Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Tracy V. Wilson and I'm Holly Fry. I have
Speaker 1: had Horace Fletcher on my to do list for a
Speaker 1: podcast for forever. He is best known for starting a
Speaker 1: food fad that came to be known as Fletcherism, and
Speaker 1: this involved, uh largely, chewing your food a lot. There
Speaker 1: were some other aspects to but chewing a lot, a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot. There were a ton of food fattists in
Speaker 1: the early twentieth century, and Fletcher was really one of
Speaker 1: the most famous. He probably if you were ranking them,
Speaker 1: he would come in second to John Harvey Kellogg, who
Speaker 1: we've talked about on the show before. Kellogg called Horace
Speaker 1: Fletcher the quote founder of a new and wonderful movement.
Speaker 1: And if you've seen the movie The Road to Wellville
Speaker 1: and you remember the scene where they sing a song
Speaker 1: about chewing, there really was such a song. The song
Speaker 1: in the movie not the real song. There doesn't seem
Speaker 1: to be like a surviving copy of the actual song,
Speaker 1: but there there was a song that they sang in
Speaker 1: the dining room about chewing. Uh. So heads up. Uh,
Speaker 1: this episode is about a food fad, so we're going
Speaker 1: to be talking a lot about food and eating and
Speaker 1: restrictive diets and weight loss and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1: And then also when I described what Fletcherizing involved to
Speaker 1: my spouse, he found it incredibly gross and insisted that
Speaker 1: I needed to warn people about that too. Um. And
Speaker 1: just to be incredibly clear, we are not advocating any
Speaker 1: of these methods. In fact, we are not making any
Speaker 1: dietary recommendations whatsoever in this episode. We are just talking
Speaker 1: about them. Horace Page Fletcher was born August tenth, eighteen
Speaker 1: forty nine, in Lawrence, Massachusetts. That's on the Merrimack River,
Speaker 1: about thirty miles north of Boston. His parents were Isaac
Speaker 1: and Mary Blake Fletcher, and he was the youngest of
Speaker 1: their four children. A lot of his life sounds like
Speaker 1: it must have been both fascinating and exciting, but most
Speaker 1: sources repeat the same few points without a lot of
Speaker 1: concrete detail. Like a very brief obituary of Horace's father, Isaac,
Speaker 1: describes him as a stone contractor, a deacon at First
Speaker 1: Baptist Church of Lawrence, and one of Lawrence's oldest citizens.
Speaker 1: When he died in eighteen eighty five at the age
Speaker 1: of seventy six. Other than that, we don't really know
Speaker 1: much about the family or what their life was like. Yeah,
Speaker 1: according to one person who wrote an obituary, he had
Speaker 1: been working on an autobiography, and this obituary writer was like,
Speaker 1: I sure hope that wasn't lost, But as far as
Speaker 1: I know it was lost, that does still exist somewhere.
Speaker 1: I wasn't able to find reference to it. We have
Speaker 1: a pretty good sense though, that Horace always loved adventure,
Speaker 1: and when he was nine years old he tried to
Speaker 1: run away so he could go to See. He did
Speaker 1: not go to see. Somebody caught him and brought him
Speaker 1: back home, and then after that point he was sent
Speaker 1: to school in New London, New Hampshire. Once he finished school,
Speaker 1: he once again tried to go to See, this time successfully.
Speaker 1: He found a position on a whaler that was bound
Speaker 1: for Japan, and after this trip he had just a
Speaker 1: lifelong fascination with Japan and more specifically with Buddhism. After
Speaker 1: returning to the US, Fletcher enrolled in Dartmouth College, but
Speaker 1: he only stayed there for a year before setting off
Speaker 1: for more travels. He later described his life this way.
Speaker 1: Quote four complete trips around the world, two of them
Speaker 1: before the time of ocean steamship lines and continental railroads,
Speaker 1: thirty six trips across the American continent by various rail,
Speaker 1: water and stage routes. Six teen voyages across the Pacific Ocean,
Speaker 1: and many across the Atlantic. Intermittent periods of residents in
Speaker 1: many different countries of Europe, in China, in India, in Japan,
Speaker 1: and in different localities in the Americas, as well as
Speaker 1: visits to parts remote from the lines of travel, such
Speaker 1: as South Africa, Yucatan, and the mountain regions of Mexico
Speaker 1: and Central America. That are the types of all the
Speaker 1: South American countries, and all of which residences and visits
Speaker 1: have been chosen at times of greatest interest in each
Speaker 1: locality in response to the invitation of the spirit of
Speaker 1: adventure by which I have been led. These, together with
Speaker 1: no less than thirty eight distinct occupations, embraced the sum
Speaker 1: of my opportunities. So yeah, that reference to occupations. He
Speaker 1: was not always just traveling for its own sake, Although
Speaker 1: I'm sure some of those trips were mostly about pleasure.
Speaker 1: He was also making money doing things like working aboard
Speaker 1: ships and importing and exporting US goods. He also developed
Speaker 1: a reputation as an athlete and a marksman. In eighteen
Speaker 1: eighty he wrote a pamphlet called ABC of Snap Shooting, Sporting,
Speaker 1: Exhibition and Military so along with describing how to raise,
Speaker 1: point and fire a weapon all in one fast and
Speaker 1: efficient and accurate movement, this pamphlet also described a Fletcher
Speaker 1: ball bell that you could use as a throne target.
Speaker 1: This was made from two metal hemispheres joined by a post,
Speaker 1: which would make a very distinctive ringing sound if the
Speaker 1: shooter hit it. He described at length why the Fletcher
Speaker 1: bell ball was superior to other types of throne targets.
