More Science From an Easy Chair Part 5

No mistake, said Huxley, is more frequently made by clever people than that of supposing that a cause or an opinion is unsound because the arguments put forward in its favour by its advocates are foolish or erroneous. Some of the arguments put forward in favour of the exclusive use by mankind of a vegetable diet can be shown to be based on misconception and error, and I propose now to mention one or two of these. But I wish to guard against the supposition that I am convinced in consequence that animal substances form the best possible diet for man, or that an exclusively vegetable diet may not, if properly selected, be advantageous for a large majority of mankind. That question, as well as the question of the advantage of a mixed diet of animal and vegetable substances, and the best proportion and quant.i.ty of the substances so mixed, must be settled, as also the question as to the harm or good in the habitual use of small quant.i.ties of alcohol, by definite careful experiment by competent physiologists, conducted on a scale large enough to give conclusive results. The cogency of the arguments in favour of vegetarianism which I am about to discuss is another matter.

In the first place it is very generally a.s.serted by those who advocate a purely vegetable diet that man's teeth are of the shape and pattern which we find in fruit-eating or in root-eating animals allied to him.

This is true. The warm-blooded hairy quadrupeds which suckle their young and are called "mammals" (for which word perhaps "beasts" is the nearest Anglo-Saxon equivalent) show in different groups and orders a great variety in their teeth. The birds of to-day have no teeth, the reptiles, amphibians, and fishes have usually simple conical or peg-like teeth, which are used simply for holding and tearing. In some cases the pointed pin-like teeth are broadened out so as to be b.u.t.ton-like, and act as crus.h.i.+ng organs for breaking up sh.e.l.l-fish.

The mammals alone have a great variety and elaboration of the teeth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 21.--Side view of the skull of a clouded tiger (_Felis nebulosa_) to show the teeth. _inc. s._ The three incisors.

_can. s._ Upper canine, corner-tooth, or dog-tooth. _can. i._ Lower canine. _m. s._ The four upper molars or cheek-teeth (called "grinders" in herbivorous animals). _m. i._ The three lower molars or cheek-teeth.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 22.--View in the horizontal plane of the teeth of the lower and upper jaw of the same clouded tiger's skull. _inc. i._ Lower incisors. _inc. s._ Upper incisors. _can. i._ and _can. s._ Lower and upper canine. _m._ The cheek-teeth--three only in the lower jaw, a minute fourth molar present in the upper.]

In shape and size, as well as in number, the teeth of mammals are very clearly related to the nature of their food in the first place, and secondly to their use as weapons of attack or of defence. When the surface of the cheek-teeth is broad, with low and numerous tubercles, the food of the animal is of a rather soft substance, which yields to a grinding action. Such substances are fruits, nuts, roots, or leaves, which are "triturated" and mixed with the saliva during the process of mastication. Where the vegetable food is coa.r.s.e gra.s.s or tree twigs, requiring long and thorough grinding, transverse ridges of enamel are present on the cheek-teeth, as in elephants, cattle, deer, and rabbits (see Figs. 8, 17, 19). Truly carnivorous animals, which eat the raw carcases of other animals, have a different shape of teeth. Not only do they have large and dagger-like canines or "dog-teeth" as weapons of attack, but the cheek-teeth (very few in number) present a long, sharp-edged ridge running parallel to the length of the jaw, the edges of which in corresponding upper and lower teeth fit and work together like the blades of a pair of scissors. The cats (including the lions, tigers and leopards) have this arrangement in perfection (see Figs. 21 and 22). They cut the bones and muscles of their prey into great lumps with the scissor-like cheek-teeth, and swallow great pieces whole without mastication. Insect-eating mammals have cheek-teeth with three or four sharp-pointed tubercles standing up on the surface. They break the hard-sh.e.l.led insects and swallow them rapidly. The fish-eating whales have an immense number of peg-like pointed teeth only. These serve as do those of the seals--merely to catch and grip the fish, which are swallowed whole.

It is quite clear that man's cheek-teeth do not enable him to cut lumps of meat and bone from raw carcases and swallow them whole, nor to grip live fish and swallow them straight off (Pl. VI). They are broad, square-surfaced teeth, with four or fewer low rounded tubercles fitted to crush soft food, as are those of monkeys (see Pl. VII and its description). And there can be no doubt that man fed originally, like monkeys, on easily crushed fruits, nuts, and roots. He could not eat like a cat.

