10 THE MEAT FETISH.
caused in this way, and that, too, when the animal food is perfectly healthy. When it is impregnated with tubercles, trichinæ, tape-worm, scrofula, no one knows what the consequence may be, and how far the poisons survive the ordeal of ordinary cooking. Oysters are known to communicate typhoid fever, and ptomaine poisons are much commoner in animal foods than in any other; and the regular readers of our medical Press will find that the list of diseases ascribed to such a diet is continually growing. Doctors, as a rule, with that conservatism which always marks professional opinion, laugh at vegetarianism, but, without being conscious of it, they are fast advancing in that direction. Dr. Chauvel, Medical Inspector of the French Army, has recently made a study of appendicitis among the troops, and he comes to the conclusion that it is caused by meat-eating. Regiments in Algiers, where little meat is eaten, have few cases, and the number increases elsewhere as the habit of eating meat increases. "The carnal régime, then, the abuse of meat, appears to be the true cause of the evil; no meat, no appendicitis," says the Paris Matin, discussing this report. Recent medical investigations into the cause of leprosy attribute it to the eating of tainted fish, and it is well known that scurvy arises from similar animal sources. It is not unlikely that before long cancer may be traced to the same origin.
I have before me two brochures by one of the leading orthodox medical practitioners of New York, and an opponent of vegetarianism, which show the drift against flesh food and the growing belief in its unwholesomeness. One of them is on the subject of rheumatism in childhood. In it the writer absolutely forbids the eating of meat, and prescribes a diet of cereals, vegetables, and fruit. Mineral waters and drugs are useless as a cure, he declares, and "animal broths are totally destitute of food properties." The curative elements are sodium and potassium, each in organic combination as produced by nature. "Vegetable food contains three
