As a prelude, however, to an examination of this statement let us first carefully consider seriatim the reasons advanced for the superiority of vegetarianism. Many of these reasons are quite fantastical and could with equal cogency be urged in favour of a mixed diet. Vegetarians arrogate to themselves the statement that their food is pure and natural, tacitly assuming, if not openly declaring, that flesh-foods are always impure and unnatural. But one of their own number has recently launched forth into invective on this question, asserting that "there are no natural foods available for consumption in such measure as to be the basis of any sane dietary suited to the needs of civilised man, and it is to be hoped therefore that a more correct phraseology will soon be adopted in the classification of those foods to which this expression has hitherto been held to refer."

As many as thirty-nine reasons have been advanced in favour of vegetarianism, i.e., translating the term in its widest significance of adopting the practice of flesh-abstinence. Quite thirty of them could with equal assurance be employed in support of a mixed diet or of any diet of which simplicity was the characteristic feature. We shall now in some detail make a careful inquiry into those which are actually conformable to reason.

(1) Animals are liable to disease which even the most rigid inspection may fail to discover, and as this inspection is of the most perfunctory character, mixed feeders are liable to consume diseased flesh, and in this way have disease communicated to them. Whatever may be said about America, and much of what was written was melodramatic and sensational in the extreme, it is unfortunately quite fair to say that the inspection to which all carcasses intended for human consumption are submitted in this country is not rigid, real, and efficient. Foreign meat and home-killed meat, so far as it refers to the large cities, are under perfect supervision, but it is quite well known that animals may be killed in villages and many small towns without any official inspection. When it is known that the flesh thus distributed contributes quite 25 per cent. of the total quantity condemned, it reveals a weak spot in our public health methods. But I am pretty certain that the production of disease amongst those who consume the flesh of diseased animals is by no means inevitable. No one would urge it as advisable, but a sufficient number of cases are on record to demonstrate the fact that not only eating the flesh of animals which have died from disease, but actually eating diseased flesh, is not necessarily risky to health. I know that "braxy" was considered a delicacy in Scotland, and I never knew of cases of illness actual or remote to arise therefrom; and I am informed that in Bengal animals dying from epidemic disease are regularly eaten without apparently any illness originating. Two diseases are specially singled out as being eminently conveyed by diseased flesh, but the selection is particularly unfortunate, as there is not a single vestige of evidence that either tubercle or cancer is more prevalent amongst mixed feeders than amongst vegetarians. There is no proof, indeed, that tubercle can be conveyed by eating the flesh of tuberculous animals, and it is asserted that "knackers," a class of people very liable to the consumption of tuberculous meat, suffer less from tuberculosis than the general population.

On the other hand it is absolutely certain that tubercle can be conveyed by drinking milk, and as this nutriment is now included amongst the items allowed to fleshless feeders, the argument is so much the more unconvincing. An interesting statement in this connection is that made by a member of the State Board of Agriculture of the State of Colorado, U.S.A., to the effect that 40 per cent. of the hogs killed in certain parts of that State are found to be infected with tuberculosis, which is conveyed to them by skimmed milk. This milk is their chief food, and is left over after creaming by the centrifugal process. He also stated that in Wisconsin the milk routes throughout the State can be traced by the tuberculosis in hogs.

The statement that cancer is much more prevalent amongst meat-eaters than amongst vegetarians is equally fallacious, for "cancer occurs in all the vertebrates, except the reptiles (almost exclusively meat-eaters), and is found in mammals tame and wild, in amphibia, in fresh-water fish, and in sea-water fish in a state of nature. The reports of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund state that the following figures represent the classification of the natives of India who die from the disease as regards their dietetic habits: 146 vegetarians, 137 flesh-eaters, 222 on a mixed diet."

But the argument could be easily turned against the vegetarians with the assertion that more diseases are probably disseminated by the use of vegetable food than by animal food. The huge epidemics of ergotism and lathyrism from the use of rye and millet respectively, the prevalence of beri-beri from the use of uncured rice, the probable dependence of pellagra on diseased maize, all testify to this fact, although it would be quite fair for the vegetarian to retort that these diseases cannot be attributed to any condition which is essentially or inseparably connected with cereals or vegetable food-stuffs, whereas the evil consequences which they ascribe to flesh-eating are effects that cannot be separated from the practice of using flesh as a staple article of food. As, however there is no general agreement on, if indeed any evidence of, their statements that excessive protein, the introduction of uric acid and other waste materials in the body, the putrefaction of undigested remnants of animal protein in the colon, are the causes of disease, unless amongst those who can only be described as gross feeders, the retort is hardly appropriate, and it is always well to realise that most pathogenic organisms belong to the vegetable kingdom.

Nor is it certain that flesh-abstainers are any less liable to disease than meat-eaters, even although they start with the enormous advantage that as a body they pay particular attention to the observance of the general laws of health. This is a problem not easily solved; but in my own experience I can vouch for the fact that they are no less liable to "colds" in the head - despite many assertions to the contrary - than meat-eaters. I do not, however, attach much importance to this fact, as I believe open-air life, moderation in diet, and careful intra-nasal hygiene are more essential factors in escaping nasal catarrh than the question of the kind of protein indulged in. Then it may be surprising for me to asseverate that the most inveterate cases of constipation I have ever known have been amongst vegetarians. This, indeed, is such a great difficulty with those who live on the wholly artificial fleshless foods, that special precautions in the way of eating slabs of compressed agar-agar at each meal require to be observed in order to obviate it in many cases. The most severe case of choleraic diarrhoea I have ever treated was in a vegetarian of many years' standing, and I have seen severe and persistent sciatica, pneumonia, and most of the ordinary everyday ailments in the persons of bigoted vegetarians.

I am bound to admit that recourse to a fleshless diet is of great value in many diseases - as, e.g., nocturnal incontinence of urine or an irritable bladder, because of the diminished acidity of the urine; but it is notable that since the Japanese have begun to eat more animal food, beri-beri is becoming daily less rampant in their midst. It may be asserted, without much fear of contradiction, that cooking practically sterilises animal food and takes away all possible chance of the conveyance of disease thereby. I do not mean that all the microbes in a joint of meat are -exterminated in the process of cooking, for I am well aware that the interior of a joint cannot be raised beyond 180° F.; but there is no doubt that alterations take place during cooking which remove any risks of disease arising from its ingestion, and likewise create in it a degree of sapidity which is a valuable peptogenic quality. The characteristics of diseased meat are so well known that it is almost impossible for it to get near the dinner-table.