(2) Animals are slaughtered in such a way as to make their flesh rich in waste matter and dangerous as food. It is in this way (so the argument runs) that gout, rheumatism, and apoplexy are apt to arise. In his recent interesting Antarctic work Shackleton describes the frightful colic his party endured after eating ponies killed in a state of absolute exhaustion. It is quite certain that if animals are overdriven to the slaughter-house and killed immediately, their flesh is not likely to be so wholesome as if they had been kept apart and quiet for, say, twenty-four hours; but the latter practice prevails in all abattoirs under public supervision. I am quite certain that I have seen as great proportion of vegetarians suffering from rheumatism in the less acute forms as of meat-eaters, and Dr. McKenzie, of Burnley, in the British Medical Journal, February 10, 1906, says that the worst case of arterio-sclerosis (with a blood "pressure of 210 mm. Hg) he ever saw was in a vegetarian and teetotaller.

(3) Animal flesh as sold in butchers' shops is always in a state of decay and putrefaction. Now, it is perfectly futile to deny that this assertion is absolutely in accordance with truth, because absence of life is the signal for such changes to begin; but the statement in its bald form makes too forcible an appeal to the imagination. It is an unquestionable fact that, when subjected to careful examination, flesh-food of all kinds, whether from healthy or diseased animals, reveals the presence of a large number of micro-organisms, varying in character and number with the state of the atmosphere and the time which has elapsed since the death of the animal. Dr. A. W. Nelson, of Battle Creek, reports that raw beef purchased in the open market contains 80,000 to 110,000 aerobes per moist gram, and from 14,000 to 90,000 anaerobes per gram; while, after cooking, the inside was found to contain from 3,000 to 150,000 aerobes and 2,000 to 160,000 anaerobes per moist gram. Sirloin steaks, as served in the dining-tables of prominent city hotels, contained 280,400,000 aerobes and 378,000,000 anaerobes per moist gram. Raw codfish (soaked to remove the salt) contained one-eighth as many, and sausages, pork, etc, quite twice as many.

It is suggested by the flesh-abstainers that intestinal autointoxication is encouraged by the ingestion of these putrefactive bacteria, and that the repeated use of foods containing them aggravates some of the worst features of this condition. They even stigmatise the condition as a disease, one of the earliest concomitants of which is hyperchlorhydria, and that this is evidently an exaggeration of one of the natural defences against such micro-organisms. So long as this excess of free hydrochloric acid persists they admit that the putrefactive bacteria contained in flesh may easily be destroyed by it; but the tendency is for the free hydrochloric acid to disappear from the gastric secretion, so that its germicidal action is lost, and the billions of putrefactive bacteria swallowed at a single meal pass on into the intestine to exert their maleficent action there. They do not take into consideration the fact that of the 128 billions of bacteria which escape with the faeces daily, and constitute one-third of their bulk, not more than 3 per cent, are alive; and A. Klein even denies that more than 1.1 per cent. of the total number passed are alive and still capable of propagation by culture. This is pretty significant testimony to the damage they have sustained by their residence in the alimentary canal.

But of the large number which still remain alive, in all probability the majority of them will prove to belong to the beneficent class of bacteria, for even Combe, the great apostle of the doctrine of intestinal auto-intoxication, admits that a well-balanced mixed diet, including milk and farinaceous foods, not only "diminishes the putrefactive phenomena in the intestine, but diminishes considerably the toxic effects" of meat. It is hardly to be expected that the putrefactive bacteria should predominate if a sufficient quantity of lacto-farinaceous material be consumed, because on a properly balanced mixed diet there should never be more than 5 grams of protein in the colon to provide sustenance for them. With an efficient quantity of carbohydrates, etc, it should be by no means difficult for the saccharolytic bacteria to keep the proteolytic bacteria in abeyance, if this be necessary. For it has always appeared to me a fact of profound import that on a diet of meat alone, such as Salisbury advocated, undoubted advantages should usually, even temporarily, accrue to the body, and especially that it should be recommended in cases of intestinal toxaemia. Still, on such a diet there is usually a craving for starchy foods, an indication of an instinctive protest on the part of the body against the ill-balanced diet.

In any case, experience demonstrates that no such evil results arise on a mixed diet containing flesh as are adumbrated by the flesh-abstainers, and that the average man is fairly capable of dealing with the poison contained in a flesh diet. Besides, Metchnikoff has issued warnings that on even apparently fresh fruit and vegetables numberless microbes exist, which should be removed by washing or destroyed by cooking before eating. It is, of course, perfectly clear that the bacteria developed in vegetables or fruit are not proteolytic but acid-forming bacteria, living upon carbohydrates, and that the undoubted diseases which arise from the consumption of such substances in summer and autumn bear immediate evidence of their origin.

(4) Flesh is stated to be a stimulating food, and may give rise to a craving for other stimulants. This is an admitted fact; but it is a question whether all the stimulating effect be due to the waste matters and not to the excess of protein likely to be consumed in eating flesh immoderately. In any case, excess of protein, even of vegetable origin, is apt to act as a stimulant. But all nations, whatever their diet, have their own form of stimulant. I am not sure whether in this country the cause of over-indulgence in alcohol, at least amongst the female sex, should not be laid at the door of excessive drinking of tea and coffee, which are of vegetable origin, and are undoubtedly much more stimulating than flesh.