RE: [100% veg*n ] :) interesting article..well...i thought so...

[Guest guest]

Thank you for that! I did find it quite heartening. )

 

xxk@xx

EBbrewpunx [EBbrewpunx]

30 July 2002 17:03

ESI-List; ;

veganhumpers ; 0veganpunx ; TFHB ;

HarmNone ; vegan-network

Cc: nikkimack; darquehaven

[100% veg*n ] interesting article..well...i thought so...

 

 

http://www.europeanvegetarian.org/evu/english/news/news962/omnivore.html

 

Omnivorous or Vegetarian?

What famous naturalists think about it

 

by Professor Luis Vallejo Rodríguez

 

Deutsch - Español - from EVU News, Issue 2 / 1996 - Français

 

 

--------

------

 

 

Professor. Luis Vallejo Rodríguez, Secretary of the Canarian Vegetarian

Association

 

Nowadays it is extensively claimed that man must eat meat to have a

balanced diet containing proteins of good quality. Furthermore this is what

is said by outstanding doctors like Dr. Francisco Grande Govian who has

recently died, considered as the greatest authority on nutrition in Spain.

To this we have to add that the Ministry of Health recommend eating meat and

that most people eat it and consider to be good food. However, considering

all this it is surprising that the most famous naturalists in humanity were

vegetarians or, at least, they declared one after the other that man is

vegetarian by nature.

 

We have to consider that the words 'vegetarian' and 'vegetarianism' first

appeared about 1838 so before that date they do not appear in any writing

and for this reason they speak about vegetable food or vegetable diet. The

inexistance of these words makes investigation difficult.

 

Furthermore we have to add that to know whether or not a famous naturalist

was a vegetarian we must read the biographies of each of them. Biographies

difficult or impossible to obtain as not all of them have been written. If

biographies have been written about famous artists, very little has been

written about scientists. To this difficulty we have to add another one: the

scarce or no importance which biographers pay to the eating habits of the

people they write about. So for example Colin Spencer complains in his book

The Heretics Feast that among 60 biographies about Leonardo Da Vinci only

two of his biographers mention that he was a vegetarian. Even with all these

difficulties the declarations of the most famous naturalists of humanity

have had one very clear message and as proof you can read what they have

said: John Ray (1628-1704) was called the father of English Natural History

and in his honour a society was founded which carries his name: The Ray

Society. According to John Ray: " There is no doubt, that man is not built to

be a carnivorous animal " . And furthermore he declares:

 

" What a sweet, pleasing and innocent sight is the spectacle of a table

served that way and what a difference to a make up of fuming animal meat,

slaughtered and dead! Man in no way has the constitution of a carnivorous

being. Hunt and voracity are unnatural to him. Man has neither the sharp

pointed teeth or claws to slaughter his prey. On the contrary his hands are

made to pick fruits, berries and vegetables and teeth appropriate to chew

them. "

" Everything we need to feed ourselves and to restore and please us is

abundantly provided in the inexhaustible store of Nature. What a sweet,

pleasing and innocent sight is a table frugally provided and what a

difference from a meal composed of fuming and slaughtered animal meat. In

short our orchards offer all the delights imaginable while the slaughter

houses and butchers are full of congealed blood and abominable stench. "

Another famous naturalist was Carl Linnée (1707-1778), a doctor of the

Swedish Navy, president of the Academy of Science and professor of Botany at

Stockholm and the University of Upsala. Linnée created the method of natural

classification of plants and animals that is still used today although more

than two centuries have passed. Linnée wrote:

" Edible fruits and plants constitute the most appropriate food for man. "

" According to his anatomy, man has not been physiologically prepared to

eat meat. "

" Fruits are the most adequate food for man according to that demonstrated

by the analogy of quadrupeds in the structure in his teeth and digestive

apparatus.

The French naturalist George Louis Leclerc, more commonly known as Count

Buffon (1707-1788) was member of the Academy of Science, administrator of

the Garden of the King and with several collaborators wrote 'Natural

History' in 36 volumes. Buffon stated that:

" Man could live on vegetables alone. However the whole of nature is not

enough to satisfy his intemperance and the inconsistent variety of his

appetite. Man by himself consumes and devours more meat than all the other

animals together and not out of necessity but as a form of abuse. "

A collaborator of Buffon was Dr. Luis Maria D'Aubenton, more commonly

known as Daubenton (1716-1799). He was a professor of Minerology at the

Garden of the King and of Natural History at the School of Medicine.

