On the whole—I repeat it—the testimony is far more favorable to the "prescribed course of regimen," both for the healthy and diseased than under the circumstances connected with the inquiry the most thorough-going vegetable eater could possibly have anticipated. If this is a fair specimen—and I know no reason why it may not be regarded as such—of the results of similar experiments and similar observations among medical men throughout our country, could their observations and experiments be collected, it certainly confirms the views which some among us have long entertained on this subject, and which will be still more strongly confirmed by evidence which will be produced in the following chapters. Had similar efforts been made forty or fifty years ago, to ascertain the views of physicians and others respecting the benefits or safety of excluding wine and other fermented drinks in the treatment of several diseases, in which not one in ten of our modern practitioners would now venture to use them, as well as among the healthy, I believe the results would have been of a very different character. The opinions, at least, of the physicians themselves, would most certainly have been, nearly without a dissenting voice, that the entire rejection of wine and fermented liquors was dangerous to the sick, and unsafe to many of the healthy, especially the hard laborer. And there is quite as much reason to believe that animal food will be discarded from our tables in the progress of a century to come, as there was, in 1800, for believing that all drinks but water would be laid aside in the progress of the century which is now passing.

FOOTNOTES:

[3] See a more recent letter from Dr. Harden, in the next chapter.

[4] Besides, it is worthy of notice, that Dr. Preston did not long survive on his own plan. He died about the year 1840.



CHAPTER IV.

ADDITIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

Letter from Dr. H. A. Barrows.—Dr. J. M. B. Harden.—Dr. J. Porter.—Dr. N. J. Knight.—Dr. Lester Keep.—Second letter from Dr. Keep.—Dr. Henry H. Brown.—Dr. Franklin Knox.—From a Physician.—Additional statements by the Author.

During the years 1837 and 1838 I wrote to several of the physicians whose names, experiments, and facts appear in Chapter II. Their answers, so far as received, are now to be presented.

I have also received interesting letters from several other physicians in New England and elsewhere—but particularly in New England—on the same general subject, which, with an additional statement of my own case, I have added to the foregoing. I might have added a hundred authentic cases, of similar import. I might also have obtained an additional amount of the same sort of intelligence, had it not been for the want of time, amid numerous other pressing avocations, for correspondence of this kind. Besides, if what I have obtained is not satisfactory, I have many doubts whether more would be so.

The first letter I shall insert is from Dr. H. A. Barrows, of Phillips, in Maine. It is dated October 10, 1837, and may be considered as a sequel to that written by him to Dr. North, though it is addressed to the author of this volume.

LETTER I.—FROM DR. H. A. BARROWS.

DEAR SIR,—As to food, my course of living has been quite uniform for the last two or three years—principally as follows. Wheat meal bread, potatoes, butter, and baked sweet apples for breakfast and dinners; for suppers, old dry flour bread, which, eaten very leisurely without butter, sauce, or drink, sits the lightest and best of any thing I eat. But I cannot make this my principal diet, because the bowels will not act (without physic) unless they have the spur of wheat bran two thirds of the time. I have at times practiced going to bed without any third meal; and have found myself amply rewarded for this kind of fasting, and the consequent respite thereby afforded the stomach, in quiet sleep and improved condition the next day. And as to drink, I still use cold water, which I take with as great a zest, and as keen a relish, as the inebriate does his stimulus. I seldom drink any thing with my meals; and if I could live without drinking any thing between meals, I think I should be rid of the principal "thorn in my side," the acetous fermentation so constantly going on in my epigastric storehouse.

As to exercise, I take abundance; perform all my practice (except in the winter) on horseback, and find this the very best kind of exercise for me. I seldom eat oftener than at intervals of six hours, and am apt to eat too much—have at various times attempted Don Cornaro's method of weighing food, but have found it rather dry business, probably on account of its conflicting with my appetite; but I actually find that my stomach does not bear watching at all well.

My brother continues to practice nearly total abstinence from animal food. I have seen him but once in two and a half years, but learn his health has greatly improved, so that he was able to take charge of a high school in the fall of 1836, of an academy in the spring of the present year, and also again this fall. During his vacation last July, he took a tour into the interior of Worcester county, Mass., and came home entirely on foot by way of the Notch of the White Hills, traveling nearly three hundred miles. This speaks something in favor of rigid abstinence—as when he commenced this regimen he was extremely low.

Yours sincerely, H. A. BARROWS.

LETTER II.—FROM DR. JOHN M. B. HARDEN.

GEORGIA, Liberty Co., Oct. 19, 1837.

DEAR SIR,—I stated in my letter to Dr. North, if I recollect correctly, that the use of animal food was resumed in consequence of a protracted indisposition brought on, as was supposed, by the inhalation of arseniuretted hydrogen gas. The gentleman had begun to recover some time previously; and in a short time after he commenced the use of the animal food, he was restored to his usual health. He has continued the use of it ever since to the same extent as in the former part of his life. He has lately passed his fifty-fifth year, and is now in the enjoyment of as good health as he has ever known.

I know of a gentleman in an adjoining county, who with his lady has been living for some time past on a purely vegetable diet. They have not continued it long enough, however, to make the experiment a fair one.

No case of injury from the inhalation of arseniuretted hydrogen has come under my own personal observation, if we except the one above alluded to. I find, however, that Gehlen, a celebrated French chemist, fell a victim to it in the year 1815. His death is thus announced in the "Philosophical Magazine" for that year. "We lament to have to announce the death of Gehlen, many years the editor of an excellent Journal on Chemistry and other sciences, and a profound chemist. He fell a victim to his ardent desire to promote the advancement of chemical knowledge. He was preparing, in company with Mr. Rehland, his colleague, some arsenated hydrogen gas, and while watching for the full development of this air from its acid solution, trying every moment to judge from its particular smell when that operation would be completed, he inhaled the fatal poison which has robbed science of his valuable services." Vide Tillock's Phil. Mag., vol. 46, p. 316. Some further notice is taken of his death in a paper extracted from the "Annales de Chimie et de Physique," and published in a subsequent volume of the same Magazine. Vide vol. 49, p. 280, in which are given his last experiments on that subject, by M. Gay Lussac. I regret that no account is given in the same work of the symptoms arising from the poison in his case. I presume, however, they are on record.

In the subject of the case I mention, the general and prominent symptoms were an immediate and great diminution of muscular strength, with pallor of countenance and constant febricula, the arteries of the head beating with violence, particularly when lying down at night, the pulse always moderately increased in frequency, and full, but not tense; and digestion for the most part good. This state continued for about three months, during which time he was attending to his usual business, although not able to take as much exercise as before. At the end of this time he began to recover slowly, but it was six months before he was restored entirely.

Yours, etc., JOHN M. B. HARDEN.

LETTER III.—FROM DR. JOSHUA PORTER.

NORTH BROOKFIELD, Oct. 26, 1827.

Though I would by no means favor the propensity for book-making, so prevalent in our day, yet I have been long of the opinion that a work on vegetable diet for general readers was greatly needed. I need it in my family; and there are many others in this vicinity who would be materially benefited by such a work.

I have had no means of ascertaining the good or bad effects of a "diet exclusively vegetable in cases of phthisis, scrofula, and dyspepsia," for I have had none of the above diseases to contend with. But, since your letter was received, I have been called to prescribe for a man who has been a flesh eater for more than half a century. He was confined to his house, had been losing strength for several months, still keeping up his old habits. The disease which was preying upon him was chronic inflammation of the right leg; the flesh had been so long swollen and inflamed that it had become hard to the touch. There were ulcers on his thigh, and some had made their appearance on the hip. This disease had been of seven months' standing, though not in so aggravated a form as it now appeared. During this time, all the local applications had been made that could be thought of by the good ladies in the neighborhood; and after every thing of the kind had failed, they concluded to send for "the doctor."

After examining the patient attentively, I became convinced that the disease, which developed itself locally, was of a constitutional origin, and of course could not be cured by local remedies. All local applications were discontinued; the patient was put on a vegetable diet after the alimentary canal was freely evacuated. I saw this man three days afterward. The dark purple appearance of the leg had somewhat subsided; the red and angry appearance about the base of the ulcers was gone, his strength improved, etc. Three days after I called, I found him in his garden at work.

He is now—two weeks since my first prescription—almost well. All the ulcers have healed, with the exception of one or two. This man, who thinks it wicked not to use the good things God has given us—such as meat, cider, tobacco, etc.—is very willing to subsist, for the present, on vegetable food, because he finds it the only remedy for his disease.

Early in the spring of 1830, while a student at Amherst College, I was attacked with dyspepsia, which rendered my life wretched for more than a year, and finally drove me from college; but it had now so completely gained the mastery, that no means I resorted to for relief afforded even a palliation of my sufferings. After I had suffered nearly two years in this way, I was made more wretched, if possible, by frequent attacks of colic, with pains and cramps extending to my back; and so severe had these pains become, that the prescriptions of the most eminent physicians afforded only partial relief.

On the 13th of February, 1833, after suffering from the most violent paroxysm I had ever endured, I left my home for Brunswick, Maine, to attend a course of medical lectures. For several days I boarded at a public house, and ate freely of several substantial dishes that were before me. The consequence was a fresh attack of colic. From some circumstances that came up at this time, I was convinced that flesh meats had much to do with my sufferings, and the resolution was formed at once to change my diet and "starve" out dyspepsia.

I took a room by myself, and made arrangements for receiving a pint of milk per day; this, with coarse rye and Indian bread, constituted my only food. After living in this way a week or two, I had a free and natural evacuation. Thus nature began to effect what medicine alone had done for nearly three years. The skin became moist, and my voracious appetite began to subside. I returned home to my friends at the close of the term well, and have been well ever since—have never had a colic pain or any costiveness since that time. My powers of digestion are good, and though I do not live so rigidly now as when at Brunswick, I always feel best when my food is vegetables and milk. I can endure fatigue and exposure as well as any man. On this mild diet, too, my muscular strength has considerably increased; and every day is adding new vigor to my constitution.

