All History

Eating by the Book?

SDA vegetarianism is rooted in the Bible, according to which for food God gave humans "all plants that bear seed everywhere on earth, and every tree bearing fruit that yields seed" (Genesis 1:29). Meat is said to have become a part of the human diet after the Flood, when all plant life had been destroyed: "Every creature that lives and moves shall be food for you" (Genesis 9:3). Adventists are taught that the introduction of meat into the human diet at that time decreased the human life span from the more than 900 years of the first humans to today's "three-score and ten."

However, the Bible warns against confusing dietary practices with moral behavior:

For the kingdom of God is not food and drink but righteousness and peace. (Romans 14:17)Let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink. (Colossians 2:16)One believes he may eat anything, while the weak man eats only vegetables, let not him who eats despise him who abstains, and let not him who abstains pass judgment on him who eats. (Romans 14:2-4)

It also seems to condemn vegetarianism:

The Holy Spirit tells us clearly that in the last times some in the church will turn away from Christ and become eager followers of teachers with devil inspired ideas. These teachers will tell lies with straight faces and do it so often that their consciences won't even bother them. They will say that it is wrong to be married and wrong to eat meat, even though God gave these things to well-taught Christians to enjoy and be thankful for. For everything God made is good, and we may eat it gladly if we are thankful for it. ( I Timothy 4:1-4, Living Bible)

SDA Church pioneer Ellen G. White (1827-1915) was a proponent of vegetarianism even though she did not practice it herself. Like the Grahamites of her time, she taught that gradually the earth would become more corrupted, diseases and calamities worse, and the food particularly animal foods unsafe. In 1902 she wrote that the time might come when the use of milk should be discontinued. Although White was an advocate of science and chiefly responsible for making SDA healthcare a science-based enterprise, clearly she did not anticipate twentieth-century advances in public health and medical science. Despite the record longevity now enjoyed by people in the developed nations, vegetarian zealots within the church caught up in the doomsday hysteria of the 1990s have decided that the time has come to give up all animal foods and are fervidly preaching veganism.

Ellen G. White's visions prompted several books by one of her followers, George McCready Price, leading to the 20th-century revival of flood geology.[43] After years selling White's books door-to-door, Price took a one-year teacher-training course and taught in several schools. When shown books on evolution and the fossil sequence which contradicted his beliefs, he found the answer in White's "revealing word pictures" which suggested how the fossils had been buried. He studied textbooks on geology and "almost tons of geological documents", finding "how the actual facts of the rocks and fossils, stripped of mere theories, splendidly refute this evolutionary theory of the invariable order of the fossils, which is the very backbone of the evolution doctrine". In 1902, he produced a manuscript for a book proposing geology based on Genesis, in which the sequence of fossils resulted from the different responses of animals to the encroaching flood. He agreed with White on the origins of coal and oil, and conjectured that mountain ranges (including the Alps and Himalaya) formed from layers deposited by the flood which had then been "folded and elevated to their present height by the great lateral pressure that accompanied its subsidence". He then found a report describing paraconformities and a paper on thrust faults. He concluded from these "providential discoveries" that it was impossible to prove the age or overall sequence of fossils, and included these points in his self-published paperback of 1906, Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory. His arguments continued this focus on disproving the sequence of strata, and he ultimately sold more than 15,000 copies of his 1923 college textbook The New Geology.[46][47] -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flood_geology

George McCready Price (26 August 1870 – 24 January 1963) was a Canadian creationist. He produced several anti-evolution and creationist works, particularly on the subject of flood geology. His views did not become common among creationists until after his death, particularly with the modern creation science movement starting in the 1960s.

