Food And Morals

[From Rev. Dr. Deems, Church of the Strangers, New York.]

Messrs. Fowler & Wells:

Gentlemen:—I have read with great interest a sermon by Rev. Mr. Clymer, of Auburn, on “The Relation of Food to Morals,” as it appeared in the Auburn Daily Advertiser of June 20th, 1880. Certainly everything stands related to morals; and all men, women, and children should be made to see and feel this.

I suppose I am considered an old-fashioned preacher. I believe in “original sin,” and I believe in a great deal of sin that is not original. I believe that every man is so corrupt that he can never be made pure without supernatural influence; and I believe that he must take advantage, at the same time, of all the natural helps. Even the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ cannot make the saint who is in the flesh, feel alert and happy, so long as he has any serious obstruction of the biliary duct. When I was a younger pastor in a Southern city, I was called by a mother to see her daughter, a girl of eighteen, who was in a dreadful way, inconsolably laboring under the oppressive feeling that there was no mercy for her. I prescribed for her torpid liver as my knowledge of the healing art enabled me to do, promising to call again soon. When I did call, the young lady was relieved, and I was able to secure her attention to the comfortable truths of our most holy faith. It is first the natural, and then the spiritual; St. Paul, 1 Cor. xv. 46: “Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual.” We must always feel our dependence on the spirit of God for our regeneration and sanctification, but not in such a way as to make fools of us. The man whose faith in the supernatural makes him depreciate the natural, has no more sense than he whose faith in the natural utterly excludes super-nature.

I think you would do a good work to issue Mr. Clymer’s discourse as one of a series of tracts proclaiming the gospel of hygiene. Will you not do it?

With kindest regards, yours truly,

CHARLES F. DEEMS.

New York, February 1, 1881.

Rev. Dr. Deems:

Dear Sir: Yours of February 1 received, and contents noted. Thanks for your suggestion. Yes; we will do it. We will publish Mr. Clymer’s sermon in so cheap a pamphlet form that we can give it an almost universal circulation.

We do this because we believe with you most fully in the gospel of hygiene.

Yours very truly,

FOWLER & WELLS.

In the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Auburn, New York,
On Sunday, June 20th, 1880.

“If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and that when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them, then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gates of his place; and they shall say unto the elders of his city: This our son is stubborn and rebellious; he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.”—Deut. xxi. 18-20.

We have had much teaching that has left the impression on our minds that the soul is the only source and seat of all the vice in human life. Because it is written “The imaginations of the thoughts of the natural heart, are only evil continually,” total depravity has been fixed on the spirit nature of man; that is, all the bad or immoral elements entering into human life have been attributed to the innate or inborn ugliness of the soul. Accepting the Scriptural truth that “the soul that sinneth, it shall die,” we have come to think that sin has its center, seat, source and circumference in the soul, or the immaterial nature of man. Hence we readily admit the fact that influences, good or bad, may pass over from the soul to the body, but we do not so readily admit that other fact, equally true, that influence good or bad may go over from the body to the soul. The road over which vicious thoughts and lustful imaginations pass from the soul to the body is the highway over which unbridled appetites, unrestrained passions and unsubdued lusts in the body may go to the soul, goading it to the wildest conceptions of vice and lecherous imaginations. The warm rays of the sun may gender rottenness in the muddy pool; so also will the effluvia from the pool poison the sunlight near it. The soul by its vicious thoughts and imaginations will entail an immoral tone on the body; so also will the body react on the soul, by its appetites, passions and propensities, increasing the viciousness of the soul by pushing it to courses of vice not directly and immediately its own. In our text is found an illustration of this thought. A father and mother bring their stubborn and rebellious son to the elders of the Jewish church. They assign, as the cause of his stubbornness and rebellion, gluttony and drunkenness, than which there are no vices that demoralize the body more, or goad the soul to greater crimes. Hear it:

“This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice, he is a glutton and a drunkard.” That is, bad conditions of the physical nature, wrought by gluttony and drunkenness, have made him stubborn and rebellious. It will not help the case to say that his stubbornness and rebellion caused his gluttony and drunkenness, for if they did, then his soul must act on the body. His morals must influence his manners, and therefore his manners must reflect on his morals; they must interact, which is just the point we make; that his appetite and lust fire the temperament or disposition, and a fiery disposition provokes appetite and lust to wilder indulgences.

A remarkable fact, in this day of advanced science and revelation, is that Christians and moralists in their work of reform have paid so little attention to the influence of the body on the soul. Jesus Christ more than any other teacher or reformer recognized the demoralizing and debasing influence of bad bodily conditions. Hence he almost always healed maladies of the body before he entered his principles upon the soul. It is true that his many miracles on the bodies of men were primarily intended to reveal his divinity; yet divinity in its manifestations always runs over the whole line of the natural before passing into the supernatural; therefore Christ’s miracles on the bodies of men had a sanitary side to them. The man with the leprosy was in the poorest condition bodily to hear favorably any talk about moral sweetness; hence Christ healed his diseased body, in connection with his moral teachings. His example with the blind and hungry and deaf in this respect ought not to go for nothing with those of us who seek to save men in our day. Philanthropists and Christians for the most part have overlooked the power of a debased body on the soul. They forget that Paul likens a body that has sinful habitudes to a thing of death, as compared with the soul that seeks to live the new life in Christ Jesus. Therefore good men have labored to create in themselves and those whom they seek to reform, certain emotional conditions of the spirit, by a tenacious adherence to creeds, or the patient performance of a set round of religious duties, and all this regardless of bad physical conditions begotten by bad habits of eating and drinking. While they have been struggling to bring their own souls and the souls of others into holy attitudes, all the basilar forces of the body have run riot within, and perhaps beyond, the pale of human customs and human laws. If you want to empty a boiler of steam, it will not help you much by lifting the safety valve if you still keep water in the boiler and fire in the furnace. Prayer, Bible reading and Psalm singing will not help a man much to get rid of his sins, if he keeps up a set of bodily habits which fire the body and inflame the soul to continue its sinning. That you may see the connection more clearly between vice and victuals, let me show you how food may damage our bodies and demoralize our souls.

I am fully aware of the difficulties I encounter in entering this thought on your minds. Because religion has been considered as having little or nothing to do with the body, I shall encounter the settled opinions of good men to this effect. Because our popular methods of eating have the sanction of custom and the defense of long established habits, I may not criticise them without losing the favor of those who are content with things as they are. Because I shall call in question many indulgences of appetite hitherto considered sinless, I shall run the risk of being called a fanatic or fool. Because I shall preach the New Testament doctrine of self-denial many will say this is a hard saying—“who can bear it?” But with the hope that I may unfold to you a glorious realm of liberty from the bondage of bodily propensities, I cheerfully do my duty and leave the consequences for God to look after.

