Health, or, How to Live

FLESH AS FOOD FOR MAN

THIS is the title of a fine Tract written by H. C. Jackson, M. D., Physician-in-chief at Our Home, and for sale by F. Wilson Hurd and Co., Dansville, N. Y. We quote largely from it as follows: HHTL 18.2

“1. Nature has divided the vertebrate animals, or those animals who have back-bones into two classes — those who are scavengers, and those who are not. The scavengers are those who live upon animal or vegetable matter when it is in a putrescent state, eating it with more relish when in the early stages of decomposition. By thus doing, they through their existence subserve a valuable purpose; they preserve the lives and secure the health of beings of a higher organization. The purpose of the Creator in making them is manifest, but he never made them as food for man. All flesh-eating animals are scavengers, and so are omnivorous animals; and uniformly these are animals low in the scale of organization. Of those in the sea, the oyster and shell fish are examples, and were it not for them the ocean would become a mass of putridity, whose pestilential exhalations would exhaust all life within itself, and on the land also. Of those on the land, THE HOG is at the head; he is the illustrious scavenger. From the filthiest heap of decaying vegetables, from the excrements of animals superior in organization to himself, to the putrid carcass of such animals, the hog never turns away. He has in his gross and filthy body made visible the object for which he was created; it is to work up into his own tissues putrescent and effete organic matters, and thus subserve the ends of human existence. His mission — if a hog can have a mission — is to dispose of, to get out of the way, filthy matters, He is of all the back-boned animals the scavenger-in-chief. Does it need an unusual degree of common sense to conclude that in thus organizing and classifying him, the Creator did not design that MAN — the creature made in his own image — should make him a staple for food? Pure human instinct would decide this question quickly. The hog has uses outside the alimental department. Vegetarians leave him there, where God placed him, without thinking it at all needful to find a reason for his having been created in eating him. HHTL 18.3

“Just in proportion as the earth is brought under human culture, and its resources properly developed, do the scavenger class of animals die, “pass away.” If they live, they need care at the hand of man. The hog originally wild, needs domestication in order to preserve his existence. Occupying the soil for his own uses, man circumscribes the means of livelihood to the hog, and so is forced to bring him under his special care, or have him become extinct. The same fate would await him that has overtaken the wolf, the cougar, the lion, and tiger, wherever they have existed and man has made settlements. All animals whose end of existence is to devour, must give way as man tills and improves the earth and his own condition, to animals which along with their propensity to eat have in themselves substantial qualities for use. Whenever any people shall have become so far civilized and enlightened by Christianity as to have nothing filthy about them for the hog to devour, they will cease to be so filthy as to devour him. Meanwhile, they will keep up their present filthy relation of making him scavenger to all the dead and decaying matter in their streets, their pastures, their farm-yards, their stables, their cow-yards, and their hog-pens, and then do themselves the honor of becoming scavenger to him. HHTL 19.1

“2. There are animals inferior to man, in their scale of being, which do not eat other animals: these are the herbivora. They are the only animals which in their best estate man should consent to eat, and “vegetarians” will not eat these, because it is clear that human thought and feeling are modified greatly by the conditions of the body, and that these conditions are largely dependent on the food eaten, as well as the beverage drunken, and that of all kinds of food flesh-meats have the most peculiar influence on the human body by carrying into the blood qualities of their own, and which, in so far as they are assimilated, make the human tissue like to themselves. History settles this question conclusively, demonstrating the law in nature, that animals of the higher organization are not intended to eat those of a lower grade, and that all tribes and nations of men who have made themselves scavengers — as the carnivorous and omnivorous animals do, have lost power, sunk in rank, deteriorated in character, and ultimately perished. HHTL 20.1

“Now, although the herbivorous are not scavengers, and are not subject, on the score of organization, to the same objections that the hog, the turkey-buzzard, the toad, the serpent, and the rat are, yet to a creature delighting himself in that he wears the image of God, there are insuperable obstacles in the way of their use as food. HHTL 20.2

