Carnivore Diet

"Sir, - On Friday, January 8th, I read the account of Dr. Salisbury's treatment in the Pall Mall Gazette, and determined to try the effect of it in my own case. Seven years ago, I weighed 11 st. 12 lbs. (height, 5 ft. 9 in.), and when I trained for my college-boat I always lost five pounds. A month ago, I weighed 14 st., so I was at least two stone above my weight. If any of my lean brethren wish to know how I felt, let them put on a top coat with two stone of shot stowed away in the pockets, and wear it for a single day. When my friends congratulated me on my aldermanic appearance, their compliments were as gall and wormwood to my soul. If they had felt as I did, that the hills of life were growing steeper, and that the pleasure of living was contracting in a daily narrowing circle, they would have condoled with instead of congratulated me.

For the last six weeks, I have lived on lean meat and hot water, or its equivalent, and yesterday I weighed 13 stone. I have taken a pint of hot water (130° Fahr.) at 7 A.M.; a pint of "schoolroom-tea" with a squeeze of lemon in it at 11.30 A.M.; the same at 3.30 or 4 P.M.; and a pint of hot water (130° Fahr.) at 10 P.M.; a pound of beefsteak at 8.30 A.M.; a pound and a quarter at 1.30 P.M.; and a pound at 6.30 A.M. This has been hot, but preferably cold, and has been varied with hare, chicken, etc.

The result is this. I am a stone less in weight; I am six inches less in girth; my gouty "heirlooms," in the shape of "hereditary deposits," have disappeared; my flatulent indigestion has vanished; my mental and bodily activity have doubled; I spoke on Thursday for an hour with less effort than I did in December for ten minutes; I sleep for seven hours without moving; I can wear gloves and shoes a size smaller; I have lost my tendency to catch cold; my muscles are daily hardening; my kidneys are doing their duty nobly; my figure is altering so rapidly that my tailor is in despair, but I am triumphant.

When I have completed the course, if you will spare me room, I will finish my tale, and relate the lessons I have learnt in dietetics and therapeutics during the experiment. - Yours faithfully, Ben Rhydding, Leeds. JOHN FLETCHER LITTLE."

"First, we may endeavor to ascertain through reliable travelers, missionaries, many of whom are educated in medicine, and resident physicians, what diseases of the skin prevail in extraordinary frequency, severity of type, or unusual form among tribes or communities, where a restricted diet of any kind has been long followed. Thus, among the natives of the northwest coast, fresh salmon forms the only food for several months, and dried or smoked salmon the exclusive or larger part for the rest of the year. The Eskimo lives almost wholly on blubber and raw meat, and other northern people mainly on pemmican. The inhabitants of some immense inland plains subsist almost entirely on fresh beef or mutton. Some tribes find their nourishment in the milk of animals. Millions of eastern people have no other diet than rice and a little fat."

XXXII. DRINKS, FOOD, BATHS, EXERCISE AND CLOTHING ADVISABLE IN CONSUMPTION, 

Drinks. — Drink from half a pint to a pint of hot water, from one to two hours before each meal and on retiring, for the purpose of washing out the slimy, yeasty and biUous stomach before eating and sleeping. Drink a cup of clear tea, coffee or beef tea (the latter free from fat), towards the close of each meal, sipping slowly. During the interval, between two hours after, and one hour before each meal, drink hot water or beef tea if thirsty. 

Food Meats. —Eat the muscle pulp of lean beef made into cakes and broiled. This pulp should be as free as possible from connective or glue tissue, fat and cartilage. The " American Chopper " answers very well for separating the connective tissue, this being driven down in front of the knife to the bottom of the board. In chopping, the beef should not be stirred up in the chopper, but the muscle pulp should be scraped off with a spoon at intervals during the chopping. At the end of the chopping, the fibrous tissue of the meat (the portion which makes up fibrous growths) all lies on the bottom board of the chopper. This may be utilized as soup meat for well people. Previous to chopping, the fat, bones, tendons and fascife should all be cut away, and the lean muscle cut up in pieces an inch or two square. Steaks cut through the centre of the round are the richest and best for this purpose. Beef should be procured from well fatted animals that are from four to six vears old. The pulp should not be pressed too firmly together before broiling, or it will taste livery. Simply press it sufficiently to hold it together. Make the cakes from half an inch to an inch thick. Broil slowly and moderately well over a fire free from blaze and smoke. When cooked, put it on a hot plate and sea- son to taste with butter, pepper and salt ; also use either Worcestershire or Halford sauce, mustard, horseradish or lemon juice on the meat if desired. Celery may be moderately used as a relish. No other meats should be allowed till the stomach becomes clean, the urine uniformly clear and free, standing at a density of from 1.015-1.020, and the cough and expectoration so improved that they cease to be troublesome. When this time arrives, bring in for variety as side dishes, broiled lamb, broiled mutton, broiled game, broiled chicken, oysters broiled or roasted in the shell, boiled codfish (fresh or salt), broiled and baked fish free from fat, and broiled dried beef, chipped thin and sprinkled over broiled beefsteak to give it a relish. A soft boiled egg may be taken at breakfast occasionally with the meat if it does not heighten the color of the urine. 

