C. B. Radcliffe

“ I cannot doubt that in the embryonic life of the higher animals there is a process of development at work by which the embryo before arriving at maturity passes through certain stages which seem to shadow forth certain permanent states of being lower down in the scale of life. I cannot doubt that in this case the more perfect is preceded by the more crude, and that there is a process of evolution at work up to a given point. ”

“ I can imagine that many mothers who can not feed their infants in the proper way, or get fresh cow's milk or cream, will have reason to be glad when they can procure preparations of condensed or inspissated milk enriched with various quantities of cream or some fatty matter. I can imagine that preparations more or less similar to those, which, for the reason I have just hinted at, might properly be called brain-food or nerve-food, might make cod-liver oil almost superfluous as medicine, and be of infinite service to countless myriads of persons in whom brain-power or nerve-power is lacking. ”

“ I can imagine that in many cases it will be difficult to find a food for invalids which is to be preferred to lightly boiled yolk of egg, or to ordinary egg flip. And in the cases where it is expedient to use flesh—meat in one form or another—I am sure it will be a great change for the better when, instead of having recourse to beef-tea, or Brand's essence, or Liebig's extraction carnis, the thoughts are turned to something like the bouillon of the French pot-au-feu, or rather to the very thing itself. ”

“ The evolution, if evolution it be, is kept within the narrowest limits; the tendency to retrograde is quite as marked as the tendency to go forward; and, as respects evolution, the conclusion to be drawn is even that which has been drawn from the changes witnessed in the pigeon and the dog—this and no other. It may be questioned, also, whether this doctrine of evolution derives as much support as it is supposed to do from the facts belonging to astronomy and geology. ”

“ Indeed, all that I want to bring about muscular contraction is, not a metamorphosis of muscle which issues in the development of muscular force, nor a transformation of heat into muscular force, but simply a supply of electricity during the state of muscular inaction which will counteract the tendency which the muscle always has to contract as an elastic body. ”

“ There is no sufficient reason to suppose that the action of digestion, be that what it may, is always to transform the starch into sugar; for sugar in quantity could not be formed in the stomach and bowels without passing directly into the general circulation, and so out from the blood into the urine by way of the kidneys—without making, that is to say, the phenomena of diabetes a natural state of things instead of an unnatural. ”

“ But it does not follow from this belief in unity that I should believe that one organ should be developed into another organ, or one animal or plant into another animal or plant. The doctrine of unity is quite consistent with a belief that there are certain fixed differences in organs or organisms; it has nothing to do with the doctrine of evolution, except, perhaps, in making its acceptance a little less difficult, for it is a little more easy to suppose that a higher creature may be evolved from a lower if there be the same archetypal unity of plan underlying the two ”

“ I only say that lean meat is not the only kind of nitrogenous food which will serve your purpose. It is impossible to distinguish between the albuminose or peptone into which fibrine is resolved in the process of digestion and the albuminose or peptone into which albumen, or caseine, or gluten, or legumin, is resolved in this process. It is apparently of little or no moment whether these various nitrogenous articles of food are derived from the world of animal life or from the world of vegetable life. You must allow that an herbivorous animal is not less vigorous than a carnivorous animal ”

“ I also find it difficult to twist the marvellous improvability of man into an argument for the doctrine of evolution. Who shall say that this improvability is not restricted within certain prescribed limits? As yet man, in his struggle for life, has never turned his opportunities for natural selection so far to account as to make even the slightest advance toward physical improvement. ”

“ It is the outcome of ages of experience in the people who have a special genius for cookery. The animal and vegetable ingredients are so blended that the flavor of no one article is predominant. The bouillon contains all, or almost all, the soluble portions of those ingredients which are necessary for tissue-forming or plastic purposes, and for force-production, and, when taken along with bread, it provides a meal for an invalid which is most palatable, most digestible, and most restorative. ”

“ Moreover, only let the varieties thus produced be let alone for a few generations, and the inevitable result is a return to the original form of the common pigeon, if not to that of the wild, blue rock-pigeon. The history contradicts the notion of evolution rather than confirms it. And so with the dog or any other animal which may be modified as the pigeon is modified; the change produced is never beyond that of mere variety, never into that of a new species ”

“ The growing chick within the egg has plenty of oily matter to feed upon, and nothing of the nature of starch or sugar, or any other carbo-hydrate to take the place of bread. The sucking mammal finds a large amount of oily matter in the milk upon which it feeds, and a somewhat larger amount of lactine, or sugar of milk, which, as a carbo-hydrate, may more or less take the place of bread. In the hen's egg, the proportion of fatty matter to albuminous matter is as 82 grains to 110 grains. ”

“ Bastian so clearly demonstrates, bacteria, the simplest of all living units, may be developed, possibly from inorganic elements, almost at the will of the experimenter, into monads, and amœbæ, and paramecia, or into the lowest forms of fungus—into forms of animal life, that is to say, or into forms of vegetable life; but not much is to be built upon this fact in favor of evolution. ”

“ The daily rate of wasting of the system which I have mentioned is that which is brought to light by very many observations, carried on by many persons in various ways, with a view to regulate the food-rations of soldiers and sailors and prisoners, and other ration-fed people; and as to the proportion of carbon and nitrogen in lean meat and in bread the evidence is sufficiently conclusive. ”

“ Indeed, so difficult is it so to conceive of it, that, until the difficulty is overcome, the nebular hypothesis may be set aside as a dream which is as little calculated to give probability to the doctrine of evolution as the evidence which has been already glanced at.
And so likewise with that particular evidence in favor of evolution which the facts of geology are supposed to supply. Endless ages are needed to allow of evolution ”

