In the pages of this book he declares he has "found a way how not to eat too much, while eating all that appetite desires, and in a way that leads to a maximum of food taste and at a minimum of cost and waste." The treatment of food in the mouth is the only mechanical responsibility we have in our nutrition, and the only digestive process over which we have any direct control. His teaching is that we must wait for an appetite which we have earned by hard work, and when this has guided us to the selection of the special food demanded for the moment by our body, that we must then masticate or otherwise treat it in the mouth until it is thoroughly liquefied, neutralised, or alkalised by the saliva, and until the resultant material settles back into the glosso-epiglottidean folds behind the circumvallate papillae and excites the swallowing reflex. Only what excites this reflex must be swallowed, and the rest must be still further "chewed at" - even although liquid - until the final portion of it disappears in response to the swallowing impulse. There is no exception to this rule, except in the case of water, which he declares has no taste. Nothing must be forcibly swallowed, as it is much safer to get rid of it beforehand than to risk putting it into the stomach. The idea involved in this last sentence is the only warrant I can find for the statement usually made that he recommends the tasteless fibrous residue of the food to be rejected - pulled out of the mouth by the fingers - and placed on the plate.

He claims for this plan that in an incredibly short space of time all digestive troubles will cease, that a relatively small amount of food is sufficient to satisfy the appetite, and that although there is a preliminary loss of body-weight, the general health and activity are immensely augmented. Those who practise this system find that their faeces are much reduced in quantity, not more than 2 ounces per day being evacuated, pilular in form, separate or massed together, perfectly odourless and aseptic, and of such consistency that no soil-paper nor any other form of cleansing is required. Defaecation rarely occurs oftener than twice a week, and may be as infrequent as once in a fortnight. The presence of odour or offensive matter in the faeces is a distinct evidence of careless mastication.