FRUIT AND THE OXALIC ACID BOGEY.

Many and varied are the creeds of Health Reformers, but all may be included within two main camps. And the opposing battle-cries are Instinct _versus_ Intellect, Taste _versus_ Theory, _a priori versus a posteriori_, Motives _versus_ Purposes. Some overlapping and confusion of creed may be found in both camps, but in the main one is filled with lovers of Nature, the other with devotees of Science.

"We believe in simplicity," cries the Nature-lover from the meadow where he is taking a sun-bath; "you are so complex, so artificial."

"We believe in being 'sensible,'" retorts the devotee of Science from the cabinet where he is taking an electric light bath, "you are so extreme."

"Not extreme--consistent. Your treatment varies every month as the decrees of 'Science' change."

"But your treatment varies every minute as the wind and clouds change.

I can keep mine constant with mathematical accuracy, or vary the light to a nicety by pressing a b.u.t.ton."

And so also is it with regard to diet. The person who talks learnedly about germs and calories (though he never saw a germ or measured a calorie in his life) will be found in the same camp with the electric light advocate, while this other who cultivates a taste in harmony with Nature by consuming what he likes best of her unaltered products, he is found arm in arm with the sun-bather. But Science will by no means allow him to eat his uncooked food in peace. "If we all adopt _that_ diet," her pseudo-disciples cry, "what is to become of the potatoes?"

Now, with regard to uncooked foods, it would seem that as little fault can be found with ripe fruit in its natural state as with any article of diet. Yet even here "Science" holds up a warning hand and is succeeding in scaring people away from one of the most harmless, most wholesome and most neglected of foods.

Leaving generalities, let us come to a specific case, an actual difficulty propounded to me by a sufferer, one who had spent her substance till she could spend no more in having various parts of herself examined and in learned prescriptions and processes of cure, but who found herself as far from health as ever. Obsessed by certain theories of "Science," this lady had acquired a dread of sugar _in every form_. Hence her query addressed to me: "In your book, _No Rheumatism_, you say that sugar is to be avoided. Why, then, do you recommend fruit, which is mostly sugar?"

I replied as follows: "The reason I recommend ripe uncooked fruit--in spite of its containing a certain quant.i.ty of sugar--is that it contains also purifying salts, and that for most people it is the pleasantest form in which these salts can be taken. Moreover, fruit sugar appears to be more wholesome than that formed from starch. When you say that 'fruit is mostly sugar,' are you not leaving the water of the fruit out of account? As the water often amounts to 90 per cent.

this makes all the difference. Taking the fruits generally grown in this country the average proportion of sugar is seven per cent.

[This statement is based on the following figures given in Goodale's Physiological Botany:--

Apples contain 7.73 per cent. sugar Pears " 8.26 " "

Plums " 3.56 " "

Strawberries 6.28 " "

Gooseberries 7.03 " "

Grapes are stated to contain 24.36 per cent, but often contain much less and sometimes even more.]

"Now a person eating fruit _ad lib._, but allowed other foods, will hardly ever eat more than a pound or two a day (generally less). But suppose him to eat two pounds. Seven per cent. of this is 2+1/4 oz. If he eats only 1 lb. he takes 1+1/8 oz. sugar. Now compare this with the amount he gets from starchy foods, say, bread, which contains fifty per cent. of starch and sugar. As the starch, if it is to be a.s.similated, must be (and as a general rule practically all is) converted into sugar during digestion, we get from 1 lb. of bread 8 oz. of sugar (to be exact, nearly 9 oz., because starch forms rather more than its own weight of sugar). But the weight of bread allowed for daily food, if no other starchy or sugary food is taken, is--according to orthodox physiology books--1 lb., 11 oz., yielding over 14 oz. of sugar. Now I reduce the starchy food to 8 oz. or less (_No Rheumatism_, p. 34), yielding at most about 4+1/2 oz. of sugar. You see, then, that the patient can now afford to take even 2 lbs. of fruit, because this will bring his total of sugar up to only 6+3/4 oz., as against 14 oz. allowed by the orthodox. And if, as I recommend (p.

