that make them of the greatest value as an essential part of the
daily ration to nourish and energize the body, and to promote vital
activities in the maintenance of strength and healthful vigor. Fruit
is also an exceedingly important and efficient factor in restoring to
normal function tissues and organs that have become vitiated and are
functionating abnormally.
In spite of the widespread opinion to the contrary, it can be
positively asserted that fruit is of great service in the prevention as
well as in the treatment of rheumatism and gout. The prejudice against
the use of fruit in rheumatism originated with the idea that the acids
of fruit tend to acidify the body. Quite the reverse is true. The acids
of fruit, when taken into the body, are promptly converted into the
alkali carbonates, thus increasing the alkalinity of the blood, tending
greatly to benefit and cure the rheumatic condition, as well as to
lessen the general tendency to the formation of various calculi, or
stones, in the kidneys, the urinary bladder, and the gall bladder.
_Fruit and Obesity_
A fruit diet is of great value in obesity. An exclusive fruit diet may
be taken to the greatest possible advantage by the too corpulent who
wish to reduce in weight. For this purpose, fruit has the advantage
of satisfying the appetite while at the same time contributing very
little nutrition to the body. The free use of fruit is the method par
excellence for overcoming constipation. The eating of a half dozen
raw prunes before breakfast, or the taking of the juice of one or two
oranges, will in the majority of cases be all that is necessary to
maintain regular bowel activity.
For an overworked liver, the so-called "bilious" state, fruit is
the best of all means of relief. Auto-intoxication due to an excess
of poisons circulating in the blood, is treated most naturally and
efficiently by a fruit diet.
The natural diuretic properties of fruit are very well known. Nearly
all fruits stimulate the kidneys to greater activity, but watermelon is
of particular service in this respect.
Fruit and fruit juices greatly aid in successfully combating
alcoholism. The acid of the fruit juices help materially in quenching
the abnormal thirst.
There are but few individuals who would not be benefited by an
occasional exclusive fruit meal; and in many cases, this can be
maintained with greatest benefit for even several days. This is a very
popular method of treatment in Europe, particularly in Switzerland,
where the "grape cure" is utilized. Patients are placed upon a diet
of grapes alone for several weeks, consuming from seven to ten pounds
of grapes a day. Wonderful results are recorded at these resorts in
the treatment of rheumatism, gout, obesity, constipation, intestinal
catarrh, liver and kidney disorders, high blood pressure, arterial
sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, and many more physical
disabilities.
Certain fruits, especially tart apples, are of great value in the
treatment of diabetes, lessening the toxæmia of this condition, as
well as mitigating the abnormal thirst that is so frequent and often
distressing an accompaniment of this condition.
In the eating of fruit, some care must be exercised not to swallow
large seeds or fruit pits. While the danger of appendicitis from fruit
seeds' becoming lodged in the appendix has been greatly exaggerated,
yet fruit seeds have occasionally been found in the appendix, and
proved the exciting cause of the inflammation which followed. Cases are
on record of children who have swallowed considerable quantities of
grape seeds, suffering for months of colic, and being only relieved by
discharging quantities of these seeds during energetic purgation.
It has been said that fruit is "gold in the morning, silver at
noon, and lead at night." But fruit is golden all the time. This
wonderful gift, one of the greatest and best physical gifts of an
all-wise Providence, cannot be prized to highly; for it is considered
sufficiently valuable to endure for both time and eternity. Of the
first man and woman, it was said that they might eat of the fruit of
the trees of the garden; and it is said of the inhabitants of the
renewed earth, during eternity, that "they shall plant vineyards, and
eat the fruit of them."
Too much good food makes one auto-toxic. Too muck fun makes one
asinine. But keep sunny. A cheerful disposition, a happy
temperament, is the master key that unlocks more secrets, more
riches, more success, than anything else. A sunny temper is an
"aroma whose fragrance fills the air with an odor of Paradise."
