The proteid substance of meat includes all the edible portion of a carcass except the fat. The proteid of meat is more easily and more rapidly digested than the proteid of vegetables. Notwithstanding this fact, there are serious objections to the use of meat as a source of nitrogen. All flesh food contains the unexcreted waste matter of the slaughtered animal. When the process of metabolism that is continually going on during life is suddenly arrested by death, the effete and decomposing cells, and the partly oxidized waste-products which are still held in the muscle-tissues, are left in the flesh of the dead animal, hence these poisons must be consumed by the flesh-eater in order to secure the meat proteids and fats.
Body-poisons generated by fear
It is now a matter of common knowledge among scientists, and among the more advanced school of pathologists, that the usual conditions under which animals are slain change the chemical constituents of the blood-serum, charging it with a form of poison that to the chemist is as yet unknown, but the presence and the potency of which is attested by its effect.
The method of slaughtering animals in the great abattoirs is especially conducive to the generation of these poisons. The condemned herd is driven to the place of slaughter and killed, one at a time, in plain view of their fellows. These animals are very intelligent and possess remarkable senses of danger. They are as conscious of approaching death as the creature who takes their lives, hence the amount of poisons generated in their bodies is measured by the time they are kept in waiting. Most animals when killed labor under these conditions, and that these mental states render their flesh entirely unfit for human nutrition can no longer be questioned.
Mother's milk poisoned by fear or anger
We find fragments of evidence supporting this theory in the fact that Nature's perfect food—the milk of a nursing animal, or of a nursing mother—can be changed in an instant into a poison by sudden fright, anger, or fear.
Meat a source of autointoxication
Thus we see that in eating meat, we are eating animal waste-material similar to that thrown off through our own body-cells. The waste material in meat being soluble, passes through the walls of our digestive organs, and enters the circulation, where it is added to similar poisons which are constantly being produced within our own bodies. It is the universal law of animal cell-growth that the waste matter of the cell acts as its own poison. When bacteria, growing in a solution of sugar, have excreted alcohol until it forms a certain percentage of the total contents, their activity ceases—they die from poisons thrown off from their own bodies. This is the reason that liquids containing a high percentage of alcohol must be distilled, and cannot be brewed. It is obvious, therefore, that in the consumption of flesh, we are adding to our bodies the poisons that are residual in the body of other animals, and are, therefore, approaching the conditions under which bacteria kill themselves by autointoxication or self-poisoning.