Extensive feeding experiments are now being conducted at the research laboratory of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, which it is hoped will develop still other points of interest respecting the superior nutritive properties of the choicest and most remarkable of all the food products which are handed to us from the fertile laboratory of the vegetable world.
Another and most interesting phase of my subject is the relation of nut feeding to anaphylaxis. This newly coined word perhaps needs explanation for the benefit of my lay hearers. For many years it has been known that some persons were astonishingly sensitive to certain foods which indeed appeared to act as violent poisons. Oysters, shellfish, mutton, fish and other animal products, as well as a few vegetable products, especially honey, strawberries and buckwheat, were most likely to be the cause of these violent disturbances. More recently it has been found that cow's milk very often shows the same peculiarity. It is now known that this remarkable phenomenon is due to the fact that the body sometimes becomes sensitized to certain proteins which thereafter act as most violent poisons and may cause death. Sensitization to animal proteins is much the more frequent. In such cases nut products become a very precious resource. This is especially true with reference to cow's milk.
Liquid nut preparations have saved the lives of hundreds of infants within the last twenty years. I have had the pleasure of meeting several fine looking young people who owed their lives to nut-feeding when other resources had failed. One case was particularly interesting. A telegram from a well-known Senator at Washington announced the fact that his infant daughter and only child was dying from mal-nutrition, as cow's milk and all the known infant foods had been found to disagree. I advised nut-feeding, and fortunately the prescription suited the case and the little one began to improve at once. When the physician in attendance learned that the child was eating nuts he vigorously protested, declaring that such a diet was preposterous and would certainly kill the infant, but the child flourished wonderfully on the liquid nut diet, eating almost nothing else for the first three years of her life, and today is a splendidly developed young woman, a brilliant witness to the food value of nuts.