Very few of us are aware of the great physical demoralization and spiritual wickedness, brought on us and our children, by bad habits of eating, as to the kind of food, the mode of its preparation, and the manner and times of taking it. We refuse to think of our indulgences of appetite as the cause of our physical ailments and premature death, and much less will we allow ourselves to believe that these indulgences have anything to do with forming our morals or shaping our characters or determining our eternal destiny.

And yet I aver, without the fear of successful refutation, that three-fourths of all our bodily ailments or diseases, and many of our immoral acts, are the legitimate results of improper dietetic habits. If these habits do not effect us directly, they do so indirectly by lowering the tone of the whole system, physical and moral, causing us to break down prematurely into some disease or deviltry, under the pressure of legitimate toil or immoral provocation. How is it possible to account for the death of one half the human family before five years of age, unless we trace it to the violation of physical laws in some way connected with the eating habits alike of parent and child? Many children enter the world with such a low state of inherited physical vitality, and so little moral tone, that they are unable to resist the attacks of bodily disease or throw it off when on them, and much less able to throw off moral disease and rise above their immoral heritage if spared to pass through childhood to years of maturity. Such children not only carry in their little bodies the physical weaknesses of their parents, but also the specific immoral tendencies found in the conditions of their parentage. And more than this, should their endowment of vitality be sufficient to carry them over the death line for infants, they are subject to such unnatural relations to dress and diet that it becomes a natural impossibility for them to live. In this way many children die prematurely, not by the arbitrary edict of God, but by the violation of law. And if God should save their lives by special suspension of his laws, more damage would be done to the moral harmony of the universe than to let them die. I know it is a common custom to ascribe all sickness and death to the direct and arbitrary action of Divine Providence. That is, if one overeats, or eats innutritious food, or at improper times, making himself sickly, so that he becomes an easy prey to disease, and dies suddenly or at the noon tide of life, all the good people say—“What a strange Providence!” As if God had everything to do with such a death, and the deceased had little or nothing to do with it. I incline to the opinion that Divine Providence has little or nothing to do with such deaths only in so far as Divine Providence is in the laws of life violated. The primary cause of all premature deaths is violated law. God does not arbitrarily kill anybody. Most of those who die in infancy or in early life, come to death by the violation of God’s laws written in their bodies. If these laws were obeyed in us and in our ancestry, most of us ought to live beyond three score years and ten, and drop from this life into the other in a ripe, mellow old age, just as ripe fruit drops from its bough in autumn time. But you ask where is God in the many untimely deaths that occur? I answer He is present in his great hearted goodness to help the dying to an eternal victory over death, if they will only let Him. He is present to bind up the hearts that are breaking with sorrow for the departed, and to make a sudden, untimely, and needless death a monument of warning to those still living, thus making the wrath of man to praise Him. If therefore our children die in infancy, because we have entailed on them feeble bodies by our violation of law, God does not kill them, but they die through violated law, and he in His goodness takes the little ones to His bosom, the seat and source of all law. Let us not then charge our sorrows to the willful enactment of our Heavenly Father. He taketh no pleasure in the death of him that dieth. When he gives life to us, He intends that we shall keep it as long as possible.

Having given us life, all the forces of His boundless nature are engaged to maintain it in us until He is ready to harvest us as the farmer does the ripened grain. The God of nature and the God of grace are not in antagonism. “The one God is in all and over all.” A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand. If, therefore, we die this side of three score years and ten—seventy years—we die untimely. It is high time that good men were awake to this fact, and ceased charging over to Divine Providence what legitimately belongs to ourselves. “Jesus Christ came to destroy him that hath the power of death, that is the devil;” and when the philosophy of Jesus is wrought up into human lives by obedience to physical laws, the power of disease and death over our bodies will be very much broken. The victory over death can be so far achieved by men in the body that they need not die until their minds and hearts have received all the development in this world that infinite love ordains. That is, men may so baffle the monster of death by obedience to law as to keep him at bay until their souls have taken on such Christly ripeness that they shall burst and break their bodies, as the ripening chestnuts break their burrs under the frosts of autumn. We have, therefore, no right to ascribe to supernatural agency any phenomena which can be explained on natural principles. Disobedience to law brings penalties. There is nothing that men need to see more in their efforts at reform than the connection between their sufferings and their disobedience. Now, disobedience to the laws of life brings the penalties, sickness and premature death. There is no field where our disobedience manifests itself more frequently and with so little thought of consequences, as in our false and unnatural habits of eating and drinking, which damage the body and demoralize the soul.

“The Blood is the Life.” This is the declaration alike of revelation and of science. Evolutionary processes may induce a variation in the form or number of the blood corpuscles, but they can not set aside the law that the building and rebuilding of all the organs involved in bodily or mental acts comes from the blood alone. The physical, mental and moral natures are so intimately connected that that which affects one, affects the others. So that a man’s mental and moral nature, as well as his physical, can very largely be determined by the quality of his blood. Now it is a physiological fact that our blood is made out of the food we eat. That food which enters the mouth and is assimilated, makes blood. By the marvelous processes of digestion and assimilation our food is transformed into blood; and the blood passing through the veins and arteries repairs the waste tissues and forms new ones, thus building up our bodies and sustaining life. It follows then that our bodies are made of the food we eat. Evidently it was the design of our Creator that the prime object of eating should be the building up of tissue—muscles, bones and brains. That this may be a pleasure to us, He has associated with eating the delights of appetite. But most of us have so far perverted the divine order as to make the pleasures of appetite the chief object of eating. “Give us something good to eat,” is the great cry of humanity, and the goodness of food is gauged by the sensations of the palate and not by the law of nutrition. Most of us determine the goodness of our food by the amount of sensual delight it imparts to the palate, no matter how much damage it may do beyond to the delicate and intricate structure of the stomach and viscera. Hence a vast amount of food enters the mouth that makes bad blood, blood that in itself is corrupt, and carries poisonous particles to every organ in the system, putting us in splendid condition to be easily provoked to some outburst of anger, passion or revenge. My hearers, there is a sure and vital connection between bad blood and bad morals. Blood always tells in morals as well as in muscles. Blood has power throughout the whole realm of life, whether it be in a human body, in society, or in the body of a horse on the racecourse.

You ask, what kind of food makes bad blood? I answer, very much of the flesh of animals, that forms the staple diet of most of us. Sty-fed pigs and stall-fed oxen are fattened under the most unlawful and unhealthful conditions possible; shut up in the dark, cut off from exercise, the fat deposited on their bodies is made up of the waste matter that the life-forces of the animal have been unable to expel. This waste fatty matter, surcharged with unexpelled excretions, is liable to induce disease in all who consume it. It has established tuberculosis in captive lions, and in cats and dogs, and in other carnivora; and it were folly to assume that mankind, feeding upon such poisonous food, should wholly escape. Even in the living animal this effete unexpelled poisonous waste breeds vermin, such as have been found in pork, which cannot be destroyed by ordinary cooking or by the process of digestion, and hence live and generate in the human body, producing disease and death. I am not now making a plea for the absolute disuse of animal food, but against the bad quality of very much of it, and also against the inordinate use of that which may be good in quality. A certain amount of animal food is useful for our nourishment, especially in winter time, because of its heat producing qualities. But meat every day, and at every meal, is in no way necessary for the proper sustenance of the human system.

