Diet for women / by Cecil Webb-Johnson.

  • Webb-Johnson, Cecil, 1879-1930.
Date:
1922
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Diet for women / by Cecil Webb-Johnson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    22/200 page 22
    this subject, the poet Shelley wrote : “ There is no disease, bodily or mental, which an adoption of a vegetable diet and pure water has not in- fallibly mitigated, whenever the experiment has been fairly tried. ” It is true that a meat diet is more stimulating than a vegetable one, but the fact must not be overlooked that stimulation and nutrition invariably exist in inverse ratio and that one stimulant craves another. Hence great eaters of meat have a predisposition towards alcohol. That meat has very little nutritive value has been proved by laboratory tests. The highest- priced meat obtainable has only 30 per cent, food- value, divided as follows : Proteids, 20 per cent.; fat, 10 per cent. The other 70 per cent, is water. People feel a sense of well-being after a meal of meat; but that is due to its stimulating effect; and it may be compared to the exhilaration pro- duced by drinking a half-bottle of good red wine or a whisky-and-soda. Pavlov, the eminent Russian physiologist, declared that meat creates three times as much putrefaction in the digestive tract as other kinds of food, and gives the liver three times as much work to do. A meat-eater’s heart beats ten times more in a minute than a vegetarian’s, and this means 14,400 more beats a day. Meat, alcohol and condiments stimulate the animal passions, and in many cases convert a human being into a brute. Excessive indulgence in these is often the cause of serious crime. The old idea that athletes training for great feats of
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3