Having experienced so much benefit from a mild diet, and being rationally convinced that man was a fruit-eating animal naturally, I made my views public by a course of lectures on physiology, which I delivered in the Lyceum soon after I came to this place (three years ago). The consequence was, that quite a number of those who heard my lectures commenced training their families as well as themselves to the use of vegetables, etc., and I am happy to inform you that, at this day, many of our most active influential business-doing men are living in the plainest and most simple manner.

One of my neighbors has taken no flesh for more than three years. He is of the ordinary height, and sanguine temperament, and usually weighed, when he ate flesh, one hundred and eighty pounds. After he changed his diet, his countenance began to change, and his cheeks fell in; and his meat-eating friends had serious apprehensions that he would survive but a short time, unless he returned to his former habits. But he persevered, and is now more vigorous and more athletic than any man in the region, or than he himself has ever been before.

His muscular strength is very great. A few days since, a number of the most athletic young men in our village were trying their strength at lifting a cask of lime, weighing five hundred pounds. All failed to do it, with the exception of one, who partly raised it from the ground. After they were gone, this vegetable eater without any difficulty raised the cask four or five times. More than three years ago this man lost his daughter, who fell a prey to cholera infantum; he has now a daughter rather more than a year old, whom he has trained on strictly physiological principles; and though very feeble at birth, and for three months subsequently, she is now the most healthy child in the town. This child had some of the first symptoms of consumption last August, owing to the too free indulgence of the mother in improper articles of food; but being treated with demulcents, at the same time correcting the mother's system, she recovered, and is now the "picture of health."

I was conversing with this gentleman the other day respecting his health—says he is perfectly well, weighs one hundred and sixty-five pounds; and though he was called well when eating flesh, he was not so in reality; for every few weeks he was troubled with headache and a sense of fullness in the region of the stomach, for which he was obliged to take an active cathartic. For a few months before he adopted the vegetable system, he had decided symptoms of congestion in the head, such as precede apoplexy. I questioned him as to his appetite. He informed me, that when he ate meat he had such an unconquerable desire for food about eleven o'clock, that he could not wait till noon. This he calls "meat hunger," for it disappeared soon after he came to the present style of living. He has no craving now; but when he begins to eat, the zest is exquisite.

Yours, JOSHUA PORTER.

LETTER IV.—FROM DR. N. J. KNIGHT, OF TRURO.

Dated at TRURO, October, 1837.

DR. ALCOTT: SIR,—I hasten to comply so far with your request as to show my decided approbation of a fruit and farinaceous diet, both in health and sickness. The manner in which nutritious vegetables are presented to us for our consumption and support, evince to a demonstration the simplicity of our corporeal systems. Through every medium of correct information, we learn that the most distinguished men, both in ancient and modern times, were pre-eminently distinguished for their abstemiousness, and the simplicity of their diet.

It was not, however, a consideration of this kind that first induced me to relinquish flesh meat and fish. Some three years previous to my forming a determination to subsist upon farinacea, I had been laboring under an aggravated case of dyspepsia; and about six months previous, also, an attack of acute rheumatism.

I was harassed with constant constipation of the bowels, and ejection of food after eating, together with occasional pain in the head.

Under all these circumstances, I came to this determination, which I committed to paper: "November 9, 1831. This day ceased from strengthening this mortal body by any part of that which ever drew breath." To the above I rigidly adhered until last November, when my health had become so perfect that I thought myself invincible, so far as disease was concerned. All pains and aches had left me, and all the functions of the body seemed to be performed in a healthy manner.

My diet had consisted of rye and Indian bread, stale flour bread, sweet bread without shortening, milk, some ripe fruit, and occasionally a little butter.

During this time, while I devoted myself to considerable laborious practice and hard study, there was no deficiency of muscular strength or mental energy. I am fully satisfied my mind was never so active and strong.

Since last November I have, at times, taken animal food, in order that I might be absolutely satisfied that my mode of living acted decidedly in favor of my perfect health, and that a different course would produce organic derangement.

I had only taken animal food about two months after the usual custom, before I had a severe attack, and only escaped an inflammatory fever by the most rigid antiphlogistic treatment.

I again lived as I ought, and felt well; and having continued so some time, I resorted the second time to an animal diet.

In two months' time, I was taken with the urticaria febrilis, of Bateman, which lasted me more than two weeks, and my suffering was sufficient to forever exclude from my stomach every kind of animal food.

I am now satisfied, to all intents and purposes, that mankind would live longer, and enjoy more perfectly the "sane mind in a sound body," should they never taste flesh meat or fish.

A simple farinaceous diet I have ever found more efficient in the cure of chronic complaints, where there was not much organic lesion, than every other medical agent.

Mrs. A., infected with scrofula of the left breast, and in a state of ulceration, applied to me two years since. The ulcer was then the size of a half-dollar, and discharged a considerable quantity of imperfect pus. The axillary glands were much enlarged, and, doubting the practicability of operating with the knife in such cases, I told her the danger of her disease, and ordered her to subsist upon bread and milk and some fruit, drink water, and keep the body of as uniform temperature as possible. I ordered the sore to be kept clean by ablutions of tepid water. In less than three months, the ulcer was all healed, and her general health much improved. The axillary glands are still enlarged, though less so than formerly.

She still lives simply, and enjoys good health; but she tells me if she tastes flesh meat, it produces a twinging in the breast.

Many cases, like the above, have come under my observation and immediate attention, and suffice it to say, I have never failed to ameliorate the condition of every individual that has applied to me, who was suffering under chronic affections, if they would follow my prescriptions—unless the system was incapable of reaction.

Yours, truly, N. J. KNIGHT.

LETTER V.—FROM DR. LESTER KEEP.

FAIR HAVEN, Jan. 22, 1838.

DEAR SIR,—Agreeably to your request, I will inform you that from September, 1834, to June, 1836, I used no meat at all, except occasionally in my intercourse with society, I used a little to avoid attracting notice.

When I commenced my studies, life was burdensome. I knew not, for months, and I may say years, what enjoyment comfortable health affords. In a great many ways I can now see that I very greatly erred in my course of living. I am surprised that the system will hold out in its powers during so long a process in the use of what I should now consider the means best calculated to break it down.

I cannot now particularize. But in college, and during my professional studies, and since, during six or eight years of practice in an arduous profession, I have been greatly guilty, and neglected those means best calculated to promote and preserve health; and used those means best fitted to destroy it. The summers of 1832, 1833, and 1834, were pretty much lost, from wretched health. I was growing worse every year, and no medicines that I could prepare for myself, or that were prescribed by various brother physicians, had any thing more than a temporary effect to relieve me. All of the year 1834, until September, I used opium for relief; and I used three and four grains of sulphate of morphine per day, equal to about sixteen grains of opium. Spirit, wine, and ale I had tried, and journeys through many portions of the State of Maine, with the hope that a more northern climate would invigorate and restore a system that I feared was broken down forever, and that at the age of thirty-seven. But, without further preamble, I will say, I omitted at once and entirely the use of tea, coffee, meat, butter, grease of all sorts, cakes, pies, etc., wine, cider, spirits, opium (which I feared I must use as long as I lived), and tobacco, the use of which I learned in college. Of course, from so sudden and so great a change, a most horrid condition must ensue for many days, for the relief of which I used the warm bath at first several times a day. I had set no time to omit these articles, and made no resolutions, except to give this course a trial, to find out whether I had many native powers of system left, and what was their character and condition when unaffected by the list of agents mentioned.

I pursued this plan of living faithfully for one year and a half, and with unspeakable joy I found a gradual return of original vigor and health. Now, I cannot say that the omission of meat of all kinds, for a year and a half, caused this improvement in health; it is possible that it had but little to do with it. I know I was guilty of many bad habits; and probably all combined caused my bad condition.

At the close of the year and a half, I married my present second wife, and then commenced living as do others, in most respects, and continued this course most of the time until I received your letter. I then again omitted the use of all animal food, tea, coffee, and tobacco; and for the last month, it is a clear case, my health is better; that is, more vigorous to bear cold. I also bear labor and care better.

I have not investigated the subject of dietetics very much, but I have no doubt that the inhabitants of our whole land make too much use of animal food. No doubt it obstructs the vital powers, and tends to unbalance the healthful play and harmony of the various organs and their functions. There is too much nutriment in a small space. An unexpected quantity is taken; for with most people a sense of fullness is the test of a sufficient quantity.

I am satisfied that I am better without animal food than with the quantity I ordinarily use. If I should use but a small quantity once or twice a day, it is possible it would not be injurious. This I have not tried; for I am so excessively fond of meat, that I always eat more than a small quantity, when I eat it at all. Healthy, vigorous men, day laborers in the field, or forest, may perhaps require some meat to sustain the system, during hard and exhausting labor. Of this I cannot say.

I am now pretty well convinced, from two or three years' observation, that a large portion of my business, as a physician, arises from intemperance in the use of food. Too much and too rich nutriment is used, and my constant business is, to counteract its bad effects.

Two cases are now in mind of the great benefit of dieting for the recovery of health, the particulars of which I cannot now give you. One of them I think would be willing to speak for himself on the subject.

I am, sir, yours, etc., LESTER KEEP.

LETTER VI.—SECOND LETTER FROM DR. KEEP.

FAIR HAVEN, Ct., Jan. 26, 1838.

SIR,—Since I wrote you, a few days ago, I have learned of several individuals who have, for some length of time, used no flesh meat at all.

Amos Townsend, Cashier of the New Haven Bank, has, as I am told, lived almost entirely upon bread, crackers, or something of that kind, and but little of that. He can dictate a letter, count money, and hold conversation with an individual, all at the same time, with no embarrassment; and I know him to have firm health.

Our minister, Rev. B. L. Swan, during the whole of two years of his theological studies at Princeton, made crackers and water his only food, and was in good health.

