FIRE AND FOOD
+Part II.+
There is a big school in England to-day, headed by certain medical
men of ability and renown, who became aware many years ago of the
deleterious effects of cooking certain foods.
I cannot enter now into an analysis of all their views. I shall,
however, select from among their ranks the man whom I believe to be
at once the most able, the most courageous, and the most independent
of them all,--I refer to the eminent specialist who until lately
was Senior Physician to the Glasgow Hospital for Women, and is now
Superintendent of Cancer Research, Battersea Hospital, Robert Bell,
M.D., F.R.F.P.S., etc.
Although Dr. Bell’s investigations appear to have led him to observe
particularly the relationship of diet to the etiology of cancer in the
human body, I do not think that this need necessarily prevent us from
attempting a general application of his principles to our daily life;
more especially as he reiterates again and again the great importance
of keeping the body healthy, and not merely safeguarding it against
positive disease.
Dr. Bell recognises a great vitalising agent in human life[97] which he
calls _nuclein_. He points out that “the most powerful antiseptic in
the pharmacopœia will not prevent bacteria establishing themselves in
a wound, and it is only the independent action of the vital energy of
the cellular tissue which prevents infection and promotes healing....
Now this healthy vitality can only be assured by supplying the cellular
tissues freely with pabulum, derived from vital elements contained in
the products of the vegetable kingdom, to which may be added, milk,
eggs and cheese.”[98]
He warns us that “the animal organism is in constant conflict with
disease, which, however ... is impotent ... so long as the cells which
make up the human microcosm are fortified and nourished by vivifying
material.”[99]
Dr. Bell then proceeds: “Chemically it [the vitalising agent] is
nuclein, and is identical with that substance which is contained in
every fruit, vegetable, seed and nut in their ripe condition, and
therefore are adapted for the food of man. Cook these, however, and
this vital and vivifying constituent ... is nullified.”[100]
Elsewhere Dr. Bell refers to “the vital principle of ripe vegetables
and fruits”[101] and “a vital quality in vegetables and fruit which is
destroyed by heat.”[102] We shall see that the existence of this “vital
principle” or “vital quality” is abundantly demonstrated by the most
recent research.
I am unfortunately unable in the small compass of this work to deal
adequately with Dr. Bell’s able treatment of this subject; I can but
recommend the reader to refer to his original treatises; and by way
of summing up his case I cannot do better than quote verbatim a few
convenient digests of his views which I have been able to find in his
most recent works.
While making certain suggestions about diet, the learned Doctor writes
as follows:--
“It is essential that the food should, to a large extent, consist
of _uncooked_ fruits, nuts and vegetables, and that butcher meat be
completely abstained from. I do not insist that no cooked vegetables
or fruit be partaken of, but these should never predominate, as it
is essential that the vital principle and unaltered condition of the
chlorophyl be retained in their natural state, and that the vegetable
salts contained in all vegetable matter remain as Nature has provided
them. Therefore vegetables should never be _boiled_ but cooked by
steam, and should never be _overcooked_. Cooking has the effect of
reducing, not only the nutritive value of these articles, but renders
them more indigestible, and induces the habit of neglecting _complete_
mastication, which is a most important factor in the process of
digestion. Moreover, the _living principle_, and the natural salts
of fruits and vegetables, are indispensable to the healthy vigour of
the cells of our body, and, without which it is impossible for them
to retain or regain their physiological activity. Milk, eggs, either
switched up with milk or in milk puddings, or very lightly cooked, also
cheese, are excellent adjuncts, but never to the exclusion in any way
of salads, fruit and nuts. Even unfired bread is to be preferred.”[103]
I do not quite follow Dr. Bell in his sweeping condemnation of butcher
meat; I incline more to the moderate view of the Catholic Church,
that butcher meat should be avoided only at frequent intervals, and
sometimes for long periods at a stretch; but I entirely agree with his
strictures against cooking (some of which we shall see confirmed in a
somewhat startling manner in what follows), and I also believe that his
contention that most diseases, cancer and rheumatism particularly, are
nutriment diseases, whose best prophylactic is a sane diet, is true and
has been demonstrated beyond doubt.[104]
A few more very helpful passages from Dr. Bell’s books will assist in
emphasising this question of the cooking of food.
In _Health at its Best versus Cancer_, Dr. Bell says: “We will
ascertain, if we consider the subject carefully, that the nutritive
properties of vegetables and fruits are materially modified in the
process of cooking. Not only is their value as an article of diet
reduced, but their digestibility also. Besides these, in no small
degree, their nourishing constituents are removed, and what is of equal
moment, their _therapeutic_[105] activity is thereby diminished.
“Let us consider what effect boiling produces upon vegetables or any
other of the various articles included in our dietary.
“Does the albumen present remain in its natural condition with its
latent vital energy still unimpaired?--Certainly not; its essential
characteristics are entirely destroyed, its composition altered and
its nutritive value reduced _pro rata_. Then it must be conceded the
therapeutic and also the sustaining value of the vegetable or fruit is
seriously reduced by the removal of the soluble salts which are carried
away in solution during the process of cooking.”[106]
Here Dr. Bell proceeds to describe a simple experiment by means of
which his contention is demonstrated.[107]
“Does it not follow, then,” Dr. Bell continues, “that cooking not only
diminishes the food value of vegetables and fruit, but also destroys
those qualities which are evidently essential as factors in the
maintenance of healthy cell metabolism? I am certain it does.”[108]
Dr. Bell then argues that the same effect is produced on meat by
cooking,[109] and concludes by pointing out that the only articles of
food which do not appear to be deteriorated by cooking are eggs and
milk, and those which contain a large amount of farinaceous material,
such as the cereals, potatoes, etc.[110]
In dealing with the whole of this subject it should, moreover, be
borne in mind that while there can be no question about the positive
and recognised dangerous diseases which are induced by dietetic
errors, there are also a host of obscure, unclassified and frequently
undiagnosable disorders and indispositions resulting from the mistakes
which we make with our food, which though they may not be fatal,
lower vitality, produce an atonic condition in which, as I have shown
elsewhere, sexual potency in particular is very much reduced, if not
suspended, and generally lessen the capacity for enjoying life.[111]
It seems to me these results of dietetic errors are almost worse
than the former, because, being obscure, they are not traced to any
particular cause and cling to the sufferer until he is mercifully
released from an existence he has ceased to regard as a pleasure.