Speaker 1: The back of this pamphlet also contained an advertisement for
Speaker 1: a rowing machine patent applied for that Fletcher had designed,
Speaker 1: which came in different configurations, including one's meant to be
Speaker 1: used by rowing clubs. In eighteen eighty, so the same
Speaker 1: year that he published that pamphlet, the thirty one year
Speaker 1: old Fletcher was settled enough in San Francisco, California that
Speaker 1: he actually registered to vote there, so presumably planning to
Speaker 1: stay at least for a little while, and a year
Speaker 1: later he married Grace Adelaide Marsh, who was twenty four.
Speaker 1: Grace had a four year old daughter named Ivy, also
Speaker 1: a one. Fletcher applied for another patents along with William
Speaker 1: Rose Finch. This one was for improvements in breach loading firearms.
Speaker 1: While living in San Francisco, Fletcher seems to have kept
Speaker 1: up his habit of pursuing various interests. In addition to
Speaker 1: the shooting manual in the rowing machine and those firearm improvements,
Speaker 1: he made a printer's ink, and he established an import
Speaker 1: business to bring in goods from Asia. He liked to paint,
Speaker 1: and he exhibited his own work. He also was an
Speaker 1: avid reader and autodidact. According to some accounts, he helped
Speaker 1: establish the Bohemian Club that's an elite, invitation only men's
Speaker 1: social club. But the Bohemian Club was established in eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, when Fletcher was only twenty three, does not
Speaker 1: seem to have been the time when he was living
Speaker 1: in San Francisco. Yet eventually the Fletchers moved to New Orleans.
Speaker 1: Later on, Horace was described as quote one of the
Speaker 1: social and literary lights of New Orleans. This writer also
Speaker 1: described him as a ripe scholar a charming gentleman and
Speaker 1: a successful businessman. By eight nine two, he was managing
Speaker 1: the New Orleans Opera House, although this seems to have
Speaker 1: led to some financial trouble. Operas are expensive, and in
Speaker 1: eighteen ninety four the Opera Guarantee Association filed suit against
Speaker 1: him over ten thousand dollars an opera company debt. This
Speaker 1: is debt that Fletcher was contractually obligated to pay off.
Speaker 1: Other than that lawsuit, it really seems like Fletcher was
Speaker 1: living a pretty good life, one in which he was
Speaker 1: well liked and well respect and wherever he went, and
Speaker 1: which was also full of travel and adventure and things
Speaker 1: that he enjoyed. He had made a lot of money
Speaker 1: and then used it to fund things like opera and
Speaker 1: theater and art. But as he got into his mid forties,
Speaker 1: he was also experiencing what we think a lot of
Speaker 1: us do in our mid forties. He was feeling kind
Speaker 1: of run down. He had persistent indigestion, and he also
Speaker 1: came down with what he described as a case of
Speaker 1: influenza about every six months around He applied for a
Speaker 1: life insurance policy and he was turned down as an
Speaker 1: unacceptable health risk. This was a wake up call. Fletcher
Speaker 1: later described this experience this way quote. About ten years ago,
Speaker 1: at the critical age of forty four, the author was
Speaker 1: fast becoming a physical wreck in the midst of a
Speaker 1: business club and social tempest. Although he was trained as
Speaker 1: an athlete in his youth and had lived an active
Speaker 1: and most agreeable life, he had contracted a degree of
Speaker 1: physical disorder that made him ineligible as an insurance risk.
Speaker 1: This unexpected disability, with such unmistakable warning, was so much
Speaker 1: a shock to his hopes of a long life that
Speaker 1: it led to his making a strong personal effort to
Speaker 1: save himself. So he decided to stop what he was doing,
Speaker 1: figure out what was causing all of these changes to
Speaker 1: his body and health, and then fix it quote. The
Speaker 1: study was taken up in a systematic manner, account of
Speaker 1: which is too long to relate here. But the eager
Speaker 1: auto reformer soon learned that his troubles came from too
Speaker 1: much of many things, among them too much food and
Speaker 1: too much needless worry. And realizing the danger ahead, he
Speaker 1: sought a way to cure himself of his disabilities by
Speaker 1: the help of an economic food supply, as did Luigi Cornaro.
Speaker 1: But what is even more important. He found a way
Speaker 1: to enjoy the smaller quantity of food much more than
Speaker 1: any plethora luxury can give, and arrived at the method
Speaker 1: by a route that showed a means of conserving a
Speaker 1: healthy economy and an increased pleasure of eating at the
Speaker 1: same time, in quite a simple and scientific manner that
Speaker 1: anyone may learn and practice without any ascetic deprivation whatever.
Speaker 1: So side note. Luigi Cornaro was a Venetian nobleman who
Speaker 1: lived in the sixteenth century and credit a severe calorie
Speaker 1: restriction with restoring him to physical health, and Fletcher brought
Speaker 1: him up a lot in his writing. Fletcher later described
Speaker 1: this as a five month process in which he assessed
Speaker 1: how he was thinking, eating and just living and made changes.
Speaker 1: And in his mind those changes were so successful and
Speaker 1: so transformative that he needed to share them with others.
Speaker 1: So soon he was writing books on the subject. And
Speaker 1: we're going to get into all of that after we
Speaker 1: pause for a sponsor break. Although Horace Fletcher's most famous
Speaker 1: health advice was about chewing food, his first books didn't
Speaker 1: really focus on that at all. His first two books
Speaker 1: were Mental Culture or The Abc of True Living, published
Speaker 1: in and Happiness as Found in Forethought Minus Fear Thought,
Speaker 1: which came out two years later. I feel like that
Speaker 1: could be published today and people would lap it up
Speaker 1: with a spoon, for sure. A lot of the things
Speaker 1: that he talks about in these books are very um
Speaker 1: in line with things that you might read in various
Speaker 1: self help or maybe kind of new a G books today.
