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Wallace D. Wattles Ultimate Collection — Chapter-88: The Source of Work-Power
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- Note: Work: New Science of Living and Healing, section 1 of 9. Includes the work's title page.
New Science of Living and Healing or Health Through New Thought and Fasting Table of Contents
- THE SOURCE OF WORK-POWER.
- SLEEP.
- TO USE SLEEP.
- SCIENTIFIC LIVING AND HEALING.
- MIND CURES.
- NATURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF WILL POWER.
- THE LIVING ONE.
- NEW LIGHT ON IMMORTALITY.
- SUFFERING IN SICKNESS.
Life passes through us, we do not possess it. —AMIEL
THE SOURCE OF WORK-POWER. Table of Contents IT IS PROBABLE that the late Edward Hooker Dewey, M. D., of Meadville, Pa., widely known as “the no-breakfast doctor,” influenced more people in the direction of the simplification of life than any other writer, living or dead. His books, “The New Science of Health,” and “The No-Breakfast Plan,” have been read by many thousands of people and have indirectly influenced many thousands more; his theories are working a revolution, and yet scarcely one in ten of his followers comprehends the really revolutionary character of his thought, or the tremendous importance of his great physiological discovery. In brief, as set forth in his last book, that discovery is this: That the strength—the work-power—of the human organism is not drawn from the food consumed, but is renewed in sleep. The storage battery of muscle energy and thought energy is not charged and recharged at the dining table, but in the bedroom. Food is to the human body what the soil is to a plant—merely raw material; tissue elements, to be built into the organism, but not in any sense a source of life. The interesting points about this theory are: First, that it is capable of mathematical demonstration, and is therefore true beyond controversy; Second, that it absolutely overthrows current theories of the source of life and strength, driving the materialistic physiologist from the field by proving that life energy is not the product of functional action, and that most muscle workers would be healthier, stronger and longer lived on one-half, and most brain workers on one-tenth of the quantity of food they now consume. It gives good ground also for the argument that mind is not produced by the body, but that
mind produces the body; that the brain does not produce thought, but that thought produces the brain; that there is no chemistry by which a piece of bread can become mind or thought; Third, it proves that most of the conclusions of the pseudo-science of medicine have been based on false premises, and are erroneous; and that most of the tick are greatly hindered in recovery by feeding, dosing and other interference. It gives us, also, a solid foundation upon which we may base a really scientific investigation of the problems of the origin of life, and of the immortality of the soul; but that is beyond the scope of this article. Let us now “make good” on our first proposition: That we do not get our strength from food. The brain is a storage battery of vital energy, which is charged in some unknown manner, and from some unknown source, during sleep. The stomach is a machine which is run by brain power, and the digestion of food is a tax on strength, and not a source of strength. Now, as to the mathematics. A laborer will consume a beefsteak and a couple of potatoes, and will shovel twenty tons of earth to a height of five feet; was there sufficient potential energy in the food to perform the work? A Japanese soldier, carrying a heavy load, can march and fight all day and only consume a handful of rice; and he can do this for an indefinite period without loss of weight or strength. Can any one seriously claim that the enormous amount of energy he displays was potentially in the few ounces of rice consumed per diem? No machine which science has been able to devise can extract one five-hundredth part as much energy from a pound of beef as the human body must draw from it if the old physiology is true; but it is not true. It is mathematically impossible. A man will eat a few slices of pork, and will “run down,” catch and overpower two or three full-grown hogs, by the sheer excess of his physical power over theirs. Is the potential energy of a pound of dead pork greater than the kinetic energy of three live three hundred pound hogs? Consider, next, the numerous cases of protracted fasts which have been recorded since Dr. Dewey's books were published. Leonard Thress, of Philadelphia, fifty- six days, and Miss Estella Kuenzel, forty-two days, with a steady gain in strength from the first day, are among the cases recorded by the doctor himself; and some hundreds of others, perfectly authenticated, prove that a person can go from twenty to sixty days without food and can often do so without appreciable
