The Healthy Life Part 24

It was the slave-woman who laid her child under a bush that she might spare herself the pain of seeing it die!

One of the commonest sources of mental and moral confusion is to mistake the egotistic shrinking from the sight of suffering with the altruistic shrinking from causing it and desire to relieve it.

The so-called sensitive person is too often only sensitive to his or her own pain and, therefore, finds it difficult in the presence of another's suffering to do what is needed to relieve it.

The healer, the health-bringer, the truly sympathetic person, does not even hesitate to inflict pain when to do so means to restore health.--[EDS.]

CASTLES IN THE AIR.

_Regular readers will recognise in this wonderfully simple and suggestive article a continuation of the series previously ent.i.tled "Healthy Brains." The author of "The Children All Day Long" is an intimate disciple of one of the greatest living psychologists, and she has a message of the first importance to all who realise that true health depends as much on poise of mind as on physical fitness._--[EDS.]

Of all the occupations which imagination gives us, surely none is more popular or more delightful than the planning out of future days.

Pleasure and fame and honour, work and rest, comfort and adventure: all things take their turn in our romances.

Not all the castles are for ourselves alone. In childhood it is our school, our club, our town that is to be the centre of great events.

The young man's castle is a nest to which he hopes to bring a mate.

The mother sees the future coronet or laurel-wreath round the soft hair of her baby's head. And we all build castles for the world sometimes--at least for our own country or our own race. Sometimes we knock them down and rebuild again in rather different shape--Mr Wells has taught us what a fascinating game it is.

Sometimes, especially perhaps in little, unimportant things, our imagination does centre chiefly around our own activities. What we mean to do, what we might do, what we would like to do: there must be something else besides selfishness and waste of time in the constantly recurring thoughts.

Who does not know the charm of looking down the theatre-list of the morning paper? One may be too busy or two poor to go often to the play, but the very suggestion of all the colour and interest is pleasant. Who does not like looking over prospectuses of lectures and cla.s.ses at the beginning of the winter session? "I _should_ like to go to that course on Greek Art. Oh, it is on Mondays, then that is no good. German, elementary and conversation. How useful that would be!

Gymnasium and physical culture; how I wish I had another evening in the week to spare!"

Railway books, again, and guides and travel bills--how delightful they are! It is easy to plan out tours for one's holidays up to the age of 100. "Brittany; oh yes, I must go there one day. And Norway, that must really be my next trip." The Rockies, the cities of the East, coral islands of the Pacific--they all seem to enrich our lives by the very thought of their possibilities.

Again, who does not love a library catalogue? To go through with a pencil, noting down the names of books one wants to read is a form of castle-building by no means to be despised.

Some people get the same pleasure out of house-hunting; they see an empty house and go and get the key in order to see over it. The chances of their ever living there are practically none, but the view gives a stimulus to their inventive activity: they plan out how they would furnish the rooms and fill the empty hearths with dreams.

Is not the same thing the explanation of shop-gazing? The woman who has bought her winter coat and hat does not as a rule refrain from looking any more into shop windows till the spring; instead, she clothes herself in imagination in all the beautiful stuffs she sees displayed, and if some of the things demand ballroom, racecourse, golf links or perhaps the Alps for the background, why, so much the better, the suggestion puts, as it were, a view from the windows of her castle in the air.

A garden--a dozen square yards or reckoned in acres--is full of material for our imagination; indeed, a seedsman's catalogue or a copy of "Amateur Gardening" will often be enough to start us; long lines of greenhouses will build themselves for us, or rockeries, or wild glens with streams in them, and the world will blossom round about us.

Sometimes it is ambition that calls us, personal or professional; we get beforehand the sweet taste of power upon the tongue. It may perhaps be sometimes the rewards of work, riches and honour and so on, but more often, I think, the dreams of youth circle round the work itself. We will be of use in the world, we will find new paths and make them safe for those coming after us to walk in, we will get rid of that evil and set up a ladder towards that good; we will heal, teach, feed, amuse, uplift or cherish the other human beings round about us. We will store only for the sake of distributing; we will climb only to be better able to give a helping hand.

Well, there are some danger signals at cross-roads of our dream-way, some precautions to be observed if we would not let romance obscure and hinder us in our search after reality. But none of these "castles"

are bad in themselves. In so far as they quicken our attention power, deepen our thoughtfulness, make our activities more elastic and keep us from carelessness or sloth, they are surely all to the good as episodes in our development.

E.M. COBHAM.

THE SCIENTIFIC BASIS OF VEGETALISM.

This article, the earlier part of which appeared in the October number, is from the French of Prof. H. Labbe, the head of the _laboratoire a la Faculte de Medecine_, in Paris. It reflects a characteristic aloofness to a any considerations other than scientific or economic. But it will well repay careful study.--[EDS.]

