This Famishing World

By Alfred W. McCann

Eight: Preventable Tragedies of Milk and Meat

§ 100 -- Milk

EVERY boy at the front in 1918 underwent a radical change of habit. There was no easy transition through which to slide gracefully from the comforts of peace into the hardships of war, yet here at home we seek to go on as before, leaving to our sons and brothers the glory of dying for a principle.

We know that milk is a perfect food, the cheapest of all animal foods, and that our money now goes only half as far as it used to go. Notwithstanding this we beheld in 1918 milk stations closing their doors, and farmers sending their cows to the butcher's block because the people did not consume the great flood of milk pouring in from the country at war prices.

The Bankers' Trust Company informs us there are approximately 27,301,199 family groups and wage-earning individuals counted as families in the United States. In 1916, 24,428,000 had annual incomes of $2,000 or less. Millions of families strive to nourish and develop their children on incomes less than $1,000 a year.

Although milk in times of stress is in itself sufficient to save the infant, the findings of the Children's Bureau with reference to Baltimore show that only 29 percent of the children between the ages of two and seven years were receiving in 1918 fresh milk to drink as against 60 percent in 1917, and that less than 3 percent of these children received as much as three cups of milk a day.

H. C. Sherman, Columbia University, has demonstrated that of all the food value of the food consumed by farm animals we recover less than 4 percent in beef, the actual figures according to Armsby being 3.5 percent, whereas 18 percent is recovered in the form of milk.

Cooper and Spillman demonstrate that the crops produced per acre of cultivated farm land will yield but 14 pounds of mutton, 18 pounds of beef, 22 pounds of pork, 27 pounds of poultry and eggs, and 72 pounds of milk estimated on a protein basis.

It is thus seen that a quart of milk is a greater food asset than an amount of meat furnishing the same weight of protein.

Osborne, Mendell, McCollum, Hart and Humphrey have demonstrated the value of those substances found in whole milk which promote growth and perform other important functions in maintaining health.

Back in 1906 Hopkins discovered the fat soluble "A" of cream and the water soluble "B" of skim milk. Seeking further light on the nature of these then unknown substances he withheld publication of the details of his experiments until 1916.

During the same period Osborne and Mendell were demonstrating the same facts. To these facts McCollum and Davis have also contributed.

Milk is not only the most benevolent and useful of man's friends, it is also the most treacherous of his foes. Countless thousands of mothers, were it not for the saving virtues of milk, would be in mourning for their lost infants, and countless thousands of mothers are suffering the anguish that only a mother can understand through the untimely taking off of their little ones, murdered by milk.

The health of the cow and the methods employed in making milk safe have been sadly neglected in America. We know the truth but do not apply it.

Because milk is such a perfect food for the human being, it is also a perfect food for the micro-organisms that spread tuberculosis, diphtheria, septic sore throat, typhoid fever and many other diseases that afflict the human race already devitalised and non-resistant through its morbid consumption of refined starches and sugars.

The United States Government has tabulated 500 epidemics of typhoid fever, scarlet fever and diphtheria caused by milk. These epidemics are but a few of those reported. They merely indicate the enormous extent to which milk, the great life-saver, becomes a destroyer.

Bad milk can be eliminated and good milk, at least safe milk, can be substituted in its place. Under the honest supervision of any adequately organised health department in small town or city, milk when properly pasteurised is a blessing. When not properly pasteurised it is a curse.

Unlike eggs, meat, poultry and fish, milk cannot be stored in refrigerator warehouses for a year. It cannot be held for speculation. It cannot be refined as wheat, oats, corn, rice, barley, rye and sugar are refined. It brings into the home all the food substances in abundance, except iron alone.

The young animal stores up iron in its liver before its birth sufficient to carry it out of the milk consuming period.

As long ago as 1826 Magenhofen in his laboratory in Frankfort determined the composition of milk, separating the lime, potassium, phosphorus, magnesium, sodium, sulphur, fluorine, silicon, iron, the sugars, fats and casein. All the analyses made since his time have been identical.

The English authority, A. Wynter Blyth, declared in 1909 that Magenhofen's treatise on milk, though little known, contains practically all of what, up to that time, had been established concerning its composition.

The iron of milk is sufficient for the child up to one year of age, but thereafter it requires more iron which unhappily it does not receive from white bread, or sugar.

These milk facts should be remembered, but facts more important than these are about to attack us.

§ 101 -- Milk and Tuberculosis

God intended cow's milk for the food of calves to be consumed at the udder. Milk from the clean udder of a healthy cow is practically sterile. The calf's food under normal conditions is not only free from germs, it is fresh.

The child receives cow's milk from twelve to seventy hours old. Good cow's milk depends upon four factors -- a healthy cow, a clean cow, plenty of ice and speedy transportation.

If the cow is not healthy the milk is dangerous even when fresh. If the cow itself and the hands of the milker are not clean, or if the milk-can is not sterile, the milk becomes infected at once, even though it be good as it leaves the udder.

If not kept cold the germs multiply by the millions. One drop of milk may contain 40,000,000 bacteria twenty-four hours after milking.

The germs of typhoid fever and diphtheria enter milk through careless or dirty methods of handling. The germs of bovine tuberculosis are introduced through a diseased udder or through small particles of manure which are frequently found infected with virulent tubercle bacilli.

The United States government as well as the governments of Great Britain and Germany have proved the deadliness of bad milk and the meaning of bacteria as an index of its quality. Practical and efficient methods of controlling these dangers have been evolved, but in only a few American cities have they been applied.

If milk were a transparent fluid its luxuriant colonies of bacteria and their accompanying poisons could be seen by the naked eye. Because milk is opalescent the presence of these infant murderers is not suspected. The human eye can easily see a colony but only through the microscope can a single germ be detected.

It is common for milk to reach our large cities containing 150,000,000 bacteria per cubic centimetre. Even these enormous quantities cannot be detected by the naked eye.

