Facultative Carnivore

Donald McTavish -taking no chances! - brought her with him every time he came ashore; and her flamboyant arrival at the fort was always an event. The voyageurs stopped work, the Indians swarmed in, and Henry himself made a holiday of her visits. "In the jolly-boat came Mr. McT. the doctor, and Jane," he wrote on one occasion. "I opened a cask of bottled porter, and also a cask of rather mouldy biscuits. Many Chinooks and Clatsops came in, some to trade, and others to visit." And, of course, to gawk at Jane. 

The Chinook and Clatsop bucks became madly infatuated with her. King Comcomly's son, according to Ross, offered a hundred rare sea otters for her hand. Not only that. "He would never ask her to carry wood, draw water, dig for roots, or hunt for provisions . . .he would make her mistress over his other wives, and permit her to sit her ease from morning to night . . . she would always have an abundance of fat salmon, anchovies, and elk, and be allowed to smoke as many pipes of tobacco during the day as she thought proper." But, although Jane's morals may have been strictly of the Chinook variety, her tastes were her own. She looked down her nose at these and many other tempting offers. Then Com- comly's son changed his tack: he formed a plan with his friends to carry her off while she was taking her customary evening stroll along the beach. He also declared that he would never again come near the fort while she was there - which, we may assume, was quite all right with Jane. Her effect on the voyageurs and young gentlemen of Fort George was, of course, no less devastating; and Henry be- gan to discuss measures for her "protection" with McTavish.

https://dlcs.io/pdf/wellcome/pdf-item/b2106331x/0

https://www.longdom.org/open-access/court-of-last-appeal--the-early-history-of-the-highfat-diet-for-diabetes-2155-6156-1000696.pdf

In Two Cases of the Diabetes Mellitus, Rollo and Cruickshank described the treatment of two patients suوٴering from glycosuria, polyuria and polydipsia with a combination of organic and inorganic salts and a diet restricted in vegetable food, and made largely of meat and fat [1]. Нis was based on the observation that, while both animal foods and vegetable foods are nutritious and will support life, glucose, found in the urine of patients with diabetes and therefore obviously connected to the disease, can be found in large quantities in vegetable foods but only in trace amounts in meat and fat. Нe diet was eوٴective for one of Rollo’s patients, but not the other. Redfearn subsequently published a report of the successful application of Rollo’s method in his own patient [2] and Rollo’s supporter John Latham published many case studies of the diet in his 1811 book Facts and Opinions Concerning Diabetes [3]. Rollo’s method seems to have become widely disseminated; circa 1830 the American adventurer Josiah Harlan, who had taught himself medicine from a popular encyclopaedia, prescribed an animal matter diet to a client in the Punjab, with what results we do not know, according to Ben MacIntyre’s life of Harlan, Нe Man Who Would be King [4]. Нe inconsistent response to the diet seen in Rollo’s first two cases, and in the cases of Latham, can be explained by its high protein content. In the later researches of Woodyatt and others, protein has a glucose value of 58%, due to a high proportion of gluconeogenic amino acids. Hadden gives an analysis of Rollo’s diet for patient 1, Captain Meredith, as supplying 160 g carbohydrate, 136 g protein and 135 g fat [1]. Нus only 50% of the energy from this diet is in the form of the nutrient, fat, which has the lowest requirement for insulin; nor is the diet as low in carbohydrate (from bread and milk, and later, when Captain Meredith returned to Ireland, potatoes) or as permissive with regard to non-starchy vegetables as modern thought would recommend. Captain Meredith lived another 15 years aіer adopting Rollo’s diet, dying in Newfoundland at the age of 49 - according to Hadden, death was probably due to macrovascular complications

Page 90:

"I have now brought the history of Diabetes down to that period when Dr. Rollo first published his celebrated Treatise, a work which ought to be in the hands of every practictioner who is anxious for the fullest information upon the subject.: a work which, like the discovery of sugar in Diabetic Urine, equally marks an important area in this disease: a work which teaches us to cure what Willis taught us only to know, and which will convey his name, with that of his learned predecessor, down with honor to the latest posterity. And let not any thing which may occur in the following pages be construed to detract from that honorable distinction to which he is so justifly entitled; for his observations on the absolute necessity of a pure animal diet will stand the test of experience, when speculations, with respect to medicine in this disease, by every physician who has hitherto existed, (and even those by Dr. Rollo himself) may probably be altogether neglected and forgotten: I must refer the reader to the work itself, which in its more enlarged form is, if possible, rendered much more important by the many communications therein made from a great number of very ingenious correspondents."

Page 100

"so that not only may it exist where little of vegetable nutriment has been taken, and consequently where but little sugar can be produced, but where animal matter has alone been eaten:"

Full Text:

https://archive.org/stream/factsopinionscon00lath/factsopinionscon00lath_djvu.txt

Read or search the full thing - contribute extra interesting comments.

Carnivorous - Flesh-eating; that of which flesh is the proper food.--In birds there is no mastication or comminution of the meat in the mouth; but in such as are not carnivorous, it is immediately swallowed into the crop or crow. Ray on the Creation.

--Man is by his frame, as well as his appetite, a carnivorous animal. Arbutimos on Aliments.

