All History

Page 24

The strangers were so well pleased in our society, that they showed no wish to leave us, and, when the market had quite ceased , they began dancing and playing with our people on the ice alongside : this exercise again set many of their noses bleeding (which at their first arrival we had observed to be the case) , and discovered to us a most nasty custom , which accounted for their gory faces ; and which was, that as fast as the blood ran down, they scraped it with the fingers into their mouths, appearing to consider it as a refreshment or dainty, if we might judge by the zest with which they smacked their lips at each supply. Some of the most quiet came on board the ship, and behaved very well ; while others walked quietly alongside, gazing occasionally at the men, but more frequently at some quarters of Old English beef, which were hanging over the stern, and had a most attractive appearance. Some slices were cut off and thrown down to them , and these they instantly devoured with great satisfaction ; but they refused to eat the biscuit which was offered at the same time. One  woman in particular attracted general notice by her unwearied application for presents, and by feigning to be hurt, and crying to excite compassion ; in which she no sooner succeeded, than a loud and triumphant laugh proclaimed the cheat. Of all horrible yells, this laugh was the most fiend - like I ever heard ; and her countenance corresponded with her voice. She had lost all her front teeth, with the exception of the eye-teeth; her mouth was plentifully ornamented by blue tattoo- lines ; and a vast profusion of black, straight, and matted hair, hung all round her head and face. At her back was an imp not more prepossessing in features than herself, and screaming itself black in the face . Although the countenances of the other young children were generally rather pretty than otherwise, yet, from their dress and man ner of walking, they might, without any great stretch of the imagination, have been taken for the cubs of wild animals ; particularly some who were laid for safety in the bottom of the women's boats, amongst blubber, the entrails of seals, &c. of which they were continually sucking whatever was nearest to them.

Sugar was offered to many of the grown people, who disliked it very much, and, to our surprise, the young children were equally averse to it. Towards midnight all our men, except the watch on deck, turned in to their beds, and the fatigued and hungry Eskimaux returned to their boats to take their supper, which consisted of lumps of raw flesh and blubber of seals, birds, entrails, &c.; licking their fingers with great zest, and with knives or fingers scraping the blood and grease which ran down their chins into their mouths. I walked quietly round to look at the different groupes, and in one of the women's boats I observed a young girl, whom we had generally allowed to be the belle of the party, busily employed in tearing a slice from the belly of a seal, and biting it into small pieces for distribution to those around her. I also remarked that the two sexes took their meal apart, the men on the ice, the women sitting in their boats. At midnight they all left us, so exhausted by their day's exertions, that they were quite unable either to scream or laugh . The men paddled slowly away, and the women rowed off with half their party asleep. A few went only to a piece of floating ice astern, where they lay down for the night, while the others made their way to the shore, which was about eight miles distant.

The simple and reliable advice is the same as it has been for the better part of two hundred years. It dates back at least to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin in 1825 and The Physiology of Taste, which has never been out of print, an accomplishment that very few nonfiction books can claim after nearly two centuries. Brillat-Savarin got it as right as anyone. He had his own conversion experience, just as fad diet book authors typically do, and he wrote about it. He spent thirty years struggling with his weight—he called his paunch his “redoubtable enemy”—and eventually came to what he considered an acceptable standoff. He did so only after digesting the message “of more than five hundred conversations” he had held with “dinner companions who were threatened or afflicted with obesity.” In every case, he wrote, the foods they craved were breads and starches and desserts. 

As a consequence, Brillat-Savarin considered it indisputable that grains and starches were the principal cause of obesity—along with a genetic or biological predisposition to fatten easily, which not everybody has—and that sugar exacerbated the fattening process.† He lived in a time, though, when sugar was still a luxury for the wealthy, and sugary beverages were exceedingly hard to come by, at least compared to their ubiquity a century later. So he focused his advice on starches and flour, assuming that abstinence from flour would imply abstinence from sugar, since sugars back then came predominantly in baked goods, pastries, and desserts. 

