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!
THE POINT IS THAT FLESH-FOOD,
unlike starchy foods, requires stomach digestion only (as against any change in the mouth), and only when taken in the natural manner, that is, substantially as meat-eating animals take it, is it retained in the stomach for a sufficient length of time to be dissolved by the gastric juice; but much of it passes on into the intestine prematurely (explaining, in great measure, the many cases of inflammation
of the bowels, as well as the frequent lesser disturbances), and doubtless a considerable proportion is absorbed in a more or less fermented state, adding thereby impure elements to the blood, and predisposing the individual to inflammatory disease. On the contrary, if meat is swallowed in pieces of moderate size, each piece being acted upon at the surface gradually dissolves from the outside, and so is perfectly changed by the gastric juice before leaving the stomach. In personal experiments I find much less inconvenience from eating flesh-food in this manner than results when I treat it as we have always been taught to. It may be well to caution against eating a large portion of meat in this manner at first; it would give the stomach a new experience and likely enough create disturbance. One-half the usual amount, taken naturally, would yield as much nourishment as the full ration, perhaps; at any rate the change should be made gradually (see pp. 50-158, for further consideration of the animal food question). The following from the Practitioner, corresponds (as far as M. Semmola carries the point) with my view of the matter entirely, as regards the nature of the malady. Albuminuria, or excess of albumen (that is, unappropriated albuminoids in the circulation, and which are consequently excretory matters), must necessarily result from any or all of the causes I have named—causes of indigestion. Says the Practitioner:
“At a recent meeting of the Paris Academy of Medicine, M. Semmola, of Naples (‘Progrès médical,’ June 9, 1883), brought forward a new theory
with regard to the causation of Bright’s disease. This malady he regards as not essentially renal, but as consisting in a general morbid alteration of nutrition, and observes that albumen in such cases is not passed by the urine only, but by all the secretory organs. This alteration [or, rather, I should say, the lack of alteration by digestion] deprives the albuminoid materials of the blood of their power of being assimilated, and so causes their excretion by the emunctories. The renal lesions he ascribes to mechanical irritation of the tubules of the kidney by the constant passage of albumen through them. Albuminuria is therefore a cause, not a result, of renal disease.[93] M. Simmola founds these views on a series of experiments on animals. He injected into the blood-vessels various substances containing albumen, as white of egg, milk, and blood-serum, with the result of inducing artificial Bright’s disease. White of egg was most active in this way.”
[93] And this only one of the hundred and one instances, in medical practice, of “cart before the horse,” which may make the difference of life or death with every patient under treatment!