Bury everything that makes you unhappy and discordant, everything
that cramps your freedom and worries you. Bury it before it buries
you. Adopt the sundial's motto, "I record none but hours of
sunshine."--_Thomason._
[Illustration]
TEN REASONS FOR A FLESHLESS DIET
_by
A. W. TRUMAN, A.B., M.D._
Superintendent of Loma Linda Sanitarium, Loma
Linda, California; Professor of Neurology, Loma
Linda College
_1. The Strength Delusion_
Every movement we make, every thought we think, and every heart throb,
involves waste and the expenditure of energy. There is a constant
breaking down of our tissues; and the food ingested is the source of
the material for repair. By its oxidation, digestion, and assimilation,
energy is liberated for life's varied activities.
The primary object of taking food is, in the words of the wise man,
"for strength, and not for drunkenness." Any one who makes the pleasure
of eating the chief requisite will some day find, by a disordered
stomach and a clogged liver, that eating has ceased to be a pleasure.
The idea has long been current that superior qualities of body and
mind come from eating flesh food; but the verdict of science, after
long observation and careful investigation and various experiments, is
rapidly reversing this opinion.
The experiments of Prof. Russell H. Chittenden, president of the
American Physiological Society, and director of the Sheffield
Scientific School at Yale, are convincing. His elaborate
investigations, extending over long periods of time, prove that
persons of widely varying habits of life, temperament, occupation, and
constitution, can maintain and even heighten their mental and physical
vigor while subsisting upon a diet containing but one half the usual
amount of protein, and in which the flesh is reduced to a minimum or is
entirely absent.
The subjects of the first experiment were three physicians, three
professors, and a clerk,--men of sedentary and chiefly of mental
occupation. For a period of six months, they were required to reduce
the amount of meat and other protein food about one half. "Their
weight remained stationary; but they improved in general health, and
experienced a quite remarkable increase of mental clearness and energy."
_Chittenden's Researches_
For his next experiment, Professor Chittenden used a detachment of
twenty soldiers from the hospital corps of the United States army,
"representing a great variety of types of different ages, nationality,
temperament, and degrees of intelligence." For a period of six months,
these men lived upon a ration in which the proteid was reduced to
one third the usual amount, and the flesh to five sixths of an ounce
daily. There was a slight gain in weight, "the general health was well
maintained, and with suggestions of improvement that are frequently
so marked as to challenge attention." "Most conspicuous, however,"
remarks Professor Chittenden, "was the effect observed on the muscular
strength of the various subjects.... Without exception, we note a
phenomenal gain in strength which demands explanation." There was an
average gain in strength for each subject of about fifty per cent.
For the third experiment, Professor Chittenden secured as subjects a
group of eight leading athletes of Yale, all in training trim. For
five months, they subsisted upon a diet comprising from one half to
one third the quantity of protein food they had been in the habit of
eating. "Gymnasium tests showed in every man a truly remarkable gain in
strength and endurance."
_Fisher's Experiments_
Dr. Irving Fisher, professor of political economy of Yale University,
concluded a series of experiments testing the endurance of forty-nine
persons, about thirty of the number being flesh abstainers. The first
endurance test was that of "holding the arms horizontally." The flesh
eaters averaged ten minutes. The flesh abstainers averaged forty-nine
minutes. The longest time for a flesh eater was twenty-two minutes.
The maximum time for a flesh abstainer was two hundred minutes. The
second endurance test was that of "deep knee bending." The flesh eaters
averaged three hundred eighty-three times, the flesh abstainers eight
hundred thirty-three times. Professor Fisher explains the results on
the basis that "flesh foods contain in themselves fatigue poisons of
various kinds, which naturally aggravate the action of the fatigue
poisons produced in the body."
Dr. J. Ioteyko, head of the laboratory at the University of
Brussels, compared the endurance of seventeen vegetarians with that
of twenty-five carnivores, students of the University of Brussels.
"Comparing the two sets of subjects on the basis of mechanical work, it
is found that the vegetarians surpassed the carnivores on the average
by fifty-three per cent."
Professor Fisher remarks, "These investigations, with those of Combe
of Lausanne, Metchnikoff, and Tisier 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."