“1. He has in the grains, the vegetables, and fruits, materials for food greatly superior to their flesh. This is evident from the single fact, that any defect in growth or formation, or any disease of the grain, vegetable, or fruit, can be apprehended, and its use avoided. A decayed apple, a rotten potato, grown wheat, can be detected, and the ill results from their use forestalled. But with the flesh of animals it is otherwise. The animals may be diseased when killed — so diseased that inoculation of their diseases in the human body may take place, producing the direst results, and yet no analysis suffice to give light on the subject. There is no doubt of the truth of this statement, the facts being patent to all close observers, though Chemistry fails to give scientific demonstration. Thus, during one week in the hot months of this year, 1858, there passed through Buffalo, in the State of New York, 2,150 “head of cattle” in the space of thirty-six hours. They were all shipped at Cleveland, Ohio, and were on the route from that city to New York, the space of sixty-six hours. The days and nights during which they were passing, were among the hottest of the season; they stood the whole time on their feet closely packed, and not one of them had given it on the whole route a drop of water. They were fattened cattle, going to slaughter, and on arrival at New York were unloaded, sold, and butchered without delay. Numbers of them died on being released from confinement. To state the condition in which they were at the time of slaughter, is to furnish evidence that they were unfit to be eaten by human beings; yet the closest analysis failed to furnish proof of difference between this and other flesh of cattle killed under totally different circumstances. HHTL 21.1

Take another illustration. The cows of the Sixteenth Street distillery stables were found, on examination by the Health Officer of New York, in horrible conditions: their ears were full of sores, their eyes ran rheum, their tongues were thickened and the edges raw, their nostrils were glanderous, their udders had externally large corroding ulcers, and inside the glands were stopped by the garget; while on their bodies, in various places, were large sores of different sizes — all betokening highly inflammatory conditions. So affected were the strength and health of some of the animals, that when lying down they had to be lifted up, and when up, had to be held up by straps passing under the body just behind the fore legs. Yet their milk, on subjection to chemical analysis, showed no morbid or poisonous constituents, and differed only in a slight degree from the milk of healthy cows. So the milk was declared good, and the stables where “white-washed.” But who among thoughtful people believes the milk to be healthy? Chemistry is not omnipotent. What the laboratory fails to find, the stomach of a child can find; and so swill milk, used as a beverage or as food by children, has its poison distilled into their blood till health is lost. Because the analyst fails to discover poison in swill milk, is no proof that it does not contain it. Because the butcher or the buyer declares the meat of fattened cattle to be good, and excellent as food, does not demonstrate the absence of poison in it; that kind of poison, too, which, when introduced to the veins of a human being, makes awful havoc with health. The issue has to be met, in the absence of proof, on philosophical grounds, and this involves an appeal to the laws of the organization of the animals eaten, and of those who eat them. HHTL 21.2

“We affirm, then, that though it be admitted that herbivorous animals, when in a healthy state, are fit materials for food of man, as they are handled, tended, fed, fattened, slaughtered, and cooked, they are wholly unfit to be eaten by him. The process of preparation is a steady, uninterrupted process from health to disease, so that by the time the animals, whether ox or sheep, whether turkey or chicken, is fit for market, it is unfit to be taken into the human stomach. Cellular, or adipose tissue has its limits of accumulation in animals which are healthy. There is a point beyond which the increase of fat cannot go, and have the animals in normal state. Where is this line, and how shall it be drawn? This is it, and it is easily drawn. That animal which accumulates fat, no matter by what means, to a degree that impairs its strength, lessens its activities, diminishes its usefulness in the sphere which it was made to fill, is diseased. It is in abnormal conditions, and unnatural and extraordinary changes are going on in its organism. Functional derangements are being established — perhaps organic changes are in process. That one or the other is true, is beyond question, and the proof is in the external change of the animal. Naturally strong, it is now weak. Naturally active, it is now inert. Naturally playful, it is now morose. Naturally sprightly, it is now dull. These present conditions contrasted with those which are common to it, show that it is out of health. If they have been brought about by high feeding, then the fattening process is the cause of it, and the animal is too fat for edible purposes; he is poisoned; he has begun to die. Keep him under the process till you have reached its utmost limit, and you kill him. Many are the animals which are fattened to a degree totally unfitting them for the uses for which they were made. Thus, the ox, whose organization especially fits him for locomotion at heavy draft, slow, laborious, patient motion — is often fattened to a degree utterly subversive of such ends. Not unfrequently is he fattened to a degree that well nigh forbids locomotion without drafts. So also of the cow, whose qualities or uses are to bear young and give milk. She is often fed to a degree and fattened to an extent which subverts her constitutional purpose. She comes to be sterile, and the secretion of milk ceases. So also of the sheep; it is not very unfrequent to see this animal lose, or shed its fleece by reason of the change in its health consequent on fattening; for it is never to be forgotten that, conditions being the same, that animal is said to be fattening whose weight increases. So also of the horse; it is very common to see him diminish in strength, power, activity, as he increases in weight. and also to see him fall dead or half dead in his tracks by reason of being put to tasks which in his fattened or diseased state — for these terms are synonymous — he is incapable of performing. HHTL 22.1