When it is remembered that the determination of a type as also that of
individual characteristics, is now believed to be dependent largely
upon the secretion of certain internal glands of the human body, the
importance of the chemical constitution of our diet in regard to
health and immunity from disease would not appear to require much
demonstration; and yet so powerful has been the influence of a creed
that despises the body and its needs, and unduly exalts the soul, that
the tendency has been, particularly in countries defiled and blighted
by Puritanism, to regard the whole question of food as a painful
subject, as something gross and material, to pay too much attention to
which is tantamount to pagan worldliness.
I have shown elsewhere[112] the havoc the Puritans made of the
Englishman’s food and drink in the seventeenth century; but this is
only one of the many heavy prices we have had to pay for our negative
creed in this country. A still more insidious and yet less apparent
consequence, is the prejudice which now seems to reign everywhere in
modern European communities in regard to enjoying the pleasures of the
body. And among these pleasures, of course, eating and drinking come
in for their share of censure. What the healthy palate approves of and
enjoys, you would have thought, would be likely to prove beneficial to
the body; and this instinctive critic of our means of nourishment, far
from being flouted, ought to have been the first authority to receive
not only respect but also obedience. This fact notwithstanding, it is
only too true that, in many wide circles to-day, it is believed that
provided that a meal is filling--that is to say, provided that it gives
a feeling of repletion--it is regarded as sufficient and adequate.
To demand any more is to be stared at with grieved astonishment by
bilious and pious eyes, blurred and dulled by years of indigestion,
constipation, and every other modern means of mortifying the flesh.
This may appear to many readers an exaggeration. Maybe it is a little
exaggerated in regard to the present world. But unfortunately the
present world is the outcome of the nineteenth century. And even if it
wished to live more rationally and in a less pious fashion now, it has
neither the means, the traditions, nor the health to do so. Throughout
the nineteenth century my remarks would have applied, and it was during
this century, particularly, that the greatest errors were made in
regard to our drink and our feeding generally--errors for which we are
only now beginning to realise the enormous price we have paid.
But cooking an article of food once is bad enough--although in my
opinion in the case of certain foods not wholly to be deprecated or
avoided[113]--there is, however, absolutely nothing to be said for
the habit, almost universal in Europe and all countries like Europe
to-day, of cooking foodstuffs twice and sometimes three times. This
process simply reduces the whole product, whatever it may be--meat,
vegetable or cereal--to so much waste matter, frequently poisonous,
and always injurious; and yet so deeply rooted is the belief that
food only requires to be filling, and so great is the ignorance which
Protestantism particularly of the Puritan breed, has cultivated in
regard to all questions of the body, that millions of the working and
poorer middle classes of Europe are now allowed to perpetrate this
dietetic crime, year in, year out, and no one says them nay.
I shall now attempt to show how, in the light of the most recent
research, and in regard only to certain highly important but relatively
very minute constituents of our food, cooking may not only be bad,
but at times positively fatal. But I should like to remind the reader,
before I start, that while all that follows does not in any way affect
the general arguments of Dr. Bell, which in the main I believe to be
acceptable, it affords an extraordinary confirmation of the importance
he attaches to that element in meat, vegetables and fruit, which he
calls roughly “the vital principle.”
It is not generally known that the body requires not only nourishment
in bulk, that is to say, ounce for ounce compensation for solid
substances and liquids expended and otherwise lost every twenty-four
hours, but that it also needs to absorb certain imponderables,
consisting of minute but vastly important constituents of plants or
animal matter, which make the nourishment it absorbs profitable and
useful. The importance of these constituents is enhanced by the fact
that the animal body is apparently incapable of synthesising them
itself, and therefore depends entirely upon an external source for its
supply.
The absence of these minute but important constituents from diet may,
according to their nature, either arrest growth or expose the human
subject from which they are absent to disease and death. It is now
no longer a matter of conjecture, but of positive proof, that while
a man or an animal may be feeding on a diet which appears exactly
to compensate for losses in bodily constituents, that man or animal
may actually have ceased growing, may be gradually dying, or may be
threatened with the most foul diseases if these imponderabilia are
absent from its diet.
In the words of the distinguished Committee responsible for the _Report
on the Present State of Knowledge concerning Accessory Food Factors
(Vitamines)_:[114] “For many years past it has been customary to
estimate the nutritive requirements of the animal organism in terms of
what have been for long regarded as the four fundamental food units,
namely protein, carbohydrate, fat, and inorganic material, and to
underestimate, if not entirely neglect, the possible significance of
other less clearly defined dietary constituents.”[115]
Thus it was customary to measure the amount of food required by a
human being or an animal in calories; and if there appeared to be a
sufficiency of calories in a diet, it was deemed adequate not only for
keeping the body alive, but also for keeping it healthy and vigorous.
We were solemnly assured, for instance, by the glib scientist, that
since margarine was equivalent in calories to butter, therefore, since
things which are equal to the same thing are equal to one another,
margarine must equal butter. Our stomachs, our palates, our digestions,
in fact a whole chorus of our tissues, protested against this bland
scientific falsehood. But the authority of Science is such nowadays
that a poor human stomach stands but a small chance against it.
It is gratifying to be able to record the fact, however, that in the
end the stomach proved right--that between the common margarine, made
from vegetable oil, and butter there is a difference, and a difference
so great that whereas a man can survive on a diet in which his fat
consists of butter, _he could not survive, and a child could not even
grow_, on a diet in which the fat constituent consisted of vegetable
margarine.
The difference between margarine, as generally sold to-day, and butter
is that in the latter a certain very essential property is present,
which is absent from the former. That essential property C. Funk has
called “Vitamine.”