A fundamental mistake has arisen amongst some of the advocates of vegetarianism by the use of the words "carnivorous" and "flesh-eating"

in an ill-defined way. Man has never eaten lumps of raw meat and bone, and no one proposes that he should do so to-day. Man did not take to meat-eating until he had acquired the use of fire, and had learnt to cook the meat before he ate it. He thus separated the bone and intractable sinew from the flesh, which he rendered friable and divisible by thorough grilling, roasting, or baking. To eat meat thus altered, both chemically and in texture, is a very different thing from eating the raw carcases of large animals. Man's teeth are thoroughly fitted for the trituration of cooked meat, which is, indeed, as well suited to their mechanical action as are fruits, nuts, and roots. Hence we see that the objection to a meat diet based on the structure of man's teeth does not apply to the use of cooked meat as diet. The use by man of uncooked meat is not proposed or defended.

Yet, further, it is well to take notice of the fact that there are many vegetarian wild animals which do not hesitate to eat certain soft animals or animal products when they get the chance. Thus, both monkeys and primitive men will eat grubs and small soft animals, and also the eggs of birds. Whilst the cat tribe, in regard to the chemical action of their digestive juices, are so specialised for eating raw meat that it is practically impossible for them to take vegetable matter as even a small portion of their diet, and whilst, on the other hand, the gra.s.s-eating cattle, sheep, goats, antelopes, deer and giraffes are similarly disqualified from any form of meat-diet, most other land-mammals can be induced, without harm to themselves, to take a mixed diet, even in those cases where they do not naturally seek it. Pigs, on the one hand, and bears, on the other, tend naturally to a mixed diet. Many birds, under conditions adverse to the finding of their usual food, will change from vegetable to animal diet, or _vice-versa_. Sea-gulls normally are fish-eaters, but some will eat biscuit and grain when fish cannot be had. Pigeons have been fed successfully on a meat diet; so, too, some parrots, and also the familiar barn-door fowl. Many of our smaller birds eat both insects and grain, according to opportunity. Hence it appears impossible to base any argument against the use of cooked meat as part of man's diet upon the structure of his teeth, or upon any far-reaching law of Nature which decrees that every animal is absolutely either fitted (internally and chemically, as well as in the matter of teeth) for a diet consisting exclusively of vegetable substances, or else is immutably a.s.signed to one consisting exclusively of animal substances.

There is no _a priori_ a.s.sumption possible against the use as food by man of nutritious matter derived from animals' bodies properly prepared.

So far as _a priori_ argument has any value in such a matter, it suggests that the most perfect food for any animal--that which supplies exactly the const.i.tuents needed by the animal in exactly right quant.i.ty and smallest bulk--is the flesh and blood of another animal of its own species. This is a startling theoretical justification--from the purely dietetic point of view--of cannibalism. It is, however, of no conclusive value; the only method which can give us conclusions of any real value in this and similarly complex matters is prolonged, full, well-devised, well-recorded experiment. At the same time, we may just note that the favourite food of the scorpion is the juice of the body of another scorpion, and that the same preference for cannibalism exists in spiders, many insects, fishes, and even higher animals.

Another line of argument by which some advocates of vegetarianism appeal to the popular judgment is by representing flesh-food derived from animals as something dirty, foul, and revolting, full of microbic germs, whilst vegetable products are extolled as being clean and sweet--free from odour and putrescence and from the scaremonger's microbes. This, I perhaps need hardly say, is a gigantic illusion and misrepresentation. I came across it the other day in a very unreasonable pamphlet on food by the American writer, Mr. Upton Sinclair. Putrefactive microbes attack vegetable foods and produce revolting smells and poisons in them, just as they do in foods of animal origin. It is true that on the whole more varieties of vegetable food can be kept dry and ready for use by softening with hot water than is the case with foods prepared from animals. This is only a question of not keeping food too long or in conditions tending to the access of putrefactive bacteria. It is, on the whole, more usual and necessary, in order to render it palatable, to apply heat to flesh, fish, and fowl than to fruits. And it is by heat--heat of the temperature of boiling water--applied for ten minutes or more, that poison-producing and infective bacteria are killed and rendered harmless. More people have become infected by deadly parasites and have died from cholera and similar diseases, through having taken the germs of those diseases into their stomachs with raw and over-ripe fruit or uncooked vegetables and the manured products of the kitchen garden, than have suffered from the presence of disease-germs or putrefactive bacteria in well-cooked meat. Here, in fact, "cooking"