The use of large quantities of animal food, however free from disease-germs, as a staple article of diet makes the blood gross, coarse and corrupt, filling the body with scrofulous elements, sending poison to every part of the system, causing it to break out in running sores, salt-rheum, tetter and the like, producing an inordinate appetite, throwing every organ of the body into frictional relations to every other organ. It is a matter of every-day surprise to me that any human being will consent to eat the flesh of pigs. Consider their uncleanness, their selfish, greedy habits, the vast amount of corruption that enters into their bodies, their want of exercise, their impure breathing, their lack of sudorific glands or emunctories, through which effete tissues and morbid accumulations may be expelled; and think, when you eat pork, of the train of horrid elements which enter into your body. And your body thus debased by a low order of animal flesh, the effect must be to make you take on the disposition and tendencies of the hog. God’s bill of fare in the eleventh chapter of Leviticus excluded from the tables of the Jews the hog and all water animals except those that had fins and scales. This bill of fare was given to the Jews not only for the preservation of their health, but, as God’s great purpose was moral reform, He had an eye single to their moral condition in the matter of their eating. Does any one doubt that the unhealthy, ugly, and vicious elements that make up the flesh of most of the animals we eat, enter our blood, and in that way affect the disposition or carriage of the soul? I am confident, if there was less demand for animal food the quality would be very much better. Animals would not be subject to false and unhealthy generation, and false and hasty methods of growth. They would come up more in keeping with the laws of their nature, and come to us with more healthy and better qualities. As for the hog, if man would not domesticate him, he could not propagate his species. He would become extinct just like the lion, leopard, and hyena, under the march of civilization. As the blessings of civilized life reach us, you notice the carnivorous or flesh-eating animals become extinct. So it seems to me that with the developments of civilization there ought to be such moral refinements in human beings that they would grow away from their carnivorous tendencies, and eat such food as tends to develop the mental and moral faculties, and not the animal propensities. Among animals you find that those that live on the flesh of other animals are the most vicious and destructive, such as the lion, leopard, and hyena. Those animals that live on the grains and the higher order of foods are the best, most beautiful, and most useful, such as the horse and cow. If this law obtains among animals, why not among men? Beyond a doubt it does. If you want proof of this, study the character and lives of those who live largely on animal food, and you will find them very animal-like in all their relations—restive, impatient, passionate, ugly in their ways, fiery in their disposition, easily provoked, readily put out of humor. And if you could look into their private lives you would find all their baser qualities having the fullest sway, stopping, it may be, inside the fence of human laws and customs, but seldom considering the claims of a higher and divine law. I charge, then, very much of our household misery, domestic woe, and connubial wretchedness, to unrestrained lust begotten in the body by the inordinate use of animal food.

We forget, my hearers, that the great law of nature, “Like produces like,” is universal. “Every seed after its kind is the law of all creation.” There is no exception to this law. This principle obtains not only in the production of life, but in the processes of its development. If my position about the intimacy of soul and body is true, then, if a man’s body is made up chiefly of flesh taken from diseased animals, and his whole physical frame is saturated with the irritating and exciting condiments of what is popularly called good food, the whole bias of his bodily powers will be toward animalism. All the impressions and impulses that the soul receives from such a body are beastly and debasing. Like produces like in the formation of physical tissue out of food, as well as in the generation of stock in the stall. Hence I hold that very much of the wickedness of mankind is the natural expression of physical beastliness rather than the outflow of innate viciousness. A body made up largely of all manner of nerve-goading, passion-producing, anger-generating elements, such as are found in the gross animal dishes with their stimulating adjuncts, just as surely drives the soul to sin as a tempest drives a feather before it.

As modern research has proved that bad or imperfect food when digested surely makes bad or imperfect blood, incapable of performing its appointed work of upbuilding and of reparation, so has science demonstrated that perfect food is one of the most potent among remedies for the relief of many diseased conditions. Since the blood is the life, and since blood is merely food emulsified, mingled with certain digestive fluids and colored by the oxygen with which it is brought in contact in the lungs—it is easy to understand how perfect food may create perfect blood, which shall presently supplant that which is feeble, that which is lacking in waste-repairing power, that which fails to give strength to the muscles or vigor to the brain, and may thus become the most effective medicine. A perusal of recent professional medical literature evinces the great stress which is now laid upon dietetics in the treatment of all diseases. The approach to this high altitude has been gradual, but sure. At first foods were made the vehicles for drugs; and cod-liver oil and malt-extracts, which are only concentrated foods of the hydro-carbon varieties, were loaded with lime and iron and strychnine and phosphorous and scores of other drugs. But perfect results were secured by the use of these foods without the drug additions, and so the foods were at last given the credit which all along belonged to them. And so it has come to pass that with advanced medical men, in a vast majority of cases of sickness, the support of the life-powers by proper nutrients is the foremost thought, the best food proving to be the best medicine.

The kind of food a man eats, and the time and manner of his eating it, are not merely a question of medicine, but one of the first questions of morals. The effects of food on the passions and feelings are thus described by Prior:

If, therefore, our meat has something to do with our morals, or if our food in some way affects our faith, it seems to me that many of our efforts at moral reform ought to be preceded by instruction in hygiene. In other words, efforts to make a man genuinely devotional ought to be prefaced by efforts to correct bad dietetic habits. A father, by prayer and precept and flogging, had done his best to reform his boy, whose staple diet was meat and sausage and pie and cake at his meals, with lunch between. The family physician said to the father, “If you will put a leech back of each of your boy’s ears once a week for a month, you will do more to reform him than your preaching and pounding will do in a year.” The father asked for the philosophy of this prescription. “Why,” said the doctor, “your boy has bad blood, and too much of it; he must behave badly or he would burst.” “Then,” said the father, “I’ll change his diet from beef and pie to hominy and milk.” In three months thereafter a better boy for his age could not be found in the neighborhood. The acrid, biting, evil blood had not become food for leeches, but it had done its wicked work and passed away, and a cooler, blander, purer, safer blood had been supplied from sweeter, gentler food sources.

In your use of animal food be very particular as to quality and quantity. Lamb and mutton are considered the most healthy by the authorities. Avoid as you would contagion the use of pork, unless you raise it yourselves, and feed it with good grain, and not the refuse of the house or barn, and keep the animals as clean as you do your pet dogs. Never fry your meat with hogs’ lard, but stew, bake, boil, or broil it. Use hogs’ lard in no form for cooking. Most of it is said to be reeking with scrofulous elements. Displace it in all your cooking by milk or butter. If you want to aid and not hinder the growth of your soul Godward, if you desire to have pure thoughts and a pure heart and a pure life, see that you make your blood out of pure food, or you will find that your soul will have an enemy within the castle of its body more treacherous and deadly than any of its enemies without.