Mr. Hanover Bradley, of this village, who has been several years a missionary among the Indians, has, for I think, eight or ten years, lived entirely on vegetable food. He had been long a dyspeptic.

There are some other cases of less importance, and probably very many in New Haven; but I am situated a mile from the city, and have never inquired for vegetable livers.

Yours, etc., LESTER KEEP.

LETTER VII.—FROM DR. HENRY H. BROWN

WEST RANDOLPH, Vt., Feb. 3, 1838.

DEAR SIR,—It has been about two years and a half since I adopted an exclusively vegetable diet, with no drink but water; and my food has been chiefly prepared by the most simple forms of cookery. Previously to this, I used a large proportion of flesh meat, and drank tea and coffee. I had much impaired my health by such indulgences. I hardly need to say that my health has greatly improved, and is now quite good and uniform.

I think that physicians, in prescribing for the removal of disease, should pay much more regard to the diet of their patients, and administer less of powerful medicine, than is customary with gentlemen of this profession at large.

Yours, etc., HENRY H. BROWN.

LETTER VIII.—FROM DR. FRANKLIN KNOX.

KINSTON,[5] N. C., June 23, 1837.

DEAR SIR,—Your letter of the 22d July has been hitherto unanswered, through press of business.

I consider an exclusive vegetable diet as of the utmost consequence in most diseases, especially in those chronic affections or morbid states of the system which are not commonly considered as diseases; and I think that, in these cases, such a diet is too often overlooked, even by physicians.

Yours, truly, F. KNOX.

LETTER IX.—FROM A HIGHLY RESPECTABLE PHYSICIAN.

[The following letter, received last autumn, is from a medical gentleman, in a distant part of the country, whose name, for particular reasons, we stand pledged not to give to the world. The facts, however, may be relied on; and they are exceedingly important and interesting.]

DEAR SIR,—Your letter was duly received. I proceed to say that, since I settled in this town, my attacks of epilepsy[6] have occurred in the following order:

1833. Nov. 18. One at 11 P. M. Severe. " 19. " " " " 24. Nineteen, from 4 A. M. to 3 P. M. Frightful.

1835. Jan. 13. One at 4 A. M. } " 15. " " } Milder. " 16. Two at 2 and 4 A. M. }

Thus it appears that I have enjoyed a longer immunity since the last, than for some years prior. I have maintained total abstinence from flesh, fish, or fowl, for two and a half years, namely, from March 1835 to the present time. That this happy immunity from a most obstinate disease is to be attributed solely to my abstinence from animal food, I do not feel prepared to assert; but that my general health has been better, my attacks of disease far milder, my vigor of mind and body greater, my mental perceptions clearer and more acute, and my enjoyment of life, on the whole, very essentially increased, I am fully prepared to prove.

I have, however, found it nearly as essential for me to abstain from many kinds of vegetable food as from animal, namely, from all kinds of flatulent vegetables; from all kinds of fruits and berries, except the very mildest—as, perfectly ripe and well baked sweet apples—and from all kinds of pies, sauces, and preserves. Of these, however, I am not able to say, as I do of the animal varieties, that I have practiced total abstinence; by no means. I have often ventured to indulge, and generally suffer more or less for my temerity. My severest sufferings for the last two years have been in the form of colic, of which I have had frequent slight attacks; but none to confine me over twenty-four hours.

* * * * *

ADDITIONAL STATEMENTS.—BY THE AUTHOR.[7]

From the age of five or six months to that of two years, I was literally crammed with flesh meat; usually of the most gross kind. Such a course was believed, by the fond parents and others, as likely to be productive of the most healthful and happy consequences. The result was an accumulation of adipose substance, that rendered me one of the most unsightly, not to say monstrous productions of nature. I ought not to say nature, perhaps; for, if not perverted, she produces no such monsters. At the age of six months, my weight was twenty-five pounds; and it rose soon after to thirty or more.

When I was about two years of age, I had the whooping-cough, and, having been brought up to the height, and more than the height of my condition, by over-feeding with fat meat, I suffered exceedingly. I? recovered, at length, but I had lost my relish, as I am informed, for flesh meat; and from this time till the age of fourteen, I seldom ate any but the leanest muscle. I was tolerably healthy, but, from the age of two years, was slender; so much so that, at five or six, I only weighed fifty pounds; and was constantly either found fault with, or pitied, because I did not eat meat in quality and quantity like other people. Nor was it without much effort, even at the age of fourteen, that I could bring myself to be reconciled to it. I was also trained to the early use of much cider, and to the moderate use of tea and spirits. I have spoken of my slender constitution;—I believe this was in part the result of excessive early labor, and that it was not wholly owing to a premature use of flesh meat.

I had suffered so much, however, from the belief that I was feeble from the latter cause, that I had no sooner become reconciled to the use of flesh and fish—which was at the age of fourteen—than I indulged in it quite freely. About this time I had a severe attack of measles, which came very near carrying me off. I was left with anasarca, or general dropsy, and with weak eyes. To cure the former the physicians plied me, for a long time, with blue pill, and with mercurial medicine in other forms, and also with digitalis; and finally filled my stomach to overflowing with diuretic drinks. However, in spite of them all, I recovered during the next year; except that a foundation was laid for premature decay of the teeth, and for a severe eruptive disease. This last, and the weakness of the eyes, were, for some time, very troublesome.

The eruptive complaint was soon discovered to be less severe, even in hot weather, and while I was using a great deal of exercise, in proportion as I abstained from all drinks but water, and ate none but mild food. Owing to the discovery of this fact and to other causes, I chiefly discontinued the use of stimulating food and drink, during the hottest part of the season; though I committed much error in regard to the quantity of my food, and drank quite too freely of cold water. Still I always found my health best, and my body and mind most vigorous at the end of summer, or the beginning of autumn, notwithstanding the very hard labor to which I was subjected on the farm. This increase of vigor was, at that time, attributed chiefly to a free use of summer fruits; for, so deeply had the belief been infixed by early education, that highly stimulating food and drink were indispensable to the full health and strength of mankind, and especially to people who were laboring hard, that, though I sometimes suspected they were not true friends to the human system, my conscience always condemned the suspicion, and pronounced me guilty of a species of high treason for harboring it.

This brings up my dietetic history, to the period at which it commences, in the letter to Dr. North. The study of medicine, however, from the age of twenty-four to twenty-seven, and the subsequent study and practice of it for a few years, joined to the changes I made at the same time in my physical habits, and my observations on their effects, led me to reject, one after another, and one group after another, the whole tribe of extra stimulants—solid and fluid.

The sequel of my story remains to be told. It is now nearly fifteen years since I wrote the letter, which is found at page 23d, to Dr. North. During this long period, and for several years before, amounting, in all, to about nineteen years, I have not only abstained entirely from flesh, fish, and fowl—not having eaten a pound of any one of these during the whole time, except the very few pounds I used in the time of the first visitation of our country with cholera, as before mentioned—but I have almost entirely abstained from butter, cheese, eggs, and milk. Butter, especially, I never taste at all. The occasional use of milk, in very small quantities, once a day, has, however, been resorted to; not from necessity, indeed, or to gratify any strong desire or inclination for it, but from a conviction of its happy medicinal effects on my much-injured frame. Hot food of every kind, and liquids, with the exception just made, I rarely touch. Nearly every thing is taken in as solid a form and in as simple a state as possible; with no condiments, except a very little salt, and with no sweets, sauces, gravies, jellies, preserves, etc. I seldom use more than one sort of food at a time, unless it be to add fruit as a second article; and this is rarely done, except in the morning. I have for ten or twelve years used no drinks with my meals; and sometimes for months together have had very little thirst at all.[8]

And as to the effects, they are such, and have all along been such, as to make me wonder at myself, whenever I think of it. Instead of being constantly subject to cold, and nearly dying with consumption in the spring, I am almost free from any tendency to take cold at all. During the winter of 1837-8, by neglecting to keep the temperature of my room low enough, and by neglecting also to take sufficient exercise in the open air, I became unusually tender, and suffered to some extent from colds. But I was well again during the spring, and felt as if I had recovered or nearly recovered my former hardihood.

In regard to other complaints, I may say still more. Of rheumatism, I have scarcely had a twinge in twelve or fourteen years. My eruptive complaint is, I believe, entirely gone. The weakness of my eyes has been wholly gone for many years. Indeed, the strength and perfection of my sight and of all my senses, till nearly fifty years of age—hearing perhaps excepted, in which I perceive no alteration—appeared to be constantly improving. My stomach and intestines perform their respective duties in the most appropriate, correct, and healthful manner. My appetite is constantly good, and as constantly improving;—that is, going on toward perfection. I can detect, especially by taste, almost any thing which is in the least offensive or deleterious in food or drink; and yet I can receive, without immediate apparent disturbance, and readily digest, almost any thing which ever entered a human stomach—knives, pencils, clay, chalk, etc., perhaps excepted. I can eat a full meal of cabbage, or any other very objectionable crude aliment, or even cheese or pastry—a single meal, I mean—with apparent impunity; not when fatigued, of course, or in any way debilitated, but in the morning and when in full strength. It is true, I make no experiments of this sort, except occasionally as experiments.

In my former statements I gave it as my opinion that vegetable food was less aperient than animal. My opinion now is, that if we were trained on vegetable food, and had never received substances into the stomach which were unduly stimulating, we should find the intestinal or peristaltic action quite sufficient. The apparent sluggishness of the bowels, when we first exchange an animal diet for a vegetable one, is probably owing to our former abuses. At present, I find my plain vegetable food, in moderate and reasonable quantity, quite as aperient as it ought to be, and, if I exceed a proper quantity, too much so.

I have now no remaining doubts of the vast importance that would result to mankind, from an universal training from childhood, to the exclusive use of vegetable food. I believe such a course of training, along with a due attention to air, exercise, cleanliness, etc., would be the means of improving our race, physically, intellectually, and morally, beyond any thing of which the world has yet conceived. But my reasons for this belief will be seen more fully in another place. They are founded in science and the observation of facts around me, much more than on a narrow individual experience.

