Regeneration Diet
And Natural Cure
For All Diseases
By A R N O L D E H R E T
Translated from the German
Synopsis of Contents:
I. The common Fundamental Cause in the Disease
II Remedies for the Removal of the Common Fundamental
Cause of Diseases and the Prevention of their
Reoccurrence.
III. The Fundamental Cause of Growing Old and Ugly, of
the Falling Out and Getting Gray of the Hair.
IV. The Death.
1. The Common Fundamental Cause in the
Nature of Diseases
All the phases of the process of development of the
medical science, including those of the earliest periods of
civilization, have in their way of understanding the causal
nature of diseases that one thing in common that the
diseases, owing to external causes, enter into the human
body and thus, by force of a necessary or at least
unavoidable law, disturb it in its existence, cause it pain
and at last destroy it. Even modern medical science, no
matter how scientifically enlightened it pretends to be, has
not quite turned away from this basic note of demoniac
interpretation. In fact, the most modern achievement,
bacteriology, rejoices over every newly discovered bacillus
as a further addition to the army of beings whose accepted
task it is to endanger the life of man.
Looking at it from a philosophical standpoint, this
interpretation differs from the mediaeval superstition and
the period of fetishism only in the supplemental name.
Formerly it was an “evil spirit,” which imagination went so
far as to believe in “satanic personages;” now this same
dangerous monster is a microscopically visible being
whose existence has been proven beyond any doubt.
The matter, it is true, has still a great drawback in the
so-called “disposition”—a fine word!—but what we really
are to understand by it, nobody has ever told us. All the
tests on animals, with their symptom-reactions, do not
prove anything sure, because these occur only by means of
injection into the blood-circulation and never by
introduction into the digestive channel through the mouth.
There is something true in the conception of “external
invasion” of a disease, as well as in heredity, however not
in the sense that the invader is a spirit (demon) hostile to
life, or a microscopic being (bacillus); but all diseases
without exception, even the hereditary, are caused—
disregarding a few other unhygienic causes—by
biologically wrong, “unnatural” food and by each ounce of
over-nourishment, only and exclusively.
First of all I maintain that in all diseases without
exception there exists a tendency by the organism to secrete
mucus, and in case of a more advanced stage—pus
(decomposed blood). Of course every healthy organism
must also contain a certain mucus—lymph, a fatty
substance of the bowels, etc., of a mucus nature.) Every
expert will admit this in all catarrhalic cases, from a
harmless cold in the nose to inflammation of the lungs and
consumption, as well as in epilepsy (attacks showing froth
at the mouth, mucus). Where this secretion of mucus does
not show freely and openly, as in cases of ear, eye, skin or
stomach trouble, heart diseases, rheumatism, gout, etc.,
even in all degrees of insanity, is mucus the main factor of
the illness, the natural secretive-organs not being able to
cope with it any longer, the mucus entering the blood and
causing at the respective spot where the vessel-system is
probably contracted owing to an over-cooling (cold), etc.,
heat, inflammation, pain, fever.
We need only to give a patient of any-kind nothing but
“mucusless” food, for instance fruit or even nothing but
water or lemonade: we then find that the entire digestive
energy, freed for the first time, throws itself upon the
mucus-matters, accumulated since childhood and
frequently hardened, as well as on the “pathologic beds”
formed therefrom. And the result? With unconditional
certainty this mucus which I mark as the common basic and
main cause of all diseases will appear in the urine and in
the excrements. If the disease is already somewhat
advanced so that in some spot, even in the innermost
interior, there have appeared pathologic beds, i.e.
decomposed cellular tissues, then pus is also being
secreted. As soon as the introduction of mucus by means of
“artificial food,” fat meat, bread, potatoes, farinaceous
products, rice milk, etc., ceases, the blood-circulation
attacks the mucus and the pus of the body themselves and
secretes them through the urine, and in the case of heavily
infected bodies, even through all the openings at their
command as well as through the mucus membranes.