Such milk is polluted with B. coli found only in the intestines of warm-blooded animals. Finding their way into milk through particles of manure they rapidly multiply. B. coli in milk means that the milk is filthy.

The most poorly equipped Health Department in America can determine the presence of B. coli in the milk consumed by its children, and through the authority possessed by it can shut such milk out until the dairy farmer substitutes decency for indecency.

Bovine tuberculosis is transmissible to the child not only through milk but through potcheese, ice cream, butter and raw meat, such as the uncooked bolognas common throughout the United States.

Bovine tuberculosis does not necessarily kill; it usually mains or cripples. Its ravages do not manifest themselves at their worst until early adult life.

Bang proved conclusively that virulent tubercle bacilli are found in milk. Hirschberger found 11 out of 20 specimens of milk from tubercular cows contained tubercle bacilli. Ernst found 42 percent of the cows examined by him were giving off tubercle bacilli in the milk, and that the milk of 36 tubercular cows with healthy udders contained tubercle bacilli.

Rabinowitz and Kempner found tubercle bacilli in 71.4 percent of the milk examined by them. Prokauer found 55 percent of the milk examined by him contained tubercle bacilli. Anderson, United States Public Health Service, found 11 in 104 dairies shipping milk to Washington, D. C., were selling a product containing virulent tubercle bacilli.

Mitchell asserts that milk containing tubercle bacilli is the cause of 90 percent of the cases of tubercular cervical lymph nodes in Edinburgh infants and children. Mitchell found 10 per cent of the enlarged tonsils of children infected with the bovine tubercle bacillus.

Of the school children examined in Berlin by the von Pirquet method, 70 percent were found to be infected with tuberculosis of the bovine type, thus revealing the fact that before the war 400,000 in Germany were annually infected through the milk, butter, potcheese and meat of tubercular cows.

Styles found 61 percent of the 67 cases of tuberculosis of the joints in children examined by him to be caused by the bovine bacillus, due to infection through milk, butter, ice cream or meat. In all the affected children less than one year old Styles found the bovine bacillus present.

All these children had been fed exclusively on cow's milk.

Fraser, operating upon 70 cases of bone and joint tuberculosis in children under twelve years of age, found 31 cases of the bovine type, showing the diseased cow to be responsible for their misery. Of 25 children brought up exclusively on human milk Fraser found only 6 infected with bovine bacillus, the infection in these cases having come from butter. Of 41 children fed on cow's milk, Fraser found 37 infected with the bovine type and only 4 with the human type.

The British Royal Commission on tuberculosis reports that among fatal cases in children, one-third are found to be due to the bovine type.

Of 500 autopsies performed by Muller on children, the deaths of 200 cases were attributed to tuberculosis of which an undetermined number was of the bovine type, showing the deadliness of raw milk.

Ravenel, studying 153 cases of tuberculous children from 5 to 16 years of age, found 36 due to bovine infection, whereas out of 280 cases of children under 5 years of age he found 65 due to bovine infection.

The Imperial Bureau of Hygiene reported before the war that 2,700 children died annually in Germany of bovine tuberculosis.

We know now beyond our right to dismiss the facts with a shrug, that bovine tuberculosis does kill our children, and that they have little resistance to the disease because of their enormous consumption of white bread and refined sugars.

Let us see whether or not only a few dairy cows in America are suffering from tuberculosis, or whether the disease is wide spread, so that we may determine the gravity of the raw milk peril.

§ 102 -- Not Pasteurized

Ward reports at least 10 percent of the cattle killed in the San Francisco stockyards, coming from open ranges, are tubercular.

Melvin, United States Bureau of Animal Industry, declares that at least 10 percent of the dairy cattle of the entire country are tubercular.

Veranus A. Moore, Cornell, found 302 herds in a total of 421 contained tubercular cows. Of 9,633 dairy cows tested by him 3,432, more than a third, were tubercular.

These diseased herds were distributed throughout 39 counties. The tuberculin test is such a reliable index of the presence of the disease that out of 23,869 cows reacting positively to the test, the disease was found in 23,585 when slaughtered, a percentage of nearly 99.

The United States Government publishes a bulletin warning dairymen and cattle growers of the dangers of the disease. That bulletin says: "Among tubercular dairy cows retaining the appearance of health and not known to be affected until tested with tuberculin, 40 percent or more, are actively expelling tubercle bacilli from their bodies in a way dangerous to the health of other animals and persons.

"When tubercle bacilli are present in milk they are especially numerous in butter. The dangers to which public health is exposed through the use of milk from tubercular cows is of a magnitude almost beyond conception.

"The distribution of tubercle bacilli is a commercial systematic distribution from door to door, or rather from table to table. As long as the use of tubercular dairy cows is permitted the manner in which unpasteurised dairy products are at present distributed will insure that practically every member of the human family is exposed to tuberculosis.

"This may explain why 91 percent of the bodies of persons who die from various causes show the lesions of tuberculosis."

In spite of these and hundreds of other facts indicating the vast extent to which tuberculosis menaces the consumer of raw milk, raw butter, raw ice cream and raw meat, and the vast extent to which tuberculosis of the bovine type actually ravages the human family, dairymen and cattle dealers openly oppose all efforts of public health authorities to apply the two remedies by which humanity can be protected from these dangers.

They ignore pasteurisation, which destroys all disease germs in milk, and they fight the tuberculin test, although for their own purposes they employ it to cover up the evidences of disease by "plugging" their cows with secret doses in order to mask the symptoms when an official test is made.

§ 103 -- "Plugging" the Cow

In New York, New Jersey and Illinois the "plugging" of tubercular cows with illegal doses of tuberculin has reached such vast proportions that in a number of instances even honest officials have been rendered powerless through this method of trickery.

Cattle men have discovered that a dose of tuberculin injected into the neck of a tubercular cow is followed by a peculiar phenomenon which scientists call "reaction."

