The Hydropathic Encyclopedia (1851)

AUTHOR: Trall, Russell Thacher

KEYWORDS: environmentalism, eugenics, food, hydropathy, land usage, race, sexuality, Temperance

Graham, Sylvester. Science of Human Life

SUMMARY (Bryn Skibo, edited Deborah Madsen)

Trall offers what he considers to be scientific evidence in support of a veg*n diet, which he shows to be more nutritious and less harmful than the consumption of animal products. In the section entitled "Hygienic Agencies and the Preservation of Health," Trall presents the chemical constituents of the human body, which in turn determine the nutritious properties of food. Taking “nitrogen” as a benchmark, he observes that “those aliments which contain the largest proportion of nitrogen” are in reality not the most nutritious since “flesh-meat contains fifteen per cent of nitrogen, while wheat, rye, oats, barley, corn, rice, peas, beans, and lentils contain only from two to five per cent.; yet each of these articles is more nutritious than flesh.” From there, he infers the following:

The truth seems to be that an alimentary substance is more or less nutritious, not according to the presence or absence of nitrogen, or any other single constituent, but according to the constitutional relation of the whole substance, as compounded by the arrangement of all its constituent elements. The most wholesome aliment and the most deadly poison may be composed of the same chemical elements, the only difference being in the proportions in which their constituents are combined (322).

This is followed by a lengthy and detailed catalogue of the various chemical elements that an animal organism needs to live, and the foods which contain them, divided in two categories: “proximate elements of food” (e.g. water, gum, sugar, starch, fat, etc.) and “aliments, or foods proper.” Trall makes a distinction between herbivorous or graminivorous animals. “The best animal food is, beyond all peradventure, that derived from the herbivora — beef, mutton, etc. Those animals which derive their nourishment directly from the vegetable kingdom will certainly afford a purer and more wholesome aliment than animals who subsist on other animals — the carnivora” (340). Similar rules apply when it comes to the characteristics of the animal (age, physical condition, how they were slaughtered) as well as the parts that are selected and the way in which they are prepared. Trall repeats that “the vegetable kingdom affords the purest aliments, as well as the greatest variety of alimentary principles” (350). He challenges the assumption that meat is more nourishing than cereals by pointing out that vegetarians eat less but are able to perform the same kind of physical tasks, e.g. in India or China (351-352). This section consists mostly of a presentation of the most common cereal groups (of which wheat is considered the best), their nutritional properties and the best way to prepare them. It is interspersed with comments related to domestic economy and ecology: that more people could be fed on a vegetarian diet and less resources would be needed:

Under existing governments and social arrangements, more than three fourths of all the land and all the labor, as far as the production of the means of human sustenance is concerned, is wasted, or worse than wasted. A large extent of the earth's surface has never yet been brought under cultivation, and that part of it which is cultivated the best admits of vast improvement. There is an immense waste in raising domestic animals for food, for it requires not less than twenty times more extent of soil to nourish animals enough to furnish our food, than is necessary to supply us with food directly from the soil itself. And again, millions of acres of excellent land are worse than wasted in raising the filthy tobacco, and fruits and grains to convert into alcoholic poisons (387-388).

However, Trall believes that the surface of the earth is expanding (because the oceans are receding) and is therefore hopeful that new lands will become cultivable, but nevertheless he denounces the present state of society, in which “the principal force of the mental energies of the world is expended in contriving a thousand ways and providing a thousand means to gratify the corporeal and animal passions” (389).

In the section devoted to dietetics, Trall poses the question “whether man is by nature best adapted to subsist on a vegetable diet exclusively, or on a mixed diet of vegetable and animal food” (399). He lists several arguments in favor of the former:

The Bible Evidence: in the Garden of Eden, “the vegetable kingdom is the ordained source of man’s sustenance” (400), although some interpretations of Genesis 9 have been taken to mean that consumption of flesh is permitted after the flood. Trall argues that man’s superiority over the animal kingdom does not mean that he is a “predaceous animal himself” (400).
Anatomical Evidence: man is frugivorous/herbivorous by nature (jaws, teeth, etc.).
Physiological Evidence: flesh-eaters’ secretions are rank and putrefy more quickly than those of vegetarians.
Medical Evidence: vegetarians are less liable to become ill or suffer from health problems such as ulcers.
Chemical Evidence: the vegetable diet is more nutritious.
Experimental Evidence: Trall lists numerous examples of illustrious vegetarians and argues that the laboring classes, among which the “the finest specimens of health, strength and activity are found” (415) are mostly vegetarian.

In this connect, Trall introdices a race-based, potentially eugenic argument against the eating of flesh:

A glance at those nations and tribes whose inhabitants subsist mostly on animal food, will set the argument in a stronger light by the contrast. The Laplanders, Ostiacs, Samoides, Tungooses, Burats, Kamtschatdales, and Esquimaux, in the north of Europe, Asia, and America; the inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, in Southern America; the people of Andeman's Island in the Pacific, the natives of New Holland and Van Diemen's Land, and the Calmuck Tartars, all possess a low, deformed, and demi-brutal organization ; some of them are stunted and dwarfish, others are coarse, rough, and hideous. Their principal food is fish, flesh, and all kinds of animal fats and oils which they are able to procure. It should be remarked, too, that the intellectual and moral constitution of these inferior races of men is as degraded and depraved as is their bodily organization. (416)