If potatoes, grain-meal, rice or the respective meatmaterials
are being boiled long enough, we receive a jellylike
slime (mucus) or paste used by bookbinders and
carpenters. This mucus substance soon becomes sour,
ferments, and forms a bed for fungi, moulds and bacilli. In
the digestion, which is nothing else but a boiling, a
combustion, this slime or paste is being secreted in the
same manner, for the blood can use only the ex-digested
sugar transformed from starch. The secreted matter, the
superfluous product, i.e., this paste or slime is a foreign
matter to the body and is being completely excreted in the
beginning. It is, therefore, easy to understand that in the
course of life the intestines and the stomach are gradually
being pasted and slimed up to such an extent that this paste
of floral and this slime of faunal origin turn into
fermentation, clog up the blood-vessels and finally
decompose the stagnating blood. If figs, dates or grapes are
boiled down thick enough we also receive a pap which,
however, does not turn to fermentation and never secretes
slime, and which nobody calls slime, but which is called
syrup. Fruit-sugar, the most important thing for the blood,
is also sticky, it is true, but is being completely used up by
the body as the highest form of fuel, and leaves for
excretion only traces of cellulose, which, not being sticky,
is promptly excreted and does not ferment. Boiled-down
sugar, owing to its resistance against fermentation, is even
used for the preservation of food.
Each healthy or sick person deposits on the tongue a
stinking mucus as soon as he reduces his food or fasts. This
occurs also on the mucous membrane of the stomach, of
which the tongue is an exact copy. In the first stool after the
fasting this mucus makes its appearance.
I recommend to the physicians and searchers to test my
claims by way of experiments which alone are entitled to
real scientific recognition. The experiment, the question put
to nature, is the basis of all natural science and reveals the
infallible truth, no matter whether it is stated by me or
somebody else. Furthermore, I recommend to those who
are brave enough to test on their own bodies the following
experiments which I undertook on mine. They will receive
the same answer from nature, i. e., from their organism,
provided that the latter be sound in my sense. “Exact” to a
certain degree reacts only the clean sound, mucusless
organism. After a two years' strict fruit-diet with
intercalated fasting cures, I had attained a degree of health
which is simply not imaginable nowadays and which
allowed of my making the following experiments:
With a knife I made an incision in my lower arm; there
was no flow of blood as it thickened instantaneously;
closing up of the wound, no inflammation, no pain, no
mucus and pus: healed up in three days, blood-crust thrown
off. Later, with vegetaric, food including mucus-formants
(starch food), but without eggs and milk: the wound bled a
little, caused some pain and pussed slightly, a light
inflammation, complete healing only after some time. After
that the same wounding, with meat-food and some alcohol:
longer bleeding, the blood of a light color, red and thin,
inflammation, pain, pussing for several days, and healing
only after a two days' fasting.
I have offered myself, of course in vain, to the Prussian
Ministry of War for a repetition of this experiment. Why is
it that the wounds of the Japanese healed much quicker and
better in the Russo-Japanese war as those of the “Meat and
Brandy Russians?” Has nobody for 2,000 years ever
thought it over why the opening of the artery and even the
poison cup could not kill Seneca, after he had despised
meat and fasted in the prison? It is said that even before
that Seneca fed on nothing but fruit and water.
All disease is finally nothing else but a clogging up of
the smallest blood vessels, the capillaries, by mucus.
Nobody will want to clean the water-conduit of a city, a
pipe-system, which is fed with soiled water by a pump, the
filters of which are clogged up, without having the watersupply
shut off during the cleaning process. If the conduit
supplies the entire city or a portion of it with unclean water,
or if even the smallest branch-pipes are clogged up, there is
no man in the world who would repair or improve that
respective spot; everybody thinks at once of the central, of
the tank and the filters, and these together with the
pumping machine can be cleaned only as long as the water
supply is shut off.
“I am the Lord, thy physician”—English and modern:
nature alone heals, cleans, “unmucuses” best and infallibly
sure, but only if the supply or at least the mucus supply is
stopped. Each “physiological machine,” man like beast,
cleanses itself immediately, dissolves the mucus in the
clogged-up vessels, without stopping short, as soon as the
supply, of compact food at least, is interrupted. Even in the
case of the supposedly healthiest man this mucus, as
already mentioned then appears in the urine where it can be
seen after cooling off in the proper glass tubes! Whoever
denies, ignores or fights this uniform fact, because,
perhaps, it goes against him or is not scientific enough for
him, is jointly guilty of the impossibility of the detection of
the principal cause of all diseases, and this, in the first
place, to his own detriment.