There is one circumstance which I must not omit, because it is full of admonition and instruction. I have elsewhere stated that, twenty-three years ago, I had incipient phthisis. Of this fact, and of the fact that there were considerable inroads made by disease on the upper lobe of the right lung, I have not the slightest doubt. The symptoms were such at the time, and subsequently, as could not have been mistaken. Besides, what was, as I conceive, pretty fully established by the symptoms which existed, is rendered still more certain by auscultation. The sounds which are heard during respiration, in the region to which I have alluded, leave no doubt on the minds of skillful medical men, of their origin. Still I doubt whether the disease has made any considerable progress for many years.

But, during the winter of 1837-8, my employments became excessively laborious; and, for the whole winter and spring, were sufficient for at least two healthy and strong men. They were also almost wholly sedentary. At the end of May, I took a long and rather fatiguing journey through a country by no means the most healthy, and came home somewhat depressed in mind and body, especially the former. I was also unusually emaciated, and I began to have fears of a decline. Still, however, my appetite was good, and I had a good share of bodily strength. The more I directed my attention to myself, the worse I became; and I actually soon began to experience darting pains in the chest, together with other symptoms of a renewal of pulmonary disease. Perceiving my danger, however, from the state of my mind, I at length made a powerful effort to shake off the mental disturbance—which succeeded. This, together with moderate labor and rather more exercise than before, seemed gradually to set me right.

Again, in the spring of 1848, after lecturing for weeks and months—often in bad and unventilated rooms and subjecting myself, unavoidably, to many of those abuses which exist every where in society, I was attacked with a cough, followed by great debility, from which it cost me some three months or more of labor with the spade and hoe, to recover. With this and the exceptions before named, I have now, for about twenty years, been as healthy as ever I was in my life, except the slight tendency to cold during the winter of which I have already taken notice. I never was more cheerful or more happy; never saw the world in a brighter aspect; never before was it more truly "morning all day" with me. I have paid, in part, the penalty of my transgressions; and may, perhaps, go on, in life, many years longer.

I now fear nothing in the future, so far as health and disease are concerned, so much as excessive alimentation. To this evil—and it is a most serious and common one in this land of abundance and busy activity—I am much exposed, both from the keenness of my appetite, and the exceeding richness of the simple vegetables and fruits of which I partake. But, within a few years past, I seem to have gotten the victory, in a good measure, even in this respect. By eating only a few simple dishes at a time, and by measuring or weighing them with the eye—for I weigh them in no other way—I am usually able to confine myself to nearly the proper limits.

This caution, and these efforts at self-government, are not needed because their neglect involves any immediate suffering; for, as I have already stated, there was never a period in my life before, when I was so completely independent—apparently so, I mean—of external circumstances. I can eat what I please, and as much or as little as I please. I can observe set hours, or be very irregular. I can use a pretty extensive variety at the same meal, and a still greater variety at different meals, or I can live perpetually on a single article—nay, on almost any thing which could be named in the animal or vegetable kingdom—and be perfectly contented and happy in the use of it. I could in short, eat, work, think, sleep, converse, or play almost all the while; or I could abstain from any or all of these, almost all the while. Let me be understood, however. I do not mean to say that either of these courses would be best for me, in the end; but only that I have so far attained to independence of external circumstances that, for a time, I believe I should be able to do or bear all I have mentioned.

One thing more, in this connection, and I shall have finished my remarks. I sleep too little; but it is because I allow my mind to run over the world so much, and lay so many schemes for human improvement or for human happiness; and because I allow my sympathies to become so deeply enlisted in human suffering and human woe. I should be most healthy, in the end, by spending six hours or more in sleep; whereas I do not probably exceed four or five. I have indeed obtained a respite from the grave of twenty-three years, through a partial repentance and amendment of life, and the mercy of God; but did I obey all his laws as well as I do a part of them, I know of no reason why my life might not be lengthened, not merely fifteen years, as was Hezekiah's, or twenty-three merely, but forty or fifty.

FOOTNOTES:

[5] Dr. Knox has since removed to St. Louis, Missouri.

[6] The reader will find another remarkable cure of epilepsy in a subsequent chapter of this volume. The case was that of Dr. Taylor, of England.

[7] See pages 13 and 23.

[8] This fact, and certain discussions on the subject of temperance, led me to abstain, about the years 1841 and 1842, entirely from all drink for a long time. Indeed, I made two of these experiments; in one of which I abstained nine months and nineteen days, and in the other fourteen months and one or two days; except that in the latter case I ate, literally, for one or two successive days, while working hard at haying, one or two bowls a day of bread and water. But these were experiments merely—the experiments made by a medical man who preferred making experiments on himself to making them on others; and they never deserved the misconstruction which was put upon them by several persons, who, in other respects, were very sensible men. "The author" never believed with Dr. Lambe, of London, that man is not a drinking animal.



CHAPTER V.

TESTIMONY OF OTHER MEDICAL MEN, BOTH OF ANCIENT AND MODERN TIMES.

General Remarks.—Testimony of Dr. Cheyne.—Dr. Geoffroy.—Vanquelin and Percy.—Dr. Pemberton.—Sir John Sinclair.—Dr. James.—Dr. Cranstoun.—Dr. Taylor.—Drs. Hufeland and Abernethy.—Sir Gilbert Blane.—Dr. Gregory.—Dr. Cullen.—Dr. Rush.—Dr. Lambe.—Prof. Lawrence.—Dr. Salgues.—Author of "Sure Methods."—Baron Cuvier.—Dr. Luther V. Bell.—Dr. Buchan.—Dr. Whitlaw.—Dr. Clark.—Prof. Mussey.—Drs. Bell and Condie.—Dr. J. V. C. Smith.—Mr. Graham.—Dr. J. M. Andrews, Jr.—Dr. Sweetser.—Dr. Pierson.—Physician in New York.—Females' Encyclopedia.—Dr. Van Cooth.—Dr. Beaumont.—Sir Everard Home.—Dr. Jennings.—Dr. Jarvis.—Dr. Ticknor.—Dr. Coles.—Dr. Shew.—Dr. Morrill.—Dr. Bell.—Dr. Jackson.—Dr. Stephenson.—Dr. J. Burdell.—Dr. Smethurst.—Dr. Schlemmer.—Dr. Curtis.—Dr. Porter.

GENERAL REMARKS.

The number of physicians, and surgeons, and medical men, whose testimony is brought to bear on the subject of diet, in the chapter which follows, is by no means as great as it might have been. There are few writers on anatomy, physiology, materia medica, or disease, who have not, either directly or indirectly, given their testimony in favor of a mild and vegetable diet for persons affected with certain chronic diseases. And there is scarcely a writer on hygiene, or even on diet, who has not done much more than this, and at times hinted at the safety of such a diet for those who are in health; particularly the studious and sedentary. But my object has been, not so much to collect all the evidence I could, as to make a judicious selection—a selection which should present the subject upon which it bears, in as many aspects as possible. I have aimed in general, also, to procure the testimony of intelligent and philanthropic men; or, at least of men whose names have by some means or other been already brought before the public. If there are a few exceptions to this rule, if a few are men whose names have been hitherto unknown, it is on account of the aspect, as I have already said, of their testimony, or on account of their peculiar position, as regards country, age of the world, etc., or to secure their authority for certain anecdotes or facts.

In the arrangement of the testimony, I have been guided by no particular rule, unless it has been to present first that of some of the older and most accredited writers, such as Cheyne, Cullen, and Rush. The testimony of certain living men and authors, particularly of our own country, has been presented toward the close of the chapter, and in a very brief and condensed form, from design. The propriety of inserting their names at all was for a time considered doubtful. It is believed, however, that they could not, in strict justice, have been entirely omitted. But let not the meagre sketch of their views I have given, satisfy us. We want a full development of their principles from their own pens—such a development as, I hope, will not long be withheld from a world which is famishing for the want of it. But now to the testimony.

DR. GEORGE CHEYNE.

This distinguished physician, and somewhat voluminous writer, flourished more than a hundred years ago. He may justly be esteemed the father of what is now called the "vegetable system" of living; although it is evident he did not see every thing clearly. "In the early part of his life," says Prof. Hitchcock, in his work on Dyspepsia, "he was a voluptuary; and before he attained to middle age, was so corpulent that it was necessary to open the whole side of his carriage that he might enter; and he saw death inevitable, without a change of his course. He immediately abandoned all ardent spirits, wine, and fermented liquors, and confined himself wholly to milk, vegetables, and water. This course, with active exercise, reduced him from the enormous weight of four hundred and forty-eight pounds, to one hundred and forty; and restored his health and the vigor of his mind. After a few years, he ventured to change his abstemious diet for one more rich and stimulating. But the effect was a recurrence of his former corpulence and ill health. A return to milk, water, and vegetables restored him again; and he continued in uninterrupted health to the age of seventy-two."

The following is his account of himself, at the age of about seventy:

"It is now about sixteen years since, for the last time, I entered upon a milk and vegetable diet. At the beginning of this period, I took this light food as my appetite directed, without any measure, and found myself easy under it. After some time, I found it became necessary to lessen the quantity; and I have latterly reduced it to one half, at most, of what I at first seemed to bear. And if it shall please God to spare me a few years longer, in order, in that case, to preserve that freedom and clearness which, by his, blessing, I now enjoy, I shall probably find myself obliged to deny myself one half of my present daily substance—which is precisely three Winchester pints of new cows' milk, and six ounces of biscuit made of fine flour, without salt or yeast, and baked in a quick oven."

