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SCIENTIFIC NEAVS. 



[Feb. 24, 188S. 



We cannot help urging that the value placed upon 

 Latin is extravagant. " Optional " mathematics also 

 comes off too well, for in pronouncing any subject op- 

 tional we admit its secondary importance. If this scheme 

 is brought into use we agree with Nature in thinking that 

 it will not be worth while for students even of marked 

 scientific ability to take up science. Those who do so 

 will, other things being equal, either fail or come out 

 lower in the list than those who rely upon their attain- 

 ments in languages. Yet who can deny that for an 

 artillery officer, and still more for an engineer, physics and 

 chemistry are likely to be of more value than Latin ? 

 Judging from the class of minds which these regulations 

 will select, it will soon be quite erroneous to speak of the 

 " scientific branches of the service." 



SCIENTIFIC TABLE TALK. 



By W. Mattieu Williams, F.R.A.S., F.C.S. 



OUR vegetarian friends are very earnest, very 

 enthusiastic, and have made great progress of late. 

 In London alone, above a dozen vegetarian restaurants 

 have been established and are flourishing. My own view 

 of the subject is that our present practice of using the 

 digestive and nutrient apparatus of sheep, oxen, etc., 

 for the preparation of our food is merely a transitory 

 barbarism that will be ultimately superseded when the 

 chemistry of cookery is sufficientl}^ understood and 

 applied to enable us to prepare the constituents of the 

 vegetable kingdom, so that they may be as easily digested 

 as the prepared grass that we call beef and mutton. I 

 expressed and amplified this in a chapter devoted to the 

 subject in " The Chemistry of Cookery," but since that 

 was published, have given further attention to the sub- 

 ject, and have something further to communicate re- 

 specting it, which finds an appropriate place in Table 

 Talk as it is a fable subject. 



In the first place, I have learned that some who have 

 tried total abstinence from flesh food have found them- 

 selves enjoying much better health in consequence, and 

 that others who have tried the experiment quite as fairly 

 have suffered considerably, displaying decided symptoms 

 of insufficient nutrition, have lost weight, have grown pale 

 and weak {ancemia is the technical name of their trouble), 

 and have recovered on returning to a flesh diet. 



What is the cause of this difference ? 



To answer this question philosophically and practi- 

 cally, we must learn what is the difference between the 

 work that has to be done in assimilating animal food, 

 and that demanded for the assimilation of vegetable 

 food. That there is a difference is obvious. The con- 

 version of bread into flesh must be a somewhat different 

 process from the conversion of flesh into flesh. 



The nature of this difference may be directly studied 

 by comparing the digestive apparatus of the pure 

 carnivora with that of herbivorous animals, i.e.^ taking 

 the extremes, for nobody supposes that we belong to either 

 class. 



Without going into details that would carry me beyond 

 my limits, I may sum up the difference in general terms, as 

 mainly consisting in the degree of insalivation. The carni- 

 vora bolt their food ; some have tearing teeth, that simply 

 cut up the flesh into fragments of swallowable size; others 



have no teeth properly so-called (fishes, reptiles, etc.), 

 but swallow their prey whole, and even alive, the organs 

 representing teeth being merely spines set backwards to 

 prevent the struggling morsel from wriggling out of the 

 mouth. Their salivary glands are but rudimentary. 



The ruminating herbivora, on the other hand,, 

 masticate most elaborately ; they first crop and 

 slightly moisten the grass with saliva, then pass it 

 into stomach number one, where it remains soaking in 

 salivary secretion, then it passes to stomach number two, 

 which forces it back into the mouth, where it is rechewed 

 and further mixed with abundance of saliva, then it 

 descends to stomach number three, and from thence into 

 a stomach like our own. Even after this the food 

 receives a further amount of what closely resembles 

 saliva, viz., the pancreatic juice, and still further on it is- 

 continuously supplied with a similar secretion, the 

 intestinal juice, the intestines of these creatures being 

 very long and affording a proportionately large supply. 



Graminivorous animals masticate most elaborately,, 

 with very large supplies of saliva, as shown by the froth 

 of a horse's mouth. 



We are intermediate ; we do not tear raw flesh and 

 bolt it at once in its moist and slimy state ; nor do we- 

 (excepting oysters) swallow living animals whole. We 

 do not chew the cud nor masticate oats, wheat, barley, or 

 other whole grain, though I have heard of some extreme 

 vegetarians trj'ing to do this. 



If we now examine the difference between animal and 

 vegetable food and the properties of saliva we shall be 

 able to solve the enigma. 



Haller says, " Dimidium corporis htimana gluten est," 

 one-half of the human body is gelatine. The same is- 

 the case with the bodies of the animals we eat, gelatin 

 being the material of which the general framework of 

 the body is composed. Not so with vegetables ; their 

 famework is made of cellulose (vegetable fibre), and next 

 to cellulose the most abundant constituent is starch, 

 which has the same chemical composition as cellulose. 



Both of these are insoluble in water, and neither can 

 be digested at all until converted into something else that 

 is soluble, that something else being dextrin (a substance 

 closely resembling gum arable, and commonly substituted 

 for it) or a sugar. The conversion of starch into dextrin 

 and sugar is the chief business of the saliva. If a purely 

 carnivorous and untrained animal is forced to eat bread,, 

 nearly all the starch, which is the largest constituent of 

 bread, passes through the animal and leaves it as starch, 

 contributing little or nothing to its nutrition. 



This conversion of the starch is effected by a constituent 

 of the saliva and of the pancreatic and intestinal juices, 

 to which the name of animal diastase has been given. It 

 appears to be identical with the vegetable diastase which 

 exists in malt, and may be extracted from it. It is formed 

 during the germination of all seeds for the purpose of 

 supplying food to the baby plant, which, like ourselves,, 

 can assimilate soluble dextrin or sugar, but not unaltered 

 starch. 



Upon these facts I build a theory, in explanation of 

 the curious differences of the effect of vegetarian diet 

 described above. It is that the efficiency of the salivary 

 glands, the pancreas and the intestinal glands, varies in 

 different individuals, that those who are well supphed 

 with their secretions take at once to a diet mainly 

 farinaceous, and do so with comfort and advantage, while 

 others in whom these organs are ill-developed or sluggish 

 in action, more or less resemble the trntraincd carni.vora 



