generate in the system injurious compounds, some of which are extremely
poisonous; also that agreeable, happy emotions generate chemical
compounds of nutritious value, which stimulate the cells to manufacture
energy,” says Elmer Gates, the celebrated American scientist. Gates’
experiments show with minute exactitude just how it is that one’s
impalpable thoughts and emotions affect the battle of the blood, and
his work makes it easier for one to understand and appreciate the
portion of truth underlying such manifestations as the New Thought and
Christian Science movement. There can be no doubt that men and women
have practically remolded their bodies and changed the whole course of
their lives by using the impalpable yet potent force of their wills.
Sometimes these have been men and women seemingly without a vestige of
will; and yet, by comprehending the necessity for will, they took the
first steps towards attaining possession of it. Many very remarkable
stories could be told illustrating this point. Professor William
James, of Harvard, introduced one of the writers to a man who had been
afflicted with what had seemed a helpless case of mental trouble,
accompanied by physical ailments which were rapidly breaking him down;
and this man had affected a complete cure through his own unaided
efforts. He resolved that he could be cured, and cured he was.
We remember another instance; this time of a consumptive; a man who
was so far gone that all the physicians gave up his case as hopeless.
To all intents and purposes he was already a dead man, when there came
to him the light of a new hope. He had spent a great deal of money
in taking various “treatments” for tuberculosis, without deriving
permanent benefit, and then had come to believe utterly that in only
one way was there hope for the consumptive, namely, by living entirely
in the open air. When seemingly at his last gasp he arrived at a branch
of the Battle Creek Sanitarium at Boulder Creek, Colorado. In certain
photographs of this establishment you may see on a bare hillside that
stands back of the building, a narrow foot-path. This path has many
turnings and windings in its lower course, but towards the top of the
hill it aspires upward in a straight line. That trail was made by the
consumptive who had determined that he would live, crawling on his
hands and knees up the side of the hill. He positively refused to go
under a roof for any consideration whatsoever. His meals were brought
to him where he lay on the road side. At first he was so weak that
he could only go a few feet in the course of a day, and had to drag
himself along in a wavering line. But he began to improve—he went on
improving—until, finally, along the track on which he had crawled he
was running at top speed.
And a little while ago this man was one of the athletes who took part
in Professor Irving Fisher’s endurance competition between flesh-eating
athletes and vegetarians; and he proved to be best of them all! He
doubled the best record made by any Yale man in the deep-knee bending
contest. The most enduring Yale man was able to make the deep-knee
bend—which is a very severe test of physical endurance—twelve hundred
times. The consumptive who had cured himself went twenty-four hundred
times. He thinks nothing of a ten or fifteen mile ran before breakfast
in the morning.
It is important to apply these truths to the question of nutrition. It
is positively harmful to eat food when one is gloomy or low spirited or
worried or angry.
You may object to this that you cannot at will make an optimist of
yourself at meal times, and turn on a flow of good humor as you draw
water from a tap. But you can at least refrain from eating, and if you
do you will discover that the real hunger which is bound to develop is
a very strong emotion. It will drive away any ordinary attack of the
blues very quickly; and will call up pleasant anticipations of the joy
of food to assist the digestive processes.
IX
THE CASE AS TO MEAT
“I wish there was a science of nutrition worthy of the name,” writes
Bernard Shaw in a private letter. “The mass of special pleading on
behalf of meat eating on the one side and vegetarianism on the other,
which calls itself the science of metabolism to-day, seems to me to
be so corrupt as to be worthless.” The fact that Shaw himself is a
perfervid vegetarian lends additional significance to this statement.
Until quite recently the advocacy of either dietary has been based upon
considerations the opposite of physiologic. It has been the sentimental
aspects of the controversy—vegetable versus animal foods—which have
received most emphasis. The vegetarian supported his position on the
ethical ground that the eating of animal food, involving as it does
the taking of life, is wrong. On the other hand, the advocate of meat
eating based his arguments on the support given to it by common
custom, and a belief that a meat diet is that which supplies vigor
and manly force. As Dr. Woods Hutchinson, the most prominent of the
champions of meat eating, puts the case: “Vegetarianism is the diet of
the enslaved, stagnant, and conquered races, and a diet rich in meat
is that of the progressing, the dominant and the conquering strains.