It is exceedingly interesting to find an aged physician, especially one who had formerly been in the habit of using six pints of milk, and twelve ounces of unfermented biscuit, and of regarding that as a low diet, reducing himself to one half this quantity in his old age, with evident advantages; and cheerfully looking forward to a period, as not many years distant, when he should be obliged to restrict himself to half even of that quantity. How far he finally carried his temperance, we do not exactly know. We only know that, after thirty years of health and successful medical practice, he strenuously contended for the superiority of a vegetable and milk diet over any other, whether for the feeble or the healthy. But his numerous works abound with the most earnest exhortations to temperance in all things, and with the most interesting facts and cogent reasonings; and—I repeat it—if there be any individual, since the days of Pythagoras, whose name ought to be handed down to posterity as the father of the vegetable system of living, it is that of Dr. Cheyne.

Among his works are, a work on Fevers; an Essay on the true Nature and proper Method of treating the Gout; a work on the Philosophical Principles of Religion; an Essay of Health and Long Life; a work called the English Malady; and another entitled the Natural Method of Cure in the Diseases of the Body, and the Distempers of the Mind depending thereon. The latter, and his Essay of Long Life are, in my view, his greatest works; though the history of his own experience is chiefly contained in his English Malady.

I shall now proceed to make such extracts from his works, as seem to me most striking and important to the general reader. They are somewhat numerous, and there may be a few repetitions; but I was more anxious to preserve his exact language—which is rather prolix—than to abridge too much, at the risk of misrepresenting his sentiments.

"When I see milk, oil, emulsion, mild watery fluids, and such like soft liquors run through leathern tubes or pipes (for such animal veins and arteries indeed are) for years, without destroying them, and observe on the other hand that brine, inflammable or urinous spirits, and the like acrimonious and burning fluids corrode, destroy, and consume them in a very short time; when I consider the rending, burning, and tearing pains and tortures of the gout, stone, colic, cancer, rheumatism, convulsions, and such like insufferably painful distempers; when I see the crises of almost all acute distempers happen either by rank and fetid sweats, thick lateritious and lixivious sediments in the urine, black, putrid, and fetid dejections, attended with livid and purple spots, corrosive ulcers, impostumes in the joints or muscles, or a gangrene and mortification in this or that part of the body; when I see the sharp, the corroding and burning ichor of scorbutic and scrofulous sores, fretting, galling, and blistering the adjacent parts, with the inflammation, swelling, hardness, scabs, scurf, scales, and other loathsome cutaneous foulnesses that attend, the white gritty and chalky matter, and hard stony or flinty concretions which happen to all those long troubled with severe gouts, gravel, jaundice, or colic—the obstructions and hardnesses, the putrefaction and mortification that happen in the bowels, joints, and members in some of these diseases, and the rottenness in the bones, ligaments, and membranes that happen in others; all the various train of pains, miseries, and torments that can afflict any part of the compound, and for which there is scarce any reprieve to be obtained, but by swallowing a kind of poison (opiates, etc.); when I behold with compassion and sorrow, such scenes of misery and woe, and see them happen only to the rich, the lazy, the luxurious, and the inactive, those who fare daintily and live voluptuously, those who are furnished with the rarest delicacies, the richest foods, and the most generous wines, such as can provoke the appetites, senses, and passions, in the most exquisite and voluptuous manner; to those who leave no desire or degree of appetite unsatisfied, and not to the poor, the low, the meaner sort, those destitute of the necessaries, conveniences, and pleasures of life; to the frugal, industrious, temperate, laborious, and active, inhabiting barren and uncultivated countries, deserts, and forests under the poles or under the line;—I must, if I am not resolved to resist the strongest conviction, conclude that it must be something received into the body that can produce such terrible appearances in it—some flagrant and notable difference in the food that so sensibly distinguishes them from the latter; and that it is the miserable man himself that creates his miseries and begets his torture, or at least those from whom he has derived his bodily organs.

"Nothing is so light and easy to the stomach, most certainly, as the farinaceous or mealy vegetables; such as peas, beans, millet, oats, barley, rye, wheat, sago, rice, potatoes, and the like."

Milk is not included in the foregoing list of light articles; although Dr. C. was evidently extremely fond of prescribing it in chronic diseases. It does not fully appear, so far as I can learn from his writings, that he regarded it as by any means indispensable to those who were perfectly healthy, except during infancy and childhood. The following extract will give us—more than any other, perhaps—his real sentiments, though modestly expressed in the form of a conjecture, rather than a settled belief.

"I have sometimes indulged the conjecture that animal food, and made or artificial liquors, in the original frame of our nature and design of our creation, were not intended for human creatures. They seem to me neither to have those strong and fit organs for digesting them (at least, such as birds and beasts of prey have that live on flesh); nor, naturally, to have those voracious and brutish appetites, that require animal food and strong liquors to satisfy them; nor those cruel and hard hearts, or those diabolical passions, which could easily suffer them to tear and destroy their fellow-creatures; at least, not in the first and early ages, before every man had corrupted his way, and God was forced to exterminate the whole race by an universal deluge, and was also obliged to shorten their lives from nine hundred or one thousand years to seventy. He wisely foresaw that animal food and artificial liquors would naturally contribute toward this end, and indulged or permitted the generation that was to plant the earth again after the flood the use of them for food; knowing that, though it would shorten their lives and plait a scourge of thorns for the backs of the lazy and voluptuous, it would be cautiously avoided by those who knew it was their duty and happiness to keep their passions low, and their appetites in subjection. And this very era of the flood is that mentioned in holy writ for the indulgence of animal food and artificial liquors, after the trial had been made how insufficient alone a vegetable diet—which was the first food appointed for human kind after their creation—was, in the long lives of men, to restrain their wickedness and malice, and after finding that nothing but shortening their duration could possibly prevent the evil.

"It is true, there is scarce a possibility of preventing the destroying of animal life, as things are now constituted, since insects breed and nestle in the very vegetables themselves; and we scarcely ever devour a plant or root, wherein we do not destroy innumerable animalculae. But, besides what I have said of nature's being quite altered and changed from what was originally intended, there is a great difference between destroying and extinguishing animal life by choice and election, to gratify our appetites, and indulge concupiscence, and the casual and unavoidable crushing of those who, perhaps, otherwise would die within the day, or at most the year, and who obtain but an inferior kind of existence and life, at the best.

"Whatever there may be, in this conjecture, it is evident to those who understand the animal economy of the frame of human bodies, together with the history, both of those who have lived abstemiously, and of those who have lived freely, that indulging in flesh meat and strong liquors, inflames the passions and shortens life, begets chronical distempers and a decrepit age.

"For remedying the distempers of the body, to make a man live as long as his original frame was designed to last, with the least pain and fewest diseases, and without the loss of his senses, I think Pythagoras and Cornaro by far the two greatest men that ever were:—the first, by vegetable food and unfermented liquors; the latter, by the lightest and least of animal food, and naturally fermented liquors. Both lived to a great age. But, what is chiefly to be regarded in their conduct and example, both preserved their senses, cheerfulness, and serenity to the last; and, which is still more to be regarded, both, at least the last, dissolved without pain or struggle; the first having lost his life in a tumult, as it is said by some, after a great age of perfect health.

"A plain, natural, and philosophical reason why vegetable food is preferable to all other food is, that abounding with few or no salts, being soft and cool, and consisting of parts that are easily divided and formed into chyle without giving any labor to the digestive powers, it has not that force to open the lacteals, to distend their orifices and excite them to an unnatural activity, to let them pass too great a quantity of hot and rank chyle into the blood, and so overcharge and inflame the lymphatics and capillaries, which is the natural and ordinary effect of animal food; and therefore cannot so readily produce diseases. There is not a sufficient stimulus in the salts and spirits of vegetable food to create an unnatural appetite, or violent cramming; at least, not sufficient to force open and extend the mouths of the lacteals, more than naturally they are or ought to be. Such food requires little or no force of digestion, a little gentle heat and motion being sufficient to dissolve it into its integral particles: so that, in a vegetable diet, though the sharp humors, in the first passages, are extended, relaxed stomach, and sometimes a delightful piquancy in the food, may tempt one to exceed in quantity; yet rarely, if spices and sauces—as too much butter, oil, and sugar—are not joined to seeds[9] and vegetables, can the mischief go farther than the stomach and bowels, to create a pressed load, sickness, vomiting, or purging, by its acquiring an acrimony from its not being received into the lacteals;—so that on more being admitted into the blood than the expenses of living require, life and health can never be endangered by a vegetable diet. But all the contrary happens under a high animal diet."

Now I will not undertake to vouch—as indeed I cannot, conscientiously, do it—for the correctness of all Dr. C.'s notions in physiology or pathology. The great object I have in view, by the introduction of these quotations, may be accomplished without it. His preference for vegetable food, or for what he calls a milk and seed diet, is the point which I wish to make most prominent.

In the following paragraphs, he takes up and considers some of the popular objections of the day, to his doctrines and practice.

"One of the most terrible objections some weak persons make against this regimen and method, is, that upon accidental trials, they have always found milk, fruit, and vegetables so inflate, blow them up, and raise such tumults and tempests in their stomach and bowels, that they have been terrified and affrighted from going on. I own the truth and fact to be such, in some as is represented; and that in stomachs and entrails inured only to hot and high meats and drinks, and consequently in an inflammatory state and full of choler and phlegm, this sensation will sometimes happen—just as a bottle of cider or fretting wine, when the cork is pulled out, will fly up, and fume, and rage; and if you throw in a little ferment or acid (such as milk, seeds, fruit, and vegetables to them), the effervescence and tempest will exasperate to a hurricane.

"But what are wind, flatulence, phlegm, and choler? What, indeed, but stopped perspiration, superfluous nourishment, inconcocted chyle, of high food and strong liquors, fermented and putrifying? And when these are shut up and corked, with still more and more solid, strong, hot, and styptic meats and drinks, is the corruption and putrefaction thereby lessened? Will it not then, at last, either burst the vessel, or throw out the cork or stopples, and raise still more lasting and cruel tempests and tumults? Are milk and vegetables, seeds and fruits, harder of digestion, more corrosive, or more capable of producing chyle, blood, and juices, less fit to circulate, to perspire, and be secreted?

