Chapter IV: Part 4

These facts prove the dependence of gastric digestion, or stomach digestion, upon mastication. Pawlow was experimenting with gastric juice when he hit upon this demonstration; and he has concluded that we cannot have gastric digestion at all well without thorough mouth digestion; that the complete mastication of food, in other words, is the thing necessary to prepare the stomach to receive the food. Thus, if you chew your food well, the food will be predigested in the mouth, and when it enters the stomach it will find already there waiting for it not only enough gastric juice to digest it, but just the particular kind of gastric juice that is needed.

Pawlow turned this discovery of his to a very practical use. He has a dozen or more healthy dogs which he calls his Dog Dairy. From these dogs he collects daily a quart or more of gastric juice, or appetite juice; and the dogs produce this large quantity without taking a particle of food into their stomachs. The juice is carefully filtered, and bottled and shipped all over the world to those physicians who are in touch with Pawlow and his work, and by them are administered to human patients. It is given to those patients who are deficient in gastric juice, and is used in very obstinate cases of indigestion.

Pawlow collects his juice by having openings made in the throat and in the stomachs of the dogs. When the dogs are hungry they are given food of kinds which they particularly like, and they are allowed to smell the odor and to become excited over the prospect of eating it before they are actually allowed to have it. With the first sight and odor of this food, the dogs begin to secrete the appetite juice, which flows from the opening made in their stomachs through tubes into receptacles. Then when they begin to eat their food, the food does not reach the stomach at all, but simply passes through the openings in the throat into a receptacle before the dog, and the dog can go on eating the same meal over and over again. They thus enjoy themselves thoroughly for a long time. When the appetite juice ceases to flow, the process of feeding them in this manner stops, and they are given a real meal.

VIII

HEALTH AND THE MIND

This account of Professor Pawlow’s experiment leads directly to the all important subject of the influence of mental states upon digestion and assimilation. Dr. Saleeby has published a book called “Worry, the Disease of the Age”—the very title of which shows the attitude of physicians upon this question; and the bad opinion which mankind has always entertained of such states of mind as “the blues” has now been scientifically justified. The effects of pain and pleasure upon digestion have been demonstrated by actual experiments in the laboratory of the St. Petersburg professor.

A vivid account of these experiments has been given to the writers by Dr. J. H. Kellogg, who witnessed them about a year ago. Dr. Kellogg writes:

“Professor Pawlow took Professor Benedict and myself into a quiet corner of his laboratory, and there we found a dog that had his salivary glands or ducts arranged so that by means of little tubes passing through the skin all the saliva, instead of passing down his throat, passed out through the tubes and could be collected in small glass bottles suspended beside his neck.

“The dog had been prepared beforehand by the attendant. Little empty bottles were attached to the collecting tubes, and as soon as the dog saw Pawlow, he seemed to be very happy, and wagged his tail, and his eyes gave evidence of satisfaction; but there was no flow of saliva until Professor Pawlow brought near to his nose a bottle containing some powdered meat. He took out the cork in the presence of the dog, turned out a little of it in his hand, shook it in the bottle and brought it near to the dog’s nose. The dog began to sniff it, licked his chops, snapped his jaws, reached out after it, and in less than two minutes the saliva began to flow very profusely, and it was not more than fifteen or twenty seconds before the saliva was pouring down into the bottles.

“Professor Pawlow, then, after holding the bottle out before the dog for about thirty seconds, put the stopper into it, and put it behind him out of sight, and in a very few seconds the saliva ceased to flow. Then he brought it back again, showed it to the dog, brought it near his nose, allowed him to smell it but kept it just out of his reach all the time, and the saliva poured out again freely. He continued this until the dog finally made up his mind he was not going to get any meat, and when the powder was brought near to him he paid no attention to it, but turned his head around and looked very disappointed and very ugly, and at that point, the saliva ceased to flow.

“That was a very remarkable thing to me. The meat was right there, he could smell it, but he knew he was not going to get it, so he was angry, and as his state of mind changed, the secretion of saliva was wholly arrested. I was very much surprised. Of course, I believe thoroughly in the importance of being in a happy state of mind when eating, but I really did not appreciate thoroughly the importance of those things; I did not fully appreciate how positive an inhibitor of the activity of the salivary glands an unhappy state might be.