A few hours after the test is applied the tubercular cow suffers a rise in temperature. The fever continues until it reaches its climax, after which it begins to subside, forming the typical reacting curve.

After this reaction the tubercular cow for a period of three or four weeks will not respond to another test unless it be a double dose. During this short period of immunity an official test with a single dose made by a winking veterinarian will fail to disclose the presence of the disease.

Thus the conscienceless owner of a diseased cow "plugs" the animal with a secret dose, waits four or five days, then asks for an official test. A clean bill of health over the signature of a state veterinarian is then issued, and the cow can be sold even to the famous certified herds.

In cases of generalised tuberculosis in which nearly every gland and organ of the cow's body is involved, the animal is so full of toxins of its own manufacture that it either fails to react to the tuberculin test or suffers what is called a delayed reaction.

The so-called official tests terminating at the twenty-fourth hour do not detect the delayed reaction, although such cow is a hundredfold more dangerous. All tests should be continued to the thirty-sixth hour, otherwise they are worthless.

These conditions are not occasional, they are common.

The annual report of the New York State Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Veterinary Service for 1913, of which I have a certified copy, was actually suppressed because of the wide-spread evils it revealed. The politicians were afraid of its publication, fearing the farmer vote.

When the New York City Health Department detects diseased milk it shuts out the dairy farm. This diseased milk is then consumed by people who are not fortunate enough to live in the metropolis.

To emphasise the tragedy of this system, Dr. S. S. Goldwater, Health Commissioner, sent a message February 26th, 1914, to Governor Glynn's Milk Commission. That message which every small town in the United States should study, read as follows:

"Yesterday we discovered another typhoid carrier in one of the milk-producing farms from which the Health Department has traced a number of cases of typhoid fever. The milk of this farm has now been excluded from the list of milk shippers to New York, but owing to inadequate state control this typhoid-producing milk will now be shipped to the smaller towns which will have to suffer as a result of New York's vigilance. If the smaller towns were under state regulations instead of being allowed to go as they please, these tragic conditions would not be possible."

March 25th, 1914, the New York Milk Committee, numbering among its members many of the most eminent pathologists of the metropolis, issued a public statement declaring that nine out of every ten children suffering from tubercular cervical glands would be sound and healthy as far as tuberculosis is concerned if they had not been fed with the milk of diseased cows.

All but 10 percent of the people of New York State drink raw milk, which means that 4,000,000 children are directly exposed to the most dreaded infection that curses the human race.

One-third of the cows of the state are spreading tuberculosis among human infants. A large percentage of the beef sold in the smaller butcher shops in the state consists of the carcasses of dairy animals suffering from tuberculosis at the time of slaughter.

It is through this source of infection that the pitiable conditions of thousands of children under ten years of age, and the fatal illness of scores of adults, are to be traced. Low resistance and constant infection! What an indictment of our intelligence!

The facts were laid before the Senate and Assembly, and cattle dealers immediately gathered at Albany from all parts of the country. The political pressure applied by them disarmed the legislators of the Empire State, and nothing was done.

Before the war politicians subordinated the physical welfare of the children of their constituents to their own political advancement. The boys who went to France to die have at least taught them by another kind of example the hellishness of such philosophy.

The efforts to open the eyes of these politicians were not altogether fruitless. It developed as a result of the agitation that more than two million dollars of the state's money had been wasted by the Department of Agriculture between 1907 and 1914 through indemnities granted to a select list of politically powerful owners of tubercular cows.

It was also shown that these cows after condemnation and slaughter were either installed in State reformatories, hospitals, training schools, orphan asylums, and prisons to infect their inmates, or were slaughtered and their meat sold to butchers.

It was shown that the junior member of a cattle dealing firm had applied to Dr. J. William Fink, state veterinarian, for a tuberculin test of a diseased herd producing milk for consumption in New York City.

Dr. Fink was asked to apply a fake test and give a clean bill of health to the diseased cows in order that they might be shipped across the state line into New Jersey. Dr. Fink refused to make the test, but another state veterinarian succumbed to the temptation and the cows were given a clean bill of health.

An investigation showed that all the cows were grossly diseased. They had to be condemned for fertiliser.

The arrests that followed involved such a large number of New Jersey and New York officials, and disclosed so many similar outrages, that it became necessary to apply a coat of political whitewash to the guilty parties.

There is no such thing as blissful ignorance in the fool's paradise. The fool's children pay too great a price for the folly of their father.

§ 104 -- The Certified Herd

Certified milk is raw milk. Unless such milk be honestly certified it is more dangerous than common milk, because on the assumption of its safety it is fed to delicate infants and invalids, whose powers of resistance are even lower than the low average. We are not discussing the honest certified herd. We are discussing the control of all certified milk.

In spite of the efforts of the Montclair Board of Health, a certified herd, numbering six hundred cows, succeeded in defying the Board for two years because of the dignity of the Medical Milk Commission that stood sponsor for its certified milk, "guaranteed to be free from the germs of the contagious and infectious disease known as bovine tuberculosis."

Finally, October 13th, 1914, after conditions had become so gross that it was impossible further to withhold knowledge of them from the public, the Essex County Medical Milk Commission, the first commission in America authorised by law to certify milk, was asked to interfere on the ground that the certified herd harbored at least one hundred diseased cows.

The dignified Medical Milk Commission refused to admit that irregularities were possible under its system of supervision, and resisted the invitation to perform its duty.

It was my privilege to expose to the public the wretched farce of this scientific superstition and the complete collapse of the certified milk myth which prior thereto had flourished at the expense of helpless infants.

We invaded the dairy and made a test of its cows. Within a period of two weeks, up to and including October 28th, 1914, two hundred and fifty-four cows were tested. Of these certified cows seventy-nine were found suffering from tuberculosis, yet all of them, up to the very day of their slaughter, were producing "certified" milk for infants and invalids.

Of these condemned cows twenty-four were sold to a Brooklyn slaughter house. I had reason to know that a vast system of Health Department corruption was operating through the graft route in this slaughter house.

