Digestive Ailments 47
and Irish farmers were forced to plant potatoes, the only crop that
would grow on the barren soil left to them. The potato blight of 1843
put an end to the consumption of potatoes for many years by destroying
every potato crop in Ireland.
What few people are aware of is that potatoes kept the Germans
from starving after World War I when their economy lay in ruins.
Another little-known fact about potatoes is that on board ships in the
nineteenth centur y, they were more effective in healing and preventing
scurvy than limes. A small village in Japan, where the dietary staple is
white potatoes, currently has the longest documented life span in the
world. (More information on this village is found in my book Eat Right
for Your Metabolism.)Gelatin Supplies Mucilage
Pottenger mentioned powdered okra and beet juice as effective hydro-
philic colloids (sticky substances that have an affi nity for water) but
believed the most practical and effective musilagenous substance was
gelatin taken with each meal, either sprinkled on food or added to liq-
uid. For an individual with alcoholic-related gastritis, gelatin with its
enormous mucilage content is often the only remedy that will counter-
act the corrosive effect of alcohol on the lining of the stomach and small
intestine. Gelatin also has great nutritive value, an additional benefi t for
alcoholics who have lost interest in food. Edgar Cayce in one of his read-
ings stated that gelatin aids in the absorption of vitamins and minerals.
Dr. Bernard Jensen in Foods That Heal writes that because the calcium
in gelatin (45 percent of gelatin consists of calcium) is derived from
chicken bones, it’s the most easily assimilated form of that mineral.^3Ulcers
My mother was fed cow’s milk as a baby and continued to drink it until,
at the age of fi ve, the chronic rash on her face and arms was diagnosed
as an allergic reaction to milk. I suspect that the gallbladder attacks she
began having in her early thirties were caused by the same chemical
and/or immune system imbalance that had caused her allergy to milk
as a child.