1876.] The Great Dietetic Reform. 23 
Let us now proceed to the considerations which indicate 
that a mixed diet is more beneficial to man in a physical 
point of view than an exclusively vegetable regimen. No 
vegetarian nation has ever made any considerable figure in 
the world. Those, on the contrary, which have been fore- 
most in civilisation, and exercised the greatest influence, 
have been semi-carnivorous.* Now if animal food were 
unfavourable to health, vigour, longevity, and rapid increase 
of population, the very contrary results might be expedted. 
We should see the flesh-eating nations decay spontaneously, 
or at all events be easily overthrown, whenever they came 
in collision with vegetarian races. But of such events his- 
tory gives us no instance. Further, the littoral populations 
of Western and Northern Europe have always been, to a 
great extent, fish-eaters ; yet they have been eminently 
hardy and vigorous, and remarkable for longevity. The 
women of the fishing-villages are often possessed of mascu- 
line strength and endurance. Can these fadts be easily 
reconciled with the notion that animal food is injurious or 
debilitating ? In modern England the upper classes — and 
especially the territorial aristocracy — appear more long-lived 
than the lower orders ; yet they are assuredly not vegetarian 
in their diet. Again, the trainers of athletes — men certainly 
not given to forming theories, but guided simply by the 
results of experience — always insist upon the use of a mainly 
animal regimen as a preparation for any display of unusual 
strength or endurance. They have found that fruits, roots, 
and the like, do not give the support needed by the pedestrian, 
the race-runner, the oarsman, swimmer, or wrestler. In 
like manner our medical authorities, when strength is de- 
clining, find that it is best kept up by animal matters, such 
as fresh broiled meat, extractum carnis, cod-liver oil, &c. 
Taking our stand on such fadts we may challenge the 
vegetarian advocate to point out in what manner, or from 
what reason, animal food should be less salutary than a 
vegetable diet. What hurtful matter does it contain ? It 
seems, indeed, to be pre-eminently adapted for the food of 
the highest-known form of animal life. We see the vege- 
table world collecting from inorganic matter, and from the 
decomposing debris of former life, certain principles, and 
elaborating them to a certain extent. The plant then be- 
comes the nourishment of animals, and in their system the 
* It is remarkable that our “ six-footed rivals,” the ants, — the only creatures 
who at all approach us in civilisation, — are, like ourselves, omnivorous. The 
animal restricted to one class of food must find itself placed at a disadvantage 
in the struggle for existence. 