The rise of any nation in civilization is invariably accompanied by an
increasing abundance in food supplies from all possible sources, both
vegetable and animal.”
At the same time, even Dr. Hutchinson admits that human life can be
maintained upon a vegetarian diet. “Nearly one-half of the human
race,” he writes, “has been compelled from sheer necessity to prove
that thesis in its actual experience; but we find absolutely no jot of
evidence in support of the contention that there is any advantage or
superiority in the vegetable diet as such—no more than that there is
any inherent superiority in a pure animal diet as such.... There is no
valid or necessary ground, so far as we have been able to discover,
for the exclusion of any known article of food, whether vegetable or
animal, from our diet list in health.”
Dr. Hutchinson’s views were printed in a popular magazine, and have
been very widely quoted, but he seems to have written without paying
attention to a number of scientific investigations which suggest
ample grounds for the radical reduction of the meat portion of the
ordinary diet. Among these are the experiments of Dr. Horter of New
York, Professors Mendel, Chittenden and Fisher of Yale, Dr. Fenton B.
Turck, and such world-known physiologists as Combe of Lausanne, and
Metchnikoff, Gautier, and Tissier of Paris. The elaborate researches
of Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek are dismissed by Woods Hutchinson,
because of the fact that Dr. Kellogg not only upholds the exclusion of
meat from the diet for purely scientific reasons, but also on ethical
grounds. The writers of this book, however, have discarded meat from
their dietary for scientific reasons, paying as little attention to
the ethical side of the question as Dr. Hutchinson could desire. They
will give in this place a brief summary of these scientific reasons.
THE BELGIAN EXPERIMENTS
We have already told of the experiments whereby Professor Fisher of
Yale proved the superior endurance of vegetarians over meat-eaters. It
happens that experiments of the same nature were carried on at about
the same time by two women scientists in Belgium, Dr. J. Ioteyko,
head of the laboratory at the University of Brussels, and Mlle. Varia
Kipiani. They studied the question of vegetarianism by several methods,
and became convinced that the vegetarian régime is a more rational one.
Their experiments were for the most part comparisons of strength and
endurance between men and women subsisting on the usual high proteid,
or flesh diet, and men and women who for longer or shorter periods had
abstained entirely from meat. The results tally remarkably with those
obtained by Professor Fisher. So far as strength was concerned, very
little difference was discovered between vegetarians and “carnivores.”
In endurance, on the other hand (and it is endurance that most
people need) a very remarkable difference was found, the vegetarians
surpassing the carnivores from 50 to 200%. The Brussels investigators
found also that the vegetarians recuperated from fatigue far more
quickly than the meat eaters, a discovery which was one of the most
remarkable features of the Yale experiments.
[Illustration: MR. SINCLAIR’S CHILDREN,
Brought up according to good health principles.]
In commenting upon the Belgian experiments, Professor Fisher writes:
DR. TURCK’S INVESTIGATIONS
It is possible that flesh-eating, as ordinarily practiced, is injurious
both because of excessive proteid and because meat, as such, contains
poisonous elements. It is well known that Liebig came to repudiate
the idea that the extractives of meat were nutritious, and that
investigation has shown them to be poisonous. Professor Fisher also
points out that Dr. F. B. Turck has found that dogs, mice, and rats
fed on meat extractives exhibit symptoms of poisoning and often die.
The poisonous effect is aggravated by intestinal bacteria, which find
in these extractives an excellent culture medium. Dr. Turck concludes:
“(1) It is clearly evident from these experiments, which correspond to
the investigations of others, that the injurious effects of meat are
due not so much to the muscle proteid, myosin, as to the extractives.
“(2) That the injurious effects of the extractives are increased
through the action of intestinal bacteria.”
Dr. Turck does not find any evidence that the extractives in small
quantities are injurious.
Dr. Turck therefore concludes that the “high liver” who uses much
flesh and also an excess of starch and sugar is a “bad risk” for life
insurance companies. He recommends, if meat is to be used, that the
extractives first be removed by special processes, which he explains.
These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne, Metchnikoff and
Tissier, of Paris, as well as Herter and others in the United States,
seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat
is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion. The “beef and
ale of England” are largely sources of weakness, not strength.
