“There can be no doubt that the oxidation of the tissues throughout the system, and the combination of the oxygen with the carbon are sources of animal heat, in common with all the organic functions and chemical changes which take place in the body. All the conditions requisite for the due regulation of the animal temperature are: good digestion, free respiration, vigorous circulation, proper assimilation, and perfect depuration; in two words—good health.”
It is thought by many that “stamina” can only be maintained upon a diet derived largely from flesh, but this is not at all the case. In the chapter on the experience of nations and individuals, I shall adduce a considerable quantity of evidence tending to show that a greater amount of endurance can be secured upon a vegetarian than upon a mixed diet! But many persons do not mean by the word “stamina,” endurance alone. It is often difficult to get a definition of this word, as it varies with individual conceptions. If, however, by “stamina,” is meant stoutness of person, and fullness of blood, such “stamina” constitutes the very food of disease, and the person in such a state is not only more liable to febrile and epidemic attacks, but is also in much greater danger while labouring under them, than one whose development is such as to allow all the secretary functions to be performed with ease, and whose blood is not so charged with either natural or extraneous elements. How frequently do we hear of those who are said to be looking well and healthy being suddenly cut off by apoplexy, or some malignant disorder! The fact is, we are deceived by appearances, by what we erroneously consider the indications of health; for those whom we are taught to regard as healthy and robust are generally the farthest from safety, and only need a slight exciting cause to bring on a fatal disease. It is not the apparent disease which is the real cause of death, but men die because the body is worn out; the tone of the fibres is destroyed, and the principle of motion fails. The obvious disease is the mask under which the condition is concealed.
I have referred before to the protection against epidemics afforded by a strictly hygienic life, and particularly by the vegetarian diet. There is an abundance of testimony on this point to which it is impossible to more than refer. Bush, in his “Works,” vol. iv., p. 55, observed that the negroes of the West India Islands, were at that time almost wholly exempt from yellow fever, which cut off the resident upper classes in large numbers. Mr Hardy, a noted Scotch philanthropist, escaped the yellow fever in New York, he asserts, by his course of living; while Mr Whitlaw, of New Orleans, Dr Rush, of Philadelphia, and Dr Copeland, also assert that they escaped yellow fever by abstinence. The poet Shelley, in his “Vindication of Natural Diet,” p. 18, says:
“There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the uncontrollable irrationalities of ill-temper, that makes a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerable evenness of temper—that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of Society. On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only malady: the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude others from enjoyment of it. All sensational delights would be infinitely exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now feel in some few and favoured moments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits and experience of six months would set for ever at rest. But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected—even though its ultimate excellence would not admit of dispute.”
Another argument in favour of the vegetarian dietary, as against meat-eating, is found in the fact that such a diet is conducive to symmetry and normal development of the human frame. We shall see (p. 142) how the abdomens of the pigmies were greatly reduced, as a result of abandoning their exclusive flesh diet. Many men are said to have reduced their weight from ten to one hundred and fifty pounds by an abstemious, non-flesh diet. The body also assumes a more symmetrical form, and the skin and complexion a ruddier and more healthful glow. It must be admitted, however, that the flesh of meat is not, of itself, a fat-forming food; and many persons are put upon a diet of minced beef and hot water, in order to reduce their weight. This they do, generally, however, at the expense of the general bodily health. In the Banting cure, and the various cures which are followed in America and in England, the weight is reduced, but with doubtful benefit to the patient. The large amount of beef creates an excess of acid within the system, which has a tendency to eat away the fatty tissues; and it is in this manner that they are destroyed. The excess of acid which is thus manufactured, however, remains in the system, and is the chief cause of resulting diseases of various kinds.
In addition to all these arguments, it can be shown that a vegetarian diet improves and renders more acute the various senses. Sight and smell, taste and hearing—all are influenced—in some cases more than in others. Frequently patients are enabled to see distances or to smell odours, after living on this diet for some weeks, which they have never been able to do before. The appetite no longer craves the highly-seasoned and stimulating articles of food formerly desired, but is content with the simpler foods. The general acuteness and sense of well-being will more than compensate for any feeling of deprivation that may at first follow the abolition of meat from the diet. There can be no question that the food exerts a tremendous influence over the mental, moral, and emotional life. Says Dr Haig[25]:
“I believe that as the result of a rational, natural and proper diet, producing the best circulation in the great power-house of the human body, we shall get not only freedom from gross disease, but that we shall get, developing gradually, conditions of mind, thought, judgment, and morality, which will, in the future be as different from what they have been in a diseased and degraded past as the light of Heaven is different from the darkness of the dungeon; and that while there are to-day many things in human nature which all believers in the great, and good, and true, can only most heartily deplore, I believe that in the future there will be more harmony, more strength, more beauty, more unselfishness, more love—in a word, a truer and greater and more complete sanity.”
It can be shown, further, that the length of individual life as well as its usefulness and freedom from disease, are dependent largely upon the character of the diet. Longevity, properly so-called, is not a prolongation of the period of decrepitude and helplessness, as some imagine; but an extension of that period of life when men can fully appreciate the blessings of existence. It has been proved that any animal should live, roughly speaking, five times as long as it takes to mature. The dog matures at two, and lives, on an average, until it is ten; and so on, throughout the animal world. Man, who matures at (say) twenty, should live to be at least one hundred, and probably more, without showing any of the signs of decrepitude and imbecility which at present frequently accompany old age. As a matter of fact, we find that the average length of life is a fraction over forty-two years; and, in addition to this, these forty-two years are filled with diverse diseases and miseries, which should at no time afflict the individual. Something, therefore, is wrong, producing this result. In some way we are consciously or unconsciously perverting the laws of Nature. Now, in no way do we so flagrantly and so continually pervert her laws as in this question of food; and we can for this reason account both for the sicknesses which occur—these being engendered by depraved conditions of the body—and for the shortening of life, which we perceive about us on every hand. Philosophically, as well as practically, this should be so. As Dr Graham pointed out years ago: “A life cannot be both intensive and extensive.” And the more it approaches the one, the less can it approach the other. Anything which tends to rapid living—or, what is perhaps the same thing, rapid bodily consumption or combustion—will consequently tend to shorten life. All stimulants would, of course, produce this effect; and, as meat is a highly stimulating article of food, it will be seen that its consumption, if long continued, will ultimately tend to devitalise and wear out the body—for the reason that it hastens the vital wear and tear, and consequently shortens life. This is, further, in agreement with the fact that “the heart of the habitual meat-eater beats from 72 to 80 beats a minute, while that of the person living on a pure diet of fruits, nuts, etc., will beat ten times less per minute. Fifteen hundred extra heart strokes every twenty-four hours makes a very appreciable strain upon the vital forces.”[26]
These conclusions are further borne out by the fact that the average standard of longevity is higher among those peoples and nations who subsist largely upon a vegetarian diet, than among the meat-eating races.