There is another popular article of food among us, which has a vital connection with bodily disorders and bad exhibition of character. Good in proper quantities and in its sphere, when made the largest and chief article of diet, for every meal, the one kind of food upon which we depend most for building up the wastes of our bodies, it indirectly does great damage. I refer to the ordinary fine flour bread made out of bolted wheat meal.

It is proper to remember that the white flour from which our bread is chiefly made, and which is deemed the staff of life, is a purely artificial product—a selection from that perfect food combination which exists in wheat. A competent food chemist has compared the regular milling processes to one by which the fat part of an ox should be saved for food, and the lean part—the albuminous or nitrogenous portion—discarded and given to the dogs. The comparison is well based, since the starch of wheat, which is valued because of its whiteness, is a carbo-hydrate, chemically allied to the fat of meat; while the dark nutriment of wheat, which, because of its color, is discarded with the bran with which it is found in contact in nature, is a vegetable nitrogenous albumen, rich in mineral elements, and almost identical, chemically, with the lean or muscular tissue of beef.

The process of bolting or refining takes from the wheat most of the phosphates and nitrates, the elements that are chiefly required for making nerves, muscles, bones, and brains. The phosphates and nitrates being removed by bolting, very little remains in the flour except the starchy carbonates, the heat and fat producing elements. The use of fine flour bread as a staple article of food introduces too much heat and fat-producing elements into the system, and where there is too much carbon or heating substance, it tends rather to provoke the system to unnatural and abnormal action, and instead of serving as an element to warm the body, its tendency is to burn or consume, heating and irritating all the organs, getting one into that state which is popularly known as “hot-blooded.” The fine white flour ordinarily used has two-thirds of the nitrogenous and mineral nutriment that God put in the wheat taken out. Unless these deficiencies are made up by some other foods, the exclusive use of fine flour bread will leave the nerves and bones poorly nourished, producing in some systems nervousness, dyspepsia, and all the physical ills that follow these diseases, together with impatience, fretfulness, and irritability. God intended that all the nutritive properties He put in the wheat should stay in it for purposes of symmetrical nourishment. Fine flour bread may be used for purposes of producing heat in the system, but it does not feed hungry nerves or starving bones.

One reason why children fed chiefly on white bread feel hungry nearly all the time, and demand so much food between meals, is found in the fact that their bodies are insufficiently nourished. Their bones and nerves not receiving the nitrates and phosphates they need, are suffering from hunger.

When children are fed with food that thoroughly nourishes their whole system, they will seldom desire to eat between meals and thus retard the process of digestion and lay the foundation for dyspepsia and all its kindred evils.

Flour made of all the nutriment of pure white wheat, unbolted, yet without the shell or husk or bran, contains all the elements necessary for the nourishment of the body. The flour called Graham flour rarely contains these elements. There is a great deal of bogus stuff in the market, which has brought the genuine article into disrepute, and made many thoughtful people disgusted with everything in that line. Very much that is called Graham flour is made up of a mixture of fine bolted flour, and the woody fibre of the wheat, which has no nutriment in it at all. This wretched fabrication has tended to make all whole wheat products unpopular. The woody bran is worse than worthless as food, or to mix with food. You might as well eat the shells of nuts, or the husks of corn, or the skins of potatoes, as the silex coats of wheat. To overload the alimentary canal with such foreign indigestible matter has no other tendency but to weaken and debilitate it. Very few millers trouble themselves to make a perfect whole wheat flour. I know but one establishment in the world where wheat and other grains are treated precisely as they should be, with all the harmful part removed and the rest made digestible by harmless methods, and that is the Health Food Company of New York.[1]

Bread leavened, or unleavened, made out of what is called the Cold Blast Whole Wheat Flour, makes more muscle and furnishes more food for the nerves than any other article of food given to man except the pure gluten of wheat. I am not now advocating the views of the extremists, the Grahamites, neither do I counsel the disuse of fine flour bread. This latter should be used in connection with unbolted flour, but should not be relied on to furnish you with all the nutritious elements that your bodies need. There is a golden mean between the extremes of vegetarianism and exclusive flesh diet which the common sense of thoughtful people will find. During the warm season a diet made up chiefly of fruits, grains, and vegetables will be most healthful for body and soul. Instead of the scrofula-breeding pork or ham for breakfast, use some one of the great variety of grains, especially oat-meal, than which there are few better foods for growing children and hard working adults. Instead of fried cakes, rich pastry, and candies, use fruit, of which there is an abundant variety, ten-fold more nourishing than pies or cakes, and very cleansing to the blood. Let brown bread, Johnnie-cake, and corn-meal pudding supplant fine wheat bread as much as possible. Eat your meals regularly and slowly, eating nothing between them. Eat sparingly of meat at mid-day, and let it be good fresh beef, mutton, or fish, well cooked. Let the evening meal be taken not later than six o’clock. Discard tea and coffee, and make your own coffee with browned crusts of bread, or burned whole wheat.[2] Follow these suggestions and you will find very many of the ills of your body departing and very many of the troubles you have in behaving yourselves, vanishing.

Again, we derange our bodies and demoralize our souls by eating too much. The great end of life with many of us is to eat. The American dining-room has become, for the most part, a place for the indulgence of animalism, and not for the development of the affections or social qualities. A distinguished American physician said: “I am sixty-six years old, and I have eaten enough food to answer my wants for 100 years, and yet I am what most people call a small eater.” The popular habit of using, inordinately, appetizers in the shape of the ordinary table condiments, begets a false and unnatural appetite. The time comes when honest food palls upon the depraved senses. The pampered, jaded appetite no longer finds satisfaction in simple food-flavors; the palate must be prompted with pungent things. The cook, who is never a physiologist, responds to the demand for spurs to appetite, and finds them in mixtures of spices and peppers and mustards and acids and essential oils and chemicals, and multitudes of non-food substances. With these, and various biting alcohols, the delicate lining of the stomach is inflamed, inducing a desire for food which passes for what it is not, namely, honest appetite. The palate demands more food than the stomach can digest or the system assimilate. Poor nature, anxious to do the best she can, adapts herself to the unnatural situation, and forces all the other organs to do the same; and thus we become accustomed to over-eating and do not know it.

