containing pernicious germs or poisons, whether animal or vegetable, is unfit to be eaten. It is not to be supposed that anyone will defend the eating of such food, so that we are justified in assuming that those who defend flesh-eating believe flesh to be free from such germs and poisons; therefore let the following be noted. It is affirmed that 50 per cent. of the bovine and other animals that are slaughtered for human food are affected with Tuberculosis, or some of the following diseases: Cancer, Anthrax, Pleuro-Pneumonia, Swine-Fever, Sheep Scab, Foot and Mouth Disease, etc., etc., and that to exclude all suspected or actually diseased carcasses would be practically to leave the market without a supply. One has only to read the literature dealing with this subject to be convinced that the meat-eating public must consume a large amount of highly poisonous substances. That these poisons may communicate disease to the person eating them has been amply proved. Cooking does not necessarily destroy all germs, for the temperature at the interior of a large joint is below that necessary to destroy the bacilli there present.

Although the remark is irrelevant to the subject in hand, one is tempted to point out that, quite apart from the question of hygiene, the idea of eating flesh containing sores and wounds, bruises and pus-polluted tissues, is altogether repulsive to the imagination.

Let it be supposed, however, that meat can be, and from the meat-eater's point of view, should be and will be under proper conditions, uncontaminated, there yet remains the question whether such food is physiologically necessary to man. Let us first consider what kind of food is best suited to man's natural constitution.

II

PHYSICAL CONSIDERATIONS

There are many eminent scientists who have given it as their opinion that anatomically and physiologically man is to be classed as a frugivorous animal. There are lacking in man all the characteristics that distinguish the prominent organs of the carnivora, while he possesses a most striking resemblance to the fruit-eating apes. Dr. Kingsford writes: 'M. Pouchet observes that all the details of the digestive apparatus in man, as well as his dentition, constitute "so many proofs of his frugivorous origin"—an opinion shared by Professor Owen, who remarks that the anthropoids and all the quadrumana derive their alimentation from fruits, grains, and other succulent and nutritive vegetable substances, and that the strict analogy which exists between the structure of these animals and that of man clearly demonstrates his frugivorous nature. This view is also taken by Cuvier, Linnæus, Professor Lawrence, Charles Bell, Gassendi, Flourens, and a great number of other eminent writers.' (see The Perfect Way in Diet.)

Linnæus is quoted by John Smith in Fruits and Farinacea as speaking of fruit as follows: 'This species of food is that which is most suitable to man: which is evidenced by the series of quadrupeds, analogy, wild men, apes, the structure of the mouth, of the stomach, and the hands.'

Sir Ray Lancaster, K.C.B., F.R.S., in an article in The Daily Telegraph, December, 1909, wrote: 'It is very generally asserted by those who advocate a purely vegetable diet that man's teeth are of the shape and pattern which we find in the fruit-eating, or in the root-eating, animals allied to him. This is true.... It is quite clear that man's cheek teeth do not enable him to cut lumps of meat and bone from raw carcasses and swallow them whole. They are broad, square-surfaced teeth with four or fewer low rounded tubercles to crush soft food, as are those of monkeys. And there can be no doubt that man fed originally like monkeys, on easily crushed fruits, nuts, and roots.'

With regard to man's original non-carnivorous nature and omnivorism, it is sometimes said that though man's system may not thrive on a raw flesh diet, yet he can assimilate cooked flesh and his system is well adapted to digest it. The answer to this is that were it demonstrable, and it is not, that cooked flesh is as easily digested and contains as much nutriment as grains and nuts, this does not prove it to be suitable for human food; for man (leaving out of consideration the fact that the eating of diseased animal flesh can communicate disease), since he was originally formed by Nature to subsist exclusively on the products of the vegetable kingdom, cannot depart from Nature's plan without incurring penalty of some sort—unless, indeed, his natural original constitution has changed; but it has not changed. The most learned and world-renowned scientists affirm man's present anatomical and physiological structure to be that of a frugivore. Disguising an unnatural food by cooking it may make that food more assimilable, but it by no means follows that such a food is suitable, let alone harmless, as human food. That it is harmful, not only to man's physical health, but to his mental and moral health, this book endeavours to demonstrate.

With regard to the fact that man has not changed constitutionally from his original frugivorous nature Dr. Haig writes as follows: 'If man imagines that a few centuries, or even a few hundred centuries, of meat-eating in defiance of Nature have endowed him with any new powers, except perhaps, that of bearing the resulting disease and degradation with an ignorance and apathy which are appalling, he deceives himself; for the record of the teeth shows that human structure has remained unaltered over vast periods of time.'

According to Dr. Haig, human metabolism (the process by which food is converted into living tissue) differs widely from that of the carnivora. The carnivore is provided with the means to dispose of such poisonous salts as are contained in and are produced by the ingestion of animal flesh, while the human system is not so provided. In the human body these poisons are not held in solution, but tend to form deposits and consequently are the cause of diseases of the arthritic group, conspicuously rheumatism.

There is sometimes some misconception as regards the distinction between a frugivorous and herbivorous diet. The natural diet of man consists of fruits, farinacea, perhaps certain roots, and the more esculent vegetables, and is commonly known as vegetarian, or fruitarian (frugivorous), but man's digestive organs by no means allow him to eat grass as the herbivora—the horse, ox, sheep, etc.—although he is much more nearly allied to these animals than to the carnivora.

We are forced to conclude, in the face of all the available evidence, that the natural constitution of man closely resembles that of fruit-eating animals, and widely differs from that of flesh-eating animals, and that from analogy it is only reasonable to suppose that the fruitarian, or vegetarian, as it is commonly called, is the diet best suited to man. This conclusion has been arrived at by many distinguished men of science, among whom are the above mentioned. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and to prove that the vegetarian is the most hygienic diet, we must examine the physical conditions of those nations and individuals who have lived, and do live, upon this diet.

It might be mentioned, parenthetically, that among animals, the herbivora are as strong physically as any species of carnivora. The most laborious work of the world is performed by oxen, horses, mules, camels, elephants, all vegetable-feeding animals. What animal possesses the enormous strength of the herbivorous rhinoceros, who, travellers relate, uproots trees and grinds whole trunks to powder? Again, the