1903 



GLEANINGS IN BEE CULTURE. 



1019 



to be there, and he will sell by the driuk to all of those 

 he can trust not to inform on him. and will be in col- 

 lusion witT some doctor who will furnish prescrip- 

 tions to all others ; and he will make money, and 

 branch out into a big drugstore, buy a farm, and drive 

 fast horses to a fine rij;. This is not overdrawn, my 

 friend, but is what I have known to be done. With 

 you it may be, '" Down with the saloons !" but with us 

 the drugfslore is fai worse than the saloon. One rea- 

 son is, men will go into a drugstore and take a drink, 

 and yet they would be ashamed to be caught in a sa- 

 loon. Again they will sell whisky to bovs under age, 

 which the saloonkt-ep r is afraid to d.i The man 

 with the " reaiiy-niade prescriptions " can sell to any 

 one. Small towns here h<ive two or three drugstores 

 where one cou d not make more than a living out of 

 the business if he would confine himself to the sale of 

 drugs and medicines. 



McAllister, Mo. B. Hamm. 



Friend H., what you mention is true more 

 or less all over our land; but let us not rush 

 to the conclusion that a// drugstores are of 

 this class. Mj* own brother kept a drug- 

 store for manj' j'ears, and he did a very 

 profitable buisness, although he sold no in- 

 toxicating liquors of any sort. He did not 

 even have a license for so doing. Of course 

 he was severely criticised bj' certain per- 

 sons, and I believe they went so far as to 

 saj' that human life maj' have been lost be- 

 cause he refused to sell the alcohol used for 

 compounding medicines. 



flfr Root:—\ have read with much interest what you 

 say under the head of • What shall we Eat?" in Health 

 Notes, page 8)1 As you are aware, I at one time took 

 the beef diet cure. My trouble was acid dysprpsia 

 (sour stomach) brought on. not by abstinence from 

 meat, or by the eating of fruits and vegetables, but by 

 eating too fast, masticating too little, and ta itig too 

 much. My s-tomach had gotten into such a state that 

 every thing soured as soon as eat en, and you may believe 

 that I was discouraged, and that every thing looked 

 blue. But the btef-diet treatment cured the acidity and 

 I have never been troubled with it since — now seven 

 years. 



I ihink your advice in regard to plain ordinary food 

 is gi od. Still, I believe that we do not know all in re- 

 gard to this diet question yet; and that there are high- 

 er planes of living than oidinary hotel fare would 

 lead to I am certain from certain observations and 

 experiments of my own. of somewhat recent date. 



I will remark that one noticeable thing in regard to 

 lean meat is. that it does not seem to furnish muscular 

 strength, no matter hr)w much is used. Now, it is vi- 

 tal force that we want, and we want a diet that will 

 jsive us mu-cular and nervous force. Certa n writers 

 in the health reform journals advocate a diet of natural 

 food — that is. nuts, grains, fruits, and vegetables in 

 right proportion, and uncooked. We all know some- 

 thing about the various health foois (so called) pre- 

 pared from the whole grain. But they do not stand 

 the test, and must sooner or later be discarded. The 

 life has been roasted out of them, and they do not sat- 

 isfy nor lurnish strength as an ideal diet should. 



