Doctor, Is There Any Enlightened Country In The World Where The People Eat As Much Meat As In The United States?

"'I don't think there is."

Then If It Be True That Americans Eat More Meat, And Are, As It Is Claimed, More Active And Accomplish More In A Given Time, Does'Nt That Prove The Superiority Of A Meat Diet?

"No. It would be just as reasonable to attribute it to some one of a hundred other things. Esquimaux live on meat, and it would be illogical to say that meat eating made the people of the United States great and that it kept those of Greenland from any attainments whatever."

The Altruistic Vegetarians Are Opposed To Killing Any Animal For Food, On The Ground That Man Has No Better Right To Live Than The Lower Animals. What Do You Think Of This Doctrine?

"It is a common thing in this country to call any one who is greatly interested in any subject, or who makes any innovation on existing things a crank, or a fanatic. This is wholly unwarranted, although it strikes me that the altruistic vegetarians practice extremely sentimental ethics. Life exists in every conceivable grade from the simplest vegetable to man, the highest animal. Who can tell just at what stage of development it is, or is not harmful to destroy it, although there seems to be general repugnance to each species destroying its own kind."

Then You Are Strongly Against Vegetarianism?

"If you merely mean their antagonism to meat, I am much in sympathy with them."

"I presume that you have some scientific reason for antagonizing meat."

"Yes, many of them, for meat, like alcohol, has important uses, but it is so much abused that it would be better for the race if its use were abandoned."

"But people rely on meat as the main source of strength and say they can not live without it."

"Suppose you tell that to the horse. There is no other animal that can stand so much or so varied physical exertion."

"That is so, but the digestion of a horse is better; that overthrows the point you make."

"I don't think so. It proves that the force or strength of the horse is developed and maintained solely on a vegetable diet, so that the charge that vegetables are not strengthening is here disproven, and if there is any fault it is in man's digestion or misuse of vegetables."

"But doctor, the people understand vegetables to be such foods as potatoes and cabbage, not bread."

"That is not a right understanding, for wheat and all cereals are vegetables."

If It Be True, As Alleged By Many, That Vegetables Are Harder To Digest, Is Not That A Good Reason For Not Using Them Exclusively?

"Well, if we go on the theory that we should eat only easily digested foods, then the less effort required the better, and we ought, therefore, to eat nothing but pre-digested foods and thus relieve the digestive organs entirely."

"I don't quite understand you, for you have been continually denouncing indigestible foods and now you defend them."

"The point is this: as we exist in this age, our appetites are perverted and our digestive powers greatly weakened; these must be strengthened in natural ways."

Then We Are To Eat Foods Adapted To Our Particular Needs?

"As far as possible. Take eggs for example. They are a good food, but it would be a perversion of nature to cook them with tobacco, and it is only less so to fry them hard in butter or lard. Now, one may require food harder to digest, and containing more waste than eggs, but it does not serve the purpose to merely make the eggs indigestible by some process of cooking."

"Doctor, your explanation is quite satisfactory and puts the subject of food in a different light from what I have ever seen it, but that does not explain what injury results from a meat diet."

"I can better explain the use and then the abuse. In discussing animal foods I endeavored to make it plain that owing to the chemical composition of meat it was not so readily burned up as other foods. Lean meat should not be used for heat production but only to supply the deficiency of nitrogen common to a diet of such vegetables as potatoes. For tissue forming food we rely on milk, peas, beans, gluten found in wheat, oats, rye and corn, especially Southern corn, and meat. Now two things govern the use of these foods; convenience of obtaining, and the idiosyncrasies of the individual."

Then If Milk, Eggs Or Beans Did Not Agree And Gluten Was Not Readily Obtainable Would You Use Meats?

"Well, as a general rule gluten is preferable to meat, but not always. In continued fevers, like typhoid, meat powder and scraped meat are especially useful - the same may be said of chronic dysentery and some other diseases of the digestive organs."

How About Meat In Diseases Of The Kidneys?

"In diabetes, meat must be the main reliance for food, but in Bright's disease it is not permissible 1o use meat at all."

Why Is This?

"In diabetes there is loss of sugar from imperfect oxidation of starches and sugars, while in Bright's disease the defect is just the opposite and the leakage is of albumen."

What About The Abuse Of Meat?