“Now, there is a great difference in the quality of flesh of animals which are fat and which are fattened. The former state or condition may be consistent with health. In such cases, however, the cellular tissue bears just proportion to the fibrous, the membranous, the nervous, and bony tissues, and does not impair the health of the animal, being the product of vigorous assimilation under circumstances favorable to its activities. Not a farmer living is ignorant of the fact that the beasts he fattens could never be made to reach their enormous accumulations under conditions which would allow of the freedom of their instincts. This wondrously delicate force which takes charge of life in them, under any fair chance of expressing itself, would warn them successfully. Could it achieve it in no other way, it would cloy them till proper depletion had taken place. Nature is too strong in them for any such folly. It is only when man interposes and takes them from under the control of the laws of health, and places them under the sway of the law of sickness, that these accumulations of fatty matter are produced. They are fattened by means inconsistent with the natural habits of the animal, violative of all, or nearly all the laws of its organization, and productive of, not a disproportion of cellular tissue to the other tissues, but an aggregation of waste matter in the adipose cells, in whose presence there is unmistakable evidence of disease. We affirm, then, that of necessity all stall-fed, all sty-fed, all pen-fed and all coop-fed animals, from the fattened ox to the crammed turkey, are diseased that are fattened above the degree in bulk and weight which they would increase were they in the enjoyment of habits natural to them. All increase is mere OBESITY — such a disease as in human being would challenge the largest and most liberal skill of the medical profession, and which would kill thousand and tens of thousands of animals, were not the knife drawn across their throats beforehand. HHTL 24.1

“We assert this because the laws which govern the lives of herbivorous animals, when in natural states, subject their bodies, in their various particles, to constant, steady, and perpetual change. Every hour the wearing out of particles is as certain to go on as the removal of particles is certain to go on. To institute conditions for any animal whereby the elimination of these waste matters from the system is not only interfered with, but absolutely hindered, and which, from being hindered, are compelled to remain within its walls, lodged in the various tissues, or floating in the blood, is of necessity to produce disease, and certain to insure that the disease shall become general, affecting the whole structure. This is the statement. What are the facts? HHTL 24.2

“1. All animals which by natural constitution and habit are given to active exercise, thereby with other means keeping themselves healthy, in order to be heavily fattened have to be prohibited such exercise, and so become diseased. Thus the ox is shut up in a stall, the hog in a pen, the sheep in a small lot, the turkey in a coop, the calf in a stable; and as if the prohibition of exercise was not enough, in most instances light — one of the most powerful agents in nature in working perfect changes in the animal frame — is shut off. Air also, which is absolutely essential to healthy life, is only given in small quantities, so as to check molecular changes; and as if these were not sufficient, common salt, which as a poison is only inferior to alcoholic poison in arresting the metamorphoses of the tissues and retaining in the body effete matter, is given daily with their food. Such are the conditions of preparation to be eaten, with which we surround them. Now, what are their actual conditions when they are sent to the butcher? HHTL 25.1

“2. On examination of the chest and abdomen, there are found oftener than otherwise in the ox, hog, and sheep, (1), enlargement of the heart, with fatty deposit in large quantities on its external covering, and about its orifices, (2), severe congestion of the lungs, so much that whole lobes are useless, with high degree of irritation of the kidneys; and in the hog, at least ninety-five in one hundred have ulcers on the liver, from the size of an ounce bullet to a hen’s egg. If this fact is doubted, one has but to consult the Cincinnati pork-dealers to find the basis of the statement. Of the ox and cow, as they come to market — independent of age — five out of six will be found to have decayed teeth, ulcerated or inflamed gums, and not unfrequently, like the hog, ulcerated liver and diseased lungs. Of the crammed turkey, goose, hen, and duck, it may be said that invariably they have swollen liver, caused by its inability to perform its depuratory office; and hence the rapidity of fattening of the animals, the accumulation of fat being nothing more than an aggregation of matters which have no place in the organism, and whose retention provokes fever, sickness, death. HHTL 25.2