loss of strength. I believe it is the accepted dictum of the old physiology that a man will starve to death in ten days. This has been proved to be a mistake, and it is evident that most of the people who have perished of hunger in that limited time died because they thought they had to, and that, properly educated, they might have lived from twenty to sixty days longer. In death by starvation the brain and nervous system, which are the power plant, lose no weight; the other tissues disappear until the skeleton condition is reached, and death comes because the brain can get no more raw material with which to repair the heart, lungs, stomach, liver, etc. The organism grows weak and perishes from lack of raw material to replace the daily waste of its vital parts; it dies when the viscera are so attenuated as to be unable to perform their functions, but it dies not for lack of vital energy, but because the vital energy has no material to use in keeping up the organism. Set a plant in gravel, and it will die—not for lack of energy, but for lack of material. Consider for a moment this claim that the body works with energy generated by its own digestive system. The digestion of food is certainly work, and it certainly takes power; those who remember the feeling of lethargy after a too hearty meal will not be disposed to deny that a very considerable amount of energy is required to operate the stomach. The old physiology claims that the heart, brain, liver, kidneys, etc, are machines which are operated by power which is ultimately traced to the action of the stomach; and that the stomach, in turn, is operated by power which is generated by the action of the heart, brain, liver, kidneys, etc. Here is a mechanical impossibility—the stomach generating power to operate the other machines and being in turn operated by power supplied by the other machines. That the body should perform its great amount of external work by means of energy generated by its own internal work is impossible; the claim that it does so is an absurdity. The functional actions of the viscera do not generate energy; they absorb energy. It uses up power to spade up the earth in the garden; and the heart and stomach cannot generate power to operate themselves, with a sufficient surplus to spade up the garden also. It is, I repeat, an absurd denial of all known chemical and mechanical principles to assert that the body works by means of energy generated by its own functional action. As well claim that a man can lift himself by his boot straps. Power is stored in the brain during sleep, and is probably transmitted to the muscles and organs over the nerves in a manner similar to the transmission of electrical energy over a trolley wire; and there is no evidence that this power comes from our food at all. Food does not “strengthen” us; there is no such thing
as a “strengthening” food. We need food to furnish the tissue elements, not to supply power; and every mouthful we eat in excess of the actual need weakens us and tends to shorten our lives. Most people expend more than half of their total life-force in the disposition of unnecessary food; if we only ate from one- tenth to one-half of what we now consume most of us would die of old age, and the average of life in the next generation would probably be beyond the century mark. This shocks you, doesn't it? Well, it is hard, scientific fact; I am just trying to write it in plain, common sense words. But, you say, do not we feel more strength after eating? Yea, but not after digesting our food. If strength comes from the assimilation of food it can only be after the food is completely digested; a partially digested mass in the stomach certainly cannot yield any workpower. Now it takes some hours, at least, to complete the process of assimilation; but the accession of strength is always felt immediately after swallowing the food. You are tired and weak; you swallow a cup of coffee and a piece of toast, and you rise and go to work refreshed; it has “strengthened '’ you, you say. But it has not; if you will pause to think you will see that your fresh strength cannot have come from the food, which has not had time to be changed at all; it is coffee and toast in your stomach, and will be, for some time; how can it strengthen you before it is digested? And three or four hours hence, when it is digested, you will be as weak as ever. If we get our energy from food, is it before or after we digest it? You are stronger right after your noon-day meal, but at five p. m., when the food is digested, you are all tired out; and with all your eating you suffer a steady decline in power from the time you emerge from unconsciousness in the morning until you return to it at night. The accession of strength you felt after taking the coffee and toast did not come from the food; it was from the rally nature made, summoning her power to the task of disposing of the food. She drew on the brain for an extra supply of its stored-up energy to perform the work of digestion, and as this power was turned on you felt it throughout the body; but the power came from the brain, and not from the stomach. We do not live by bread alone; we do not really live by bread at all. Beefsteak and potatoes are not the raw materials from which life and mind are made. The old physiology is controverted by the law of the conservation of energy.
