Book
Strong Medicine
Publish date:
January 1, 1962
Dr Blake J Donaldson, a NYC based doctor describes how he applies a meat-based diet to fix obesity, allergies, digestion and other common ailments. It's a fascinating look at how a doctor thinks around the mid 20th century.
"I oberved two families, in practice, that bothered me. Several members of each family were fat and had come to me for treatment. Fast weight reduction was in order, so they were given only two things with a meal, fat meat and black coffee. Both families seemed to have an inherent inability to convert protein into some carbohydrate, if that was the difficulty. They developed acidosis to the extent of a very offensive dead-violet odor on the breath and some sense of weakness. Switching over to slow weight reduction with three things with a meal had instantly resolved the difficulty. But why had it existed?
Oh, there were dozens of questions I wanted to discuss with Stefansson, so Fred Taylor brought him out to my home on Long Island. Some steamed clams and a good steak loosened him up, and we sat around a beach fire and talked for hours. He proved to be a mine of information. As I remember his conversation, it went something like this:
"Well, in the first place, it is just as well to have intelligent companions if you expect to live for long periods on sea ice. It isn't enough to pick up, at Point Barrow, a dock hand who is somewhat inured to cold weather. Men you take with you have no worry about scurvy. They know that fresh meat and fish entirely prevent that. And they know that there is always fresh water on the sea ice. They may be doubtful at first over their ability to get along without a few luxuries. At the end of several weeks the extras are discarded as not worth the effort of transporting. "Most people enjoy fresh fat meat from the start, but some react this way: they are expected to live on thin slivers of fat seal meat and the broth it is cooked in, and this is eagerly taken at first and then with increasing reluctance on the second and third day. By the fourth day the pieces of meat may be found on the snow or given to the dogs. For two or three days these men seem to eat almost nothing. Then appetite for the meat comes with a rush and no more trouble is experienced. After many months away from a base where there are grocery stores, elaborate menus may be planned against the day of return. During their time away they have been free from head colds, but as soon as they return to people who have been living on groceries, head colds are promptly contracted. A few days of living on the food they thought would be so wonderful usually finds them back in the Eskimo part of town trying to beg, borrow, or steal some delicious fat from the back of the eyes of a caribou, or else some good seal meat. Accustomed to fat in their food, their bodies seem to crave it, and groceries do not satisfy.
"It is highly desirable to be a good rifle shot so that a seal may be shot through the head. Matches must be most carefully conserved. The technique of meal preparation is exact. Hollow bones and strips of blubber cut like bacon are saved from the day before. A pyramid is formed of the hollow bones. At the apex the strips of blubber are laid. A little piece of shirttail or similar cloth is reserved to help start each meal. The cloth is impregnated with fat and laid under the pyramid of bones. The cloth should light with one match. Exposed to this heat, the blubber melts and runs down over the bones, which act as a wick. This fat burns with an intensely hot but smoky flame. Over this a preferably unwelded solid metal container is placed, filled with water and thin slivers of fat meat. By the time the water boils, the meat is cooked and ready to eat. The broth it is cooked in is drunk and is much more satisfying than tea or coffee." So that was the way of it, was it? Just be sure you are right and then be tough about it. What was I worrying about? If Stefansson could get his people to live that way, I certainly should have enough executive ability to get my patients to stick to a beautifully broiled sirloin and a demitasse of black coffee."
Authors
Image | Author | Author Website | Twitter | Author Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Blake F. Donaldson | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blake_F._Donaldson | Deceased |
Topics
Meatritionist | A doctor or medical professional who studies or promotes exclusive meat diets | |
Autoimmune Disease | Autoimmune diseases are a group of disorders characterized by an abnormal immune response, in which the immune system mistakenly attacks healthy cells and tissues in the body. Normally, the immune system's role is to protect the body from foreign substances such as bacteria and viruses. However, in autoimmune diseases, the immune system fails to distinguish between self and non-self, leading to inflammation, tissue damage, and a variety of symptoms. There are over 80 different types of autoimmune diseases, each affecting specific organs or systems in the body Likely helped by elimination carnivore diets, and caused by excess plant consumption. | |
Carnivore Diet | The carnivore diet involves eating only animal products such as meat, fish, dairy, eggs, marrow, meat broths, organs. There are little to no plants in the diet. | |
Ketogenic Diet | The ketogenic diet involves eating high fat, low carbs, and moderate protein. To be in ketosis, one must eat less than 20 grams of carbohydrates per day. |
History Entries - 10 per page
Wednesday, January 1, 1919
Blake F. Donaldson
Good Calories Bad Calories
Donaldson, as he wrote in his 1962 memoirs, began treating obese patients in 1919, when he worked with the cardiologist Robert Halsey, one of four founding officers of the American Heart Association. After a year of futility in trying to reduce these patients ("fat cardiacs," he called them) with semi-starvation diets, he spoke with the resident anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History, who told him that prehistoric humans lived almost exclusively on "the fattest meat they could kill," perhaps supplemented by roots and berries
In 1920, while Vilhjalmur Stefansson was just beginning his campaign to convince nutritionists that an all-meat diet was a uniquely healthy diet, it was already making the transition into a reducing diet courtesy of a New York internist named Blake Donaldson. Donaldson, as he wrote in his 1962 memoirs, began treating obese patients in 1919, when he worked with the cardiologist Robert Halsey, one of four founding officers of the American Heart Association. After a year of futility in trying to reduce these patients ("fat cardiacs," he called them) with semi-starvation diets, he spoke with the resident anthropologists at the American Museum of Natural History, who told him that prehistoric humans lived almost exclusively on "the fattest meat they could kill," perhaps supplemented by roots and berries. This led Donaldson to conclude that fatty meat should be "the essential part of any reducing routine," and this is what he began prescribing to his obese patients. Through the 1920s, Donaldson honed his diet by trial and error, eventually settling on a half-pound of fatty meat-three parts fat to one part lean by calories, the same proportion used in Stefansson's Bellevue experiment-for each of three meals a day. After cooking, this works out to six ounces of lean meat with two ounces of attached fat at each meal. Donaldson's diet prohibited all sugar, flour, alcohol, and starches, with the exception of a "hotel portion" once a day of raw fruit or a potato, which substituted for the roots and berries that primitive man might have been eating as well. Donaldson also prescribed a half-hour walk before breakfast.