I laid the facts before the Government, and for once was successful in inducing the Federal authorities to seize these twenty-four cows in Jersey City on their way through interstate commerce to Brooklyn. They were slaughtered, October 28th, for purposes of post mortem.

The examinations were conducted by Bureau of Animal Industry veterinarians Dr. E. C. Yodier, Dr. Frederick Wilson and Dr. Robert M. Mullins. The witnesses in addition to the writer included Dr. J. E. Smith, president New Jersey Medical Association, Dr. James McDonough, Montclair Board of Health, Dr. Wilbur F. Harrison, Jersey City, Health Officer James Hagan, Jersey City, and Dr. R. C. Newton, president New Jersey State Board of Health.

The Essex County Medical Milk Commission, which had certified to the milk produced by these twenty-four cows, was not represented.

All the cows were found grossly diseased and under the regulations of the United States Government, the generalised cases were sent to the fertiliser tank.

Certified cow No. 3184, producing certified milk for infants, was typical of the tragedy. She was found to be suffering from tuberculosis of the bronchial glands, tuberculosis of both lungs, tuberculosis of the portal gland, tuberculosis of the mediastinal gland and tuberculosis of the liver.

Following this examination another group of twenty-four cows was seized on its way to the Brooklyn slaughter houses and slaughtered under Government supervision. They were all diseased.

After one hundred and ninety-one cows had been condemned in the certified herd, which had been looked upon as a model throughout the Medical Milk Commissions of the United States, the first Medical Milk Commission established in America passed into the waste heap of rejected rubbish. Eminent academicians who had been forcing certified milk upon the public for years, reluctantly admitted that diseased cows really could produce diseased milk under the shadows of inflated scientific reputations.

The laity had paid the bills, had borne the burden of the mistakes, had suffered the pains of disease.

The sad events which, upon these disclosures, followed each other in dizzy succession, exposed such a condition of complete demoralisation of many of the most famous certified herds of the country, that had the newspapers reported the facts it is quite certain somebody would have gone to jail.

Thanks to the encouragement and support of the three men to whom this book is dedicated, I was able to stick to the scandal out of which subsequently many convictions were obtained, resulting in penitentiary sentences.

§ 105 -- Old Offenders

Nineteen certified herds within a period of six months were found to be literally rotten with tuberculosis, and as far as New York City is concerned, a new system of supervision was inaugurated by Dr. S. S. Goldwater.

Following the trail into Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois and Wisconsin, I was able to demonstrate with evidence just as specific and conclusive that the dairy butter and ice cream industries were quite as rotten as the certified milk industry. Both industries required nation-wide reform, of which, at this writing, August 28th, 1918, no indications are visible. The facts are known to the United States Department of Agriculture and the United States Public Health Service, but no official action has been taken.

Justice James C. Cropsey, Supreme Court, Brooklyn, October 4th, 1916, emphasised the horror of these unmolested conditions by sentencing a group of convicted slaughterers to Sing Sing.

Five slaughtering establishments had been operating for twenty-five years in Brooklyn. They specialised in the killing of diseased cows, culled from the dairy herds of the country. These cows, milked as long as they were profitable, were finally, after a career of poisoning the milk, butter and ice cream of the people, salvaged through the peoples' stomachs.

Sixty thousand such cows were killed annually in these five establishments.

By the payment of graft to the extent of $30,000 a year, or 50 cents a head to the officials, the carcasses of the diseased animals were stamped with the official "inspected and passed" seal.

For four years the officials succeeded in resisting my efforts to break up this deadly system. Finally, through the assistance of Commissioner of Accounts, Leonard M. Wallstein, legal evidence was obtained which resulted in the indictment of twelve slaughterers whose establishments, May 26th, 1916, operating as a single unit in a vast system of units, were shut down, thus scattering the diseased dairy culls through the smaller towns and cities of the country.

The wholesale convictions that followed have meant nothing to the officials of other states, and the parade of diseased meat continues. Even the success of Commissioner Wallstein in collecting $1,025 graft money before the trap was sprung that finally bagged the Brooklyn operators, had little or no meaning for other officials, who to-day remain as inactive as they were two years ago.

The packers who have persistently denied the charges made against them by the Federal Trade Commission, 1918, and whose denials have been given wide publicity by the newspapers carrying their advertisements, cannot hurdle the evidences of their guilt, even though they succeed in fooling the public.

On forty-seven occasions, unarmed with official authority, I have obtained in the last five years forty-seven convictions against Armour & Company, Swift & Company, and Sulzberger & Sons Company (now Wilson & Company). These convictions are all recorded. They resulted in fines of $500 each, the limit permitted under the statute.

The newspapers that have given publicity to their denial of guilt, with the exception of the New York Globe and the Chicago Daily News, did not publish the details of any of these convictions.

"Old offenders" are sometimes looked upon by the courts gravely and solemnly, but only as a rule when they are commonplace offenders whose crimes are the crimes of human infirmity.

July 5th, 1915, a poor creature pleaded guilty before Justice Petit of Chicago on the charge of stealing two hams, and was sentenced to the penitentiary for life under the "old offender" statute.

"The world will be informed," said Justice Petit in imposing sentence, "that I have sent you to the penitentiary for life for stealing two hams. I have not done that. Your record shows you are a crook, and it is time that the country finds a way to keep habitual offenders like you in jail."

One week later a Federal-inspected establishment, Swift & Company, was convicted in the courts of New York for the sixteenth time within a period of two years, and fined $500 on a charge of trafficking in putrid flesh.

I was responsible for the sixteenth conviction of this offending corporation, and it seemed to me that under the "old offender" act a corporation guilty in the same community of the same crime on sixteen occasions within a period of two years is an old offender.

