The more or less exclusive use of animal food improves the quality of the blood by increasing the number of the red corpuscles. The urine rises in specific gravity, and the urea and uric acid are increased in amount. According to Liebig, force in excess is developed from a diet of animal food, whence a nation of animal feeders must be a nation of hunters, possessing a savage disposition. Those who consume largely of animal food are not fat, but have a high degree of muscular activity. They are tormented by imperious venereal desires, and are irritable in temper.

Therapy

A diet of animal food is specially indicated and of great utility in diabetes. As the vegetables and fruits contain sugar, and starch which is readily transformed into sugar, they are interdicted in this disease. A method of treating diarrhoea long practiced in Russia, and popularized by Trousseau, consists in the use of a pulp of raw meat. A bit of fillet of beef is deprived of all fat and aponeurotic fiber, minutely divided, and beaten in a mortar until all traces of fibers have disappeared. It is then pressed through a fine sieve and mixed with sugar, conserve of roses, or suitable aromatics, or seasoned with salt and pepper to the taste. It may be administered in this form with fruit-jelly, or spread on thin pieces of bread. A beefsteak has- tily broiled on a hot fire, so as to retain its juices, may be treated by the same method, or the raw beef scraped to a pulp, rejecting the fiber, may be thrown on to a hot skillet for a few seconds to give an odor and appearance of cooked meat. This method, which has been used especially in the treatment of diarrhoeal diseases of early life, is equally efficacious in the chronic diarrhoea of adults. The chief objection to this mode of alimentation is the great frequency with which tape-worm follows.

In states of debility arising from any cause in which it is necessary to supply an easily-digested nitrogenous aliment, raw beef may be used in this way.

Blood is so rich in the elements of nutrition that its employment as a food in wasting diseases need not excite surprise. Within a few years it has been much used in the treatment of phthisis, the patients resorting to the butchers' shambles to quaff the blood as it flows away. On the part of the patients, it is supposed to possess some special curative power; but it is only as a nutrient that its use is justifiable. Besides the unpleasant associations which must necessarily be connected with blood-drinking, there is danger of swallowing parasites. That it improves nutrition, often to a remarkable extent, is undeniable. It must therefore remain a question to be decided by the patient whether he will incur the risk of infection by parasites, to be benefited by drinking a valuable nutrient.

As the serum of the blood contains the most important of the nutritive elements of the blood, the use of this has been proposed in lieu of the latter, administering one ounce three times a day. Blood-serum is said to be an efficient vermifuge. It must be taken fasting.