



THE SOUTHERN PLANTER. 



729 



On the other hand the Chinaman and 

 our own pioneers, who hardly eat any other 

 flesh, are remarkably healthy and exempt 

 from scrofula — a disease we have much 

 more reason to suspect as originating long 

 ago from the hereditary taint of an un- 

 mentionable disease favored by irregular 

 living and poor diet. 



In the South, from their sleek appear- 

 ance and exemption from scrofula, you can 

 at once distinguish the bacon-fed negro. 

 These examples may suffice on that head. 

 Fat pork is not in any sense carbonic 

 acid, but hydro-carbon, a combination of 

 hydrogen and carbon. It becomes carbon- 

 ic acid and water by combining with oxy- 

 gen in the act of being burned or digest- 

 ed, which is mnch the same thing — giving 

 off during those processes large amounts 

 of heat and light. 



It is true the fat of fat pork does not 

 make blood or red flesh, though the lean 

 which is always eaten alone does. It is as 

 your article says truly, material for breath. 

 Well, that is a good deal. It is supposed 

 that if the writer's breath had stopped five 

 minutes before he took his pen, we should 

 never seen his article on fat pork. 



But it does more. All the fat that goes 

 into the stomach and thence into the blood 

 does not undergo slow burning in the 

 lungs by the process of burning, but is de- 

 posited in the body as human fat. Now a 

 certain amount of fat is so necessary for 

 the proper play of all the parts, muscles 

 included, that without if, the body, like an 

 ungreased engine, wears itself out by its 

 own friction. In consumption, the waste 

 of fat is one alarming and most dangerous 

 symptom, and the far-famed cod-liver oil 

 acts perhaps chiefly by supplying the blood 

 with fat. 



I km satisfied by experience that fat 

 pork-~-when the stomach will receive it — 

 does just as well. Moreover, few of those 

 delicate persons that have so great an aver- 

 sion to pork or other fat, ever live to see 

 40 years. They die young of consump- 

 tion. Butter, sugar, starch, vegetable oils 

 act, to some extent as animal fat, and in 

 tropical climates are used as substitutes. 



But go to the arctic regions and see the 

 refined Dr. Kane and his men devour raw 

 walrus blubber with a gusto, as we would 

 take a dish of ice cream, and you will con- 

 clude that "fat pork," particularly in our 

 arctic winters, is not so bad an institution. 



We could not live on fat pork alone — 

 nor on sugar and starch — though we could 

 on bread. Bread, the staff of life, con- 

 tains the materials both for breathing and 

 making blood and red flesh (muscle) in a 

 supereminent degree, greater even than 

 lean beef or any other single article of 

 food, and this, or some substitute, such as 

 beans, peas, potatoes, etc. is always eaten 

 with fat pork, so that there is a sufficient 

 supply of blood and flesh-making material. 

 However, excess is bad, and the fat pork 

 must not constitute the bulk of a meal. 



Chemical analysis is a poor substitute 

 for the observation of facts in the living 

 body, nor can we even base very much on 

 experiments made on Mr. Martin, the man 

 with the hole in his stomach, by which 

 food can be introduced and digestion ob- 

 served, for that is not nature's way of get- 

 ting it there, and a stomach with such an 

 unnatural opening is much like a leaky 

 dinner pot with a hole in the bottom stuff- 

 ed with a rag. Extended experience alone 

 can settle such a question. 



The Greeks and Romans esteem pork as 

 a luxury, and a most wholesome diet ; 

 their athletic and gladiators (prize-fight- 

 ers) were fed on pork, our own Saxon 

 (Teutonic Scandinavian) ancestors esteem- 

 ed it so highly that they, even in their 

 heaven, provided a great hog with golden 

 bristles, called Gulliborstli, of whose ba- 

 con the heroes of Walhalla dined every 

 day, when at night the picked bones again 

 united and became covered with a fresh 

 supply of fat pork. In this estimate of the 

 hog, the mass of majikind, not of the 

 Shemite race, (Jew r s, Turks, Arabs, etc.,) 

 who follow Moses' law, that had spiritual 

 and representative meaning, have, in all 

 ages, agreed, and will agree, as long as 

 man has canine teeth, and lives by draw- 

 ing his breath. Whenever the Scientific 

 American or Prof. Liebig will discover a 

 new process of living, without breathing, 

 we maybe guided by their opinion; till 

 then, I opine, " good corn-fed (and no oth- 

 er is good) pork" will rule the roast, of 

 which themselves they will not be slow to 

 partake. 



My remarks are, of course, only appli- 

 cable to men, women and children, with 

 comparatively healthy stomachs, who have 

 sufficient exercise, with pure air and pure 

 water. Yours, with respect, 



John G. F. Holston, A.M., M.D. 