Speaker 1: So Mental Culture was expanded from a talk that Fletcher
Speaker 1: gave a New Orleans to a group of what we're
Speaker 1: called mental scientists that would have included psychologists, moral philosophers, behaviorists,
Speaker 1: basedly anyone whose work was connected to the mind and
Speaker 1: mental health at this relatively early point in the history
Speaker 1: of psychology as a field. He mentioned humanity struggled to
Speaker 1: treat disease until the development of germ theory, and in
Speaker 1: Fletcher's view, mental illnesses had germs of their own, and
Speaker 1: there were ways to get rid of those germs. Rs.
Speaker 1: Fletcher stressed that this was not his own new discovery.
Speaker 1: Quote Christ, Buddha, Aristotle, Omar Khyam, and many others have
Speaker 1: all suggested that the elimination of the evil passions is
Speaker 1: entirely possible. But my special analysis of them and the
Speaker 1: easy method of defeat that I have found possible to
Speaker 1: myself have excited such interests that I have been induced
Speaker 1: to publish them without attempting to follow the subject beyond
Speaker 1: the elementary stage. Long story short, all of those evil
Speaker 1: passions were rooted in anger or worry, and if you
Speaker 1: got rid of anger and worry, you could get rid
Speaker 1: of all of their associated ills. That sounds great. Yeah,
Speaker 1: he doesn't ever seem to engage with the idea that,
Speaker 1: like a person could have a mental illness, that that
Speaker 1: makes getting rid of worry and anger kind of outside
Speaker 1: of their control in a lot of ways. Right, there's
Speaker 1: a presumption of like a level playing field of everyone's
Speaker 1: mental health. Yes, yeah, but you know, I have for
Speaker 1: sure been in places or times in my life when
Speaker 1: I was making a lot of my own misery by
Speaker 1: my own uh like thought patterns, and you know, getting
Speaker 1: out of those thought patterns changed things. So I mean,
Speaker 1: that's that part of it is both appealing and problematic.
Speaker 1: So anyway, he offered a prescription for how to do
Speaker 1: this quote one grain of the assurance of Christ that
Speaker 1: man is made in the image of God, one grain
Speaker 1: of risk begged for the responsibility of the care and
Speaker 1: culture of the divine essence with which we have been entrusted.
Speaker 1: One grain of the command of Christ implying a possibility
Speaker 1: be perfect as your Father in Heaven is perfect. One
Speaker 1: grain of the example of Buddha that a man can
Speaker 1: grow to perfection through the elimination of anger and worry
Speaker 1: and their brood of dependent passions. One grain of the
Speaker 1: wisdom of Aristotle, which declared that the passions are habits
Speaker 1: of the mind and can be gotten rid of as
Speaker 1: physical habits are gotten rid of. One grain of the
Speaker 1: assurance of Omar Khayam that Heaven and Hell are within ourselves.
Speaker 1: One grain of the assurance of Christ that the Kingdom
Speaker 1: of Heaven is at hand. One grain of common sense
Speaker 1: applied to an analysis of mental handicaps and the discovery
Speaker 1: of their limitations. One grain of the today experience of
Speaker 1: the author that anger and worry are the roots of
Speaker 1: all the passion which depress and can be eliminated. Sounds
Speaker 1: great uh Fletcher's next book, Happiness as Found in Forethought
Speaker 1: Minus Fear Thought, was quote written in answer to many
Speaker 1: questions elicited by the publication of mental culture. He offered
Speaker 1: further thoughts on anger and fear in getting rid of them,
Speaker 1: and outlined various definitions of concepts like altruism and envy.
Speaker 1: As an example, here is his definition of optimism quote
Speaker 1: optimism is forethought. Christianity, pure and undefiled is perfect optimism.
Speaker 1: Christ is the perfect optimist. And for pessimism, pessimism is
Speaker 1: fear thought. Pessimism is the devil. He stressed the need
Speaker 1: to stay focused on the present with such gems as
Speaker 1: let us work together for a season in the now field,
Speaker 1: which is one of the best sentences I have ever read.
Speaker 1: We're just gonna work in the now field. He also
Speaker 1: offered some aphorisms and rules for living, including don't be
Speaker 1: a sewer, which I think that's some good advice. Do
Speaker 1: not be a sewer. I used to have a dance
Speaker 1: teacher that would say that all the time, and I
Speaker 1: wonder if she knew this is where it came from,
Speaker 1: don't be a sewer. In Fletcher published That Last Waif
Speaker 1: or a Social Quarantine a brief. This was a call
Speaker 1: for better treatment of children, especially orphaned and abandoned children,
Speaker 1: and he donated the book's proceeds to that cause. He
Speaker 1: gave in it an anecdote of seeing a child about
Speaker 1: four years old living in poverty in New Orleans during
Speaker 1: the Spanish American War and feeling moved to see such
Speaker 1: children better cared for. This wasn't a purely altruistic impulse.
