Book Review: The Philosophy of the Stomach: or, an exclusively animal diet (without any vegetable or condiment whatever) is the most wholesome and fit for man: illustrated by experiments upon himse...

Moncriff sets out an ambitious project of arguing against the traditionally accepted view by the medical doctors that mixed diet or

eating vegetables is more nutritious for us, and instead takes a view that an exclusive animal diet is the true path to follow if we want to be healthy. He argues that consulting doctors about what our diet should be is ridiculous, since “the healthy want no doctors, and if they wish to know how to preserve their health, they must first study themselves, and then learn from others the means by which these have actually succeeded,” and warns the doctors that they too should learn from his principles, which offers “.” He repeatedly instructs us that it is important not to consume anything that is disagreeable to our stomach, however agreeable it may appear to be to our palate. It is in this spirit that he writes his account of as “a strewn in the future.”

He begins his investigation by supposing that we should be able to tell naturally what food is hurtful to us and what is not, just as “brutes can spur whatever is hurtful to them, and distinguish poisonous plants from salutary, by natural instinct… [and] only such as either accidentally or pressed by extreme hunger eat of it.” But our experience tells us that we taste junk food agreeable to our palate, even though we know it is bad for us. Can we really tell what is disagreeable to our stomach simply by something’s being agreeable or disagreeable to our palate?

Having first complained that his paper was rejected by a number of journals for his novel, and consequently incredible, idea of commencement of exclusive animal diet, he explains to us that the present condition of our palate is not conducive to the experiment to finding out that animal diet is in fact the healthiest human diet. This is because our palate, after a long abuse by eating artificially added condiments on cooked food, has been confused as to what tastes essentially good to us. So his first step is to get rid of this confusion from our palate, and only then can we have a sound appetite, as he is convinced that “there could be no unison between a sound, or true appetite, and a false one; that a perfectly healthy man could have only one appetite, and this a sound one, while the false appetite could only exist with imperfect health.” He argues that had we been truly healthy and our palate not corrupted, we would be able to know instinctively, just like those brutes in the wild, what is wholesome and would come to “reject everything unwholesome to [us], not out of a knowledge of its unwholesomeness, but simply because it was repulsive or indifferent to [our] taste.” In order to achieve a immaculate taste, as if in infancy, he spends six months or so “exclusively or mainly upon plain milk, without sugar, salt, or any condiment whatever,” and “I thus made myself, as it were, a baby again, fancying for a moment dietetics as a and myself as having nothing to guide me except my own experience.”

After six months of nothing but milk and almonds, “[m]y face, from being rather shallow, became clear and youthful, my eyes serene and mirrors of happiness,” and “[i]t gave me unknown, or rather, forgotten pleasure, to jump over ditch and hedge, and to make those exercises which required muscular strength.” In this way, he recounts that he had never been happier and felt healthier than before, resulting in him being “always cheerful, indulging frequently in songs.” Indeed, he now tells us that it is such a miserable pittance to have a sumptuous dinner, compared to having a single hour of perfect health and true enjoyment of life.

However, this is only the first phrase of his project. He now spends the next twelve months eating only fresh meat and milk. It has frequently been said in opposition to animal diet that it can be least economical in supporting us. Yet, he fends off this claim by providing us with the information about how much quantity of meat and milk he has consumed, and proves that it is much more economical than mixed diets.

He further reports that since he began his exclusive animal diet, he has “not felt the slightest disagreeableness arising from the bowels, either in the shape of eructations from the stomach, or obstruction, or dysentery, or of any denomination whatever.” Further, he entertains us with the empirical account of his that the “quantity of both urine and feces is, as might be expected, much less than formerly,” and is pleasantly surprised that “no bad odour is to be detected in the latter.”

He also has a rather teleological as well as functional argument that meat does not injure our teeth either mechanically or chemically, as vegetables are known to do with fibres and grains mechanically, and with fruits chemically, for “[a]cid, even when considerably diluted, corrode the enamel, and penetrate in small quantities into the dental sac,” not to mention there is this inconvenience arising from “the cracking of hady substances, as nuts, &c., by which the enamel is often being broken,” which results in the “subsequent destruction of the teeth unavoidable.”

In like manner, he argues that fruits are to be consumed only by birds who are destitute of teeth,” and concludes that “there is not a slightest doubt in my mind that there will be a time when the entire human race will live upon an exclusively animal diet.”

His extensive empirical study of the stomach is resonant of the period in many ways, as his argument is based on a quantitative science as is echoed from his citation from Lavoisier, yet his argument from functions and teleology shows the kind of science done during the period, as Darwin would publish his book on in the following years. His inclination to empiricism does not, however, reject a rational theoretical science, as he says at one point that “a man without grand theories will never arrive at a great fact.” Yet in the end, his commitment in the science lies in the belief often seen in the progressive thinkers that when the fact is found, “the theories must be relinquished or corrected without hesitation.” In sum, this book offers an alternative view on a rational ground to the currently predominant view that vegetable diet is healthier than and preferable to the exclusive animal diet.