Price was born in Havelock, New Brunswick, Canada.[3][4] His father died in 1882, and his mother joined the Seventh-day Adventist Church. Price attended Battle Creek College (now Andrews University) between 1891 and 1893. In 1896, he enrolled in a one-year teacher training course at the Provincial Normal School of New Brunswick (now the University of New Brunswick), where he took some elementary courses in some of the natural sciences, including some mineralogy.[5]

Price taught at a series of small-town schools from 1897 onwards, including at a high school in Tracadie between 1899 and 1902. While there, socially, he met Alfred Corbett Smith (head of the medical department at a local leprosarium) who loaned him scientific literature. Believing the Earth was young, Price concluded that geologists had misinterpreted their data. In 1902, Price completed the manuscript Outlines of Modern Christianity and Modern Science before leaving Tracadie to serve brief stints as an Adventist evangelist on Prince Edward Island and the head of a new Adventist boarding academy in Nova Scotia. He briefly returned to book-selling in 1904, and then moved to New York City in an attempt to become a magazine and newspaper writer.[5]

In a response to a plea from his wife, the Adventist church first employed Price as a construction worker in Maryland. He then was principal of a small Adventist school in Oakland, California, before becoming a construction worker and handyman at a newly purchased Adventist sanitarium in Loma Linda, California, where he published Illogical Geology: The Weakest Point in the Evolution Theory in 1906.[5] In Illogical Geology, Price offered $1000 "to any one who will, in the face of the facts here presented, show me how to prove that one kind of fossil is older than another."[6]

From 1907 to 1912, Price taught at the Seventh-day Adventist-run College of Medical Evangelists, now known as Loma Linda University, which awarded him a B.A., based partially on his authorship and independent study. From 1912 to 1914, he taught at the San Fernando Academy in San Fernando, California, and from 1914 to 1916 at Lodi Academy, Lodi, California.[7]

Beginning in 1920, Price taught at Pacific Union College, Angwin, California,[7] where he was awarded an M.A. (described by Ronald L. Numbers as a "gift").[8] From 1924 to 1928, Price taught at Stanborough Missionary College in Watford, England, where he served as president from 1927 to 1928. He then taught at Emmanual Missionary College (now Andrews University) in Berrien Springs, Michigan from 1929 to 1933, and Walla Walla College near Walla Walla, Washington from 1933 to 1938.[7]

While Price claimed that his book-selling travels gave him invaluable "firsthand knowledge of field geology", his "familiarity with the outside world" remained rudimentary, with even his own students noting that he could "barely tell one fossil from another" on a field trip shortly before he retired.[8]

In 1943, he moved to Loma Linda, California, where he died 20 years later at the age of 92.[9]

How to Reduce Flesh

A man or woman who feels that flesh accumulating too rapidly may lose it by drinking sassafras tea, either cold or hot, with or without sugar, as the taste demands. There might be conditions of the system when it might be injurious, however, and it would be better to consult a doctor before using it. A strong infusion may be made of one ounce of sassafras to a quart of water. Boil half an hour very slowly, let it cool, and keep from the air.

A perfectly safe way to get thin is to eat chopped meat without any potatoes. Drink as little as possible of any fluid. Exercise a great deal without drinking and if possible eat no bread, butter, or sweets. Lemonade, acid drinks of any kind, a little strong tea and saline mineral waters will assist you, but of thees take only as little as possible. Start the morning by drinking a glass of clear water.

How to Increase Flesh

Thin people who wish to get stout should eat oatmeal, hominy, or any of the preparations of wheat now sold. Wheat rolls, corn mush, cream, chocolate, milk, sugar, omelets, jams, eggs, potatoes, bacon, and all other fattening foods.

The territory most specifically observed by Romig is Temperate Zone southwestern Alaska, south of the Yukon River and west of a line drawn north from Seward and Anchorage to Fairbanks. The Europeanization of these parts started in the 1740's, soon after Bering's visit, and was intense in the Aleutians and along mainland Alaska's south coast and the southern west coast. There were little-touched sections, particularly the west coast farther north than the Kuskokwim; and then the interior, which is forested and chiefly inhabited by Athapaska Indians. So there were districts and families that had been “modernized” even before Romig first came; but there were others still so primitive that we might consider them untouched by such influences as those of European foods and food-handling methods. Which these little-influenced spots were, the medical missionary, when of sympathetic temper, would soon know. The total population, before the 1900 measles epidemic, would have been considerably more than 10,000; after the measles, considerably less.