“As far as such conditions are found to exist, they settle the quality of the flesh of such animals beyond all doubt. It is poisonous, and of such a nature, too, to be easily taken into the human system and poison it. It is not at all difficult to account for the prevalence of scrofula, when it is remembered that fattened flesh is the staple of our tables. It is quite as easy to account for a large majority of the inflammatory diseases which are so common in the West and the South. Depend on it, that climate influences have had to bear in a large degree the responsibility of diseases which were attributable to conditions of blood consequent on eating poisoned meat.” It is quite bad enough to eat meats at all, however favorable the conditions of health in which animals are placed while living; but to take an ox, sheep, or swine, and shut him up in a dark place, ill-ventilated, and where exercise is impossible, and thus keep him for months, in order to fit him to be eaten by man, is so thoroughly monstrous to one’s moral sense as to admit of no justification whatever. HHTL 26.1

“3. No organ of secretion in the animal can be functionally deranged without producing general sickness. In human pathology this is well understood. A diseased liver sickens the whole man, and the whole man shows it. He has headache, loss of appetite, pain in his bones, constipation of the bowels, chills and fever, furred tongue, high-colored or colorless urine, labored breathing, dim sight, tremulous hands, ill temper, confusion of ideas, impairment of memory, and loss of strength. Let an ox show these or like symptoms, as far as his organization will allow; let him die, and make him a post-mortem examination, and find only ulceration of the liver — is not the cause of his sickness explained? Yet farmers and butchers, and meat-dealers, and meat-eaters, are constantly in the habit of killing animals, finding their livers abscessed, throwing them away, and putting the general carcass into the barrel for use. HHTL 26.2

“4. The flesh of animals fattened under such circumstances being poisonous, no culinary process can change it. It defies the kitchen as it does the laboratory. Boil it, bake it, roast it, fry it, stew it, fricassee it, make sausage of it, make mince-meat of it, salt it, spice it, and you have lost labor. The meat itself is poisonous, and there is only one way to be rid of the poison, and that is to be rid of the meat. HHTL 27.1

“5. To a meat-eater connoisseur in deciding the quality of the flesh to be served as food — the extent to which the meat is poisoned is the measure of its goodness — “the tenderness,” “the deliciousness,” “the sweetness” of the flesh being present to the taste just to the degree in which the poison has penetrated and become part of the tissue. To decide this question and prove the assertion true, ask butchers, hotel-keepers, Saloon-keepers, cooks, stewards on steamers, each and all, if they do not value flesh of animals, without exception, just in proportion to their fatness. They may, perhaps, prefer the lean meat to the fat of the animal, but they uniformly prefer their lean meat of a fattened to the lean meat of an unfattened animal, and for the cause stated above. Such are some of the reasons why we will not eat the flesh of animals nor feed it to our children. Will you listen further? HHTL 27.2

“To the use of flesh-meats do we charge in large measure the prevalence of drunkenness in the United States. This frightful evil, which has left its blood-stain on the door-post of every household in the land, has met the uncompromising hostility of good men and women for the last thirty years; and much as they have done, they have only kept it at bay. They have not conquered it; they have not even crippled it; it is rampant to-day, defying them to battle. There is a reason for this persistence of the people in the use of the strong drinks. It has been accounted for on a variety of grounds, but these have all proved insufficient and ultimately unsatisfactory. But from this stand-point, the whole evil becomes perceptible. Meat is in the United States the staple of our food. No family, unless vegetarian, does without it. In the majority of families it is eaten three times a day, and from the oldest to the babe tied in a chair, the members eat it. It has its adjuncts or correspondents; these are spices, such as pepper, black and cayenne; mustard, horse-radish, common salt, butter, tea, coffee and chocolate. Of vegetables and fruits which are edible, there are aside from potatoes a minimum quantity. Add to this list fermented bread, and you have the framework of a dietary; but enlarge it, or diminish it as you will on no consideration is meat to be dispensed with. Now, when in addition to this universal and habitual use of meat is taken into account that it excites the nervous system, increases the heart’s action, pushes the digestive and assimilative organs to undue effort; in fine that its presence in the stomach and as pabulum to the blood rouses the whole vital machinery to exalted and extraordinary exhibition, causing more power to be spent than occasion warrants, how far does one’s imagination need to wander beyond the limits of fact, to take on the impression that whenever the hour of reaction comes, and depression takes the place of previous exaltation, the subject will find within him a clamor for strong drink. The correctness of this view can be tested in several ways. HHTL 27.3

