The value of meat in the preventive and curative treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis / by F. Parkes Weber.

  • Weber, Frederick Parkes, 1863-1962.
Date:
1900
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The value of meat in the preventive and curative treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis / by F. Parkes Weber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    kinds of bad hygiene play an immense part in determining the relatively great incidence of tuberculosis amongst the poor, but the insufficiency of meaty foods is, I believe, likewise partly responsible. The poorest classes, though they often obtain abundance of carbohydrate food, can generally obtain very little of the more expensive meaty foods. Great meat-eaters, if not alcoholic, rarely, even in the most unhygienic surroundings, become phthisical; and it may likewise be noted that in all charitable hospitals and sanatoria for tuber- culosis more animal food is provided than the patients owing to their poverty can generally obtain in their own homes, whereas many of them have been already accustomes at home to as much carbohydrate food as they care for. Dr. J. Dvorak^s remarks^) at the recent Berlin Congress may likewise be referred to. He pointed out that in Bohemia a want of resistance to disease was very noticeable in children fed with much carbohydrates and with too little animal proteids. Charles Richet’s recent experiments^) on dogs are moreover very suggestive in this respect. He in'oculated a certain number of dogs with tubercle. Those fed on a mixed carbohydrate and meat diet died on the average in thirty days, whereas those fed exclusively on abundance of raw meat survived for a very much longer period, and five out of ten were .still living a year and a half after the experiment. I should be sorry to be thought to be recommending a meat diet as a kind of panacea for all tuberculous diseases, or indeed to be recommending it at all indiscriminately for phthisical patients, but I wish to lay stress on the questions referred to, which have been relatively less discussed than most other points in the therapeutics of tuberculosis. Every one must admit the general value of good feeding in tuberculosis, and notably of abundance of fats in many cases of phthisis. A due proportion of vegetables and fruits is admittedly of great importance, perhaps especially for their antiscorbutic action in growing subjects. Moreover, in regard to the suitability of meaty foods, as in all other matters of treatment, great differences must be observed in different individuals. Whilst some persons have an inherent dislike for much meat, others have a great inclination to it, and in some cases a fair amount of butcher’s meat in the diet will stimulate the appetite enormously for all kinds of food and render digestion more vigorous. This doubtless explains some of the value of abundant meat in regard to tuberculosis. In very acute and feverish stages of phthisis the advisability of much meat is naturally quite another question, In very advanced cases the great excretory organs, the kidneys and liver, are frequently damaged. The liver especially, which plays a very great part in the last stages of nitrogenous tissue-change, is almost always enlarged and infiltrated with fat®) in advanced and hectic cases of phthisis, showing clearly that its important ’j „Bericht iiber den Kongress zur Bekampfung der Tuberkulose als Volkskrankbeit“, Berlin, 1899, P- 619. q Academie de MMecine, Paris, Seance de 28 Nov. 1899. This condition is of course very different to the so-called ,,sluggish liver resulting often transfrom habitually overworking the liver and digestive organs by too copious and stimulating a diet, especially in persons of sedentary habits.