Speaker 1: The hope was that this would protect these children from
Speaker 1: bad influences and allow them to grow up into productive,
Speaker 1: upstanding members of society. Fletcher proposed to do this by
Speaker 1: establishing kindergartens that would act as a social quarantine, which,
Speaker 1: in his words, meant quote, throwing a perfect cordon of
Speaker 1: care around tender souls coming into a nation or community,
Speaker 1: so that none shall escape contact with the wholesome suggestions
Speaker 1: and adequate nourishment that are essential to growth and habit
Speaker 1: forming according to the best intelligence of the science of
Speaker 1: child life. In this publication, he included a long list
Speaker 1: of recommended organizations that he thought should participate in this
Speaker 1: kindergarten project, as well as committees that needed to be
Speaker 1: established to carry it out. This work included a lot
Speaker 1: of references to educator Sarah Brown Ingersoll Cooper, who had
Speaker 1: been a prominent voice in the kindergarten movement until her
Speaker 1: tragic death just a couple of years before this. If
Speaker 1: you go looking for information about her, this death involved
Speaker 1: a suicide, So be Aware um It reprinted some of
Speaker 1: her work as part of the book. Shortly before publishing
Speaker 1: The Last Wave, Fletcher also put out a pair of
Speaker 1: pamphlets on eating and nutrition, What Sense or Economic Nutrition
Speaker 1: and Nature's Food Filter or What and When to Swallow.
Speaker 1: He combined and expanded on them in eight nine, and
Speaker 1: the result was The New Glutton or Epicure, which he
Speaker 1: revised again and republished in nineteen o three. So Mental
Speaker 1: Culture and Happiness had detailed how he had improved his
Speaker 1: mental health by getting rid of anger and worry, and
Speaker 1: according to these works on food and nutrition, he had
Speaker 1: improved his physical health by changing how he ate, primarily
Speaker 1: by chewing a lot more. This was in the middle
Speaker 1: of a ton of food fads that developed in the
Speaker 1: late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. There was a big
Speaker 1: cultural focus on what to eat and how much to eat,
Speaker 1: and how that could affect a person's health. We talked
Speaker 1: about James Salzburg and his meat based diet not long
Speaker 1: ago on the show, and he started his research into
Speaker 1: that in the eighteen fifties and sixties. Other people writing
Speaker 1: around the same time took the opposite view that people
Speaker 1: ate too much meat, and that a vegetarian diet was
Speaker 1: really the way to go. Of course, there have been
Speaker 1: vegetarians and people who primarily ate meat forever, but this
Speaker 1: went a little further, with a lot of focus on
Speaker 1: the supposed curative benefits of these kinds of food choices.
Speaker 1: Raw foodists, fruititarians, and others took similar tax, arguing that
Speaker 1: their specific diet was the key to perfect health. This
Speaker 1: is a pattern we still see today, with various fad
Speaker 1: diets promising to like cure everything. That time, so within
Speaker 1: the scientific and medical communities there was also a lot
Speaker 1: of discussion about how much people should eat, including how
Speaker 1: much of which nutrients. The term vitamin hadn't been coined yet,
Speaker 1: but various researchers were looking at things like sugar and
Speaker 1: protein how much a person's body really needed to function.
Speaker 1: In the second half of the nineteenth century, various researchers
Speaker 1: started quantifying the energy in food as calories and developing
Speaker 1: instruments to measure calorie content. So, while Fletcher's work was
Speaker 1: based on pretty much his own experience and his own reading,
Speaker 1: he was writing about it at a time when a
Speaker 1: lot of different people were suggesting that different foods or
Speaker 1: combinations of foods or nutrients or whatever could effectively act
Speaker 1: as cure alls, and also studying the nutrients in food
Speaker 1: more methodically and how they affected the body like in
Speaker 1: a more scientific systemic way. During his months of examining
Speaker 1: his own life and habits, Fletcher had decided that he
Speaker 1: was eating too much and eating too fast, and that
Speaker 1: this was true of most other people as well. But
Speaker 1: he also came to some very erroneous conclusions about human
Speaker 1: anatomy and physiology. He thought that most digestion happened in
Speaker 1: the mouth, that the anatomy of the mouth, including anatomical
Speaker 1: structures in the palate and throat, acted as a nutrient gait,
Speaker 1: that indigestible foods became digestible only after being chewed thoroughly
Speaker 1: and being mixed with saliva, And very importantly, that chewing
Speaker 1: food sufficiently required you to keep chewing until the food
Speaker 1: had lost all its flavor and had been rendered into
Speaker 1: a nutrient liquid that would slide past that gate and
Speaker 1: down the throat involuntarily. It would, in his words, swallow itself.
Speaker 1: It makes me so sad. Yes, the food's taste offered
Speaker 1: a clue to how long that chewing needed to go
Speaker 1: on as long as there was a flavor present, there
Speaker 1: were nutrient still needed to be extracted. In some of
Speaker 1: his writing he kind of personifies this in the form
Speaker 1: of doctor Taste, who tells you if you're ready to
Speaker 1: swallow your food or not indigestible sediments meaning anything that
Speaker 1: was not liquefied and remained in the mouth during that
Speaker 1: involuntary swallow that was unnecessary, you could spit it out.
Speaker 1: And if you were really chewing your food that thoroughly
Speaker 1: and according to him, absorbing all the nutrients and spitting
Speaker 1: out all the waste, then you would of course see
Speaker 1: a big difference on the other end of the digestive
Speaker 1: tract as well. He called feces digestion ash both because
Speaker 1: of what he said it resembled when eating this way
Speaker 1: and because he thought that the body had burned away
Speaker 1: all of the nutritious substance as fuel and left only
Speaker 1: ash behind. Some key misunderstandings about the whole thing. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so this chewing process went way, way, way beyond the
Speaker 1: idea of chewing each bite thirty two times, which I
Speaker 1: think most of us have probably heard somebody say that before.
Speaker 1: It's often attributed to British Prime Minister William Gladstone, I'm
Speaker 1: not actually sure whether he really said that. Uh. Most
Speaker 1: of the time when I tried to track it down,
Speaker 1: stuff circled back to Horace Letcher. So I don't really
Speaker 1: know how many times a person needed to chew a
Speaker 1: bite of food. According to Fletcher, depended on the food.