That all who accustom themselves to a stimulating diet, to spices and wines and other irritating things, consume too much food, cannot, I think, be gainsayed. The amount and kind of food needed depends upon the individual habits and the kind of waste to be supplied. A wholly idle man should thrive well on cucumbers and water-melons, which are chiefly water; while the hard-working hod-carrier would demand several pounds of solid carbon and nitrogen daily. It is the sedentary, the well-to-do, the man of leisure, who suffers most from over-eating; and it behooves him to carefully avoid all goads and spurs to appetite. With the simplest flavors he is nearly certain to over-eat and thus to suffer. With an appetite stimulated and induced, without corresponding out-door labor to create a genuine need and demand for it, digestive failure and assimilative bankruptcy is only a question of time.

The stomach, overloaded, performs its work imperfectly, and thus imposes on all the organs an extra amount of work, which breaks them down prematurely, causing diseases of every kind, such as nervous headache, sick headache, rush of blood to the head, apoplexy, sore eyes, deafness, erysipelas, neuralgia of the face, decayed teeth, catarrh, bronchitis, asthma, nausea, common colic, congestion of the liver, and a host of other diseases too unpleasant to mention. In some cases there is a disposition of too much fatty matter in the system; and many people suppose that fatness is a sign of healthfulness, which is false. No one needs any more fat on his body than is essential to form cushions for his tendons and muscles; if too much, there is a depletion of strength.

The crowded and overloaded condition of the system makes the body take on very many false manifestations. The irritation produced in an overcharged system manifests itself in different forms in different individuals. In some it produces nervousness, making them rack the flesh off their bones and keeping them poor; and in others it produces sluggishness, retaining defunct matter in the system, making them corpulent. As I have said, our highly-seasoned foods create morbid and abnormal appetites.

As a consequence we eat too much and too often, the system being borne down by overwork in its digestive department, there comes a demand for stimulating drinks and medicines to take off the depression and to keep up tone; and to make ourselves feel good, after having made ourselves feel bad, by improper eating, some of us resort to tea and coffee, and others to alcohol, and then the excitement produced demands a sedative, and some of us smoke and others chew a poisonous weed called tobacco. Thus the poor body, subject to these revulsions of unnatural action in overwork and stimulation and sedation, is goaded to abnormities and unnatural action, sending up to the soul no other influences but those which drive it to moral madness and vicious deeds.

Now, vice is a morbid exhibition of the will. The will is represented through the physical organ, the brain, and the brain is straightway affected by the condition of the body and the state of the blood. The will is that power of the mind by which we put forth volitions and perform actions. If the pressure of bad blood is on the brain, that same pressure is on the will; hence a sick man or a diseased man will do a great many bad things through the power of bad blood on the will. Vice, then, is both the result and cause of physical derangement. Hence that vice of vices, drunkenness.

Drunkenness may be caused by bad physical conditions, brought about by bad habits of eating. Would it not be well for us to look into bad table habits for one of the reasons why so many of our young men become drunkards? May there not be some cause working in the flesh of our youths, driving them to intemperance? May it not be possible that kind fathers and mothers for years have been filling up the awful gap of 40,000 dead drunkards annually by feeding their children upon stimulating, highly-seasoned, innutritious foods? There is no doubt in my mind that every man is a glutton before he is a drunkard. If nature’s laws are violated, a man’s sensations will be all abnormal, and the mainsprings of his life will be befouled, and the result will be irregular and vicious expressions of all the appetites, both for food and drink. I am, therefore, confident that the widespread appetite for intoxicating liquors is largely due to the false relations that the American people hold to their food. We cannot hope much from moral suasion and legal enactments so long as we overlook the physical condition of the drunkard. If you would cure disease or vice effectually, you must shut off that which nourishes them, instead of putting all your force in efforts to antidote them. “Let the wicked forsake his way,” and then turn unto the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, and he will abundantly pardon him. There are 200,000 drunkards in the United States, 40,000 of whom go annually to premature graves. There are 20,000 prostitutes, whose average life in their profession is four years. Do you believe this vast army of immortals go willingly to ruin? There are causes lying back of mere perversities of soul in the common every-day dietetic habits of these forlorn ones.

Eating and drinking are always associated with the bar and brothel, and if you will take notice, the eating is always of that kind of food which goes straight for the animal nature, and wakes up in a man everything that is beastly.

The whole tendency of the food furnished at the popular bar-room restaurant is to stir the baser elements in humanity and keep up the demand for alcoholic stimulants. No wonder the drinking saloons can afford to give what they call a “free lunch.” Care is taken to furnish such food as fires the appetite for strong drink, and the rum-seller gets his pay for his “free lunch” through the sale of the whisky that must inevitably follow it. Those who, living on highly stimulating foods, but do not drink strong drinks, will find that the bias of their bodily powers, instead of being toward mental and spiritual spheres, will be toward animal indulgences, dragging the mind and soul into servitude to the flesh, and where there are any moral aspirations, making the conflict between the higher and lower nature so intense that a vast amount of moral force is wasted in self-conflict that ought to go into the world’s redemptive agencies for saving the lost.

I am confident that the American habit of eating sumptuous and late suppers, whether at our homes or church fairs or festivals, is damaging the physical, mental, and moral health of our nation more than any other one thing of its kind; more damaging, because it has the appearance of innocency, and the sanction of our fathers and mothers and some of our pastors.

Furthermore, the habit of eating hurriedly, or hastily, is preying upon the vital and moral forces of many of us. A meal eaten hastily or nervously, under the pressure of intense mental activity or nervous tension, or great weariness, begins its work of nutrition under the greatest possible disadvantage. All our meals should be eaten calmly and deliberately, so as to thoroughly masticate the food, and not impose on the stomach and viscera the legitimate work of the teeth. In the interest of health to soul as well as body I enter an earnest plea for more time for eating, and especially at noon, when most hard working people take their principal meal. Clerks, business men, and school teachers, mechanics, laborers, and our children who attend the public schools, need more time at noon to properly dispose of the chief meal of the day. No better investment could be made to secure the best possible physical, intellectual, financial, and moral returns than for all classes of people to take two hours at mid-day for resting and eating dinner. Selfish greed demands otherwise, and makes a show of gain; but the loss is sure to come in due time to all parties concerned.

My friends, when will we fast-living, fast-eating, fast-working, and fast-dying Americans learn the great lesson, that life is a unit, that the Divine Trinity in us, namely, the physical, intellectual, and spiritual, is one life, with different phases of expression; and whatever mars one mars the whole, and whatever builds up one most surely builds up the others? All our powers are many members in one body, with an inter-dependence which is eternal. Slight your body, and you smite your soul and enervate the mind. Corrupt the mind, and you debase both body and soul. When will those who profess to be God’s children by the adoption of the Holy Ghost, catch the Spirit of His great Apostle Paul, who, more than any other sacred writer, maintained the sanctity of the human body and its subservience to the mind and soul. Hear him: “I beseech you, brethren, by the mercies of God that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service, and be not conformed to this world, but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds, that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.” I admit the power of the Holy Ghost in the work of regeneration, but is there not something for us to do, in keeping our bodies under, “lest we become cast-aways?” I do not say that all human evils and ills have their primary origin in physical habits, but I do say that the great mass of impulsions from the excited, inflamed, over-stimulated body toward the soul, are in the interests of sin. The economy of salvation orders otherwise. By the Gospel the body may become the temple of the Holy Ghost. By the law of self-denial of the New Testament, our bodies, with all their fiery elements, may be made an inspiration to our souls. It is not the purpose of God that a life-time warfare shall be kept up between the body and the soul. There ought to come to every true Christian a day of final victory over his bodily powers, in which they will cease their rebellion, and come into the sweetest union with the soul in its great work of developing a likeness to Christ.