"But what is to be done? The cure is obvious. Begin by degrees; eat less animal food—the most tender and young—and drink less strong fermented liquors, for a month or two. Then proceed to a trimming diet, of one day, seed and vegetables, and another day, tender, young animal food;—and, by degrees, slide into a total milk, seed, and vegetable diet; cooling the stomach and entrails gradually, to fit them for this soft, mild, sweetening regimen; and in time your diet will give you all the gratification you ever had from strong, high, and rank food, and spirituous liquors. And you will, at last, enjoy ease, free spirits, perfect health, and long life into the bargain.

"Seeds of all kinds are fittest to begin with, in these cases, when dried, finely ground, and dressed; and, consequently, the least flatulent. Lessen the quantity, even of these, below what your appetite would require, at least for a time. Bear a little, and forbear.

"Virtue and good health are not to be obtained, without some labor and pains, against contrary habits. It was a wild bounce of a Pythagorean, who defied any one to produce an instance of a person, who had long lived on milk and vegetables, who ever cut his own throat, hanged, or made way with himself; who had ever suffered at Tyburn, gone to Newgate, or to Moorfields; (and, he added rather profanely,) or, would go to eternal misery hereafter.

"Another weighty objection against a vegetable diet, I have heard, has been made by learned men; and is, that vegetables require great labor, strong exercise, and much action, to digest and turn them into proper nutriment; as (say they) is evident from their being the common diet of day-laborers, handicraftsmen, and farmers. This objection I should have been ashamed to mention, but that I have heard it come from men of learning; and they might have as justly said, that freestone is harder than marble, and that the juice of vegetables makes stronger glue than that of fish and beef!

"Do not children and young persons, that is, tender persons, live on milk and seeds, even before they are capable of much labor and exercise? Do not all the eastern and southern people live almost entirely on them? The Asiatics, Moors, and Indians, whose climates incapacitate them for much labor, and whose indolence is so justly a reproach to them,—are these lazier and less laborious men than the Highlanders and native Irish?

"The truth is, hardness of digestion principally depends on the minuteness of the component particles, as is evident in marble and precious stones. And animal substances being made of particles that pass through innumerable very little, or infinitely small excretory ducts, must be of a much finer texture, and consequently harder, or tougher, in their composition, than any vegetable substance can be. And the flesh of animals that live on animals, is like double distilled spirits, and so requires much labor to break, grind, and digest it. And, indeed, if day-laborers, and handicraftsmen were allowed the high, strong food of men of condition, and the quiet and much-thinking persons were confined to the farmer and ploughman's food, it would be much happier for both.

"Another objection, still, against a milk and vegetable diet is, that it breeds phlegm, and so is unfit for tender persons, of cold constitutions; especially those whose predominant failing is too much phlegm. But this objection has as little foundation as either of the preceding. Phlegm is nothing but superfluous chyle and nourishment, as the taking down more food than the expenses of living and the waste of the solids and fluids require. The people that live most on such foods—the eastern and southern people and those of the northern I have mentioned—are less troubled with phlegm than any others. Superfluity will always produce redundancy, whether it be of phlegm or choler; and that which will digest the most readily, will produce the least phlegm—such as milk, seeds, and vegetables. By cooling and relaxing the solids, the phlegm will be more readily thrown up and discharged—more, I say, by such a diet than by a hot, high, caustic, and restringent one; but that discharge is a benefit to the constitution, and will help it the sooner and faster to become purified, and so to get into perfect good health. Whereas, by shutting them up, the can or cask must fly and burst so much the sooner.

"The only material and solid objections against a milk, seed, and vegetable diet, are the following:

"First, That it is particular and unsocial, in a country where the common diet is of another nature. But I am sure sickness, lowness, and oppression, are much more so. These difficulties, after all, happen only at first, while the cure is about; for, when good health comes, all these oddnesses and specialities will vanish, and then all the contrary to these will be the case.

"Secondly, That it is weakening, and gives a man less strength and force, than common diet. It is true that this may be the result, at first, while the cure is imperfect. But then the greater activity and gayety which will ensue on the return of health, under a milk and vegetable diet, will liberally supply that defect.

"Thirdly, The most material objection against such a diet is, that it cools, relaxes, softens, and unbends the solids, at first, faster than it corrects and sweetens the juices, and brings on greater degrees of lowness than it is designed to cure; and so sinks, instead of raising. But this objection is not universally true; for there are many I have treated, who, without any such inconvenience, or consequent lowness, have gone into this regimen, and have been free from any oppression, sinking, or any degree of weakness, ever after; and they were not only those who have been generally temperate and clean, free from humors and sharpnesses, but who, on the decline of life, or from a naturally weak constitution or frame, have been oppressed and sunk from their weakness and their incapacity to digest common animal food and fermented liquors.

"I very much question if any diet, either hot or cool, has any great influence on the solids, after the fluids have been entirely sweetened and balmified. Sweeten and thin the juices, and the rest will follow, as a matter of course."

At page 90 of Dr. Cheyne's Natural Method of Curing Diseases, he thus says:

"People think they cannot possibly subsist on a little meat, milk, and vegetables, or on any low diet, and that they must infallibly perish if they should be confined to water only; not considering that nine tenths of the whole mass of mankind are necessarily confined to this diet, or pretty nearly to it, and yet live with the use of their senses, limbs, and faculties, without diseases, or but few, and those from accidents or epidemical causes; and that there have been nations, and now are numbers of tribes, who voluntarily confine themselves to vegetables only; as the Essenes among the Jews, some Hermits and Solitaries among the Christians of the first ages, a great number of monks in the Chartreux now in Europe, Banians among the Indians and Chinese, the Guebres among the Persians, and of old, the Druids among ourselves."

To illustrate the foregoing, I may here introduce the following extracts from the sixth London edition of Dr. Cheyne's Essay on Health and Long Life.

"It is surprising to what a great age the Eastern Christians, who retired from the persecutions into the deserts of Egypt and Arabia, lived healthful on a very little food. We are informed, by Cassian, that the common measure for twenty-four hours was about twelve ounces, with only pure water for drink. St. Anthony lived to one hundred and five years on mere bread and water, adding only a few herbs at last. On a similar diet, James the Hermit lived to one hundred and four years. Arsenius, the tutor of the emperor Arcadius, to one hundred and twenty—sixty-five years in society, and fifty-five in the desert. St. Epiphanius, to one hundred and fifteen; St. Jerome, about one hundred; Simon Stylites, to one hundred and nine; and Romualdus, to one hundred and twenty.

"It is wonderful in what sprightliness, strength, activity, and freedom of spirits, a low diet, even here in England, will preserve those who have habituated themselves to it. Buchanan informs us of one Laurence, who preserved himself to one hundred and forty, by the mere force of temperance and labor. Spotswood mentions one Kentigern (afterward called St. Mongah, or Mungo, from whom the famous well in Wales is named), who lived to one hundred and eighty-five years; and who, after he came to years of understanding, never tasted wine or strong drink, and slept on the cold ground.

"My worthy friend, Mr. Webb, is still alive. He, by the quickness of the faculties of the mind, and the activity of the organs of his body, shows the great benefit of a low diet—living altogether on vegetable food and pure water. Henry Jenkins lived to one hundred and sixty-nine years on a low, coarse, and simple diet. Thomas Parr died at the age of one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months. His diet was coarse bread, milk, cheese, whey, and small beer; and his historian tells us, that he might have lived a good while longer if he had not changed his diet and air; coming out of a clear, thin air, into the thick air of London, and being taken into a splendid family, where he fed high, and drank plentifully of the best wines, and, as a necessary consequence, died in a short time. Dr. Lister mentions eight persons in the north of England, the youngest of whom was above one hundred years old, and the oldest was one hundred and forty. He says, it is to be observed that the food of all this mountainous country is exceeding coarse."

Dr. C., in his Natural Method, at page 91, thus continues his remarks:

"And there are whole villages in this kingdom, even of those who live on the plains, who scarce eat animal food, or drink fermented liquors a dozen times a year. It is true, most of these cannot be said to live at ease and commodiously, and many may be said to live in barbarity and ignorance. All I would infer from this is, that they do live, and enjoy life, health, and outward serenity, with few or no bodily diseases but from accidents and epidemical causes; and that, being reduced by voluntary and necessary poverty, they are not able to manage with care and caution the rest of the non-naturals, which, for perfect health and cheerfulness, must all be equally attended to, and prudently conducted; and their ignorance and brutality is owing to the want of the convenience of due and sufficient culture and education in their youth.

"But the only conclusion I would draw from these historical facts is, that a low diet, or living on vegetables, will not destroy life or health, or cause nervous and cephalic distempers; but, on the contrary, cure them, as far as they are curable. I pretend to demonstrate from these facts, that abstinence and a low diet is the great antidote and universal remedy of distempers acquired by excess, intemperance, and a mistaken regimen of high meats and drinks; and that it will greatly alleviate and render tolerable the original distempers derived from diseased parents; and that it is absolutely necessary for the deep thinking part of mankind, who would preserve their faculties sound and entire, ripe and pregnant to a green old age and to the last dregs of life; and that it is, lastly, the true and real antidote and preservative from heavy-headedness, irregular and disorderly intellectual functions, from loss of the rational faculties, memory, and senses, and from all nervous distempers, as far as the ends of Providence and the condition of mortality will allow.