Brillat-Savarin acknowledged that those who wished to reduce their weight needed something more than just the usual advice to “eat moderately” and “exercise as much as possible.” The only infallible system, he said, had to be diet, and that diet had to remove the cause of the excess body fat: 

"Of all medical prescriptions, diet is the most important, for it acts without cease day and night, waking and sleeping; it works anew at every meal, so that finally it influences each part of the individual. Now, an anti-fat diet is based on the commonest and most active cause of obesity, since, as it has already been clearly shown, it is only because of grains and starches that fatty congestion can occur, as much in man as in the animals; in regard to these latter, this effect is demonstrated every day under our very eyes, and plays a large part in the commerce of

fattened beasts for our markets, and it can be deduced, as an exact consequence, that a more or less rigid abstinence from everything that is starchy or floury will lead to the lessening of weight." 

Brillat-Savarin even went so far as to imagine his readers complaining that more or less rigid abstinence from everything that is starchy or floury meant no longer eating the foods they craved. In other words, his readers then might be much like readers now. “In a single word he [Brillat-Savarin] forbids us everything we most love,” he wrote, “those little white rolls from Limet, and Achard’s cakes, and those cookies … and a hundred other things made with flour and butter, with flour and sugar, with flour and sugar and eggs! He doesn’t even leave us potatoes, or macaroni! Who would have thought this of a lover of good food who seemed so pleasant?” Brillat-Savarin’s response was simple (although I’m bowdlerizing the translation for the more sensitive times in which we live): Then eat these foods and get fat and stay fat!

For many or most of us, this logic offers little or no escape, and as Brillat-Savarin said, the conclusion can still be deduced as an exact consequence. If carbohydrate-rich foods make us fat, then we have to deprive ourselves of the pleasure of their eating if we want to avoid this fate or possibly reverse it. But then, as Brillat-Savarin also noted, these restrictions left plenty to eat and as much of it as desired, which meant meals could be consumed that were still plenty tempting but not fattening.

Gary Taubes. The Case for Keto: Rethinking Weight Control and the Science and Practice of Low-Carb/High-Fat Eating (Kindle Locations 2519-2522). Knopf. Kindle Edition. 

of sand or a light coloured barren earth, which is in many places wholly destitute of the least semblance of vegetation. 

In relation to the subsistence of men and horses, I will remark that nothing now is actually necessary for the support of men in the wilderness than a plentiful supply of good fresh meat. It is all that our mountaineers ever require or even seem to wish. They prefer the meat of the buffaloe to that of any other animal, and the circumstance of the uninterrupted health of these people who generally eat unreasonable quantities of meat at their meals, proves it to be the most wholesome and best adapted food to the constitution of man. In the different concerns which I have had in the Indian Country, where not less than one hundred men have been annually employed for the last four years and subsist altogether upon meat, I have not known at any time a single instance of bilious fever among them or any other disease prevalent in the settled parts of our country, except a few instances (and but very few) of slight fevers produced by colds or rheumatic affections, contracted while in the discharge of guard duty on cold and inclement nights. Nor have we in the whole four years lost a single man by death except those who came to their end prematurely by being either shot or drowned. 

In the summer and fall seasons of the year, the country will afford sufficient grass to subsist any number of horses in traversing it in either direction and even in the winter season, such is the nutritious quality of the mountain grass that, when it can be had plentifully, although perfectly dry in appearance, horses (moderately used) that partake of it, will retain in a great degree their flesh, strength, and spirits. When the round leaf or sweet-bark cottonwood can be had abundantly, horses may be win—

In recommending nutriment adequate to the increased demands of the system, it is not understood that stimulation also is indiscriminately advocated. ‘The object is not stimulation, but power, and that diet must be the best which is capable of imparting the greatest degree of vital power to the various textures, as well as to the blood itself. For this purpose, vegetable food, however nutrient, is very inadequate ; animal diet, on the contrary, stimulates the digestive functions, enriches the blood, invigorates the whole system, and, under judicious regard to existing circumstances, is unquestionably the most restorative of lost power. 

Animal and invigorating diet has been, it is true, generally deprecated in pulmonary cases ; and increase of fever, with aggravation of organic disorder, are usually apprehended as the result. ‘That this idea cannot be always well-founded, the above cases decidedly demonstrate. 

That in certain circumstances of pulmonary disorder injurious Consequences are to be apprehended from the liberal and indiscriminate use of animal diet, Iam ready to concede ; and also, that caution is necessary to adapt the kind and quantity to existing circumstances,—otherwise fever, disorder, and debility, will result, instead of vigour and health. But, on the other hand, I am convinced that, under groundless, or, at all events, mistaken fears of this kind, a system of exclusive abstinence is pursued to the certain aggravation of existing disorder, when a discriminating adoption of a system directly opposite to it is that which is indicated. 