During his first seven years, 1896-1903, Romig worked from Bethel, the Moravian mission on the lower Kuskokwim. He traveled considerably, by dog team in winter and canoe or launch in summer. His patients were chiefly Aleuts, Eskimos, and Athapaskans; but there was a scattering of Russian and other European whites, and of Chinese, Japanese, and Negroes. Some native women were married to these immigrants. They and their children were the chief modernized elements among whom — as among the immigrants themselves — Romig was now and then discovering malignancy cases.

Rubner called attention to the fact that a man cannot live on meat alone because of the physical limitation of the apparatus of mastication. He was evidently considering only lean meat as fat offers little difficulty. via

ZOMOTHERAPY IN TUBERCULOSIS.

By Lawrason Brown, M.D.,

RESIDENT PHYSICIAN, ADIRONDACK COTTAGE SANITARIUM, SARANAC LAKE, N. Y.

Some months ago two French scientists, Richet and Hericourt, 1 announced most favorable results in the treatment of tuberculosis with raw meat or its juice. They began two years ago to publish their observations, and during the last year both have written glowing accounts of the efficiency of this treatment. They have long been experimenting upon dogs, endeavoring to find some curative agent for tuberculosis; but all to no avail until they began to feed their dogs exclusively upon raw meat. Their dogs, 129 in number, may be divided into three groups. The first, composed of 30, received no treatment; the second, numbering 58, was treated by different methods, while the third, 41 in number, was fed on raw meat. At first the amount was unlimited, but later they found that 10 to 12 grammes per kilogramme of body weight of the animal was sufficient The first and second groups lived, on an average, 52 days, while the dogs fed on raw meat lived, on an average, 227 days; in other words, the period of life was very nearly five times longer in the dogs fed with raw meat. From their experiments they conclude that cooked meat in any quantity is inefficacious, that meat deprived of its serum is moderately efficacious, and that muscle serum is as efficacious as raw meat. Raw meat they found also to act prophylactically.

The explanation of the action of the raw meat, although discussed at the Paris Conference in 1900, is still unsettled. Richet at that time attributed the beneficial effects to some body in the meat-juice that prevented the development of tuberculous granulations. According to Maragliano, meat acts as a stimulant, and therefore promotes the formation of an antitoxin in the body. More recently Richet has advanced a “ metatxophic antitoxic action." The tuberculized animal, he says, dies by a slow and progressive intoxication of the nervous system. The active elements of the muscle serum preserves the nerve cell from a tuberculous intoxication.

Richet and Roux’ have obtained favorable results in experimental meningeal tuberculosis in dogs. Twenty dogs were inoculated with tubercle bacilli in the spinal canal between the atlas vertebra and the occiput. Eleven of these were fed on raw meat and three survived, two of which were injected with tuberculin and did not succumb, as did one of the dogs which survived after being fed on cooked meat. Nine dogs were fed on cooked meat, and all died.

Chantemesse,’ who first looked upon raw meat as a stomachic, has later taken an opposite view on account of his own observations. He injected two dogs with tubercle bacilli. One he fed upon raw meat; the other with cooked meat. The first remained sound and well; the second died.

Salmon 4 divided a number of dogs into three groups. The first, which received raw meat and was then injected, died as quickly as the controls. A Eecond group, injected and then fed on raw meat, gained in weight and lived a fairly long time. In the third group treatment with raw meat was not begun until the disease had advanced considerably, and there was much loss of strength. On these raw meat exerted no influence. This author also calls attention to the fact that a dog which has apparently recovered from tuberculous peritonitis may still show at autopsy numerous fresh nodules in the peritoneum and internal organs and an extending tuberculosis.

Frankel and Sobemheim 1 have published their results obtained by zomotherapy in tuberculous dogs and rats. Nine dogs and four rat were injected with carefully estimated quantities of an emulsion oi tubercle bacilli. Four dogs and two rats, fed on a mixed diet, were used as controls, and the remainder fed on raw meat. The dogs all died in six weeks. These authors suggest that Bichet and Hericourt’a results may be due to the fact that a non-virulent tubercle bacillus was used in the injections.

