NATURE'S INSURGENT SON 39 



men were employed to study and experiment on this 

 matter, we should soon make an end of all infectious 

 disease. Is there any one, man or woman, who would 

 not wish to contribute to the removal from human life 

 of the suffering and uncertainty due to disease, the 

 anguish and misery caused by premature death ? Yet 

 nothing is done by those who determine the expendi- 

 ture of the revenues of great States towards dealing 

 adequately with this matter. 1 



1 As little is the question of the use and abuse of food and drink dealt 

 with, as yet, by civilized man. As in many other matters man has 

 carried into his later crowded, artificial, nature-controlling life habits 

 and tendencies derived from savage prehistoric days, so has he perpetu- 

 ated ways of feeding which are mere traditions from his early ' animal ' 

 days, and have never been seriously called in question and put to proof. 

 The persistence under new conditions of either habit or structure which 

 belonged to old conditions may be attended with great danger and diffi- 

 culty to an organism which changes, as man does, with great rapidity 

 important features in its general surroundings and mode of life. This 

 is in effect MetschnikofFs doctrine of ' disharmonies.' It is probable 

 that in very early days when a tribe of primitive men killed a mammoth, 

 they all rushed on to the dead monster and gorged as much of its flesh 

 as they could swallow (cooked or possibly uncooked). They had to 

 take in enough to last for another week or two that is to say, until 

 another large animal should be trapped and slain. Accordingly he who 

 could eat most would be strongest and best able to seize a good share 

 when the next opportunity arrived, and it naturally became considered 

 an indication of strength, vigour, and future prosperity to be capable of 

 gorging large quantities of food. By means of the phrases ' enjoying a 

 good appetite,' or ' a good trencherman,' or other such approving terms, 

 civilized society still encourages the heavy feeder. The lower classes 

 always consider a ravenous appetite to be an indication of strength and 

 future prosperity in a child. Most healthy men, and even many women, 

 in Western Europe, attack their food and swallow it without sufficient 

 mastication, and as though they did not hope to get another chance 

 of feeding for a week or two to come. Medical men have never 

 ventured to investigate seriously whether civilized man is doing best 

 for his health in behaving like a savage about his food. It is their 

 business to attend to the patient with a disordered digestion, but not to 

 experiment upon the amount of food of various kinds which the modern 

 man should swallow in order to avoid indigestion and yet supply his 



