Good Health and How We Won It, With an Account of the New Hygiene

In commenting upon the Belgian experiments, Professor Fisher writes:

DR. TURCK’S INVESTIGATIONS

It is possible that flesh-eating, as ordinarily practiced, is injurious both because of excessive proteid and because meat, as such, contains poisonous elements. It is well known that Liebig came to repudiate the idea that the extractives of meat were nutritious, and that investigation has shown them to be poisonous. Professor Fisher also points out that Dr. F. B. Turck has found that dogs, mice, and rats fed on meat extractives exhibit symptoms of poisoning and often die. The poisonous effect is aggravated by intestinal bacteria, which find in these extractives an excellent culture medium. Dr. Turck concludes:

“(1) It is clearly evident from these experiments, which correspond to the investigations of others, that the injurious effects of meat are due not so much to the muscle proteid, myosin, as to the extractives.

“(2) That the injurious effects of the extractives are increased through the action of intestinal bacteria.”

Dr. Turck does not find any evidence that the extractives in small quantities are injurious.

Dr. Turck therefore concludes that the “high liver” who uses much flesh and also an excess of starch and sugar is a “bad risk” for life insurance companies. He recommends, if meat is to be used, that the extractives first be removed by special processes, which he explains.

These investigations, with those of Combe of Lausanne, Metchnikoff and Tissier, of Paris, as well as Herter and others in the United States, seem gradually to be demonstrating that the fancied strength from meat is, like the fancied strength from alcohol, an illusion. The “beef and ale of England” are largely sources of weakness, not strength.

THE DANGER OF INFECTION FROM MEAT

It has always been conceded that by eating raw or underdone beef or pork one may acquire tape worms; and that in eating raw or underdone pork one runs the same risk of contracting that uncurable malady, trichinosis. The danger from these sources, however, is comparatively slight, since most people eat their meat well cooked; but in the view of many modern scientists all meat eaters are open to a particular form of germ infection which involves all kinds of meat, fish, flesh and fowl, cooked as well as uncooked.

Everybody knows how readily meats of all kinds, and particularly seafood, such as fish, oysters and clams, undergo putrefaction. The processes of decay in fish and animals begin within an hour or two after death, under the influence of putrefactive bacteria, which are always present in the colon, or large intestine of animals, upon the skin and in the atmosphere about them. Ordinary cooking does not destroy them, for they are able to stand the ordinary cooking temperature. Salt and smoked fish, and other meats have these germs present in vast multitudes; and beef and game that is “hung” for a long time in order to become “tender,” are so far advanced in decay before they are brought to the table that every minute particle of them is alive with these germs.

These facts are granted by all; but the physiologist who favors the use of meat, says that unless excessive quantities are consumed, the healthy person undergoes little risk. The argument is, that when the germs are swallowed into the stomach they are there destroyed by the action of the gastric juice, which is germicidal; but experiments have lately proved that some of these germs escape destruction by the gastric juice, and find their way to the colon, where they continue to multiply in the mucous which covers the intestinal wall, and thus maintain constant and active putrefactive processes in that part of the body.

THE NUMBER OF GERMS WE EAT

Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek has lately made public the results of a carefully conducted series of observations made by Dr. A. W. Nelson, bacteriologist of the clinical laboratory of the Battle Creek Sanitarium. Various specimens of meat were purchased in the ordinary way in the market, wrapped in clean paper, and immediately taken to the laboratory, where samples were removed for observation under the microscope. The meat was then taken to the diet kitchen and well cooked, after which cultures were again made.

The germs found in meat are classed as aerobes and anaerobes. The aerobes are for the most part acid-forming germs, and comparatively harmless. But the anaerobes are poison-forming germs, and are the agents of putrefaction and of various diseases. They are to-day considered as the most potent causes of many chronic maladies, and especially of that most common of diseases, intestinal autointoxication.

Dr. Nelson found that in one specimen of raw beef, there were present per moist gram of material 105,000 aerobes and 90,000 anaerobes. On the outside of the beef after it had been fried, there were no germs present, but on the inside of the fried beef, he found 3000 aerobes and 2000 anaerobes per gram. With three other specimens of beef, that were broiled, and boiled, and roasted, respectively, the results were generally similar. Of all modes of cooking, roasting seems to have least effect upon the bacteria, for in specimen No. 3, while there were fewer bacteria than in specimen No. 1 before cooking, there were found after it had been well roasted 150,000 aerobes and 160,000 anaerobes.

In fresh fish raw there were found 870,000 anaerobes per gram; in sardines in oil, 14,000,000; while in codfish that had been soaked to remove the salt, there were found 47,600,000. In another experiment specimens of meat were secured such as were served on the dining tables of one of the prominent city hotels, and taken at once to the laboratory, where without delay bacterial cultures were made. A specimen of sirloin steak was found to contain 378,000,000 anaerobes per gram of moist material.

An interesting experiment which showed the increase of anaerobes or poison-forming germs in dead flesh, was that made with two chickens of equal size, one of which was drawn, and the other undrawn. Both were placed under the same conditions in a room the temperature of which was maintained at 70° Fahrenheit. Bacterial cultures were made at frequent intervals, with results as given in the following table, the figures showing the number of bacteria per gram of moist material.

It must be remembered that these chickens were freshly killed, and that the anaerobes had no such opportunity to increase as in ordinary market beefs.

Specimens of several other kinds of meat were purchased in the market, and at once taken to the laboratory for study. Cultures were made immediately on reaching the laboratory, and again after the meat had been allowed to stand (covered) at room temperature for twenty hours. The following table shows the results of the bacterial counts:

Bacteria Per Gram (Moist)

Immediately after purchase

After being kept at room temperature for twenty hours.