To quote again the report above mentioned, the Committee writes: “What
can be said precisely at present is that if minute amounts of certain
constituents are removed from natural foods, such foods wholly fail to
support nutrition, and grave symptoms of disease may supervene.”[116]
These vitamines, or essential accessory food factors, are of two
kinds:--
1. Growth-promoting.
2. Disease-preventing.
But even the vitamines of the first group may also be regarded, in a
sense, as prophylactic, seeing that their absence from food not only
arrests growth, but also exposes the body to bacterial infection of
every kind. Thus, to the shortage of animal fats during the winter of
1918-1919, was undoubtedly due the rigorous influenza epidemic which
carried away such large numbers of people in Europe. While, as I shall
show later, the absence of one class of vitamines of this group may
directly cause one or two specific diseases.
The diseases known to be caused by the absence of the
disease-preventing vitamines from diet are scurvy, beri-beri and
rickets in infants.
Group one, or the growth-promoting vitamines, have been termed by
Collum and Davis: “Fat-soluble A,” and “Water-soluble B.”[117]
“Practically all investigators in this field of research,” says
the Committee I am quoting, “have now admitted their belief in
the indispensability of the two accessory factors, ‘fat-soluble
A’ and ‘water-soluble B’ for growth and nutrition of the animal
organism.”[118] When Fat-soluble A is absent from a diet, this
deficiency leads to--
(_a_) Gradual cessation of growth.
(_b_) The breaking down of resistance to bacterial infections of all
kinds, particularly those affecting the lungs.
(_c_) Rickets in infants.
(_d_) A general lack of tone, debility, depression, skin troubles,
conjunctivitis.
When water-soluble B is absent from a diet, this deficiency leads to--
(_a_) Immediate cessation of growth.
(_b_) Rapid decline, which may terminate fatally.
(_c_) Beri-beri.
(_d_) A general lack of tone, debility, nervous trouble, depression.
As will be seen from (_d_) in each list--and this fact is most
important--a number of vague disorders, none of them amounting actually
to a dangerous disease, though sufficiently debilitating to reduce
vitality, spirit and sexual potency, may arise from an insufficiency of
either vitamine from the diet, this insufficiency not amounting to a
dangerous deficiency.
Fat-soluble A is in all probability synthesised by the plant,[119]
and is found in green leaves and the embryos of seeds. It was first
detected in butter and egg-yolk, which are still believed to be the
richest sources of it.[120] It is also present in oils and fats
_derived from the animal kingdom_, such as cod-liver oil, shark-liver
oil, beef fat, the fat of kidneys, heart muscle and liver tissues,
herring oil, cod oil, salmon oil and whale oil.[121]
Water-soluble B is widespread. It has been detected in almost all
the natural foods. Its principal sources proved to be the seeds of
plants and eggs of birds. But since the largest deposit of it lies
in the embryo, or germ, and the bran of grain, the same symptoms may
be induced in the human being by a diet of grain deprived, through
milling, of the embryo and the bran, as through a total absence of
water-soluble B from the diet.[122]
It is plentiful in rice germ, wheat germ (hence the value of whole-meal
bread), linseed, yeast, egg-yolk, and ox-liver. It is less plentiful in
wheat bran, fresh peas, fresh carrots, dried carrots, meat muscle, milk
and potatoes.[123]
We now come to the _anti-scorbutic vitamine_, which, from the point of
view of this treatise, I believe to be very much more important than
any of the others.
Scurvy in itself is such a distressing disease, so alarming, revolting
and complex in its symptoms, that it has been for thousands of
years[124] the nightmare of the mariner, the explorer and all those
who, for some reason or other, may have been compelled to live on a
restricted diet either totally lacking the anti-scorbutic vitamine or
else insufficiently supplied with it.
It is a disease attended by increasing weakness, gastro-intestinal
disturbances of all kinds, great pallor, inflammation and necrosis of
the gums, until they project as a soft or mushy and friable tissue,
bleeding at the slightest touch. There is pain during mastication, and
the saliva, usually increased in quantity and mixed with blood, may
dribble from the mouth. The tongue is coated and the breath is horribly
fœtid. Hæmorrhage, chiefly in the legs, near the ankle, usually occurs
after the changes in the gums have begun, both legs being involved.
Extensive ulcers sometimes occur at the spot where the hæmorrhage has
taken place. Bleeding from the mucous membranes constitutes one of
the frequent and more serious manifestations of the disease. There
is also swelling of the joints, the knee and ankle joints being most
frequently involved. The bowels are constipated and may be obstinately
so. Circulatory disturbance and disorders of the respiratory system are
prone to develop in proportion to the degree of anæmia present.
Death may occur from gradually increasing weakness and inanition, from
the development of large serous effusions, œdema of the lungs, or
pneumonia. A rapid end may be brought about by hæmorrhage.[125]
Now these symptoms are sufficiently distressing and nauseating to
account for any amount of horror and alarm on the part of those who
have either suffered from the disease in a mild form, particularly
as deep depression is a further characteristic symptom of it, or who
have witnessed others dying of it. I maintain, however--and I think
authoritative medicine will support me in this--that there are a
hundred weaker forms of the disease which, though not recognised as
mild manifestations of it, could nevertheless be cured or removed by
the very same treatment as that which cures scurvy. And I cannot insist
too emphatically on this point, because not only does it affect the
argument in this book, but it also affords, I believe, an interesting
explanation of a great many modern disorders which are as vague as they
are distressing, and as incurable by ordinary doctor’s drugs as they
are susceptible to immediate modification by the time-honoured scurvy
treatment.
Let me give a few instances. A friend of mine, who had reasons for
relying on my judgment in matters of hygiene and diet, came to me one
day with serious inflammation of the conjunctivæ, and asked me what he
should do for it. The eyeballs were also a little inflamed, and there
was a slight beginning of suppuration. I told him to eat at least four
oranges a day for a week, and to drink still lemonade. In three days
the inflammation round the eyelids had completely gone.
On another occasion a dentist whom I had consulted about some trouble
with an inflamed gum told me that I had much better have the tooth
removed around which the gum was inflamed, and he hinted darkly at
pyorrhœa. Not wishing to lose a good tooth, I disregarded his advice,
and treated myself as for a mild scorbutus. I ate plenty of uncooked
vegetables, and consumed about four oranges a day. At the end of the
week my gums no longer troubled me.