Justices Russel, Salmon, Kernochen, Moss, Collins, Herrman, McInerny, Zeller, Forker, O'Keefe and Freschi during this short period collected $20,000 in fines from Armour & Company, Swift & Company, and Sulzberger and Sons Company. In only one case did the convicted establishments appeal. In that appeal the conviction of the lower court was upheld by the Appellate Division, on which sat Justices Ingraham, McLaughlin, Scott, Dowling and Hotchkiss.

In imposing sentence in one of these cases, Justice Russel had perhaps the old offender statute in mind, for he said: "We cannot send a corporation to jail. It is no wonder then that you continue without fear in your assault upon human life and health. When it is considered that this court has the power to send an individual to jail for such an offence as you have committed but can do no more in dealing with the same offence when committed by a corporation than impose a paltry fine which by an establishment doing a business of more than $400,000,000 annually, must be looked upon as inconsequential and without significance, it is not strange that there are agitators abroad who cry out like John the Baptist against these inhuman sins so difficult to detect and so inadequately punished when brought to trial."

These specific instances are recorded here for the reason that in spite of the existence of the "old offender" statute and the evidence of corruption that has flowed in a steady stream from my self-appointed and unofficial investigations, the authorities have persisted in ignoring their duty, while from the milk-producing herds of the country the culls and rejects, the lame and the halt, the diseased and the spreaders of disease continue to pass unmolested into the food supply of the people.

§ 106 -- America's Kidneycides

The meatless days established, 1918, by the Food Administration were wisely appointed, but the suicidal gluttons of America thought otherwise, and the Food Administration, heeding the clamor, decided it was not necessary to stop the assault and battery tendencies of Americans with respect to their kidneys, and "meatless days" were wiped off the calendar.

Prior to the last week of February, 1918, in America, man's efforts to spare his kidneys constituted patriotism. After that he could beat his kidneys to death with a club, if he wanted. to, and still be a patriot.

Sink your canines into as many bloody, bawdy, kindless steaks as you have a mind to! Grind the juicy cadaver between your molars -- if you have any molars! Go to a dentist and have your-self equipped with crowns, bridges, or any other device that will enable you to pound to a pulp all the dead flesh your appetite desires! Nothing will now stop you but the price -- unless it be your own intelligence.

The man who over-exercises his kidneys, in the performance of which he must under-exercise his brains, will not contribute much to the world's welfare. The converse of this self-evident truth will hold water without leaking.

Homicide is punishable under the State law. Suicide is believed by millions to be punishable under the Divine law. Kidneycide goes scot-free.

All of this may make the angels weep; but incidentally it enabled five packers to pile up net profits of a hundred million dollars a year.

These five packers did not make very much money on a single pound of meat, nor did they prior to 1918 pay a living wage to their employees; but they killed so many animals and sold so much meat that what they called their "turn-over" enabled them to pay dividends of something like forty percent on the money invested in their plants. Therefore, unlike the angels, they did not weep while Americans were condemning their kidneys to hari-kari.

Most of the kidneycides of America never heard of Anthony Bassler or the American Journal of Electro-therapeutics and Radiology. They do not care much about the comments of Bassler, as published in that journal, upon the significant fact, now conclusively proved, that the human body cannot utilise more than two ounces of protein a day.

Four ounces of beefsteak, roast beef, lamb chops, pork chops, sausage, bologna, chicken, fish or ham contain two ounces of protein.

Therefore Bassler cries out that four ounces of any kind of meat a day should be the extreme limit, even for gluttons, because any quantity of meat in excess of four ounces must be thrown off as waste by the healthy body or stored up as poisons for the kidneys to remove.

Even the boys in their first year in the medical schools know that it is this overload which gradually smashes the kidneys and throws them out of commission.

What is protein? Milk is protein. Eggs are protein. Cheese is protein. Nuts are protein. A very large part of wheat, corn, barley and rye is protein, about one-eighth.

In America, as stated at the hearing before the Committee on Agriculture of the United States Senate in April, 1917, by Secretary Houston, we produced the year before 22,400,000,000 pounds of meat, 7,900,000,000 gallons of milk, 1,847,000,000 dozens of eggs, 567,000,000 fowls; and so many billion pounds of cereal protein that there aren't sufficient ciphers left in the lino-type machine to tell the story here.

The story wouldn't mean anything, anyhow, if it hadn't been for the testimony before the same Committee of Dr. Clyde L. King, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. King showed that in the United States we consume daily 80 grams, or nearly 3 ounces, of protein, whereas even in Germany, whose inhabitants were all fed up before the war, only 61 grams were consumed. The figures for France before the war were 44 grams; for Japan, 14 grams; for Austria, 27 grams; for Russia, 26 grams; for Italy, 52 grams.

The statements made here are not sweeping statements. They have gone to headquarters for their authority and are fool-proof.

All of which means that Americans in consuming eighty grams of protein daily are attempting the impossible. We are attempting to dispose of about thirty-five grams more than we have capacity for. Our kidneys cannot talk. They just have to stay mum until a hundred and one bodily disorders start us looking around for some mysterious cause of serious trouble. Then, as a rule, it is too late to apologise to the kidneys.

The plain facts recorded here might have some consolation in them if they really told the whole story; but they do nothing of the kind. Babies, old people, sick people, children under ten or fifteen years of age, and the very poor -- who are becoming more numerous in America -- do not consume the daily average of eighty grams of protein.

To keep the average up to this high level, the kidneycides have to eat not only their own share and the vast excess representing the difference between their own share and what they ought to eat, but also the left-overs which the babies, old people, and the others cannot eat and do not eat. This hoists the total for millions of kidneycides far above the eighty-gram mark and it is quite evident that there are many millions of kidneycides in America who consume one hundred grams and not a few who consume one hundred and fifty grams.

No; such people are not patriots. They do not help win war. They are the kidneyviki of America, and if it were not for the fact that the chaos over which they exercise control is the product of gross ignorance, I would subscribe to the proposition that they ought to be taken out, shot, and converted into fertiliser with which to enrich the wheat fields, orchards and vineyards of the Nation.

