THE MEAT FETISH. 11
to four times as much potassium as animal food." "Sodium compounds are largely formed by oxidation of vegetable acids."
The other pamphlet is on the food of children, and in it we read: "There is more so-called nervousness, anaemia, rheumatism, valvular disease of the heart, and chorea at the present time in children from an excess of meat and its preparations in the diet than from all other causes combined." The author seems to regard meat simply as a stimulant of the brain and an appetiser. Surely that is a narrow function for the product of such an immense industry as the production of meat, and other stimulants and appetisers might be found, if we need them.
Thirdly, in addition to the uncleanness and unwholesomeness of meat, it is easy to show that it is also an unnatural food for man. If it were a natural food, would you not be willing to go into the first butcher's shop, cut a slice from a carcass, and put it in your mouth? You would not hesitate to do so to any fruit or vegetable. If meat is a natural food, would you feel any repugnance at eating dog-flesh or cat-flesh merely because you are not accustomed to it? You would rather like to taste a new fruit. Dogs are raised for food in Korea, and there is no difference between their flesh and other meat in principle. Put a kitten and a chick in the same room, and the former will show what its natural food is by pouncing upon the latter and devouring it. Put a baby, of sufficient discretion not to poke pins and needles into its mouth, in the place of the kitten, and it will not attempt to eat the chick; but it will try to eat an apple, which is its natural food. It is a common experience of vegetarians that after years of abstention from flesh foods the idea of eating them becomes disagreeable. I have not eaten meat for six or seven years, and I would not trust myself now to eat a juicy beef-steak in company. A member of a vegetarian colony near St. Louis told me that his children first tasted meat when they were over six-
