see children with severe morbus cordis, forging H through months of suffering to certain death ; and j, the knowledge that it might have been prevented, j only increases my regret that it was not. It is a ^ matter of little consequence whether the uric acid is driven into the fibrous tissues by cold, or the action of a microbe ; but it is a matter of vast importance that, if the uric acid is absent, neither the cold nor vi. Preface to the Fourth Eclitiou

the microbe can destroy life, as they are now constantly doing.

With those who have grown up on our present diet customs it is again too late, the time for prevention has gone, and only a patch-work repair, can be attempted.

But for the children, the coming race of this new century, seventy-five per cent, of the present suffer^ ing can be avoided, if the points can be grasped.

The fact that uric acid controls the circulation would almost alone suffice to carry this statement ; and I appeal to those of the profession who have, followed my reasoning and applied it in their work, to say whether I am overstating the case. The same fact also explains why those who train on a uric acid free diet have hitherto beaten all comers ; and for these and many reasons it cannot too soon be understood and acted on, that man is - indeed what he eats.

With regard to the two very interesting figures to illustrate a point in comparative anatomy,. I am under a deep debt of gratitude for kind help and assistance to Mr. Oldfield Thomas, F.R.S., and Mr. R. Kirkpatrick, of the British Museum (Natural History), South Kensington.

7, Brook Street, London, W.

September, 1902.

PEEFACE.

In attempting to alter people’s diet so as to free them from the poisonous xanthins and uric acid, I have met with so much ignorance, and its results prejudice and superstition, that I have been led to write these pages in the hope of making rather clearer the position that diet holds in relation to these matters of strength and nutrition.

And I believe that I speak no more than the truth when T say that once a clear knowledge of the facts is obtained and a workmanlike and useful grasp of the subject is attained, it will be found that in diet lies the. key to nine-tenths of the social and political problems that vex our nation and time.

Diet, as at present used; is often the product of a vast amount of ignorance ; it is the cause of a hideous waste of time and money ; it produces mental and moral obliquities, destroys health and shortens life, and generally quite fails to fulfil its proper purpose.

It is my object in the following pages to show that it may be easily made to fulfil its proper purpose,

Vlll.

Preface and that with even a partial removal of the ignorance that surrounds it, the waste of time and money may be prevented, and the dangers to life and health averted.

But after pointing out the possibility I shall leave the facts to speak for themselves, as those will most completely understand them w'ho put them to the test of experience.

7, Bkook Street, London, W August, 1898.

Contents

Chapteb I.

Some points in the Physiology of Albumen and Urea . .

Chapteb II.