"Let two people be taken as nearly alike as the diversity and the individuality of nature will admit, of the same age, stature, complexion, and strength of body, and under the same chronical distemper, and I am willing to take the seeming worse of the two; let all the most promising nostrums, drops, drugs, and medicines known among the learned and experienced physicians, ancient or modern, regular physicians or quacks, be administered to the best of the two, by any professor at home or abroad; I will manage my patient with only a few naturally indicated and proper evacuations and sweetening innocent alternatives, which shall neither be loathsome, various, nor complicated, require no confinement, under an appropriate diet, or, in a word, under the 'lightest and the least,' or at worst under a milk and seed diet; and I will venture reputation and life, that my method cures sooner, more perfectly and durably, is much more easily and pleasantly passed through, in a shorter time, and with less danger of a relapse than the other, with all the assistance of the best skill and experience, under a full and free, though even a commonly reputed moderate diet, but of rich foods and generous liquors; much more, under a voluptuous diet."

But I am unwilling to dismiss this subject without inserting a few more extracts from Dr. Cheyne, to show his views of the treatment of diseases. And first, of the scurvy, and other diseases which he supposes to arise from it.

"There is no chronical distemper, whatsoever, more universal, more obstinate, and more fatal in Britain than the scurvy, taken in its general extent. Scarce any one chronical distemper but owes its origin to a scorbutic tendency, or is so complicated with it, that it furnishes the most cruel and most obstinate symptoms. To it we owe all the dropsies that happen after the meridian of life; all diabetes, asthmas, consumptions of several kinds; many sorts of colics and diarrhoeas; some kinds of gouts and rheumatisms, all palsies, various kinds of ulcers, and possibly the cancer itself; and most cutaneous foulnesses, weakly constitutions, and bad digestions; vapors, melancholy, and almost all nervous distempers whatsoever. And what a plentiful source of miseries the last are, the afflicted best can tell. And scarce any one chronical distemper whatever, but has some degree of this evil faithfully attending it. The reason why the scurvy is peculiar to this country and so fruitful of miseries, is, that it is produced by causes mostly special and particular to this island, to wit: the indulging so much in animal food and strong fermented liquors, sedentary and confined employments, etc.

"Though the inhabitants of Britain live, for the most part, as long as those of a warmer climate, and probably rather longer, yet scarce any one, especially those of the better sort, but becomes crazy and suffers under some chronical distemper or other, before he arrives at old age.

"Nothing less than a very moderate use of animal food, and that of the least exciting kind, and a more moderate use of spirituous liquors, due exercise, etc., can keep this hydra under. And nothing else than a total abstinence from animal food and alcoholic liquors can totally extirpate it."

The following are extracted from his "Natural Methods." I do not lay them down as recipes, to be followed in the treatment of diseases; but to show the views of Dr. Cheyne in regard to vegetable regimen.

"1. Cancer.—Any cancer that can be cut out, contracted, and healed up with common, that is, soft, cool, and gently astringent dressings, and at last left as an issue on the part, may, by a cow's milk and seed diet continued ever afterward, be made as easy to the patient, and his life and health as long preserved, almost, as if he had never been afflicted with it; especially if under fifty years of age.

"2. Cancer.—A total ass's milk diet—about two quarts a day, without any other meat or drink—will in time cure a cancer in any part of the body, with mere common dressings, provided the patient is not quite worn out with it before it is begun, or too far gone in the common duration of life and even in that case, it will lessen the pain, lengthen life, and make death easier, especially if joined with small interspersed bleedings, millepedes, crabs' eyes prepared, nitre and rhubarb, properly managed. But the diet, even after the cure, must be continued, and never after greatly altered, unless it be into cow's milk with seeds.

"3. Consumption.—A total milk and seed diet, gentle and frequent bleedings, as symptoms exasperate, a little ipecacuanha or thumb vomit repeated once or twice a week, chewing quill bark in the morning, and a few grains of rhubarb at night, will totally cure consumptions, even when attended with tubercles, and hemoptoe, and hectic, in the first stage; will greatly relieve, if not cure, in the second stage, especially if riding and a warm clear air be joined; and make death easier in the third and last stage.

"4. Fits.—A total cow's milk diet—about two quarts a day—without any other food, will at last totally cure all kinds of fits, epileptical, hysterical, or apoplectic, if entered upon before fifty. But the patient, if near fifty, must ever after continue in the same diet, with the addition only of seeds; otherwise his fits will return oftener and more severely, and at last cut him off.

"5. Palsy.—A total cow's milk diet, without any other food, will bid fairest to cure a hemiplegia or even a dead palsy, and consequently all the lesser degrees of a partial one, if entered upon before fifty. And this distemper I take to be the most obstinate, intractable, and disheartening one that can afflict the human machine; and is chiefly produced by intemperate cookery, with its necessary attendant, habitual luxury.

"6. Gout.—A total milk and seed diet, with gentle vomits before and after the fits, chewing bark in the morning and rhubarb at night, with bleeding about the equinoxes, will perfectly cure the gout in persons under fifty, and greatly relieve those farther advanced in life; but must be continued ever after, if such desire to get well.

"7. Gravel.—Soap lees, softened with a little oil of sweet almonds, drunk about a quarter of an ounce twice a day on a fasting stomach; or soap and egg-shell pills, with a total milk and seed diet, and Bristol water beverage, will either totally dissolve the stone in kidneys or bladder, or render it almost as easy as the nail on one's finger, if the patient is under fifty, and much relieve him, even after that age.

"In about thirty years' practice, in which I have, in some degree or other, advised this method in proper cases, I have had but two patients in whose total recovery I have been mistaken, and these were both scrofulous cases, where the glands and tubercles were so many, so hard, and so impervious that even the ponderous remedies and diet joined could not discuss them; and they were both also too far gone before they entered upon them;—and I have found deep scrofulous vapors the most obstinate of any of this tribe of these distempers. And indeed nothing can possibly reach such, but the ponderous medicines, joined with a liquid, cool, soft, milk and seed regimen; and if these two do not, in due time, I can boldly affirm it, nothing ever will."

Dr. Cheyne goes on to speak of the cure, on similar principles, of a great many other difficult or dangerous diseases, as asthma, pleurisy, hemorrhage, mania, jaundice, bilious colic, rheumatism, scurvy, and venereal disease; but he modestly owns that, in his opinion on these, he does not feel such entire confidence as in the former cases, for want of sufficient experiments. He, however, closes one of his chapters with the following pretty strong statement:

"I am morally certain, and am myself entirely convinced, that a milk and seed, or milk and turnip diet, duly persisted in, with the occasional helps mentioned (elsewhere) on exacerbations, will either totally cure or greatly relieve every chronical distemper I ever saw or read of."

Another chapter is thus concluded, and with it I shall conclude my extracts from his writings.

"Some, perhaps, may controvert, nay, ridicule the doctrine laid down in these propositions. I shall neither reply to, nor be moved with any thing that shall be said against them. If they are of nature and truth, they will stand; if not, I consent they should come to nought. I have satisfied my own conscience—the rest belongs to Providence. Possibly time and bodily sufferings may justify them;—if not to this generation, perhaps to some succeeding one. I myself am convinced, by long and many repeated experience, of their justness and solidity. If what has been advocated through this whole treatise does not convince others, nothing I can add will be sufficient. I will leave only this reflection with my readers.

"All physicians, ancient and modern, allow that a milk and seed diet will totally cure before fifty, and infinitely alleviate after it, the consumption, the rheumatism, the scurvy, the gout—these highest, most mortal, most painful, and most obstinate distempers; and nothing is more certain in mathematics, than that which will cure the greater will certainly cure the lesser distempers."

DR. GEOFFROY.

Dr. Geoffroy, a distinguished French physician and professor of chemistry and medicine in some of the institutions of France, flourished more than a hundred years ago. The bearing of the following extract will be readily seen. It is from the Memoirs of the Royal Academy for the year 1730; and I am indebted for it to the labors of Dr. Cheyne.

"M. Geoffroy has given a method for determining the proportion of nourishment or true matter of the flesh and blood, contained in any sort of food. He took a pound of meat that had been freed from the fat, bones, and cartilages, and boiled it for a determined time in a close vessel, with three pints of water; then, pouring off the liquor, he added the same quantity of water, boiling it again for the same time; and this operation he repeated several times, so that the last liquor appeared, both in smell and taste, to be little different from common water. Then, putting all the liquor together, and filtrating, to separate the too gross particles, he evaporated it over a slow fire, till it was brought to an extract of a pretty moderate consistence.

"This experiment was made upon several sorts of food, the result of which may be seen in the following table. The weights are in ounces, drachms, and grains; sixty grains to a drachm, and eight drachms to an ounce.

Kind of Food. Amount of Extract. oz. dr. gr. One lb. Beef 0. 7. 8. " Veal 1. 1. 48. " Mutton 1. 3. 16. " Lamb 1. 1. 39. " Chicken 1. 4. 34. " Pigeon 1. 0. 12. " Pheasant 1. 2. 8. " Partridge 1. 4. 34. " Calves' Feet 1. 2. 26. " Carp 1. 0. 8. " Whey 1. 1. 3. " Bread 4. 1. 0.

"The relative proportion of the nourishment will be as follows:

Beef 7 Veal 9 Mutton 11 Lamb 9 Chicken 12 Pigeon 8 Pheasant 10 Partridge 12 Calves' Feet 10 Carp 8 Whey 9 Bread 33

"From the foregoing decisive experiments it is evident that white, young, tender animal food, bread, milk, and vegetables are the best and most effectual substances for nutrition, accretion, and sweetening bad juices. They may not give so strong and durable mechanical force, because being easily and readily digestible, and quickly passing all the animal functions, so as to turn into good blood and muscular flesh, they are more transitory, fugitive, and of prompt secretion; yet they will perform all the animal functions more readily and pleasantly, with fewer resistances and less labor, and leave the party to exercise the rational and intellectual operations with pleasure and facility. They will leave Nature to its own original powers, prevent and cure diseases, and lengthen out life."