“ In a word, I fail to find anywhere sufficient reason for believing that man began his history as a marine ascidian, or as a creature still lower down in the scale of being, and that he has worked his way to his present state of civilization by ceaseless stragglings upward—first, in countless forms of brute life, each one succeeding in the series being a little more advanced than that which went before it ”

“ Fat and butter and oily matters generally are fuel ready-made, or which only need to be emulsified in order to be in this case; and they have this advantage also—that they are burned up in the system, without leaving behind them, so to speak, any ash like urea. And, as force-producing agents—if the capacity for oxidization may be taken as a measure—the value of fat and oil is almost double that of fibrine or albumen.
C. I can see that I may have been taking too much lean meat and too little toast; I can also see that I may have been especially wrong in avoiding fat and butter ”

“ I only want you to understand distinctly that a person who can not get a full allowance of lean meat, or who does not choose to get it, is not necessarily ill fed for that reason, even though he have to do hard work with his muscles.
C. If a large amount of nitrogenous food is not wanted as food for muscle or other tissues—for plastic purposes, that is to say—how is the excess disposed of? ”

“ In order to replace the daily loss of 4,800 grains of carbon by lean meat, the quantity of meat you must take is 43,637 grains, or rather over 6 pounds a quantity which contains 1,009 grains of nitrogen in excess of the 300 grains actually wanted. In order to replace the daily loss of 300 grains of nitrogen by bread, the quantity of bread you must take will be 30,000 grains, or about 4 pounds—a quantity which exceeds by 25,200 grains the 4,800 grains of carbon which, are actually wanted. ”

“ If the rock in which the skeleton of a plesiosaurus is embedded had been deposited as slowly as it is supposed to have been deposited, every trace of organization must have decomposed and disappeared long ages before the animal could have been covered up in its bed. ”

“ The earthy matter of the shell is certainly necessary to the proper development of the bones of the chick, and in all probability the bones are not the only tissues which are in this case. A dog lives long and thrives when it is fed upon brown bread, but not when it is fed upon white bread. ”

“ On the contrary, I would hold that there is nothing unreasonable in widening these limits so as to bring within them an actual God, even the God of the Scriptures, and that by so doing a much more reasonable realization of unity is to be found than that which can be found in an Unknown Reality. ”

“ Fat is very rich in carbon, and so are all fatty and oily matters. You would have the 4,800 grains of carbon and the 300 grains of nitrogen which you want, if you took 34 pound of lean meat and about 212 ounces of fat. In proportion as you increase the amount of fatty or oily matter, you may diminish the amount of bread ”

“ The nitrogenous matter consists of vegetable fibrine, albumen, and gluteine in the rough form of gluten. The fatty matter is in no way peculiar. The non-nitrogenous carbo-hydrates are starch, dextrine, sugar, gum, cellulose, and lignine—starch chiefly. ”

“ I have more than once heard an Irish peasant say that he misses the sour milk he takes along with his potatoes almost as much as the potatoes themselves, and that "it warms him like whisky and keeps off the rheumatiz." ”

“ And what other conclusion can be fairly drawn from the infertility of mules than this—that there is a barrier between different species of animals, even between those which are most closely akin to each other, by which one is prevented from passing into the other. Nay, it is even difficult to find any evidence in favor of evolution in the history of the rudimentary creatures which swarm in dense crowds around the very feet of the scale of being. ”

“ I have a small appetite, and no superabundance of digestive power; my inclinations turn toward vegetable food rather than toward animal food, and I can easily see that farinaceous food may be really more suitable to the wants of my system than anything which is left behind in the bouilli. ”

“ I think, indeed, that their introduction to the public marks a new epoch in the proper feeding of our countrymen, and that they will be made still more suitable for food when they are enriched to some extent by some form of fatty matter. I know how difficult it is to convince the poor of this country that all food is little more than padding except steaks, and chops, and cuts out of joints ”

“ Moreover, it must not be forgotten that there are not a few fossils out of place in the strata, fossils which ought not to be where they are if living things had made their appearance on the earth in the order required by the doctrine of evolution. ”

“ Leguminose seeds or pulse contain as much as from twenty-five to thirty per cent of nitrogenous matter, mainly in a form of caseine called legumine; rice and potato contain as little as about eight per cent of nitrogenous matter, and as much as eighty per cent of starch, the amount of nitrogenous matter and starch in these articles of food being in an inverse ratio to each other. Fatty matter is especially abundant in oats and maize. ”

“ Scurvy also is a speedy consequence of living upon salt meat, which differs from fresh meat chiefly in the fact that the salts belonging to it have been transferred to the brine. If the body is to be properly nourished, the mineral matters which are contained in the different articles of food can not be excluded, that is evident. ”

“ I believe that they actually serve as food for nerve-tissue. This tissue is in the main made up of a peculiar kind of fat, and I am convinced that nerve is starved if the food be wanting in a sufficient quantity of fatty or oily matter. I find that very many persons suffering from various chronic disorders of the nervous system have abstained from the fatty and oily articles of food, and that their state is almost invariably very much changed for the better when you can get them to take what they have avoided ”

“ For it may be fairly assumed that the properties of the nitrogenous and nonnitrogenous compounds are as properly balanced in the egg and milk, which are the two great typical forms of natural food, as they are in the artificial combination of bread and meat of which we are speaking. ”

“ Moreover, it seems to be certain that no one can take a large amount of meat and other highly nitrogenous compounds for a long time unless lie also do a large amount of muscular work—unless he do much more work of this sort than the great majority of human beings are willing or able to do. ”