Bread. — Bread, toast, boiled rice or cracked wheat may be eaten in the proportion of one part (by bulk) to from four to six parts of the meat. The bread should be free from sugar and raised with yeast. It may be made from gluten flour, white flour or Graham flour ; corn meal preparations should be avoided. All things not previously enumerated and the following articles of food in especial should not be eaten, viz. : beans, soups, sweets, pies, cakes, pickles, sauce, preserves, fruits, vegetables, greens, pancakes, fritters, crullers, griddle - cakes and mush. Vinegar should be carefully avoided.

Meals. —Meals should be taken at regular intervals, and it is better not to sit down at a table where others are indulging in all kinds of food. Eat alone, or with others who are on the same diet. After the system gets in good running order, which is indicated by the urine flowing at the rate of from three pints to two quarts in twenty-four hours, and standing constantly at 1.020 density, the appetite becomes good, and usually more than three meals a day are desired. This desire for food shoidd be gratified by allowing the patient a nice piece of broiled steak, with a cup of clear tea, coffee, hot water or beef tea, midway between the breakfast and dinner, and dinner and supper. If the directions here given are faithfully followed out and persisted in, consumption in all its stages becomes a curable disease.

All anodynes that disorder the stomach are to be rigidly avoided. No medicines of any kind should be taken, except such as are prescribed by a physician. The cure is accomplished by getting the system in splendid basic condition, Avhen the urine becomes clear and flows at the rate of three pints or more per diem, standing at 1.020 density, the appetite becomes enormous, and from two to four pounds of lean beef are eaten daily. The chills, fevers and sweats, growing- lighter, soon cease entirely. Blood-making processes go on rapidly ; the blood-vessels fill out; repair of tissues begins and steadily continues; the eyes brighten; the cough lessens by degrees; interstitial death, decay and disintegration of lung tissue cease ; the entire organism is pervaded by the glow of health, and step by step the patient (if he perseveres) advances safely and surely towards the goal of cure, to reach which, only patience and the strict observance of the rules here laid down are required. To accomplish this end, both diet and treatment are to be minutely and conscientiously carried out in all their details, with the soul and body of the patient firmly enlisted in the good cause. All this of course takes time, for it is Nature, after all, that does the work. Consequently all the changes must be physiological, and as such can only ensue as rapidly as the human machine — when well run — can organize and repair. 

The physician must know precisely what to do, and do it. He must watch his patient daily, scrutinize excretions, secretions and blood alike carefully, and see that every part of the programme is faithfully and honestly carried out. Any deviation from the right course can be at once detected by increased fermentation ; the consequent biliousness ; heightened color of urine ; aggravation of cough, and all the other pathological symptoms. Patients cannot deceive the physician sldlled in this field of positive work. If the directions are all rigidly followed, the machine will soon get to running nicely and continue to do so unless thrown off the track by deviations. Such departures should be at once detected and corrected, or the patient begins to lose ground. 

No one need hope to handle consumption successfully by change of climate or by medicinal remedies. It is a disease arising from long-continued, unhealthy alimentation, and can only be cured by the removal of its cause. This cause is fermenting food, and the products of this fermentation (carbonic acid gas, alcohoKc and vinegar yeast and vinegar) are the more miportant factors in developing the pecuHar pathological symptoms, conditions and states in this complaint, Avhich is generally and erroneously believed to be incurable. 

Consumption of the bowels can be produced at any time in the human subject, in from fifteen to thirty days, and consumption of the lungs within three months, by special, exclusive and continued feeding upon the diet that produces them.

XLV. SOME OF THE DISEASES PRODUCED BY TOO EXCLUSIVE FEEDING UPON AMYLACEOUS AND SACCHARINE FOODS AND FRUITS, WITH THE DIET TO BE USED FOR THEIR CURE. 

Vegetable Dyspepsia, or the first Stage of Consumption. 

