“Physiologists sometimes, for experimental purposes, separate from its bony attachments one of the muscles of a frog’s leg, and arrange it in such a manner, in connection with a battery and a suitable device, that by a repetition of electric shocks the muscle may be made to contract and lift a small weight. After being thus made to work for a longer or shorter period, the muscle becomes fatigued to such a degree that it no longer contracts in response to the electric stimulus. This is shown to be due to the accumulation of the waste matters, of which mention has been made. If at this point the muscle is washed with a weak saline solution, it at once recovers its ability to work. If now a fresh muscle is thus prepared, and strong beef tea or solution of beef extract applied to it, the muscle at once becomes expanded or unable to contract, the same as if it had been working for a long time, but without having done any work whatever! The reason for this is that the beef tea or beef extract is simply a solution of the same poisons which are developed in the muscles by work, and to the paralysing effect of which its fatigue and inability to contract are due.... By injection of the fluid obtained by compressing a piece of beef steak or so-called beef juice into the veins of a rabbit, it has been proved to be highly deadly in character. The quantity of beef juice required to kill a rabbit of given weight is less than the amount of urine required to produce the same effect.... The juice obtained from the flesh of a dog was twice as poisonous as that obtained from ox flesh; in other words, it required twice as much beef juice to kill an animal of given weight as the juice obtained from the flesh of a dog....”[23]
Upon this subject of beef tea, Dr Tibbles says:
“Beef tea, mutton broth, chicken broth, and other meat infusions are useful for sick persons, for they are stimulating and restoring, but they are recognised now chiefly as stimulants to tissue change or to metabolism rather than as foods proper. They do not prevent wasting of the body; indeed, when given alone, they cause more rapid wasting than no food at all. Dogs fed on beef tea die sooner than when they are not fed at all.”[24]
In the U. S. Dept. of Agr. Bulletin, No. 102, “Experiments on Losses in Cooking Meat,” we read:
“Beef which has been used for the preparation of beef tea or broth has lost comparatively little nutritive value, though much of the flavouring material has been removed” (p. 64).
It will thus be seen that beef tea extracts practically nothing from the meat; and that the bulk of the nutriment, such as it is, remains in the meat. This, however, is invariably thrown away! We thus see that neither the beef tea nor the remaining mass of meat is of any use; while both are certainly harmful. So much for beef tea!
It is now a well-known fact that meat-eating is the more or less direct cause of various diseases. Tapeworm is one of these, most easily and directly traceable to meat; and a very serious disease it can become. Beef and pork are two great carriers of the cysts, or tapeworm embryos; and they develop in the intestine, whence it is most difficult to extract them. Fish is another great cause of tapeworm; and no matter how fresh these meats may be, this same danger is run, and can never be completely guarded against. These facts are now so well known that it is unnecessary to quote authority in support of them. The deadly trichina, found mainly in pork, but also in fish, fowls, and in other meats, is the direct cause of trichinosis—a disease so closely resembling cerebro-spinal meningitis that it is impossible to distinguish between the two at first, and without a detailed diagnosis. The history of the infection is said to be somewhat as follows:—rats visit a cemetery, and become infected with trichinæ. After a time, the rat dies of infection. The hog—the universal scavenger—eats it. Man—the greatest of all scavengers—eats the hog, and thus becomes infected in turn! It is not a very pleasant thought, or one calculated to elevate man to a position “a little lower than the angels!”
Tuberculosis is another disease that is very frequently communicated to the human organism from the carcasses of dead cattle. In his “Human and Bovine Tuberculosis,” Dr E. F. Brush contends most strenuously that phthisis is very frequently contracted in this manner, and advances strong evidence in support of his claim. He says (pp. 9-10):
“The total number of cows in the United States for the year 1887 was 14,522,083—that is, one cow to every four and three-fourths (4.7) persons. There exists, according to Lynt, a true parallel between human and bovine phthisis; the curves of double mortality are the same for different districts in the Duchy of Baden. Now this must mean that a larger proportion of the bovine race dies from phthisis than of the human race, because of the difference in the length of life between the races. We have no statistics of this kind in the United States, but Professor R. A. McLean tells me that, where cows are affected by tuberculosis in great numbers, the death rate from phthisis is correspondingly large in the human race in the same districts. This is his observation from his large experience among diseased cattle.”