On this point, an interesting feature in the last-detailed case merits attention :—the exacerbation of the cough and febrile symptoms shortly after the adoption of animal diet. ‘This is a result which I admit is of very frequent occurrence in circumstances of great general debility, and in proportion to the degree of debility. It has been usual to regard such an occurrence as highly unfavourable, and as an immediate urgent ground for withholding animal diet in future, and for having recourse to less stimulating vegetable preparations. I am disposed to view the matter in a different light. Knowing, on incontrovertible principles, that the constitution, in these circumstances, absolutely requires the nutritious and invigorating influence of animal diet, the symptoms in question cannot be owing to these properties, but necessarily are due to some other coexistent circumstance. This, | believe, usually consists of such disorder of the alimentary viscera, whether dependent on general debility and habitual organic atony, or upon existing depravity of secretions, as is incompatible with the adequate conversion of animal diet to its proper use. It lodges unreduced in the duodenum, irritating to morbid action that organ ; and as the various secretions have been deficient or depraved, the excitement of the circulating activity locally takes place without corresponding activity of the glandular function of the liver, and the other secreting actions connected with digestion, whence necessarily morbid local action and febrile excitement. To relinquish measures so essential to restore the constitutional powers on this account, is a mistaken course. Correct the existing disorder; stimulate the secreting functions of the liver and the other secretions ; promote habitually the alvine evacuations ; and perseverance in animal diet is no longer injurious, but beneficial, and what the very debility, indicated by the febrile exacerbations in question, urgently calls for. It is an interesting practical fact that, in such circumstances, the excitement of fever by the use of animal diet is generally in a degree moon to existing debility; and as vigour is regained by the use of that means, the febrile exacerbations in question are less liable to occur, and, when occurring, produce much less influence either on the constitution or on the local disorder. In chronic catarrh and mucous secretion of the bronchiz dependent on slighter pulmonic congestions, increased freedom of expectoration supervenes after every meal, and seems, in such cases, a favourable symptom rather than otherwise, indicating the beneficial effects of food in restoring and invigorating the system. When, as in the above-detailed case, the same disordered condition is associated with great general debility, increase of expectoration is naturally to be expected from the remission of chronic congestion under an invigorating diet ; and in such circumstances, being analogous to the critical expectoration in acute inflammations, is rather favourably symptomatic of returning vigour, than an indication for farther reduction of power. 

 These remarks by no means imply the propriety of adopting animal diet in all cases indiscriminately. Where, from existing disorder of the lungs or digestive organs, or from extraneous circumstances of impure air, the digestive power is materially impaired and counteracted, what good can be effected by administering food ? The injurious consequences supervening are naturally in a degree proportioned to existing debility and incapacity Sr digestive action. A just estimate of the digestive capacity is not less essential than a just estimate of the existing demands of the debilitated frame. 

The question naturally occurs, what was the real nature of the pulmonary disorder in the foregoing case? No evidence appearing of the existence of tubercles, the inference is, that the purulent expectoration proceeded from brochial secretion or ulceration. But regarding the attendant symptoms and the rapidly progressive decline of the powers, the result of porerarenes in abstinence and antiphlogistic treatment may e anticipated. As no criterion for judging of the existence of tubercles usually is afforded* farther than the symptoms manifested in this case, the practical deduction is, that an invigorating system of dietetics is now generally deserving of trial in sumilar cases. It may be objected that, however useful animal diet may be in chronic catarrh, purulent secretion, or even ulceration, this system of diet is not applicable to the case of tubercular ulceration.

Meanwhile, orthodox Christianity was saved from

the embarrassing inadequacies of the Diluvial Theory

by the French geologist, naturalist, and member of

the Académie des Sciences, Baron Georges Cuvier

(1769-1832). To explain the progressive sequences of

fossils found in rock sediments, Cuvier proposed

a series of catastrophes, each of which had totally wiped

out animal and plant populations (thus producing the

fossils), followed by a period of calm during which

God restocked the earth with new (and improved)

species, The Noachian Flood was just one of these.

