Meatritionist

THE VALUE OF AN EXCLUSIVE RED MEAT DIET IN CERTAIN CASES OF CHRONIC GOUT."
To the -Editors of THE LANCET.

SIRS,-Mr. William Armstrong’s paper under this heading in The Lancet of July 3rd has shown the good that can be done by sometimes using what on the face of it appears to be a theoretically wrong diet. Reasoning as the writer does on the subject of auto-intoxication the diet has much in its favour; its results are good in his practice.

Speaking of children in whom the uric acid diathesis is sometimes very marked, I will give a case in my own practice which supports the assimilation theory. A child at two days old passed a quantity of red urine which alarmed the nurse, so much so that she saved me a specimen which on being tested was found to contain pure uric acid crystals. This urine was constantly being passed by the child, who screamed a great deal, had flatulence and sickness, and seemed very miserable altogether. The mother's milk was rich in cream, but turned acid rapidly. Careful dieting of the mother had no effect on the child for good. I found eventually that no milks would agree, so I abandoned milk and put the child on mutton juice. This agreed perfectly, the crying and sickness ceased, the general aspect of the child changed for the better, and the uric acid ceased to be marked after twenty-four hours of mutton-juice feeding. I gradually brought the feeding back to a sterilised cream mixture; the child is now well and taking food without difficulty. Curiously enough the family history of this infant reads like a list of Spa patients--viz., paternal grandmother has rheumatoid arthritis; the father has passed quantities of uric acid calculi; the mother has what Sir Willoughby Wade would call gouty neuritis accompanied by acid dyspepsia.

When Dr. Eustace Smith introduced meat-juice feeding he saw the wonderful way in which the albumin was assimilated, and I am quit econvinced that it is in cases of uric acid diathesis that milk-mixed carbohydrate-diets often disagree. Beef-tea I never give to children, as I only see harm from its use. In several other cases of children unable to digest milk well I have noted uric acid, but the family history is not so marked. When one considers that sugar, which is almost harmless in itself, can (as Sir Dyce Duckwork has pointed out) by setting up fermentation produce flatulence and acidity, it is obvious that carbohydrates may retard stomach digestion by acting as diluents alone, as well as by improperly fermenting and throwing the whole digestive tract out of gear by sending into the duedenum a fermenting mass, the toxins of which are absorbed--veritable taskmasters to an overworked system. Sir William Roberts has called attention to the value of mixed diets, and they certainly are more comfortable than the single red meat and water or vegetarian; but in the special cases mentioned by Mr. Armstrong the microbes must be mastered. 

I am, Sirs, yours faithfully,

Lennox Wainwright, M.D. Brux., &c. 

Folkestone, July 19th, 1897

 1898. Excerpt: ... GENERAL OBSERVATIONS. 'He who gains a new idea, or has a fresh insight into an old one, is thereby invested with a new responsibility. He has no right to live exactly as he did before. A duty is laid upon him to bring it into practical operation for his own guidance, and, as far as possible, for the general welfare.' 

ANY persons seem to imagine that when they have said 'mince and hot water' they have polished off in a word the whole Salisbury treatment. They were never more at sea in all their lives. The Salisbury System is not one--but many-sided. Beef and hot water form a part and an all-important part; but here besides is a wide-embracing plan that minutely takes into account everything that concerns the patient, and provides for every day's contingencies. All doings, takings, quantities, etc. are considered and regulated so that every condition may be made and kept advantageous for the furthering of Nature's processes, and that the patient and his family may be continually aiding and fostering these as far as possible. The Salisbury treatment looks narrowly to the patient's eating, drinking, to the when, what, how, and how much he eats, to the cooking of his food, to the digesting of his food (for sensible people, like you and me, Reader, know that the proof of the pudding is--not the eating,--alas, no! it is the digesting!), to the internal cleansings, the thorough tranquil restings; the encouragement of a brave, placid frame of mind, a cheerful, hopeful spirit, with special avoidance of fatigue, friction, and worry; and it seeks besides to judiciously accommodate to its wise requirements every hour of the patient's day and every one of his doings.