THE DANGER OF INFECTION FROM MEAT
It has always been conceded that by eating raw or underdone beef or
pork one may acquire tape worms; and that in eating raw or underdone
pork one runs the same risk of contracting that uncurable malady,
trichinosis. The danger from these sources, however, is comparatively
slight, since most people eat their meat well cooked; but in the view
of many modern scientists all meat eaters are open to a particular form
of germ infection which involves all kinds of meat, fish, flesh and
fowl, cooked as well as uncooked.
Everybody knows how readily meats of all kinds, and particularly
seafood, such as fish, oysters and clams, undergo putrefaction. The
processes of decay in fish and animals begin within an hour or two
after death, under the influence of putrefactive bacteria, which are
always present in the colon, or large intestine of animals, upon
the skin and in the atmosphere about them. Ordinary cooking does
not destroy them, for they are able to stand the ordinary cooking
temperature. Salt and smoked fish, and other meats have these germs
present in vast multitudes; and beef and game that is “hung” for a long
time in order to become “tender,” are so far advanced in decay before
they are brought to the table that every minute particle of them is
alive with these germs.
These facts are granted by all; but the physiologist who favors the
use of meat, says that unless excessive quantities are consumed, the
healthy person undergoes little risk. The argument is, that when the
germs are swallowed into the stomach they are there destroyed by the
action of the gastric juice, which is germicidal; but experiments have
lately proved that some of these germs escape destruction by the
gastric juice, and find their way to the colon, where they continue
to multiply in the mucous which covers the intestinal wall, and thus
maintain constant and active putrefactive processes in that part of the
body.
THE NUMBER OF GERMS WE EAT
Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek has lately made public the results of
a carefully conducted series of observations made by Dr. A. W.
Nelson, bacteriologist of the clinical laboratory of the Battle Creek
Sanitarium. Various specimens of meat were purchased in the ordinary
way in the market, wrapped in clean paper, and immediately taken to
the laboratory, where samples were removed for observation under the
microscope. The meat was then taken to the diet kitchen and well
cooked, after which cultures were again made.
The germs found in meat are classed as aerobes and anaerobes. The
aerobes are for the most part acid-forming germs, and comparatively
harmless. But the anaerobes are poison-forming germs, and are the
agents of putrefaction and of various diseases. They are to-day
considered as the most potent causes of many chronic maladies, and
especially of that most common of diseases, intestinal autointoxication.
Dr. Nelson found that in one specimen of raw beef, there were present
per moist gram of material 105,000 aerobes and 90,000 anaerobes. On
the outside of the beef after it had been fried, there were no germs
present, but on the inside of the fried beef, he found 3000 aerobes
and 2000 anaerobes per gram. With three other specimens of beef, that
were broiled, and boiled, and roasted, respectively, the results were
generally similar. Of all modes of cooking, roasting seems to have
least effect upon the bacteria, for in specimen No. 3, while there were
fewer bacteria than in specimen No. 1 before cooking, there were found
after it had been well roasted 150,000 aerobes and 160,000 anaerobes.
In fresh fish raw there were found 870,000 anaerobes per gram; in
sardines in oil, 14,000,000; while in codfish that had been soaked to
remove the salt, there were found 47,600,000. In another experiment
specimens of meat were secured such as were served on the dining
tables of one of the prominent city hotels, and taken at once to
the laboratory, where without delay bacterial cultures were made. A
specimen of sirloin steak was found to contain 378,000,000 anaerobes
per gram of moist material.
An interesting experiment which showed the increase of anaerobes or
poison-forming germs in dead flesh, was that made with two chickens of
equal size, one of which was drawn, and the other undrawn. Both were
placed under the same conditions in a room the temperature of which was
maintained at 70° Fahrenheit. Bacterial cultures were made at frequent
intervals, with results as given in the following table, the figures
showing the number of bacteria per gram of moist material.
No. 11 Drawn No. 12 Not Drawn
Aerobes Anaerobes Aerobes Anaerobes
3 hrs after death 4,500 5,650 5,000 6,500
2d day 8,500 9,000 10,000 12,000
3d day 17,000 16,000 60,000 20,000
It must be remembered that these chickens were freshly killed, and
that the anaerobes had no such opportunity to increase as in ordinary
market beefs.