These kidneyviki, who ought to know that they cannot consume more than four ounces of meat, including poultry, cheese, and eggs, daily, without injuring themselves, ought to know also that in Europe there is very much less than four ounces of meat a day to consume. Why, then, should they complain of meatless days? They can well afford, with benefit to themselves, to do without meat on meatless days in order that from their savings they may supply at least part of the needs of America's friends.

§ 107 -- Meatology

The failure of meat to supply the needs of the body can be understood from the fact that it is easy to bring about in young dogs a condition resembling "rickets" in children by feeding the dogs on meats and fats alone. If pulverised bone is added to their diet the young dogs recover quickly.

I do not for a moment agree with those who claim that there is no place whatever for animal flesh in the diet of man. It is well known that there are times when a meat diet is valuable, provided the meat is cut from the carcass of a healthy animal and none of its extractives are lost in cooking. Yet we should remember that catarrh, rheumatism, blood diseases, and many other physical disorders cannot be cured where meat is consumed in excess. Meat is one of the pegs in our national shoe.

When we eat the flesh of an animal we eat the end-products of the animal's life processes: urea, uric acid, the animal sweat, dead cells, toxic waste, etc. When we eat whole grains, legumes and milk, the nitrogen supply is just as great, even greater, without the urea and the other poisons.

In comparing the merits of a heavy flesh diet with a diet of whole grains, eggs and milk, we stumble into another point of tremendous interest. For every pound of beef consumed by man, ten pounds of corn are necessary to produce that pound of beef. A pound of beef will partly support a man for a given length of time; but the same quantity of corn necessary to yield that pound of beef will support ten men for the same length of time.

Leibig, as we have already seen, cites the restlessness and incessant activity of meat-eating animals -- lions, tigers, panthers, wolves, hyenas -- and observes that men who habitually cram themselves with meat manifest similar irritability and lack of repose.

This condition of high pressure in the vital processes is merely functional excitement -- not true invigoration. To be whipped into stimulation is not to be strengthened or recreated. Let us not forget that the meat-eating animals pace up and down with a certain wildness of movement, while the elephant, camel and horse exhibit all the dignity of reposeful strength.

When man attempts to live on an excess of meat and is forced to neutralise the waste products produced by meat digestion and in addition is also forced to neutialise the waste products continually generating in his own body, thereby imposing upon his organs of elimination a double task, he is at the same time attempting to sustain himself with imperfect foods. Then he complains of constipation, biliousness, headache and albumen.

We know that a meat diet tends to acidify the blood and that man's only defence against the attacks of disease is based upon the normal alkalinity of the blood. A. E. Wolff has analysed the flesh of beef, veal, and mutton to determine the average of alkalines and acids in one hundred parts of such flesh. Commenting on Wolff's findings, Armond Gautier states:

"In the ash of muscle, phosphoric acid is united to the extent of two-thirds to the potassium of the tissues. The other third, not finding sufficient alkalinity to neutralise it, remains mostly acid. The sulphuric acid found in the tissues comes from the sulphur of the albuminoids. The destruction of meat in the body thus tends to acidify the blood both by mineral acids and organic acids, which originate from the digestion and decomposition of meat."

To render these acids harmless they must be neutralised in the body.

In a meat and vegetable diet the vegetables furnish the alkalines necessary to neutralise these acids.

Meat eaters should therefore always supplement their diet with plenty of fresh vegetables and should see to it that none of the alkaline juices of the vegetables are lost in cooking.

But, in order to neutralise with vegetables the acids of meat, the kidneycide who eats twice as much meat as he ought to, would have to eat twice as many vegetables as he can hold. Thus far no surgeon has been able successfully to devise an operation that would enlarge the stomach to any such capacity.

It is much easier to develop an enlarged cranium than to dilate a stomach ordinarily designed to hold a quart to a degree that will enable it to receive a peck. There is no questioning the fact that if we are going to go on in America with our present rate of meat consumption, we have simply got to get new stomachs.

It might be possible at birth by a deft operation to substitute a calf's stomach for the human stomach in order to enlarge the human capacity, but to do so it would also be necessary to equip the body with a liver and two kidneys that would measure up in size to the increased demands made upon them. This would necessitate the extension of the entire abdominal cavity -- a difficulty that might be overcome by grafting over the abdominal surface of the infant fifteen or twenty square feet of cowhide.

To support this rotund sack we might rig up some kind of a block and tackle which would enable the child as it grows to waddle along into adult life.

The prospect is not promising, but it seems to be the only way out of our present difficulty.

In the meantime the meat eater ought to consider certain facts which have no bearing on patriotism but which affect his own physical welfare to an extent rarely suspected by him. Wet, water-logged, soggy, soft, gelatinous, flabby meat is always of poor quality as distinguished from good meat which has a healthy red colour, unless it be pork or veal, the colour of which is pale.

To the touch good meat should be firm and elastic; not wet, but moist.

Meat of a pale pinkish or bluish hue should be rejected as coming from diseased animals. Meat which has a deep purplish colour should also be rejected, for this colour indicates that the animal died a natural death -- that it was not slaughtered.

Meat which has a blazing red colour, instead of a dark, rich but dull red, has been treated with anhydrous sodium sulphite. Hamburg steak is the most abused in this regard.

Tubercular meat is especially to be rejected.

Animals suffering from tuberculosis do not always leave in their flesh symptoms which can be detected by mere visual examination, although the marks appearing in the advanced stages of tuberculosis are unmistakable.

Meat which discharges its juice on the platter in large quantities is frozen meat which has been thawed. Freshly killed or merely chilled meat is comparatively dry.

In freezing meat for storage purposes the liquid constituents of the tissue cells expand just as water expands. The expansion ruptures the cell walls just as it ruptures a lead pipe. When the meat is thawed for sale by the retailer the cell juices flow through the broken tissues and escape. Frozen meat after thawing putrifies rapidly.