I am firmly convinced that whereas thousands of people to-day are
having all their teeth removed owing to pyorrhœa, this disfiguring and
painful operation could be avoided if they treated themselves as for
scurvy, and at the same time removed from a low to a high altitude.[126]
The anti-scorbutic vitamine is plentiful in some of our most common
food-stuffs, provided that it be not destroyed. Scurvy may be arrested
and cured by raw cabbage leaves and the raw juice of swedes.[127]
These are the most potent of anti-scorbutics among vegetables. Raw
carrot-juice and raw beetroot juice are comparatively feeble, while the
potato (after half an hour’s boiling) would appear to occupy a mean
position.[128] Among the fresh fruits the orange and lemon easily take
the first place. Dried vegetables and fruits are practically useless.
Milk and meat come last in the order of merit, and _have to be consumed
in enormous quantities_ in order to afford protection from scurvy.[129]
Foodstuffs offering no protection from scurvy are:--Eggs, cereals, malt
(dried and kilned), preserved lime juice, autolysed yeast extract,
pickled cabbage.
I shall not deal with the numerous ways in which purely _modern_
methods of preparing food succeed in killing both the vitamines of
group (1) and those of group (2) in the products constituting our
daily diet. Because since these methods cannot be supposed to have
been used by the ancestors of the ancient Greeks, they do not concern
us here.[130] I shall therefore only discuss the action of _heat_ upon
these vitamines, leaving the question of prolonged or short-period
exposure to the sequel.
Mrs. Rink, discussing the liability of vitamines to partial or total
destruction under the influence of heat, says that this may occur in
one of the two following ways:--
“(_a_) Prolonged exposure to dry heat (be it sunshine or an
artificially raised temperature), sufficiently high to remove the
moisture from a food.
“(_b_) Prolonged exposure to moist heat.”
Summing up, she says:--
“A prolonged exposure to heat is always prejudicial to the existence of
accessory factors.
“The boiling and stewing of food is calculated to impoverish and
eventually to destroy them. Roasting, baking and grilling resulting in
the production of underdone meat are naturally preferable methods in
this connection. Even the steaming of vegetables--an admirable means
of preparation from every other point of view--does not guarantee the
preservation of vitamines intact.”[131]
Turning now to the Committee’s Report, we find the following particular
details about the effect of heat upon certain foods:--
Fat-soluble A, the chief vehicles of which, as we have seen, are
butter, egg-yolk and animal fats and oils, has been shown to be
gradually destroyed when the butter is exposed to heat.[132] This is
also true of fat-soluble A in milk, cabbages and potatoes--five such
common articles of food that they might be regarded as forming the bulk
of the staple diet of England.
Thus, in regard to fat-soluble A, we have arrived at a very definite
result. Seeing that a deficiency of this vitamine in a diet removes
the protection from bacterial infection of all kinds, arrests growth,
and, in children, leads to rickets, the evil effects of cooking, on the
foods containing this vitamine, cannot be too strongly emphasised. Nor
should it be forgotten that in cases where the deficiency is not marked
enough to produce disease, a general lack of tone, debility, depression
and skin trouble (conjunctivitis particularly) will be sure to result
when the compensation obtained from other foodstuffs is insufficient
completely to correct the deleterious effects of cooking on the
products which are the chief vehicles of this vitamine.
Water-soluble B, or the anti-beri-beri and anti-neuritic factor, is
more hardy, and can survive heat very much longer than fat-soluble A.
It has, however, been found that one to two hours’ exposure to 120°
C. destroyed this vitamine in unmilled rice, Katjang-idjo beans, and
buffalo meat. Other experiments have shown that beef heated to 110° C.
for thirty minutes also loses its anti-neuritic properties, and that,
generally speaking, while the destruction of this vitamine takes place
very slowly at 100° C., it is very much more rapid in the neighbourhood
of 120° C.[133]
Now bearing in mind that a deficiency of water-soluble B in a diet
leads to a cessation of growth, to decline, to beri-beri, and in
mild cases to a general lack of tone, debility, nervous trouble and
depression, we are again confronted by an example of the grave danger
which the body incurs when certain foods are cooked, or cooked too much.
In regard to the anti-scorbutic factor, the evidence is overwhelming,
and seeing that, in its milder forms, when it is unrecognised as
scurvy, scorbutus has a number of manifestations which are as
disagreeable as they are mystifying, there is in all probability, owing
to the prevalence of erroneous methods of cooking all over Europe, very
much more “mild” or “undiagnosed” scurvy about than anyone, least of
all the average medical man, can possibly suspect.
In the words of the learned Report prepared by the Committee whose
conclusions and statistics I have already quoted so extensively in
this chapter: “With regard to exposure to high temperatures, the
anti-scorbutic factor is also much more sensitive than the anti-beri
factor, or the fat-soluble A factor.”[134]
And further: “Seeing that the anti-scorbutic factor is sensitive to
high temperatures, it is clear that the value of fresh vegetables and
fruit must of necessity be greatly impaired by cooking. When there is
scarcity of fresh food, either by actual deficiency or by difficulty
in transport or distribution, it is well to realise that raw fruit and
salads have a value, weight for weight, far exceeding that of cooked
fruit or cooked vegetables, and that a smaller ration will suffice
to afford protection from scurvy.... The bulk of the population in
this country takes its anti-scorbutic food in the cooked condition,
and this being so, the methods adopted for cooking become of great
importance.”[135]
The anti-scorbutic property in milk is reduced 50 per cent. by cooking;
that of cabbages is reduced 66⅔ per cent. It is probably the great
quantity of potatoes that are regularly consumed by the average working
family that alone compensates for the loss of the anti-scorbutic
vitamine in the potato through cooking, but unfortunately experiments
with raw potatoes have not been made to prove this.
