The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-01-30
CHEW YOUR FOOD SEVENTY
 TIMES.

|
 Mastication is the Latest Fad for the
 Cure of All Ailments.
 Masticaton is the latest cure for the ills which af1lict mankind A German
 scientist has discovered that indiges- tion and all the complaints arising from l it can be either prevented or cured by obiging patients to bite up thoroughly
 everything that enters their mouths.
 Even liquids, such as water, must be
 chewed to some extent, and soup must receive as much mastication as if it
 were composed of dry bread crumbs. | According to the scientist who advo- cates this method eghty-five per cent.
 of the stomach troubles of mankind are | caused by improper methods of con 1 sumng food and drink. The human
 mouth, he points out, is neither a mere l receptacle for food. nor is it designed solely for tasting. It is as much di- gestive organ as the stomach itself. | More than half of the process of diges- l tion, he says, should take place in the mouth. It is when the work which should have been performed by the teeth is thrown upon the stomach that indigestion and other troubles ensue. Animals do not have indigestion, says the German discoverer, because those which have been given ruminant teeth never think of bolting their food, as mankind so often does The dog bolts his food and does not suffer from indi gestion simply because nature has pro- vided it with a digestive apparatus which renders chewing more or less su-
 perfluous. Nature, however, stopped
 with the animals. No man yet investi-
 gated has been found to possess the
 dogs digestive abilities.
 These are the basic facts upon which
 the German scientist has formulated his
 system of a masticatory cure for ind- gestion and other stomach troubles. Even water is to be kept some time in the mouth, not because it needs masti cation, but so that it may be brought to the body temperature and impregnated 1 to certain extent with the digestive l juices of the mouth.
 Science owes it's first knowledge of the | properties and powers of gastric juice ! to an accident, A man named St. Mar | tin received a gunshot wound in his | stomach, so that there existed an open | ing leading directly in the stomach. | Through this opening Professor Beau | mont London, was able to watch the | process of eXcretion and to discover the | way in which the flow was stimulated Professor Beaumont found that the in- troduction of any mechanical irritant into the stomach, such as the bulb of thermometer, excited at once the secre- ton of gastric fluid. Quantities of this fluid were drawn away by the doctor for their experiments and exact knowl- edge of the methods of digestion result ed. The quantity of gastric juice se- creted daily has been variously estima- ted, but the average for a healthy adult may be assumed to range from ten to twenty pints in the twenty four hours. The acidity of the fluid is due to the presence of free hydrochloric acid. In healthy gastric juice the amount of free acid may be as much as two per cent.
 From the foregoing it can be seen how important IL Is that the nrsl part of the digestive process should be per- formed ill the mouth, so that enough l will exist in the food to part ly neutraliZe what may be an excess of acid in the stomach. The digestive power of the gastric juice, so physiolo- sists say, depends on the pepsin and acid contained in it, both of which are, | under ordinary circumstances, necessa- " for the process. In healthy indi- l yidual the general effect of digestion in the stomach is the conversion of the | food into what is called "chyme," a semi-llquid substance containing those ] parts of the food which can be absorbed 0y the system
 The preservation of the normal aka