FOOD FROM THE AIR 



HENRY LEFFMANN 



Delivered October 5, 191 7 



THE human being is classified as omnivorous, and this is justified not only 

 by the common experience of mankind, but by the anatomic character 

 of the digestive tract. The normal dental arch contains cutting, grinding 

 and tearing teeth, the digestive secretions are adapted to all types of food, the 

 intestinal canal is intermediate in length between those of strictly herbivorous 

 and strictly carnivorous animals respectively. 



Yet is it possible that in the earliest period man was essentially if not 

 exclusively vegetarian. Except as to eggs and milk, the securing of animal 

 food requires weapons and its preparation requires fire. The light that is 

 thrown on beginnings by the tradition recorded in Genesis tends to show that 

 pastoral life was the primitive form, that is, the rearing of animals, whose milk 

 and eggs might have served as sources of the higher proteins. The view that 

 all animals have the "living soul" the same as man, would be likely to give 

 rise to a "taboo" that would prevent the general use of flesh as food. Outside 

 of milk and eggs, primitive man may have lived upon fruits. Indeed, the idea 

 of a "Garden" as the abode of the race, in its earliest and innocent state, ex- 

 presses this view. Fruits mostly grow on perennial plants. In a balanced 

 environment, that is, one in which reptile and bird life is allowed full play so 

 that insect life may be controlled, such plants need no cultivation by human 

 beings, who may simply gather the fruits as they ripen. This, as is well known, 

 is the condition in the tropics, and inevitably leads to listlessness and indif- 

 ference to the objects and methods of Hfe, in contrast to the standards of 

 temperate regions. 



Whatever may have been the habits of human beings in the exceedingly 

 remote past in which they were being differentiated from other primates, it is 

 well known that the remains of the cave-dwellers and other early races show 

 that animal food was consumed, and such practice is wide-spread today, so that 

 with unimportant exceptions — among highly civilized people largely due to 

 dogmas as to diet or ethical reasons — normal men and women partake freely 

 of both classes of food, and there is no clinical or physiologic evidence that a 