Speaker 1: He wrote, quote, some morsels of food will not resist
Speaker 1: thirty two mastications, while others will defy seven hundred. The
Speaker 1: author has found that one fifth of an ounce of
Speaker 1: the midway section of the garden young onion, sometimes called
Speaker 1: the chalet, has required seven hundred and twenty two mastications
Speaker 1: before disappearing through involuntary swallowing. After the tussle. However, the
Speaker 1: young onion left no odor upon the breath and joy
Speaker 1: to the happy family in the stomach, as if it
Speaker 1: had been of corn starch, softness and consistency. Fletcher also
Speaker 1: applied his ideas to liquids. Quote, don't drink soup, don't
Speaker 1: drink milk, don't drink beer, don't drink wine, don't drink
Speaker 1: syrup sodas for the taste of the syrups. Sip everything
Speaker 1: that has tastes, so that taste, can inspect it and
Speaker 1: get the good out of it for you. Now you're
Speaker 1: supposed to hold it in your mouth, and so you
Speaker 1: didn't taste it anymore. Horace Fletcher claimed the eating and
Speaker 1: drinking in this way allowed him to consume a whole
Speaker 1: lot less without feeling deprived in any way. Quote the
Speaker 1: author ate just what his appetite called for, as nearly
Speaker 1: as circumstances of supply permitted. He ate all that his
Speaker 1: appetite would allow, enjoyed a gustatory pleasure that had never
Speaker 1: been equalled under old habits of taking food, and was
Speaker 1: a distinct epicurean gainer by the economy learned and practiced.
Speaker 1: He described himself as five ft seven inches tall and
Speaker 1: two hundred five pounds when he started eating this way,
Speaker 1: and said that about four months later he weighed a
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty three pounds, and that his energy had returned,
Speaker 1: along with his desire to do physical activity as he
Speaker 1: had in his younger years. In some circles, all of
Speaker 1: this really got on, and Fletcher wound up with some
Speaker 1: very famous devotees. We'll get into that after a sponsor break.
Speaker 1: Horace Fletchers, the new Glutton, or epicure included some of
Speaker 1: the correspondents that he had had with other high profile
Speaker 1: people in the world of food and health fads. One
Speaker 1: was Edward H. Dewey, who was a proponent of fasting
Speaker 1: and the author of a work called The No Breakfast
Speaker 1: Plan and the Pasting Cure. Another was John Harvey Kellogg,
Speaker 1: who we've talked about before, whose Battle Creek Sanitarium, nicknamed
Speaker 1: the Sand, was renowned as a center for health and wellness.
Speaker 1: Among other things, Kellogg advocated a bland vegetarian diet, and
Speaker 1: for a time he also advocated Fletcherism at the Sand.
Speaker 1: He was also a proponent of eugenics and one of
Speaker 1: several people to introduce Fletcher's ideas into the eugenics movement.
Speaker 1: In nineteen hundred, Fletcher and his family were staying at
Speaker 1: a hotel in Venice, and Fletcher became friends with the
Speaker 1: hotel physician Ernest van Somren. Van Somren became interested in
Speaker 1: Fletcher's ideas, and in nineteen o one he read a
Speaker 1: paper to the British Medical Association in which he summarized them.
Speaker 1: He said that he had improved his own health by
Speaker 1: chewing his food thoroughly and reducing his protein intake. Van
Speaker 1: Summern said Fletcherism had allowed him to cure himself of gout, headaches,
Speaker 1: frequent colds, exima, and other maladies, while also improving his
Speaker 1: mental health and his outlook on life. Ernest van Summerin
Speaker 1: also married Fletcher's stepdaughter, Ivy. That happened in nineteen o two.
Speaker 1: Beyond Fletcher's published work and lectures on food and nutrition,
Speaker 1: he also had money, and during these same years he
Speaker 1: started trying to establish and fund a nutrition research institute.
Speaker 1: This may have led some nutritionists to give him more
Speaker 1: attention than they might have otherwise, since newly developed instruments
Speaker 1: like respiration calorimeters were expensive. Sir Michael Foster of Cambridge
Speaker 1: University heard about Fletcher's plans and invited him to come
Speaker 1: for a visit. Although it seems like Fletcher's ideas did
Speaker 1: get some support at Cambridge, the university eventually turned its
Speaker 1: attention to funding from the Carnegie Institution was also providing
Speaker 1: money for this kind of research and not advocating that
Speaker 1: people choose their food until it was a tasteless pulp.
Speaker 1: Fletcher visited the same in two and that same year
Speaker 1: he carried out a publicity stunt meant to show off
Speaker 1: his endurance, which he attributed to his way of eating.
Speaker 1: He climbed to the top of the Washington Monument that
Speaker 1: was eight nineties stairs without stopping, and then he ran
Speaker 1: back down. This was not the first or the last
Speaker 1: such display. For example, a few years before, for his
Speaker 1: fiftieth birthday, he and thirty year old artist Edward W.
Speaker 1: Redfield had set off on a two hundred mile bike
Speaker 1: ride in France, although Redfield got cramps and had to
Speaker 1: take a train back home, while Fletcher went on without him.