Why are we called upon to present the body a living sacrifice to God, if its powers are not to be sanctified to holy purposes? Why should we spend all our life waiting for the adoption of our whole nature, to wit, the redemption of the body, as well as the soul.

Our fondest dreams for the progress of humanity must be based in a newly created body by strict obedience to the laws of God, written on every fibre, tissue, muscle, and bone. We cannot develop the human brain and heart to the possibilities that God has put in them, while they are the tenants of bodies the laws of which are violated in the commonest habits of every-day life.

Regeneration does a mighty work for us; but generation has also much to do with our highest and best development. The sins of the fathers must cease, so that the sons may be spared their terrible visitations; the accumulated virtues of parents must roll over on their children in purer, stronger, and better bodies until by a blessed economy the whole race shall be exalted to heirship with Christ through loving obedience to all the laws of physical as well as moral life.

Why may we not now, under the laws of redemption, begin to build a new heaven and a new earth, new souls and new bodies. If our souls are redeemed and renewed by obedience and faith, why not secure also the redemption of our bodies? I know it is slow work to teach the subtle but mighty elements of self-restraint. I know the flesh lusteth against the spirit. Yet I thank God who giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.

In complying with the request of Messrs. Fowler & Wells for the manuscript of this sermon for publication, I should fall far short of my duty if I did not allude more particularly than seemed appropriate in a Sabbath sermon, to the valuable work which is being done by the Health Food Company, and to the great excellence of its products. If these remarks were addressed to physicians, the simple mention of the name of the company would suffice, because there are probably very few medical men and women who are not aware of the good work of this organization in the matter of providing perfect foods for invalids of every type, as well as for such as are in health and are solicitous thus to continue. The work of the company has, from the beginning, been under the wise direction of a scientific head, himself an original investigator, and having an ample acquaintance with all the truths which have been evolved by modern scientific research. While it is very important that physicians should know all that is to be known concerning improved forms of diet, in order that their large opportunities for conveying valuable information to the world may not go unused, I deem it of even greater moment that the vast body of intelligent readers and church-goers should be made aware of the fact that in the matter of food and its preparation there are laws which are not comprehended by ignorant cooks, which may not be violated with impunity, the scope and importance of which are being more perfectly understood from year to year, and which, in their practical application by intelligence and skill, are capable of accomplishing a grand work in the up-building and re-building of human bodies and brains. Especially am I desirous that my brethren in the ministry—many of whom, I am persuaded, suffer from unsupplied waste of brain and nerve power—should more fully appreciate the fact that while waste of the grosser tissues of the body may be supplied by common forms of food, such foods may nearly or quite fail to supply or replenish the waste of the delicate brain and nervous system; and should understand how the best foods for the active brain-worker can be procured.

A dyspeptic myself, a member of a dyspeptic family, and observing much of that kind of misery and weakness which arises from digestive feebleness, I have been compelled to study the subject of food in its relation to bodily and mental and moral well-being, during many years; and it is not less a pleasure than a duty to say that an intimate acquaintance with the researches of the Health Food Co. and its products, has convinced me that this organization is the center and source of the best information obtainable in any land, on the subject of dietetics; that the food which it prepares from many substances, especially from the cereal grains, are the best in the world; and that all who seek to live wisely and well, all who are strong and would continue so, all who are feeble and would fain be strong, all in whom the spirit to lead noble and useful lives is willing, but in whom the flesh, alas! is weak—owe it to themselves and to all whom they have power to influence, to learn all that can be learned concerning the great work of this company. In this brief Appendix it is not possible to allude, even remotely, to all its investigations in the domain of dietetics, nor to fully indicate the valuable results which it has achieved. I shall be justified, however, in referring to a few of its more prominent applications of scientific thought to the daily needs of humanity.

It knew that the white commercial flour of wheat, by whatever “new process,” or under whatever brand, was a robbed, impoverished food, and that attached to the bran or husk—which is excluded as it should be—there is a layer of nitrogeneous substance which goes to the cows and horses. It deemed it a pity that human bodies and brains should be deprived of just what it most needed for perfect support—this wheat nitrogen, so rich in the useful minerals without which there is no adequate up-building of every tissue. So it devised a method of removing all the woody, branny, siliceous coats from the grain without wasting one atom of the nutriment. Seeing that ordinary mill-stone grinding tended to heat and impair the flour, it devised other and better methods of pulverizing. To-day, as for years past, their whole wheat flour is not a coarse, harsh, branny mixture, like what is called “Graham,” but a perfect, natural, nourishing bread-food, with nothing taken from it that is useful, and without the obnoxious addition of grit from rapidly revolving millstones, or the woody fibre and silex which form the protecting, innutritious shell. Thus the theories of the value of bread from the entire wheat berry, advanced by Dr. John C. Warren, of Boston, in 1825, and subsequently urged by Dr. Sylvester Graham, were taken up by the head of the Health Food Company, sustained in part and exploded in part, while the small residue of truth really existing in the Grahamite philosophy, modified and improved by exact experiments and by scientific methods, has at length been made of real value to the human race instead of continuing to be a source of possible, and often of positive injury, by virtue of the errors originally attending it. The perfect, branless flour of the entire grain is called the Cold Blast Whole Wheat Flour, and is, beyond question, the most perfect bread-food in the world.

Again, chemistry long ago proved that the nitrogenous, albuminous element of the great food staples (the cereal grains) known as Gluten, was the chief source of muscular tissue in animals, whether obtained from grasses, seeds, or other vegetable substances; that it could be digested in a mixture of 1 part gastric juice and 10 parts water; that it could be separated from its universal attendant, starch, by washing; and that a kind of tasteless, insipid bread could then be made from it, which was understood to be useful in a disease called diabetes. Up to a few years ago these facts comprised pretty much all that the scientific world knew about Gluten. It was known to exist; Koopman, the German chemist, had shown it to be readily digestible; and it was non-convertible into sugar, and therefore a safe food for those to whom starch, or the sugar which results from digested starch, is little less than poison. These slender facts were not sufficient to satisfy the accurate investigator at the head of the Health Food Co. He deemed it probable that this easily digested Gluten, this source of all the tissues of the ox except the fatty ones, would be found to be of vast value as a separate food for human beings, if while being practically isolated from the starch and bran associates which nature provides, it could still retain the pleasant grainy flavor of the cereal which supplies it. He began a series of investigations to determine the source of the agreeable flavor existing in sound wheat, and—as modified by milling and cooking—in commercial wheat flour and the foods prepared therefrom. The results of the researches of Prof. Henry B. Hill, of Harvard University, and of those contemporaneously conducted by Adolph Baeyer, of Munich, led him to conclude that to the oil known as “furfurol,” existing in the exterior bran and interior cellulose of the grain, the flour and bread chiefly owed their desirable flavors. The cellulose of the interior of the wheat was found to contain enough of the flavoring oil to impart to the insipid gluten an agreeable taste. Accordingly, methods were devised for separating the gluten and the cellulose from most of the starch, these three elements alone remaining after the bran coats were peeled off.