makes all the difference, just as it does in the matter we were discussing above of the fitness of flesh and bone for trituration by man's teeth.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate VI.--The series of teeth in the upper (1) and lower jaw (2) of a modern European (natural size). The teeth are placed closely side by side without a gap--an arrangement which does not occur in the apes nor in any other living mammal, although it is found in some extinct herbivores--the Anoplotherium and the Arsinoitherium. The shape of the arch formed by the row of teeth should be compared with that shown by the same arch in the Gibbon (Pl.

VII). The crowns of the teeth are very carefully drawn in this figure, which is from a plate published by Professor Selenka.

It must be noted that the number of tubercles on the true molars may be in exceptional cases one more or one less than that given in this drawing which gives the most usual number. The word "molar" is often used to include the five cheek-teeth on each side of each jaw, but more strictly the anterior bicuspid teeth are called "pre-molars," and the three larger teeth behind them, which have no predecessors or representatives in the first or milk dent.i.tion, are called true molars or simply "molars"--a rule we have followed here.

In both upper and lower jaw we see the four incisors in the middle (Inc. 1, Inc. 2); on each side of them is the conical crown of a canine--a tooth which is greatly enlarged in the ape (see Pl. VII), but is no larger proportionately than it is here even in the most ancient known human jaw, that from the Pleistocene of Heidelberg (see "Science from an Easy Chair," Methuen, 1910, p. 405). The two small bicuspid "pre-molars" and the three large molars follow these on each side in each jaw. The crown of the most anterior (or "first") molar of the upper jaw has four cusps, tubercles, or cones on it. It is "quadri-tuberculate." The second and third molars of the upper jaw have three such prominent tubercles (excluding a row of small tubercles on the hinder margin of the second); they are, in fact, tri-tuberculate; whilst the two hindermost molars of the lower jaw have four tubercles and are called quadri-tuberculate. The first molar (M1) of the lower jaw has in this specimen five tubercles. In 60 per cent. of European lower jaws this is the case. But in 40 per cent.

this tooth is quadri-tuberculate. In Polynesians, Chinese, Melanesians and negroes five tubercles are found on this tooth in 90 per cent. of the jaws examined. The apes are characterised by five tubercles on this tooth, and they are found also on the first lower molars of prehistoric men. Four tubercles only on this tooth is a departure from the ape's condition and is found more frequently in Europeans.

It is obvious that these big molar teeth, as well as the two smaller ones in front of them on each side of each jaw, are adapted for breaking up rather soft, pulpy food, and not for cutting lumps of bone or raw flesh, as are the molars of the clouded tiger (identical with those of all species of the genus _Felis_), shown in Figs. 21 and 22, pp. 103, 104, nor for rubbing grain, gra.s.s or herbage to a paste, as are those of the goat (Fig. 17), those of the Coypu rat (Fig. 19), and those of the elephants and mastodons (Fig. 8).]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Plate VII.--Drawings of (1) the upper and (2) the lower series of teeth of the Gibbon (_Hylobates concolor_), one of the anthropoid or most man-like apes (enlarged by one third). If these drawings are compared with those in Pl. VI, showing man's teeth, the most striking difference seen is that the "arch" or series of teeth is here elongated and squared, not rounded in front, whilst there is plenty of room in both jaws for the last or wisdom tooth, which is not the case in modern races of men, though in the ancient Neander man's jaw and in that from Heidelberg there is ample s.p.a.ce for the last molar as in the apes. The next most important difference is that in the gibbon the four canine teeth are very large and tusk-like, and must certainly be of value as weapons of attack--which man's are not.

Connected with the large size of the canines is the presence of a gap (or "diastema" as it is called) between the four front teeth or incisors of the upper jaw and the upper canine--which allows the lower canine to fit in front of the upper canine when the jaw is closed. The number of the tubercles or cones on the molars (the two smaller pre-molars and the three hinder large molars) can be compared in detail in these beautiful drawings from Professor Selenka's work, which are the most careful and perfect which have ever been published.

