SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In the Preface, Nichols claims that his sole aim is “to enable people to get well, and keep well” (vi). Since “[l]ife depends upon diet” and “[t]he character and perfection of life depend upon the nature and perfection of the diet” (1), the quality and quantity of food and nutrition are the book's primary concern. Nichols notes that the human is by nature “a fruit-eating animal – of course including nuts and seeds under the general designation of fruit” (9). Certainly, “devouring the corpses of dead animals, in whatever condition, is not the highest, purest, most natural, and therefore most healthful diet for man” (11). “Millions of men,” he points out,

live almost entirely on rice; millions live on oatmeal, or barley, or rye; millions on maize, or wheat; millions on dates, or bananas, or breadfruit. Grapes, figs, apples, contain abundant, healthful, delicious nutriment. The hardy Spanish peasant is strong and happy on bread, onions, olives, and grapes. The Italian fares sumptuously on maccaroni, polenta (maize pudding), olives, and other fruits. The chief food of multitudes of people in France is chesnuts [sic]. The brave, strong Turks are happy on dry bread and figs or grapes. From the Straits of Gibraltar along both coasts of the Mediterranean, and so on to India, the body of the people, physically some of the finest that live upon the earth, eat little or no flesh (12-12).

For Nichols, bad nutrition and poor diet are among the chief causes of disease. Our eating habits are disastrous:

For breakfast – tea or coffee, bacon, ham, eggs, toast, rolls. For luncheon – beef, mutton, chicken, bread, wine, beer. For dinner – soup, fish, beef, mutton, poultry, potatoes, puddings, tarts, salad, cheese, fruit, ale, wine, coffee. Tea – bread, butter, sweetmeats. Supper – nearly a repetition of dinner. Tea may precede dinner or follow it, or both. In any case here are five meals a-day; with many things to excite and disorder the nerves; greasy food to derange the liver; mixtures which few stomachs can well digest; much that is unnatural, a temptation to excess, a heavy draft upon the nervous power that must dissolve and dispose of such heterogeneous mixtures (14).

In such circumstances, temperance and abstinence are the only remedies – “temperance in what is needful; abstinence from what is useless and harmful” (16). In addition to meat, stimulants and narcotics like tobacco, tea, coffee, and alcohol should be wholly abstained from, as they invariably result in bad health and, ultimately, death. In contrast, “[l]iving on brown bread, wheaten porridge, oatmeal, fruits and some kinds of greens, as spinach, cures all ... uncomfortable and dangerous disorders” (24). “Of strictly animal food,” Nichols writes, “we may most safely take that which is farthest from us. Oysters, and similar shell-fish, and the purer, less oily, more easily digested of fishes may be eaten if needful; but they are not so healthy – they do not afford so natural and pure a form of nutriment as bread, and milk, and fruit” (28).

Along with fresh air, pure water, and sunlight, adjustments in diet thus make up much of Nichols' cures and treatments. As he points out, “from the days of Hippocrates all wise physicians, all careful observers, [have emphasized] “the importance of diet to the preservation of health and the cure of disease” (35). “Whatever the disease,” he writes, “rest, cleanliness, pure air, light, and simple, natural food and drink, are needed for cure” (47). Indeed, Nichols is convinced that a proper, pure, vegetable diet is a “remedy for all our diseases,” either “as a means of prevention or of cure” (49). He maintains that “a pure diet of bread and its equivalents, and fruit or its best substitutes, with proper sanitary conditions, would prevent nine-tenths of our diseases, and cure nine-tenths of such as are not prevented” (54). If we “[a]dd to a pure diet of grains and fruits entire abstinence from all stimulants,” such as tobacco and alcohol, we “have so far the conditions of health” (63). And good health is an imperative for Nichols, not only for individuals but also as a social and national good (67-70, 80-84). Nichols also notes the importance of mental well-being or what he calls “psychic force,” in relation to which he has “[s]omnambulism or clairvoyance” in mind (76, 79).