TESTIMONY OF PHILOSOPHERS AND OTHER EMINENT MEN.
General Remarks.--Testimony of
Plautus.--Plutarch.--Porphyry.--Lord Bacon.--Sir William
Temple.--Cicero.--Cyrus the Great.--Gassendi.--Prof.
Hitchcock.--Lord Kaims.--Dr. Thomas Dick.--Prof. Bush.--Thomas
Shillitoe.--Alexander Pope.--Sir Richard Phillips.--Sir Isaac
Newton.--The Abbé Gallani.--Homer.--Dr. Franklin.--Mr.
Newton.--O. S. Fowler.--Rev. Mr. Johnston.--John H.
Chandler.--Rev. J. Caswell.--Mr. Chinn.--Father
Sewall.--Magliabecchi.--Oberlin and Swartz.--James
Haughton.--John Bailies.--Francis Hupazoli.--Prof.
Ferguson.--Howard, the Philanthropist.--Gen.
Elliot.--Encyclopedia Americana.--Thomas Bell, of
London.--Linnæus, the Naturalist.--Shelley, the Poet.--Rev. Mr.
Rich.--Rev. John Wesley.--Lamartine.
GENERAL REMARKS.
This chapter might have been much more extended than it is. I might have
mentioned, for example, the cases of Daniel and his three brethren, at
the court of the Babylonian monarch, who certainly maintained their
health--if they did not even improve it--by vegetable food, and by a
form of it, too, which has by many been considered rather doubtful. I
might have mentioned the case of Paul,[17] who, though he occasionally
appears to have eaten flesh, said, expressly, that he would abstain from
it while the world stood, where a great moral end was to be gained; and
no one can suppose he would have done so, had he feared any injury would
thereby result to his constitution of body or mind.
The case of William Penn, if I remember rightly what he says in his "No
Cross no Crown," would have been in point. Jefferson, the third
President of the United States, was, according to his own story, almost
a vegetable eater, during the whole of his long life. He says he
abstained principally from animal food; using it, if he used it at all,
only as a condiment for his vegetables. And does any one, who has read
his remarks, doubt that his "convictions" were in favor of the exclusive
use of vegetable food?
However, to prevent the volume from much exceeding the limits originally
assigned it, I will be satisfied--and I hope the public will--with the
following selections of testimonies, ancient and modern; some of more,
some of less importance; but all of them, as it appears to me, worthy of
being collected and incorporated into a volume like this, and faithfully
and carefully examined.
PLAUTUS.
Plautus, a distinguished dramatic Roman writer, who flourished about two
thousand years ago, gives the following remarkable testimony against the
use of animal food, and of course in favor of the salubrity of
vegetables; addressed, indeed, to his own countrymen and times, but
scarcely less applicable to our own:
"You apply the term wild to lions, panthers, and serpents; yet, in your
own savage slaughters, you surpass them in ferocity; for the blood shed
by them is a matter of necessity, and requisite for their subsistence.
"But, that man is not, by nature, destined to devour animal food, is
evident from the construction of the human frame, which bears no
resemblance to wild beasts or birds of prey. Man is not provided with
claws or talons, with sharpness of fang or tusk, so well adapted to tear
and lacerate; nor is his stomach so well braced and muscular, nor his
animal spirits so warm, as to enable him to digest this solid mass of
animal flesh. On the contrary, nature has made his teeth smooth, his
mouth narrow, and his tongue soft; and has contrived, by the slowness of
his digestion, to divert him from devouring a species of food so ill
adapted to his frame and constitution. But, if you still maintain that
such is your natural mode of subsistence, then follow nature in your
mode of killing your prey, and employ neither knife, hammer, nor
hatchet--but, like wolves, bears, and lions, seize an ox with your
teeth, grasp a boar round the body, or tear asunder a lamb or a hare,
and, like the savage tribe, devour them still panting in the agonies of
death.
"We carry our luxury still farther, by the variety of sauces and
seasonings which we add to our beastly banquets--mixing together oil,
wine, honey, pickles, vinegar, and Syrian and Arabian ointments and
perfumes, as if we intended to bury and embalm the carcasses on which we
feed. The difficulty of digesting such a mass of matter, reduced in our
stomachs to a state of liquefaction and putrefaction, is the source of
endless disorders in the human frame.