The agreement of these teeth in man and the gibbon is very close: but there are differences. The first, or most anterior pre-molar of the lower jaw has one predominant cusp or cone; the second, like both in the upper jaw, is "bicuspid," or bi-tuberculate, as in man. The three big molars of the upper jaw are closely similar to those of man, with some small differences, the second being quadri-tuberculate, whilst in man it is as often tri-tuberculate (as it is in Pl. VI) as it is quadri-tuberculate. But the two anterior big molars of the lower jaw are seen to have each five well-marked cones, cusps or tubercles; they are quinqui-tuberculate, whilst in man the first lower molar is often quadri-tuberculate and the second even more frequently so. The last lower molar (wisdom tooth) of the gibbon is like that of man, quadri-tuberculate.

The details of the tubercles on these molar teeth distinctly justify the conclusion that they are adapted in the two animals compared--namely, man and the gibbon--to food of the same mechanical quality, and this undoubtedly is fruit and nuts. Nevertheless such a form of tooth is equally well adapted to the texture of cooked meat, which has served many races of man for probably hundreds of thousands of years as food.]

Once we remember that man is not fitted for the "raw meat" diet of the carnivora, but is fitted for the "cooked meat" diet which he has himself discovered--alone of all animals--we shall get rid of a misleading prejudice in the consideration of the question as to whether civilised men should or should not make cooked meat a portion of their diet, with the purpose of maintaining themselves in as healthy and vigorous a state as possible. Do not let us forget that ancient Palaeolithic cave-men certainly made use of fire to cook their meals of animal flesh, and that probably this use of fire dates back to a still earlier period when, in consequence of this application of the red, running tongues of flame, which he had learned to produce, primitive man was able to leave the warmer climates of the earth and their abundant fruits, and to establish himself in temperate and even sub-Arctic regions.

Experiments on a large and decisive scale in regard to the value of the different foods taken by man and the question of the desirability of cooked meat as part of his diet have never been carried out, nor has the use of alcohol been studied by direct experimental method on a large scale. Inasmuch as the feeding of our Army and Navy, of prisoners, lunatics, and paupers, is the business of the State, it is obviously the duty of the Government to investigate this matter and arrive at a decision. It can be done by the Government, and only by the Government. The Army Medical Department is fully capable, and, I am told, desirous, of undertaking this investigation. Five hundred soldiers in barracks would find it no hards.h.i.+p, but an agreeable duty (if rewarded in a suitable way), to submit to various diets, and to comparative tests of the value of such diets. There would be no difficulty in arranging the experimental investigation. Fifty years ago similar work (but not precisely in regard to the questions now raised) was done by the Army Medical Department, under Parkes, with most valuable and widely recognised results.

CHAPTER IX

FOOD AND COOKERY

Animals, taking one kind with another, nourish themselves on an immense variety of food. The flesh and the blood of other animals of all kinds, warm or cold, the leaves, twigs, fruits, juices of plants, putrid carcases, hair, feathers, skin, bran, sawdust, the vegetable mould or "humus" of the earth's surface, the sand of the sea, with its minute particles of organic detritus, all serve as food to different kinds of animals. Some are very little fettered in their tastes, and are called "omnivorous," others are bound in the strictest way to a diet consisting of the leaves of some one species of plant or the juices of one species of animal. Some of the latter cla.s.s, under stress or privation, can accommodate themselves to a new food very different in character and origin from that which is habitual to them; others have no elasticity in this respect, and must have their exact habitual food-plant or food-animal, unless they are to die of starvation.

Man exhibits his great powers of accommodation to changed circ.u.mstances in respect of food as well as in other matters. If we are to suppose, as is probable, that our original ape-like ancestors fed exclusively upon fruits and an occasional egg or juicy grub, how vast are the changes in diet to which man has habituated himself! Man is sometimes said to be omnivorous, but this is not a sufficient description of the state of things which has grown up as he has spread over the earth's surface. Every race--and even many a small group of men--has its accustomed diet, to depart from which is a pain and a difficulty, even though new kinds of food may be gradually accepted and even become popular. Man has in this, as in so many other things, a large range of possible accommodation, but he has at the same time habits the continuance of which are necessary for the healthy working of the nervous system. The psychical element in the matter of food-habit is important in all higher animals, but most of all in man.