No meat should be consumed raw for the reason that it may not only infect its consumer with tuberculosis but also with trichinosis and other diseases.

The heat ordinarily applied to a heavy roast does not sterilise the lymphatic glands which lie imbedded in the flesh. If the animal is tubercular the glands are always affected even though no evidence of the disease is to be found in the tissues.

In milk the germ of tuberculosis is killed when heated to 145 degrees Fahrenheit for thirty minutes. This is called pasteurisation.

Meat, however, is a poor conductor of heat, and heat penetrates to the centre of large pieces of meat very slowly.

If the interior of a roast of beef retains much of the blood-red colour of the raw meat you can be sure that the temperature has not been high enough to destroy any germs that may be present.

Dr. Woodland of the British Royal Commission subjected meats known to contain tubercular material to the ordinary processes of cooking. After cooking he used the central portions for feeding and inoculating animals.

The results were startling.

He found the centre of a joint weighing six pounds never attained a higher temperature than 140 degrees Fahrenheit during ordinary cooking. The germs on the outside were destroyed, but those on the inside remained alive.

The results of his experiment prove that the most trustworthy method of cooking meat is by boiling.

Mutton is probably more easily digested than beef because its fibres are much finer, and its connective tissues loose. Veal is thought to be difficult to digest, although its connective tissues are very loose and are readily converted into gelatine.

In explanation of the belief that veal resists digestion it is said that the fibres of veal easily escape the action of the teeth and that because its flavour is insipid as compared to the flavour of other meats it fails to stimulate a liberal flow of the digestive juices.

Pork is digested with great difficulty on account of its high fat content.

It requires a much longer time to digest fat than to digest muscle fibre.

Bacon is an exception to this rule as it can often be consumed without any ill effects by those who find difficulty in digesting other forms of fat.

The breast of chicken and game is digested with more ease than any other form of meat.

Lamb is probably the most wholesome of all meat foods for the reason that the sheep is found to be amazingly free of the diseases which affect such a large proportion of the steers and swine offered for slaughter.

Beef tea is made by boiling the flesh of old cows, known in the packing industry as "canners" or "downers." The boiling extracts the soluble substances present in the tissues. The cast off cells of the old flesh and the waste products of its muscles are soluble in water, consequently they enter the extract.

The insoluble waste which appears in solid form becomes "corned or canned roast beef." For myself I find that carefully selected meats do not harm me when consumed in moderation. Three or four times a week I eat meat. When I used to eat it three times a day I did not know what was the matter with my health, but now there is nothing the matter with it.

§ 108 -- Old When Tired

When we are tired we are old. Age might well be said to be a state of chronic fatigue. Even the very young suffer from fatigue and it is usually during fatigue, when the vitality is at low ebb and resistance weak, that the germs of disease begin their growth in the body.

Youth suffers two kinds of fatigue -- nervous fatigue and muscular fatigue. In either case the conditions may be brought about by overexertion or disease. The scientists call the former physiological fatigue and the latter pathological fatigue. These two forms of fatigue differ from one another only in degree.

The sensations of fatigue, with all they signify, are of interest to a nation confronted by food problems because it has been established that certain kinds of food will produce the same chemical changes in the human tissues that are brought about by fatigue.

Fatigue interferes with the activities of every gland of the body. Its principal effect is to destroy the capacity of muscle and nerve to perform the work natural to them. Its chief symptom is depression, and its chief effect the destruction of all those natural forces which tend to protect the body from disease.

Because fatigue is so intimately related to food folly as well as to overexertion and disease its dangers should be clearly understood.

Dr. Arthur L. Fisk has devoted many years to the study of fatigue, examining its phenomena through the tired muscle. He informs us that, inasmuch as the muscles are more accessible for investigation and experiment than are the nerves, we necessarily know more of the fatigue of the muscle than of the nerves.

"But," he says, "as the general law of biology applies to both muscle and nerve alike the processes which take place in the one doubtless occur similarly in the other."

Until recently the fatigue of muscle which results from physical exertion was thought to be a condition only of the muscle, but this is now known not to be the case.

If a healthy fresh muscle of a frog's leg is placed upon a marble slab and stimulated with electricity it will contract in the same manner as it would have done in life and health.

If these contractions are repeated in sufficiently rapid succession certain chemical changes take place within the muscle tissue. During these changes there are formed in the tissues some of the same toxic substances which are formed in a one-sided diet of refined food. These substances are lactic acid, creatine, and carbon dioxide. An exclusive diet of white bread, meat and sugar produces the same tissue change as is produced in fatigue.

When these substances are developed in the muscle of the frog's leg it resists further contraction and can then be said to be in a state of fatigue. However, if these toxic substances are removed by flushing the tissues with a weak salt solution the muscle of the frog's leg will again contract when the electrical stimulus is applied.

All these toxic products of fatigue are acid. During rest following fatigue these acids are neutralised by the alkalines of the blood and internal secretions, after which the muscle is restored to a state of freshness, strength and tone.

If these corrective alkaline substances are removed by mechanical processes from food before it is consumed the blood and other internal secretions which the body relies upon in health to counteract the poisonous effects of fatigue must necessarily be deprived of the tools with which they operate.

Even an amateur can readily appreciate the fact that to the extent to which food refinement robs the daily diet of these corrective alkaline salts the body is correspondingly handicapped in its effort to overcome the evil effects of fatigue, from which complete recovery on a refined diet is absolutely impossible.

§ 109 -- Food and Fatigue

To clearly understand the direct relationship between food and fatigue it will be well to examine the remarkable experiments of Weichardt, Ranke, Mosso and Lee.

Weichardt took living animals which had been fatigued by their own exertions, cut from them pieces of muscle tissue, and recovered from this tissue poisons which could not be recovered from healthy tissue in a state of rest.

These poisons, taken from the fatigued muscle, were injected into the body of the rested animal, which soon after began to manifest all the symptoms of natural fatigue.

