Essays on Diet Author:Francis William Newman Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: IV. ON SOME GRAVE NATIONAL PROBLEMS, WITH ESSAYS TOWARDS THEIR SOLUTION. When the name and practice of Vegetarianism is brought casually before an English ... more »man or woman, it is very generally regarded as fanciful and ridiculous. I will not deny that while I knew it myself only from a distance, I thought it a strange, perhaps even a silly fancy ; hence I cannot be surprized that others, equally uninformed as I then was, so regard it. I have often heard the rather scornful question, made in a peculiarly decisive tone : ' What is the use of it ? '—of course the questioner implies the true and obvious answer to be, 'Absolutely none whatever.' Now, by way of reply, I take the liberty of asking some questions. Did you ever hear of such a thing as cattle murrain ? Did you ever hear of diseased meat in the market ? or of contagious disease spreading among foul eaters ? or are you at all aware of butcher's meat becoming very dear ? inconveniently dear for most, ruinously dear to hand-workers. Well, if these matters are familiar to you, I have one more question—Did you ever reflect on the causes of these things ? for you can hardly believe that they come without a cause. It is possible that many have never inquired into these causes, and my first attempt will be to aid in the research, by recalling many obvious and notorious facts. The easiest question to answer is—What is the cause of the high price of butcher's meat ? The reply is—An enormous increase of demand. The whole series of events is within the easy memory of those who are no longer young, yet may need to be shortly recapitulated to the new generation. I will first remark, that any great murrain in cattle (however caused) would naturally be followed by an increased price of meat. I do not overlook this, when I refer to the ...« less