The digestive organs are controlled by the nervous system, and the brain acts upon the latter in such a way as to favour or to restrain the "appet.i.te" and the secretion of the elaborate digestive juices, so that fear, surprise, disgust, and "nausea" (that strange product of mental and physical reactions) may destroy appet.i.te and inhibit the digestive process. There are vast populations of men who live on rice, or beans, or meal, and never eat animal food, not even milk (after babyhood), nor cheese, and would be, at a first attempt to eat it, "put off" and disgusted by a mutton chop. There are others who subsist almost entirely on fish, others who live on dried beef, others who live on the fat of whales and seals, and would be for a generation or two injured, half starved, and some of them even killed, by a change of diet. Again, there are others who consider that they must have and will be "ill" unless they had the cooked flesh of an ox or sheep as part of their daily food. Let us examine this latter group a little more fully--a group to which the nations of Europe belong, with the exception of the Italians, who are essentially a meal-, fruit-, and cheese-eating people.

Apparently at a very early time, even before the last glacial period, man had learnt the use of fire, and roasted or grilled the carcases of other animals which he killed in the chase, in order to consume them as food. We have no reason to suppose that man ever made use of the raw flesh of higher animals as his habitual diet. His teeth are not, and never were, from his earliest ape-like days, adapted to true carnivorous diet. Cooked meat is not the food of a carnivor, but is an adaptation of the flesh of animals to the requirements of a frugivorous animal. Probably the use of grain and cultivated vegetable food is a later step in human progress than the roasting of meat. The Neandermen, and even the later Reindeer-men (Cromagnards), had no cultivated fields, but lived on roasted meat (of beasts, birds, and fish) and wild fruits. We know how thoroughly the most ancient Greeks enjoyed the long slices of roasted meat cut from the chine, as told in the Homeric poems, and everywhere in Europe after the neolithic or polished-stone period, meat was a main article of diet, in conjunction with the vegetable products of agriculture. In this country, after the Norman conquest, meat-eating was greatly favoured by the important industry which grew up in hides. The land was well suited for the pasturage of cattle, and owing to the smallness of the population and the abundance of cattle slaughtered for their hides, meat was almost to be had for the asking. It was thus that Englishmen became great meat-eaters and that "the roast beef of Old England" was established.

Later the same superfluity of meat--in this case, "mutton"--recurred and became general when wool-growing and the manufacture of woollen goods developed into important industries. Relatively to the population there was more "meat" of oxen and sheep in this country than on the continent of Europe, and this disproportion has been maintained.

But the increase of population has led to a considerable change in the diet of a very large proportion--the poorer part--of the community.

Whilst the families of the better-paid working cla.s.s and all the middle and upper cla.s.s continue to eat meat, the agricultural labourer and the poorer workmen in towns live chiefly on flour, sugar, bacon, and cheese. Probably they have become habituated to this diet, and, provided that the quant.i.ty is sufficient, it cannot be maintained that the diet, in which meat is nearly or altogether absent, is unhealthy.

Many vigorous and muscularly well-developed populations in other lands thrive on exclusively vegetable food.

A curious and not altogether comforting reflection is that if the inexpensive and simple food of the agricultural labourer is sufficient, the section of the community which spends from five to ten s.h.i.+llings per head a day on a mixed diet of meat, fish, eggs, and vegetables is guilty of waste and excess. Here, however, the remarkable, and, in fact, exceptional domination of "habit" (in the case of man), in regard to both the actual articles of food and the mode of its preparation, has to be recognised. Such and such inexpensive and unskilfully prepared food may contain more than the necessary amount of proteids (that is, matters like flesh, the casein of cheese and of vegetables, and the alb.u.men of eggs), of hydro-carbons (_i.e._, fats), of carbo-hydrates (_i.e._, starch and sugar), yet if you were suddenly to compel a man accustomed to well-cooked meat to live on such food he would be unable to a.s.similate it, his digestive organs would refuse to work, and he would become, if not seriously ill, yet so ill-nourished and sickly that he would be unfit for his work and readily fall a victim to disease. It is, in fact, impossible to lay down any scheme of diet based on the mere provision of the necessary quant.i.ties of food materials whilst ignoring the formed habits of the individual and the relation of the psychical conditions which we call "taste," "appet.i.te," "fancy,"

"disgust," to the actual processes of digestion and the consequent efficiency of the proposed diet.

