164 VEGETARIANS AND THEIR TEETH 



chemically, as well as in the matter of teeth) for a diet 

 consisting exclusively of vegetable substances, or else is 

 immutably assigned to one consisting exclusively of animal 

 substances. There is no a priori assumption possible 

 against the use as food by man of nutritious matter 

 derived from animal bodies properly prepared. 



So far as a priori argument has any value in such a 

 matter, it suggests that the most perfect food for any 

 animal that which supplies exactly the constituents 

 needed by the animal in exactly right quantity and 

 smallest bulk is the flesh and blood of another animal of 

 its own species. This is a startling theoretical justification 

 from the purely dietetic point of view of cannibalism. 

 It is, however, of no conclusive value ; the only method 

 which can give us conclusions of any real value in this and 

 similarly complex matters is prolonged, full, well-devised, 

 well-recorded experiment. At the same time, we may 

 just note that the favourite food of a scorpion is the juice 

 of the body of another scorpion, and that the same 

 preference for cannibalism exists in spiders, many insects, 

 fishes, and even higher animals. 



Another line of argument by which some advocates of 

 vegetarianism appeal to the popular judgment is by 

 representing flesh-food derived from animals as something 

 dirty, foul, and revolting, full of microbic germs, whilst 

 vegetable products are extolled as being clean and sweat 

 free from odour and putrescence and from the scare- 

 monger's microbes. This, I perhaps need hardly say, is a 

 gigantic illusion and misrepresentation. I came across it 

 the other day in a very unreasonable pamphlet on food by 

 the American writer, Mr. Upton Sinclair. Putrefactive 

 microbes attack vegetable foods and produce revolting 

 smells and poisons in them, just as they do in foods of 

 animal origin. It is true that on the whole more varieties 

 of vegetable food can be kept dry and ready for use by 