Speaker 1: Fletcher also became connected to Russell H. Chittenden, who was
Speaker 1: director of Sheffield School of Science at Yale University, who
Speaker 1: wondered if Fletcher's methods might help him address some of
Speaker 1: his own chronic health issues. Shouldn't then invited Fletcher to
Speaker 1: the lab for a series of studies. He ran various
Speaker 1: tests and experiments. This included analyzing exactly how much Fletcher
Speaker 1: was eating, ing and of what, and having him do
Speaker 1: various physical trials. It concluded that Fletcher was living on
Speaker 1: less food than most people were believed to need, including
Speaker 1: eating about a third of the recommended amount of protein,
Speaker 1: all while maintaining what seemed like a steady weight, and
Speaker 1: he also seemed to be physically healthy. Although Chittenden does
Speaker 1: seem to have concluded that Fletcher was physically healthy while
Speaker 1: eating a lot less food, he was also pretty selective
Speaker 1: about which of Fletcher's ideas he really supported. He thought, really,
Speaker 1: really thoroughly chewing food led to better digestion, and that
Speaker 1: the reduced calorie and protein intake that was a natural
Speaker 1: side effect of this extensive chewing was a good thing.
Speaker 1: But he did not support Fletcher's claims that there was
Speaker 1: some kind of physiological nutrient gait in the mouth, or
Speaker 1: that the mouth included previously unknown digestive organs. Shouldn't then
Speaker 1: published an article about his work with Fletcher and Popular
Speaker 1: Science in June of nineteen oh three. It's set in
Speaker 1: part quote the writer has had in his laboratory for
Speaker 1: several months past a gentleman hf who has, for some
Speaker 1: five years, in pursuit of a study of the subject
Speaker 1: of human nutrition, practiced a certain degree of abstinence in
Speaker 1: the taking of food, and attained important economy, with as
Speaker 1: he believes, a great gain in bodily and mental vigor,
Speaker 1: and with marked improvement in his general health. Under his
Speaker 1: new method of living, he finds himself possessed of a
Speaker 1: peculiar fitness for work of all kinds, and with freedom
Speaker 1: from the ordinary fatigue incidental to extra physical exertion. And
Speaker 1: using the word abstinence, possibly a wrong impression is given,
Speaker 1: for the habits of life now followed have resulted in
Speaker 1: the disappearance of the ordinary craving for food. In other words,
Speaker 1: the gentleman in question fully satisfies his appetite, but no
Speaker 1: longer desires the amount of food consumed by most individuals.
Speaker 1: A lot of Horace Fletcher's writing was focused on feeling better,
Speaker 1: both mentally and physically, but he also touched on more
Speaker 1: economic ideas, like if poor people started Fletcherizing, they could
Speaker 1: better afford to feed their families, and that aspect of
Speaker 1: Fletcherism was really attractive to people who were responsible for
Speaker 1: figuring out how to feed large groups like the U. S. Army.
Speaker 1: The Army sent a medical team to Yale, reportedly some
Speaker 1: of the same people who had been part of Walter
Speaker 1: Reed's efforts to stop the spread of yellow fever, which
Speaker 1: we recently had as a Saturday Classic. The Army wanted
Speaker 1: to figure out if soldiers could cut down on the
Speaker 1: rations that they needed by employing fletcherizing. Fletcher published another
Speaker 1: book in h three called A B two Z of
Speaker 1: Our Own Nutrition. Among other things, this described some of
Speaker 1: the ongoing research that was happening at that point involving
Speaker 1: soldiers at Gale. In it, Fletcher also proposed a series
Speaker 1: of questions for readers to ask themselves. Some were pretty straightforward,
Speaker 1: like the first question, which was how much do I
Speaker 1: know about my own nutrition? Others were a little more fanciful,
Speaker 1: including quote, were I an iron and steel automobile instead
Speaker 1: of a flesh and blood automobile? Which I really am?
Speaker 1: Could I get a license for myself as a chauffeur
Speaker 1: to run myself with safety based upon my knowledge of
Speaker 1: my own mechanism and the theory and development of my power.
Speaker 1: I'm just gonna digest that concept for a moment. Fletcher
Speaker 1: also placed a lot of moral and religious weight onto
Speaker 1: eating decisions. As one example from this book, he wrote, quote,
Speaker 1: how can I religiously ask a blessing upon food and
Speaker 1: then immediately sin by treating it in a manner abhorrent
Speaker 1: to the natural requirements? In nineteen War Chittenden was still
Speaker 1: doing research at Yale, including one study involving three groups
Speaker 1: of test subjects. There were brain workers, those were people
Speaker 1: who had pretty sedentary jobs. There were members of the
Speaker 1: Army Hospital Corps whose activity level was described as moderate,
Speaker 1: and there were members of the Varsity crew at Yale
Speaker 1: who were doing intensive athletic training. According to Fletcher, the
Speaker 1: Army also distributed a set of instructions titled method of
Speaker 1: Attaining Economic Assimilation of Nutriment, but the only places that
Speaker 1: Tracy found that were in Fletcher's own writing and that
Speaker 1: of people citing him. He did, however, serve on the
Speaker 1: Committee of one hundred on National Health, as well as
Speaker 1: on the other National Commission on Mental Hygiene. At one
Speaker 1: point he was also vice president of the Food Reform
Speaker 1: Society of England. Although people like Chittenden and various Army
Speaker 1: leaders seemed to have been willing to at least invest
Speaker 1: a gate Fletcher's claims, he was at odds with a
Speaker 1: lot of other people in the evolving field of nutrition.
Speaker 1: Fletcherism was nicknamed the Chow Chow cult, and even some
Speaker 1: people who cautiously suggested that he might have a point
Speaker 1: in terms of people needing to chew their food better. Uh.
Speaker 1: They also noted that most of his support was from
Speaker 1: people who just subjectively said that they felt better when
Speaker 1: they were Fletcherizing their food anecdotes versus data. Meanwhile, Fletcher
Speaker 1: was giving speeches and funding research and mailing samples of
Speaker 1: his digestive ash to researchers. Famous people who reportedly attended
Speaker 1: his lectures included John D. Rockefeller, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
Speaker 1: and Upton Sinclair. Franz Kafka was reportedly a Fletcher right,
Speaker 1: with his father hiding behind his newspaper during meals so
Speaker 1: that he would not have to watch all that chewing.