No doubt gradually, after a few generations, a whole people may become healthily habituated to a diet which would have been positively injurious to their forebears, and no doubt individuals may be led by fort.i.tude or by necessity in time (perhaps weeks, perhaps years) to acquire a tolerance, or even enjoyment, of food at first repulsive, and therefore injurious. The difficulty in the matter is not that of correctly determining what is physiologically sufficient for the human animal, nor even what would be a healthy diet for a community when once, after a transition period of distress and injury, habituated or "attuned" to that diet. The difficulty is to arrive at a conclusion as to what is really the suitable and reasonable diet for an individual--yourself or one like yourself--having regard to the lifelong habits of the individual, and the consequent nervous reactions established in him or her in relation to the taste, quality, and mode of presentation of food. Robust people, so long as they get what suits their own uncultivated taste, are apt to make very light of what they call "fancies" about food, and to overlook their real importance.

Feeding on the part of civilised man is not the simple procedure which it is with animals, although many animals are particular as to their food and what is called "dainty." The necessity for civilised man of cheerful company at his meal, and for the absence of mental anxiety, is universally recognised, as well as the importance of an inviting appeal to the appet.i.te through the sense of smell and of sight, whilst the injurious effect of the reverse conditions, which may lead to nausea, and even vomiting, is admitted. Even the ceremonial features of the dinner table, the change of clothes before sitting down to the repast, the leisurely yet precise succession of approved and expected dishes, accompanied by pleasant talk and light-hearted companions.h.i.+p, are shown by strict scientific examination to be important aids to the healthy digestion of food, which need not be large in quant.i.ty, although it should be wisely presented.

These psychical conditions of healthy feeding are not trivial matters, as we are too apt to suppose. They are part, and a very important part, of the physiology of nutrition, and so deserving of scientific inquiry and of practical attention. They have been made the subject of careful experiment by a Russian physiologist, Pavloff. At a recent meeting of the British a.s.sociation this matter was brought under discussion in the Physiological Section, and it was pointed out by the author of a very interesting communication that the whole question as to what is and what is not a sound and healthy diet is too often dealt with by writers who ignore the psychical (or shall we say the cerebral?) factor. Cases were cited of dangerous arrest of the power of digesting, or even of swallowing, food which were cured by giving the patient some apparently inappropriate and probably harmful article of food for which he or she had a fancy, such as a grilled salmon-steak, the last thing which would be spontaneously recommended by a medical man to a patient who had been suffering for weeks from inability to take food. The willingness is all--the a.s.sent, the approval of the cerebral centres, and the consequent unlocking of the whole arrested mechanism of digestive secretions and movements. Such a case is only an extreme instance. But it is undoubtedly the fact that just as the sight of so small a thing as a drop of blood, or even the word "blood," will on occasion cause a strong, healthy man to faint, so quite a small excess or defect in the accustomed quality of food will at times arrest the appet.i.te and digestive processes of a healthy man. To many a healthy individual one among many flavours and savours a.s.sociated with agreeable food is necessary in order that healthy appet.i.te and proper digestion may be set going, and the absence of the right flavour and the presence of what is, in his experience, a wrong and disgusting smell or taste in the food set before him, will produce nausea and complete arrest of the digestive processes.

It is apparently owing to this cause that "tinned meats" have proved to be of little value as rations for an army in campaign, for exploring expeditions, and for remote mining camps. It is not that such tinned meats do not contain the necessary const.i.tuents of food, or that they contain poisonous substances, but that they produce a sense of disgust, and arrest the digestive processes. Soldiers, travellers, and miners have a.s.sured me that they prefer a dry biscuit and dried, or salted, or sugared meat, to the supposed more "tasty"

tinned meats, and that such is the general experience of their comrades.

