No Animal Food | Page 3

is simply that they are deplorably ignorant of their natural
bodily wants. How much does the ordinary individual know about
nutrition, or about obedience to an unperverted appetite? The doctors
seem to know little about health; they are not asked to keep us healthy,
but only to cure us of disease, and so their studies relate to disease, not
health; and dietetics, a science dealing with the very first principles of
health, is an optional course in the curriculum of the medical student.
Food is the first necessary of life, and the right kind of food, eaten in
the right manner, is necessary to a right, that is, healthy life. No doubt,
pathological conditions are sometimes due to causes other than wrong
feeding, but in a very large percentage of cases there is little doubt that
errors in diet have been the cause of the trouble, either directly, or
indirectly by rendering the system susceptible to pernicious
influences.[1] A knowledge of what is the right food to eat, and of the

right way to eat it, does not, under existing conditions of life, come
instinctively. Under other conditions it might do so, but under those in
which we live, it certainly does not; and this is owing to the fact that for
many hundred generations back there has been a pandering to sense,
and a quelling and consequent atrophy of the discriminating animal
instinct. As our intelligence has developed we have applied it to the
service of the senses and at the expense of our primitive intuition of
right and wrong that guided us in the selection of that which was
suitable to our preservation and health. We excel the animals in the
possession of reason, but the animals excel us in the exercise of
instinct.
It has been said that animals do not study dietetics and yet live healthily
enough. This is true, but it is true only as far as concerns those animals
which live in their natural surroundings and under natural conditions.
Man would not need to study diet were he so situated, but he is not.
The wild animal of the woods is far removed from the civilized human
being. The animal's instinct guides him aright, but man has lost his
primitive instinct, and to trust to his inclinations may result in disaster.
The first question about vegetarianism, then, is this:--Is it the best diet
from the hygienic point of view? Of course it will be granted that
diseased food, food containing pernicious germs or poisons, whether
animal or vegetable, is unfit to be eaten. It is not to be supposed that
anyone will defend the eating of such food, so that we are justified in
assuming that those who defend flesh-eating believe flesh to be free
from such germs and poisons; therefore let the following be noted. It is
affirmed that 50 per cent. of the bovine and other animals that are
slaughtered for human food are affected with Tuberculosis, or some of
the following diseases: Cancer, Anthrax, Pleuro-Pneumonia,
Swine-Fever, Sheep Scab, Foot and Mouth Disease, etc., etc., and that
to exclude all suspected or actually diseased carcasses would be
practically to leave the market without a supply. One has only to read
the literature dealing with this subject to be convinced that the
meat-eating public must consume a large amount of highly poisonous
substances. That these poisons may communicate disease to the person
eating them has been amply proved. Cooking does not necessarily

destroy all germs, for the temperature at the interior of a large joint is
below that necessary to destroy the bacilli there present.
Although the remark is irrelevant to the subject in hand, one is tempted
to point out that, quite apart from the question of hygiene, the idea of
eating flesh containing sores and wounds, bruises and pus-polluted
tissues, is altogether repulsive to the imagination.
Let it be supposed, however, that meat can be, and from the
meat-eater's point of view, should be and will be under proper
conditions, uncontaminated, there yet remains the question whether
such food is physiologically necessary to man. Let us first consider
what kind of food is best suited to man's natural constitution.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: It seems reasonable to suppose that granting the organism
has such natural needs satisfied as sleep, warmth, pure air, sunshine,
and so forth, fundamentally all susceptibility to disease is due to wrong
feeding and mal-nutrition, either of the individual organism or of its
progenitors. The rationale of nutrition is a far more complicated matter
than medical science appears to realise, and until the intimate
relationship existing between nutrition and pathology has been
investigated, we shall not see much progress towards the extermination
of disease. Medical science by its curative methods is simply pruning
the evil, which, meanwhile, is sending its roots