Excessive uric acid resulting from meat-eating also causes diseases such as rheumatism, Bright's disease, kidney stones, gout and gallstones. Meat proteins cause putrefication twice as rapidly as the vegetable proteins. The morbid matter of the dead animal body is foreign and uncongenial to the excretory organs of man. It is much harder for them to eliminate the waste matter of an animal carcass than that of the human body. Moreover, the formation of ptomaine or corpse poisons, begins immediately after the death of the animal and meat and poultry are usually kept in cold storage for many days and even months before they reach the kitchen.
Flesh is often a carrier of disease germs.
Diseases of many kinds are on the increase in animals, making flesh foods more and more unsafe. People are continually eating flesh that may contain tuberculosis and cancerous germs. Often animals are taken to market and sold for food when they are so diseased that their owners do not wish to keep them any longer. And some of the processes of fattening them to increase their weight and consequently their market value, produce disease. Shut away from light and pure air, breathing the atmosphere of filthy stables, perhaps fattening on decaying food, the entire body now becomes contaminated with foul matter.