_Tests in Germany_
Professor Rubner, of Berlin, "one of the world's foremost students of
hygiene," read a paper before the recent International Congress of
Hygiene and Demography on the "Nutrition of the People," in which he
said: "It is a fact that the diet of the well-to-do is not in itself
physiologically justified; it is not even healthful; for on account of
the false notions of the strengthening effect of meat, too much meat is
used by young and old, and this is harmful."
In the long distance races in Germany, the flesh abstainers have
invariably been easy victors. Upon this point, Professor Von Norden,
in his monumental work on "Metabolism and Practical Medicine," says:
"In Germany at least, in these competitive races, the vegetarian is
ahead of the meat eater. The non-vegetarian cannot compete with the
vegetarian in the matter of endurance in these long distance walks. The
vegetarian is ahead in the matter of rapid pedestrian feats."
A few years ago, a well-known athlete, Dr. Deighton, walked from the
southernmost point of England to the northernmost point of Scotland,
a distance of almost a thousand miles, in twenty-four days and four
hours. His chief subsistence en route was a much advertised meat juice.
Mr. George Allen, who for a number of years had subsisted upon a strict
non-flesh diet, undertook the same task, which he accomplished in a
little less than seventeen days, that is, in seven days less time.
As in the heat engine, energy for light, heat, or power does not come
from burning copper, lead, or iron filings, but from carbonaceous
materials, as coal, coke, fuel oils, etc., so in the human body, energy
for warmth and muscular effort comes not from oxidizing the metal
repair foods, the proteins, but from those foods which are rich in
carbon, the starches and the sugars, called the carbohydrates.
_2. Flesh Food a Stimulant_
Whence then come these "illusions," these "false notions of the
strengthening effect of meat"? They come from the fact that foods of
this class are stimulating. A stimulant is a counterfeit for strength.
It is a physical deceiver. It makes a person believe he is strong
because he "feels" strong, when it is not true at all. That which is
interpreted as strength is only nervous excitement. A stimulant never
builds up; it only stirs up. While pretending to contribute energy, it
actually robs the body of strength. The resort to stimulants to whip
up the flagging energies of the body is an effort to trick nature in
playing the game of life. It is like borrowing money. Some day the
principal must be returned with interest to a relentless creditor.
Beef tea contains less than one per cent nourishment, but one can get
the same kind of exhilaration from a cup of beef tea as from a cup of
brandy. This is due to the drug effect of the beef tea, which is a
solution of the waste products, the poisonous extractives, of the meat.
Every animal organism is constantly throwing off these extractives,
such as urea, uric acid, creatinine, etc. The kidneys have no other
function than the removal of poisons. If an animal is deprived of the
use of its kidneys, it will die of self-poisoning in a few days. When
an animal is slaughtered and the blood ceases to circulate, this stream
of urinary products on its way to the kidneys for excretion stops in
the tissues, and is devoured by the consumer with the flesh.
Friedenwald and Ruhrah, in their book "Diet in Health and Disease,"
say: "The extractives are probably of no value either as a source of
energy or in the formation of tissues. They act as stimulants and
appetizers, and it has been stated that the craving some individuals
have for meat is in reality a desire for the extractives."
Armand Gautier, the eminent French dietitian, says on this point, "Like
the opium smoker, the individual who accustoms himself to meat, feels
that he misses it when he does not take the usual excess."
If the poisonous waste products be removed from meat, it is insipid,
and is no more stimulating than the same amount of bread.
_3. Ptomaine Poisoning_
The seeds of death and decay are in every animal organism; and just
as soon as the heart ceases to throb, and the arteries cease to
pulsate, and the spark of life leaves the animal, decomposition begins.
These putrefactive changes often result in the formation of violent
poisons, called ptomaines. The word "ptomaine" comes from a Greek word
meaning _carcass_, or _cadaver_; and the poisons are variously called
putrefactive alkaloid, animal alkaloid, etc. The presence of fatal
amounts of these poisons in flesh may not be betrayed by any change in
appearance, odor, or taste. The common practice of keeping meat until
it becomes tender, or "ripens," is simply waiting for decomposition
to advance until the meat fiber is softened by the process of decay.
Canned meats are especially liable to contain the poisonous ptomaine.
