Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages / Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

by William A. Alcott

Besides the general fact, that almost all medical and dietetic writers object to fat, and to butter among the rest, as difficult of digestion and tending to cutaneous and other diseases,—and besides the general admission in society at large that it makes the skin "break out,"—it must be obvious that it is liable to retain, in a greater or less degree, all the poisonous properties which existed in the milk from which it was made. Next to fat pork, butter seems to me one of the worst things that ever entered a human stomach; and if it will not, like pork, quite cause the leprosy, it will cause almost every other skin disease which is known.

Cheese is often poisoned now-a-days by design. I do not mean to say that the act of poisoning is accompanied by malice toward mankind; far from it. It is added to color it, as in the form of anatto; or to give it freshness and tenderness, as in the case of arsenic.[21]

Eggs, when not fresh, are more or less liable to disease. I might even say more. When not fresh, they are diseased. On this point we have the testimony of Drs. Willich and Dunglison. The truth is, that the yolk of the egg has a strong tendency to decomposition, and this decomposing or putrefying process begins long before it is perceived, or even suspected, by most people. There is much reason for believing that a large proportion of the eggs eaten in civic life,—except when we keep the poultry ourselves,—are, when used, more or less in a state of decomposition. And yet, into how many hundred forms of food do they enter in fashionable life, or in truth, in almost every condition of society! The French cooks are said to have six hundred and eighty-five methods of cooking the egg, including all the various sorts of pastry, etc., of which it forms a component part.

One of the grand objections against animal food, of almost all sorts, is, that it tends with such comparative rapidity to decomposition. Such is at least the case with eggs, flesh, and fish of every kind. The usual way of preventing the decomposition is by processes scarcely less hurtful—by the addition of salt, pyroligneous acid, saltpetre, lime, etc. These, to be sure, prevent putrefaction; but they render every thing to which they are applied, unless it is the egg, the more indigestible.

It is a strange taste in mankind, by the way, which leads them to prefer things in a state of incipient decomposition. And yet such a taste certainly prevails widely. Many like the flesh beaten; hence the origin of the cruel practice of the East of whipping animals to death.[22] And most persons like fresh meat kept till it begins to be tender; that is, begins to putrefy. So most persons like fermented beer better than that which is unfermented, although fermentation is a step toward putrefaction; and they like vinegar, too, which is also far advanced in the same road.

That diseased food causes diseases in the persons who use it, needs not, one would think, a single testimony; and yet, I will name a few.

Dr. Paris, speaking of fish, says,—"It is not improbable that certain cutaneous diseases may be produced, or at least aggravated by such diet." Dr. Dunglison says, bacon and cured meats are often poisonous. He speaks of the poisonous tendency of eggs, and says that all made dishes are more or less "rebellious." In Aurillac, in France, not many years since, fifteen or sixteen persons were attacked with symptoms of cholera after eating the milk of a certain goat. The goat died with cholera about twenty-four hours after, and two men, no less eminent than Professors Orfila and Marc, gave it as their undoubted opinion that the cholera symptoms alluded to, were caused by the milk. I have myself known oysters at certain times and seasons to produce the same symptoms. During the progress of a mortal disease among the poultry on Edisto Island, S. C., in 1837, all the dogs and vultures that tasted of the flesh of the dead poultry sickened and died. Chrisiston mentions an instance in which five persons were poisoned by eating beef; and Dunglison one in which fourteen persons were made sick, and some died, from eating the meat of a calf. Between the years 1793 and 1827, it is on record that there were in the kingdom of Wurtemberg alone, no less than two hundred and thirty-four cases of poisoning, and one hundred and ten deaths, from eating sausages. But I need not multiply this sort of evidence, the world abounds with it; though for one person who is poisoned so much as to be made sick immediately, hundreds perhaps are only slightly affected; and the punishment may seem to be deferred for many years.

The truth, in short, is, that every fashionable process of fattening and even of domesticating animals, induces disease; and as most of the animals we use for food are domesticated or fattened, or both, it follows that most of our animal food, whether milk, butter, cheese, eggs, or flesh, is diseased food, and must inevitably, sooner or later, induce disease in those who receive it. Those which are most fattened are the worst, of course; as the hog, the goose, the sheep, and the ox. The more the animal is removed from a natural state, in fattening, the more does the fat accumulate, and the more it is diseased. Hence the complaints against every form of animal oil or fat, in every age, by men who, notwithstanding their complaints, for the most part, continue to set mankind an example of its use.

Let me here introduce a single paragraph from Dr. Cheyne, which is very much to my present purpose.

"About London, we can scarce have any but crammed poultry or stall-fed butchers' meat. It were sufficient to disgust the stoutest stomach to see the foul, gross, and nasty manner in which, and the fetid, putrid, and unwholesome materials with which they are fed. Perpetual foulness and cramming, gross food and nastiness, we know, will putrefy the juices, and corrupt the muscular substance of human creatures—and sure they can do no less in brute animals—and thus make our food poison. The same may be said of hot-beds, and forcing plants and vegetables. The only way of having sound and healthful animals, is to leave them to their own natural liberty in the free air, and their own proper element, with plenty of food and due cleanliness; and a shelter from the injuries of the weather, whenever they have a mind to retire to it."