562 



SCIENCE 



[N. S. Vol. XXVI. No. &69 



conditions of the experiment remain the 

 same." 



The authors compared the endurance of 

 seventeen vegetarians, six men and eleven 

 women, with that of twenty-five carnivores, 

 students of the University of Brussels. Com- 

 parisons for the right hand differed somewhat 

 from those for the left, the superiority of the 

 vegetarians being greater for the latter than 

 for the former. Comparing the two sets of 

 subjects on the basis of mechanical work, it 

 is found that the vegetarians surpassed the 

 carnivores on the average by 53 per cent. 

 Comparing the two groups on the basis of the 

 number ol contractions — or, what amounts to 

 the same thing, the length of time during 

 which the ergograph could be continuously 

 operated — it was found that the vegetarians 

 could work on the ergograph two or three times 

 as long as the carnivores before reaching the 

 exhaustion point. 



This last result corresponds to conclusions' 

 of the present writer in an experiment in 

 which forty-nine subjects, about half of whom 

 were flesh-eaters and half flesh-abstainers, 

 were compared. It was found that the flesh- 

 abstainers had more endurance, as measured 

 by gymnasium tests, than the flesh-eaters, to 

 the extent of from two to three fold. 



The Brussels investigators found also that 

 the vegetarians recuperated from fatigue far 

 more quickly than the meat-eaters, a result 

 also found in the Tale experiment. 



An interesting mathematical study of the 

 fatigue curve is made in which the equation 



is used. In this equation v represents the 

 height of the contraction at any time; t repre- 

 sents time and H, a, h, c, are constants. H is 

 the heigjit of initial or maximum contraction. 

 The authors believe that a. is a parameter meas- 

 uring the toxicity of albumenoids in their effect 

 on the muscles. The numerical value of a is 

 very small, but as it is a coefficient of the cube 

 of the time during which the experiment is 

 continued, the cumulative effects of these toxins 

 is very rapid. The parameter h is believed to 

 ' " The Influence of Flesh-eating on Endurance," 

 Yale Medical Journal, March, 1907. 



refer to the excitability of the central nervous 

 system, and c to the utilization of carbo- 

 hydrates. The authors refer to previous 

 memoirs of J. loteyko to justify these interpre- 

 tations of the coefficients. After laborious 

 computations, it is found that the average of 

 the coefficient a for the carnivores is .00305 and 

 for the vegetarians .00015. The average 

 coefficient 6 for the carnivores is .086 and for 

 the vegetarians .023. The average coefficient 

 c for the carnivores is 1.94 and for the vege- 

 tarians 1.46. The average of the constant II 

 of the carnivores was 38.7 and for the vege- 

 tarians 31.Y. 



The authors conclude by advocating a vege- 

 tarian regime as a proper system for working 

 men, and believe that its use would reduce the 

 accidents on railways and in industry which 

 come from over-fatigue, increase the produc- 

 tivity of labor, as well as have other economic 

 benefits. 



The monograph of Miles. loteyko and 

 Kipiani is especially interesting as confirming 

 the trend of many modern studies. It agrees 

 in substance with the conclusions in a popular 

 book published a year ago in England by T. 

 Eussell on "Diet and Strength." The phi- 

 losophy, however, by which these harmonious 

 results are explained by various investigators 

 is not the same. Eussell and lilies. loteyko 

 and Kipiani regard the inferior endurance of 

 meat-eaters as due to specific toxins in flesh 

 foods, and therefore are avowed vegetarians. 

 Under Professor Chittenden's theory, on the 

 other hand, the facts brought forward by 

 Miles. loteyko and Kipiani, as well as by Mr. 

 Russell and the writer, would be interpreted 

 as primarily due to the superiority of " low 

 proteid " rather than of a non-flesh diet. For 

 this and other reasons. Professor Chittenden 

 and most other modern physiologists avoid the 

 term " vegetarian " as inappropriate and mis- 

 leading. A vegetarian may, through a wrong 

 selection of his food materials, suffer from the 

 evils of high proteid, and a flesh-eater may, if 

 he consumes flesh sparingly, have the advan- 

 tages of a low-proteid diet. 



It is possible that flesh-eating, as ordinarily 

 practised, is injurious both because of ex- 



