historical and scientific perspectives on the health of canada's first ...

2.4.2 North American Degenerative Disease Levels
Disease levels <strong>and</strong> patterns in North America have been compared with those of rural Africa.
The vast majority of chronic <strong>and</strong> degenerative diseases p<strong>and</strong>emic in North America are, it is
contended, genuinely preventable. The most frequent adult emergency operation in North
America is appendicitis. In Africa, a physician after 20 years of rural African practice had yet to
see his first case of appendicitis. Cancer of the large bowel, the second most frequent cancer in
North America, is always rare among traditionally living people. Disease of the heart is the
greatest cause of death in the Western world, while one
case has been seen in 15 million East Africans. In the
U.S.A. close to 350,000 gall bladders are removed
annually. A physician recounts his clinical experience in
which he states that “I only removed 20 gall bladders in
my 20 years in Africa. However, regarding the
population of blacks in industrial South Africa, they have
been found to have the same prevalence of certain
degenerative diseases as in North America. So we cannot
say these diseases are due to the colour of the skin. They
are due to the way we live. These diseases get worse
from rural Africa to Westernized Africa.” 116
Sir Robert McCarrison who served as a Major General in the British Medical Corps <strong>and</strong> as the
Corp’s Director of Nutrition Research spent the early years of the 20 th century in the northern
frontier region of India investigating the legendary <strong>and</strong> very isolated mountain people of Hunza.
Hunzukuts are reputed to live to a vigorous very old age, <strong>and</strong> even as recently as the mid 20 th
Century, as a distinct society, they have been attested by various observers to have been free of
both infectious <strong>and</strong> degenerative diseases. As for McCarrison, he concluded that their
extraordinary health was essentially due to their lifestyle <strong>and</strong> nutrition patterns, coupled with
extracting a living in a pristine environment which included mineral rich topsoils. His rare
opportunity to purposely study a people optimum health greatly contrasted with the excessive
focus on pathology that even to this day is the norm in medical research. In his travels he also
observed that among the diversified ethnic people groups inhabiting India <strong>and</strong> the bordering
nations to the North, some groups were
extremely well developed <strong>and</strong> robust,
while others were frail in appearance <strong>and</strong>
clearly sickly. He went on to
systematically study their respective diets
<strong>and</strong> then conducted comparative feeding
tests on animal subjects in a series of
experiments at the Nutrition Research
Laboratories at Coonoor, India. Over
time he observed that the growth, vigour,
disease resistance, <strong>and</strong> disease patterns, of
the animals closely paralleled his
observations of the varied people groups
Hunzakuts Drying Apricots – Early 20 th Century
that he had observed. 117
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