Therewith I also uncover the last secret of
consumption. Or does anybody believe that this enormous
quantity of mucus thrown off by a patient stricken with
tuberculosis for years and years, emanates only from the
lung itself? Just because this patient is then almost forcibly
fed on “mucus” (pap, milk, fat meats) the mucus can never
cease, until the lung itself decays and the “bacilli” make
their appearance, when death becomes inevitable. The
mystery of the bacilli is solved simply thus: The gradual
clogging up by mucus of the blood vessels leads to
decomposition, to fermentation of these mucus products
and “boiled-dead” food - residues. These decay partially on
the living body (pussy abscesses, cancer, tuberculosis,
syphilis, lupus, etc.). Now, everybody knows that meat,
cheese and all organic matter will again “germinate, put
forth bacilli” during the process of decomposition. It is for
this reason that these germs appear and are detectable only
in the more advanced stage of the disease, when, however,
they are not the cause but the product of the disease, and
disease-furthering only in so far as the decomposition, for
instance of the lung, is being hastened by them, because the
excretions of the bacilli, their toxines. act poisoning. If it be
correct that bacilli invade, “infect” from the exterior, then it
is nothing but the mucus which makes possible their
activity, and furnishes the proper soil, the “disposition.”
As already said, I have repeatedly (once for two years)
lived mucusless, i.e., on fruit exclusively. I was no longer
in need of a handkerchief which product of civilization I
hardly need even up to this day. Has anyone ever seen a
healthy animal, living in freedom, to expectorate or to blow
its nose? A chronic inflammation of the kidneys,
considered deadly, which I was stricken with, was not only
healed, but I am enjoying a degree of health and efficiency
which by far surpasses even that of my healthiest youth. I
want to see the man who, being sick to death at 31, can run
without a stop for two hours and a quarter, or make an
endurance march of 56 hours' duration—eight years later.
With this “mucus theory,” well confirmed by my
numerous experiments, there is for the first time put up a
thorough, aetiologic, i.e., a cause—defining uniform
conception of all diseases. If naturopathy here and there
mentions certain affections of the blood as being the
fundamental cause of all disease, this theory has proved
insufficient because the food had been prescribed to be
meatless or its contents of meat greatly reduced, at the
same time, however, introducing so much the more mucus
by means of bread, pap, milk, butter, eggs, cheese and
farinaceous stuffs, especially starch food. That is the reason
why most of the vegetarians in spite of their lauded bill of
fare, are not healthy just the same. I myself was such a
much—and mucus-eater for several years. If a considerable
number of the vegetarians does not soon advance towards
the only natural food, the fruit diet, or at least returns to
eating little, there will be great danger of the shallowingdown
of vegetarianism; not because the principle of “no
meat eating” is bad, but because the healthful effects of the
existing vegetaric nourishment are so inferior. The
representatives of the vegetarian movement are still trying
to prove what man is in need-of as regards boiled meals,
because they themselves as well as all the amateurs in this
field have a fundamentally wrong conception of the fruit
diet as a healing remedy, and go at it in a wrong way. The
hobby of the vegetaric propaganda is the argument that
man is not a carnivore and that, therefore, the eating of
meat is unnatural. With perfect right says the opponent that
the eating of meat is just as “natural” as that of bread,
cabbage, milk, cheese, etc. Professor V. Bunge has
reproached the vegetarians for inconsequence more than a
decade ago, and he is right.
It is surely theoretically correct that man was a mere
fruit eater in times gone by, and biologically correct, that he
can be it even to-day. Or can the horse-sense of man not
conceive, without any proofs and directly, of the fact that
man, before becoming a hunter, lived on fruits only? I even
maintain that he did live in absolute health, beauty and
strength, without pain and grief, just the way the Bible
says. Fruit only, the sole “mucus-less” food, is natural.
Everything prepared by man or supposedly improved by
him is evil. The arguments regarding fruit are scientifically
exact; in an apple or a banana, for instance, is everything
contained what man needs. Man is so perfect that he can
live on one kind of fruit only, at least for quite some time.
This, however, need not necessarily be cocoanut
(Kabakon). But a self-evident truth preached by nature
must not be discarded just because nobody has been able to
apply it in practice on account of civilizational
considerations. From fruit only one becomes first of all ill,
i.e. cleansed; this cleansing process, however, is better to
undergo at home and not in the tropics. No man would have
ever believed me that it is possible to live without food for
126 days, in which 49 at a stretch, during 14 months. Now I
have done it, and yet this truth is not being understood.
Hitherto I say and teach only that fruit is the most natural
“healing remedy.” Whether my calculation is correct will
be proven by the next epidemic. I take, however, this
opportunity to uncover the reasons why the self-evident is
not believed in. When in the previous century somebody
talked about telephoning from Berlin to Paris, everybody
laughed, because there had never been such a thing. Natural
food is not being believed in any more, because almost
nobody practices it and, being a man of civilization, cannot
easily practice it. It must also be considered that contrainterests
fear that the prices of the other, artificial foodstuffs
may drop, and others fear that the food-physiology
may receive a shock and the physicians become
unnecessary. But it is just this fasting and fruit cure which
requires very strict observation and instruction—therefore:
more doctors and less patients who, however, will gladly
pay more if they get well. Thus the social question
regarding doctors is solved—assertion already made by me
publicly in Zurich several years ago.
