VEGETARIANS OF INDIA

Vegetarian of India : Habits of the Brahmans Afford a Testimonial to Value of No-Flesh Diet

THE eminent Prof. C. B. Ramarao, M.D., delegate to the British Medical Association which recently held its meeting at Toronto, stated in a lecture recently delivered before the physicians and guests of the Battle Creek Sanitarium upon the habits and customs of the people of India, that the Brahmans of southern India, who are known to be the most intellectual and highly cultivated people of that country, absolutely eschew all animal food of every description with the exception of milk. Even eggs are excluded from their dietary. The Brahmans of northern India make use of eggs, and sometimes of fish, but never eat the flesh of animals.

Dr. Ramarao is himself a fine specimen of physical development and manly vigor, a man of great intellect and professional attainments. He showed himself to be quite the equal of his white colleagues in the discussion of various questions of interest at the meeting of the British Medical Association. He was particularly happy in his reply to an eminent English physician who spoke in defense of the high protein dietary and the use of flesh meats. In his remarks, the professor (Dr. Haliburton) maintained that the inferiority of the Hindu race was in part due to the small amount of protein they had in their dietary; that they were inferior physically on this account, and lacked endurance. Dr. Ramarao was very quickly upon his feet when the professor had ceased talking, and made so vigorous and effective a defense of the low protein dietary and abstinence from flesh, that he received vigorous applause from the entire assembly of medical men.

At the present time, there are very few men who are well versed in the results of recent researches in dietetics and physiologic chemistry who are not thoroughly persuaded that the use of flesh meat is quite unnecessary. If foodstuffs rich in proteins are at any time needful as an addition to the dietary, they may be readily found in peas, beans, lentils, milk, and eggs; but that even these protein substances are not really needful is clearly shown by the fact demonstrated by Prof. Chittenden, whose views Prof. Haliburton sought though unsuccessfully to controvert. Prof.Chittenden has shown that the actual requirements of the body of protein material is only ten per cent of the total food value. That this is without doubt correct, the writer, and many others, have fully demonstrated in personal experience. Even the potato and rice contain a sufficient amount of protein to meet the needs of the body, while wheat bread, rye, barley, and oatmeal contain more protein than is actually required.

The fear of proteid starvation without the use of flesh food is, then, absolutely groundless. The natural products of the earth supply in ample quantity a proper proportion of the elements necessary for human sustenance.

The taking of life to perpetuate human life is necessary only under unusual and extraordinary conditions in which the ordinary and natural foodstuffs are unobtainable.