Strong Medicine by Dr. Blake Donaldson

This is a classic low carb book which has been out-of-print for a long time. The PDF is already available on High Steaks – Meat is Life and Just Meat, but I decided to make it available through my website as well. Dr. Donaldson went to medical school in the late 1800s and practiced medicine in New York until the mid-1900s. His book was published in 1961. He had very good success treating his obese patients with an all-meat diet. His general prescription was 6 oz of lean and 2 oz of visible fat three times per day from either lamb or beef. He never recommended pork, chicken, fish, or eggs, but only meat from ruminants. He says that if his patients did not eat enough food, enough times a day, they would invariably stop losing body fat. If you struggle with obesity and cannot seem to lose weight no matter what you do, his approach is definitely worth exploring. I really enjoyed it.

Strong Medicine by Dr. Blake Donaldson

 

The Type A-Type B Weight Loss Book by H. L. Newbold

Dr. H. L. Newbold is one of the original low carb thinkers, although that is not how he would have described himself. He was a man before his time who was able to think outside the box. As a physician in New York, he catered to a very wealthy clientele that primarily wanted to lose weight. However, the value of his book lies not in its focus on weight loss, but rather on the insight it offers to people with food and environmental sensitivities and intolerances. He observed initially in himself, and then in his patients, that certain foods and chemicals caused uncontrollable cravings for carbohydrates and subsequent disordered “addictive” or “binge” eating. Through trial and error, he came to the conclusion that some people simply cannot tolerate what he termed “new foods,” i.e grains, vegetables, fruits, and even dairy and eggs; in other words, any food that became a major part of our diet after the Agricultural Revolution was capable of triggering cravings for these sensitive people. Interestingly, he also discovered that many man-made chemicals commonly in use around us today are also capable of triggering these irresistable cravings. He includes a long list of all the different chemicals he identified that might be a potential issue. His solution to this problem for himself and his clients was to: first, remove all the “new foods” from the diet and return to the foods of our pre-agricultural ancestors, namely meat, but more specifically beef; and second, to reduce our exposure to the many chemical poisons that surround us in our modern environment. Like many in the Zero Carb Carnivore community today, he found that fish, chicken, and pork were all far from being able to satisfy his patients appetites, and many of his patients also experienced negative reactions, like fatigue, after eating them.

Unfortunately, his unique and insightful book is out of print and there seems to be no interest in republishing it, and used copies are prohibitively expensive. Therefore, I have taken the liberty to create a high quality PDF version and make it available for free here on my website. I originally read it when it first came out in 1991 and I have revisited it many times throughout the past 25+ years. I encourage everyone who struggles with weight management or food and chemical intolerances to make the time to read this largely forgotten classic on the value of a diet based predominantly on red meat. A word of caution: He is very sexist and some of his comments may offend female readers. Additionally, keep in mind that he was a pioneer forging a new path and did not have any one else to fall back on for experience in eating an all-meat diet. Consequently, he tends to err on the side of caution by including an array of vitamin and mineral supplements, as well as a very small amount of vegetables and/or fruits simply because he did not know is meat alone would provide himself and his patients all the nutrients needed for good health. However, there are many others since the time his book was published who have decided to adopt an all-meat diet for health reasons, without the addition of any plant foods or supplements, and have remained perfectly healthy for many years and even decades. Nevertheless, please pay attention and listen to your own body which may have special needs and follow whatever path feels best to you. If you wish to meet and converse with other carnivores, please join us in our Facebook group Principia Carnivora. May your journey be blessed!

The Type A-Type B Weight Loss Book by H. L. Newbold 

 

What Must I Do to Get Well? by Elma Stuart

What Must I Do to Get Well by Elma Stuart

This is a book about Dr. James Henry Salisbury’s Beef and Hot Water Diet Therapy for healing. It was observed to help everything from diabetes to epilepsy to rheumatism to gout to migraines to insomnia to asthma to cancer. This is the 25th edition of the book and was published in 1898. The first edition was published in the mid-1880s and each edition was larger and more comprehensive than the last. This is the most complete edition that I have found. It may have been the final edition.

The author was bedridden for 9 years with what today would be labeled Fibromyalgia or Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. She went to 43 doctors in an effort to regain her health. None of their recommendations worked. She learned about Dr. Salisbury’s diet through an ad in her local newspaper and ordered his book The Relation of Alimentation and Disease.

A good neighbor helped her to do the diet by purchasing, grinding, and cooking all of her meals every day for 7 months until she was strong enough to do it for herself. All of the meat was purchased daily (from animals slaughtered that morning) and ground fresh just prior to cooking. Interestingly, this would have prevented any significant formation of histamines in the meat. Elma says it took her about a year on Dr. Salisbury’s diet to regain her health. At the time of publication, Elma had eaten beef and hot water exclusively for 11 years.

The main difference between Dr. Salisbury’s diet and what the Zero Carb community recommends is that it prescribes lean beef, rather than fatty beef.  Elma says that she has witnessed hundreds, if not thousands, of people recover from very serious illnesses using Dr. Salisbury’s diet. The book is fascinating and has many funny passages.

To read the free PDF version of her book, please click on the link below:

What Must I Do to Get Well? And How Can I Keep So? by Elma Stuart

 

On a side note, those of you who like nineteenth century English literature will enjoy discovering that Elma Stuart was very good friends with the well-known feminist and philosophical novelist George Eliot (a.k.a. Maryann Evans). They wrote many letters back and forth over an 8 year period, from 1872 to 1880.

To read the free PDF version of the exant letters, please click on the link below:

Letters from George Eliot to Elma Stuart

 

The Fat of the Land by Vilhjalmur Stefansson

Fat_of_the_Land_Stefansson

 

This classic work by Vilhjalmur Stefansson is considered to be essential reading for anyone who wishes to eat an All-Meat diet.

To read the free PDF photocopied version, please click the highlighted link below:

The Fat of the Land