This experiment proved that fatigue is produced by chemical changes of an acid character which take place in the tissues and that until these depressing acids are neutralised by the natural functions of a healthy body the poisons remain in the tissues.

Ranke, convinced that the products, lactic acid, creatine, and carbon dioxide, developed by muscle activity, were responsible for the phenomenon of fatigue, experimented on frogs' muscles, into which he introduced these substances taken from the laboratory.

He found, after injecting creatine and carbon dioxide into the muscle, that it lost its strength as well as its power to move.

After proving this he gave the name of "fatigue substances" to creatine and carbon dioxide.

Mosso, as a result of his study of fatigue, found it was due entirely to chemical changes within the muscle.

Lee describes changes which he says result in the production of three acid substances which he calls sarcolactic acid, novopotassium phosphate, and carbon dioxide.

All of these substances are acid in their reaction, which accounts for the acid reaction of a muscle in a condition of fatigue as distinguished from the reaction of a muscle in repose, which is alkaline.

Until these acid products of fatigue are neutralised by the alkalinity of the healthy blood which passes through the tissues the fatigued muscle cannot recover its strength.

The fact that the alkaline salts are removed from most of the foods served on the American dinner table has never been heeded by the medical profession as a body, although individual physicians in many parts of the country have in recent years recognised the truth and are applying it in their practice by prescribing unrefined foods in many diseases.

Fisk declares: "Fatigue is the result of chemical changes which occur within the tissues and organs of the body and which give rise to certain toxic products that act to depress these tissues or organs.

"Nerve tissue is no exception to the general biological law. Such changes occur in the nerves during activity as well as in the muscle tissue.

"Intense mental activity is capable of giving rise within the body to these profound chemical changes as shown by the frequent occurrence of a nursing mother suffering an intense fright and, subsequent to it, nursing her baby, who within three or four hours thereafter has severe convulsions.

"This also demonstrates," he says, "that the action of the fatigue poisons is not confined to the tissues in which they arise, but passes over to all the other glands and organs of the body affecting their secretions and functions.

"The constitution of the blood is altered by the absorption of these acid products of fatigue, in consequence of which its alkalinity is greatly diminished, a condition which results in serious disorders.

"Any activity on the part of a nerve or muscle that is already in a condition of fatigue results in decidedly more harm than would a heavier task done under normal conditions, so that when the body is fatigued even a small amount of extra work often produces disastrous results."

The athlete generally recognises the importance of food of the proper kind in order to enable him to recover from the fatigue of his exertions. He instinctively recognises that if he can get his blood in a healthy condition through proper dieting he will more quickly overcome the depressing effects of fatigue and thus recuperate under strain in a more rapid manner. Without knowing why, he understands fully that if he can bring about in his blood a perfectly normal alkaline condition it will have capacity for neutralising larger quantities of the acids of fatigue, thus contributing to his endurance and enabling him to outlast his opponent in a contest.

The conditioning of all boxers and athletes is based upon the training table.

Growing children, prospective mothers, nursing mothers, and bread-winners engaged in the ordinary exhausting pursuits of the day are just as dependent upon the application of these biological facts to their own physical welfare as is the boxer, but the importance of food is not recognised in the ordinary everyday walks of life.

§ 110 -- The End of Fatigue

Extreme fatigue, whether nervous or physical, produces a change in temper, causing irritability, and often overpowers the noblest qualities.

There is scarcely a man, woman or child who does not daily suffer some manifestation of irritability which, if properly understood, might be traced to its proper source and overcome.

Impoverished food, through diminishing the alkalinity of the blood and thus reducing the capacity of that fluid to neutralise the poisonous acids of fatigue, has done much to upset the happiness of the human family.

Incompatibility of temper is dragged into the divorce courts more often through the impoverished food route than through any other channel.

The fretful, irritable child which occasions so much vexation and anxiety at home is the victim of much preventable suffering only because it is reacting to the ignorance of those who have undertaken to supply its tissues with food incapable of contributing to their normal needs.

Many a highly developed mind breaks down in the midst of its unfinished labours solely because with all its intelligence it still acts in the dark as regards the physical needs of the body which sustains it.

The worn down business man crams himself with foods which no owner of a prize animal would permit in his kennel, stable, or stock farm.

Fisk enumerates the order in which the functions of the body are affected in fatigue. He says, "We first find the circulation and respiration affected, then later digestion and then the action of the kidneys. In individuals of advanced years we have to deal with tissues in a condition of fatigue or depression due to the wear and tear which they have suffered during the stress of life in years that have passed.

"The evidence of this fatigue is shown by what is usually called lowered vitality exhibited in poor circulation, deficient respiration, impaired digestion, and faulty action of the kidneys -- processes which have to do with oxidation, assimilation, and elimination. Such individuals are in a condition of chronic fatigue, depression, or acidosis."

This word "acidosis" persists throughout the literature of impoverished foods. The sailors who were stricken aboard the converted cruiser Kronprinz Wilhelm suffered from a condition of acidosis so similar to that of chronic fatigue that the symptoms of both were identical.

In their case an abundance of acid-producing foods so diminished the alkalinity of their blood that their tissues were saturated with the acids of fatigue. They lost the power of locomotion. Their blood had been robbed of alkalines to such a degree that even the slight scratches upon their hands and feet refused to heal.

Alkaline solutions quickly enabled them to neutralise these acid poisons and they promptly recovered.

Describing the effects of fatigue upon the aged, Fisk says: "They increase the depression of acidosis of the tissues that exists and this increase overpowers the system with poisons so that death results."

Foods which produce an acid reaction in the body must be consumed with foods which produce an alkaline reaction.

Foods robbed of their alkaline salts cannot contribute this alkalinity to the blood.

Blood robbed of its natural alkalinity cannot neutralise or correct the acid products of fatigue.

The tissue sweeteners are the alkaline salts found in ripe fruits, succulent vegetables and greens, milk, egg yolk, beans, peas, lentils, whole wheat, whole corn, and other whole cereals.


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