dapted in the two animals
compared--namely, man and the gibbon--to food of the same mechanical
quality, and this undoubtedly is fruit and nuts. Nevertheless such a
form of tooth is equally well adapted to the texture of cooked meat,
which has served many races of man for probably hundreds of thousands
of years as food.]

Once we remember that man is not fitted for the "raw meat" diet of the
carnivora, but is fitted for the "cooked meat" diet which he has
himself discovered--alone of all animals--we shall get rid of a
misleading prejudice in the consideration of the question as to
whether civilised men should or should not make cooked meat a portion
of their diet, with the purpose of maintaining themselves in as
healthy and vigorous a state as possible. Do not let us forget that
ancient Palaeolithic cave-men certainly made use of fire to cook their
meals of animal flesh, and that probably this use of fire dates back
to a still earlier period when, in consequence of this application of
the red, running tongues of flame, which he had learned to produce,
primitive man was able to leave the warmer climates of the earth and
their abundant fruits, and to establish himself in temperate and even
sub-Arctic regions.

Experiments on a large and decisive scale in regard to the value of
the different foods taken by man and the question of the desirability
of cooked meat as part of his diet have never been carried out, nor
has the use of alcohol been studied by direct experimental method on a
large scale. Inasmuch as the feeding of our Army and Navy, of
prisoners, lunatics, and paupers, is the business of the State, it is
obviously the duty of the Government to investigate this matter and
arrive at a decision. It can be done by the Government, and only by
the Government. The Army Medical Department is fully capable, and, I
am told, desirous, of undertaking this investigation. Five hundred
soldiers in barracks would find it no hardship, but an agreeable duty
(if rewarded in a suitable way), to submit to various diets, and to
comparative tests of the value of such diets. There would be no
difficulty in arranging the experimental investigation. Fifty years
ago similar work (but not precisely in regard to the questions now
raised) was done by the Army Medical Department, under Parkes, with
most valuable and widely recognised results.

CHAPTER IX

FOOD AND COOKERY

Animals, taking one kind with another, nourish themselves o