“But a common experiment made in India shows the same idea. When an Anglo-Indian has lost anything of value, he has his whole family of servants brought to him to find out which one has stolen it. A common test is to stand them all up in a row, and then to give each one a morsel of dry rice to chew. They must chew this rice for five minutes, and then the master goes around and examines each man’s mouth. The mouth which is dry is the mouth of the culprit, and the state of that man’s mind has the effect of arresting the flow of saliva. Pawlow has shown that this is a positive physiologic law and operates upon the dogs as well as upon human beings.

“Another experiment astonished me even more than this. We followed Pawlow down through a long narrow hall and upstairs into a room which was small and secluded, in a very quiet part of the laboratory, remote from any noisy occupation, and there we found a brown dog standing on a high table. It was a delicate and very intelligent looking animal. The attendant sat near by, and the dog was prepared as the other had been. As we came in, the Professor beckoned to us to sit down on a little bench beside the wall and indicated that we should be quiet. He stepped up to the dog, looked at him, and the dog recognized him with a smile in the dog’s way of smiling!—and presently the saliva began to flow.

“Professor Pawlow was very much surprised. We had come into the room and he had offered the dog nothing, but the saliva was flowing. That was contrary to his expectation. He looked with considerable astonishment at the attendant. The attendant quietly said, ‘You have been feeding meat to the other dog, and he smells the meat on your hands.’

“The dog had such a keen sense of smell that the odor of meat on Pawlow’s hands even at a distance of several feet was sufficient to cause the saliva to flow. So he went out, washed his hands and came back. At this time, not a drop of saliva was flowing. The arrangement was such that every particle secreted must come outside of the mouth into these bottles. While we were waiting in silence, watching the dog quietly, suddenly the attendant pressed his foot without making any motion of the body at all, upon a little lever beneath his toe and the result was the causing of a high musical note to be sounded, a very high pitched tone.

“Instantly, in less than three seconds, the saliva was flowing into the tube. We waited a little while until the saliva ceased to flow, then the note was sounded again. Instantly the saliva began to flow.

“Professor Pawlow has been experimenting upon this line for a long time. Other experiments were made. One interesting experiment was with a large number of dogs. He had upon one counter a long row of dogs, about a dozen, which had their stomachs fixed in such a way, and their throats fixed also in such a way, that upon the secretion of the gastric juice in the stomach the juice would flow out into a flask.

“The dogs were suspended in a sort of harness. They had had their throats fixed so that food instead of going into the stomach came out at the throat. So as the dog ate the food, the food fell back into the plate and the dog continued eating the same breakfast over and over. These dogs had been eating the same breakfast for four hours, from six to ten o’clock in the morning, and they were still eating, and just as hungry as ever because there was no food entering their stomachs at all and their appetites were growing keener every moment, and they were having a wonderfully good time. I thought that some people I have met might enjoy such an arrangement. This really has the same effect without having your throat cut.

“I noticed that if these dogs got disgruntled, or tired, or dissatisfied, then the gastric juice would cease to flow. Sometimes the food, having been chewed a very long time, lost its flavor, and the dogs secreted no more juice; then the attendant would come along and put a little fresh food into the plate and the dogs would seize this with great avidity, and the gastric juice would begin to flow again in a perfect stream.

“These experiments have demonstrated in the most positive manner the definite connection there is between psychic conditions and the process of digestion, and have shown us that the food must be palatable, that it must address the olfactory sense agreeably, and that the mind must be in a happy state in order that the digestive process may proceed.”

And then Dr. Kellogg goes on to tell of the work of Professor Cannon, of Harvard University, who actually has made visible the digestive processes in the stomach by means of the X-ray. By feeding cats food colored with certain substances which are impervious to the X-rays, he was enabled to photograph all the actual movements of the organs concerned in the acts of digestion. It was demonstrated that certain emotions, such as anger and fear, positively stopped the whole process of digestion.

Depressing thought will affect injuriously the circulation of the blood; it will also affect the breathing. The mere attitude of the body assumed by the despondent person has its bad influence. The head droops in a melancholy fashion—and this very attitude prevents normal action of the lungs and the blood veins. Depressing thoughts destroy the appetite; and when the body does not receive its proper nourishment, the blood becomes impoverished.