This arises from the too exchisive and long-continued use of vegetable or amylaceous and saccharine foods and fruits, or either of them. The stomach is the first organ to suffer. In man this organ is mainly designed for digesting lean meats. It may be called a purely carnivorous organ. It requires lean meats to excite a normal quantity of healthy secretions in its glandular follicles for digestion, and the healthy excitation of these secretions stimulates the muscular fibres to maintain those normal downward peristaltic movements which are necessary for physiological digestion and transmission. The stomach does not digest amylaceous and saccharine foods, fruits and fats. These are digested by the secretions that are poured out into the duodenum by the liver, pancreas, and glands of Lieberkuhn and Bruner. Hence the too exclusive and long-continued use of vegetable, and especially amylaceous and saccharine food, fills the stomach with materials which do not stimulate it even enough to pass them along to where they are digested, in consequence of which they lie so long in this organ that fermentative processes supervene little by little, and we have the stomach filled with carbonic acid gas, sugar, alcohol, acid and alcoholic and acid yeast plants. These products of fermentation soon begin to paralyze the follicles and muscular walls of the stomach, so that it becomes flabby and baggy, and will hold an unusual amount of trashy foods and fluids. The organ has been turned into a veritable sour " yeast pot," and we have the first stage of the disease known as vegetable dyspepsia of the stomach, or the first stage of consumption. 

In this stage of the disease, the stomach is almost constantly distended mth gas, which is only partiafly relieved by the frequent sour eructations. 

Yeast plants are rapidly developed in the organ, and every particle of vegetable food which is taken in immediately begins to ferment, —the stomach being converted into an apparatus for manufacturing beer, alcohol, vinegar and carbonic acid gas. This carbonic acid gas soon begins to paralyze the gastric nerves, and the follicles of the mucous membranes of the organ commence to pour out a stringy viscid mucus, in considerable quantities. This, together with the partial paralysis, produces a relaxed, dilated state of the blood-vessels, so that a congestion (with a low state of vitality) results. The epithelial surfaces and connective tissue layer beneath them, then begin to mcrease in thickness, and if this process and state continue long enough, we have a gastric fibroid which may terminate ni scirrhus of the organ. If, however, the person is fairly active, so as to shake the food out of the stomach into the duodenum and small bowels, or if the pyloric valve becomes sufadently paralyzed to remain open, so that the food and hquids flow into the small bowels soon after being swallowed, then danger of gastric thickening is lessened : the patient feels much more comfortable and thinks he is greatly improved. The disease, however, is no better. It has simply changed its base of action and is transferred from the stomach to the small bowels. This is the second and most dangerous stage, bemg vegetable dyspepsia of the small bowels. 

The exercise, habits of living, eating and dnnkmg may be such as to detain the disease in this stage a long whfle. There is then great danger of the passage of Mycoderma spores (and the products developed by their multipHcation) into the blood stream. Should this occur, we are in the second or transmissive stage of Consumption. In this stage of the disease, the bowels are more or less constipated. Generally speaking, the more constipated they are, the greater the danger. 

An inactive, sedentary life, and a great disturbance of the bowels with carbonic acid gas and other yeasty products, may early paralyze the ileo-csecal valve so far as to let the fermenting products pass readily and freely into the large bowels. The danger of having the yeast spores transmitted is then lessened by the free passage of the spores into the colon, where they go on exciting fermentation in the various fermenting foods used. This soon results in many copious, yeasty evacuations during the night or early every morning and forenoon. Sometimes there are twenty or more passages daily. The passages are light and bulky, and have but little weight. They are sour yeast. This is the third stage of Vegetable Dyspepsia or Chronic Diarrhoea, or more strictly speaking, Consumption of the Bowels. The disease, if left to itself, and if the foods producing it are kept up, may run on for months or even years. I have treated and cured cases that had been running on for from fifteen to twenty years. 

In all cases of this stage of the disease, the large bowel becomes greatly thickened, and often in severe cases is almost entirely closed up. This thickening goes on quite rapidly in the connective tissue layer, and in the epithelial lining of the bowel. The folds of the bowel soon become greatly enlarged and are elongated from a few inches to a foot or more extra in length. If the patient lives long enough, and is on a curative diet, these folds and the thickening gradually disappear by absorption, though sometimes the elongated folds slough away partially decayed. Occasionally, in severe cases, from three to four years are required to remove all traces of the disease and all thickenings of the bowel. As long as the thickenings are present, there will be more or less of a thick, jelly-like, ropy, viscid mucus, coming- away every day . or every few days or weeks, according to the condition and severity of the disease. In consumption of the bowels, the lungs almost invariably become involved before death. Checking the diarrhea with astringents —while the fermenting foods are kept up —only aggravates the disease in the end and endangers lung invasion.