"I have already explained that the waste of the tissue forming foods is eliminated by the kidneys. Now, ordinarily, ths system does not require that more than one sixth of the food be of tissue forming character, but a much larger per cent of such food is often eaten, and as most people stimulate their appetites with either condiments or liquors, it naturally follows that they eat too much."

Then As I Understand It, The Excess Of Tissue Forming Foods Overwork The Kidneys?

"Yes, excessive meat eating puts too great a burden on the kidneys, but this is not the worst effect."

What Is Worse Than Disease Of The Kidneys?

"The point I wanted to make was not the virulence of any disease but certain effects that are well nigh universal. If there be imperfect elimination of either the excess of meat eaten, or the dead tissue of the body, auto-infection will result with some of its numerous diseases."

Why Should Me:It Be So Much Worse Than Other Foods?

Because of its composition. You will better understand this by an illustration.

Suppose You Take Five Pounds Of Fresh Beef In One Vessel And Five Pounds Of Vegetables In Another, Then Cook Each And Leave Them Exposed To The Air In A Warm Room, What Would Result?

"The meat would spoil in a short time and drive every one out of the house and almost out of the neighborhood."

Then You Don't Think That The Vegetables Would Greatly Disturb Any One When They Spoiled?

"No, and I guess I understand your point. You want to emphasize the fact that decaying meat is much more odorous than decaying vegetables."

"That is it. When meat or vegetables decay in the system, their relative effect is very similar to the comparative strength of their odors when decomposing, just as I have illustrated."

Then You Believe That A Large Per Cent Of The Ordinary Diseases Are Caused By Excessive Meat Eating?

"Undoubtedly; many people subject to bilious attacks, sick headache, rheumatism and other disorders have cured themselves by leaving off meat."

"Doctor, how do you get over the actual experience of laborers who say they can do more work on meat and even doctors themselves have tried the vegetable diet with unsatisfactory results."

"But more have tried it with satisfactory results."

"Then that would indicate that it was good for some and not for others."

That may be a fact, and yet when we consider how little is known about the proper preparation of foods, and about their properties and uses, it is not surprising that a vegetable diet is not satisfactory.

How Many Can Tell The Amount And Properties Of Different Foods, That Would Be Required At Different Seasons For A Perfect Diet?

"Certainly not many, for I interviewed more than one thousand physicians and only two of them could do it."

"Then how can they adjust a diet to their needs? Trying a vegetable diet, by bolting down, as is usually done, starchy vegetables (like bread and potatoes) into an acid stomach, would be absolutely certain to bring disagreeable results. Then there are other reasons for such failure. Many vegetables contain an excess of starch, and if fat and sugar be added as is usually done, the excess throws the diet too far out of balance."

May There Not Be Some Peculiarity In The Digestion Of Individuals, So That Vegetables Suit Some Best While Meats Are Best For Others?

"That may be possible, and is what is called idiosyncrasy. People who feel discomfort from eating a large amount of meat or eggs will unquestionably do better on a vegetable diet. If the stomach only secretes a small amount of acid and pepsin, and the pancreatic digestion is good, vegetable foods will agree much better than meats."

Don't Some Persons Have Strongly Acid Stomachs And Weak Pancreatic Digestion, Who Can Hardly Be Said To Be Diseased?

"Yes, there are probably such persons, but the stomach specialist does not have occasion to treat such stomachs until there is disease, so that no one so far as I know, has sought such a subject on which to make a test. The starches in large quantities would not agree with such persons, but I am of the opinion that the vegetable gluten found in wheat, peas and beans if properly prepared would agree better than meat. The reason why people have failed with a vegetable diet is, that they have gone too far in substituting starch for meat instead of trying something like wheat gluten or nuts."

"Doctor, after all your predilections seem to be on the side of the vegetarians."

"No, I have no bias or fads, and I speak of things as I find them. My conclusions are based on many years careful study of the diseases of the digestive organs and how they are caused and influenced by diet and habits. A stomach specialist, who treats chronic diseases of long standing is compelled to study cause and effect."

Then According To Your View, Doctor, The Main Reason Why The So-Called Trials Of Vegetarians Failed Is Because Those Making The Trials Did Not Understand Digestion, And The Proper Assimilation Of Foods?

"Yes, that is it; one pound of wheat hearts contains as much of tissue forming food as two pounds of steak, and it is a fact that many invalids can digest it who cannot digest meat, and it is absur I to say that such foods are not sufficiently nutritions"