Now if this experiment proves what Dr. C. supposes in favor of the lighter meats and vegetables taken together, how much more does it prove for bread alone? For it cannot escape the eye of the least observing that this article, though placed last in the list of Dr. Geoffroy, is by far the highest in point of nutriment; nay, that it is about three times as high as any of the rest. I am not disposed to lay so much stress on these experiments as Dr. C. does; nevertheless, they prove something Connected with the more recent experiments of Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin and others, how strikingly do they establish one fact, at least, viz., that bread and the other farinaceous vegetables cannot possibly be wanting in nutriment; and how completely do they annihilate the old-fashioned doctrine—one which is still abroad and very extensively believed—that animal food is a great deal more nourishing than vegetable! No careful inquirer can doubt that bread, peas, beans, rice, etc., are twice as nutritious—to say the least—as flesh or fish.

MESSRS. PERCY AND VAUQUELIN.

As I have alluded, in the preceding article, to the experiments of Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin, two distinguished French chemists, their testimony in this place seems almost indispensable, even though we should not regard it, in the most strict import of the term, as medical testimony. The result of their experiments, as communicated by them to the French minister of the interior, is as follows:

In bread, every one hundred pounds is found to contain eighty pounds of nutritious matter; butcher's meat, averaging the different sorts, contains only thirty-five pounds in one hundred; French beans (in the grain), ninety-two pounds in one hundred; broad beans, eighty-nine pounds; peas, ninety-three pounds; lentils (a species of half pea little known with us), fifty-four pounds in one hundred; greens and turnips only eight pounds of solid nutritious substance in one hundred; carrots, fourteen pounds; and one hundred pounds of potatoes yield only twenty-five pounds of nutriment.

I will just affix to the foregoing one more table. It is inserted in several other works which I have published; but for the benefit of those who may never yet have seen it, and to show how strikingly it corresponds with the results of the experiments of Geoffroy, Percy, and Vauquelin, I deem it proper to insert it.

Of the best wheat, one hundred pounds contain about eighty-five pounds of nutritious matter; of rice, ninety pounds; of rye, eighty; of barley, eighty-three; of beans, eighty-nine to ninety-two; peas, ninety-three; lentils, ninety-four; meat (average), thirty-five; potatoes, twenty-five; beets, fourteen; carrots, ten; cabbage, seven; greens, six; and turnips, four.

DR. PEMBERTON.

Dr. Pemberton, after speaking of the general tendency, in our highly fed communities, to scrofula and consumption, makes the following remarks, which need no comment:

"If a child is born of scrofulous parents, I would strongly recommend that it be entirely nourished from the breast of a healthy nurse, for at least a year. After this, the food should consist of milk and farinaceous vegetables. By a perseverance in this diet for three years, I have imagined that the threatened scrofulous appearances have certainly been postponed, if not altogether prevented."

SIR JOHN SINCLAIR.

Sir John Sinclair, an eminent British surgeon, says, "I have wandered a good deal about the world, my health has been tried in all ways, and, by the aid of temperance and hard work, I have worn out two armies in two wars, and probably could wear out another before my period of old age arrives. I eat no animal food, drink no wine or malt liquor, or spirits of any kind; I wear no flannel; and neither regard wind nor rain, heat nor cold, when business is in the way."

DR. JAMES, OF WISCONSIN.

Dr. James, of Wisconsin, but formerly of Albany, and editor of a temperance paper in that city, one of the most sensible, intelligent, and refined of men, and one of the first in his profession, is a vegetable eater, and a man of great simplicity in all his physical, intellectual, and moral habits. I do not know that his views have ever been presented to the public, but I state them with much confidence, from a source in which I place the most implicit reliance.

DR. CRANSTOUN.

Dr. Cranstoun, a worthy medical gentleman in England, became subject, by some means or other, to a chronic dysentery, on which he exhausted, as it were, the whole materia medica, in vain. At length, after suffering greatly for four or five years, he was completely cured by a milk and vegetable diet. The following is his own brief account of his cure, in a letter to Dr. Cheyne:

"I resolutely, as soon as capable of a diet, held myself close to your rules of bland vegetable food and elementary drink, and, without any other medicine, save frequent chewing of rhubarb and a little bark, I passed last winter and this summer without a relapse of the dysentery; and, though by a very slow advance, I find now more restitution of the body and regularity in the economy, on this primitive aliment, than ever I knew from the beginning of this trouble. This encourages much my perseverance in the same method, and that so religiously, as, to my knowledge, now for more than a year and a half I have not tasted of any thing that had animal life. There is plenty in the vegetable kingdom."

DR. TAYLOR, OF ENGLAND.

This gentleman, who had studied the works of Dr. Sydenham, and was therefore rather favorably inclined toward a milk and vegetable diet, became at last subject to epileptic fits. Not being willing, however, to give up his high living and his strong drinks, he tried the effects of medicine, and even consulted all the most eminent of his brethren of the medical profession in and about London; but all to no purpose, and the fits continued to recur. He used frequently to be attacked with them while riding along the road, in pursuance of the business of his profession. In these cases he would fall from his horse, and often remain senseless till some passenger or wagon came along and carried him to the nearest house. At length his danger, not only from accidents, but from the frequency and violence of the attacks, became so imminent that he was obliged to follow the advice of his master, Sydenham. He first laid aside the use of all fermented and distilled liquors; then, finding his fits became less frequent and violent, he gave up all flesh meat, and confined himself entirely to cows' milk.

In pursuance of this plan, in a year or two the epilepsy entirely left him. "And now," says Dr. Cheyne, from whom I take the account, "for seventeen years he has enjoyed as good health as human nature is capable of, except that once, in a damp air and foggy weather in riding through Essex, he was seized with an ague, which he got over by chewing the bark." He assured Dr. C. that at this time—and he was considerably advanced in life—he could play six hours at cricket without fatigue or distress, and was more active and clear in his faculties than ever he had been before in his whole life. He also said he had cured a great many persons, by means of the same diet, of inveterate distempers.

DRS. HUFELAND AND ABERNETHY.

The celebrated Dr. Hufeland taught that a simple vegetable diet was most conducive to health and long life. The distinguished Dr. Abernethy has expressed an opinion not very unlike it, in the following eccentric manner:

"If you put improper food into the stomach it becomes disordered, and the whole system is affected. Vegetable matter ferments and becomes gaseous, while animal substances are changed into a putrid, abominable, and acrid stimulus. Now, some people acquire preposterous noses; others, blotches on the face and different parts of the body; others, inflammation of the eyes; all arising from the irritations of the stomach. I am often asked why I don't practice what I preach. I reply by reminding the inquirer of the parson and sign-post—both point the way, but neither follows its course."

DR. GREGORY.

Dr. Gregory, a distinguished professor and practitioner of medicine in Scotland, in a work published more than seventy years ago, strongly recommends plain and simple food for children. Till they are three years old, he says, their diet should consist of plain milk, panada, good bread, barley meal porridge, and rice. He also complains of pampering them with animal food. The same arguments which are good for forming them to the habits of vegetable food exclusively for the first three years of life, would be equally good for its continuance.

DR. CULLEN, OF EDINBURGH.

The name of Dr. Cullen is well known, and he has long been regarded as high authority. Yet this distinguished writer and teacher expressly says, that a very temperate and sparing use of animal food is the surest means of preserving health and obtaining long life. But I will quote his own language, in various parts of his writings. And first, from his Materia Medica:

"Vegetable aliment, as never over-distending the vessels or loading the system, never interrupts the stronger emotions of the mind, while the heat, fullness, and weight of animal food, is an enemy to its vigorous efforts. Temperance, then, does not consist so much in the quantity, for that will always be regulated by our appetite, as in the quality, viz., a large proportion of vegetable aliment."

I will not stop here to oppose Dr. C.'s views in regard to the quantity of our food; for this is not the place. It is sufficient to show that he admits the importance of quality, and gives the preference to a diet of vegetables.

He seems in favor, in another place in his works, of sleeping after eating—perhaps a heresy, too—and inclines to the opinion that the practice would be hardly hurtful if we ate less animal food.

But his "First Lines of the Practice of Physic," abounds in testimonies in favor of vegetable food. In speaking, for example, of the cure of rheumatic affections, he has the following language:

"The cure, therefore, requires, in the first place, an antiphlogistic regimen, and particularly, a total abstinence from animal food, and from all fermented or spirituous liquors."

"Antiphlogistic regimen," in medical language, means that food and drink which is most cooling and quieting to the stomach and to the general system.

In the treatment of gout, Dr. Cullen recommends a course like that which has been stated, except that instead of proposing vegetable food as a means of cure, he recommends it as preventive. He says—

"The gout may be entirely prevented by constant bodily exercise, and by a low diet; and I am of opinion that this prevention may take place even in persons who have a hereditary disposition to the disease. I must add, here, that even when the disposition has discovered itself by severe paroxysms of inflammatory gout, I am persuaded that labor and abstinence will absolutely prevent any returns of it for the rest of life."

Again, in reference to the same subject, he thus observes:

"I am firmly persuaded that any man who, early in life, will enter upon the constant practice of bodily labor and of abstinence from animal food, will be preserved entirely from the disease."

And yet once more.

"If an abstinence from animal food be entered upon early in life, while the vigor of the system is yet entire, I have no doubt of its being both safe and effectual."

To guard against the common opinion that by vegetable food, he meant raw, or crude, or bad vegetables, Dr. C. explains his meaning by assuring the reader that by a vegetable diet he means the "farinaceous seeds," and "milk;" and admits that green, crude, and bad vegetables are not only less useful, but actually liable to produce the very diseases, which good, mealy vegetable food will prevent or cure.

This is an important distinction. Many a person, who wishes to be abstemious, seems to think that if he only abstains from flesh and fish, that is enough. No matter, he supposes, what vegetables he uses, so they are vegetables; nor how much he abuses himself by excess in quantity. Nay, he will even load his stomach with milk, or butter, or eggs; sometimes with fish (we have often been asked if we considered fish as animal food); and sometimes, worse still, with hot bread, hot buckwheat cakes, hot short-cakes, swimming, almost, in butter;—yes, and sometimes he will even cover his potatoes with gravy, mustard, salt, etc.