Summer Complaint in Children. 

The summer diarrhoeas in children are of the same character as the so-called Chronic Diarrhoea, previously described. It is essentially a disease of unhealthy or defective feeding, and readily yields to the simplest treatment, by removing the cause and substituting food that will not ferment with yeast. As soon as green vegetables and fruit begin to appear in early summer, children live almost entirely upon this kind of food at the expense of more substantial aliments. The same symptoms and pathological lesions, in the same order, result as has been previously described under the head of chronic diarrhoea, and the disease yields readily to the same treatment. 

Influence of Army Diet in Producing Diseases of Soldiers. 

In the army there is in all the men a peculiar chronic condition of the "alimentary membranes, excited by frequent fermentation of amylaceous matters too long retained, and which condition does not run on to chronic diarrhoea unless some enervating cause — such as over-fatigue, dysentery, typhoid, bilious, remittent or intermittent fever, or other cause —debihtates the system, and further impairs the condition of the alimentary membranes. This is evidenced by the almost universal condition of the alimentary canal in apparently healthy soldiers who are shot dead in battle. (See Eng. Surg, and Med. Hist, of Crimean War.) The follicles of the large intestines are more or less enlarged and frequently disintegrated, leaving ulcers. The amylaceous, army biscuit diet of the common soldiers, besides its fermentative and carbonic acid poisoning effects, does not furnish to the system the proper proportion of ingredients for healthy alimentation and nutrition. Hence a scorbutic condition results, which renders the disease an obstinate one to treat, unless this state is recognized and particularly attended to. This explains the reasons why the vegetable acids, combined with potassa and iron, are so useful in treating this disease. Rochelle salts are admirably adapted for exciting intestinal epithelial activity, and secretion and absorption in the alimentary canal. 

Any one kind of food too long continued has a tendency to produce systemic derangements of a scorbutic type. Amylaceous matters, too exclusively used, tend to excite abnormal actions in the parent epithelial cells of the mucous surfaces and of the glands ; while any one kind of animal food, too long and too exclusively eaten, produces derangements which show themselves more strongly in skin and mouth. A too free use of oils and fatty food, and of alcoholic beverages, produces the red, blotched face, and swollen carbunculated nose, oily surface, and erythematous swelling and redness of the skin generally. 

Salt meats produce a dry, scaly eruption upon the surface, with spongy, swollen and discolored gums ; loosened teeth, and a watery, flabby, often bloody tongue ; pains in the limbs and back resembling those of chronic rheumatism ; leaden-hued features ; offensive breath ; patches of extravasated blood in various parts of the body ; hard, contracted condition of the muscles ; stiffness of the joints ; diarrhoea and hemorrhage from mucous surfaces generally ; mental depression and indisposition to any kind of exertion. From this scorbutic condition —produced in all the men by the want of the necessary variety in their food —arises a long train of the most fatal and most obstniate diseases of the army. Among these may be mentioned chronic diarrhoea ; the so-called muscular rheumatism ; dysentery ; hospital gangrene in wounds ; tuberculosis ; fibrinous depositions iii the heart ; the clogging up of pulmonary vessels with fibrinous clots ; paralytic conditions and tendencies, and many of the diseases of the larynx, ear and eye. This condition of the system also renders it extremely subject (when exposed to the exciting cause) to typhoid, intermittent and remittent fevers. The vital powers are so depressed that the organism on light exposure to cold, is liable to be frostbitten and is strongly inclined to attacks of pneumonia and bronchitis, with diseases of the eye and ear. In short, the long list of army diseases may be traced, in great measure, to an extreme susceptibility to them, which susceptibility is produced by a want of the proper admixture of nutrient ingredients in the food of the soldier in campaigns. All authorities agree that scorbutic states arise from this cause, and no one having any experience in army diseases can fail to detect symptoms of scorbutus in almost every one of them. If they are not plainly visible in the apparently well man, they make themselves manifest in him as soon as he is placed under treatment for any disease, in the surprising benefit his system derives from the vegetable acid salts of potassa and iron, and from the free use of those articles of food of which his system has been deprived. Without this treatment almost all army diseases become obstinate to deal with, much more so than similar ones in private practice. In old cases of chronic diarrhoea, it frequently happens that the diarrhoea somewhat abates, the appetite becomes remarkably good and the patient fattens rapidly. His abdomen becomes hard and distended, it being either dropsical, tympanitic, or distended by enlarged viscera ; the whole surface becomes bloated and presents the appearance of having been affected by an excessive use of alcoholic beverages. The eyes become prominent, red and watery ; the thyroid glands become enlarged ; the heart gives marked evidence of fibrinous depositions internally (1 It has been noticed that in certain cases of heart disease tlie thyroid glands become enlarged, and the eyes prominent, watery and red. Whether there is any analogy between the condition of tlie symptom in this form of heart disease, and that productive of heart disease, chronic diarrhea, paralytic tendencies, etc. in the army, I am unable to say. I merely mention the circumstance here to draw attention in this direction.)