The literature on zomotherapy in human tuberculosis is more extensive, but no more conclusive. Duhoureau 8 mentions the case of his son, who, from smaller doses than those given by Hericourt, derived much benefit. Hericourt advises 600 to 700 grammes of raw meat, or the juice of 1000 to 1300 grammes of raw meat, per diem. In a recent article Hericourt 7 has collected statistics in zomotherapy in human tuberculosis. Besides eleven cases treated by himself, he reports twelve cases treated by others. These cases may be tabulated as follows:

It is but natural that anyone acquainted with pulmonary tuberculosis should, if the cases have not been selected, regard these uniformly good results somewhat skeptically.

Hericourt quotes, in addition, several favorable reports. Dr. Petit-Clerc" mentions three cases in the second stage of pulmonary tubercu¬ losis who recovered under treatment by raw meat and fresh air. Dr. Sarge 9 has seen a case of pulmonary tuberculosis in the third stage recover under zomotherapy. Garnault 10 reports two cases in the second and third stages of pulmonary tuberculosis who apparently recovered under raw meat and iutratracheal injections of orthoform. Josias and Roux" have followed zomotherapy as treatment in six cases of pulmonary tuberculosis in children, three of whom were in the second stage and did very well, and three in the third stage, who did not do so well. Three cases of meningeal tuberculosis were treated without favorable results.

At present the prevalent opinion is that Richet’s method is only a better means of offering nourishment and of enabling a larger quantity of food to be given. The resistance of gouty persons toward tuberculosis is, Weber 12 thinks, probably due partly to the meaty food. He recognizes, however, that due proportions of vegetables and fruits are of great importance. In some cases a fair amount of butchers’ meat will stimulate the appetite enormously for all kinds of food, and render digestion more vigorous. Meat albumin, in contradistinction to milk albumin, writes Ross, 13 quickly and readily manifests its better qualities in the early observable improvement in the sufferer, and the benefit so obtained is not so easily undone as in the case of casein albumin. The cause, he thinks, is due to the fact that the adult has more muscle, and so needs more muscle-juice, or the muscle-juice contains more iron. Possibly, he says, the meat-juice contains some antitoxic substance. Browning the meat, he thinks, has little effect upon the real properties of serum.

Myosin albumin returns a maximum of nutrient for a minimum of effort, peptonizes readily, and is promptly absorbed, throwing little or no stress and irritating overaction on the stomach. But Bernheim 1 * warns us that the benefit of alimentation is not measured by the quantity of food ingested, but by the quantity digested. The raw-meat treatment of Richet and Hericourt is, in effect, really suralimentation, but suralimentation in'such a form that the majority of patients can stand it. “ When, under the pretext of recovering the albuminoids, one submits the tuberculous patient to an exclusive meat diet, when one declares the carbohydrates—vegetables, sugar, cereals, etc.—to be secondary, the patient is deprived of an element primordially essential to repair, is given only an insufficient diet of phosphates, has his hyperacidity increased, and in place of increasing the artificial arthritism, which would be of value, a state of affairs is favored which would increase the susceptibility to the bacillus.”

On account of the great expense, but few patients can carry out the raw-meat treatment as suggested by Hericourt, who advises that the juice of six pounds of rare beef, free from fat, bone, and cartilage, be taken daily. However, smaller quantities can be used advantageously. Two patients who took the full amount for several months made good recoveries. In one of these the disease was advancing quite rapidly. Many patients have been given beef-juice extracted from meat slightly browned, and it seemed to exert a very beneficial but no specific action.

In reviewing the experimental work done on this subject one is struck, as Frankel remarks, by its meagreness. Chantemesse, Salmon, and Frankel are apparently the only observers to repeat Riehet’s work. Frankel obtained opposite results, Salmon’s results were inconclusive, while Chantemesse, from experiments upon two dogs, upholds Richet. For this reason at the suggestion of Dr. Trudeau, and largely under his guidance, the following experiments were carried out:

From the foregoing experiments on the treatment of experimental tuberculosis by raw meat, the following conclusions may be drawn.

1. That raw meat has no perceptible effect on the duration of experimental tuberculosis in dogs if the bacilli are virulent and a sufficient number injected intravenously.

