The perfect way in diet - A treatise advocating a return to the natural and ancient food of our race E-Book

Anna Kingsford

• Herausgeber: Anna Kingsford
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

The following treatise is a translation, revised and enlarged, of my “Thése pour le Doctorat”, which, under the title “De l’Alimentation Vegetale chez l'Homme”, I presented in the month of July, 1880, at the Faculté de Médecine of Paris on completing my medical studies and taking my degree.
The original thesis was published in Paris in the French language, and subsequently translated into German and issued with illustrative notes and other additions by Dr. A. Aderholdt. Encouraged by the success obtained by these two editions, and by the favourable notices they elicited from various foreign scientific and popular critics, I offer the present work to English readers, confident of a kindly welcome from the friends of the reform I advocate, and hopeful of a serious and intelligent hearing from those who as yet are strangers to the merits of that reform.
The French and German editions of this treatise include an Appendix, containing short notices and citations from the works of the chief exponents and exemplars of the Pythagorean system of diet. In the present volume this Appendix is suppressed in favour of a forthcoming Catena of Authorities Denunciatory or Depreciatory of the Practice of Flesh-Eating, by a Graduate of Cambridge; an excellent and ample compendium to which the reader is referred.
That I have dwelt chiefly on the aspects, physical and social, of my subject, and touched but lightly on those moral and philosophical, is not, assuredly, because I regard these last as of lesser importance, but because their abstruse and recondite nature renders them unsuitable to a work intended for general reading.
Finally, if any into whose hands this book may fall, should be inclined to think me over-enthusiastic, or to stigmatise my views as “Utopian”, I would ask him seriously to consider whether “Utopia” be not indeed within the realisation of all who can imagine and love it, and whether, without enthusiasm, any great cause was ever yet won for our race. Man is the master of the world, and may make it what he will. Into his hands it is delivered with all its mighty possibilities for good or evil, for happiness or misery. Following the monitions and devices of the sub-human, he may make of it —what indeed for some gentle and tender souls it has already become—a very hell; working with God and Nature, he may reconvert it into Paradise.
 

Leseprobe

The perfect way in diet

A treatise advocating a return to the natural and ancient food of our race

ANNA KINGSFORD

Original edition 1892 – first digital edition 2016 by Anna Ruggieri

CONTENTS

PREFACE

PROEM

THE PERFECT WAY IN LIFE

PREFACE

The following treatise is a translation, revised and enlarged, of my “Thése pour le Doctorat”, which, under the title “De l’Alimentation Vegetale chez l'Homme”, I presented in the month of July, 1880, at the Faculté de Médecine of Paris on completing my medical studies and taking my degree.

The original thesis was published in Paris in the French language, and subsequently translated into German and issued with illustrative notes and other additions by Dr. A. Aderholdt. Encouraged by the success obtained by these two editions, and by the favourable notices they elicited from various foreign scientific and popular critics, I offer the present work to English readers, confident of a kindly welcome from the friends of the reform I advocate, and hopeful of a serious and intelligent hearing from those who as yet are strangers to the merits of that reform.

The French and German editions of this treatise include an Appendix, containing short notices and citations from the works of the chief exponents and exemplars of the Pythagorean system of diet. In the present volume this Appendix is suppressed in favour of a forthcoming Catena of Authorities Denunciatory or Depreciatory of the Practice of Flesh-Eating, by a Graduate of Cambridge; an excellent and ample compendium to which the reader is referred.

That I have dwelt chiefly on the aspects, physical and social, of my subject, and touched but lightly on those moral and philosophical, is not, assuredly, because I regard these last as of lesser importance, but because their abstruse and recondite nature renders them unsuitable to a work intended for general reading.

Finally, if any into whose hands this book may fall, should be inclined to think me over-enthusiastic, or to stigmatise my views as “Utopian”, I would ask him seriously to consider whether “Utopia” be not indeed within the realisation of all who can imagine and love it, and whether, without enthusiasm, any great cause was ever yet won for our race. Man is the master of the world, and may make it what he will. Into his hands it is delivered with all its mighty possibilities for good or evil, for happiness or misery. Following the monitions and devices of the sub-human, he may make of it —what indeed for some gentle and tender souls it has already become—a very hell; working with God and Nature, he may reconvert it into Paradise.