Speaker 1: Two prominent devotes were author Henry James and his brother,
Speaker 1: philosopher William James. William discovered Fletcher's work first and sent
Speaker 1: a copy of one of his books to his brother.
Speaker 1: Both of them were really hoping that they could address
Speaker 1: various health concerns through Fletcher's methods. For a time, their
Speaker 1: letters to each other included a lot about Fletcher's ideas.
Speaker 1: Henry in particular, was, in his own words, zealous, and
Speaker 1: he advocated Fletcherism to his friends and literary colleagues, including
Speaker 1: Edith Wharton Henry James wrote to Fletcher in nineteen o
Speaker 1: five and told him that after adopting his methods, quote,
Speaker 1: all my serenity and improvement return. William wrote to the
Speaker 1: Harvard Crimson that same year to encourage students and staff
Speaker 1: to attend one of Fletcher's lectures, but both brothers had
Speaker 1: given up on Fletcherism by nineteen o eight and nineteen
Speaker 1: o nine. Apparently Henry ultimately decided that living on so
Speaker 1: little food was a miss ruble experience. By that point,
Speaker 1: Fletcher had made another trip to Yale for another set
Speaker 1: of studies and physical tests. In his own words, at
Speaker 1: the age of fifty eight, he did a set of
Speaker 1: trials under the observation of a doctor Anderson quote, I
Speaker 1: lifted three hundred pounds dead weight three hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: times with the muscles of my right leg below the knee.
Speaker 1: The record of the best athlete was then one hundred
Speaker 1: and seventy five lifts. So I doubled the world's record
Speaker 1: of that style of tests of endurance just taking that in.
Speaker 1: Russell H. Chitten then published another report in Popular Science
Speaker 1: in n seven describing another battery of tests of strength
Speaker 1: and endurance. It read in part quote why a man
Speaker 1: of fifty nine years of age, without training should be
Speaker 1: able to far surpass the record for endurance made by
Speaker 1: young and vigorous athletes can only be surmised, but it
Speaker 1: certainly seems plausible to assume that the explanation is to
Speaker 1: be found in the careful dietary habits which this man
Speaker 1: has followed for the past nine years. Still, other people
Speaker 1: were not nearly as complimentary. In nineteen o nine, journalist
Speaker 1: and theater critic Francis W. Crowninshield published Manners for the Metropolis,
Speaker 1: An Entrance Key to the Fantastic Life of the four Hundred.
Speaker 1: In this book, Crown and Shield wrote, quote, Fletcher rights
Speaker 1: have lately added a new horror to dining out. These
Speaker 1: strange creatures seldom repay attention. The best that can be
Speaker 1: expected of them as the tense and awful silence which
Speaker 1: always accompanies their excruciating tortures of mastication. For context, back
Speaker 1: in ward, McAlister had told the New York Tribune that
Speaker 1: there were only four hundred people in fashionable New York society,
Speaker 1: and that had evolved into a list of who the
Speaker 1: four hundred fashionable people were, and a few years After this,
Speaker 1: Crown and Shield would become editor of Vanity Fair. In
Speaker 1: Fletcher published Fletcherism, What It Is or How I Became
Speaker 1: Young at sixty. In it, he wrote, quote, the first
Speaker 1: role of Fletcherism is to feel gratitude and to express
Speaker 1: appreciation for and of all the blessings which nature, intelligence, civilization,
Speaker 1: and imagination bring to mankind. He also boiled Fletcherism down
Speaker 1: to five rules. First, wait for a true earned appetite. Second,
Speaker 1: select from the food available that which appeals most to appetite,
Speaker 1: and in the order called for by appetite. Third, get
Speaker 1: all the good taste there is in food, out of
Speaker 1: it in the mouth, and swallow only when it practically
Speaker 1: swallows itself. Fourth, enjoy the good taste for all it
Speaker 1: is worth, and do not allow any depressing or diverting
Speaker 1: thought to intrude upon the ceremony. Fifth, weight, take and
Speaker 1: enjoy as much as possible what appetite approves. Nature will
Speaker 1: do the rest. During World War One, Fletcher started working
Speaker 1: with Herbert Hoover on food relief projects in Europe, although
Speaker 1: in some accounts this was more like an honorary position
Speaker 1: that Fletcher basically appointed himself to. Today, Herbert Hoover is
Speaker 1: most known for having been US President at the start
Speaker 1: of the Great Depression, and in a lot of ways
Speaker 1: he has become a huge scapegoat for that entire financial crisis,
Speaker 1: but at this point he was known as the great humanitarian.
Speaker 1: Hoover had become a multi millionaire after being orphaned at
Speaker 1: a young age, and he had retired from business to
Speaker 1: focus pretty much exclusively on philanthropy. If Fletcher's ideas really
Speaker 1: were sound, if a person really could live on about
Speaker 1: a third of the recommended calories and protein and still
Speaker 1: be healthy, that would of course be revolutionary to time
Speaker 1: relief efforts. But a number of people pointed out that
Speaker 1: there was a huge difference between Army recruits and Yale
Speaker 1: athletes being studied in a lab having arrived at that
Speaker 1: lab well fed and in good health, and people facing
Speaker 1: years of malnutrition, deprivation, hardship, and violence during the war.