2. That raw meat has no effect on the prolongation of the duration of experimental tuberculosis in dogs, even if the bacilli are attenuated, provided a reasonable quantity be injected intravenously.

3. That under the same conditions dogs fed on a mixed diet with no raw meat may live a much longer time.

Regarding the use of meat in pulmonary tuberculosis, it may be said:

1. That meat is highly essential in the dietetic treatment.

2. That much meat with a judicious admixture of carbohydrates, fats, etc., is essential to the treatment.

3. That rare meat is better than meat well cooked.

4. That meat-juice is of great value in suralimentatioo, as myosin albumin is easily digested by most patients—even the dyspeptic, and it affords a“ maximum of nutrient for a minimum of effort.” (In a few patients meat-juice causes diarrhoea and meteorism.)

5. That meat-juice can be taken when patients can take no other form of meat, i. e., when there exists a marked repugnance to all solids.

6. That the juice from raw meat seems slightly, if at all, more beneficial than the juice from meat slightly browned.

7. That the disadvantages of preparing and preserving raw meat-juice more than offset its advantages. (Patients who object to juice from raw meat will willingly take that from meat browned.)

8. That meat-juice is of value, as it can be administered in the form of jellies, ices, etc.

 In his words “To one whose work has lain in India, and who for more than twenty years has been engaged in a study of the relation of faulty food to disease, the belief that such food is of paramount importance in the causation of disease amounts to certainty.”

McCarrison was a young medical doctor when he was stationed by the British administration in what is today northern Pakistan, at the beginning of the 20’s century. He had a neck for research and noticed soon after his arrival that the Hunza tribe are incredibly healthy in comparison to other populations in his region. He attributed the health to their diet and thus began a long career in nutritional research.

After WWI the British realized that they did not know what to feed their Indian soldiers, so they established a nutritional research center in Madras headed by McCarrison. The results of his 18 years of research are summarized in two Cantor lectures that McCarrison presented in England in 1936 after he was promoted to major-general and received a Sir title from King George V for his scientific achievements. via Miki Ben-Dor

"Add to this that the average Bengali or Madrassi uses relatively little milk or milk-products, that by religion he is often a non-meat-eater, that his consumption of protein, whether of vegetable or of animal origin, is, in general, very low, that fresh vegetable and fruit enter into his dietary but sparingly, and we have not far to seek for the poor physique that, in general, characterizes him. In short, it may be said that according as the quality of the diet diminishes with respect to proteins, fats, minerals and vitamins, so do physical efficiency and health; a rule which applies with equal force to the European as to the Indian."

The Big Fat Surprise by Nina Teicholz also discusses this, page 14 
"In the early 1900s, for instance, Sir Robert McCarrison, the Britist government's director of nutrition research in the Indian Medical Service and perhaps the most influential nutritionist of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote that he was "deeply impressed by the health and vigour of certain races there. The Sikhs and the Hunzas," notably, suffered from "none of the major diseases of Western nations such as cancer, peptic ulcer, appendicitis, and dental decay." These Indians in the north were generally long-lived and had "good physique[s]," and their vibrant health stood "in marked contrast" to the high morbidity of other groups in the southern part of India who ate mainly white rice with minimal dairy or meat. McCarrison believed he could rule out causes other than nutrition for these differences, because he found that he could reproduce a similar degree of ill-health when feeding experimental rats a diet low in milk and meat. The healthy people McCarrison observed ate some meat but mostly "an abundance" of milk and milk products such as butter and cheese, which meant that the fat content of their diet was mainly saturated."

These maps show trends in the export flow of glucose from United States ports to the world from 1890 to 1910. Exporters shipped glucose (or “grape-sugar”) by the tens of millions of pounds throughout the later 1800s. The trade grew from three export ports in 1890 (Boston, New York, and Detroit) to six in 1910; it expanded from five global regional destinations to seven. In terms of quantity, the exports grew fifteen-fold from about 46 million to 728 million pounds in 1910. Some of the more notable trends are the increases in shipment to various South American countries by the early 1900s and shipments to new Asian markets beginning in 1905. The United Kingdom was such a large trading partner with the U.S. for glucose that their records offered more precision and, thus, the maps show direct flows to the UK while showing aggregated export streams to regions (Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America) with less specificity in record keeping.