“Any severe anger or grief is almost certain to be succeeded by fever in certain parts of Africa,” says Sir Samuel Baker, in the British and Foreign Medico Chirurgical Review. “In many cases, I have seen reasons for believing that cancer had its origin in prolonged anxiety,” says Sir George Paget, in his “Lectures.” “The vast majority of the cases of cancer, especially of breast or uterine cancer, are probably due to mental anxiety,” says Dr. Snow, in the London _Lancet_. “Diabetes from a sudden mental shock is a true, pure type of physical malady of mental origin,” says Sir B. W. Richardson in “Discourses.” “I have been surprised how often patients with primary cancer of the liver lay the cause of this ill health to protracted grief or anxiety. The cases have been far too numerous to be accounted for as mere coincidences,” says Murchison.

“Eruptions on the skin will follow excessive mental strain. In all these and in cancer, epilepsy and mania from mental causes there is a predisposition. It is remarkable how little the question of physical disease from mental influence has been studied,” says Sir B. W. Richardson.

“My experiments show that irascible, malevolent and depressing emotions 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.

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.

Summing up his views of the deliberations of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, recently held at Leicester, England, and which formed a storm center for the great alcohol debate, a noted chemist in London “Science,” said that we know how far the sun is, and can tell the weight of the earth, predict when the next comet may be expected, and give true answers to many other important questions, but we do not know “anything to speak of” on the subject of alcohol. As to the discussions that have waged at Leicester and elsewhere on the question of the medical use of alcohol, the general impression left on the world of laymen is that they all (the noted authorities) disagreed with one another more or less, and that nobody can declare with any scientific authority whether alcoholic liquor is good for us or bad for us.

We propose here to describe the work of one scientist who has made experiments which enable him to declare with authority that alcohol is injurious. This investigator is Charles E. Stewart, M. D., of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. He has closely studied the work of Sir Edward Wright, London, the discoverer of “Opsonins”; and his experiments were suggested by those of Wright. They led him to the discovery that alcohol has a harmful effect on the blood by lowering its supply of opsonins.

It has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of most students of Wright and Metchnikoff, and their allies, that the opsonins form one of the most valuable of the body’s defences against disease. And if Dr. Stewart has demonstrated that alcohol poisons the opsonins, it must be admitted that at last a positive and tangible proof has been brought forward of alcohol’s harmful qualities. What nourishes and strengthens the blood, helps the lifeforce within us; what weakens or poisons the blood, is an attack upon the very citadel of vitality. Alcohol, says Dr. Stewart, is such an enemy.

In such diseases as pneumonia and tuberculosis, the white cells, according to Wright, cannot effectually combat the germs unless there are plenty of opsonins present to aid them. Now, in treating pneumonia and tuberculosis, many practitioners encourage the use of alcohol. Dr. Stewart believed that alcohol was injurious. Having heard Sir W. Edward Wright’s lectures, he asked himself the question:

“Can the evil effects of alcohol be due to its lowering of the opsonic power of the blood?”

He instituted a series of experiments to determine, if possible, the facts in the case. He first of all administered to four persons who all their lives had been total abstainers, two ounces each of port wine. The normal opsonic power of each of these individuals had been determined as being 75 or above—that is to say, it was well above the point at which the opsonic power must be maintained in order that the white cell may do effective fighting. At the time when the subjects took the port wine, the first subject had a normal amount of opsonic power to resist the germ of tuberculosis which may be expressed by the term 1.13., and a normal power of resistance to the pus germ, which infects wounds, of 1.06. After drinking the wine, both those powers of resistance were lowered most perceptibly; the first to .85, and the second to .67. Similar results, in greater or less degree, followed in all other cases. The port wine decreased the power of the blood to make opsonic sauce for the white cells.

In a second series of experiments, two ounces of Scotch whisky were taken an hour apart; that is, the normal index was taken, and immediately afterwards an ounce of the Scotch whisky was taken, an hour later another ounce, and an hour after this the index was taken again. The results here were similar. For the germs of tuberculosis it was discovered that the opsonic power had dropped 10% and for the streptococci (or pus-forming) germs about 8%.

In another experiment where two ounces of sherry wine were used, the opsonic power for the germs of tuberculosis dropped 11% and for the streptococci 5%.

In another experiment where four ounces of champagne were taken, the opsonic power dropped 9% for the germs of tuberculosis and 19% for the streptococci germ. Many other experiments were performed, but they gave practically the same results. The opsonic power decreased in proportion to the amount of alcohol contained in the liquor.