I wonder are the Eskimos unique among the nations in their disregard of vegetable foods? I sometimes saw them getting young willow shoots and one or two other little bits of green, and eating them as a relish to their meat; but they make absolutely no attempt to till what soil there is, and they do not even make the most of the plants that grow. During the short weeks of summer the vegetation springs up in a perfectly marvelous manner. . . . Surely among this wild scramble of plant life there must be some things that are good to eat! I know that there are plenty of dandelion leaves, and I have tasted worse things in my time, but the people never touch them.

It was a marvel to me how the Eskimos managed to keep free from scurvy, eating so little green food; but the settlers on the coast say that seal meat does instead of vegetables, presumably because there are similar salts in it, and so eaters of seal meat are able to keep healthy. It is very likely true, for the Eskimos, whose main food it is, are practically free from scurvy. We Europeans could never take to seal meat; it looks very black and nasty, and has a queer, inky, fishy taste that goes against a fastidious palate; but the people only smile at our lack of appreciation of their greatest delicacy, and tell us "Mamadlarpok" (it tastes fine).

But though gardening is entirely foreign to the Eskimo nature, they do not entirely scorn the good things of the earth . . . In most years the scrubby bushes that crawl upon the ground are loaded with succulent berries—a truly marvelous provision—and the people gather them not only by the handfuls and bucketfuls, but by barrelfuls.

Among the Eskimos of Labrador; a record of five years' close intercourse with the Eskimo tribes of Labrador by S. K Hutton( Book )

24 editions published in 1912 in English and held by 238 WorldCat member libraries worldwide

Account based on author's experience as medical missionary on Killinek Island, 1908-12

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.

The dietetic observations and experiences of Vilhjalmur Stefansson during his career as an arctic explorer are worthy of careful scrutiny by students of nutrition. Because of his contributions, he is entitled to prominence in many departments of science, among them anthropology, geography, geology, oceanography, languages and comparative religions. Whether reading Stefansson's books, attending his lectures, or in private conversation with him, one is impressed not only by his broad knowledge of biology but also by the keenness of his observations and deductions in the domain of metabolism, particularly as applied to the science of practical dietetics. An anthropologist by training, an arctic explorer by choice, he became a student of nutrition by necessity. Perhaps there is no other man living today whose experimental studies have been so well controlled and done on so large a scale. His laboratory was the arctic circle, his experimental subjects human beings, and his experimental material, meat.

This paper reviews the medical history of this unique man. It is hoped that the facts gleaned from the study of his arctic dietetic regimen and body physiology may throw additional light on a subject about which our knowledge is still somewhat vague and controversial ; namely, protein metabolism.

During the month of September, 1922, I made a medical survey of Mr. Stefansson. He suggested at that time that the facts elicited from the studies might be of sufficient scientific interest to warrant publication. The present paper represents the work done on him at that time, amplified by a clinical survey of his condition some two years later.

​

The following facts regarding Stefansson's life in the Far North are noteworthy:

1. He spent altogether eleven and one-half years within the arctic circle.

2. He lived for a number of days, totaling nine years, on an exclusive meat diet.

3. He lived for nine successive months on an exclusive meat diet.

4. He reached his maximum weight while subsisting on meat (fish).

5. His sense of physical and mental well being was at its best during that period of his life. 6. He found that the exclusive meat diet worked as well when he was inactive as when active, and as well in hot weather as in cold.

7. Constipation was never present. One month's entire absence from exercise produced neither constipation nor muscular weakness.

8. His hair thickened, and his scalp became healthier.

9. Teeth decay was apparently much less rapid. Stefansson avers that not a single case of constipation was observed in 600 exclusively meat-eating Eskimos for a period of three years

​

Neither Stefansson nor any of his men, so far as we could determine, suffered any ill effects from long continued meat diet.