I have experimented with fowl and found that you can perfect them by proper treatment. I raised 56 pullets one spring, and that winter I had eggs galore. The fowl were healthy and happy. I fed them only two meals a day on cracked corn and wheat or the regular "scratch feed" of the market in the morning, and at night gave them scalded meal, seasoned with some salt, pepper and onions; sometimes cooked potato parings, etc., were used. I supplied the fowl with fresh ground bone which held some fat, of course. I always had gravel and ground oyster shells before them, also plenty of fresh water. They had their run and found grass both in summer and winter, and had a dry, roomy house.
Meat is not only unnecessary to animal life, but is injurious. My hens laid more eggs than any others about and were bright, active and healthy, yet they had no meat during all the winter. The bone was not necessary, for I had at times fed poultry a little fat or oil instead of the ground bone, and they did just as well.
The mind has a great effect on the digestion, and it is necessary in selecting our food and drink to have it agreeable. Of course, this does not mean that because something tastes good we should use it, for poisons often taste pleasant. We mean that from a variety of salutary food we should select what we like, and again any combination, adjustment or preparation which enhances the food is very useful. For instance:
Potatoes mashed, mixed with eggs, flour, pepper and salt and other articles which are not injurious, and then fried in a little butter are very agreeable, and many such manipulations of foods are wise.
But spices, coffee, tea and such condiments contain tannin and poisons and should be eschewed.
If a person should suddenly change his diet from a liberal one to mush and skim-milk it might give him indigestion and disgust, for the organs try to adapt themselves to certain kinds of food; and if the persons cannot take a vacation while reforming their diet, it might be better to wait until they can. After a fit of sickness one can start with the right kind of food and drink and improve by it.
People who are raised on simple food relish it and keep happy and healthy. Here is a reprint which proves this to be true:
"According to census reports, persons who live 100 years or more are very scarce. The United States, with a population of more than 90,000,000, is given credit for only 46. Germany's population is 60,000,000 and its quota of centenarians is 70. Great Britain, with a population of 46,000,000, has 94. France, with 40,000,000, claims 164. Bulgaria, with 4,000,000 inhabitants, boasts of 3,300, and Roumania, with 6,000,000 people, has 3,320 centenarians. The last named little countries eat little meat and use a great deal of milk and dark bread."
The persons who used tobacco, etc., and lived to be old might have lived much longer if they had been abstemious. William Smellie in his "Philosophy of Natural History" records cases where persons have lived to be over 150 years old, and some of the oldest people, for instance, Capt. Diamond, was a simple living man and lived to be 113 (when I last heard from him). He never even used sugar and was an old bachelor, showing that simple life allows continence.
It has been proved that meat allows an alkaloid condition in the intestines which generates poison producing germs, while vegetable food, like oat-meal, etc., produces an acid condition which, it is claimed, "prevents the generation of microbes and poisons which produce premature old age." The large intestine when retaining the elements from the bowels too long becomes a "filth reservoir."