Carnivorous is an epithet applied to those animals, which naturally seek and feed on flesh. It has been a dispute among naturalists, whether man is naturally carnivorous. Those who take the negative side, intuit chiefly on the structure of our deeth, which are mostly incisors or molars; not such as carnivorous animlas are furnished with, and w ihch are proper to tear flesh in pieces; to which it may be added, that, even when we do feed on flesh, it is not withtout a preparatory alteration by boiling, roasting, etc, and even then that it is the hadrdes of digestion of all foods. To these arguments Dr Wallis subjoins another, which is that all quadrupeds which feed on herbs or plants have a long colon, with a caecum at the upper end of it, or somewhot equivalent, which conveys the food by a long and large progress, from the stomach downwards, in order to its propre passage through the intestines. Now, in man, the caecum is very visible; a strong presumption that he was not intended for a carnivorous animal. It is true, the caecum is small in adults, and seems of little use; but in a featus it is much larger in proportion; And it is probable, our customary change change of diet, as we grow up, may occasion this thinking. 

But to these arguments, Dr Tyfon repiles, that if man had been designed not to be carnivorous, there would doubtless have been found, somewhere on the globe, people who do not feed on flesh; which is not the case. Neither are carnivorous animals always without a colon and caecum; nor are all animals carnivorous which have those parts; the oppossum, for instance, hath both a colon and caecum, and yet feeds on poultry and other flesh; whereas the hedge-hog, which has neither colon nor caecum, and so ought to be carnivorous, feeds only on vegetables. Add to this, that hogs, which have both, will feed upon flesh when they can get it; and rats and mice, which have large ceacums, will feed on bacon as well as bread and cheese. Lastly, the human race are furnished with teeth necessary for the preparation of all kinds of foods; whence it would seem, that we are intended to live on all. And as the alimentary duct in the human body is fitted for digesting all kinds of food, ought we not rather to conclude, that nature did not intend to deny us any? 

It is no lesson disputed whether mankind were carnivorous before the flood. St Jerom, Chryfoltom, Theodoret, and other ancients, maintain, that all animal food was then forbidden; which opinion is also strenuously supported among the moderns by Curcellzeus, and refuted by Heidegger, Dauzius, Bockhart, etc. See Antediluvians.

LXVII

Man is a carnivorous production, 

And must have meals, at least one meal a day; 

He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction, 

But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey; 

Although his anatomical construction 

Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way, 

Your laboring people think beyond all question, 

Beef, veal, and mutton better for digestion.

Full Poem: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/21700/21700-h/21700-h.htm

Fun instances of searching 'beef':

So Juan stood, bewilder’d on the deck:
     The wind sung, cordage strain’d, and sailors swore,
And the ship creak’d, the town became a speck,
      From which away so fair and fast they bore.
The best of remedies is a beef-steak
      Against sea-sickness: try it, sir, before
You sneer, and I assure you this is true,
For I have found it answer—so may you.

And Juan, too, was help’d out from his dream,
    Or sleep, or whatso’er it was, by feeling
A most prodigious appetite: the steam
    Of Zoe’s cookery no doubt was stealing
Upon his senses, and the kindling beam
    Of the new fire, which Zoe kept up, kneeling
To stir her viands, made him quite awake
And long for food, but chiefly a beef-steak.

But beef is rare within these oxless isles;
    Goat’s flesh there is, no doubt, and kid, and mutton;
And, when a holiday upon them smiles,
    A joint upon their barbarous spits they put on:
But this occurs but seldom, between whiles,
    For some of these are rocks with scarce a hut on;
Others are fair and fertile, among which
This, though not large, was one of the most rich.

I say that beef is rare, and can’t help thinking
    That the old fable of the Minotaur—
From which our modern morals rightly shrinking
    Condemn the royal lady’s taste who wore
A cow’s shape for a mask—was only (sinking
    The allegory) a mere type, no more,
That Pasiphae promoted breeding cattle,
To make the Cretans bloodier in battle.

For we all know that English people are
    Fed upon beef—I won’t say much of beer,
Because ’tis liquor only, and being far
    From this my subject, has no business here;
We know, too, they very fond of war,
    A pleasure—like all pleasures—rather dear;
So were the Cretans—from which I infer
That beef and battles both were owing to her.

But to resume. The languid Juan raised
    His head upon his elbow, and he saw
A sight on which he had not lately gazed,
    As all his latter meals had been quite raw,
Three or four things, for which the Lord he praised,
    And, feeling still the famish’d vulture gnaw,
He fell upon whate’er was offer’d, like
A priest, a shark, an alderman, or pike.

"I here would observe that I permit the patient to take the meat in any way which he prefers. Of course roast and boiled mutton and beef are principally employed. Patients I believe could scarcely be prevailed upon to live upon meats rancid and putrid. Indeed I never made the trial as I found by experience that even when they were permitted to take the meat in such variety and manner as they pleased not one would entirely refrain from vegetables although convinced that they were hurtful. All the patients who employed a meat diet soon became fatter and stronger and made less water materially and that of a less diabetic quality than before. The amendment appeared the most conspicuously in the worst cases. Miss Y.Z. (3) was so much reduced and the disease appeared to be making such rapid progress that I believe she could not have lived above a month or six weeks longer had the complaint been left to itself. Mr B.I. (5) was still worse and I have no doubt would have died within a fortnight. Yet after this Miss Y.Z. (3) recovered so far that she could continue in bed through the whole night frequently without rising to make water and could walk five or six miles at once without material fatigue and Mr B.l. (5) who had been a remarkably active man in business amended to such a degree that he carried on his business with the same activity as before his illness. Amendment though not to the same extent was equally perceptible in the other patients who employed a meat diet. Yet that it had not effected a cure was evident from this circumstance that whenever they deviated materially from the meat diet the diabetic symptoms were induced".