Specimens of several other kinds of meat were purchased in the market,
and at once taken to the laboratory for study. Cultures were made
immediately on reaching the laboratory, and again after the meat had
been allowed to stand (covered) at room temperature for twenty hours.
The following table shows the results of the bacterial counts:
BACTERIA PER GRAM (MOIST)
_Immediately after purchase_
Specimen Aerobes Anaerobes
No. 13 Large sausage 560,000,000 420,000,000
No. 14 Small sausage 834,400,000 663,000,000
No. 15 Round steak 420,000,000 560,000,000
No. 16 Roast beef 252,000,000 560,000,000
No. 17 Smoked ham 47,320,000 43,120,000
No. 18 Hamburger steak 138,000,000 129,000,000
No. 19 Pork 635,600,000 126,040,000
No. 20 Porterhouse steak 31,920,000 30,800,000
_After being kept at room temperature for twenty hours._
Specimen Aerobes Anaerobes
No. 13 Large sausage 770,000,000 490,000,000
No. 14 Small sausage 770,000,000 640,400,000
No. 15 Round steak 750,000,000 840,000,000
No. 16 Roast beef 728,000,000 750,000,000
No. 17 Smoked ham 616,000,000 750,000,000
No. 18 Hamburger steak 784,000,000 700,000,000
No. 19 Pork 952,000,000 1,036,000,000
No. 20 Porterhouse steak 336,000,000 700,000,000
These experiments were made in the winter time, when, because of
the diminished amount of dust in the air, germs are less abundant.
Even in the winter time, however, certain meat products simply swarm
with germs. A specimen of raw liver examined in January was found to
contain 269,800,000 bacteria per ounce or gram. Raw sausage contained
48,280,000 bacteria per ounce or gram.
“A food which introduces these deadly organisms, the anaerobes, at the
rate of ten to twenty-five billions to the ounce, as do pork, beef and
sausage, must certainly be classed as unclean,” said Dr. Kellogg, in
summing up the report on his experiments. “When thousands are daily
indulging themselves in this dietary, what wonder that Bright’s
disease, enteritis, and other maladies due to germs and germ poisons
are so rife and so rapidly increasing? It is quite as important to keep
the inside of the body in a sweet, clean and wholesome condition as to
maintain a wholesome state of the external portion of the body.”
CANCER AND MEAT EATING
That nothing could seem more definite than the connection between
cancer and the practice of eating inferior meat, is the conclusion
reached by Dr. G. Cook Adams, who made a series of statistical studies
under the direction of the Chicago Board of Health. “There cannot be
the slightest doubt,” says this expert, “that the great increase in
cancer among the foreign born of Chicago over the prevalence of that
disease in their native countries, is due to the increased consumption
of animal foods, particularly those derived from diseased animals.”
This conclusion substantiates the original deductions made by Dr.
Adams from investigations carried on over a number of years in
Australia and London.
Dr. Woods Hutchinson stated that the rise of any nation in civilization
is invariably accompanied by an increased abundance in food supply; and
the rise of these foreign born in Chicago in civilization substantiates
Dr. Woods Hutchinson’s views. Receiving more wages than in their native
homes, where their diet was simple, they are enabled to indulge in a
meat diet denied them in Europe. The result is an increase in the death
rate from cancer between the years 1856 and 1866 of 680%, while from
1866 to 1905 the increase was 232%.
In 1905 cancer was responsible for one in every twenty-three deaths,
while in 1906 one death in every 21.8 was due to this horrible
disease. The Italians and the Chinese were the only two of all the
races represented in Chicago that do not show a far greater death rate
from cancer than in their own homes. The Italians keep up the use of
macaroni and spaghetti, while the Chinese adhere to their native
diet of rice. The nations showing the higher mortality consume large
quantities of canned, preserved, dried and pickled meats, sausages,
etc. It was also shown that the bulk of the fresh meat prepared at
the plant of a slaughtering company was stock condemned by official
inspectors, and this was the meat eaten by the poor.
INVESTIGATIONS IN NEW YORK
Dr. W. H. Guilfoy, of the New York Health Department, recently
published the results of investigations of the death rate among
foreigners in New York, and showed that cancer, heart disease and
chronic Bright’s disease have increased alarmingly in recent years,
and his statistics show that foreigners of flesh eating nations reveal
the highest rates for the three diseases mentioned, in marked contrast
with nations that consume from 50 to 400% less meat per capita. The
following list shows the exact comparison:
DEATHS PER 100,000 AMONG FLESH-EATING FOREIGNERS
Chronic
Heart Bright’s
Cancer. Disease. Disease.
