476 MEALS MEDICINAL. 
It is to be leavened by under half an ounce of compressed yeast 
to the pound of flour. Ordinary bread contains proteid, and 
carbohydrate matters, also fat, in a very small quantity; so 
that meat and bread in combination afford the essentials of 
a healthy diet. 
The best way of preparing raw meat (a form of food which 
patients with very weak stomachs can digest more easily 
than most other sorts of nourishment) is to scrape a piece 
of tender, juicy steak with a blunt instrument, in a direction 
parallel to the course of the fibres, which are thereby separated 
out from the connective tissue including them, the same being 
left behind. The fibres form a pulp, which may be seasoned 
with celery-salt, and a little pepper, being then served either 
in a sandwich between thin slices of bread, or stirred into broth. 
Certain acids become developed in meat by hanging, which 
improve its flavour, rendering it less insipid of taste than 
when fresh. Thus the flesh of hunted animals (wherein the 
same acids become immediately created by reason of the 
extreme muscular exertion undergone straightway before death) 
is of superior flavour. Another method for producing the same 
effect artificially is by soaking the meat in vinegar and water 
for a short time before cooking it, thereby giving to fresh meat 
a better taste, and making it more tender. Nevertheless, the 
flesh of an animal which has been slaughtered for food dies only 
by degrees as to its tissues and cells, which continue for a while 
to consume the food elements with which they are still remaining 
in contact; and various toxic substances are resultant, which 
now accumulate, since no longer do the skin, lungs, and 
kidneys, or bowels operate to carry off these poisonous excre- — 
tions, whilst the dead animal contains no aerated, or purified 
blood, only the venous fluid with its retained urea, and other 
such effete matters of broken-down structures. To a varying 
extent this must be the condition of all the meat which 
comes into the market for animal food. We can imagine 
how aggravated is the evil when the carcase has been kept 
for several days, or weeks. Certain savage tribes poison 
their arrows by sticking the points into the flesh of such 
decomposing animals. “It must be admitted,” says Dr. Haig, 
‘as by no means improbable that the existence within a person's 
body, accustomed to the consumption of animal food, of semi 
organized material in excess of what is required for maintenance, 