The Catastrophe Theory was a great balm to many

troubled minds. Adam Sedgwick, a geologist at

Cambridge University and a teacher of Charles Darwin, 

expounded the theory thus: 'At succeeding periods

new tribes of beings were called into existence,

not merely as progeny of those that had appeared

before them, but as new and living proof of creative

interference; and though formed on the same plan,

and bearing the same marks of wise contrivance, of-

tentimes unlike those creatures which preceded them,

as if they had been matured in a different portion of the

universe and cast upon the earth by the collision of

another planet.'

In formulating the Catastrophe Theory, Cuvier rou-

tinely took for granted an extreme rapidity of changes

in times past as compared with the present, but con-

ceded that perhaps a little more than six thousand

years was required. So, following the example of his

countryman, Comte Georges de Buffon (1707-1778),

he added eighty thousand years on to the age of the

earth. According to calculations of members of the

Académie, made after Cuvier's death, there had been

twenty-seven successive acts of creation, the products

of each but the last being obliterated in subsequent

catastrophes, thus providing a geological 'clock'. An

Englishman, William Smith (1769-1839), raised the

number of strata to thirty-two.

Opposite: This fossil

crocodile, illustrated in

Cuvier's book, The

Animal Kingdom (1830),

is obviously related to

present-day species

and it was such finds

that posed a problem to

the proponents of the

Diluvial Theory.

Baron Georges Leopold

Cuvier, the French

comparative anatomist,

explained away the

progressive sequences

of fossils found in strata

by proposing a series of

catastrophes, the Flood

being just one of these.

The mountain man was a rugged individualist of whom Washington Irving wrote, "You cannot pay a free trapper a greater compliment than to persuade him that you have mistaken him for an Indian." In fact, he virtually had to become an Indian in order to survive. "A turned leaf," wrote George Frederick Ruxton in Adventures in Mexico and the Rocky Mountains, blade of grass pressed down, the uneasiness of wild animals, the flight of birds, are all paragraphs to him written in Nature's legible hand." 

In addition to his other talents, the mountain man had to be a master of buffalo hunting, for meat comprised almost one hundred per cent of his normal diet--at least when in the buffalo country. As in everything else, he had to develop new techniques for "making meat." When hunting horseback, according to the traveler Rudolph Kurz, the hunters (those operating from fixed forts, at any rate) did not use long-barreled rifles because "they think the care required in loading them takes too much time unnecessarily when shooting at close range and, furthermore, they find rifle balls too small. The hunter chases buffaloes at full gallop, discharges his gun [a short- harreled shotgunk and reloads it with out slackening speed.

Buffalo meat has been called the greatest meat man has ever fed on. The mountain man usually boiled the outs from the hump, and roasted other pieces. He cracked the marrow bones to make "trapper's butter", or he used the marrow to make a fine thick soup.

In one of the great statements in the history of science, Sedgwick, who was Buckland's close colleague in both science and theology, publicly abandoned flood geology and upheld empirical science—in his presidential address to the Geological Society of London in 1831.

Having been myself a believer, and, to the best of my power, a propagator of what I now regard as a philosophic heresy, and having more than once been quoted for opinions I do not now maintain, I think it right, as one of my last acts before I quit this Chair, thus publicly to read my recantation...

There is, I think, one great negative conclusion now incontestably established—that the vast masses of diluvial gravel, scattered almost over the surface of the earth, do not belong to one violent and transitory period...

We ought, indeed, to have paused before we first adopted the diluvian theory, and referred all our old superficial gravel to the action of the Mosaic flood... In classing together distant unknown formations under one name; in giving them a simultaneous origin, and in determining their date, not by the organic remains we had discovered, but by those we expected hypothetically hereafter to discover, in them; we have given one more example of the passion with which the mind fastens upon general conclusions, and of the readiness with which it leaves the consideration of unconnected truths.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1982/09/genesis-vs-geology/306198/?single_page=true

Within this growing temperance environment the Pennsylvania Society for Discouraging the Use of Ardent Spirits was founded in 1827.  The name of the organization says much about its methodology, its attempt to discourage the use of alcohol through lectures, pamphlets, and education rather than advocating for the ban of spirits through legislation. Fear of alcohol abuse, including its medical, spiritual, and social eff ects, was widespread among members of Philadelphia’s medical elite, who saw the abuse of spirits as the primary cause of mortality and poverty in the 1820s and 1830s.