I have been greatly troubled with constipa'ion, 

 which of course, grows out of mv earlier wrong hab- 

 its. I have found that I could not live on the ordinary 

 hotel diet for many weeks consecutively withofut get- 

 ting all out of fix. One reason is, that, as a rule, they 

 use baker's bread mnde from fine flour, and potatoes 

 boiled with the skins off both of which articles are 

 about as near worthless as any thing you could find 

 excepting pastries Some time ago I got into trouble 

 away from home as indicated above. I decided to try 

 the natural-food plan. I had previously discardeci 

 breakfast, and was drinkinji only fresh wattr, and 

 plenty of it, which, of course, is the proper thing to do, 

 and is advocated by all the reformers without excep- 



tion. Well, to the test: I procured some nice white 

 northern wheat, some seeded raisins, some large Cali- 

 fornia dried prunes, some English walnuts, some fresh 

 roasted peanuts, some nice rolled oats, and some white- 

 clover extracted honey of my own production. The 

 lady of the house furnished me what sweet milk I 

 wanted. For fresh fruits I bought white California 

 grapes or nice ripe Concords and a few pears. On ac- 

 count of my old trouble with acidity I am forced to 

 avoid sour fruits and select the milder sorts. Now 

 please study the list that I have given you. There is 

 no meat in it; but I know by experience that it is a 

 wonderful diet for me. I stuck to it rigidly for several 

 weeks, and I will just mention here that I am blessed 

 with a perfect set of teeth and can easily and thor- 

 oughly ma'sticate while wheat. I ate some of the 

 wheat flavored with nuts, and then for a change 

 would try the rolled oats, which I think is one of the 

 most delicious things I ever tasted, for a man having 

 natural hunger (there's the rub; too many of our peo- 

 ple never know what natural hunger is from one 

 year's end to another, surfeited all the time with foods 

 in an unnatu'al and spiced condition). I began to 

 crave something green at one time, and ate some crisp 

 cabbage with only a little salt on it. That was deli- 

 cious too. and for my part I never expect to eat cooked 

 cabbage again. E iten raw it is about as near perfect 

 as any green food yon can get. But on hotel tables it 

 is always fixed up with vinegar or some other tiash 

 that spoils it for the natural food man. 



Now as to the result in my case — it was wonderful. 

 At the time, I had charge of a railroad station that is 

 considered a hard one, doing all the work myself. 

 There was twelve good hours of work every day, and 

 I was compelled to work some every Sunday in order 

 to get out the reports on time. But I did something 

 else. I felt so good that I got out in the evening and 

 ran foot races with an eighteen-vear-old boy. and 

 stood on my head. He be.at me in the race, but I beat 

 him in raising a heavyweight the most times, although 

 he is much the larger. I tell you this to show you that 

 there was no muscular weikness as a result of the 

 diet, which, we must concede, was not stimulating. 



In order to demonstrate this, if I had time, I would 

 be willing to come to your pla^e and allow you to con- 

 fine me to the use of natural foods for ten days, and 

 during that time I would engage to work along with 

 anv of your men whose duties are the most arduous. 



If you want to know what is the effect of a strictly 

 meat diet on muscular strength ask Ernest. Still, in 

 certain cases I think it is a good thing. What are we 

 living for? Shall we eat for strength and life, or to see 

 how much we can consume, and keep an army of wo- 

 men in kitchens over hot stoves from morning till 

 night inventing, mixing, spicing, in order to minister 

 to a perverlei and abnormal appetite? 



In experimenting I have made one or two discoveries 

 that are worth knowing. As I slid before, the pre- 

 pared foods, such as granola "force," and the like, 

 have had the life roasled out of them; but if you want 

 something very fine, take Pettijohn's rolled wheat, 

 and parch a little the same as in parching corn Do it 

 lightly, so that some of the grains are only just touch- 

 ed. Then serve hot with cream or milk. This beats 

 any prepared food I ever saw. It has a delicious 

 parched-f-orn flavor, and has not been choked to death 

 as the others have. Harry IvAThrop. 



Monroe, Wis., Oct. 29. 



Friend L., I am exceedingly glad to get 

 the above report, especially since j'ou have 

 been " through the mill " on the beef diet. 

 By the way, I should be glad to hear brief- 

 ly from all who have made a trial of this 

 diet, especially those who have made a trial 

 through the recommendations of either Er- 

 nest or myself. 



Yes, I am painfully aware that a meat 

 diet does not furnish muscular or vital 

 force. When I spoke about the hotel diet, 

 I had in mind a good deal the bill of fare 

 one gets at country hotels, say through 

 Michigan, in towns so small they do not 

 need to use baker's bread, and where you 

 can get Michigan potatoes roasted with the 

 skins on, eating the peelings and all. I no- 

 tice 3'ou have tried the modern no-breakfast 

 invention. Huber has followed this for 

 years. One hot day when we were out in 