V

Though the consumption of vegetable foods seems to offer a slight disadvantage from the point of view of alb.u.minoid matters, this is not the case touching hydro-carbonated matters and sugars. The vegetable kingdom const.i.tutes the almost exclusive source of these alimentary principles. One cannot indeed take much account of the consumption of the .5-.6 per cent, of glycogen which exists in the animal muscle partaken of under the shape of butcher's meat. There is hardly enough in this for a large eater of between 200 and 250 grammes of meat, to find in hydrocarbonated matters the 1/300 or the 1/400 of the daily ration. Hydrocarbons are necessarily borrowed from the vegetable foods. This is also the case with sugars which do not exist in the animal kingdom in appreciable quant.i.ties. It is the same thing with alcohol which is obtained only from the vegetable kingdom.

VI

As to fatty matters, animal foods, like vegetable products, are abundantly provided with them. Moreover, from the point of view of digestibility and capability of a.s.similating, one may say that there is a quasi-absolute ident.i.ty between animal and vegetable fats. The reason which would induce us to prefer either would not seem to be of a physiological nature. The economics, which we shall see further on, take this upon themselves, as the most serious reproach which can be made against the use of animal dishes is doubtless their dearness, and the reason which militates most in favour of the predominance of a vegetable diet is to a certainty its cheapness.

VII

Such are, briefly expounded and refuted, the fundamental objections which can be brought against the vegetarian diet and the "vegetalian"

customs. There exists, in fact, no serious physiological or chemical reason for not satisfying our needs solely with foods of vegetable origin. It may be interesting to note that, in reality, the most confirmed flesh eaters support their energy-producing needs mainly with vegetable products. In the mixed diet universally practised meat plays but a small part.

In meat the waste in preparation and consecutive waste at table is considerable. To really introduce 200 grammes of meat into the stomach, nearly 400 grammes must be purchased, and expensively put into use. What do these 200 grammes really bring in nutritive elements?

Meat.

200 gr. (mod. fat.) at 18% alb.u.min = 36 gr. alb.u.m., about.

" " 5% fat = 10 gr. fat, about.

----- 46 gr.

These 46 grs. const.i.tute barely the 8 per cent. of the total weight of a ration, averaged in nutritive elements, calculated as follows:--

Alb.u.min 80 Fatty matters 70 Hydrates of carbon 350

This is a very feeble proportion.

If one turns to the calorific point of view, in order to estimate the share of energy useful to the organism, we arrive at much the same conclusion. The 46 grs. of nutritive animal elements barely provide 230 thermal units which can be utilised, while the total diet which we are considering brings a power of disposal of nearly 2,350 thermal units. It is, even then, barely 10 per cent. of the total energy. The most convinced flesh eaters, those who buy 400 grs. of meat a day for their consumption, must learn, willingly or unwillingly, that the animal element enters only in an infinitesimal part into their real substance and reparation.

VIII

Beyond this very feeble nutritive help is there, then, in meat, anything else which makes the use of this article of food necessary, agreeable or particularly strengthening? It is incontestible that meat contains stimulating substances, which, as Prof. Armand Gautier has said, play the part of nerve tonics, and have perhaps a direct action on the circulation.

These special meat matters are found concentrated in the gravy. Meat gravy, in fact, beside a feeble proportion of alb.u.minoid matters, or solubly derived quant.i.ties, polypeptides, etc., in notable proportion of liberated acids, contains a certain quant.i.ty of matters, qualified by the generic name of extractives; a notable quant.i.ty of these extractive matters being creatine and creatinine, as well as substances of which the fundamental nucleus is the puric grouping.

These purins, by the name which E. Fischer attributes to them, derive from a special grouping which it would be supposed exists in a hypothetic body, but which is not known in a state of liberty, purin.

This first term gives rise to a series of bodies in lateral groups, of which the most interesting are caffeine and theobromine. Amongst these substances the one which has the maximum of oxidation is no other than uric acid. Caffeine and theobromine enjoy nervine properties and energetic vascular actions. These properties minutely studied are utilised every day for therapeutic purposes. It is probable that the other bodies of the series which are met with in the extract of meat enjoy a.n.a.logous physiological properties. These substances are ingested without discernment, often in great excess, and daily, by people who consume meat.

Amongst these latter, many would not dare to drug themselves with a centigramme of pharmaceutic caffeine, whereas they absorb each day gr.

5 and more, of its h.o.m.ologous const.i.tuents.

Therefore, in the same way as chocolate, tea and coffee, meat has a stimulating effect on the system. He who is accidentally deprived of it finds that he experiences a pa.s.sing depression. This obviously proves that by the exaggerated use of meat, one drugs and doctors oneself without discernment. However this may be, the judicious part played by meat must apparently be reduced to that of a condiment food destined to produce in a measure the whipping-up which is useful, and sometimes indispensable to the system. We cannot here discuss the expediency of action and the harmlessness of the dose of substances reputed stimulating. But one can ask oneself whether, to attain this object of stimulation, carnivorous feeding is indispensable, and if vegetarianism could not supply the need.

The reply is easy: the vegetable kingdom disposes of a variety of stimulating articles, such as tea, coffee, kola and cocoa. Through their active substances these foods are nerve tonics of the first order, less dangerous in their use than meat, because more easily a.s.similated, of far more continuous effects, less mixed with other substances, sometimes noxious, and consequently more measurable.