Mushrooms, and edible fungi, among which we must include the yeasts
used by bakers and brewers, are saprophytes, or parasites, living
upon the products of rotting vegetation and decaying organic matter.
Nature uses these living vegetable organisms or plants for the purpose
of rapidly clearing such objectionable matter from the earth. The one
thing in their favour is that they are very rich in potassium salts and
in neuclein, which latter is said to be the product which is released
when our own tissues undergo disintegration and decay.
It is a popular belief that mushrooms are equal in nutritive value to
beefsteak, but this is a double-faced delusion. 10 lbs. of mushrooms
only equal 1 lb. of prime beef in proteid content, and the same
quantity of beef, containing as it does 80 per cent. of water, is far
surpassed in food value by about ½ lb. of pine kernels, almonds, or
ordinary cheese, because these latter are nearly free from water, and
are (an important point) toxin-free.
Singularly enough, yeast extracts are now largely used as beverages,
and as vegetable substitutes for meat extracts. They are often employed
by vegetarians for flavouring soups and entrées so as to give these a
“meaty” character. Yeast in its fresh state, as well as in the form of
extracts, exerts a marked curative action upon boils and abscesses,
being administered for this purpose in the form of yeast extract
beverages. It has been said that this treatment merely suppresses the
complaint, but as, in the author’s experience, people so treated seem
to be _permanently_ benefited, it is difficult to see how this can be
so.
The Yeast Cure--a Contrast.
Apropos of this statement the following letter appeared in the August
(1909) issue of the _Vegetarian Messenger_ signed by E. Lewis:--
“The letter by ‘T’ last month amused me very much, and brought to
my mind the following:--The wife of a friend of mine had been ailing
for some considerable time. I tried very hard to get her to give
up yeast-raised bread, but failed to do so, but she continued with
various mixtures for a few weeks longer, when, to my surprise, I
found she had left home to undergo a month’s special treatment. It
was some time before I could get to know what the treatment was. I
was astonished when her husband told me it consisted of one gill of
brewers’ yeast every morning before breakfast. I thought they had
gone mad, and feared the lady would be dead before the month end, but
I got another surprise when she arrived home in the pink of health,
and now, after eleven years’ hard work, she is still in splendid
health. Ask any old man and woman what the simple teaspoonful of
brewers’ yeast did to their children, and they will smile, shake
their heads and say, ‘make bonny lads and lasses of them.’ They ate
little or no fruit, and seldom vegetables, but plenty of plain bread,
oat cake, buttermilk, and ‘fatty cake.’”
This letter is inserted deliberately, for the idea of eating yeast or
drinking yeast extracts is repugnant to most advocates of an unfired
diet. It is chiefly the cooked food votaries who need the cleansing
action of yeast extracts to help them to get rid of the fermenting
devitalized pabulum which they take into their digestive organs. The
yeast extract exerts a cleansing action upon the contents of the
stomach and bowels, when filled with fermenting food waste, and thus
prevents the entry into the blood of the poisonous acids and toxins, to
get rid of which the white corpuscles of the body are called out.
This, of course, is the theory I have evolved as the result of
considerable experience in the use of yeast extracts in the cure
of boils, and I have often watched the white corpuscles steadily
decrease in the blood, and the general condition of the blood improve,
under their influence. I am aware that this is at direct variance
to the Wallace theory, that the yeast cell is identical with the
white corpuscles of the blood. It must be remembered that the late
Joseph Wallace did a colossal amount of work when he first began his
investigations upon the blood, and he acquired by such means an insight
into the state of the body which was remarkable. Investigation of the
fresh living blood is the only satisfactory way of diagnosing disease
in a thorough manner. One of the things that Mr. Joseph Wallace was
most emphatic about in his long-continued pioneer observations was
the identity of yeast and the white corpuscle. For many years I tried
to work on his lines and confirm this identity, but in vain, for the
more I investigated, the more I was convinced that yeast cell and
white corpuscle were absolutely distinct from each other, _although
they both did the same sort of work_,--the one as scavenger in the
vegetable kingdom, the other in the animal realm. The white blood
corpuscle reproduces itself in the animal way, and is often seen to
have amœboid movements. The yeast cell always reproduces itself by what
is called budding, and never appears to have any amœboid movements at
all. The following cutting from the _Herald of Health_ indicates the
“Wallaceite” attitude towards yeast extracts:--
“YEAST VERSUS BEEF-TEA. A complaint is being made in the _British
Medical Journal_ that ‘yeast extract is being largely used as a
cheapener in so-called beef teas.’ Students of _Physianthropy_
know that it is the yeast, and the products of yeast fermentation,
essential to all dead flesh, that are among the worst features
of flesh foods when eaten by the human subject. From the
disease-producing standpoint beef-tea is not so injurious as
yeast extract, yet yeast compounds, minus the beef-tea, are
largely patronised by those vegetarians who aim at getting as
near as possible the fleshpots of old without resorting to the
slaughter-house.”