Meat-Eating and Disease
By D. H. Kress
By D. H. Kress, M.D., Medical Superintendent of Washington (D.C.) Sanitarium Considerable has been said within recent years of the need of breathing pure air. Much has been accomplished in the prevention, and successful treatment, of diseases, which were considered almost incurable, by merely supplying a liberal amount of pure air day and night. Why is pure air so essential?—Because it contains that very essential element, oxygen. But impure air may not be deficient in oxygen and yet be injurious. The chief objection to the inhalation of impure air is the fact that the oxygen has associated with it poisonous products. Meat is valued as a food because it contains an essential food element—proteid. If this was all it contained, no serious objection could be raised against its use. But the proteid in meat has associated with it impurities. In vitiated air we have a mixture of oxygen and eliminated body wastes. In meat we have a mixture of proteid and uneliminated body wastes. The inhalation of vitiated air, or the ingestion of vitiated food, are both injurious, for both tend to vitiate the blood and lower the vitality of the tissues, making a person more subject to take on disease. The liability to take germ diseases is greatly increased by meat-eating, and those who use meat freely are more apt to die of such diseases when stricken down with them. As in breathing, the aim should be to get the oxygen unassociated with impurities, so in eating the aim should be to get the proteids unassociated with impurities. Meat and meat extracts are sometimes recommended for the sick. It would be just as rational to recommend to the sick vitiated air to breathe, as it would be to recommend these animal wastes to eat. Even meat from a healthy animal is impure, because the healthy animal always has circulating in its tissues waste products, which are on their way to the kidneys, lungs, and skin for elimination. When the animal is killed these wastes on their way to the organs of elimination are retained in the tissues. It is estimated that one pound of meat contains about fourteen grains of uric acid. Dr. H. W. Wiley says: “There is no nourishment in broth or in the so-called extracts of meat. Every one of the so-called invalid foods made from meats is a fake of the worst kind. Extract of beef is absolutely without value as food. A dog fed on beef extract for eleven days died of starvation. He was given all he would eat. The makers of the best known extracts do not claim it to be a food. They say it is a stimulant, not a food.” The stimulating properties found in meat are the poisonous wastes it contains. These, when introduced into the system cause fever or produce what is known as stimulation. They render the blood and tissues impure, lower vitality and thus predispose to various diseases. Aside from the fact that flesh foods introduce impurities into the system, germ diseases are frequently directly communicated to man through the consumption of the flesh of diseased animals. Leprosy is said by one of the best authorities to be due to the use of diseased fish. Flesh-eating is, no doubt, one of the causes of the prevalence of tuberculosis, a disease which is responsible for 180,000 deaths annually in the United States alone. It is also the chief cause of cancer and its rapid increase in modern times. Infection in Tuberculosis.
While impure air and impure food lower the vital resistance of the tissues of the body, infection, it is now held, takes place chiefly through the alimentary canal by the use of foods or drinks which contain the germs of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis is a common disease among cattle. Many of the animals slaughtered give visible evidence of having the disease. Diseased lungs and livers are found to be the rule and not the exception in slaughterhouses, whenever a critical examination is made of the internal organs. So common is disease among these creatures that a member of the City Board of Health in Chicago said, that if all the diseased meat were rejected “the price of beef would be a dollar a pound.” A chief inspector of meat said, “If all the poor meat were condemned, half the population would have to go without any at all.” Butchers usually cut out the manifestly diseased portion, the remainder of the carcass is by him considered healthy and is sold. At the Royal Commission on Tuberculosis, 1895, it was reported that of the numerous experiments that had been made “the apparently healthy flesh of tuberculous cattle (not the manifestly diseased organs) had been swallowed by various animals, with the effect that the disease had in many cases, fatally followed the injection of such infected ‘material.’” No part of an animal that has diseased lungs or liver, is fit as food for human consumption. It is estimated that fully one fourth of the cattle are afflicted with this disease alone. Many of the creatures which have the disease are well nourished and give no visible evidence of being diseased. It is not until the disease is well advanced that emaciation and other noticeable symptoms appear. Burton R. Rogers, D.V.M., in the address published in the Bulletin of Iowa Institutions for October, 1904, says hogs are extremely infected by tubercular disease. He said: “In four years’ work as inspector of meats I have seen no less than ten thousand such animals, to say nothing of the like proportion which two hundred other federal inspectors have seen.” He further said, “The high-bred, high-priced, pedigreed animals, those in prime fat and apparently healthy in condition, are often as thoroly saturated with disease as the scrub.” “Among 750 hogs which were discovered to be tuberculous after being slaughtered we were not able to discover on examination before slaughter of a single hog that we could say positively was tuberculous and we were not able even to suspect more than fifty.” The deadly trichina is commonly found in pigs and gains access to human beings by the use of measly pork. In New Zealand, where I saw the finest cattle I have ever seen anywhere, cancer among cattle is very common. It did not surprise me to learn later that cancer in man was also very common. Fat is no indication of health, either in man or in the animal, it is rather an indication of disease. Fat subjects usually fall a prey to this disease. I am convinced that the free use of meat is responsible to a great extent for the prevalence of tuberculosis, cancer, scrofula, tumors, and other like affections. I am also convinced that the suffering and mortality from meat-eating is not discerned at present as it will be in the future. It has been affirmed by some of the best authorities that appendicitis, another modern disease, is practically confined to meat-eating countries and to meat-eaters in those countries. Why eat meat? There certainly can be no excuse to eat flesh of animals so long as it is possible to get the food elements to supply the needs of the body from safer sources. In the absence or scarcity of better foods man may be justified in running the risk; but no man, it seems to me, can afford to run these risks in a land where fruits, cereals, legumes, vegetables, etc., are so abundantly provided as they are in America. In these simple products of the earth no food-element is lacking that the human body needs. The animal derives the elements out of which it builds strong bones, muscles, and from which it derives heat and energy, from the vegetable kingdom, why should not man do likewise? Why should he be content to take his food at second hand, and thus fill his body with impurities and run the chances of introducing germs of disease? At the beginning man was placed in a garden and surrounded with trees pleasant to the sight and good for food. “Of every15tree,” the Creator said, “thou mayest freely eat.” Gen. 2:8, 9, 16. “And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat.” Gen. 1:29. This was the food originally given to man. Had man never departed from this heaven-appointed bill of fare, suffering would be unknown. Satan knew he could destroy God’s handiwork best by gaining control of his appetite. He knew that in order to demoralize the members of the human family he must change their food and their drink. This he has been successful in doing, and as a result, disease prevails. But men and women need no longer be ignorant of his devices. Egypt’s flesh-pots should be forsaken for the simple food given to man at the Creation. Men and women will discover that in order to have health, this must be done.