Speaker 1: Fletcher claimed to have taught Fletcherism to eight millions starving
Speaker 1: people in Belgium, But although Russell Chittenden was on the
Speaker 1: advisory committee for some of this food relief, and Chittenden
Speaker 1: had been researching Fletcher's methods for years, these relief projects
Speaker 1: did not formally adopt those methods. Yeah. One of the
Speaker 1: articles that I read about this kind of did a
Speaker 1: whole thought exercise, like but what if? Actually, I think
Speaker 1: it was a podcast hasn't too like but what if?
Speaker 1: What if they had? How much differently with things have gone?
Speaker 1: If people had been spending all of their time chewing
Speaker 1: and and having way less food Anyway, Art Fletcher's story
Speaker 1: has an abrupt end. He died on January nineteen, nineteen
Speaker 1: in Copenhagen. One obituary described him as seventy years young,
Speaker 1: although that same obituary also described him as having asthma
Speaker 1: and rheumatism and being nearly blind from cataracts in both eyes.
Speaker 1: He's buried in Bellevue Cemetery in Lawrence, Massachusetts. His wife, Grace,
Speaker 1: lived on until nine, and his ideas pretty quickly fell
Speaker 1: out of fashion after his death, Although there has been
Speaker 1: various research since then about exactly how much chewing really
Speaker 1: is the right amount and whether there was anything to
Speaker 1: this whole idea. They've kind of had varying results. I'm
Speaker 1: the healthiest person alive and now I am gone. Thank
Speaker 1: you a wild one. Yeah, do you have listener mail
Speaker 1: that doesn't involve a lot of chewing fingers cross I
Speaker 1: do and it includes no chewing um. This is from
Speaker 1: Rachel and Rachel wrote after our blood donation episode, dude
Speaker 1: with a little p s A. Rachel said, Hi, there,
Speaker 1: I just listened to your blood bank episode and behind
Speaker 1: the scenes many and wanted to share a quick p
Speaker 1: s A. I also haven't had good experiences donating whole
Speaker 1: blood due to borderline anemia, but then I found out
Speaker 1: about platelet donation after a friend of mine was battling limphoma.
Speaker 1: She's doing great. Now. I'm not a science slash medical person,
Speaker 1: but essentially, platelet donation involves taking whole blood out of
Speaker 1: one arm, cycling it through a machine to remove the platelets,
Speaker 1: and then returning everything else to the other arm. It's
Speaker 1: a longer process, about two hours, but depending on your
Speaker 1: platelet concentration, they can get up to three units percession,
Speaker 1: and in my experience, the donor doesn't feel as faint afterwards,
Speaker 1: since you're getting your red blood cells back. It has
Speaker 1: to be done at specific locations. I eat not mobile
Speaker 1: blood banks since the equipment is large, but they wrap
Speaker 1: you in warm blankets while you watch TV, read or
Speaker 1: even just sleep. Platelets have a wide use and are
Speaker 1: often given to cancer patients, and since they are the
Speaker 1: part of your blood that clots, they go bad quickly
Speaker 1: and are needed often. And there's a link to the
Speaker 1: Red Cross page about that. Um. Rachel says that Tracy,
Speaker 1: I know you said you often give whole blood, so
Speaker 1: you might not be interested in platelet donation. But I
Speaker 1: also live in the Boston area and the m g
Speaker 1: H Donation Center is top notch. Thank you for everything
Speaker 1: you both do. I love your podcast and the new
Speaker 1: behind the scenes many episodes. I've attached a short video
Speaker 1: here of our mischievous cat, Penny, who loved opening our
Speaker 1: cabinets at our old apartment and hiding among our snacks.
Speaker 1: Cheers Rachel Um. That last bit reminds me of a
Speaker 1: thing that was going around on TikTok for a while
Speaker 1: about people needing a cabinet kitty. People would have a
Speaker 1: little video and open the door and there would be
Speaker 1: their cabinet kitty. Thank you so much for that, Rachel.
Speaker 1: For me personally, I can walk on foot to a
Speaker 1: drive where I can give whole blood, and going to
Speaker 1: give platelets requires like either a twenty to thirty minute
Speaker 1: car trip or much long her on public transportation for
Speaker 1: where I live. There just for me personally, like it is,
Speaker 1: I'm more able to fit a whole blood donation into
Speaker 1: my schedule, but for other people for other reasons, plate
Speaker 1: let's work a whole lot better. Well. And I think
Speaker 1: I'm probably the person that mentioned that I always get
Speaker 1: dinged for having a borderline anemia. And there is a
Speaker 1: platelet donation place near me that is fairly new that
Speaker 1: I I need to make time to go visit and
Speaker 1: check out and see if if I'm a good candidate.
Speaker 1: My thing with that is that it is very hard
Speaker 1: for me to set aside three hours, yeah, where I
Speaker 1: can't be doing seven other things. I was going to
Speaker 1: fill in your sentence by saying, holding still for that long.
Speaker 1: It's very hard for me. That's like the trick that's
Speaker 1: like an anxiety inducer when I'm like, do you mean
Speaker 1: I just sit? What if I have to peet? Like
Speaker 1: I immediately go to this whole anxiety party train for sure,
Speaker 1: But I'm gonna talk to them and see if there's
Speaker 1: a way that even the Holly Fries of the world
Speaker 1: can do it. Um, I don't know that this would
Speaker 1: necessarily help, uh, because part of this is needing or
Speaker 1: wanting to be up and around. But um, recently, when
Speaker 1: I had a thing that was going to take up
Speaker 1: a bunch of my time, I picked something to ben
Speaker 1: Binge watch and put it on my iPad so that
Speaker 1: I could just take the iPad with me wherever it
Speaker 1: was that I needed to be and that helped a lot.
Speaker 1: So anyway, thank you so much for that. P s A.
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