GOOD HEALTH | AdventAI

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · May 23, 1878

GOOD HEALTH.

Proper Diet for Man.

COMPARATIVE ANATOMY.

ALL of these principles have been developed by studying the teeth and other alimentary organs of these animals, after their dietetic habits were known by observation. The method of reasoning followed has been purely inductive. With animals in a state of nature, in which condition their appetites are acknowledged to be unperverted, this method is entirely sound and reliable; but we cannot so determine the dietetic nature of men, because we do not find him in that same normal and unperverted condition. In this case, then, we must pursue a different course. We must follow the same plan of reasoning that we should adopt in determining the dietetic character of an extinct race of animals, of whose dietetic character nothing is known by observation, its fossil remains being the only relics left for examination.

As an illustration of the principles upon which this method of reasoning is based, we will suppose that we have found the bones of some animal which has become extinct, so that its natural history is unknown. Upon examination of its teeth, and other alimentary organs as far as practicable, we find a striking resemblance to the corresponding organs of the lion, tiger, cat, and other carnivorous animals. Since these animals subsist upon flesh food, we at once very properly conclude that such was also the natural food of the animals in question. Had the alimentary organs been like those of a sheep, an ox, a horse, or a deer, we should have been obliged to class it as herbivorous. A similar course would have been pursued in relation to either of the other classes had there been a resemblance requiring a different conclusion. The study of animals in this manner is what is termed, “comparative anatomy.”

To ascertain, then, in accordance with the above principles, to which of the several classes man belongs, and thus determine his dietetic character, we must carefully compare the structure of his alimentary organs with that of the corresponding organs of each of the classes of animals referred to. In this examination, we must be constantly on our guard lest we allow ourselves to be influenced in our verdict by prejudice in favor of the diet which we see in such common use at the present time. As we have seen, however, this must be made no criterion whatever; for man, unlike animals possessed of less reasoning capacity, but perhaps, at the present at least, of more fully developed and reliable instinctive impulses, has departed widely, as we shall show, from that state of natural simplicity and normal condition in which the Creator placed him. Whatever we learn, then, from anatomy, of the natural food of man, must be determined by just such a comparison of his organs of alimentation with those of other animals as would be resorted to in order to settle the same question in regard to an animal whose natural history was entirely unknown, nothing being discovered but the fossil remains.

If we can find, then, a class of animals in which the organs of alimentation are like those of the human species, we shall be obliged to place man in that class, dietetically, and shall then have solved the whole problem; but if we find in man a great likeness to one class in certain particulars, and as great differences in others, while the same is true of some other class also, we must not hastily conclude that he partakes of the nature of both. We must consider that, since he is like neither one, we have not yet found the parallel for which we were looking, and so must continue the search until such a one is found. This principle is important, and its truth will become more apparent as we advance in this investigation.