The Committee’s Report gives two interesting examples of recent
outbreaks of scurvy, which were due entirely to the process of
cooking:--
“Scurvy broke out in a camp in Scotland in the spring of 1917, and
eighty-two men were affected. At the time potatoes were scarce, but
the ration contained a fair proportion of fresh meat, and 2 ounces
of swedes were available daily.” (As we have already seen on p. 100,
swedes are among the most potent anti-scorbutic vegetables we possess,
and ought, if cooked in the proper manner, to have afforded ample
protection.) “The cause of the outbreak was investigated by Professor
L. Hill, who discovered that the meat was always served as a stew,
the vegetables were added, and the whole cooked for about five hours.
This circumstance was considered by Professor Hill to be sufficient
explanation of the outbreak.”[136]
Another outbreak occurred in a Kaffir labour battalion in France
between May and July, 1918, in which there were 142 cases of pronounced
scurvy. “In this case there was a ration of fresh vegetables equal to 8
ounces daily, these were cooked with the meat and boiled for a period
of at least three hours. In the opinion of the medical officer by whom
the circumstances of the outbreak were thoroughly investigated this
fact was an important contributory cause.”[137]
In an outbreak of very mild and subacute infantile scurvy which
occurred at the Hebrew Infant Asylum, New York, it was found that the
malady was confined to infants who had been fed for several months upon
a diet of cow’s milk previously heated to 63° C. for thirty minutes.
Though this diet had been found safe if accompanied by a little orange
juice, the discontinuance of this ration of orange juice “as a result
of the pronouncement of the American Medical Milk Commission, (1912)
that for the purposes of infant feeding heated milk might be considered
the equivalent of raw milk,” led in the course of two to four months to
the outbreak in question.[138]
For future reference, it is highly interesting also to note the
following fact: that[139] “_if fresh vegetables or fruit are scarce
or absent, an anti-scorbutic food can be prepared by moistening any
available seeds (wheat, barley, rye, peas, beans, lentils), and
allowing them to germinate_.... The seeds should then be soaked in
water for twenty-four hours, and kept moist with access of air for one
to three days, by which time they will have sprouted. _This sprouted
material possesses an anti-scorbutic value equal to that of many fresh
vegetables._”[140]
With reference to this most important fact, it is furthermore desirable
in view of what is to follow for the reader to bear in mind this
additional valuable information: that the Kaffir beer, “leting” or
“joala,” is “the product of rapid fermentation of partly germinated
millet and is consumed quickly after preparation. The Kaffirs are in
the habit of taking large quantities when living in their own kraals in
South Africa, and it is believed to be a valuable anti-scorbutic....
Outbreaks of scurvy have been reported by Dyke among companies of
Kaffir labourers in France, where this ‘joala’ was replaced by a second
type of beer, ‘mahew,’ a fermented drink also made from millet and
maize, but in the preparation of which _the grain is not previously
germinated_.”[141]
Meat when it is fresh, not when it is frozen, also possesses
anti-scorbutic properties, but apparently great heat or great cold
destroys the essential vitamine. Very large quantities of it, however,
have to be eaten in order to afford protection; hence the enormous
amount of meat consumed by people who rely chiefly on meat for their
immunity from scurvy in its acute or sub-acute form. It is also best
eaten raw for this purpose. This is probably why the Eskimo, who suffer
from such a dearth of anti-scorbutic vegetables, are not only heavy
meat-eaters but also raw-meat eaters.[142]
The qualities of raw meat, however, are still appreciated by so-called
“civilised” Europeans, and this kind of food is now recommended by some
medical men, both for rachitic infants and nursing mothers.
Now to sum up the foregoing, we have seen that (1) in addition to the
old and recognised chemical constituents of our daily food, there
are in the products we eat certain ingredients known as accessory
food factors or vitamines, which not only complete the value of the
remaining compound of which the food consists, and render it profitable
and useful to the body, but also constitute indispensable elements for
keeping the body healthy, immune and vigorous.
2. These accessory food factors or vitamines are of two kinds:
growth-promoting and disease-preventing, and a deficiency of them in
our diet quickly leads to stunted growth or disease.
3. As might have been anticipated, they are found chiefly in those
primary products which nature has intended as a _whole_ food for living
creatures: egg-yolk, milk and its by-products, grain, vegetables,
including grass (on which sheep and cows and all grazing animals keep
thoroughly fit) and, of course, such secondary natural products as
_honey_, which serve as whole-foods.
4. The anti-scorbutic vitamine occurs most plentifully in fresh fruit
and vegetables; but it may also be made to occur abundantly in seeds,
if these are partly germinated--hence the great anti-scorbutic value of
all beers prepared from the partly germinated grain of millet, barley,
etc.
5. The effects resulting from an acute deficiency are as alarming as
they must have seemed mysterious to those who could not possibly have
traced them to their proper cause. We have only to think of stunted
growth, wasting and decline, neuritic troubles such as beri-beri,
loss of immunity against bacterial infection, and, worst of all, the
loathsome disease scurvy--all ending in premature death.
6. The effects resulting from subacute deficiency are quite as
distressing as the former, because though they may not prove fatal,
they are less marked and less pronounced, and therefore less easy
to deal with and to diagnose, and surpassing the former in the
vagueness and mystery that surrounds them. We have only to think of
conjunctivitis, leading frequently to blindness, general debility,
depression, indigestion, constipation, sleeplessness, neuritis,
rheumatism, all the unrecognised and milder forms of scurvy (from
which it is certain millions of the modern world now suffer without the
smallest notion of the true nature of their indisposition), loss of
sexual potency and consequently of high spirits and good-cheer,[143] in
fact a general poisoning of the body which turns all the good things of
life to naught, and blights the brilliance of the sunniest day.
7. The exposure of certain foodstuffs to heat in the process of
cooking has, we have been assured on the high authority of Dr. Bell,
such deleterious effects that he believes rheumatism, cancer, and a
host of other ills to which the flesh of man is heir, are in a great
measure due to this method of food preparation. We have also seen in
confirmation of Dr. Bell’s beliefs, that some vitamines are certainly
destroyed by exposure to heat, and that the anti-scorbutic are the most
susceptible to this form of deterioration and extirpation.