1. Because trade records provide a wide range of quantities per year, for the sake of reader legibility the maps represent proportions. For example, an arrow five-hatch-marks wide is five orders of magnitude greater than an arrow with one hatch mark, while the width of the five-hatch arrow is five times the width of the one-hatch arrow. Readers can thus view the maps to gain a sense of growth in export markets, relative quantities to various parts of the world, and sense of scale in the global marketplace for supposed adulterants.

2. The maps derive from government trade statistics that listed departure ports (export locations) and final destinations (import locations), but not together. For instance, while we know manufacturers shipped x pounds of glucose from New York in 1890, we do not know where, specifically, that specific quantity ended up. Therefore, the maps show the commodities shipped from individual U.S. ports to meet in the Atlantic before dispersing to final destinations.

3. In general, but not consistently, the government statistics used to construct theses maps documented foreign imports by country. Thus, in creating these maps the countries were aggregated into regions such as Northern Europe, Southern Europe, South America, Central America, Africa, and Asia. On the export side, various cities were aggregated into regions based on geographical proximity. The full data sets show specific nations.

Infant nutrition, Dr. Marsh argued, could perhaps show its effects well into adult life. A child was usually at the breast for as long as three years. Marsh had seen cases of more than six years — so had Leavitt; and so have I, since. At the age of a few days Eskimo babies started receiving, along with their mothers' milk, food masticated by the parent and passed directly from mouth to mouth. Thus she fed the child on what she herself liked best — always, of course, lean and fat meats, except in case of famine, when vegetables might be included and when the child and mother fared alike — neither of them well but the child a little better than the parents. 

Chapter 12 contains a great deal of information about Eskimo's Way of Life.

In reply to a further query, the rector wrote again from Sitka on September 16, 1958. He confirmed that he had lived at Anvik all but three of the years between his birth in 1895 and his first journey in 1908 when he went out to become a graduate of Middlebury College, Vermont. “I returned to Anvik as a missionary in 1922 and lived there until 1948, except for furloughs and the four years I was in Fairbanks.

“The native people of the Anvik area are Athapaskans. During my youth the main parts of their food were meat (caribou, rabbits, grouse, waterfowl, beaver, porcupine, black bear and lynx) and fish (salmon, whitefish, shellfish, loche and lampreys). The loche has a large liver which is said to be even richer in vitamins than ordinary cod liver. The Indians also ate raw foods such as berries, wild rhubarb, and a root which they called ‘mouseberries’ because it was gathered and hoarded by field mice.

“They obtained fat from caribou, black bear, and beaver tails. The lampreys were rich in oil, which was highly prized. They also bought seal oil from the Eskimos. Even in my boyhood they supplemented their native diet with white man's food, including lard ...

“The usual way of cooking meat was either boiling or frying. As a boy I was once invited by a party of Indians to eat bear meat with them. It was boiled and well done ... I do not know that any flesh foods were eaten raw, except for dried fish ...”

Neither does the published literature on the forest Indians report that any flesh foods were customarily eaten raw by the forest Indians of Alaska or northern Canada. Indeed, the name “Eskimos” is believed by many to have been derived from an Algonquin expression meaning “they eat their meat raw.”

When I went down north along the Mackenzie, in 1906 and 1908, I now and then heard talk of how horrified the Athapaskans had been when they first saw white men of the Northwest Company and Hudson's Bay Company eating the customary British underdone roast meats. In 1910, when we met the Athapaskans northeast of Great Bear Lake — Dogribs, Slaves, and Yellowknives — we found that they were still mildly horrified to see the Hudson's Bay Company Canadian Joseph Hodgson and the Old Country British John Hornby and Cosmo Melvil, who were then living among them, eating rare caribou steaks and roasts.