Almost all fasting attempts fail on account of the
ignorance of the fact that with the beginning of mucusless
diet the old mucus is being excreted so much more forcibly
until that person is absolutely clean and healthy. Thus the
seemingly most healthy person has first to pass through a
condition of sickness (cleansing), or to go through an
intermediate stage of illness to a higher level of health.
This is the great cliff around which so very few
vegetarians have failed to go, discarding the highest truth
just like the mass of people is doing. I have proven this
here in the “Vegetarische Warte” competently on the basis
of experiments and facts, and refuted the greatest objection,
that of under-nourishment, by an actual fasting experiment
of 49 days with preceding fruit diet. My state of health was
only improved by this radical excretion of mucus,
disregarding a few unhygienic circumstances during the
test. I received numerous letters of appreciation, especially
from the educated classes. The mass of the adherents of
vegetarianism “mucuses” gaily ahead. Vegetarianism has to
show representatives of both sexes who do not differ by
anything from Munich beer-stomachs: a consequence of the
daily stuffing up with “mucus-food” of all kinds.
Contrasting herewith it can only be said that the poisons
(so-called by them): meat, alcohol, coffee and tobacco are
in the long run comparatively harmless, as long as they are
used moderately.
In order to avoid misunderstanding on the part of
teetotalers and vegetarians, I must insert here a few
explanations. Meat is not a foodstuff but only a stimulant
which ferments, decays in the stomach ; the process of
decay, however, does not begin in the stomach but at once
after the slaughtering. This has already been proven on
living persons by Prof. Dr. S. Graham, and I complete this
fact by saying that meat acts as a stimulant just by means of
these poisons of decay, and therefore is being regarded as a
strengthening foodstuff. Or is there anyone who can show
me chemico-physiologically that the albumen molecule
going through the process of decay is being newly
reformed in the stomach and celebrates its resurrection in
some muscle of the human body? Exactly like alcohol, the
meat acts in the beginning delusively as if stimulating
strength and energy, until the entire organism is penetrated
by it and the break-down inevitable. All the other
stimulants act likewise.
The fundamental evil of all non-vegetaric forms of diet
consists always in the overeating of meat, as it is the origin
of all the other evils, especially of the craving for alcohol.
If fruit is eaten almost exclusively, the eagerness for cup or
glass loses itself to chastise himself against it, simply
because meat produces the demon thirst. Alcohol is a
proven kind of antidote for meat, and the gourmand of the
big city, who eats almost nothing but meat, must therefore
have wines, Mocha and Havana, in order to at least in some
way counteract the heavy meat-poisoning. It is a wellknown
fact that, after an opulent dinner, one feels
decidedly fresher, physically and mentally, if the
stimulants, poisonous in themselves, are taken moderately,
than to stuff one's self full with the good eating to the very
fatigue.
I absolutely declare war on meat and alcohol; through
fruit and moderate eating these great evils are radically
diminished. But whoever finds it impossible to entirely
give up meat and alcohol is, if he takes them moderately,
still far ahead of the vegetaric much-eater. The American
Fletcher proves this most evidently by his tremendous
success, and his secret is explained by my experiments
which show that a person becomes most efficient and
develops best in his health if he eats as little as possible.
Are not the oldest people as a rule the poorest? Have not
the greatest discoverers and inventors sprung from poverty,
i.e., been little eaters? Were not the greatest of mankind,
the prophets, founders of religions, etc., ascetics? Is that
culture, to live in Berlin, dining excellently thrice a day,
and is that social progress that each working man eats five
times a day and then pumps himself full with beer at night?
If the sick organism can regenerate by eating nothing, I
think the logical consequences is that a healthy organism
needs but little food in order to remain healthy, strong and
persevering.
All so-called miracles of the saints have their only
origin in ascetics, and are to-day impossible but for the
reason that, although much praying is done, no fasting is
adhered to. This is the only solution of this quarrel. We
have no more miracles because we have no more saints,
i.e., sanctified and healed by ascetics and fastings. The
saints were self-shining, expressed in modern language:
medial or radioactive, but only because through ascetics
they were “godly” healthy, and not “by special grace.” I
just wish to mention here that I myself have succeeded in
visible, electric effluences, but only by external and internal
sun-energies- (sun-baths and food from the “sun-kitchen,”
fruit.)