Over the course of four decades, as Donaldson told it, he treated seventeen thousand patients for their weight problems. Most of them lost two to three pounds a week on his diet, without experiencing hunger. Donaldson claimed that the only patients who didn't lose weight on the diet were those who cheated, a common assumption that physicians also make about calorie-restricted diets. These patients had a "bread addiction," Donaldson wrote, in that they could no more tolerate living without their starches, flour, and sugar than could a smoker without cigarettes. As a result, he spent considerable effort trying to persuade his patients to break their habit. "Remember that grapefruit and all other raw fruit is starch. You can't have any," he would tell them. "No breadstuff means any kind of bread…. They must go out of your life, now and forever." (His advice to diabetics was equally frank: "You are out of your mind when you take insulin in order to eat Danish pastry.")
Had Donaldson published details of his diet and its efficacy through the 1920s and 1930s, as Frank Evans did about his very low-calorie diet, he might have convinced mainstream investigators at least to consider the possibility that it is the quality of the nutrients in a diet and not the quantity of calories that causes obesity. As it is, he discussed his approach only at in-house conferences at New York Hospital. Among those who heard of his treatment, however, was Alfred Pennington, a local internist who tried the diet himself in 1944-and then began prescribing it to his patients.
Monday, January 1, 1962
Blake F. Donaldson
Advice to Fat Men Is to 'Go Primitive'
Dr Blake Donaldson, author of Strong Medicine, is quoted in a newspaper about his advice to lose weight. "For breakfast, lunch and dinner eat the same thing: one-half pound of fresh fat meat."
Advice to Fat Men Is To 'Go Primitive'
Dr. Blake Donaldson insists that his weight reducing ideas are simultaneously 20 years ahead of the times and 8,000 years old.
Donaldson, a trim 70 years old, is impressed by evidence that primitive man, for all his troubles, did not suffer from overweight. So Donaldson advises his patients to go primitive. Results, they shed a total of 4,000 pounds of fat per year.
"The human animal " said Donaldson, while eating a big steak at a New York restaurant, "for millions of years lived just one way. He dwelled in forests and on the banks of streams. "He hunted and ate fat meat. His life was one of constant exercise. He had to be able to jump seven feet into a tree to escape a saber-toothed tiger.
"We are fairly sure--from examining old German burial grounds and skulls found in the Arctic--that he had excellent vision, good teeth, no arthritis or skin problems. Chances are he usually avoided the crippling and killing diseases aggravated by overweight."
"People just refuse to believe that a ginger snap or a soda cracker is starch.
For the past four decades Donaldson has advised his overweight patients personally or through his book "Strong Medicine," to hold to the following regimen:
Do not retire before 10 p.m.; up by 6 a.m. Never sleep more than eight hours per day.
Before breakfast take a half-hour brisk walk. ("This is the most important medical advance in 8,000 years.")
For breakfast, lunch and dinner eat the same thing: one-half pound of fresh fat meat. A demitasse of black coffee three times daily is permissible.
Drink six glasses of water per day, none after 5 p.m.
Abstain from every other food, including seasoning. "It's so simple it's difficult," complained the good doctor.
"People just refuse to believe that a ginger snap or a soda cracker is starch. This is not an extreme diet. But if anybody is content to peel off three pounds of fat a week--and keep it off--my plan does it.
"I don't object to smoking. People must have a few vices or they aren't worth talking to. They become plants.
"But I do object to flour addiction. This is a worse vice than heroin in terms of the physical damage it can do."
As Donaldson polished off his steak he confessed that being fat is not enough inducement to reduce. "It has to hurt you--either your pride or your body," he said.
"And it's impossible to slim down some people. They simply do not obey orders. I don't think the devil himself could take fat off an opera singer."