Of similar nature is another very serious trouble, in regard to the healthy feeding of the modern Englishman, which has come upon us in consequence of the quite modern system of huge restaurants, whether in London or in the very large hotels, which are now run in Swiss, Italian and English summer resorts. Hundreds of visitors are "catered for" daily. There is no attempt at anything which deserves the name of cookery. Great monopolists control the supplies, and contract to deliver to these hotels, even in out-of-the-way localities, so much ice-stored, "mousey" fish, "mousey" quails, stringy meat, impossible vegetables and fruits, gathered from the cheapest markets of Europe and of a quality just not bad enough to cause a revolt among the hotel visitors. The heating of the food is done by patent machinery in ovens and by the use of boiling fat. No cook is in these circ.u.mstances possible, with his artistic feeling for the production of a perfect result of skill and taste. A kind of bottled meat-flavoured sauce, manufactured from spent yeast, is used to make the soups, and is poured, with an equally nauseating result, over the hard veal, the tough chicken, the "mousey" quails, and the tasteless beef and mutton, which are never roasted, but are baked or stewed in boiling fat--though shamelessly described as "rotis" in the pretentious and mendacious "menu" placed on the dinner-table. The consequence is that the tourist, who has been overfed at home, eats very little, and his health benefits. But in such an hotel the man who lives carefully when at home, and desires a simple but properly cooked meal, is reduced to a state of indigestion, semi-starvation and misery.

The Englishman who is disgusted by the new mechanical methods of cookery in the great hotels of Continental "resorts," returns to London, and finds the same atrocious system at work--not only in the public restaurants, but in his club. Nowhere in London can you rely on being served with really fresh fish, however highly you may pay for it. Rarely it is fresh, usually it is not. The ice storage people take good care that you shall not obtain fresh fish, and so retain your taste for it. Nowhere at club or restaurant, with rare exceptions, can you obtain meat roasted in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way on a roasting-jack, carefully "basted" during the process, and served when exactly cooked to a turn. There were, only a few years ago, one or two such places surviving--both clubs and restaurants--where proper roasting was done, but, like the rest, they have now adopted lazy, economical, money-saving methods. Their managers calculate that what they do will serve. It is good enough for the crowd! So at last you abandon the efforts to obtain decent simple food, in club or hotel, and dine with your friend _en famille_. The same thing confronts you. The joint has been baked in an oven, of which it smells, and is surrounded by a sickly gravy, produced by pouring hot water over it! In conversation with your hostess, you find that she knows nothing whatever about the simplest elements of the preparation of food. She tells you she avoids roasting because it necessitates a large fire and an extra expenditure of 5 a year on coal, and she also purchases those mouldy, frost-bitten potatoes instead of the best, because they cost half as much as sound ones--and she herself does not care for potatoes. They are fattening!

Sometimes at a restaurant or club, served by a foreign "chef," a Yorks.h.i.+re pudding, as hard as a stale loaf of bread, is handed round in slabs with the so-called "roast" beef. It is not roasted: it is baked beef, and the pudding is an ill-tasting baked mess, also.

Nowhere in London in public or private house do I ever see the properly cooked article. True Yorks.h.i.+re pudding can only be made by placing it under the roasting joint, which drips digestion-promoting essences into the pudding whilst itself rotating, hissing and spluttering--as did the joints roasted in the caves long ago by the prehistoric Reindeer-men. The scientific importance of good roasting and grilling is that a savour is thereby produced which sets the whole gastric and digestive economy of the man who sniffs it and tastes it, at work. Possibly our successors, a generation or two hence, will have learnt to do without this, and will have acquired as intimate and happy a gastronomic relation to what now are for us the nauseous flavours of superheated fat (rarely renewed), and of the all-pervading gravy fabricated by chemical treatment of yeast, as that which we ourselves have acquired in regard to the old-established and painstaking cookery of the early Victorian and many preceding ages.

Medical men who are occupied as specialists with the study of very young children have clearly demonstrated that the implanting of tastes, tendencies and habits in infants of from two to eight years of age has an immense importance in their subsequent development.

Character and capacity are really formed in those early years. Food preferences, no less than mental and moral qualities, are then created. Yet the children of both rich and poor are in these early stages either left to haphazard or entrusted to ignorant nursemaids.

For those of us who were not born to the present system the transition to the new methods of wholesale cookery is an abomination, and to escape from them a matter of difficulty. We have to secure an ancient roasting-jack and a large clear fire in our own kitchen, and to instruct our cook--since no woman has taught her what she ought to know--in the art of roasting and grilling, in the preparation of Yorks.h.i.+re pudding, in the mystery of the marrow-bone and the proper and distinct use of garlic, onions, shalots, chives, chervil, tarragon, marjoram, basil, other herbs, and divers peppers, and finally to train her in the supreme accomplishment of the seasoning of a salad.