_4. Unbalances the Diet_
It is of primary importance that one should guard against consuming
excessive quantities of any kind of food material, but there is a
difference. Should we take an excess of starches or sugars, provision
has been made for storing a certain amount in the form of fat, or as
glycogen in the liver and the muscles; but no provision is found for
storing an excess of protein. An excess of this food element is of
particular injury to the body. The extensive experiments of Professors
Chittenden, Fisher, and other scientific workers, have shown that
for efficient nutrition, we require that only one tenth of the daily
intake of food should be of the structure-building, tissue-repairing
protein. In the laboratory of nature, the food elements have been so
combined by the plants, that the protein element is very low; and thus
a diet selected from the natural products of the earth is not only free
from uric acid and other waste products, but is already balanced. The
addition of flesh food--which does not contain any starch--to the menu,
at once raises the protein constituent too high.
_5. Bright's Disease and High Blood Pressure_
The waste products in the blood arising from excess of protein are a
leading cause of Bright's disease, auto-intoxication, arteriosclerosis,
and high blood pressure. These maladies are often associated in the
same individual, and frequently have a common origin. Sir William
Osler, in his "Principle and Practice of Medicine," writes: "I am more
and more impressed with the part played by overeating in inducing
arteriosclerosis." "There are many cases in which there is no other
factor." Dr. Alexander Haig, of London, states that uric acid makes the
blood "collaemic" or viscous, and then the heart has difficulty to pump
it through the capillaries. Hence the blood pressure increases. Isaac
Ott, in his textbook on physiology, says on this point, "Burton-Opitz
has shown that hunger reduces viscosity, and meat diet raises it to a
great height, whilst carbohydrates and fat diet give average values to
it."
In the colon, flesh foods rapidly undergo decomposition, giving rise
to numerous poisons, which are absorbed into the blood, and are toxic
to the nervous system, and cast an additional burden upon the liver
and the kidneys. These are a sort of dietetic clinkers, which throw
nature's delicate machinery out of adjustment, and produce various
symptoms of auto-intoxication. Bouchard found that the fecal and
urinary excrement of carnivorous animals is twice as poisonous when
injected into rabbits as that from a herbivorous animal. The former
also emits a strong odor, and the fecal discharges are offensively
repulsive. Dr. Haig, before quoted, also asserts that "Bright's disease
is the result of our meat-eating and tea-drinking habits; and as these
habits are common, so also is the disease."
_6. Tuberculosis, Ulcer, Cancer, and Appendicitis_
While it is true that tuberculosis is more frequently contracted
through the use of tuberculous milk than from tuberculous meat, the
latter source of infection cannot be ignored. Numerous cases of
tuberculosis have been reported where the infection could be directly
traced to the flesh of tuberculous animals.
Dr. E. C. Shroeder, of the Bureau of Animal Industry of the United
States Department of Agriculture, says: "That ten per cent of the dairy
cattle in the United States are affected with tuberculosis impresses me
as a very conservative estimate. In New York State, about thirty-three
per cent of all cattle tested were found to be tuberculous." Dr. Julius
Rosenberg, of New York City, writes: "Cattle tuberculosis is rapidly
increasing. There is scarcely a dairy herd without a number of infected
animals. It is an ever growing menace. The health department of Boston
estimates the percentage of tuberculous animals producing the city's
milk supply to be from twenty to twenty-five per cent. Conservative
estimate places the number of cows dying yearly from tuberculosis at
one million, were they permitted to die a natural death; but they are
killed before drawing the last gasp, and served as prime beef." In
one year in the United States, the entire carcasses of thirty-five
thousand one hundred three cattle were condemned because of generalized
tuberculosis. In the same year, a portion of the carcass of ninety-nine
thousand seven hundred thirty-nine more were rejected because of local
tuberculosis.
Professor Ravenal, of the University of Wisconsin, says that of the
thirty-five million hogs killed for food annually in the United States,
seven million are found to be infected with tuberculosis. Some one has
said that meat would sell for a dollar a pound if all the diseased meat
were eliminated.
Ulcer of the stomach is one of our most common diseases. Leading
surgeons have shown that it is ten times as frequent as was formerly
supposed. It is clearly of dietetic origin, and is usually associated
with too high consumption of protein, and especially of meat. Starches,
sugars, and fats are not digested in the stomach, and require no acid.
