Henry James & Fletcherism; or, "The Gospel of Much Chewing"

Reading through Wharton's correspondence with Henry James, I came across a passage in which he extols the virtues of "the Fletcher diet."  According to L.F. Barker in The New York Times (8 March 1907), its inventor, Horace Fletcher,

was refused a few years ago on applying for life insurance because of stomach trouble.  That frightened him, and he began to think over the question of what he ate and should eat.  He came to the conclusion that food swallowed before it is dissolved is very much in the situation of clinkers in a furnace—likely to cause trouble and the loss of a great deal of energy in getting rid of it ... So he decided to chew everything he ate until it had thoroughly dissolved in his mouth. 

"The Gospel of Much Chewing," according to the Massachusetts Ploughman and New England Journal of Agriculture (27 February 1904), came to Fletcher when he realized

that the malassimilation which causes ["most, if, indeed, not all, of the ills to which humanity is supposed to be heir"] must arise from some voluntary violation of nature's laws, since subconscious action is of necessity in accord with them.

As the action of the stomach and lower digestive tract is involuntary, he reasoned that the difficulty must be in the mouth ... and he began at once to study its office in connection with digestion.  He soon discovered, among other untabulated physiological facts, that, after he had formed the habit of so thoroughly insalivating his food, both liquids and solids, that it became tasteless, he swallowed it without voluntary effort, and also that he experienced a curious inability to swallow food not so thoroughly masticated; finding that the throat through no act of will closed against that which had not been reduced to the consistency of cream.

While making these experiments Mr. Fletcher found that a young garden onion required 722 bites before it disappeared by involuntary swallowing, but that when this was accomplished it left no odor.

Simply put, Mr. Fletcher's contention is that the office of the teeth is so to reduce food that each particle can be acted upon by the saliva, which is freed by the action of the mouth for this purpose.

By practicing this thorough insalivating of his food, Dr. van Someren ["a practicing physician in Venice"] says that he has been cured of inherited gout and of eczema, frequent boils and severe headaches when all remedies known to the medical profession failed to give him relief ... In fact, he declares that most diseases would disappear if this method of eating was a universal habit.

In sum: Henry James praises a method of eating which entails sitting down to a delicious dinner and chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing, chewing until the food loses all flavor and is the consistency of cream.  Can you resist the temptation to analogize his post-1900 diet and his post-1900 prose style?

I, for one, cannot.

Comments

[The Necromancer]

Ah, for simpler times...Pastoral. Bovine, even.

[JAKE]

Insane.

What these people lacked were PHYSICAL THERAPISTS and HEALTH GURUS!

[SEK]

But they did, Jake, they did!

[Rich Puchalsky]

I forget who it was, but I remember reading in someone's biography -- or was it fiction? -- that he had a lifelong raging hatred for his father because his father forced him to chew each mouthful of food forty (or some similar number) of times.

[SEK]

William Gladstone's the one who started the chew-your-food-thirty-two-times fad (and was acknowledged as such in the articles above). I don't know quite which novel you're talking about though ... maybe one of Disraeli's? (ducks)

[Jake]

But they did, Jake, they did!

17.95? My paycheck from stuffing pillows in a factory all day can barely cover that price.

Doesn't the American military have a policy about chewing? Only 23 chews per bite and then there must be immediate swallowing?

[SEK]

$17.95? Really? Well then, there's always Project Gutenberg. (I only linked to the other because, damn it, I'm lazy.)

[Sisyphus]

You should watch The Road to Wellville to get your creepy-health-craze and fucked-up-Victorian-sexuality game on. (well, I guess you could read it, but where's the fun in that?)

It will make excessive mastication (and Henry James) seem tame in comparison.

[SEK]

This is what happens when I bury my lede: the point isn't the chewing, but its resemblance to The Golden Bore! Get with the program, people. I'll have none of this your-own-agendizing on my blog!

[Sisyphus]

Oh, I got it ---- the chewing is just more interesting than the James.

And couldn't you do something --- ok, no not evolutionary theory, but maybe something eco-critical --- about all the damn terrapins everyone is eating in Wharton and James?

[SEK]

I know, I know, my hatred of late James just burns so bright ...

... that said, I don't think there's anything to be done about the eating or terrapins. However, I recommend you don't read The Voyage of the Beagle, as I don't think it'd be to your taste.

[Sisyphus]

Where is it --- was it Wharton who wrote the scathing little anecdote about James being lost on King's Road and asking (interminably) for directions?

And I'm not anti-terrapin; they're not scary, just sad and endangered.

Now, white sauce ---- there's a food of the time just begging to be studied. I think it's been done though.

[Josh]

There's a T.C. Boyle novel with Fletch--oh,someone already mentioned that. But how could one bring him up without citing his motto, "Nature will castgate those who don't masticate"? Oh, right, 'cause one's point is to hate on Strether. Got it. Never mind.

[Karl Steel]

was it Wharton who wrote the scathing little anecdote about James being lost on King's Road and asking (interminably) for directions?

Yes. It's in the Oxford Book of Literary Anecdotes. At least's that's where it is on my shelves.

[eb]

The Princess Cassamastica just doesn't have the same ring to it.

[Ray Davis]

She shoots, she scores, she's never reprinted.

[anon]

Kafka fletcherized his food, but not his prose.

[alkau]

There is a book, I know I gave it to you about a man trying to find a reason for his wife"s suicide and he looks to find a way to improve his dog's bite - etc. Just think of how little would be done in this world if every person took this diet to heart - could we solve all the world's problems just by changing the way everyone eats????

[hormone imbalance]

Hi..This very interesting subject!! Thank you!!