VEGETARIANISM 489 



attempts to give vegetarianism a dynamic basis seem to be 

 misplaced. 17 Albertoni and Eossi 18 have conducted ex- 

 haustive metabolic investigations upon Italian country peo- 

 ple from the Abruzzi, who (at a food-cost of about fifteen 

 centimes a day for each) live their whole lives upon vegetable 

 food, eating perhaps a little pork three or four times a year. 

 The Italian investigators were able to satisfy themselves 

 that this mode of living has an unfavorable influence upon 

 development, and that the addition of meat results in an 

 improvement in the general health, in the utilization of the 

 food, improvement in weight and strength, and raising the 

 haemoglobin. It is, of course, impossible to exclude the 

 chance that a corresponding improvement of the food of 

 strictly vegetable type might perhaps exert a similarly 

 favorable effect. 



The observations made by the American physiologist, 

 Slonaker, 19 seem of even greater importance. This investi- 

 gator separated a number of young rats of the same age into 

 two groups and reared them under the same conditions, with 

 this difference, that those of one group were fed exclusively 

 upon vegetables, those of the other upon the same materials 

 with the addition of meat. As a result it appeared that the 

 growth of the vegetarian animals was decidedly retarded, the 

 animals were weakly and much more apathetic than their 

 omnivorous comrades ; they became senile much earlier, and 

 their average length of life was only about half that of the 

 second group. Collectively the omnivorous rats lived longer 

 than even those individuals of the other group which at- 

 tained the greatest age. These results are of such a char- 

 acter that the experience gained upon rats may be directly 

 applied, if we wish to protect man from such effects, to 

 human beings. 



17 M. Bircher-Benner, Grundziige der Ernahrungstherapie, 3d ed., Berlin, 

 0. Salle, 1909; cf. references of N. Zuntz, Biochem. Centralbl., 8, No. 2178, 1909. 



18 P. Albertoni and Rossi (Bologne), Arch. f. exper. Pathol., Schmiedeberg 

 Festschr., 29, 1908, and 64, 439, 1911. 



18 J. R. Slonaker, Stanford University Publications, 1912. 