So much for our first proposition; now for the second: Most muscle workers would be stronger, healthier and longer lived on one-half, and most brain workers on one-tenth of the food they now consume. Since Dr. Dewey's books were published some hundreds of thousands of people have adopted the nobreakfast plan, going entirely without food until noon; and nearly all of them have found, to their astonishment, that they were stronger, brighter, and had more work-power without the breakfast than with it. And the exceptions are nearly always those who cannot grasp the idea that the possession of strength does not depend on keeping the stomach full. This is the philosophy of the no-breakfasi plan: You awake with the brain fully charged with work-power, and your blood contains the tissue elements of the previous days’ food; you are, therefore, in the best possible condition for work. Why should yon eat? It takes power to run the stomach; why not save the power for your other work? You are not realty hungry; there is no such thing as a normal hunger on arising in the morning, in a person who has been sufficiently fed on the previous day. Your morning appetite is a matter of habit; of mental attitude. You eat because you are afraid you will get faint later in the day; or you tickle your palate with sweet foods until you arouse a taste for more; but you never eat breakfast because you are genuinely hungry. If you do not believe all this, put it to the best possible test; try it on yourself. Get up and go to work without eating; and if you are in anything approaching a normal condition you will find that you are in better condition for mental or physical labor with an empty stomach than with a full one. Mind, though, much depends upon your mental attitude; remember that many people who believe in the old physiology have starved to death in ten days, while others, better taught, have fasted forty days without much discomfort. If you expect that because your stomach is empty you will have a fainting fit about ten o'clock, the fainting fit will probably come; you will get just about what you look for. On the other hand, if you put the thought of food resolutely aside, and go to your work without fear of any disagreeable consequences yon will have a forenoon of such mental cheer, and of such physical vigor as you have seldom experienced; but you will not feel so well after your noon meal. Why? Because you will overeat; you will mistakenly suppose that because you
have done without breakfast you must eat enough, and more than enough at noon to make up the deficiency; and during the afternoon so much of your brain's energy will be required at the stomach that you will have very little left for mental or physical work. This ought to convince you that your stomach is a machine which absorbs energy, instead of being a generator for producing it. The object in dispensing with the breakfast is not to increase the quantity consumed at noon but to prevent the waste of energy in the disposition of unnecessary food. If you want to be strong, and full of snap and vigor, drop your breakfast entirely, leave off half your noon meal and two-thirds of your evening one. Eat just enough to maintain your weight; not a mouthful more. If you can hold your weight on one cracker a day, and you eat two crackers, the disposal of the superfluous one will be a waste of your life force; it will weaken you by just the amount of power required to dispose of it, and if you overeat as a matter of habit the surplus will be a source of danger, disease and premature death. You don't believe it, do you? Well, it won't cost you a cent to prove it If you want to have strength for your work, whether mental or physical, get eight hours of sleep every night in a well-ventilated room; eat plain, hearty food, and the smallest quantity which will maintain your weight. If it takes power to run the stomach it is foolish to keep it in operation more than is actually necessary. “For this cause many are weak and sickly among you, and many sleep.” said St. Paul, writing to the Corinthians about overeating at the Lord's supper. Wise St. Paul! Most of the dietary conclusions of the pseudoscience of medicine are based on false premises, and are therefore erroneous; and the recovery of most of the sick is greatly hindered by feeding, dosing, and other interference. Most physicians accept the theory that we can add to the strength of a sick man by inducing him to swallow food; when the fact is that every mouthful is a tax on his strength, and decreases his power of resistance. It takes power to run the stomach. In every case of severe sickness Nature takes away the appetite, because there is no power to spare for the digestive process; she wishes to conserve her energy for combat with the disease. In severe sickness Nature's way is to suspend digestion and let the brain live on the tissues of the body, which can be spared. That is why a sick man loses in weight. If you feed him, and he still loses, it is proof positive that the food is not assimilated; if it were assimilated there could be no loss in weight. And if you continue to feed under
such conditions you may be absolutely certain that you are loading up his system with waste matter which must be eliminated at a fearful cost in vital power. You may lay it down as a general law which is amply proven in practice, that in the absence of appetite the patient who is fed will lose weight and strength more rapidly than the one who is not fed. When the desire for food is absent, and the tongue is heavily coated, it should be interpreted to mean: “Busy; nothing wanted within.” It is homicidal folly to feed under such conditions; the food decays in the alimentary canal, and generates poisons which are dangerous to life. No matter what the books say, it is foolish to feed the sick man whose breath tells in unmistakable language that his digestive tract is already filled with rotting filth. The sick horse will not eat; and it is to be hoped that sick men, women and children will some day be allowed by their physicians and friends to exercise horse sense. Nature would have the severely sick man sleep much, and not eat at all; we try to induce him to eat all he can, and we wake him every few minutes to force into his protesting stomach some nauseous or poisonous compound of drugs. Nine-tenths of our interference with the sick has no scientific justification, and is injurious to them. Put the sick man into a well- ventilated room; make him as comfortable as possible; shut out the neighbors, the family, the preacher— everybody but the nurse, and possibly the doctor; in most cases leave the doctor out, too. It would be a great deal better if two-thirds of the doctors had to resort to some other means of making a living; the other third could easily take care of all the cases where they are really needed. Give nature a chance with your sick one; and if he dies you may at least feel sure that you did not help to kill him. The stomach is a machine which uses up power, and it is operated by power supplied from the brain, which is charged during sleep. Remember this physiological fact, and regulate your life accordingly; get sleep enough, and get it under favorable conditions, and eat less.
Sleep, that knits up the ravelled sleeve of care, The death of each day's life; Balm of hurt minds, great nature's second course, Chief nourisher in life's feast. —SHAKESPEARE, “Macbeth”