ANNA KINGSFORD, M.D. 1881

PROEM

Tim king stood in his hall of offering,

On either hand the white-robed Brahmans ranged

Muttered their mantras, feeding still the fire

Which roared upon the midmost altar. There

From scented woods flickered bright tongues of flame,

Hissing and curling as they licked the gifts

Of ghee and spices and the Soma juice,

The joy of Indra. Round about the pile

A slow, thick, scarlet streamlet smoked and ran,

Sucked by the sand, but ever rolling down,

The blood of bleating victims. One such lay,

A spotted goat, long-horned, its head bound back

With munja grass; at its stretched throat the knife

Pressed by a priest, who murmured, This, dread gods

Of many yajnas, cometh as the crown

From Bimbastlra; take ye joy to see

The spirted blood, and pleasure in the scent

Of rich flesh roasting 'mid the fragrant flames;

Let the king's sins be laid upon this goat,

And let the fire consume them burning it,

For now I strike.'

But Buddha softly said,

' Let him not strike, great king and therewith loosed

The victim's bonds, none staying him, so great

His presence was. Then, craving leave, he spake

Of life, which all can take but none can give,

Life, which all creatures love and strive to keep,

Wonderful, dear, and pleasant unto each,

Even to the meanest; yea, a boon to all

Where pity is, for pity makes the world

Soft to the weak and noble for the strong.

Unto the dumb lips of the flock he lent

Sad, pleading words, showing how man, who prays

For mercy to the gods, is merciless,

Being as god to those; albeit all life

Is linked and kin, and what we slay have given

Meek tribute of their milk and wool, and set

Fast trust upon the hands which murder them.

Also he spake of what the holy books

Do surely teach, how that at death some sink

To bird and beast, and these rise up to man

In wanderings of the spark which grows purged flame.

So were the sacrifice new sin, if so

The fated passage of a soul be stayed.

Nor, spake he, shall one wash his spirit clean

By blood; nor gladden gods, being good, with blood

Nor bribe them, being evil; nay, nor lay

Upon the brow of innocent bound beasts

One hair's weight of that answer all must give

For all things done amiss or wrongfully,

Alone, each for himself, reckoning with that

The fixed arithmic of the universe,

Which meteth good for good and ill for ill,

Measure for measure, unto deeds, words, thoughts;

Watchful, aware, implacable, unmoved;

Making all futures fruits of all the pasts.

Thus spake he, breathing words so piteous

With such high lordliness of ruth and right,

The priests drew back their garments o'er the hands

Crimsoned with slaughter, and the king came near,

Standing with clasped palms reverencing Buddh;

While still our Lord went on, teaching how fair

This earth were if all living things be linked

In friendliness and common use of foods,

Bloodless and pure; the golden grain, bright fruits,

Sweet herbs which grow for all, the waters wan,

Sufficient drinks and meats. Which when these heard,

The might of gentleness so conquered them,

The priests themselves scattered their altar-flames

And flung away the steel of sacrifice;

And through the land next day passed a decree

Proclaimed by criers, and in this wise graved

On rock and column: Thus the king's will is:

There hath been slaughter for the sacrifice

And slaying for the meat, but henceforth none

Shall spill the blood of lift nor taste of flesh,

Seeing that knowledge grows, and life is one,

And merry cometh to the merciful.'

So ran the edict, and from those days forth

Sweet peace hath spread between all living kind,

Man and the beasts which serve him, and the birds,

On all those banks of Gunga where our Lord

Taught with his saintly pity and soft speech.

THE PERFECT WAY IN DIET

By what habits and mode of life has humanity in the past attained its highest development, and what is the method which modern science and philosophy indicate to us as that best adapted to perfect our kind?

In order to resolve this vast and important inquiry, it will be necessary, in the first place, to refer to natural history, and seek in the study of the comparative anatomy of men and other animals for information regarding the primitive habits of mankind, and the mode of living which is indicated by their exterior conformation and by the structure of their organs. In short, we must inquire whether the human race is naturally carnivorous, herbivorous, omnivorous, or frugivorous.

Without accepting definitively the theories of Lamarck, Darwin, and Haeckel, I think we may adopt, without fear of any serious objection, the classification of Linnaeus, which is generally admitted by scientists. This classification distinguishes, under the name of Primates, the highest order in the class of mammiferous animals, and at its head is placed the human family and that of the anthropoid apes. This last contains two species, one of which, from an anatomical and physiological point of view, resembles man very closely; I mean the apes of the Old World, among which we find the orang-outan (wild man), the gorilla, and the chimpanzee. The orang belongs to the tribe of the Simiadm, the gorilla and the chimpanzee to the Troglodytes.

We will examine as rapidly and shortly as possible the characters which attach these creatures to man, and those which separate them, as well as man, from certain other orders or genera. Next we shall inquire what mode of alimentation is proper to the animals most resembling the human family, and thus, we shall be enabled to judge what ought to be, consistently with natural laws, the habits and diet of the latter. We will begin our task by an examination of the superior part of the skeleton, the cranium, and the organs it contains.

