PURE FOOD AN ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF TRUE REFORM.
By David Paulson
Vegetarianism is not a fad nor a new-fangled idea. It is decidedly old-fashioned, for it originated with the race. After creating Adam, the Lord made out a menu for him; and it consisted of the natural products of the earth. Evidently there was a divine fitness existing between Adam's beautiful home, his pure diet, and his exalted character. Providence always arranges things in the best manner; and when men seek to improve them, they of necessity to that extent spoil them. Saturating the pure air of heaven with tobacco smoke, instead of improving the atmosphere, makes it a menace to health. Nature furnishes us with water to quench our thirst, and instead of making it better by adding to it alcohol, or even tea or coffee, or any other harmful substance, we render it more suitable to be consigned to the kitchen sink than to be taken into the human stomach. When we consider the importance of the diet question from the mental, moral, and physical standpoint, it is amazing to see the indifference and ignorance that exist in reference to it. It is not only possible, but it is the rule, rather than the exception, for young women to go through the entire modern system of education, of which we are so proud, and yet not be able to give their mothers one idea of how to improve upon their methods of cooking the food that is to build up brain substance with which to think again God's thoughts. The business man requires a good stenographer; for he can not afford to run the risk of having her make him say that he will pay a thousand dollars for a certain article when he said one hundred dollars. Likewise, if he becomes badly tangled up in his business affairs, he secures a good attorney to unravel the snarl. He also desires to listen to a good minister to preach the gospel from the pulpit. But any ignorant girl, who perhaps has no more knowledge of the composition of the body than she has of the geography of the moon, but merely knows enough of the art of seasoning and flavoring the ingredients that she mixes together so that they will taste well for the half second that is required for them to slip past the palate — she is on that account regarded a perfectly competent cook. Dr. Lauder Brunton, an eminent English physician, has well said that cookery deserves to rank with the fine arts. The painting on the wall stimulates the nerve of sight, but it is not taken into the body; the piano that produces beautiful music always remains outside of the body; but the food that stimulates the nerves of taste, unlike the piano and the painting, is taken inside the body. Yet too often the question that the mother debates in her mind, and even in the presence of her child, is whether to eat a certain thing to save it. The child comes to regard its stomach, not as deserving at least the care that is given to the piano and the painting, but as simply on a level with the garbage box in the rear of the house. One objection I have to the eating of flesh foods, as well as to the wearing of second-hand clothing, is a dread of what is likely to go with them. I do not approve of filtering through the body, the waste products and the poisons that are found in dead oxen, dead hens, and other animal carcasses. When a human system is used as a filter through which to strain all these waste products, it is gradually being prepared for disease. Dr. Brunton has expressed it as his opinion that the reason that the percentage of Englishmen who die as a result of taking chloroform is larger than is the percentage of deaths from the same cause among the inhabitants of India, is due to the excessive use of meat among the English. On this account their blood is constantly so near the saturation point of general poisoning that the mere addition of chloroform is sufficient in many instances to overpower the heart's action, and cause instant death. Recently, in the London Lancet, Dr. L. Roger Williams called attention to the fact that the mortality from cancer had exactly kept pace with the increased use of meat,—that while, in 1850, in one hundred and twenty-seven deaths there was only one death from this cause, it is now responsible for one death in every twenty-two. The Englishman eats, on the average, one hundred and thirty-two pounds of meat a year. It is well known that there are thousands of persons in the British Islands who scarcely taste meat, so it is evident that there are some who use vastly more than these figures represent. In our laboratory of hygiene at the Battle Creek Sanitarium carefully arranged experiments were conducted to determine the increase of the toxicity of the kidney secretion of a person when using meat, as compared to the same when he lives upon pure food. The kidney secretion of a healthy vegetarian was injected into a vein of a rabbit, and the exact amount required to kill it was noted. Then, for a few days, this man was placed upon a diet consisting largely of flesh foods, after which a rabbit, of the same weight as the first one, was selected, and it was found that only one fourth as much kidney secretion was required to kill it. That meant, of course, that the blood in every part of the man's body was constantly four times as poisonous as before. As long as a person has a strong constitution, and his eliminating organs are capable of carrying off four times as much poison as should be necessary, so long he may eat flesh food with impunity, and even boast that it does not hurt him; but let the reverse be the case, as it is with many thousands, and the use of flesh food becomes at once an important factor in preparing the way for serious diseases. According to Dr. Osler, there are 1,200,000 consumptives in the United States to-day; and according to Dr. Matthews, late president of the American Medical Association, one third of all the deaths between the ages of fifteen and sixty is now due to this dread malady. We know that every one inhales more or less tubercular bacilli at every breath; but the bacilli secure a foothold only when vitality has been weakened. Reliable statistics show that insanity has increased three hundred per cent over and above the increase of the population during the last fifty years. Dr. McGuigan, of the State insane asylum at Kalamazoo, Mich., has called attention to the fact that placing certain classes of mental patients upon a purely non-flesh diet has resulted in a noticeable improvement in them. It must be evident to all that a diet which is conducive to the recovery of insane patients would certainly be equally conducive to the prevention of the disease. The overwhelming increase of tuberculosis among cattle is of itself sufficient justification for us to discard the use of flesh foods. The Illinois Live Stock Commissioners, as recently editorially reported in the Times-Herald, made the statement that of the sixty thousand cows supplying milk to Chicago twenty thousand were estimated to have tuberculosis. It was my privilege to be present when the herd that had been supplying Governor Tanner's family with milk was slaughtered at the Chicago stock yards. There was certainly nothing to indicate that eighty per cent of those sleek-looking animals were infected with any disease, but the post mortem revealed that the pharyngeal glands were in some cases as large as a fist, and were in a completely broken-down state of tubercular degeneration. In some instances the udders themselves were in almost the same condition, not to mention the lungs and other parts of the body. If we really “ring in the new” in reference to the improvement of society, and seek to propagate true reform with the intense earnestness that its importance demands, then we must take hold of the diet question in earnest; for it lies at the very root of more physical and moral evils than has been supposed. Providence co-operates with every true effort which man makes in the direction of reform. If we can induce a man to make no greater reform than merely to bury dead things in the graveyard rather than in his stomach, he will be so amply rewarded for this effort that it will serve as an encouragement to him, and will surely lead him to take further steps in the way of reform.