Proteins, on the other hand, are digested within the stomach, and
require for their digestion a high percentage of hydrochloric acid. The
excessive production of acid within the stomach, stimulated by too much
protein, is probably the chief cause of the formation of ulcers. In
1908, Dr. Fenton B. Turck, of Chicago, said before the American Medical
Association: "Ulcer of the stomach is not found in those countries
where the inhabitants eat rice. It is evidently a meat eater's
disease. The zone of ulcer is in the meat eater's zone."
Cancer is a disease of modern civilization. It is the one major
unsolved problem in the field of medical science to-day. From the
_Journal of the American Medical Association_ of June 14, 1913,
we quote: "That cancer has increased in recent years is perhaps a
commonplace, but the extent of the increase is not generally realized.
Under existing conditions, one in seven women and one in eleven men
die of cancer." In the _Medical Record_, issue of May 15, 1915, Dr.
W. G. Mayo is quoted as saying: "Cancer of the stomach forms nearly
one third of all cancers of the human body.... Is it not possible that
there is something in the habits of civilized man, in the cooking or
other preparation of his food, which acts to produce the precancerous
condition?... Within the last one hundred years, four times as much
meat is taken as before that time. If flesh foods are not fully broken
up, decomposition results, and active poisons are thrown into an organ
not intended for their reception, and which has not had time to adapt
itself to the new function."
Dr. L. Duncan Bulkley, senior physician to the New York Skin and Cancer
Hospital, says on this point, "Analyzing the various data obtained, we
find that cancer has increased in proportion to the consumption of four
articles, meat, coffee, tea, and alcohol."
One is hardly up to date who does not present an abdominal scar caused
by an offending appendix. At the fifteenth International Congress
of Hygiene and Demography held in Washington, D. C., Dr. Henning
contributed a paper dealing with "statistics upon the increase of
appendicitis and its causes." He said: "A meat diet is of great
influence in the development of appendicitis. This diet leads to
constipation. In most instances, too long retention of intestinal
contents in the cæcum causes slight inflammation in that region,
the results of which are to weaken the appendix, and to render it
nonresistant against later infection." When Dr. Lorenz, the celebrated
Vienna surgeon, was in the United States, he called attention to the
relatively greater prevalence of appendicitis in this country as
compared with Europe, and attributed it to the greater consumption
of cold storage meats here, which he said rendered Americans unduly
septic, and especially prone to infection of the appendix. Nicholas
Senn was told by the hospital surgeons in Africa that they had never
seen a case of appendicitis in a vegetable-eating African.
_7. Trichinæ and Tapeworms_
"A story is told of two of the most noted of Germans,--Bismarck,
the statesman, and Virchow, the scientist. The latter had severely
criticized the former in his capacity as chancellor, and was challenged
to fight a duel. The man of science was found by Bismarck's seconds
in his laboratory, hard at work at experiments which had for their
object the discovery of a means of destroying trichinæ, then making
ravages among animals in Germany. 'Ah,' said the doctor, 'a challenge
from Prince Bismarck, eh? Well, well, as I am the challenged party,
I suppose I have the choice of weapons. Here they are.' He held up
two large sausages, which appeared to be exactly alike. 'One of these
sausages,' he said, 'is filled with trichinæ. It is deadly. The other
is perfectly wholesome. Externally, they can't be told apart. Let his
excellency do me the honor to choose whichever of these he wishes and
eat it, and I will eat the other.' No duel was fought, and no one
accused Virchow of cowardice."
The trichina is a small, wormlike parasite found in the flesh of
"measly pork," which, when eaten, burrows in the muscles of the human,
producing an extremely painful and often fatal affection. About two
per cent of hogs, it is estimated, harbor this parasite.
Practically speaking, the human being becomes the host of a tapeworm
only by eating underdone flesh containing the larvæ of the parasite.
(Thoroughly boiled or fried tapeworm is a harmless diet.) The ox, the
hog, and the fish frequently harbor the larvæ of tapeworms.
_8. Poor Economy_