The most superficial observation enables us to recognise on the one hand the resemblance which exists between the general conformation of the skull of man and that of the ape, and on the other hand the differences which establish a line of separation more or less marked between the human cranium and that belonging to other mammalia of no matter what order or species. Passing by these familiar and superficial features of morphology, we will devote ourselves to the study of those which present a more scientific and less common interest.

The noblest and most important apparatus of the animal economy is without doubt the nervous system, which, dominating the functions of all the organs, presides over the harmony of their operations, regulates the work of all other systems and tissues, repairs their lesions, maintains their integrity, and is, as it were, preserver and law-giver of the bodily kingdom. The animal in which this system, and above all, the dominant part of this system, that is to say the brain, appears to resemble the human type most closely, will therefore possess, a priori, the right to be considered the most man-like among the lower races. Moreover, it is to the perfection, more or less accentuated, of the nervous system, and in particular to that of its ganglionic centres—that is, to the more or less perfect aggregation and ccmplete composition of the parts which constitute this system—that are due principally, we might almost say exclusively, the degree of elevation of any given being in the animal scale, and the characters which separate it more or less distinctly from the vegetable kingdom. Now it is in man that we find the supreme degree of this aggregation and ganglionic development, and the animal which most closely imitates him in this respect is the orang-outan. The height of the brain in the orang is greater than in the chimpanzee, the frontal lobe is more developed, the occipital smaller, the temporal more horizontal and less flattened—characteristics which well agree with the exterior aspect of the simians. Besides, the brain convolutions, which are very rudimentary in the rodents and edentates, less simple in the carnassiers, and still less so in the ruminants and solipedes, attain their greatest development in the apes, and particularly in the orang. The disposition of the cerebral mass in the carnivorous mammals, which has been well studied by Leuret, shows only six convolutions, varying in regularity and simplicity according to the species, but remaining in all cases parallel to each other and antero-posterior in direction. These convolutions have been described by Professor Sappey under the name of constant or primitive convolutions. It is not until we reach the elephant, the lemur, and particularly the ape-group, that we find certain new convolutions, or `folds of perfectionment,' remarkable by their volume and by their perpendicular direction to the primitive convolutions. Add,' says M. Sappey, to the antero-posterior convolutions of the carnivora and other inferior mammals, two or three convolutions cutting them perpendicularly in the middle, and the disposition proper to the highest mammals, particularly man and the ape, will be realised.'

Now in the brain of the orang we not only find the antero-posterior convolutions lengthened, curved, and anastomosed after the human type, but it is also in the encephalon of the same animal that those additional convolutions or folds of perfectionment ' noticed by Professor Sappey appear the most distinctly, and offer consequently the completest analogy with the disposition of the cerebral organ in man. We are thus authorised to conclude, with Professor Mivart, that the difference between the brain of the orang and that of the human subject is one not of kind, but of degree. The writings of the late Professor Broca, whose careful studies in anthropology give special weight to his statements, confirm this opinion, and assert that the brain of the archencephalous animals—hominidae of Owen—differs so little from that of the superior gyrencephalm that the only distinctive characters observable in the latter are altogether secondary in importance. But,' says the professor, these characters are not real in their nature, and even if they were, even if the cerebral hemispheres of the apes contained neither the ancyroid cavity nor the small hippocampus of man, even if we should find their cerebrum not entirely covering the cerebellum, these differences would be but slight, almost accessory, and less important than those which we meet with among animals belonging to the same order, so that they must be held altogether insufficient for the establishment of two sub-classes.'

Having thus briefly traced the points of resemblance between the human and the simian brain, and their common divergence from the type presented by other and lower races, we pass to the examination of the buccal cavity, which ought to furnish us with valuable indications respecting the mode of life of the subject under observation.

In the anthropoid animals the mouth is disposed according to the human type. The lateral sacks, known as cheek-pouches, are absent in this species; the two excretory canals of the sub-maxillary glands (Wharton's ducts) open singly on the sides of the fraenum of the tongue; the tongue itself resembles that of man; in the orang the circumvallate papillae present the V-shaped disposition of the human type, their arrangement slightly differing in the chimpanzee and assuming the form of a T. The dental morphology and formula of the apes of the old world (catarrhines) are identical with those of man; their cuspids are, however, longer, especially in the males, and the wisdom teeth appear at an earlier age than in the human subject. The apes of the New World (platyrrhines) differ from man by the absence of one molar in each half-jaw, the place of this tooth being occupied by an extra bicuspid. The surface of the molar teeth in the human subject is characterised by the presence of an irregular ramified depression dividing it into four or five distinct tubercules. The same formation is met with in the orang, the chimpanzee, and the gorilla, as also is the superficial disposition of the enamel, which substance, in the herbivorous races, is quite otherwise distributed. Among the latter, pachydermata, ruminants (which have no incisors in the upper jaw), and rodents, the molar teeth are composed of alternate layers of dentine, enamel, and cement, which penetrate into the interior of the tooth, so that a transverse section of it, instead of presenting an homogeneous substance surrounded by a simple enamel stratum, as in man and the quadrumana, exhibits several undulating composite folds, the dentine of which, being much less durable than the enamel, wears down rapidly, and the tooth thus acquires a rough unequal surface fitted to triturate the woody substances which form part of the alimentation of these animals.

