if you want to get well and stay well, is like taking the
handle of an axe and going out into the woods to cut down a tree. Now
with Fletcherizing you have a perfectly good handle, but you know very
well that you can't cut a tree down with only an axe handle. But that is
not the fault of the handle. The fault is obviously your own. Now
suppose you get the axe and fit the handle to it. You can then cut the
tree down if you work hard enough at the task. Again, suppose you cut
the tree half way through and quit. Will the axe keep on until the work
is done? You know it will not, and you very well know if you wish to be
cured you must keep on doing your part of the work or dieting will be of
no value whatever to you. Now suppose a man comes along and tells you
that the axe you have is no good and therefore it is no use for you to
keep on trying to use it. That is exactly what some physicians still say
about Fletcherizing.

But you say, "I must cut this tree down. Nobody will do it for me; how
shall I get it down? Can you give me an axe that will cut it down?"

"Oh, no," he replies, "but anyway there's no use fooling with that one."

Then, if you are determined to do the work, you say, "I have to cut the
tree down. You have no other axe to offer me, so I'm going to try the
one I have." And you go ahead and cut down the tree. Then just as you
have finished, the man comes your way again, and in great delight you
call out to him: "Come and see! I cut this tree down with the axe you
said was no good!"

The man comes over to you and says, "Where's the tree? I don't see it!"

You are astonished and you tell him, "There it lies on the ground right
before your eyes! Can't you see it?"

But he turns and walks away saying: "There is no tree there; it is all
in your mind."

This is exactly what people with "nerves" have been told again and again
by physicians, by relatives, and by most other people who have never had
"nerves."

I tell you these things so that when you begin to eat sparingly and chew
your food to a cream you may fortify yourself against well-meaning but
mistaken friends and relatives. And, oddly enough, it does seem that the
individual with "nerves" has more friends and relatives than any other
person in the world.

Remember you must not only chew your food to the consistency of cream
for one or two months, you must make this practice a lifelong habit. If
you cannot take time to eat a meal in this way, you had