The danger to which I am about to allude—a real danger, as I believe—does not refer to abstinence from artificial salt, but rather to the loss of certain essential elements contained in the grains, fruits, and vegetables, owing (1) to their being cooked at all, and (2) to bad cooking. Vegetables form a large proportion of the food of even those who live on the “mixed diet”; and unless cooked (see Natural Diet) in the best manner, a large part of certain of their elements may be lost, and a degree of starvation result therefrom. For example: potatoes, when peeled and over-boiled, lose nearly one-half of their potash. So, too, when they are kept boiling until the skins break open—the “mealy” potato, often preferred,—more especially if they are permitted to remain in the water any length of time thereafter, a large additional percentage of valuable matters must be dissolved and turned away with the water. The chief aim should be to retain all the elements contained in the food articles, whether the cereals, vegetables, or fruits. Hence all of those substances that are acceptable in a raw state should be thus eaten; and
when any of them are cooked, it should be (referring particularly to vegetables) done upon the principle adopted by well-informed cooks in boiling meat; they put the meat into boiling water, let it boil vigorously for a sufficient length of time (say ten or fifteen minutes) to “close the pores,” as they say, and confine the juices within the meat, and then the kettle is set back where the water will keep hot, just “simmering,” until the work is completed (four to eight hours, according to size of the piece of meat). The same plan should be used in cooking vegetables, except as to time—they are “done” when the fork passes through them easily. The impoverishment of vegetables, as sometimes cooked, is poorly compensated for—not at all, in fact, except in flavor—by the use of artificial salt; while this substance, so universally used, is altogether unnatural and injurious, in proportion to the amount swallowed. The loss of the natural salines, in the manner referred to, is especially observed by vegetarians who dine at ordinary tables, where exclusion of animal food and white bread is the only selection they can make. It is of vital importance for food-reformers to understand and guard against this danger—not that they will suffer more than those who take the mixed diet, for in fact the reverse is true (their whole-meal bread being a great aid)—but being, as it were, on exhibition before the world, it is important for them to obtain and enjoy all the advantages pertaining to the system they advocate.
Says Dr. Hunter:
“It is an old and a cruel experiment, that of the
French academicians, who fed dogs on washed flesh-meat until they died of starvation. The poor animals soon became aware that it was not food, and refused to eat it. Were our instincts as natural, no charming of the eyes or tickling of the palate by our cook would persuade us to swallow those washed and whitened foods that deceive us into weakness.
“Analysis of the liver and other important vital organs after death, show that in some diseased states these organs contain only one-half of certain saline matters that are invariable in the healthy organ. And not only so, but that in proportion to this deficiency the organ is useless for its work. In fact, as the organ changed its tissue (as does every part of the body every three or four years), and was compelled to renew itself in the absence of sufficient potash and phosphates, it did its best to preserve its form and structure much as a fossil does. It rebuilt itself as best it could of such material as would make tissue with the minimum of potash; but such tissue, whilst useful and conservative in retaining the form, elasticity and contractility of the organ, is as useless for secretion and excretion as a fossil liver.”
The want of knowledge, not only on the part of the laity, but medical men as well, regarding such questions, and health matters in general, is exhibited in the utterances heard on every hand: “The doctor says the trouble is with my liver,” explains one who hasn’t a sound tissue in his entire body. “My blood is bad—so the doctor says.”[59] “‘He’ gave me something
for my blood”—or my appetite, or my kidneys as the case may be—it might as well be “for my grandmother.” “The first thing to be done,” says an eminent physician, after citing an hypothetical case, “is to clear out the liver”; and then, after apologizing for “what might seem to be an unscientific expression,” he continues: “I have already explained the way in which certain purgatives may be said to have the effect of clearing out the liver, and first among these we must reckon mercurials.” The italics are my own. He then offers a generous dose of blue-pill “every night, or two or three grains of calomel either alone or combined with extract of hyoscyamos or conium, and this,” he continues, “should be followed next morning by a saline draught.” Mercury, to poison and exasperate the entire organism, and then a saline potion in the hope of getting rid of the mercury! And then he offers a grain of sense—a homœopathic dose, indeed, but drowned in a deluge of something vastly worse than sugar and water: “But even with all this care in food and drink, with all this attention to what is to be taken and what avoided, how are we to keep the liver in order without exercise?” Again, the underlining is the author’s. How, indeed, without attention to all the simple laws of life—“so simple,” says Schopenhauer, “that we refuse to understand them!”
[59] Strangely enough the belief prevails, generally, that the blood is a fixed quantity; whereas, in fact, it is constantly changing, second by second, used up and cast out, and replaced from the food; so that if one’s blood is impure to-day, he may at once begin to make a better article, by making it of better material,—not by “tinkering it up” with drugs or so-called “blood-purifiers.”