Dr. Stewart carried on his experiments in the laboratory of the Battle Creek Sanitarium, with the assistance of Dr. A. W. Nelson. He reported his results to the American Society for the Study of Alcohol and Drug Neuroses:

“I realize that there are a great number of factors which influence the opsonic power of the blood, and that there is considerable variation in even what may be considered normal cases, but, notwithstanding these variations, there is a sufficient uniformity to enable us to make some very valuable deductions. I feel justified in concluding that alcohol has a marked influence in reducing the vital forces of the body, thereby greatly interfering with the natural power of the body to remedy ailments. Since Wright has shown that out of all comparison the most valuable asset in medicine lies in raising the anti-bacterial power of the blood, the adminstration of alcohol, which according to these experiments, is pro-bacterial, and as such a strong liability instead of an asset, should be eliminated from our therapeutics, at least so far as internal administration in infectious diseases is concerned.

“While only a comparatively few experiments have been made, the results obtained have been uniform, and justify, I believe, the preliminary report of it given to the medical profession and the public with the hope that it may encourage others to pursue the work further in this direction.

“Heretofore, when any statement was made to the effect that alcohol caused this or the other disease, or ailment, or harmful effect of any sort on the human constitution, the reply could be and was made that the case could not be proven; that there were always circumstances which might be construed as showing that other factors besides alcohol influenced the situation. Now, however, I believe that we have opened up a line of investigation which will place the proofs against alcohol on a solid scientific basis by demonstrating its injurious effect on the blood, which is the life.”

TEA AND COFFEE

In the same laboratory where Dr. Stewart placed his case against alcohol, experiments are being made which show in the same direct way that such drinks as tea and coffee also lower the opsonic power of the blood. Into the United States alone are imported more than one billion pounds, or five hundred thousand tons of tea and coffee each year. It is estimated that tea and coffee contain from three to six per cent. of poison. Therefore, more than fifteen thousand tons of poison, “so deadly that twenty grains might produce fatal results if administered to a full-grown man in a single dose”—in all more than ten billion deadly doses of poison, or, “fully six times as much as would be required to kill every man, woman and child on the face of the earth,” are brought into this country every year, as component parts of substances which are commonly regarded as pleasant foodstuffs.

This is the case stated against coffee and tea in its broadest and most emphatic form. The opponents of the use of tea drinking term both tea and coffee “drugs.” What is commonly thought to be the pleasantest property of both tea and coffee, namely, their ability to banish one’s sense of fatigue, is regarded by the critics of the tea and coffee drinking habits as perhaps the most sufficient evidence of their poisonous character.

“No one would doubt for a moment,” says one such critic, “the poisonous nature of a drug capable of producing irresistible drowsiness in a person who is not weary, as morphine would, for instance. Vice versa, the power of a drug to produce wakefulness in a person strongly inclined to sleep as the result of fatigue is equal evidence of its poisonous character. The sallow complexion common among women of the higher classes who have reached middle life, the almost universal nervousness among American women, and many common digestive disorders, and the increasing prevalence of nervous or sick headaches, afford to the experienced physician ample evidence of the toxic or poisonous character of tea and coffee.”

Tea and coffee contain (in addition to caffeine) tannic acid, and various other volatile poisons, each of which produces characteristic harmful effects. The volatile oils give rise to nervous excitability, and after a time provoke serious nervous disorders. Caffeine is a narcotic, which has been shown to diminish the activity of the peptic glands—and thus seriously to interfere with the normal operation of the organs of digestion. The eminent physiologist, Wolfe, showed by experiments that three grains of caffeine—an amount that might easily be imbibed in an ordinary cup of tea or coffee—very substantially impairs the quality of the gastric juices, lessening their total acidity. Roberts’ experiments showed that tea and coffee interfere with the action of the saliva upon the starch of the food, and at times may even wholly destroy its effect.

XI

DIET REFORM IN THE FAMILY

The reader is now familiar with the new ideas upon the subject of human nutrition. It is obvious, of course, that if these ideas should ever come into general acceptance, there would be enormous changes in the every-day habits of human beings. And we can well imagine that a person might be fully convinced of the soundness of all the arguments which have been advanced in this book, and yet shrink in dismay from the complications incidental to applying them.