In a presentation of evidence regarding the views of frontier doctors on the incidence of cancer, it is of consequence to make clear that early testimony regarding the rarity or absence of malignancies is as clear and strong for the forest Indian north as for the grassland Eskimo country. Some of the early medical missionaries — notably Dr. Hutton in Labrador — have inclined to credit a diet of raw flesh with that former absence of cancer in which they believed. To emphasize this point let me quote again Dr. Hutton's book Health Conditions (1925), Page 35:

“Some diseases common in Europe have no t come under my notice ... Of these diseases the most striking is cancer ... In this connection it may be noted that cookery holds a very secondary place in the preparation of food — most of the food is eaten raw ...”

If only Eskimos are considered, in relation to the alleged former absence of cancer, and of these only the Labradorians, then the logical deduction for one who believes nutrition to be fundamental in relation to malignancy, is that actual rawness of food may be the crucially important cancer-inhibiting factor. But the force of this logic diminishes as we go westward from Labrador, among the Eskimos. Without cancer's appearing at all, cooking grows steadily more important as we move west. From Dr. Hutton's and other accounts, the Labradorians, east of Hudson Bay, were the greatest raw-flesh eaters of the whole Eskimo world. West of the Bay the boiling of flesh increases; and inland from the Bay, among the Caribou Eskimos, the roasting of caribou supplements the boiling. At Coronation Gulf, near where Dr. Jenness and I spent the first years during which the Copper Eskimos ever associated closely with Europeans, the years 1910 to 1915, there was considerable summer use of roasting, though the winter cooking, if any, was by boiling. Among the Mackenzie Eskimos, as described from the 1860's by Father Emile Petitot and from the early 1900's by myself, boiling and roasting were both considerable. These methods were even a bit more common in northern Alaska, as described by John Simpson in the 1850's and Murdoch in the 1880's. In southwestern Alaska as described by Dr. Romig in the manuscript he submitted to our Encyclopedia Antarctica, for the last decade of the nineteenth century and the first one of the twentieth, the cooking of flesh foods reached its Eskimo high point.

Yet the mission testimony, starting from Labrador, remains equally clear, from east to west: the medical missionaries all looked for cancer, and they never found it among the “primitive,” though they did find it among the “modernized.”

Thus clarification is important for whoever expects a nutritional key to this Eskimo cancer situation. Among the Athapaska and western Eskimos cooking was hardly ever carried to the point of “well done,” or “boiled to pieces.” Instead the native meats resembled our fashionable roasts, which have a well-done layer on the outside, medium done just under that, and the center pink or red. And so it was with the forest Indians — at least with those Athapaskans from Great Bear Lake to just west of the Mackenzie, with whom I hunted and lived — though they insisted on some cooking, they were in practice as careful as Eskimo cooks to see that the centers of most pieces were pink.

To sum up the raw and cooked-food elements of northern medical missionary theorizing about cancer:

During the time when large numbers of non-Europeanized northern natives were allegedly free of cancer, there was little cooking of flesh foods beyond the degree which we call medium. Among grassland and coastal Eskimos raw flesh eating ranged from a great deal in northern Labrador to a good deal in southwestern Alaska. Only among forest Indians were raw flesh foods avoided, and even among these there was little use of overcooked flesh.

Vegetable foods, where eaten at all, were always raw, among prairie and woodland natives alike. Among Eskimos, vegetable foods were important only in the farthest west — along the west coast of Alaska, among the Aleutians, and along the south coast of Alaska. In the most northerly region from Baffin Island, Canada, to Point Barrow, Alaska, vegetable eating was negligible, except in time of famine. Among woodland Indians, vegetables were negligible with the Athapaskans from the west shore of Hudson Bay to beyond the Mackenzie. In Alaska the eating of raw vegetables by forest Indians increased westward along the northern belt and then increased still more southward, into the country of the Tlingit.

During the time when the medical missionaries reported cancer difficult or impossible to find among large numbers of primitive natives, there was no usual cooking of any vegetables, whether among grassland or forest natives. The cooking of vegetables is part of that Europeanization which is considered by some missionaries to be responsible for the introduction of cancer, or for the change from its being hard to find to its being impossible not to notice.

The European-style application of intense heat to food through frying was new to all northern North American natives.