 Though reticent to legislate absolute prohibition, the society worked with 19 local magistrates to prosecute public drunkenness, gambling, and Sabbath violations.  The group warned against the destructive lives of both the “habitual drunkard” as well as the equally pernicious “occasional drunkard.”  The society advocated for stiff punishments under existing laws and believed in the need for internment in hospitals, almshouses, and prisons to reform alcohol abuse. In addition to its published reports, the Pennsylvania Society aimed to curb alcohol consumption through a network of agents and lecturers sent out to spread the gospel of sobriety, temperance, and clean living.  

In June 1830, Sylvester Graham set out to reach the masses, lecturing throughout Pennsylvania connecting alcohol consumption with both physical and spiritual debasement. Graham peppered his speeches with compelling evidence, anecdotes, and scientific reasoning, all under the umbrella of religious imagery. This methodology was part of Graham’s attempt to avoid “mere declamation against drunkenness” and instead provide his audiences with “the reasons why they should not use intoxicating drinks.” During this period Graham became fascinated with studying human physiology, connecting physical health with ethical development. Not surprisingly, given his existing preoccupation with the connections between alcohol and physiology, Graham eventually turned his attention to dietary habits.  

While Graham lectured throughout Philadelphia in 1830, he was introduced to members of the Bible Christian Church, beginning a correspondence with William Metcalfe that continued for most of their lives. Graham later claimed that his dietary decisions were “neither . . . founded on, nor suggested by, the opinions of others who have taught that vegetable food is the proper aliment of the human species,” though this was more a rhetorical device aimed at building personal credibility. The growing Bible Christian movement undoubtedly infl uenced Graham’s own dietary conversion, given his connection to Metcalfe. 

Graham’s specious claim that his vegetable diet was based purely on experimentation refl ected his methods as a lecturer, emphasizing rational science rather than loyalty to a mere philosophy.  Graham’s time working solely on temperance was short-lived, and he resigned from his post aft er just six months. But his life as a public reformer and lecturer was established. By the spring of 1831, Graham began delivering a series of lectures at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia on what he labeled “the Science of Human Life,” including instruction on meat-free living, temperance, and the dangers of masturbation. Despite these other concerns, Graham’s philosophy of healthy living hinged on the adoption of a meatless diet; of the twenty-four lectures included in the Lectures on the Science of Human Life , fourteen focused on food, digestion, and the benefits of avoiding flesh foods. At the core of this lecture series—which Graham delivered in New York City immediately after lecturing in Philadelphia— was the notion that the human body could be controlled and maximized through the mechanism of deep self-awareness. In this sense Graham’s lectures offered a democratic notion of personal health care, arguing that it was the individual’s responsibility to understand how the human body functioned and to react by initiating the healthiest path of living.  

Graham presented a vegetable diet as “ the diet of man,” proven by a combination of anatomical and historical study. The fact that most Americans lived omnivorous lives was not proof of the dominant diet’s validity; rather, it reflected a general disconnect between humans and their natural, physiological state. Graham recognized the potentially controversial nature of his dietetics. A vegetable diet was not antireligious, he assured his audiences. Rather, there was “the most entire harmony between the Sacred Scriptures, and the dietetic and other principles” that he advocated.  While Graham’s ideas about meat were radical, the traditional awareness of the need to keep the humoral body in balance provided some familiarity and legitimacy to Graham’s dietary dictates, as he claimed that meat overheated the body.  

In the Science of Human Life lectures Graham presented the first unified theory of a meatless diet to general audiences, expunging the notion from the purely religious and placing it within the temporal and physical. Even though Graham’s dietary principles were controversial, they offered practical advice and reasoning on how to improve day-to-day life. Connecting the benefits of a vegetable diet to a variety of social changes, Graham successfully exploited the social reform spirit of the 1830s.