These experiments were made in the winter time, when, because of the diminished amount of dust in the air, germs are less abundant. Even in the winter time, however, certain meat products simply swarm with germs. A specimen of raw liver examined in January was found to contain 269,800,000 bacteria per ounce or gram. Raw sausage contained 48,280,000 bacteria per ounce or gram.

“A food which introduces these deadly organisms, the anaerobes, at the rate of ten to twenty-five billions to the ounce, as do pork, beef and sausage, must certainly be classed as unclean,” said Dr. Kellogg, in summing up the report on his experiments. “When thousands are daily indulging themselves in this dietary, what wonder that Bright’s disease, enteritis, and other maladies due to germs and germ poisons are so rife and so rapidly increasing? It is quite as important to keep the inside of the body in a sweet, clean and wholesome condition as to maintain a wholesome state of the external portion of the body.”

CANCER AND MEAT EATING

That nothing could seem more definite than the connection between cancer and the practice of eating inferior meat, is the conclusion reached by Dr. G. Cook Adams, who made a series of statistical studies under the direction of the Chicago Board of Health. “There cannot be the slightest doubt,” says this expert, “that the great increase in cancer among the foreign born of Chicago over the prevalence of that disease in their native countries, is due to the increased consumption of animal foods, particularly those derived from diseased animals.” This conclusion substantiates the original deductions made by Dr. Adams from investigations carried on over a number of years in Australia and London.

Dr. Woods Hutchinson stated that the rise of any nation in civilization is invariably accompanied by an increased abundance in food supply; and the rise of these foreign born in Chicago in civilization substantiates Dr. Woods Hutchinson’s views. Receiving more wages than in their native homes, where their diet was simple, they are enabled to indulge in a meat diet denied them in Europe. The result is an increase in the death rate from cancer between the years 1856 and 1866 of 680%, while from 1866 to 1905 the increase was 232%.

In 1905 cancer was responsible for one in every twenty-three deaths, while in 1906 one death in every 21.8 was due to this horrible disease. The Italians and the Chinese were the only two of all the races represented in Chicago that do not show a far greater death rate from cancer than in their own homes. The Italians keep up the use of macaroni and spaghetti, while the Chinese adhere to their native diet of rice. The nations showing the higher mortality consume large quantities of canned, preserved, dried and pickled meats, sausages, etc. It was also shown that the bulk of the fresh meat prepared at the plant of a slaughtering company was stock condemned by official inspectors, and this was the meat eaten by the poor.

INVESTIGATIONS IN NEW YORK

Dr. W. H. Guilfoy, of the New York Health Department, recently published the results of investigations of the death rate among foreigners in New York, and showed that cancer, heart disease and chronic Bright’s disease have increased alarmingly in recent years, and his statistics show that foreigners of flesh eating nations reveal the highest rates for the three diseases mentioned, in marked contrast with nations that consume from 50 to 400% less meat per capita. The following list shows the exact comparison:

Deaths per 100,000 among Flesh-eating Foreigners

Deaths per 100,000 among Nationalities noted for Small Consumption of Meat

Another argument which the opponents of meat-eating bring forward, is based upon the fact that in eating flesh which contains blood, we consume a great deal of waste material and poisons from the body of the animal. When the blood flows from the heart outward to each organ of the body it is a life-stream containing life-giving oxygen and particles of fresh food material for the use of the tissues, but when it flows back it is freighted with the elements of disease and death, with poisonous substances which are the bi-products of organic activity, and which, if retained in the body for any length of time invariably cause disease. The rapidity with which the blood becomes impure and poisonous may be easily noted by winding a string about the finger, when the flesh will quickly turn a blue color. Animals die as men and women die, with their ailments within them, and if you eat of them you eat the products of their disease process. Tuberculosis is known to be one of the maladies sometimes transmitted by the use of flesh. Numerous epidemics of typhoid fever have been traced to the use of oysters.

THE PROTEID ARGUMENT

It had generally been assumed by physiologists that the great virtue of meat lay in the greater digestibility of its proteid matter. Recent experiment investigations, however, have shown that the vegetable proteids are as a rule not less digestible than those from animal sources. The vegetable proteids are often packed away and enveloped in cellulose or other material difficult of digestion, or are permeated with fats, as in some of the nuts; but modern methods of preparing grains for the market, and also the thorough cooking of them, remove this difficulty.

The deficiency of ordinary vegetable dietaries in proteids has been a ground for criticism by the opponents of this regimen. Since, however, the researches of Chittenden, Mendel, Metchnikoff, Dr. Folin, and others have shown us that we need much less proteid than the elder school of physiologists so long supposed, this objection loses its weight. And, furthermore, there are many nut foods which are even richer in proteids than cooked meats. Cooked meat contains 25% of proteids, while peanut butter contains 29%. The edible portion of walnuts contains 27%, and the edible portion of pine nuts 35%.

To sum up the argument in this matter it is our belief that modern science has demonstrated that excessive meat eating is dangerous, because of its high proteid content and its liability to germ infection; and, also, that we can obtain all the elements which meat contains from other kinds of food which are not open to the objections fairly to be made against the use of meat. Nevertheless, here, as elsewhere, it may be said that “Fletcherism,”—complete mastication—is again the key that unlocks the solution of this problem for many. Thorough mastication leads to the use of less meat; it also gives the germicidal saliva a chance to kill harmful germs; and it aids the digestive organs very materially. Eat meat—says the rational physiologist—if you feel you must, or if it is difficult to abandon its use, but be careful to chew it well.

It is true, to be sure, that the digestion of proteid is accomplished not by saliva, but by stomach juices, which would seem to be an argument in favor of bolting meat (as the dog does), but the mere maceration of the meat by the teeth, if nothing more, is a help to the stomach in its work of digestion.