This “whole wheat gluten,” as it is termed by the company, has proved a most valuable food, not only for the diabetic, to whom it seems to present the chief hope of recovery, but to the dyspeptic and feeble, whether in brain or body. Its use has been attended with such signally successful results as to attract the attention of large numbers of prominent medical men, among whom I may mention Prof. Austin Flint, of Bellevue Hospital Medical College, New York city, who passes upon it a warm encomium in his last great volume. [See Flint’s Clinical Medicine, pp. 452-53.]

If I did not feel quite certain that the vast majority of those who shall peruse this paragraph would seek from the Health Food Company, or from some of its many agents in various parts of the country, the very able and interesting pamphlets which it mails free to all applicants, I should deem it my duty to allude to other and not less valuable applications of scientific thought to the vast problems involved in the preparation of foods for humanity, from infancy to old age. To adequately describe them all, would require a volume; let me content myself with an allusion to one or two of the many.

There is a digestive element existing in the saliva and in the fluid called the “pancreatic juice,” which bears the name of “diastase.” This diastase exists nowhere outside of the animal economy, except in seeds during the process of germination, or sprouting. When the seed, or cereal, or vegetable, is exposed to proper influences of moisture and warmth, such, for example, as are supplied by the earth in spring-time, the process of germination begins, and from the germ diastase is liberated. The function of the diastase thus set free is the conversion of the food elements in the seed into assimilative nutriment for the young and tender plant. It is the digestant of food, whether the thing fed be plant or animal. Now, while physiologists have long been ready to concede that when, as is common in diseased conditions, this important digestant is absent from the saliva and pancreatic juice, the conversion of all starchy foods is suspended, it has not been supposed that diastase has any marked influence upon the emulsification and digestion of food-substances not containing starch, nor had any food-chemist availed himself of the diastase in cereals, if I except the development and possible subsequent retention, to some extent, of diastase in some of the preparations of malt. The Health Food Company develops and employs the cereal diastase in a most effective way. It removes the germinal molecules from wheat and barley, reduces them to powder, forms the powder into a dough, encloses it in a steam-tight vessel and subjects the vessel and contents for a protracted period to a temperature of 150ºF. The latent diastase is thus brought into being, while the low temperature and the close vessel completely prevent its volatilization and loss. The diastatic dough is subsequently dried and powdered, and is then packed and labeled, ready for use, demanding no cooking, and no other preparation than simple moistening with milk or water. Used with milk it is found to prevent that tough and curdy coagulation which renders milk so oppressive, “bilious” and indigestible in many cases. The name given to this diastatic food which I have mentioned, is “The Universal Food,” a name suggested by a leading physician, who believed it to be universally applicable to enfeebled conditions in which better nourishment was needed. It is admirably adapted to the nourishment of infants, as diastase is almost entirely lacking during the first years of life, and may wisely be supplied from exterior sources.

The Company’s great work for the multitude, however, is in the preparation of wheat, oats, barley, rye, corn, peas, beans, and other seeds. These are perfectly cleansed from all impurities, the outer bran-coats, husks, and pellicles are removed, and the interior, soluble, digestible food-portion is admirably prepared for ready cooking. Persons who have a distaste for Graham and crushed wheat, and oat-meal and other cereals, find in the Fine Granulated Wheat, the Coarse Granulated Wheat, the Pearled Wheat, Pearled Oats, Granulated Oats, Granulated Barley, Rye, Corn, etc., manufactured by this Company, delicious foods, which, once adopted, are continued from choice.

I leave this important subject with my readers, again urging them to seek to learn more concerning it. To be placed in possession of information which I do not assume to be competent to impart, it is only necessary that you address a postal card to the Health Food Company, No. 74 Fourth Ave., cor. 10th street, New York, N. Y., asking for all its Health Food literature, and appending your address, and you will be quite certain to receive the entertaining pamphlets by due course of mail. The agents of the company, also, cordially respond to calls for circulars and orders for the Health Foods.

Let me ask my readers not to content themselves with sending for and perusing, however carefully, the instructive pamphlets of the Health Food Company. If you are sick you will do well to describe your condition by letter to the company, and its medical head will write you which of the foods are adapted to your case; you can then order a supply of such as he advises. If you are in good health and merely seek to supply yourself with delicate and nutritive substances which will have the effect to keep you strong and well, you will be able to select from their list, without special advice. Advice from the medical man of the organization costs nothing, however, and should be asked in all doubtful or diseased states. J. F. C.

LIST OF AGENTS:

THE HEALTH FOOD COMPANY OF NEW YORK

Is now in the twelfth year of its existence. Its valuable and important work has been recognized and commended by thousands of physicians, by many writers for the medical and general press, and by multitudes of the sick and suffering who have found health and comfort through its products. It has had many imitators, but it has conscientiously adhered to its original mission of preparing

Perfect Foods for Sick and Well.

WORKS PUBLISHED BY
FOWLER & WELLS CO., New York.

PHRENOLOGY AND PHYSIOGNOMY.

WORKS ON MAGNETISM.

There is an increasing interest in the facts relating to Magnetism, etc., and we present below a list of Works on this subject.

HEALTH BOOKS.

This List Comprises the Best Works on Hygiene, Health, Etc.

WORKS ON HYGIENE BY R. T. TRALL, M. D.

These works may be considered standard from the reformatory hygienic standpoint. Thousands of people owe their lives and good health to their teaching.

A NEW BOOK.
HEALTH IN THE HOUSEHOLD;
OR,
HYGIENIC COOKERY.

By SUSANNA W. DODDS, M.D.

One large 12mo vol., 600 pp., extra cloth or oil-cloth, Price, $2.00.

The author of this work is specially qualified for her task, as she is both a physician and a practical housekeeper. It is unquestionably the best work ever written on the healthful preparation of food, and should be in the hands of every housekeeper who wishes to prepare food healthfully and palatably. The best way and the reason why are given. It is complete in every department. To show something of what is thought of this work, we copy a few brief extracts from the many

NOTICES OF THE PRESS.

FOWLER & WELLS CO., Publishers, 775 Broadway, New York.

Healthful and Palatable.

