Not only can diabetes, especially if of an hereditary nature, be increased by abundant meat food, but gout also, as is well known, may be caused thereby, and, existing, may be made worse. Such diet not only provokes the elimination of sugar, but of uric acid as well, which latter is a cause of gout. Many authorities, especially Walker Hall and Haig, have demonstrated that even small quantities of meat can produce uric acid, especially when such meat contains a large quantity of nuclein bodies from which uric acid can be formed, such as the glandular organs, especially kidneys, liver, sweetbreads, shortbread, etc. Meat food in abundance is also deleterious to other organs, as, for instance, to the intestines, which, receiving a food so easily digested and absorbed, lack the natural stimulus for good peristaltic movements, which can best be produced by a cellulose food like vegetables and fruit. The greatest danger to the circulatory apparatus lies in meat, for, as already mentioned, the viscosity of the blood is thereby increased, as discovered by Determann,[280] and thus its circulation through the blood-vessels impaired. It is a well-established fact that arteriosclerosis can very often be observed in persons who have been largely addicted to a meat diet for a long time. Apoplexy also is more frequent among such. Footnote 280: Congress für Innere Medicin, 1904. These conditions can, however, be improved if the meat be suppressed and replaced by a vegetarian diet. It would lead us beyond the limits of this book if we attempted to point out in an exhaustive manner various other dangerous consequences of a too abundant meat diet. All we desire is to discuss the question whether, in view of the various dangers to which a meat diet may lead, to which we have referred, we should or should not give up meat. We think we should be guilty of fanatical prejudice if, because of the above accounts of the dangerous consequences ensuing on an unlimited _abuse_ of meat, we should discard meat entirely, even in small quantities. Such a course is, indeed, strongly advocated by Haig,[281] but we cannot follow him so far. Footnote 281: Haig: “Uric Acid in the Causation of Disease,” sixth edition, London, 1904. It is quite true that even a moderate amount of meat may create uric acid, but there is not one hour out of the twenty-four that we do not produce a small amount of uric acid in our system, even if we exclude food of every description, such being the uric acid produced endogenously through the decomposition of the nuclein-containing albuminous bodies in the system, and which it is hardly possible to avoid; and if our kidneys be in good condition they will easily eliminate this small amount.