178 



HITCHCOCK'S ANATOMY 



clusively upon vegetable or animal diet. An answer comes 

 to us from both experience and chemistry. For while on the 

 one hand hundreds of examples are adduced, as showing that 

 some men have lived to a green old age in solid health, who 

 have entirely refrained from animal diet, and many others 

 who probably would have shortened their lives a score of 

 years by the use of animal food, have prolonged it by adopt- 

 ing a vegetable regimen, an equal number of cases can be 

 mentioned to show that a mixed diet has promoted equally 

 long and healthy lives. The geographical distribution of man, 

 as well as the manner of life, also furnishes valuable evidence 

 in this case. Travelers who have visited the polar regions, and 

 pre-eminently Dr. Kane, give us undoubted testimony of the 

 necessity of eating meat and animal fat to keep the body in 

 health : since the low temperature not only requires a greater 

 amount of combustive material, but this greater energy of 

 respiration produces a more rapid waste of all the tissues of 

 the body, requiring a more abundant supply of azotised and 

 non-azotised material to supply the deficiency. And on the 

 other hand experience shows that in tropical climates stimu- 

 lating food and drink should be avoided, because the high 

 temperature of the atmosphere depresses vital energy, and 

 consequently less material for supporting animal heat is re- 

 quired with a corresponding decrease in the waste of the 

 body. 



324. Example of the Esquimaux. — As examples of these 

 principles one traveler among the Esquimaux relates that these 

 people relish very heartily tallow candles as a dessert for din- 

 ner. Another states that he has seen the Greenlanders eat 

 from twenty to thirty pounds of blubber, or whale-fat, at one 

 meal. This, however, was a sufficiency of food to them for 

 two or three days. 



Give the testimony of experience. Give the argument derived from difference in 

 climate. What kind of food is necessary to support life in polar, and what in tropical 

 countries ? 324. State luxurious articles of diet among Esquimaux and Greenlanders. 

 How much will a Greenlander sometimes eat? 



