2 IFisher — The Efect of Diet on Endurance. 



tigated through the very kind cooperation of able colleagues. My 

 thanks are especially due to Professor Chittenden and his co-workers. 

 Professor Mendel and Dr. Underhill, for the aid rendered by the 

 Sheffield Scientific School Laborator}^ in determining the nitrogen 

 excreted, and for much helpful advice and criticism. I wish also to 

 express my obligations to Dr. J. P. C, Foster for his services as 

 medical adviser to the students ; to Dr. W. G. Anderson, Director 

 of the Yale Gymnasium, and his corps of assistants, through whom 

 the endurance tests were conducted ; to Professor Rettger for fecal 

 tests ; and to the subjects of the experiment themselves, Messrs. 

 Bauer, Edwards, Lagerquist, Lawton, Mitke, Parmelee, Reeds, Taylor, 

 and Weyman, whose patient submission to the painful tests of endur- 

 ance was little short of heroic. 



In January, 1906, the students above mentioned organized them- 

 selves into an eating club. The experiment began with an endurance 

 test on January 14, and consisted of two main parts, each of which 

 lasted about ten weeks. 



The object of the first half of the experiment was to test the claims 

 which have been made by Mr. Horace Fletcher, as to the effects upon 

 endurance of thorough mastication combined with implicit obedience 

 to appetite. Our conclusion in brief is that Mr. Fletcher's claims, so 

 far as they relate to endurance, are justified. 



Mr. Fletcher's method may be briefly ' expressed in two rules. 



1. Mastication. Thorough mastication of all food up to the 

 point of involuntary swallowing, with the attention directed, how- 

 ever, not on the mechanical act of chewing, but on the tasting and 

 enjoyment of the food ; liquid foods to be sipped and tasted, not 

 drunk down like water. There should be no artificial holding of food 

 in the mouth beyond the time of natural swallowing, even if, as is to 

 be expected at the start, that swallowing is premature. It is not 

 intended to " count the chews," or hold the food forcibly in the front 

 of the mouth, or allow the tongue muscles to become fatigued by any 

 unnatural eft'ort or position, or in any other way to make eating a 

 bore. On the contrary, every such effort distracts one from 

 the natural enjoyment of food. Pawlow has shown that without 

 such attention and enjoyment of the taste of food, the secretion of 



' The reader who desires to pursue the subject is referred, as to mastication 

 and instinctive eating, to Higgins, Humaniculture, Stokes, N. Y. , 1906; as to 

 proteid, to Chittenden, Phijsiological Economy in Nutrition, Stokes, 1904; and 

 as to the general subject, to Horace Fletcher, The A. B.-Z. of our oivn Nutri- 

 tion, Stokes, 1903. 