8. It has been pointed out that the only reason why modern Europeans do
not suffer more acutely (that they _all_ suffer subacutely is fairly
certain) from their wholesale destruction of vitamines, either through
cooking, or through the various _commercial processes_ by which eggs,
meat-extracts, malt-extracts, meats and oils are prepared, is that,
owing to the great variety of food they consume, they accidentally
compensate in one direction for losses incurred in another.
9. If a people _restricted to a limited number of foodstuffs_, as
soldiers are in camps, for instance, cook food in such a way as to
destroy the essential vitamines in their diet, epidemics, as we have
seen, quickly break out and men die like flies. Thus, where accidental
compensation in the form of a great variety of foodstuffs is prevented
by the circumstances incidental to the life of any particular
community, the cooking of certain products may and will prove fatal to
all those endeavouring to maintain themselves on a restricted diet. If
there is partial compensation, the consequences, though not fatal, may
be both distressing and alarming.
I think I have now said enough on this question to be able to return to
my main thesis, and to begin to apply the conclusions at which I have
arrived to my interpretation of the Prometheus myth.
If we pause to ask ourselves how it is that we modern Europeans
are able to frame our dietaries upon such an enormous variety of
foodstuffs, and to light, as it were, by accident upon a regimen that
allows for compensation in one direction, while grave deficiencies
occur in another, we must remember that modern commerce and the world
trade has placed the whole storehouse of the globe at the disposal of
our markets; our meals reach us not merely from all the corners of our
own lands, but literally from all points of the compass. Not a day
goes by, particularly in England, without the product of some foreign
land, some British colony, some dependence, being offered to us at our
tables. The fact is now such a commonplace, that it has ceased to be
regarded as strange, much less as marvellous.
If, then, with all this variety, we are nevertheless unable to maintain
ourselves in health, owing to the gross errors of our own taste and
culinary methods--for thousands upon thousands are suffering to-day
purely from dietetic mistakes--how much more grave must the situation
be among a people who have not our variety to draw upon. The moment the
great war reduced us to the condition of such a people, we realised,
by being deprived of our accidental compensations, how precarious our
living had been before. As I have already pointed out, the serious
influenza epidemics that swept Europe during the latter years of the
war were largely due to deficiencies in the diet of her people (fats,
for instance), which deprived them of their normal resistance against
bacterial infection.
We know, however, that all primitive peoples are, by virtue of their
simple civilisations, foredoomed to a very restricted number of
foodstuffs. The balance of health and disease is therefore susceptible
to more rapid, more immediate disequilibration, owing to the
circumstance that it may be destroyed by a famine in one particular
product alone.[144]
But a condition equivalent to a famine may be artificially brought
about, as we have seen, if the essential accessory factors in a food
are persistently killed or destroyed by exposure to heat. And the
effects of such destruction would be felt the more rapidly, the less
extensive was the variety of foodstuffs from which a people were able
to draw.
It is not difficult to conjecture the constituents composing the bill
of fare of the remote ancestors of the ancient Greeks. We can frame
it upon the dietaries of most primitive hunting peoples. That it was
composed largely of meat is most probable--meat eaten grilled, roasted,
or baked, when good-fortune provided a natural fire,[145] and eaten raw
at other times. To this may have been added various grasses, seeds,
berries, roots and fruits, when they were available, and wild honey
when it was found. It is possible that the milk of wild cattle was also
obtained long before pastoral conditions were actually established, and
that the milk of mares was drunk before the horse had been thoroughly
domesticated.
These primitive people were certainly nomadic. Having exhausted any
particular area of game or other food, they would wander into other
parts of the land. They would also plan their wanderings according to
the seasons, and venture further north in the summer than they would
dare to go in the winter.
If, however, through some mishap--hostility on the part of another
people, floods, or a spell of ill-luck in hunting--foodstuffs ran
short, while actual famine might still be warded off, deficiency
diseases must have been of frequent occurrence and sometimes
devastating. Forced to take up winter-quarters in an area further north
than was the custom, the usual supply of fruit, berries, grasses,
seeds, might fall short, and disaster would quickly follow.
For centuries, if not millenniums, habit must have confirmed what
appetite and taste first created, in the dietaries of these primitive
peoples, so that they sought their compensating or “protective
foodstuffs,” not from a knowledge of their virtues, but from a blind
rule of thumb which tradition all but sanctified.
Imagine now the sudden possession by such a people of a power so
far-reaching in its effects, so subversive of their whole order of
life, and so infinite in its possible applications, as the means to
produce fire at will.
Everything which had not been realised when chance “natural” fires had
been used, could now be tried and introduced into a new order of life.
We have seen that the name of Prometheus was associated in the minds of
the ancient Greeks with the manufacture of pottery. It may be assumed,
therefore, that among a people _refusing to recognise any limits to
the use of fire_, thanks to the Promethean spirit which animated them,
pottery was one of the first things to be produced once the means for
kindling a fire at will had become a common possession.
With pottery, however, the easiest form of cooking comes into
being--the cooking you can leave for hours to itself, while you go
about other business, the cooking that in a sense may be called
automatic and self-performing--I mean boiling, simmering, stewing and
braising.
Incidentally, as we have seen, this is the worst kind of cooking, the
most deleterious to the food, and the most harmful, therefore, to the
body; but the tremendous ease with which it is effected, the simplicity
of an operation consisting merely of setting a variety of products in a
pan with water, and leaving it to the action of heat, has, I am afraid,
made it the classical method of cooking ever since the Promethean crime.
All the time we were in the line on the Somme, for instance, scarcely a
day passed that the food, at least of the men, was not stewed;[146] but
then, as the officers and men of my battery will be able to remember,
our casualties from boils and _scabies_ (a sort of dermatitis revealing
at the very least a low state of resistance to bacterial infection--if
not subacute scurvy itself) were pretty heavy throughout the latter
months of 1916. Nor could this be ascribed to dirt alone, as one of
the smartest and cleanest N.C.O.’s of the left section--now alas!
dead--suffered from it most severely.
The temptation to stew, when other means of cooking are rendered
difficult owing to the rough-and-ready apparatus which is available in
the field, shows that it is, of all methods, the easiest. It is the
line of least resistance in the culinary art.