Maybe that the present established relations of our appet.i.tes to the time-honoured savours, by which the ancient Jews sought to propitiate the Deity, are destined to be superseded. On the other hand it is quite possible that all the juggling of modern "machine" cookery is a false step, and injurious to digestion and health. It is not unlikely that there is no relish which has so sure a hold on the digestion of European man, no appeal to the cerebral mechanism controlling the liberation of his gastric juices, which is so infallible as that emanating from "well and truly" roasted or grilled meat.

It is not easy to account for the present neglect of decent cookery and the triumph of the sham French cookery (for it is not French at all!) which is at present foisted on a long-suffering public. Probably the enormously increased number of visitors to foreign resorts and of frequenters of restaurants in London have led to huge enterprise in "catering," and to a monopoly which has driven out of existence the smaller establishments, where alone the artist-cook can flourish. But it seems that the neglect of decent cooking is also due in this country to a racial incapacity and indifference which leads both men and women to despise "taking pains" about small things, and brings them into the world devoid of the desire to carry out with skill those small enterprises on which much of the sweetness and gaiety of life depends.

Even in the time of Charles II the skill and seriousness of French cookery as compared with our own was recognised. The high reputation of Scotch cooks at the present day seems to be due to an inheritance of traditions from the days of close a.s.sociation of the Scotch and French Courts. Up to nearly 100 years ago roasting was as usual a method of cooking meat in Paris as in London. There were "rotisseries"

in Paris in the old days. High prices and thrift have led to the decadence of roasting as a popular method of cooking meat in France, but the great "chef" in a private house in Paris still produces the most perfect roast beef and roast saddle of mutton (better than you will find in England) in the old-fas.h.i.+oned way. So indifferent, or perhaps hopeless, are Englishmen in regard to cookery that they drink a strong champagne throughout dinner, content to drown the insipid taste of the food in the fine flavour of a drink upon which they can rely. An Englishman dining at a first-rate restaurant will usually spend twice as much for wine as for food, whilst a Frenchman will reverse the proportions. Another difference is one for which women are responsible. In Paris a party of French men and women at a table in a good restaurant enjoy their food, laugh and talk with one another, and do not concern themselves with the company at other tables. It would be bad manners to do so. But English-speaking women, when dining in public, seem to be chiefly interested, not in their food nor in their own party, but in pointing out to one another the celebrities or notorieties or eccentricities seated at other tables. So long as the place is fas.h.i.+onable and noisy, the food is negligible and neglected.

For some reason, which I am unable to discover, the women of England (it is not the case with those of France and Germany) have, with rare exceptions, no interest in or liking for "cookery," and yet the men have left the management of it entirely in their hands. Male "chefs"

of English nationality are rare specimens, though they are, as a rule, the best at grilling and roasting. On the other hand, in France, where women no less than men value and understand cookery, there is an enormous body of professional male cooks. English-women of means and education have to such a degree neglected all knowledge of cookery and of the quality and criticism of kitchen supplies, such as meat, fish, birds, and vegetables, that there is no one to teach the poor country girls (who become cooks in the majority of households) the elements of the very difficult and important duties which they are expected--in virtue of some kind of inspiration or native genius--to discharge with skill and judgment: nor is there any head of a household capable of seeing that the necessary care and trouble are given. It is wonderful, under the circ.u.mstances, how clever and willing our domestic cooks are. A considerable section of English middle-cla.s.s women at the present day are allowed by the men, who should guide them so as to make them honourable and useful members of the community, to grow up in complete ignorance of the essential parts of the art of cookery.

This was not the case a hundred years ago. Now a large proportion of them have been led by bad example and foolish notions to give up such matters to "the servants," whether they are able to afford competent servants or even to judge of the competence of a servant or not. Many of these "mistresses" now devote themselves exclusively to "dress,"

"amus.e.m.e.nts," "charity," "politics," and dabbling inconsequently in various crazes. They are not to blame. It is the men who are to blame who deliberately neglect to give to their womenkind a training and education which shall make them real mistresses of household arts and business, so that they may be thus filled with the happy conviction (which is the one thing they most desire and most often cannot gain) that they are of real use--are really wanted--in the world.