We ourselves have faced these difficulties in many forms. We have wished to have two meals, and yet felt obliged to have three, because all our friends had them, and we did not wish to be hermits. We have wished to avoid meat, and yet have eaten it, because it was on the table, and we did not like to startle our hostess—and perhaps find ourselves involved in an argument about vegetarianism, in the course of which we had either to permit a good cause to go down into defeat, or else to tell facts about meat which would take away every one’s appetite for meat, and for vegetables as well. But in the end, the desire for health has conquered all other motives with us, and we have broken with every trace of the old ways. It seemed to us that we would help and interest others if we gave some account of how the new ideas have worked out in practice, and the daily regimen of a family which adopts them.

This book is written in Bermuda, where the writers have been living in co-operation, along the lines worked out at Helicon Hall, only upon a much smaller scale. Their party consists of eight adults and three children—this including two governesses, a secretary, and a servant. They live in an isolated neighborhood, upon the waterfront. Most of the party sleep out of doors on the broad verandas of the house, while the wide doors and windows of the other rooms afford ample ventilation. Daily sea-bathing is the habit of all of the group.

The married women of the party assume in turn the direction of our dietaries; that is to say, they choose the menus, and attend to the ordering of the food supplies. We eat but twice a day, and the menus are made up entirely of fruits, grains, nuts and vegetables, with the occasional use of eggs. We obtain from the Battle Creek Sanitarium a great number of the foods we use, availing ourselves of its splendidly managed food-department. The children eat three times a day, but their breakfasts are very light, consisting of orange juice and a fig or two, or perhaps a banana. The children have this light breakfast immediately after arising. At ten o’clock comes the principal meal of the day for the whole household. An effort is made to make this meal “well balanced”; that is to say, to have the proportion of proteids, carbohydrates and fats. There are usually not more than two, or at the most, three cooked dishes. Sometimes the main dish is a soup; sometimes it is baked or boiled macaroni with tomato dressing; sometimes it is bean or pea croquettes; sometimes it is scrambled eggs, or the yolks of hard boiled eggs.

We have a constant supply of fresh vegetables, the justly celebrated Bermuda onion; beets, turnips, egg plant, raw cabbage, potatoes, white and sweet, rice, hominy, green peas, tomatoes, and lettuce.

We have corn pones, corn bread, brown bread containing oatmeal, ordinary white bread, and oven toast—that is to say, slices of bread baked in the oven until it is brown all the way through. From Battle Creek we have malt honey, malted nuts, ripe olives, olive oil, fig and prune marmalades made without cane sugar, various crackers and grain preparations, and several other nut products. The Sanitarium health-chocolate, a sweet made without the use of cane sugar, and with chocolate divested of its caffeine, also appears on our table. We have eliminated dessert at dinner, having learned not only at Battle Creek, but in the sore school of experience, that the heterogeneous mixtures of cream or milk and cane sugar and various mushy stuffs, along with butter or lard, in the shape of pies and puddings and cakes, are extremely undesirable foods. We find the sweet, pure taste of malt honey an adequate and highly satisfactory substitute.

Fruits rarely appear on the table at dinner, since we do not wish to mix them with vegetables. They make their appearance in great abundance at supper, which we have at five o’clock. At this meal we have various cooked fruits, such as prunes or apricots or baked or stewed apples; and of uncooked fruits, oranges, apples, figs, bananas, grapes, and whatever else the market affords. With these we have zweibach and common bread or crackers. At both meals appears Yogurt, an acidulous and agreeable beverage which gratefully checks thirst and in itself nourishes, and is also the vehicle whereby millions of beneficial germs are introduced into the body.

The work of preparing and serving these two meals is done by one person—and that person has time left to play tennis and go in swimming with the rest of us. The total cost of the food is less than thirty dollars a week; cooked and served, its cost is about three dollars and a quarter a week per person. In this connection it should be explained that Bermuda prices, for even the commonest things, are in excess of prices in New York. We pay five cents each for eggs and twelve cents a quart for milk. We have oranges by the barrel, but they come from California, or from Jamaica by way of New York. We have olive oil at four dollars a gallon, and sterilized butter at fifty cents a pound. And in addition the figures quoted include expressage and steamer charges, and ten per cent. duty as well. We mention these things for the light they throw upon the relative costs of the vegetarian and carnivorous life.

The reader will also wish to know about the health of a family living in this manner. When we came here all our children were half-sick from too long contact with cities, and we were not used to the climate, and so one of them caught a severe cold. With this exception there has not been a day’s sickness among them, nor the remotest trace of an ailment. If we were to describe their looks the reader might attribute it to parental blindness, and so the proper plan seems to us to insert a picture of them, and let the reader come to his own conclusions.