The foregoing descriptions of the results of continuous feeding upon one food at a time, with a view of determining what especial diseased states might be brought about by each food, in the human body, are sufficient to give a clear idea of the significance, scope and character of this painstaking work. To go through all my food experiments in detail would make this treatise far too voluminous to be read and studied, except as a work of reference. This would defeat my desire of getting it into the hands of as many students as possible in the opening of their career, directing their attention, as well as that of all earnest thinkers, whether in the profession or out of it, to the urgent necessity of dietetic reform, and to the real nature of most of our diseases, based as they are upon departure from dietetic laws indicated by the organic structure of man. 

I will state in this connection, that bread, rice, wheaten grits, hominy, tapioca, sago, potatoes, green peas, string beans, green corn, beets, turnips, squash, asparagus and the various meats, have each been fed upon exclusively and continuously by from four to six men at a time, for from seven to forty-five days. The results in all cases were recorded and tabulated as in the preceding experiments. Bread, rice, wheaten grits, hominy, sago, tapioca and potatoes have each been fed upon continuously for from forty to fortyfive days, before serious diseases and symptoms were produced. These foods are very similar in their action upon the human body, and cause like derangements and pathological states. They sustain the organism far better, and can be borne longer than any other vegetable aliment, before grave disturbances arise from their exclusive use. The diseased conditions and states finally induced by them are as follows : Flatulence, weak heart, oppressed breathing, singing in ears, dizzy head, headaches, lumbago, constipation lirst and afterwards chronic diarrhcBa ; tliickened large bowel, cold feet, numbness in extremities, and general lassitude and weakness. Were the exclusive feeding too long kept up, either consumption of the bowels, or lungs, or both may result ; or either locomotor ataxy, Bright's disease, diabetes, paresis, or fatty diseases of liver, spleen, or heart might be the final outcome. Also goitre, ovarian tumors, uterine fibroids, fibrous growths and fibrous consumption may be caused by such feeding in course of time. Green peas and string beans rank next to the seven foods above named in point of alimentary qualities. Green corn, turnips, beets and squash, cannot be subsisted upon for more than a very short period (when taken exclusively) before most unpleasant and more or less grave derangements ensue. Of all vegetables, asparagus is one of the most injurious when lived upon alone. Seven days is about as long as it would be safe to subsist upon this plant. The great efforts made by the kidneys to eliminate the asparagine, which overstimulates them, rapidly exhausts the vitality of the victim, and in a few days he is scarcely able to navigate. 

The experiments upon meat feeding showed that meats, and especially beef and mutton, can be subsisted upon without resulting in diseased states, for a much longer time than can the best vegetable products under the same conditions. The reason of this is that the first organ of the digestive apparatus — the stomach — is a meat-digesting organ. I have had patients afflicted with grave diseases, thrive and become perfectly well upon beef. Many of them have continued this as an exclusive diet from three to four years, before bringing breads and vegetables into their diet list. Good, fresh beef and mutton stand at the head of all aliments as foods promotive of human health.

Eggs, fish, pork, veal, chickens, turkeys and game come in merely as side dishes : they may be subsisted upon singly tor a limited time without bad results. All of these, however, if continued alone for too long a time, or if eaten in undue proportion constantly, may eventually produce meat dyspepsia, and various scorbutic conditions which are disagreeable and sometimes difficult to handle, and may result fatally. In meat dyspepsia there is more or less distress, oppression and load about the stomach, with usually a ball in the throat, and the " gulping of wind " that tastes like "rotten eggs " (Sulphuretted Hydrogen). With these symptoms there is frequently much sickness and weakness, with loss of appetite and great heat and bewilderment in the head. In treating this form of dyspepsia, all food by the mouth has to be discontinued, and nourishment given by the rectum till the stomach can be thoroughly washed out and disinfected. Then feeding by the mouth is carefully begun by giving a very small quantity of pulp of beef and bread foods at first, gradually increasing them as digestion improves.