D'aubenton said, that:

" It is to be presumed that man, while he lives in a natural state and a

graded climate, where the earth spontaneously produces every type of fruit,

he feeds himself with these and does not eat animals. "

George Cuvier (1769-1832) was a French naturalist, anatomist and

geologist. He was a professor at the School and Museum of France, Secretary

of the Academy of Sciences and Chancellor of the University. He created the

theory of Compared Anatomy and Palaeontology. Thanks to his studies we have

been able to reconstruct species which have disappeared. Cuvier received the

distinctions and titles of Baron and grand official of the Legion of Honour

and was honoured by Napoleon I, Louis XVIII and Louis Philip. Cuvier stated

in his work: Lessons of Compared Anatomy, that:

" The compared anatomy shows us that man in every way is like the

frugivorous animals and no way like the carnivorous animals... Disguising

the dead meat by culinary preparations, the outward appearance is changed

and tenderised because the sight of raw and bloody meat only exited horror

and disgust in man. "

Lets look at some statements made by Cuvier:

" According to the constitution of mans principle organs, it has been

demonstrated that his nourishment should not consist of any other thing than

vegetables. "

" Mans natural food, judging from his structure, should consist of fruits,

roots and vegetables. "

" The whole of the human body even down to the slightest detail is destined

by nature for an exclusively vegetable diet. "

" Man appears to be organized to feed on fruits, roots and the succulent

parts of vegetables. His short mandibles of medium force, his canines of the

same length as his other teeth, and his tuberous molars do not permit him to

chew grass or devour meat without preparing these foods through cooking. His

digestive organs are formed in accordance with the disposition of his teeth.

His stomach is simple and his intestine canal is of medium length and very

well fixed to his large intestine. "

Alexander von Humbold (1769-1859) was a German naturalist, explorer and

geographer. He carried out studies on magnetism and supported the theory of

the igneous origin of rocks. He is considered to be the founder of

Climathology, Terrestrial Morphology, Physical Geogrophy of the Oceans and

the Geography of the Planets. He wrote a book in 30 volumes entitled Cosmos

and Trips to Equimoctial Regions of the New World. Humbold stated that:

" Eating animals as food is not far away from athropophagy and cannibalism.

The same amount of land used to graze and feed cattle could feed ten people,

if however we cultivated it with lentils, kidney beans or peas it could feed

a hundred people....The Orinoco basin can produce sufficient bananas to feed

the whole of mankind comfortably. "

Richard Owen (1804-1892) was an English naturalist who studied with

Cuvier, catalogued the Hunter Collection of the British Museum and organized

the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. He studied anatomy and

compared Physiology and Palaeontology. He wrote A Course in Compared Anatomy

and Palaeontology and Physiology in Vertebrae. Owen stated:

" The anthropoids and all quadumanous derive their nourishment from fruits,

grains and other succulent vegetable substances and the strict analogy

between the structure of those animals and man clearly demonstrates their

natural frugivorousness. "

" The apes, whose dentition is almost equal to that of man, lives

principally on fruit, seeds, nuts and other similar kinds of savoury

textures of nutritious value which are elaborated by the vegetable kingdom.

The profound similarity between the dentition of quadrupeds and that of

humans demonstrates that man was from his origins adapted to eat fruit from

the trees in Paradise. "

Of course, the most famous of all British naturalists also agreed with the

other naturalists. I am referring to Charles Darwin (1800-1882) who at the

age of 22 years started on a journey around the world which lasted 5 years.

On this journey Darwin collected material which served to publish his most

famous book in 1859: The Origin of Species by Natural Selection: Darwin was

a member of the Royal Society of London and after his death he was buried in

Westminster Abbey with great funeral honours and diplomatic representatives

from many great nations were present at his funeral. Darwin wrote:

" The grading of forms, organic functions, customs and diets showed in an

evident way that the normal food of man is vegetable like the anthropoids

and apes and that our canine teeth are less developed than theirs and that

we are not destined to compete with wild beasts or carnivorous animals. "

In his book The Origin of Man he tells us:

" Although we know nothing for certain about the time or place that man

shed the thick hair that covered him, with much probability of being right

we could say that he must have lived in a warm country where conditions were

favourable to the frugivorous way of life which, to judge from analogies,

must have been the way man lived. "

Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) was an English doctor and anthropologist

who supported Darwin's theories and became the president of the Royal

Society. Among other books he wrote Zoological Evidences as to Man's Place

in Nature and Compared Anatomy. Let's look at some of Huxleys' statements:

" Man came before the axe and fire so he couldn't be carnivorous. "

" The length of mans digestive tube is 5-8 meters and the distance between

the mouth and the coccyx is 50 to 80 centimetres, which gives us a result of

10 as in other frugivorous animals and not 3 as in the carnivorous or 20 as

in the herbivorous animals. "

" The only animal with probable omnivorous morphology that exists, is the

bear, which has some pointed teeth and others that are flat. "

Sir Arthur Keith (1866-1955) was a famous English anatomist and

anthropologist. Together with Martin Flack he discovered the sinoauricular

nodule which is where cardiac contractions originate. He was Rector of

Aberdeen University and wrote: Instruction to the Study of Anthropoid Apes

Ancient Types of Man and Essays about Evolution of Humans. This

anthropologist tells us that:

" Chimpanzees and gorillas have the same digestive mechanisms as man does.

That is the proof of compared anatomy in favour of a diet of crude

vegetables which permits the fermentation to produce several disposals

daily, soft and free from putrefaction. "

 

--------

------

 

These are the researches by the most famous naturalists that mankind has

had. We have to observe that their studies were frequently supported and

made reference by comparing the anatomy of man to that of other mammals,

especially the ape family, and speak to us about the formation of teeth and

digestive tubes of these animals. In this way all these famous naturalists

arrived at the same impressive conclusion: man is vegetarian by nature, and

if the word vegetarian does not appear in their writings, it is because the

word did not exist before or until 1838 and the studies of all the famous

naturalists were written before that date.

 

We could argue against vegetarianism that the pictures of pre-historic man

on the rocks the cavern show him as a hunter. However this does not

necessarily mean, that meat is the ideal form of food for man. Furthermore,

we have to take into account, that the anthropologist Alan Walker of John

Hopkins University, when studying the grooves of fossilized teeth, found a

diverse assortment of different foods. He claimed that our first human

ancestors did not live predominantly on meat, nor seeds, buds, leaves or

grass, neither were they omnivorous. It seems that they subsisted

principally on a diet of fruit. Exceptions have not been found. Each tooth

was examined and those coming from hominids of the period twelve million

years ago, which are in direct line to Homo Erectus, proved to be fruit

eaters.

 

In conclusion I want to ask the reader the following question: Is man by

nature a vegetarian? Nowadays most doctors tell us, that he is not, but the

most famous naturalists have all deduced, that he is.

 

If this is really so, only a small minority of the population of developed

countries, the people we call vegetarians would be eating correctly, whilst

the great majority of the population would be eating incorrectly.

 

Dr. Luis Vallejo Rodríguez

Secretary of the Canarian Vegetarian Association

Apartado 3557, Las Palmas, Canary Islands, Spain

 

Professor Rodriguez has published three books in Spanish:

 

La curación del cáncer por limpieza del intestino grueso (1990)

Alimentación y éxito escolar (1991)

El cancer y los intereses creados (1993)

 

 

--------

------

 

 

 

 

© European Vegetarian Union - http://www.ivu.org/evu

 

[Guest guest]

Oops. Forgot to snip that last one, methinks.

Anyroad, meant to say that this article was good news and in stark contrast

to a programme i saw recently from which i learned that (inhu)man(ity) has

been farming animals since 8,000 years b.c. (any alternatives to that frame

of reference?)! Nice one. Apparently, that was about the time that women

began to be subjugated...allegedly, arguably, ad nauseum.

 

xxk@xx

 

EBbrewpunx [EBbrewpunx]

30 July 2002 17:03

ESI-List; ;

veganhumpers ; 0veganpunx ; TFHB ;

HarmNone ; vegan-network

Cc: nikkimack; darquehaven

[100% veg*n ] interesting article..well...i thought so...

 

 

http://www.europeanvegetarian.org/evu/english/news/news962/omnivore.html

 

Omnivorous or Vegetarian?

What famous naturalists think about it

 

by Professor Luis Vallejo Rodríguez

 

Deutsch - Español - from EVU News, Issue 2 / 1996 - Français

 

 

--------

------