Camp Venture: A Story of the Virginia Mountains
CHAPTER IX
_A Sunday Discussion_
"I say, Tom," said the Doctor, on Sunday morning, after the breakfastthings had been cleared away, and the first fire had been lighted in thenew fireplace, "I want to ask you something about your experience onyour hunting trips."
"Go on, Doctor. No boy of sixteen--and we've voted you to be of thatage--can ask me anything that I'll hesitate to answer."
"Thank you," said the Doctor, with a laugh. "Now, think of me as exactlysixteen and tell me all about it. As I understand, you have frequentlyspent from a week to ten days in the mountains, living exclusively uponwhat you could kill."
"So far, Doctor, you are absolutely right," answered the boy, who,having laid aside his headache, was disposed to be facetious.
"Well, that must have been animal food exclusively," said the Doctor.
"Absolutely," answered Tom. "I had always a little of the mineral foodsalt to season it with, but as for bread or potatoes, or anything elseof a vegetable character, why I simply couldn't get them."
"All right. Now, the theory is that a man must have starchy foods inorder to keep in good health. You had no starchy food for from a week totwo weeks at a time on each of these occasions, but lived exclusively onmeat. Now, what effects of this diet did you observe?"
"None whatever, except that little Tom Ridsdale had a mighty keen relishfor bread when he got home again."
The Doctor then asked detailed questions as to particular symptoms, toall of which the substance of Tom's replies was that in his case nosymptoms whatever had manifested themselves. "I think, Doctor," headded, "as the result of my own experience that a healthy young humananimal like me, when living night and day in the open air and taking agreat deal of exercise, can eat pretty much anything he pleases that wecommonly recognize as food, or rather anything of that kind that he canget--without much danger of injuring himself. No, I don't know so wellabout that. Once, I got hurt in the mountains, and lived for a week in abarn, eating nothing but corn. I was all right in a general way, but Isuffered a good deal with cold. When I got out and killed a 'coon androasted and ate it, the weather seemed suddenly to warm up."
"Precisely," answered the Doctor. "The fat of the coon furnished youwith fuel, and you needed it. The more I study the subject, the morefirmly convinced I become of two things--first, that man is essentiallya carnivorous, or meat-eating animal, and second, that while starchyfoods are desirable as a part of his diet, they are not absolutelynecessary to him, except at comparatively long intervals. You know ababy simply cannot digest starchy foods at all. It would starve to deathwith a stomach full of them. Every baby lives exclusively upon theanimal food milk."
"Yes," answered Jack, "but so does every colt and every calf. Yet,neither horses nor cows eat any animal food whatever after they cease tobe colts and calves."
"That is true," said the Doctor, meditatively. "I hadn't thought ofthat." Then, after a minute's thought, he added--"but neither cows norhorses have any carnivorous teeth whatever, any teeth fit for thechewing of meat, while man has. Besides that, physicians have observedthat behind almost every case of obstinate, low fevers and that sort ofdebilitated disease, there is a history of underfeeding, andparticularly of an insufficient use of meat, whether as a matter ofnecessity, or merely as a matter of choice. Persons who eat no meat, orvery little meat, may seem very robust so long as positive disease doesnot attack them, but when they contract maladies of a serious sort, theyare very likely to show a lack of stamina, a deficiency of recuperativepower."
"Then you don't believe at all, any more than we meat-eating Virginiansdo--in the doctrines of the vegetarians?" asked Jack, as he finished thehind legs of a broiled squirrel.
"It will be time enough," answered the Doctor, "to consider thedoctrines of the vegetarians when they agree among themselves as to whatthose doctrines are."
"Why, how do you mean?" asked Tom.
"Well, some vegetarians held a congress, or a convention, or somethingof that sort in New York a little while ago. There were only fifty-sevenof them present, I believe, and yet they managed to split their congressup into four groups, each antagonizing the views of all the others withsomething approaching violence of temper."
"What were their differences?" asked Tom.
"Well first of all there was a group who advocated the eating ofvegetable matters only, except that they saw no harm in the use of milk,eggs, cheese and butter. Next there was a group who bitterly condemnedmilk, eggs, cheese and butter as animal foods, tending to inflame evilpassions and utterly to be rejected, though they ate milk biscuit andbutter crackers. This second group looked with favor upon all fruits andvegetables, but here a third group took issue with them, contending thatonly those vegetables should be eaten which grow above ground, andutterly rejecting the thought of eating potatoes, parsnips, beets,turnips, onions, carrots, radishes and other things that develop beneaththe surface of the earth. Finally there was a fourth group that agreedwith the third except that they made a plea in behalf of celery, on theground that it is naturally a plant growing above ground and isartificially imbedded in earth only by way of making it tender andpalatable."
"But how about circuses then?" asked Tom.
"I don't understand," the Doctor answered.
"Why how can anybody go to a circus without eating peanuts? And aboutthree-fourths of all the peanuts are developed under ground by buryingthe blossoms."
"It's all very funny," said Jack. "But the funniest thing about it isthe fetish worship of that word 'vegetable.' Patent medicines are oftenadvertised as 'purely vegetable,' as if that settled the question oftheir harmlessness. Yet I know at least a dozen 'purely vegetable'plants that grow in these woods which are poisonous."
"Of course," answered the Doctor, "and for that matter the most virulentpoisons known to man are 'purely vegetable.' There's strychnia forexample, as purely vegetable in its origin as apple-butter itself is.And there are others, such as morphine, stramonium, and nux vomica andworst of all hydrocyanic acid, commonly called prussic acid. That is sodeadly that it is almost never made or kept in its pure state, because asingle whiff of its fumes in the nostrils would kill almost instantly.Yet it is an extract of peach pits or bitter almonds."
"Well now I say," broke in Tom, "let's return to the subject of foods,for I am hungry, and I'm going to declare war on the Doctor if hedoesn't let me have some light thing to eat like a chop from that wildboar or something of an equally digestible sort."
"Well, we'll see about that," said the Doctor, going to Tom's bed andexamining and redressing his wounds. After the inspection he said:
"You were entirely right, Tom, when you called yourself a perfectlyhealthy human animal a little while ago. I never yet saw wounds heal inthe way they are doing on you. So you may sit up for dinner to-day, andyou may have whatever you want to eat."
"All right!" cried Tom, hastily scrambling out of bed. "My clamor is forpork. How are you going to cook the pig boys?"
After a little consultation, it was decided to hang the shoat before thegreat fire in the new fire place, and roast it whole.
"After all, it doesn't weigh more than forty pounds, and that isn't muchto divide between six of us," said Harry, laughingly.
"And besides," added Ed, "roast wild shoat is as good cold as hot, orrather better. So we'll roast the gentleman whole, and I for onevolunteer to sit down before him and baste him so that all the juicesthat belong to him shall be found succulently pervading his muscularstructure."
"I'll help in that," called Jim Chenowith from outside the cabin, wherehe was just finishing a turn of guard duty.
Thus the little company rested and grew strong during the Sunday, and bybed time they were eager for the morning and the hard, outdoor work oftree felling that it would bring with it. With a great glowing blaze inthe fireplace, which each sentinel replenished with wood beforesummoning his successor to take his place, the log hut seemed adelightful place to sleep in.