What would happen if the supply of fresh meat was stopped altogether? The question is easily answered - meat is not an essential.

However agreeable and however useful it is supposed to be to the young, there is no doubt about its bad influence upon the health of the middle-aged man. This is not a mere pious opinion, but the result of the test of four years of the teaching of Chittenden, Fletcher, Bircher and others who have demonstrated the fact that, by abandoning flesh, there is a gain in health, strength, mental capacity, the joy of living and length of life, which is unknown to the average man. Yet I do not write as a vegetarian. Where the principle is recognised the practice may be so transformed that meat-eating - and fish is included - is no longer observed as an essential of everyday life.

I find from the official returns that in the provincial markets of the country the wholesale price of the best lamb is Is. to Is. 4d. per pound, mutton and beef, Is. to Is. 6d. These figures are prohibitory to 90 per cent, of the public, but so long as there are buyers farmers will sell, and instead of creating a reserve for the time that may possibly come they are diminishing the stock of the country.

The market price of meat, however, is not the best guide to its cost as a food. A pound of beef without bone or waste, but with a medium quantity of fat, and costing a shilling a pound, provides only four to five ounces of nutritious food, for the remainder is water. Thus a pound of that food eaten in beef costs from 3s. 3d. to 4s. Where bone and other inedible portions of a joint are included the cost is still higher. I take an example direct from the kitchen. A quarter of lamb weighing 9 lb. 2 oz. which was baked in the oven weighed when ready for table 6 1/2 lb. At the wholesale market-price referred to above, this would have cost 1s. l0 1/2d. a pound! Lamb contains more water than mutton or beef; and, therefore, allowing for bone, the nutritious portion of this joint would have cost the consumer approximately 7s. a pound. As lamb is a much less suitable and perfectly balanced food than bread, oatmeal, potatoes, or milk - while costing an enormously higher price - it is folly to urge that it is essential to life.

The nutritious material in the lean of flesh is a substance known as Protein, the function of which is to build up the muscular tissues of the young and to maintain them in repair in the adult. For the latter purpose the quantity which nature demands is much less than the meat-eater consumes. It exists in almost every composite food which is placed before him, and so far is this true that, where meat is excluded altogether, it is difficult to avoid taking sufficient to suffice for his bodily wants. I have calculated the quantity in my own diet on many occasions, and find it is less than one-half of the minimum which an average man is supposed to require, according to the standard which a few scientific men have laid down.

If these facts are true - and they have been abundantly proved by public demonstration, and by many persons known to me in private life - it is obvious that a diminution in the quantity of meat eaten, still more where it is abandoned altogether, will effect a great personal as well as a great national saving.

Here is an example of the fact that meat is by far the most costly and extravagant of our ordinary foods. Where lean meat, without bone, costs Is. a pound, it provides approximately forty units of energy for a penny. Where the lean is accompanied by fat its food value is greater, but in that case the buyer is paying a shilling a pound for fat, or double its value. On the other hand, where wholemeal bread costs 2d. a pound, a penny provides 600 units, so that this bread is worth, from the point of view of nutrition, twelve to fourteen times as much as the lean portion of meat, or still more when the bone is included. Rice at 2d. a pound provides 800 units of energy for a penny.

It is claimed that meat alone makes a meal substantial, although the lean is chiefly composed of water, and that it is a great source of strength to the system - invigorating, muscle-building, and vital to life. There is nothing to warrant this belief. The more meat a man eats - if he depends upon no other assistance - the more he loses vitality. Strength, or energy, is the product of the starches and sugars, which are the chief constituents of foods of a vegetable character, and of the fats derived from the foods of both kingdoms. The protein of meat is the source of construction and repair of the muscular tissues, and although it is able to assist in the production of energy, that assistance is obtained, as we have seen, at much greater cost.

The elephant, the strongest; the horse, the fleetest; and the camel, the most enduring, in animal life, are vegetable feeders, extracting their energy, as man does, from vegetable foods.

Constant or excessive meat-eating becomes a danger to health, and even to life, when man reaches middle age. The system becomes charged with a residue much larger than it has been constructed to deal with. Pressure is put upon the kidneys, the liver, the intestines, and finally on the heart, with the result that some organ breaks down altogether, or, in men with stronger constitutions, the production of uric acid is so large that gout or rheumatism ruins the health, the joy of living, and the usefulness of life. This is the verdict of those special physicians to whom I was originally indebted for instruction and facts, and who have made a life study of a subject which others have ignored. I refer to the influence exerted among hundreds of patients who have abandoned meat-eating, and who are in consequence living vigorous, useful, and happy lives.

The meat-eater is a greater drinker than the vegetarian, and the more meat he consumes the more he wants to drink, and to drink alcohol. His animal passions are greater, and his temper less under control, for meat is a stimulant. If meat must be eaten it is better confined to fat bacon, or, if a fresh joint is demanded, to mutton, which contains more feeding matter than beef. The best joints are not of necessity more nourishing than those which are cheaper, although they may be superior in texture and flavour. So long, however, as men have money to spend they will, as a body, eat meat; but if they cannot abandon it, they can at least consume less.