inclined to "nerves" can eat a greater variety of food, it's greatly to
be desired when there is a nervous person in a household of grownups
that all other members of the family enter together into this thing. It
could not fail to help every one of them. To be truthful, in the
beginning you will all find it mighty hard to persist in chewing all
your food to a cream. Mouthful after mouthful of food will get away from
you when you are not thinking. This just goes to show how we are in the
habit of bolting our food. At first people who Fletcherize or chew their
food perfectly, usually lose weight. I most certainly did. I lost about
twenty pounds because of it, but I was so well and felt so good I could
almost have jumped over the North Star.

I know that, unfortunately, a lot of people with "nerves" have started
to chew their food carefully and to eat sparingly, but the minute they
found themselves losing weight they were frightened and quit. They went
on carrying that ten or twenty or thirty pounds of flesh and all the
time suffering the tortures of the damned just in order that they might
keep it. But of what benefit are a certain number of extra pounds of
flesh and how can a man explain such a senseless action?

The astonishing thing is that many physicians are willing to condemn a
cure just as soon as they find the patient has lost a pound of beef. But
as I said before, the primary mission of man in this world is not to
raise beef. I do not find fault with the raising of beef in the feeding
yards, but if beef must be raised let us confine the industry to the
cattle pens and stock yards. Let us not worship it to the degree that we
would rather live in hell than part with a few extra pounds that
overload our own bodies.

Now just here I want it distinctly understood, as I have said before,
that this text is primarily for _functional nervous cases_. Tubercular
people belong to an entirely different class. They should live out of
doors day and night and should, if possible, be treated at outdoor
institutions established for such cases. But the individual with
"nerves" will find what he needs and will find it abundantly if he has
enough determination to take hold of it and keep at it.

On the part of many it will take all the determination they have to chew
their food to a cream and always eat sparingly. In regard to the amount
of food taken, judgment must of course be used. We all know that it is
possible to eat too li