A FEW years ago, soon after my first article appeared in “HEAL THYSELF”, or rather in “THE HOMOEOPATHIC WORLD”, by which title it had been known for many years, the Editor did me the honour of adding my name to the list of many illustrious contributors that appears month by month on inside of front cover. By the hints since received from time to time from the Editor, it may be that the many articles that have since appeared have not justified his bracketing my name with that of “Vegetarianism”, hence the present article.
I am often asked, “Why did you take up the Food Reform Movement?” “Why did you take up Vegetarianism?” or some similar question. The reply is “I did not take it up, it took me up, which makes all the difference”.
The first time I remember encountering the word “vegetarianism” was more than fifty years ago. It was in Queen Street, Portsmouth, when I went into a Vegetarian Restaurant and had a “three course dinner for six pence”. The price suited both my “Scotch” blood and my pocket, and I remember how much I enjoyed that dinner, thanks to the most piquant and health-giving of all sauces-hunger.
But it did nothing, as far as I remember, to convert me to vegetarianism. Later I discarded the use of ham and bacon, recognizing the fact that the pig, the dirtiest creature on Gods earth, as kept by man, provided this choice breakfast dish. I further found that I could keep fitter on wholemeal bread and butter and oatmeal porridge, but it require more than that to make me a confirmed disciple of vegetarianism.
Later still I was refused acceptance by three Life Insurance Companies, and I found that if I was ever going to live to enjoy good health I had to learn to do without all such stimulating solids and liquids as beef and mutton and tea and coffee. Experience also taught me that if one “fixed upon that course of life which is best, custom would render it most delightful”. Further, I found that for every one thing I gave up and learnt to do without, I found two better things to take its place. I had also come to see that there was some truth in the dictum, “Tell me what you eat and I will tell you what you are”.
In all foods partaken of from the Vegetable Kingdom there are produced more or less waste products than the human digestive organs, or the system as a whole, has to dispose of. If these waste products amount to, say, sixteen ounces per day and fifteen ounces only are disposed of, the remaining ounce will eventually lay one on his or her back, in spite of the assertion” I have eaten so and so for twenty, thirty, forty or fifty years.” When one dies, the greater the amount of these impurities the body contains the quicker will putrefaction set in.
The same will be true, after being slaughtered, of the pig and the cow I saw wallowing in six inches of slush in a farmers yard only last week. If vegetable products taken first hand produce such results in the human organism, what results can one expect when such impurities are taken second hand and ready made, from the animal kingdom? In other words, we are given the choice of obtaining nourishment at first hand by eating barley porridge, or allowing the pig to eat the barley meal (if it ever has the chance of eating anything so clean) and then eating the pig ourselves, thus taking our nourishment second hand.
About that time all my spare time was occupied with work connected with the Temperance Movement. I had been instrumental in starting two Bands of Hope and one Good Templar Lodge, and at one and the same time I was secretary of no less than three such organizations.
When I was asked, “Why do you, in conversations and debates, always take the side of the vegetarian when you are not a vegetarian?” the reply was “I have not been in the employ of an enthusiastic vegetarian for five years without learning that the vegetarians have the best of the argument from all standpoints, so I support them to be on the winning side in spite of the fact that I still hanker after the flesh pots. The moral aspect of the question has never appealed to me sufficiently, but I believe the time will come when it will do so, then I shall have to become almost and altogether a vegetarian”.
This-the humanitarian aspect – I consider to be the unassailable portion of the vegetarian argument. This I hope to deal with in the July issue of “HEAL THYSELF”, believing that the mode of living that has been, and is daily being, proved by thousands in all walks of life to be physically right, cannot be other than morally and ethically right also.
As promised in the June issue, I will now endeavour to deal with the humanitarian, or if preferred, the ethical, aspect of Vegetarianism. In doing this it should be quite understood that I am voicing my own views. No one else is responsible for them, and no reader is called upon to endorse them.
While claiming the right to hold the views I may express, I consider that others have an equal right to hold views to the contrary. The following illustration may make my position clear. I have, on different occasions, been asked: “Do you think it wrong to drink a glass of beer?” I reply emphatically: “Yes, I consider it wrong for one man to drink a glass of beer, and that one man is myself, but I claim no right to be the judge of others, or to say that such action would be wrong of anyone else.” I take up the same attitude regarding the movement under consideration.