The entire world is quarreling now regarding these
questions and miracles. And here is the solution on the
basis of experiments which everybody can repeat if he is
brave enough. But it is apparently easier to write books,
preach and pray, or to say that I am an exception. This is
true, but only as far as pluck and understanding are
concerned. Physiologically all men are equal, and whoever
cannot be moderate may learn it from me if he wishes to be
a real searcher. If a man eats little and is healthy he can
digest for quite a length of time the most absurd food, meat
and starch (mucus), i.e., he can again excrete it; naturally,
he becomes and remains still more perfect and clean if he
eats but little fruit, and of this he needs the least because it
is the most perfect food. This eternal truth by natural law
man of today will and cannot admit, and has a wellfounded
fear of it, because he is built up of dead-boiled
food and his cells die off and are excreted as soon as he
takes sun-baths, fasts or eats the living cells of fruit. But
this cure must be done with the greatest care. Medicine has,
as long as this is possible, to protect man from a breakdown
of his cells, to hold him above water, only to make him
then die of the disease so much more promptly and quickly,
which to-day is fervently wished for. Vegetarianism cannot
deny that the consumers of meat and alcohol can also boast
of much health and great deeds and high age, but taken
individually and as a people, only so long as but little is
eaten and no over-nourishment caused. The “too much”
takes less revenge in case of meat-eating because meat
contains proportionally less “mucus” than the starchcontaining,
i.e. “mucus” vegetaric food and the celebrated
vegetaric dinners with so and so many dishes daily. I
myself have not cared for many years for any meals; I eat
only when I have appetite and then so little that it does not
cause any harmful effect, if, on account of an experiment, I
am obliged to eat something which in itself is not entirely
free from objection.
If the most serious diseases can be cured by fasting—
which has been proven in thousands of cases—and if by
this way of living one gets even stronger “if it is done
right,” then the most energetic food, the fruit, should cause
one so much the more to become strong and healthy. This
has been also scientifically proven by the merited Dr.
Bircher. It is true, the science of cure by nature has
recognized the fact that something must get out of the sick
organism, but it has so far ascribed the greatest importance
to physical stimulations and ignored entirely the real
natural moment of the process of cure; the abstaining from
food and the fruit-diet, or at least only tried to substitute it
by an alcohol and meatless diet. This does not mean much
in the face of my “mucus-theory.” And what is this
mucusless alcohol not accused of to-day! It will soon be
made the scape-goat of all diseases, because here and there
is found a depraved one who, consuming it in enormous
quantities, ends in delirium. Just compel a drinker to fast a
few days or to eat nothing but fruit—I can bet that the best
glass of beer will have lost its taste for him. This shows thatthe entire “civilized” mess, from beefsteak down to the
apparently harmless oatmeals, creates the desire for these
detested antidotes: alcohol, coffee, tea, tobacco. Why?
Because much-eating paralyzes and only the use of
stimulants restores.
Here is the true and fundamental reason for the
increase of alcohol consumption: the over-nourishment,
especially with meat. Prof. Dr. Graham says in his
“Physiology of Nourishment”; “A drinker can reach a high
age, a glutton never.” This is true, because the acute
alcohol acting as a stimulant, especially the modern beer, is
less harmful in the long run than the chronic stuffing-up of
the digestive channel with mucus food.
I now ask: what appeals more to reason—to wipe out
the masses of mucus, piled up since childhood and having
infected the cellular tissues of the body right there
(symptoms of illness), by sweating, baths, artificial cold
(kneipp cures), massage, sport, etc., at the expense of
vitality (especially of the heart) and the duration of life . . .
or simply to stop the further supply of mucus? Or is there
anybody who wants to prove to me that even the best chef
or confectioner is capable of producing something better
than an apple, a grape or banana? If nourishment by mucus
and over-eating is the true fundamental cause of all
diseases without exception, which I can prove to anybody
on his own body, then there can exist but one natural
remedy, i.e., fasting and fruit-diet. That every animal fasts
in case of even the slightest uneasiness, is a well-known
fact and to culture and thanks to man feeding them, have
lost their sharp instinct for the right kind of food and the
natural hours of feeding—and therewith their proper state
of health and acuteness of sense,—they will nevertheless,
when sick, accept only the most necessary food; they fast
themselves back to health. Poor, sick man, however, must
under no circumstances live on short rations for more than
1 or 2 days, for fear that he may “lose strength.”
