How to Eat: A Cure for "Nerves" — Context and Discussion

The Simplicity of the Cure

Hinkle repeatedly emphasizes that his remedy is simple, almost to the point of being despised, as Naaman despised Elisha's instruction to wash in the Jordan. He quotes Cornaro—"Whosoever wishes to eat much must eat little"—to underscore that longevity requires daily restraint. The author insists that no single measure suffices; the cure demands common sense across several avenues: diet, exercise, and mental attitude. He dismisses the idea that some people are "born to success and long life," calling such reasoning "all nonsense." Instead, he offers a system that, if followed, guarantees recovery from nervous breakdown and prevents it in children of nervous parentage.

Historical Exemplars of Moderation

To bolster his argument, Hinkle cites historical figures who lived long, active lives through moderate eating. He notes that John Wesley, at eighty-eight, walked six miles to a preaching appointment and claimed the only difference from age twenty was that he could not "run quite so fast." Wesley was a "spare eater" who traveled forty to sixty miles daily on horseback. Similarly, Dr. Eliot, ex-President of Harvard, is quoted as saying he "always eaten moderately of simple food in great variety." Chauncey Depew's eighty-seventh birthday speech is invoked to reinforce that liking a thing is reason to give it up. These anecdotes serve as proof that moderation, not medical intervention, leads to health and longevity.

A Warning Against Over-Sympathy

Hinkle uses a striking metaphor to critique misplaced concern: a woman who pities a thin neighbor while herself being a "walking stone quarry" of gallstones. He urges readers not to worry about dieting, assuring them they belong to a "most fortunate class of people" if they adopt his rules. The tone is direct and occasionally sarcastic, as when he mocks "calamity-howlers" who believe some are born to fail. This section reveals Hinkle's rhetorical strategy: he combines dietary advice with a moral rebuke of self-pity and overindulgence, framing nervous disorders as largely self-inflicted through poor habits.

Readers should approach this book as a period piece of early 20th-century self-help medicine, where dietary reform is intertwined with moral exhortation. Hinkle's evidence is anecdotal rather than clinical, drawing on historical figures and hypothetical cases. The work is valuable for understanding how nervous disorders were conceptualized before modern psychiatry, and for observing the rhetorical tactics used to persuade patients to adopt lifestyle changes. The catalog subjects accurately describe the content, but the excerpts show a text more polemical than its headings suggest.

I remember the summer I read Dr. Hinkle’s cure for nerves, sitting on the porch with iced tea, feeling seen in his warning about hurried bites. That gentleness—the idea that we can soothe ourselves by slowing down—came back years later while browsing old arguments about women’s education, where another voice insisted the body’s limits deserved respect. Sex in Education; or, A Fair Chance for Girls — Edition Insights carries that same quiet permission to trust one’s own pace.