Buckle up! This is a 400 page book published in 1888 discussing the benefits of a ASF diet
It’s sad how much we “knew”, but didn’t use in the last 150 years, how many lives could have been improved?
In this book Salisbury putting people on Red Meat and water (indian diet), he found he could reverse rheumatoid arthritis, Ulcerative colitis, gout. He specifically was interested in how the Red Meat diet improved Tuberculosis, and how those already on a red meat diet were far less susceptible to Tuberculosis
The fact this book is old does NOT INVALIDATE IT. This doctor was able to visit and live amongst people who ate “carnivore” diets, and compare their health vs people eating lots of PBF. That is a unique perspective we don’t have access to anymore. This is a time capsule that should be the basis of more modern research.
https://collections.nlm.nih.gov/catalog/nlm:nlmuid-62210780R-bk
https://archive.org/details/b2150796x/page/n7/mode/2up
A bit on James Salisbury - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_H._Salisbury
He did, in fact, invent the Salisbury steak.
his advocacy of a meat-centered diet to promote health, and the term Salisbury steak for a ground beef patty served as the main course has been used in the United States since 1897.
Salisbury recommended this recipe (somewhat different from modern Salisbury steak recipes) for the treatment of alimentation (digestive disorders):
Heat the muscle pulp of lean beef made into cakes and broiled. This pulp should be as free as possible from connective or glue tissue, fat and cartilage. […]
Previous to chopping, the fat, bones, tendons and fasciae should all be cut away, and the lean muscle cut up in pieces an inch or two square. Steaks cut through the centre of the round are the richest and best for this purpose. Beef should be procured from well fatted animals that are from four to six years old.
The pulp should not be pressed too firmly together before broiling, or it will taste livery. Simply press it sufficiently to hold it together. Make the cakes from half an inch to an inch thick. Broil slowly and moderately well over a fire free from blaze and smoke. When cooked, put it on a hot plate and season to taste with butter, pepper, salt; also use either Worcestershire or Halford sauce, mustard, horseradish or lemon juice on the meat if desired. Celery may be moderately used as a relish.[5]
Look at that, no carbs in Salisbury’s version of the Salisbury steak.
That’s going to take a bit of reading! Downloaded and added to my reading queue (isn’t 1800s English wordy!)
Incidentally the word in the title and commonly in the text “alimentation” means “the food one eats”
Note the first: The fun of these old scientific types is they’re so often about 60% right but their wrong is just so, so wrong. The downside of that is if you use these guys to reinforce a point it’s really easy for opposing people to discredit them. OTOH it’s a 400 page book and they’re probably not going to read it, especially given they don’t read the recent science we post
Note the second: He thinks physical exercise is life limiting - do it professionally and die at 55. I guess his examples were people in physical work jobs who aren’t as long lived as people in gentler life, who in turn are not going to do as well as people in gentle life who exercise deliberately. Resistance and weight lifting to exhaustion, or sprinting seem to be the most effective exercises. I note that some of the youtube carnivores are setting records (was it Chaffee who got the seated row record?)
Note the third: Wow are things bad now
For instance, we should not for a moment think of feeding our cattle, horses and sheep upon lean and fat meats, neither do we expect to feed cats and dogs upon hay, corn and oats.
Sad to say yes we do feed dogs corn.
Note the fourth: 20 meat teeth, 12 plant teeth of which 4 aren’t much use being the wisdom teeth. I never grew wisdom teeth. I have only 8 alleged plant eating teeth, though I use them when eating beef.
The rationale of this process is as follows. The palm of the right hand and the fore part of the body are both + (or positive) magnetic poles. The left palm and the back part of the body are both — (or negative) poles.
You were not kidding about the wordiness. This passage seems silly, given it is easy to verify with a magnet.
Sad to say yes we do feed dogs corn.
Yeah, cats and dogs only get diabetes when living with humans.
She was one hundred and four years of age, while her husband was one hundred and six. He was erect and vigorous, appearing no older than a civilized man of sixty. Amono- the native, wild tribes of Central America many persons are found to be considerably over one hundred years of age. In one instance, where records have been kept, a man now living, active and in good health, is known to be over one hundred and fifty, and is supposed to be nearly two hundred years old.^
I wonder about the record keeping, but telomeres in cells should be good enough for 120 year old humans.
Medicines alone will not cure the disease. They are merely aids to the restoration of healthy states, after the cause, or the unhealthy alimentation is remove
The chapter on diabetes is interesting, the protocol is low carb until the urine is back to normal, then he reintroduces breads.
His only hope lies in the maintenance of an unwavering determination to carry on the good work ; otherwise he will so often yield to the morbid longings for fermentable food, as to render his cure impossible. The patient can tear down more in one minute, by indulging in the forbidden, than the physician can build up in three days
So true.
To effect a cure, we must cut off (as far as possible) aU food which goes to make animal sugar
He knew in 1888!!!
This includes vegetable food, animal fats, tendon and connective or glue tissues and cartilage. Also all excess in drinks. Abstinence in these respects will lessen the labor of the diseased parts and by degrees subdue their excessive activity.
Swing and a miss, ha, nobody is perfect.
His food experiments were really forward thinking!
The experiments upon meat feeding showed that meats, and especially beef and mutton, can be subsisted upon without resulting in diseased states, for a much longer time than can the best vegetable products under the same conditions. The reason of this is that the first organ of the digestive apparatus — the stomach — is a meat-digesting organ. I have had patients afflicted with grave diseases, thrive and become perfectly well upon beef. Many of them have continued this as an exclusive diet from three to four years, before bringing breads and vegetables into their diet list. Good, fresh beef and mutton stand at the head of all aliments as foods promotive of- human health.
Wow, all the microscope sketches! the man was dedicated
The fun of these old scientific types is they’re so often about 60% right but their wrong is just so, so wrong
I think that’s the benefit of hindsight. And we’re currently living in the same type of environment. About half of what we know now is wrong, we just don’t know which half. Which is why it’s so important to keep the scientific spirit alive, don’t live in dogma, verify everything with data, and if you’re bored do an experiment anyway.
I reckon you can safely skip to page 104 after reading the introduction. The first hundred-odd pages are his pre-germ theory model of tuberculosis which is basically:
- Eat too much of fermentable foods (as opposed to meat and grains, with grains good as they are easy to digest to sugars)
- Get overloaded with yeast and the products of fermentation
- Die of consumption
Apparently the yeast promoting foods hurried death for tuberculosis patients