I have, however, quoted sufficiently from the Expert Committee’s Report
to show how dangerous it is, and how, even during the last war, forces
not actually in the line developed scurvy after a long spell of stewed
food, even though this food contained ample protection in its unstewed
state against the malady.
But, as we have seen, although scurvy in its acute and subacute and
frequently unrecognised forms may be the worst, the most alarming and
nauseating of the deficiency diseases, it is by no means the only one.
Other vitamines besides the anti-scorbutic are destroyed by exposure to
heat, and other diseases are the outcome of such destruction.
When, therefore, it is remembered that the remote ancestors of the
ancient Greeks were a primitive people, that the range of their
foodstuffs was restricted, and that such chance compensation as we
achieve to-day was certainly impracticable with them; when, moreover,
we bear in mind that with the discovery of the means of fire-production
not only did pottery become a possibility, but with it also the worst,
the easiest, the most deleterious and utterly destructive form of
cookery,[147] it requires no fantastic flights of fancy to picture the
results, some immediate and others more remote, of the introduction of
fire-production among them.
Epidemics of the cruellest and most devastating kind probably raged
for generations, without anyone being able to point to any cause save
perhaps Jove’s anger. Crippledom, stunted growth, tooth-trouble,
eye-trouble,[148] pronounced and acute scurvy, beri-beri, pellagra,
indigestion, skin disease, rickets in children,--verily, in fact, a
Pandora’s casket of evils must have fallen upon these ignorant, early
users of fire, particularly as the Promethean spirit would have drawn
no limits to its use.
When we add to this, that the possibility of kindling fire probably
induced whole tribes to face the colder months in regions which they
would formerly have deserted, and that, therefore, to the natural
restrictions of their usual regimen must have been coupled the common
restrictions imposed by the cold of winter; when we also recollect that
these people, far from connecting their troubles and illnesses with
the actual _use_ of fire, were taught by tradition merely to ascribe
them to Jove’s wrath over the _stealing_ of fire--just as the Syrian
to-day ascribes his eye-trouble to Allah’s particular attentiveness to
him--it is difficult to conceive of the state of utter desperation
and horror to which they must have been driven. Mothers bewailing
the loss of their children--or what was worse in those days, the
deformity and botchedness of their children--men and girls taken away
in the prime of life, sexual potency radically impaired and causing
more consternation among the women than the men,[149] mouths becoming
unsavoury, unpleasant to look upon; eyes losing their lustre and their
keenness of vision. But it is impossible to describe the picture of
such misery--much less to overdraw it. And to all those who doubt
that such appalling calamities are remembered for thousands of years,
to all those who question the historical truth behind this mythical
association of fire and frenzied suffering, I can but recommend as a
pastime for a week or so the task of imagining the effect upon the
primitive mind of man, of such a sudden avalanche of ills and woes. We
who, to-day, are so used to illness, botchedness and ugliness, that we
scarcely know ourselves as Europeans and civilised men unless we have
at least one cripple, one cretin, one lunatic, one neurasthenic or
one consumptive in our family; we who are so accustomed to the fœtid
atmosphere of the sick-chamber, that we no longer regard our own or
anybody else’s physical shortcomings with shame or disgust, and who
are forced to imagine some post-mortem methods of compensation for the
tragic suffering that is now quite a normal occurrence with us--we,
of modern progressive Europe, can form, it is true, but a shadowy
conception of the horror with which primitive man must have regarded
such a shower of physical calamities as fell upon him after the first
indiscriminate application of fire to food; but those of us who still
have a clean breath left, those who still are healthy and robust enough
to feel a frank dislike and contempt for the invalid, the “sufferer,”
and the half-witted, and who regard the cripple, the cretin, the
misshapen and the physiologically bungled and botched with undisguised
loathing, will know what I mean, and will realise that Hesiod was an
accurate though unconscious historian when voicing the tradition of
centuries, he declared:--
“Of themselves diseases came upon men continually by day and by night
bringing mischief to mortals silently.... For ere this the tribes of
men lived on earth remote and free from ills and hard toil and heavy
sicknesses which bring the Fates upon men; for in misery men grow old
quickly. But the woman took off the great lid of the jar with her hands
and scattered all these, and her thoughts caused sorrow and mischief to
men.”[150]
He who has not the flair to scent history behind this, he who is too
modern, too Promethean, to believe that a scientific development that
is accompanied by a decrease of vitality and health, may be an outrage
on humanity, can scarcely picture the anguish which must have existed
to give rise to such a tradition as this. It explains the miraculous
torture to which posterity condemned the “benefactor” of mankind; it
accounts for the belief in the supposed wrath of Zeus over the stealing
of fire, and, above all, it reveals the relationship between the
ancient Greeks’ infinite trust in their supreme deity, while at the
same time they felt the gravest doubts about the civilisation which had
developed in spite of his most wise and benevolent ordinances.
FOOTNOTES:
[97] It is interesting to note that Dr. Bell’s views were formed long
before the last and most valuable contribution to this subject was even
thought of, and it must be a source of great satisfaction to him to
find that the doctrines he has advocated so persistently all through
a busy life should at last be recognised and confirmed by the highest
authorities of the day on Dietetics.
[98] _Dietetics and Hygienics versus Disease_, p. 6.
[99] _Ibid._, p. 7.
[100] _Ibid._, p. 8.
[101] _Cancer: Its Causes and Treatment_ (George Bell and Sons), p. 193.
[102] _Health at its Best versus Cancer_ (Fisher Unwin), p. 274.
[103] See _The Futility of Operations in Cancer with Proofs_, p. 8. See
also _Cancer: Its Cause and Treatment_, chap. xxvii.
[104] Dr. Bell, writing in 1916, estimates that the death-rate from
cancer in this country has increased 200 per cent. since 1868. See _The
Futility of Operations_, etc., p. 3. In _Health at its Best versus
Cancer_, p. 254, he says: “What we are pleased to term civilisation has
a good deal to answer for, and certainly cancer is an evil which is
attributable to a very considerable extent to flagrant errors of diet
for which civilisation is directly responsible.”
[105] In this case the italics are mine.--A. M. L.
[106] p. 265.
