It has been said that animals do not study dietetics and yet live healthily enough. This is true, but it is true only as far as concerns those animals which live _in their natural surroundings and under natural conditions_. Man would not need to study diet were he so situated, but he is not. The wild animal of the woods is far removed from the civilized human being. The animal's instinct guides him aright, but man has lost his primitive instinct, and to trust to his inclinations may result in disaster. The first question about vegetarianism, then, is this:--Is it the best diet from the hygienic point of view? Of course it will be granted that diseased food, food containing pernicious germs or poisons, whether animal or vegetable, is unfit to be eaten. It is not to be supposed that anyone will defend the eating of such food, so that we are justified in assuming that those who defend flesh-eating believe flesh to be free from such germs and poisons; therefore let the following be noted. It is affirmed that 50 per cent. of the bovine and other animals that are slaughtered for human food are affected with Tuberculosis, or some of the following diseases: Cancer, Anthrax, Pleuro-Pneumonia, Swine-Fever, Sheep Scab, Foot and Mouth Disease, etc., etc., and that to exclude all suspected or actually diseased carcasses would be practically to leave the market without a supply. One has only to read the literature dealing with this subject to be convinced that the meat-eating public must consume a large amount of highly poisonous substances. That these poisons may communicate disease to the person eating them has been amply proved. Cooking does _not_ necessarily destroy all germs, for the temperature at the interior of a large joint is below that necessary to destroy the bacilli there present. Although the remark is irrelevant to the subject in hand, one is tempted to point out that, quite apart from the question of hygiene, the idea of eating flesh containing sores and wounds, bruises and pus-polluted tissues, is altogether repulsive to the imagination. Let it be supposed, however, that meat can be, and from the meat-eater's point of view, should be and will be under proper conditions, uncontaminated, there yet remains the question whether such food is physiologically necessary to man. Let us first consider what kind of food is best suited to man's natural constitution. FOOTNOTES: