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YEAST EXTRACTS.

Mushrooms, and edible fungi, among which we must include the yeasts used by bakers and brewers, are saprophytes, or parasites, living upon the products of rotting vegetation and decaying organic matter. Nature uses these living vegetable organisms or plants for the purpose of rapidly clearing such objectionable matter from the earth. The one thing in their favour is that they are very rich in potassium salts and in neuclein, which latter is said to be the product which is released when our own tissues undergo disintegration and decay.

It is a popular belief that mushrooms are equal in nutritive value to beefsteak, but this is a double-faced delusion. 10 lbs. of mushrooms only equal 1 lb. of prime beef in proteid content, and the same quantity of beef, containing as it does 80 per cent. of water, is far surpassed in food value by about ½ lb. of pine kernels, almonds, or ordinary cheese, because these latter are nearly free from water, and are (an important point) toxin-free.

Singularly enough, yeast extracts are now largely used as beverages, and as vegetable substitutes for meat extracts. They are often employed by vegetarians for flavouring soups and entrées so as to give these a “meaty” character. Yeast in its fresh state, as well as in the form of extracts, exerts a marked curative action upon boils and abscesses, being administered for this purpose in the form of yeast extract beverages. It has been said that this treatment merely suppresses the complaint, but as, in the author’s experience, people so treated seem to be permanently benefited, it is difficult to see how this can be so.

The Yeast Cure—a Contrast.

Apropos of this statement the following letter appeared in the August (1909) issue of the Vegetarian Messenger signed by E. Lewis:—

“The letter by ‘T’ last month amused me very much, and brought to my mind the following:—The wife of a friend of mine had been ailing for some considerable time. I tried very hard to get her to give up yeast-raised bread, but failed to do so, but she continued with various mixtures for a few weeks longer, when, to my surprise, I found she had left home to undergo a month’s special treatment. It was some time before I could get to know what the treatment was. I was astonished when her husband told me it consisted of one gill of brewers’ yeast every morning before breakfast. I thought they had gone mad, and feared the lady would be dead before the month end, but I got another surprise when she arrived home in the pink of health, and now, after eleven years’ hard work, she is still in splendid health. Ask any old man and woman what the simple teaspoonful of brewers’ yeast did to their children, and they will smile, shake their heads and say, ‘make bonny lads and lasses of them.’ They ate little or no fruit, and seldom vegetables, but plenty of plain bread, oat cake, buttermilk, and ‘fatty cake.’”

This letter is inserted deliberately, for the idea of eating yeast or drinking yeast extracts is repugnant to most advocates of an unfired diet. It is chiefly the cooked food votaries who need the cleansing action of yeast extracts to help them to get rid of the fermenting devitalized pabulum which they take into their digestive organs. The yeast extract exerts a cleansing action upon the contents of the stomach and bowels, when filled with fermenting food waste, and thus prevents the entry into the blood of the poisonous acids and toxins, to get rid of which the white corpuscles of the body are called out.

This, of course, is the theory I have evolved as the result of considerable experience in the use of yeast extracts in the cure of boils, and I have often watched the white corpuscles steadily decrease in the blood, and the general condition of the blood improve, under their influence. I am aware that this is at direct variance to the Wallace theory, that the yeast cell is identical with the white corpuscles of the blood. It must be remembered that the late Joseph Wallace did a colossal amount of work when he first began his investigations upon the blood, and he acquired by such means an insight into the state of the body which was remarkable. Investigation of the fresh living blood is the only satisfactory way of diagnosing disease in a thorough manner. One of the things that Mr. Joseph Wallace was most emphatic about in his long-continued pioneer observations was the identity of yeast and the white corpuscle. For many years I tried to work on his lines and confirm this identity, but in vain, for the more I investigated, the more I was convinced that yeast cell and white corpuscle were absolutely distinct from each other, although they both did the same sort of work,—the one as scavenger in the vegetable kingdom, the other in the animal realm. The white blood corpuscle reproduces itself in the animal way, and is often seen to have amœboid movements. The yeast cell always reproduces itself by what is called budding, and never appears to have any amœboid movements at all. The following cutting from the Herald of Health indicates the “Wallaceite” attitude towards yeast extracts:—

“Yeast versus Beef-tea. A complaint is being made in the British Medical Journal that ‘yeast extract is being largely used as a cheapener in so-called beef teas.’ Students of Physianthropy know that it is the yeast, and the products of yeast fermentation, essential to all dead flesh, that are among the worst features of flesh foods when eaten by the human subject. From the disease-producing standpoint beef-tea is not so injurious as yeast extract, yet yeast compounds, minus the beef-tea, are largely patronised by those vegetarians who aim at getting as near as possible the fleshpots of old without resorting to the slaughter-house.”