On the other hand, the carnassiers possess organs of mastication, which, according to Kfiss, are hardly properly called teeth, but rather spike-like instruments destined to tear in fragments the meat on which they feed. Their incisives, six instead of four in number in each jaw, are small, pointed, and uneven; the surface of the molar teeth exhibits the appearance of a saw, and there usually exists but one on each side, the last bicuspid or carnassial tooth being especially characteristic. This tooth, well developed in the tiger kind, is composed of three sharp strong uneven prominences, placed one behind the other and connected by jutting ridges, the anterior prominence being doubled by an accessory spine. Nothing of this sort is observable in man or in the races which stand nearest to him. By the side of the exclusively predatory mammals we place the omnivorous types, such as the Alpine bear, the North American bear (ursus arctos), the wild boar, and the hog (sus scrota, sus tibdanus, and SUS ibericus). In the bear the surface of the molars is flattened, but the incisives number six as in the true carnivora, although they are blunter and less accentuated than the corresponding teeth of the latter. The cuspids are very long and curved, and between them and the bicuspids a remarkable interval generally exists. This character of dentition resembles the carnivorous rather than the herbivorous type, and, except that the enamel is superficially placed upon the cheek teeth, has nothing in common with the human and frugivorous morphology. The incisive teeth of the wild boar and the hog are elongated, and project forward in the direction of the axe of the maxillary bone; the cuspids, particularly those of the superior jaw, assume a special character, and develop themselves in the shape of tusks; in the lower jaw these teeth projecting outwards cross the direction of the upper pair. The same interval between the cuspids and the premolars, which we noted in the bear, exists also in the boar and pig species.

Let us now pass to an examination of the zygomatic arch and temporal region in the various orders of the mammalia. This region is important to our subject, because its disposition and aspect serve to indicate the kind of food proper to the animaL It is to be remarked that in man and in the apes the zygomatic arch is comparatively frail, slightly curved so as to present an upper concave surface, and that the temporal and masseter muscles are but little developed; while in the ruminants, although the temporal muscle does not attain any important dimensions, the masseter on the contrary manifests considerable development, and, passing beyond the zygomatic arch, attaches itself to nearly the whole of the lateral surface of the superior maxillary. Moreover, the inferior jaw of these latter animals possesses a lateral movement, which is quite characteristic, and to produce it the condyles are flattened and enabled to slide sideways in their cavity of reception. Another type of condyle is that of the rodents, which exhibits an increased diameter in the antero-posterior sense, and has a glenoid cavity similarly hollowed.

But it is pre-eminently among the carnivorous quadrupeds that we meet with the most striking variation from the human type in respect to the characters of the temporal arch. The zygomatic arch in the flesh-eating animals is extremely large, and is increased in strength by its decided curve, the direction of which is the reverse of that which we have noted in the frugivora; for the concavity is inferior in position and the upper surface is strongly convex, the curve increasing with the ferocity of the species. The dimensions, as well as the peculiar form, of this bone, and its outward projection from the slain, give strength precisely in the direction most required, and augment enormously the tearing power. Besides, the masseter and temporal muscles are strongly developed, the thickness of the latter entirely filling the large space between the zygomatic process and the temporal bone; while in height it attains the upper limit of the skull. On the other hand the internal and external pterygoidian muscles are very small, because these quadrupeds possess no lateral mobility of the jaw. This movement indeed is rendered impossible by the disposition of the glenoid cavity, the great depth of which prevents any change of position other than perpendicular opening and shutting. The omnivora differ but very slightly from the carnassiers in these respects; and it is only among the apes and above all the simians and troglodytes that we find a disposition and aspect of this articulation and muscular region perfectly analogous to those observable in man.

The classification which we have thus seen indicated in regard to the brain, the buccal cavity, the teeth and the temporo-maxillary articulation, will be confirmed by a study of the digestive canal.

The human stomach is simple, consisting, eat is, of a single receptacle, as is that of all the primates. Professor Broca kindly allowed me to see is his anthropological laboratory, some drawings and anatomical preparations which [...]