The Natural Cure of Consumption, Constipation, Bright's Disease, Neuralgia, Rheumatism, "Colds" (Fevers), Etc. / How Sickness Originates, and How to Prevent It. A Health Manual for the People.

by C. E. Page

2 [NOTE ON BRIGHT’S DISEASE.]

How to Eat Meat.—In the chapter on this subject, I have taken the position that Albuminuria results from: (1) excess in diet; (2) the use of foods that can not, or are not properly masticated and insalivated, as mush, or bread wet and washed down with any sort of artificial fluids, gravy-drowned vegetables, etc.; (3) stimulating drinks, as

beer, spirits, tea, coffee, etc.; (4) excess of animal food. To this I must add meat eaten in a manner totally different from that in vogue with all carnivorous animals, viz.: hashed, or tender and well chewed, instead of being, as it should be, swallowed in pieces of convenient size—a rational modification in the premises, surely. Dogs, wolves, cats, and the like, are gourmands, to be sure, but this is not the fundamental reason for their manner of gulping their natural food whole. It has been shown by experiments that dogs fed on hashed meat suffer from indigestion, a portion of their food passing undigested, while if fed the same quantity of meat in chunks, no part of it appears in the excreta, but all is perfectly digested.

Grain-eating animals teach us how to eat grain; or at least, how to masticate farinaceous food. We may well learn from the carnivore an analogous lesson—not, however, necessarily dispensing with knife and fork, napkin or finger-bowl, nor any other improvement over their primitive fashions!