Already have physicians called the fasting: wonder
cures, cure of the uncured, cure of all cures, etc. Certain
charlatans have brought this infallible, but at the same time
dangerous cure, to discredit. I have done in fasting the most
significant thing in centuries: 49 days, world-record (see
“Vegetarische Warte,” 1909, book 19, 20, 22, 1910, book 1
and 2). Furthermore I am the only one who combines this
cure with systematically and individually adapted fruit-diet,
which makes it astonishingly easier and absolutely
harmless. We are, therefore, undoubtedly put in a position
to heal diseases which the school-medicine designates as
incurable. On the basis of my detection that this mucus
coming from cultured food, is the fundamental cause and
main factor in the nature of all diseases, symptoms of age,
obesity, falling out of the hair, wrinkles, weakness of
nerves and memory, etc., there is justified hope for the
creation of a new phase of development of the progressive
healing methods and biological medicine.
Already Hippokrates had uniformly recognized the
“disease-material” for all diseases. Prof. Jäger has defined
the “Common” as “Stench,” but not discovered the source
of this “bad smell.” Dr. Lahmann and other representatives
of the physical-dietetic tendency, especially Kuhne, came
on to the tracks of this “common foreign matter.” But all of
them did not show, recognize or prove by experiment that it
is just this mucus of culture-food, which loads up our
organism from very childhood, and attacks it at a certain
degree of fermentations forms pathologic beds, i.e.,
decomposes the cellular tissue of the body itself into pus
and decay. It is being mobilized in case of casual colds or
high temperatures, etc., and produces, in its tendency to
leave the body, symptoms of abnormal functions which
hitherto have been regarded as the disease itself. It is,
therefore, for the first time possible to define what is meant
by “disposition.” The more the “mucus” (bad mother's milk
and all its substitutes) is being administered from childhood
on, or the less this mucus is being excreted, owing to
hereditary weakness, through the organs made to perform
this task, the greater is the inclination to catch cold, fever,
to freeze, to admit parasites, to get sick and to grow old.
Very likely by this the veil has been lifted from the secret
which hitherto has always surrounded the nature of the
white-corpuscles. I believe, that here, as in many other
cases, we have to do with an error of the medical science.
The bacteria throw themselves upon the white largest
extent of this mucus denounced by me. Are not the bacteria
being bred on this mucus by the millions outside of the
organism?—on potatoes, broth, gelatine, i.e., on mucus,
i.e., nitrogenous, vegetable or animal substances consisting
of an alcalically reacting fluid containing granulated cells
of the appearance of the white blood-corpuscles! Perhaps in
an entirely healthy condition the so-called mucus
membrane should not at all be white, slimy, but clean and
red like on animals. Perhaps this “corpse-mucus” is even
the cause of the paleness of the white race? Paleface!
Corpsecolor!
With this “mucus-theory” to be confirmed by
experiment the spectre “disease” has been finally deprived
of its demoniac mask. He who believes me can heal not
only himself, if everything else fails, but we have for the
first time been given the means to radically prevent disease
and to make it definitively impossible. Even the dream of
lasting youth and beauty is now about to become true.
The animal, and especially the human organism is,
from a mechanical standpoint, a complicated tube-system
of blood-vessels with air-gas impetus by means of the lungs
in which the blood-fluid is constantly kept moving and
regulated by the heart as a valve. The decomposition of the
air-gas is accomplished by each breath in the lungs
(separating of the air into oxygen and nitrogen): thus the
blood is constantly kept moving and the human body does
its service incredibly long without fatigue. Let nobody
come to me with the silly excuse of the “daily experience
of the absolutely natural compulsion of much-eating,”
prescribed for working man, etc., before it has not been
experienced by such complainant, how long it is possible to
work or march, without fatigue, after fasting or fruit-food.
Fatigue is in the first place a reducing of strength by too
much digestion-work, secondly a clogging-up of the heated
and consequently narrowed-down blood-vessels, and
thirdly a “self- and re-poisoning” through the excretion of
mucus during the motion. All organic substances of animal
origin excrete cyan groupes in their decomposition, which
the Chemist Hensel has defined as bacilli proper. The air is
not only the highest and most perfect operating material of
the human body, but simultaneously the first element for
the erection, repair, substitute, and very likely, the animal
organism derives nitrogen also from the air. On certain
caterpillars an increase of weight through air alone has
been stated.
