STAMINA. 455 



scrofula and other forms of tuberculosis began to prevail among them, 

 and have attained a degree of prevalence even greater than among the 

 poorest people in Ireland, where the staple food is of the same kind, 

 but beneficially supplemented to a considerable extent by the use of 

 buttermilk. 



Moreover, I have observed among people in the tropics, as well as 

 in temperate latitudes, that there is a marked difference in the health 

 of persons whose chief food is farinaceous, between those who but 

 rarely eat anything else and are particularly feeble, lymphatic and 

 scrofulous, and those who eat butter or oil with their rice and similar 

 food, or supplement it with sardines in oil, or oil-dressed salads. 



Eecurring to what I have remarked on the superiority of meat that 

 retain the blood as well as the fat, every epicure knows, and every 

 physician ought to know, that the meat of animals of every kind so 

 killed as to retain the blood is more delicious than that of animals 

 otherwise killed. It is also more digestible and more nutritious. All 

 fresh meat is more or less acid, and that from which the blood has 

 been drained requires to be kept until alkalinity is induced by in- 

 cipient decomposition before it becomes tender and digestible. On the 

 contrary, that which retains the blood only requires thorough cooling 

 before it is ready for cooking and is tender and digestible from the 

 outset, because the alkalinity of the blood speedily acts upon and 

 neutralizes the acid. Hence, the meat of the buffalo, as it used to be 

 killed and prepared by the North American Indians; the jerked beef 

 of the Gauchos; the beef of cattle that have been knocked in the head, 

 or preferably, by dividing the spinal marrow in the neck, as now 

 practised in the abattoirs of Chicago (if it is not afterward drained 

 of its blood), is greatly superior to that which is prepared after the 

 method of the Jews. Besides, the draining or soaking away of the 

 blood from meat impairs its nutritive value. The blood is essentially 

 of the same composition as the flesh, but besides, it holds in solution 

 phosphates of soda, salts of potash, iron and sulphates; all nutritives 

 of vital importance to the human economy. But there is no method 

 of slaughtering animals that entirely divests the flesh of blood, hence 

 to attempt to prohibit eating it, to be effective, should prohibit the 

 eating of meat altogether. 



Relative exemption from tuberculosis, under all circumstances, is, 

 according to my observation, due to the generous use and potentiality 

 of fat food. My conclusion in this regard is fortified by many years' 

 observation and study of the liability to consumption of people collect- 

 ively, families and individuals, more or less proportional to their 

 abstinence from fat foods. The most prominent example, of which I 

 have never lost sight from youth up, is the negro race in America. I 

 began my professional life among them when they were slaves and 



