This small book of 146 pages attempts nothing less than the elaboration of a concept which would provide a common causation for diabetes mellitus, dental caries, pyorrhea, peptic ulcer, obesity, colonic stasis, varicose veins, hemorrhoids, coronary artery disease, and Escherichia coli infections! Surgeon-Captain T. L. Cleave and Dr. G. D. Campbell have coined the designation "The Saccharine Disease" to describe the train of ills following upon the ingestion by man of "refined sugars," particularly cane or beet sugar, white flour, and—in rice eating countries—milled rice. The authors state (as an axiom) that primitive man for half a million years did not ingest refined carbohydrates, that for a brief 5,000 years he has had to cope with "refined carbohydrates" for which the human body was not adapted. This, the argument goes, leads to over-consumption. Dietary fat and protein are unchanged, the authors state; hence we do not overeat in these areas.