Graham’s lectures emphasized the naturalness of a vegetable diet based on the study of physiology, arguing that the human dental and alimentary systems were constructed to chew and digest only vegetable-based products. Carnivorous members of the animal kingdom had sharp, elongated teeth, perfect for chewing through flesh and sinew. Humans, in contrast, were blessed with flat teeth, perfect for the grinding necessary to break down fruits, vegetables, and grains. The goal of a meatless diet was a “more healthy, vigorous and long-lived” life, allowing for a “more active and powerful” intellect able to develop the most “moral faculties . . . rendered by suitable cultivation.” A moral and intellectually driven individual would not debase him-or-herself with the evils of stimulants such as meat. History, Graham argued, pointed toward the benefits of a vegetable diet. Ancient Romans, Greeks, Phoenicians, and Jews all expounded on the virtues of the “natural diet.” A vegetable diet worked for Plutarch, Ovid, Hesiod, and Pythagoras; it was only logical that Americans, the torchbearers of modern republicanism, should follow this lead. 

Graham, however, was not arguing for animal rights. In fact, he referred to nonhumans as “the lower animals,” driven strictly by instinct, a quality to be managed and sublimated by humanity.  Meat abstainers feared humanity’s inclination to act like the rest of the animal world. Exposure to all kinds of sensory experiences—whether culinary, alcoholic, or sexual—worried dietary reformers, who believed that Americans had relinquished themselves to the most primal, animalistic urges. Proto-vegetarianism put little emphasis on the effects of meat production on the animals themselves, focusing instead on human ethics and their eff ect on physical functions.  

The concept of overstimulation was at the center of Graham’s antimeat doctrine, an idea derived from the traditional view of the balanced humoral body. Humanity’s natural state—which included a meatless diet—kept the body in a mode of regulated stasis. Substances such as meat, alcohol, and spices served to throw off this natural balance, overstimulating and overheating the human body, mind, and soul. Once the body was out of balance it would become susceptible to any number of serious physical and moral maladies.  

Graham’s claims about the dangers of meat and other stimulants gained more traction with the outbreak of a mass cholera epidemic. The simultaneous  growth of American cities and waves of new immigrants entering urban areas contributed to overcrowding. A lack of available municipal services ensured that impoverished urban areas remained dirty and disease-ridden. By June 1832 cholera appeared in North America in Quebec and quickly spread to the United States before the month was over. In just two months nearly 3,500 New Yorkers—primarily working-class inhabitants of the crowded slums— died from the epidemic. Diarrhea, vomiting, and intense stomach cramping culminated in the eventual collapse of the circulation system. Cities large and small along the East Coast were gripped by fear and hysteria. Wealthy citizens fl ed to the countryside fearing the spread of the disease, leading one New York reporter to refl ect that “the roads, in all directions, were lined with wellfilled stagecoaches, livery coaches, private vehicles and equestrians, all panicstruck, fleeing the city, as . . . the inhabitants of Pompeii fled when the red lava showered down upon their houses.” 

The medical response to the epidemic was slow and usually ineffective. In a pre–germ theory generation, cholera was not perceived as being communicable via interpersonal contact; rather, it was seen as an airborne illness, apt to attack the physically and morally weakest in the cities. Mercury chloride was given out to those afflicted as a strong purgative to induce purification, while laudanum—a powerful opiate that includes opium and morphine— was administered in a glass of hot brandy to treat intense stomach pains. On a federal level, all that Congress could offer was Senator Henry Clay’s call for a national day of fasting and prayer for a providential cure.

  As these treatments proved to be ineffective and Americans struggled to understand the reasons for the epidemic, Sylvester Graham offered strikingly different advice on how to best treat and avoid cholera. Graham argued that a combination of factors contributed to the epidemic, especially diet and overstimulation. Americans, Graham preached, were detached from and ignorant of the natural laws that regulated the human body, and drunk from a diet heavy in stimulants. Animal flesh was essentially rotting and inorganic, leading to impure blood and the draining of vital power in order to digest unnatural substances.  

Laying the blame squarely on meat-eating and alcohol consumption, Graham pointed toward “dietetic intemperance and lewdness” as the primary causes of the spread of cholera.  Only by adhering to natural laws—a flesh- and alcohol-free diet; cold, pure water; frequent bathing; exercise; and fresh air—could one avoid contracting the disease. Graham pointed further toward emotional strength as a weapon in the fi ght against choleric agents. Fear of the disease weakened the body’s constitution, making it more apt to overtax itself. Only through strength of mind, body, and soul could individuals avoid the importation of impurities. Through a vegetable diet and mastery over the laws of nature, Graham argued, individuals could avoid the perils of illness.