I sometimes think that I am not granted the like liberty by others. As an example I may mention that I recently, by request, spoke at a young mens Bible Class of Vegetarianism. In the discussion that followed I was informed that, holding the views I did, I ought not to wear leather shoes. As I had been told the same thing, on a number of previous occasions, I was prepared with a reply to the effect that it so happened that the shoes I was wearing did not contain a particle of leather. In spite of that I did not claim to be consistent.
I was only a pilgrim after perfection, and I sometimes thought ” a long way after”. Another very good example of this lack of toleration appears under “Notes and News” in the Vegetarian News for April. The Editor calls attention to the warning given by the Rev. H. T. Wigley, part of which reads: “Vegetarianism founded on health grounds may be sound, but vegetarianism founded on Kinship of Life is unsound and sentimental”.
The Editor of the Vegetarian News, in reply, quotes a powerful passage from one of John Wesleys sermons, entitled “The Great Deliverance”, which is well worth the reading by anyone interested. The Editor concluded as follows: ” As for Mr. Wigley, good Methodist though he is, he must straightaway, we suggest, if he be consistent, proceed also to dub the founder of Methodism with that unpleasant epithet sentimentalist. But, for ourselves, if John Wesley indeed be on our side, after all, what does it matter what the Rev. H. T. Wigley thinks of us ?” I think this needs no comment of mine.
After all, I find a great deal of sentimentalism among all classes of people, both vegetarians and non-vegetarians, that does much to enrich the world. I once heard a little girl, not then four years old, on passing a butchers shop say, “How awful, and what a dreadful smell”. That little girl is now nearer thirty than twenty-five years of age and has never yet tasted meat, or had a days illness. In that same butchers shop and at the same time I noticed a lady turning over pieces of those carcasses.
Another little maiden once said, “What a sweet little lamb, I do love it”, and the father said, “So do I, with mint sauce”. I once read of two men commenting on a delightful landscape. One said to the other, “How beautiful, and even the cattle lend entrancement to the scene”. The other replied, “Yes, and theyve got a good bit of beef on em too”. Need an explanation be given as to which was the poet and which the butcher? In any case I would rather be on the side of the children and the poet and run the risk of being dubbed a sentimentalist.
There is one aspect of this sentimentalism I have never been able to fathom. I have known a number of different young people between the ages of four years and twenty, living in homes where vegetarianism has never been spoken of, who, for no accountable reason, have taken a violent aversion to flesh meats of all kinds, and have fought for years against every protest and obstacle purposely put in their paths, but have always refused meat. I would like to receive from readers their explanation for this.
In looking up dates I find that I became an out-and-out vegetarian by conviction on May 28th, 1895. Things were very different then. When one dined at a friends house an apology was considered necessary for being a vegetarian. Now the tables are turned.
Whatever may appear on the tables when I am not there, it is very seldom that any meat appears on the tables of meat-eaters when I am, and if there is, they apologize and inform me that they “eat but very little meat.” If one is at home enough to reply to the lady without offence, ” I suppose you would eat less if you had to do your own killing,” the reply is, “Oh ! I should not eat any if I had to do that.” If she would but pay a visit to one of our big city shambles, and see the slaughtermen drenched in blood all day, my lady friend might refuse to be a butcher by deputy any longer.
Henry followed in his father's footsteps, obtaining his Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from Durham in 1891. At the age of 27 he arrived in Melbourne in April 1894 aboard the Port Albert. He was registered as a medical practitioner in Victoria on 4 May 1894.
It appears that Dr Cook already believed in homœopathy, possibly because of his father's influence, as in 1895 Dr Cook took the position of Resident Surgeon of the Melbourne Homœopathic Hospital . (This position was previously held by Dr James Cook, unrelated, who resigned in March 1895). He was listed in the 1896 & 1897 editions of the Melbourne Post Office Directory as being Resident Medical Officer at the Melbourne Homœopathic Hospital, but not in the 1898 edition.
In 1901 he moved to Sale in Eastern Victoria, where he ran a practice in York Street. By 1909 his practice was at Wyndham Street, Shepparton.
By 1919 he had moved to 2 Studley Park Road, Kew, where he died on 7 May, 1923.