This feature (quantity of waste) differed in the cases of the different persons experimented with according to the carefulness with which they obeyed the test injunctions. In some, greed abnormality could not quickly be overcome, but, as the subjects were selected in part from the stratum of society where want is the constant dread, it is not to be wondered at that a lifetime habit of tremor and greed should resist even the dictates of their reason. But it was in these that the revelation excited the highest appreciation at last when they were put in possession of faculties and strength that they had supposed the Creator had denied them in a world of suffering.
There is no doubt but that it is possible to introduce nutrition into the system wherein, or rather wherewith, there is little or no waste material.
One physician, to whom I applied for information, suggested that too fine an application of my method might finally do away with the lower intestines altogether from the same cause that any unused member of the body, and also unnourished members, shrivel and disappear in time.
While this is possible, the means taken towards it are productive of marvellous good results; and, if there were no further use, what purpose would they serve?[14]
[Footnote 14: Dr. George Monks of Boston, Massachusetts, has recently called the attention of the author to the fact that the length of the intestines in man have been known to vary from nine feet to twenty-nine feet.
In the longer ones the _papillæ convenenti_ which serve for absorption and which line the inside of the intestines extended only part way down the channel, but in the shorter ones they lined the channel throughout its entire length, giving inferential evidence that the strain of continued excess of waste material had lengthened the intestines for the sole purpose of providing storage room for the waste. Metchnikoff, the head of the Pasteur Institute, Paris, has even proposed removing some eighteen feet of intestine by surgical operation, including the troublesome vermiform appendix, as being unnecessary in connection with cooking and the prevalence of partly predigested foods.]
Think of the number of separate complaints that are attributable to trouble of the lower intestines, and think of the relief coming with their return to normal conditions in performing infrequent service with the ease of rejuvenated strength! Such was the case with all of the subjects under test, and it was a revelation which was as the opening of a new life to even those who had suffered least, and had thought themselves fortunate as to health conditions.