Health Department

Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 7, 1875

Health Department.

“Beloved, I wish above all things that thou mayest prosper and be in health, even as thy soul prospereth.” 3 John 2.

Diet and Peace.

In 1871 a Mr. Ellis published a small pamphlet in San Francisco on the subject of peace, national and individual, and how to obtain it. He makes it a question of diet, and his statements are correct and his reasoning good, as the following extract shows:—

“Take the North American Indians at the time of their discovery by Columbus. We find them subsisting almost exclusively on meat. Their numbers were very few, and their natures were almost identical with those of the wolf and panther that slaughtered and fed on the same animals that they did. Their greatest happiness was in scenes of blood. They had little or no mental enjoyment. The long and exhaustive hunts and the kind of food they ate doubtless made them what they were. Their numbers could not increase, because the land could not maintain them, owing to their system of living. Now let us consider the condition of the Sandwich Islanders for a contrast, at the time of their discovery by Captain Cook. They had few domestic animals, and comparatively no wild ones; they lived on fruits and vegetables. Captain Cook says that at one place where he stopped the natives had a large oven in which the whole village cooked, and that there was no meat cooked during his stay, and adds: ‘I think I can safely say that their food is nine-tenths vegetable; and they have kind, gentle dispositions, and have excellent health, few or no cases of sickness among them.’ He estimates their numbers at four hundred thousand. Probably there was not a place on the North American continent of ten times the size of these islands that contained so many native inhabitants at that time, and when we consider that the Islanders had no agricultural implements with which to cultivate the soil, we have only to guess how many times more inhabitants the islands would support under a proper system of cultivation, if they would only live as the natives did at the time of their discovery. But they have taken thither all kinds of domestic animals, and gone to living on meat. They had their numbers taken in 1860, and there were but sixty-eight thousand natives left, and less than three thousand foreigners. Is there not a mighty lesson to be learned from these facts?

“But what has all this to do with peace, national peace? may be asked. • Everything to do with it. Just as much to do with it as the rain has to do with the prosperity of California. There can be no such thing as permanent national peace until there is individual peace, health, and happiness among the masses. • Under our present system of living our lives are nothing but one continual toil, struggle and strife. This state of things ought not to continue, and, I think, need not.”

The writer then speaks of the health and longevity of man while eating the simple diet provided for him by his Creator, as stated in Gen. 1: 29, 30, and of his speedy degeneracy after the introduction of animal food, and continues:—

“The Sandwich Islanders have done the same thing. What has been the result? Why, out of four hundred thousand healthy, happy human beings there are seventy thousand discontented, sickly persons left. Are they not most effectually driven out of their beautiful garden, and compelled to earn their food by the sweat of their brows as the Bible says old Adam had to? How can there be such a thing as happiness so long as a man has to toil with body or brain eight, ten, or twelve hours out of every twenty-four, for a livelihood? Is it necessary that the laboring classes of the United States should earn nineteen millions of dollars annually to pay for duty on tea and coffee? Is not the use of these drugs worse than useless? Are they not causing the immense consumption of tobacco and alcoholic drinks which is going on all over the civilized world, and destroying the peace of thousands of our fellow-beings? Do they not heat both body and brain, even if a person never uses tobacco or alcohol? I think they do, and never use them.

“What effect has the eating of meat on individual and national character? We have seen what the North American Indians were, who lived on it. We know that it strengthens, stimulates, and renders active all the lower faculties of man, at the expense of the intellect. Why did so many of the founders of different religions abstain from its use? Because they knew that it would give them an animal and not an intellectual nature. The habitual use of meat makes man governed by passion and impulse, instead of reason and forethought, and hence destroys the very foundation of national peace and prosperity. And then look at the toil and expense necessary to produce it. How few there are who seem to realize that in buying meats instead of other food there is a loss of four dollars out of every five. Take the San Francisco market for example. Good beef is worth twenty cents per pound, bones and all; rye or corn meal and flour, from three to four cents per pound, and nearly all is good food, while meat is three-fourths water. Chickens are worth from seventy-five cents to one dollar each; the best of potatoes, one cent per pound. I have bought the best of sweet potatoes, the past season, for seventy-five cents per hundred; compare those with chickens at seventy-five cents each. Many suppose that they cannot have strength if they do not eat meat; but let such a person be at Castle Garden, New York, and see those German and Irish immigrants land, see those broad shoulders and strong arms, deep chests and large vital organs, and he cannot help noticing their strength and apparent powers of endurance. Many of them will tell you that they did not eat meat in their old homes more than once or twice a week, and as for tea or coffee, they drank them no oftener. I know of a laboring man in this city who practices the principles which I am trying to advocate, and it is his pride and boast that he has done a week’s hard work on food that he has bought for one dollar. He says that he has earned money enough in one week, as a common laborer on the street, to feed, clothe, and give him books for one month. Now, don’t you think that man has done his part toward producing universal peace? I tell you that as long as butchery and bloodshed are necessary for your daily existence, so long shall army meet army and strew the battlefield with the slain; for to have a higher mental development the use of meat as food must cease, in order to give the masses time to cultivate the intellect and the desire to do so. The laborer above referred to is satisfied that he can go out into the valleys and select one acre of ground, which, by being brought to as high a state of cultivation as the soil will admit of, can support fifteen adult persons, in full health and strength, if they will live as he does; and the labor for its cultivation will not exceed four hours per day for one-third of that number.”

We might allow a wider range in the line of food than this San Francisco laborer allowed to himself, and still the statements of the writer would be forcibly correct. The subject is worthy of much more attention than it receives.

J. H. W.