[107] p. 266.
[108] p. 267.
[109] p. 269.
[110] p. 272. As we shall see, Dr. Bell is not quite right here; but
in the main he has ably anticipated the results of the most recent
research.
[111] For interesting and authoritative confirmation of some of Dr.
Bell’s views see Dr. Hutchinson’s famous work, _Food and the Principles
of Dietetics_ (Edward Arnold, 1906), chap. xxii. The learned doctor
says (pp. 390-391): “It is an error to suppose that cooking increases
the digestibility of food.... The digestibility of animal food is
diminished rather than increased by cooking.... The fats of food are
not so much affected by heat as the proteids and carbohydrates.... The
effect of heat on the _proteids_ of the food is to coagulate them.”
For losses resulting from cooking see pp. 398-399. Comparing the time
taken in digesting raw and cooked meat respectively Dr. Hutchinson
writes (p. 66): “It has been found by experiments on men that 3½ oz.
of beef disappears completely from the stomach in the following times,
depending on the method by which it has been cooked: Raw ... 2 hours;
half-boiled ... 2½ hours; wholly boiled ... 3 hours; half-roasted
... 3½ hours; wholly roasted ... 4 hours.” Discussing the cooking of
vegetables Dr. Hutchinson writes (p. 248): “The effect of cooking upon
green vegetables is still further to reduce their already poor stock
of nutrients. They gain water and lose part of their carbohydrates and
proteid, most of their mineral matter, and nearly the whole of their
non-albuminoid nitrogenous constituents.”
[112] See my _Defence of Aristocracy_, chap. v.
[113] Provided, of course, in regard to meat in particular, that a
time-limit is rigorously imposed.
[114] Published by His Majesty’s Stationery Office, November, 1919.
[115] p. 5.
[116] p. 1.
[117] p. 12.
[118] p. 13.
[119] p. 19.
[120] p. 21.
[121] For a complete list of foods in which fat-soluble A is present,
and for the proportion in which it is present, I refer the reader to
pp. 22-23 of the Committee’s Report.
[122] p. 31.
[123] p. 35.
[124] Hippocrates and others among the ancients described it, though
they had not the faintest suspicion of its true cause. Even as late as
1896 it is stated in _Twentieth Century Practice_, vol. vii., p. 492:
“The essential cause of scorbutus is still a matter of doubt.”
[125] These details concerning scurvy have all been taken (sometimes
verbatim) from vol. vii. of _Twentieth Century Practice_, pp. 491-505.
[126] Dr. Robert Bell mentions somewhere that at one time when he was
suffering from gum-boils, a friend told him to try eating several
oranges a day, and that this treatment quickly and entirely cured him.
[127] Committee’s Report, p. 44. Raw dandelion leaves, sorrel, carrot
and cranberries are apparently also potent anti-scorbutics.
[128] _Ibid._
[129] p. 45.
[130] Anyone, however, wishing to discover further evidence in support
of “progress” will find some cheering facts in regard to this aspect of
the question.
[131] _What we Ought to Know about Food_: Chapter “Vitamines.” I
have only seen this book in manuscript, so that I cannot give page
references. It is the book mentioned in the Preface.--A. M. L.
[132] p. 23. The experiments dealt only with butter, but it is unlikely
that egg-yolk and the animal oils would enjoy a special immunity that
butter does not share.
[133] Committee’s Report, p. 34.
[134] p. 45.
[135] p. 64.
[136] pp. 65-66.
[137] p. 66.
[138] p. 79.
[139] p. 100: the italics are mine.--A. M. L.
[140] p. 100. See also p. 41.
[141] p. 61.
[142] See _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 11th ed., article “Eskimo”: “The
Eskimo are enormous meat-eaters; two will easily dispose of a seal at
a sitting; and in Greenland, for instance, each individual has for his
daily consumption, on an average, 2½ lbs. of flesh with blubber, and
1 lb. of fish.... 10 lbs. of flesh in addition to other food is not
uncommonly consumed in a day in time of plenty.” See also J. Deniker,
_The Races of Man_, p. 149: “Some few northern tribes, the Eskimo, the
Cukchi, eat ... reindeer’s flesh and fish quite raw.” See also Nansen,
_Eskimo Life_, pp. 89-92: “They can consume at a sitting astonishing
quantities of meat, blubber, fish, etc.... Meat and fish are eaten
sometimes raw.... The blubber of seals and whales is generally eaten
raw.... The Greenlander is also very fond of raw sealskin with the
blubber.” See also Vilhjalmur Stefansson, _My Life with the Eskimo_,
pp. 170, 278, etc.
[143] I showed the dependence of high spirits and good cheer upon the
vigour of the sexual powers in my _Defence of Aristocracy_, chap. v.,
pp. 175-183.
[144] Even in such relatively highly civilised countries as Ireland
and Norway, scurvy followed a failure of the potato crop in the former
country in 1847, and in the latter in 1904.
[145] See Deniker, _op. cit._, p. 149: “The preservation of fire
produced by natural forces (conflagration, lightning, volcanoes, etc.)
must have preceded the production of fire.”
[146] I am speaking of C Battery, 79th Brigade, R.F.A.
[147] Some anthropologists will object, perhaps, that long before
pottery existed, the process known as “stone-cooking” or “stone
boiling” was probably practised by all primitive peoples. This is
possibly true, but to such objectors I reply, that they know as well
as I do the tediousness of stone boiling and stone cooking, and that,
therefore, the very difficulty of the process itself would remove the
chief advantage which stewing possesses over other methods of cooking,
which is _ease_; and thus leave no inducement to primitive man to
practise it.
[148] The eye-trouble in the near East is still very noticeable. When I
was in Greece, Palestine, and Egypt in 1910, it struck me that it was
almost universal, and I have often wondered since whether it might not
be largely a deficiency disease.
[149] Elsewhere, I have shown how, at another and much later epoch
in history, it was the women who raised the greatest outcry against
the sex-destroying drugs which became prevalent in England after the
Puritan Rebellion. See my _Defence of Aristocracy_, chap. v.
[150] _Works and Days_, 90 _et seq._