Irish 166.6 381.2 410
German 151.9 231.5 212
English 140 207 209
Bohemian 246 237.4 255.7
DEATHS PER 100,000 AMONG NATIONALITIES NOTED FOR SMALL CONSUMPTION OF
MEAT
Chronic
Heart Bright’s
Cancer. Disease. Disease.
Austro-Hungarian 151.5 190.7 131.2
Swedish 84.7 69.7 99.6
Polish 130 170 121
Italian 63.7 161 107.7
Another argument which the opponents of meat-eating bring forward,
is based upon the fact that in eating flesh which contains blood,
we consume a great deal of waste material and poisons from the body
of the animal. When the blood flows from the heart outward to each
organ of the body it is a life-stream containing life-giving oxygen
and particles of fresh food material for the use of the tissues, but
when it flows back it is freighted with the elements of disease and
death, with poisonous substances which are the bi-products of organic
activity, and which, if retained in the body for any length of time
invariably cause disease. The rapidity with which the blood becomes
impure and poisonous may be easily noted by winding a string about the
finger, when the flesh will quickly turn a blue color. Animals die as
men and women die, with their ailments within them, and if you eat of
them you eat the products of their disease process. Tuberculosis is
known to be one of the maladies sometimes transmitted by the use of
flesh. Numerous epidemics of typhoid fever have been traced to the use
of oysters.
THE PROTEID ARGUMENT
It had generally been assumed by physiologists that the great virtue
of meat lay in the greater digestibility of its proteid matter. Recent
experiment investigations, however, have shown that the vegetable
proteids are as a rule not less digestible than those from animal
sources. The vegetable proteids are often packed away and enveloped in
cellulose or other material difficult of digestion, or are permeated
with fats, as in some of the nuts; but modern methods of preparing
grains for the market, and also the thorough cooking of them, remove
this difficulty.
The deficiency of ordinary vegetable dietaries in proteids has been a
ground for criticism by the opponents of this regimen. Since, however,
the researches of Chittenden, Mendel, Metchnikoff, Dr. Folin, and
others have shown us that we need much less proteid than the elder
school of physiologists so long supposed, this objection loses its
weight. And, furthermore, there are many nut foods which are even
richer in proteids than cooked meats. Cooked meat contains 25% of
proteids, while peanut butter contains 29%. The edible portion of
walnuts contains 27%, and the edible portion of pine nuts 35%.
To sum up the argument in this matter it is our belief that modern
science has demonstrated that excessive meat eating is dangerous,
because of its high proteid content and its liability to germ
infection; and, also, that we can obtain all the elements which meat
contains from other kinds of food which are not open to the objections
fairly to be made against the use of meat. Nevertheless, here, as
elsewhere, it may be said that “Fletcherism,”—complete mastication—is
again the key that unlocks the solution of this problem for many.
Thorough mastication leads to the use of less meat; it also gives
the germicidal saliva a chance to kill harmful germs; and it aids
the digestive organs very materially. Eat meat—says the rational
physiologist—if you feel you must, or if it is difficult to abandon its
use, but be careful to chew it well.
It is true, to be sure, that the digestion of proteid is accomplished
not by saliva, but by stomach juices, which would seem to be an
argument in favor of bolting meat (as the dog does), but the mere
maceration of the meat by the teeth, if nothing more, is a help to the
stomach in its work of digestion.
X
THE CASE AGAINST STIMULANTS
The dominant note of the discussion that for years has been waged in
scientific and medical circles as to the effect of alcohol on the
human constitution has been, to the puzzled layman at any rate, the
insistent, reiterated cry of the fundamental “mystery” of alcohol.
Alcohol is poison! cries one school. It is not anything of the sort,
being, as a matter of fact, a food! retorts the opposing school. Its
use in health or its administration to patients sick of any ailment
is hardly short of a crime, declares one leading physician. Tut!
tut! alcohol in moderation does no harm, and it is invaluable in the
treatment of many diseases! replies another. And so the arguments
proceeded.