p. 99 | Teeth and Food by R. T. Trall

Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · Sep 12, 1871

Teeth and Food.

By R. T. Trall

BY R. T. TRALL, M. D.

Naturalists can determine the natural dietetic character of animals by the structure of the teeth and jaws. Judged by this rule, man is found to be frugivorous. In this opinion all naturalists—Cuvier, Lawrence, Bell, Monboddo, and others—agree. But, in the face of these facts, physicians are continually asserting that the teeth of the human being indicate his omnivorous character. They tell us that man has carnivorous teeth, and therefore should eat flesh.

Now we meet this assertion with a flat contradiction. There are no such teeth in his head. It is true that those of his teeth which are intermediate between the cutting front teeth and the grinding back teeth do resemble, in some respects, the canine teeth of flesh-eating and omnivorous animals. But they also differ in some respects, and the differences are quite as significant as the resemblances. Without this resemblance there would not be symmetry between the incisors (cutting teeth) and the molars (grinding teeth). No unprejudiced person, on comparing the teeth of a dog, or lion, or tiger, or cat, or hog, or bear, with those of a man, would ever suspect the “higher animal” of being carnivorously inclined.

But the structure and motions of the jaws are entirely conclusive on this subject. Flesh-eating animals do not have the lateral or grinding motion of the under jaw. This is peculiar to graminivorous and frugivorous animals. The carnivora and omnivora have only the up and down, or cutting and tearing, motion of the jaws. The under jaw plays against the upper as one blade of a shears does against the other. Flesh-food only needs to be divided, cut or torn, into small pieces before being swallowed; grasses, grains, and fruits, require grinding; hence horses, cattle, sheep, the monkey tribes, and all animals subsisting directly on the fruits of the earth, have the lateral motion of the under jaw.

That man can masticate animal food is true. A cow, a horse, and a sheep, has been taught to eat beef-steak, and to prefer it to oats, hay, or grass. But who will say that this is not a perversion of the normal appetite? Animals, too, domestic and wild, have learned to love salt; and physicians, reasoning from morbid propensities instead of normal instincts, have told us that salt is necessary, or, at least, useful for such animals—that they had a “natural craving” for it. They might argue that man has a natural desire and necessity for alcohol and tobacco, because so many become addicted to their use. Indeed, our current literature, medical and secular, is everywhere pervaded and saturated with the doctrine that all human beings naturally crave stimulus of some kind, and in proof we are reminded that a majority of the nations and tribes of the human family have contrived some method of manufacturing from grains, fruits, and roots, some kind of intoxicating liquor. It would be just as good logic to say that, because a very large portion of the human family are addicted to lying and cheating, these are normal instincts!

So far as the scientific argument is concerned, it is all on the vegetarian side. But the advocates for flesh-eating often resort to experience, and this is just as fatal to their position as science is. They tell us that the people of the most developed and progressive nations are generally flesh-eaters. This argument, however, proves too much, for they are also liquor-drinkers and tobacco-users. Their superior physical and mental condition is attributable to the influences of latitude and longitude, soil and climate, and not to flesh, alcohol, and tobacco. Their superiority is in spite of these deteriorating habits, and not with their assistance, as most physicians and many pseudo-physiologists would have us believe. And it is true, too, that the lowest and most degraded tribes of the human family are flesh-eaters. We do not say that flesh-food is the sole nor the principal cause of their degradation. There is no argument for nor against flesh-eating to be derived from the fact that persons who eat flesh are more or less elevated or deteriorated in the social scale. The real issue lies deeper, and it is purely a scientific question. Does flesh, or do fruits and farinacea, afford the best material for the human organism? Physiology, animal and vegetable, and anatomy, human and comparative, demonstrate beyond all peradventure that man is designed by nature to subsist directly on the productions of the vegetable kingdom, except during the period of infancy.—Health Reformer.