Considering what an almost endless series of palatable and really
nourishing drinks can be produced from purely vegetable sources, it is
surely unnecessary to add beef tea to their number.
Yet a few words about beef tea may not be out of place, in order to
clear up any doubts that the public may have about it.
Beef tea imparts a sense of well-being and exhilaration, because it
stimulates the living tissues of the body to increased and unnatural
activity. This is naturally followed by a subsequent stage of fatigue.
Claude Bernard found that dogs fed on meat extractives and beef teas
died sooner than dogs having nothing at all but water. This arose from
the stimulation of these preparations.
Dr. Austin Flint of New York also showed that beef tea and urine gave
practically identical results on analysis. (Bulletin No. 28, revised
edition, Agricultural Dept., U.S.A.)
Urine is an extract of the tissues; the blood bathes the tissues and
washes out from them the poisonous waste; these are carried by the
blood-stream to the kidneys, by which they are thrown out of the body
as urine. An extract from the tissues, as in the case of meat extracts
or beef tea must thus possess the same characteristics as urine. Why,
therefore, drink it, or indeed any form of meat beverage?
The truth has been well expressed by Mr. Edgar Saxon in the following
passage (extracted from _The Christian Commonwealth_ of June 7, 1911):--
“It is obvious to all who have studied animal physiology that
conservative cookery applied to mutton or any meat is a fatal error.
Animals function in the same way as you and I. Their processes of
digestion, assimilation, and excretion are, especially in the case of
the higher mammals, almost identical with our own. When their life
ceases under the poleaxe or the knife their tissues are inevitably
saturated with waste matter on its way to excretion through the
kidneys, the lungs, and the skin. The comparatively pure arterial
blood escapes; the impure venous blood to a large extent remains,
and gives the colour and flavour to the gravy so highly prized by
meat-eating nations.
“So that the only way to get the proteid (or the body-building
element) out of meat, without at the same time getting all this
highly undesirable and distinctly poisonous broken-down waste matter
is to make the strongest possible ‘beef tea’ or ‘mutton tea,’ throw
it down the sink, and then eat the tasteless fibre that is left
behind. The latter is rich in proteid, the former is simply a harmful
and intrinsically repugnant stimulant. These are not the wild ravings
of a one-eyed vegetarian crank, but plain scientific facts which
cannot be refuted.
“It would seem to be, therefore, a fair working principle to lay
down if we say that the juices of vegetables should be conserved as
cleansing tonics, and the juices of meat eliminated as poisonous
stimulants.
“I hasten to add that I am not suggesting that people should live
on vegetable broth and meat fibre! The former is an excellent natural
medicine, but not a food in the sense of building tissue. The latter
is very nourishing, but insipid to a degree.”