“1. Take a meat-eater, whose habit is to eat three times a day. Cause a delay of an hour in his breakfast or dinner and watch the effects on him. If he does not show up to a degree which the meat excites his brain and stimulates his nervous system, generally the same symptoms that a brandy-drinker does who fails to get his dram at the usual time; the same symptoms that a smoker of cigars does who fails to get his Havana after breakfast; the same, or very similar symptoms that an opium-eater does, who is disappointed in chewing at his usual time his drug, then the test may be considered at fault, and so far the argument a failure. But if he does show the grand features which all indulgers in stimulants and stimulo-narcotics show, how is this correspondence to be accounted for, except on the hypothesis that, in using meat, the eater trains his nervous system, and in fact his whole body, to such morbid conditions as to make it not only easy for him to acquire the habit of drinking intoxicating liquors, but unless countervailing forces are mightily at work in his moral nature, to render it inevitable that he should acquire such habit. Most persons who form the habit of using spirituous liquors — whether distilled or fermented — begin to form it early in life, when the moral sense is imperfectly cultured. There is no substance in nature more revolting to unperverted human instinct than alcohol. By what means is it, then, that the young form a liking for it? Are we told that it is outside influence that does it—the power of persuasion and of personal example? This cannot be. Children are not persuaded into the habitual use of Epsom salts, castor oil, calomel, and jalap. These substances are disgusting, and authority is required to induce them to take them. Alcohol mixtures are not less so to undepraved tastes. How, then, do the young learn to drink the disgusting stuff with evident pleasure? How? by previous training and education of the appetite. Habituated at the table to food whose legitimate effect is to create abnormal desire for stimulants, they are all ready to swear fealty to the King and CHIEF of them all. HHTL 28.1

“It would require the exercise of authority in an extreme degree on the part of a father to make a child who had never eaten meat and table condiments, had never chewed nor smoked tobacco, had never drank tea or coffee, like alcoholic mixture of any sort; and even then it would require great perseverance and unremitting application to do it. Indeed, it may well be questioned whether he could succeed at all if allowed his child such food as vegetarians eat. But educated to such dietetics as children usually are, powder is not more ready for explosion than they are to “like liquors,” when once the opportunity is given. Thousands and tens of thousands of brilliant young men have been sacrificed at the shrine of drunkenness, whose brows were wreathed with garlands for the sacrifice at their parents’ table. The indirect results of eating fattened meat are therefore, if possible, more frightful to contemplate than the direct results. The poison entering the circulation seems specially to affect the brain, so that meat-eaters are proverbially excitable, irritable, easily wrought to anger, are almost universally given to sexual excess, though it may be within the conjugal pale, and make gods of their bellies. This is their character in the department of the propensities. In the sphere of the intellect, compared with what they might be were they vegetarians, they are superficial, partial, and unphilosophic. To the unnatural excitement consequent on the eating of poisoned flesh is attributable the slow growth of Christian civilization. Nine men in ten are blunderers. They make mistakes oftener by far than successes. They see falsely, hear partially, comprehend imperfectly, execute deficiently. They are falsely related to the laws of life, to the principles of truth, to the facts that are about them. Illusion is the atmosphere in which they dwell. They are the victims of poisoned FOOD, as truly and to all intents and purposes as essentially as the drunkard is to poisoned BEVERAGE. The abnormal exhibitions are different, but none the less deplorable. The world suffers to-day more from meat-eating than from dram-drinking in all those higher considerations which affect its redemption, because meat-eating is the base of all the perversity which the appetite and the passions show. Vegetarians do not chew, smoke, or snuff tobacco; nor drink strong drinks, tea, or coffee; nor chew or smoke opium; nor take poisoned medicines; nor eat highly seasoned food. On the other hand are they thus habituated, on becoming vegetarians they put these all away, while the reverse of the picture is true of eaters of flesh; they drink tea and coffee, eat pepper and salt; the vast majority chew or smoke, and take drugs; many of them drink ardent spirits are proud self-willed, selfish, haughty, passionate, vengeful, lustful, and utterly at fault in making harmonious growth of character.” HHTL 29.1