33), fruits containing but little sugar (especially cuc.u.mbers) are taken, his total sugar under my regime will be even less than 6+3/4 oz.

"As so many people fail to distinguish between fruit sugar occurring naturally in fruit and ordinary separated and concentrated cane sugar, or even beet sugar separated by various chemicals--'shop sugar,' in fact--I translate for you a pa.s.sage from Dr Carton's _Trois Aliments Meurtriers_[20]:--

[20] _Some Popular Foodstuffs Exposed_, translated by D.M. Richardson.

1s. net. Daniel.

"'Let us proceed now to the study of the third deadly food. The sugar contained in vegetables and raw fruits is a living aliment, physiologically combined with the protoplasm of the vegetable cells, a.s.sociated with ferments and with vitalised chemical salts. The absorption of this natural sugar is effected by a harmonious contact, by an exchange of energy between the living vegetable cells and our living digestive cells.

"'The sugar of commerce, on the contrary, is a dead food which has lost all a.s.sociation with vegetable protoplasm, with vitalised mineral salts and with oxidising ferments which would render it physiological.

It is nothing more than a drug, a dangerous chemical, because Nature has nowhere presented it to us in this form.... Its absorption involves an anti-physiological irritation which over-excites the viscera, and when repeated ends by profoundly altering them.'"

"This is all very well," cries Pseudo-Science, "but people may eat too much fruit."

"Certainly, but then I warn them at once," quoth Taste.

"But they have an idea it is good for them, and they disregard your warnings."

"If they 'have an idea' which runs counter to my warnings and my penalties, to say nothing of my promises and my rewards, then they can only get that idea from you, Mr Pseudo-Science, with your theories and your figures and your long words."

"Why not from your relative, Unnatural Taste? Anyhow, it is my duty to warn them."

"If they don't heed my warning, they certainly won't heed yours," says Taste.

"But I can paint such a picture of the trouble they store up for the future if they persist in excessive fruit eating!"

"Never mind about persisting and storing up for the future. I punish excess in fruit eating as in everything else by prompt discomfort and pain."

"But what do you know about oxalic acid?"

"Enough to avoid it. Like every other poison it is repugnant to me."

"Yet fruit which is so nice in the mouth may ferment in the intestines and form that very poison. Then what are you going to do about it?"

"Take care that not too much fruit is eaten another time."

"But in the meantime the oxalic acid already formed must be neutralised at once."

"No, no! It would be a pity to do that. Oxalic acid is the latest fashion. What would your patients do without it? And what would you do without your patients?"

"It must be neutralised at once. It can only be neutralised at the cost of abstracting lime from the system. Result: oxalate of lime, forming calculus, or 'stone,' which you don't want, and tissues depleted of lime which you do want."

"So you get your patients after all. In fact, having 'neutralised their oxalic acid' to escape you, they come back to you with two diseases instead of one. It seems to me you are a very profitable investment, Mr Pseudo-Science."

"Really, Mr Taste, you would not, I presume, have me suppress the truth simply because it happens to be profitable?"

"But is it the truth? What proof have you?"

"I presume you are ignorant of the fact that animals have died with all the symptoms of oxalic acid poisoning, simply through taking too much sugar."

"What kind of animals? You chose such as are used to taking shop sugar as part of their ordinary food, of course?"

"Well--no; not in that form. The subjects of the experiment were rabbits."

"Ah! And from these you draw deductions about man who has been eating artificial sugar for ages. How like a vivisectionist! But what doses of sugar did the rabbits get?"

"About one-fortieth of the body-weight."

"That would be as if a man of 150 lbs. weight should take 3+3/4 lbs.

sugar at a meal! And since it is excessive fruit you are warning us against, can you tell me how many pounds of fruit--say, apples--one must take in order to get that amount of sugar in a day? No less than sixty pounds. Really your warning seems a little superfluous."

"It is all very well for you to scoff, Mr Taste, but if it were not for me you would know nothing about the latest diseases. I really believe you would be content to go right through life without knowing that you had a duodenum or an appendix."

"Quite" a.s.sented Taste cheerfully.

ARNOLD EILOART, B.SC.