The most important question with all interested and intelligent housekeepers should be “What can I prepare for my table that will be Healthful and Palatable?” The world is full of Cook Books and Receipt Books, but in nearly every case not the slightest attention is given to the health and strength giving qualities of the dishes described, and a large part of the directions are useless (for never followed) and in many cases harmful (if tried).

What is needed is a practical work in which these conditions are carefully considered and one which is simple enough to be easily understood.

A recent publication, Health in the Household, by Dr. S. W. Dodd, a lady physician and a practical housekeeper, covers this ground very fully and can be recommended. It considers the value of the different food products, the best methods of preparation, and the reason why.

The Chicago Inter-Ocean says: “She evidently knows what she is writing about, and her book is eminently practical upon every page. It is more than a book of recipes for making soups, and pies, and cakes; it is an educator of how to make the home the abode of healthful people.”

“She sets forth the why and wherefore of cookery, and devotes the larger portion of the work to those articles essential to good blood, strong bodies, and vigorous minds,” says The New Haven Register.

Housekeepers who consult this will be able to provide for the household that which will positively please and increase the happiness by increasing the healthful conditions.

It contains 600 large pages, bound in extra cloth or oil cloth binding, and is sold at $2. Sent by mail or express, prepaid, on receipt of price. Address

FOWLER & WELLS CO., Publishers, 775 Broadway, N.Y.

A FEW OF THE MANY NOTES FROM READERS.

A STORY WORTH READING.
About Human Nature.

THE LABYRINTH

We have recently published a volume containing a story of Human Nature which will be found of interest. It is called “The Man Wonderful in the House Beautiful,” and is an allegory, teaching the principles of Physiology and Hygiene, and the effects of Stimulants and Narcotics. The House is the Body, in which the Foundations are the Bones, the Walls are Muscles, the Skin and Hair the Siding and Shingles, the head an Observatory in which are found a pair of Telescopes, and radiating from it are the nerves which are compared to a Telegraph, while communications are kept up with the Kitchen, Dining-room, Pantry, Laundry, etc. The House is heated with a Furnace. There are also Mysterious Chambers, and the whole is protected by a Burglar Alarm. In studying the inhabitant of the House, the “Man Wonderful,” we learn of his growth, development, and habits of the guests whom he introduces. He finds that some of them are friends, others are doubtful acquaintances, and some decidedly wicked. Under this form, we ascertain the effects of Food and Drink, Narcotics and Stimulants.

It is a wonderful book, and placed in the hands of children will lead them to the study of Physiology and Hygiene, and the Laws of Life and Health in a way that will never be forgotten. The book will prove of great interest even to adults and those familiar with the subject. The authors, Drs. C. B. and Mary A. Allen, are both regular physicians, and therefore the work is accurate and on a scientific basis. “Science in Story” has never been presented in a more attractive form. It is universally admitted that a large proportion of sickness comes from violations of the laws of Life and Health, and therefore it is important that this subject should be understood by all, as in this way we may become familiar with all the avoidable causes of disease. The reading of this book will very largely accomplish this end. It will be sent securely by mail, prepaid, on receipt of price, which is only $1.50. Address

Fowler & Wells Co., Publishers, 775 Broadway, New York.

Brain and Mind,

OR, MENTAL SCIENCE CONSIDERED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE PRINCIPLES OF PHRENOLOGY AND IN RELATION TO MODERN PHILOSOPHY.

By H. S. Drayton, A.M., M.D., and James McNeill, A.B. Illustrated with over One Hundred Portraits and Diagrams. $1.50.

The authors state in their preface: “In preparing this volume it has been the aim to meet an existing want, viz; that of a treatise which not only gives the reader a complete view of the system of mental science known as Phrenology, but also exhibits its relation to Anatomy and Physiology, as those sciences are represented today by standard authority.”

The following, from the Table of Contents, shows the scope and character of the work:

• General Principles.
• The Temperaments.
• Structure of the Brain and Skull.
• Classification of the Faculties.
• The Selfish Organs.
• The Intellect.
• The Semi-Intellectual Faculties.
• The Organs of the Social Functions.
• The Selfish Sentiments.
• The Moral and Religious Sentiments.
• How to Examine Heads.
• How Character is Manifested.
• The Action of the Faculties.
• The Relation of Phrenology to Metaphysics and Education.
• Value of Phrenology as an Art.
• Phrenology and Physiology.
• Objections and Confirmations by the Physiologists.
• Phrenology in General Literature.

Notices of the Press.

Phrenology is no longer a thing laughed at. The scientific researches of the last twenty years have demonstrated the fearful and wonderful complication of matter, not only with mind, but with what we call moral qualities. Thereby, we believe, the divine origin of “our frame” has been newly illustrated, and the Scriptural psychology confirmed: and in the Phrenological Chart we are disposed to find a species of “urim and thummim,” revealing, if not the Creator’s will concerning us, at least His revelation of essential character. One thing is certain, that the discoveries of physical science must ere long force all men to the single alternative of Calvinism or Atheism. When they see that God has written himself sovereign, absolute, and predestinating, on the records of His creation, they will be ready to find His writing as clearly in the Word; and the analogical argument, meeting the difficulties and the objections on the side of Faith by those admitted as existing on the side of Sight, will avail as well in one case as in the other. We will only add, the above work is, without doubt, the best popular presentation of the science which has yet been made. It confines itself strictly to facts, and is not written in the interest of any pet “theory.” It is made very interesting by its copious illustrations, pictorial and narrative, and the whole is brought down to the latest information on this curious and suggestive department of knowledge.—Christian Intelligencer.

As far as a comprehensive view of the teachings of Combe can be embodied into a system that the popular mind can understand, this book is as satisfactory an exposition of its kind as has yet been published. The definitions are clear, exhaustive, and spirited.—Philadelphia Enquirer.

In style and treatment it is adapted to the general reader, abounds with valuable instruction expressed in clear, practical terms, and the work constitutes by far the best Text-book on Phrenology published, and is adapted to both private and class study.

The illustrations of the Special Organs and Faculties are for the most part from portraits of men and women whose characters are known, and great pains have been taken to exemplify with accuracy the significance of the text in each case. For the student of human nature and character the work is of the highest value.

It is printed on fine paper, and substantially bound in extra cloth, by mail, postpaid, on receipt of price, $1.50. Address

FOWLER & WELLS CO., Publishers, 775 Broadway, New York.

PHYSICAL CULTURE.

For Home and School. Scientific and Practical. By D. L. Dowd, Professor of Physical Culture. 322 12mo. pages. 300 Illustrations. Fine Binding, Price $1.50.

CONTENTS.

Physical Culture, Scientific and Practical, for the Home and School. Pure Air and Foul Air.

Questions Constantly Being Asked:

Address, Fowler & Wells Co., Publishers, 775 Broadway, New York.

HUMAN-NATURE.