"First of all, the wild, mischievous animals were selected for food; and
then the birds and fishes were dragged to slaughter; next, the human
appetite directed itself against the laborious ox, the useful and
fleece-bearing sheep, and the cock, the guardian of the house. At last,
by this preparatory discipline, man became matured for human massacres,
slaughters, and wars."
PLUTARCH.
"It is best to accustom ourselves to eat no flesh at all, for the earth
affords plenty enough of things not only fit for nourishment, but for
enjoyment and delight; some of which may be eaten without much
preparation, and others may be made pleasant by adding divers other
things to them.
"You ask me," continues Plutarch, "'for what reason Pythagoras abstained
from eating the flesh of brutes?' For my part, I am astonished to think,
on the contrary, what appetite first induced man to taste of a dead
carcass; or what motive could suggest the notion of nourishing himself
with the flesh of animals which he saw, the moment before, bleating,
bellowing, walking, and looking around them. How could he bear to see an
impotent and defenceless creature slaughtered, skinned, and cut up for
food? How could he endure the sight of the convulsed limbs and muscles?
How bear the smell arising from the dissection? Whence happened it that
he was not disgusted and struck with horror when he came to handle the
bleeding flesh, and clear away the clotted blood and humors from the
wounds?
"We should therefore rather wonder at the conduct of those who first
indulged themselves in this horrible repast, than at such as have
humanely abstained from it."
PORPHYRY, OF TYRE.
Porphyry, of Tyre, lived about the middle of the third century, and
wrote a book on abstinence from animal food. This book was addressed to
an individual who had once followed the vegetable system, but had
afterward relinquished it. The following is an extract from it:
"You owned, when you lived among us, that a vegetable diet was
preferable to animal food, both for preserving the health and for
facilitating the study of philosophy; and now, since you have eat flesh,
your own experience must convince you that what you then confessed was
true. It was not from those who lived on vegetables that robbers or
murderers, sycophants or tyrants, have proceeded; but from
_flesh-eaters_. The necessaries of life are few and easily acquired,
without violating justice, liberty, health, or peace of mind; whereas
luxury obliges those vulgar souls who take delight in it to covet
riches, to give up their liberty, to sell justice, to misspend their
time, to ruin their health and to renounce the joy of an upright
conscience."
He takes pains to persuade men of the truth of the two following
propositions:
1st. "That a conquest over the appetites and passions will greatly
contribute to preserve health and to remove distempers.
2d. "That a simple vegetable food, being easily procured and easily
digested, is a mighty help toward obtaining this conquest over
ourselves."
To prove the first proposition, he appeals to experience, and proves
that many of his acquaintance who had disengaged themselves from the
care of amassing riches, and turning their thoughts to spiritual
subjects, had got rid entirely of their bodily distempers.
In confirmation of the second proposition, he argues in the following
manner: "Give me a man who considers, seriously, what he is, whence he
came, and whither he must go, and from these considerations resolves not
to be led astray nor governed by his passions; and let such a man tell
me whether a rich animal diet is more easily procured or incites less to
irregular passions and appetites than a light vegetable diet! But if
neither he, nor a physician, nor indeed any reasonable man whatsoever,
dares to affirm this, why do we oppress ourselves with animal food, and
why do we not, together with luxury and flesh meat, throw off the
incumbrances and snares which attend them?"
LORD BACON.
Lord Bacon, in his treatise on Life and Death, says, "It seems to be
approved by experience, that a spare and almost a Pythagorean diet, such
as is prescribed by the strictest monastic life, or practiced by
hermits, is most favorable to long life."
SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.
"The patriarchs' abodes were not in cities, but in open countries and
fields. Their lives were pastoral, and employed in some sorts of
agriculture. They were of the same race, to which their marriages were
generally confined. Their diet was simple, as that of the ancients is
generally represented. Among them flesh and wine were seldom used,
except at sacrifices at solemn feasts.
"The Brachmans, among the old Indians, were all of the same races, lived
in fields and in woods, after the course of their studies was ended, and
fed only upon rice, milk, and herbs.
"The Brazilians, when first discovered, lived the most natural, original
lives of mankind, so frequently described in ancient countries, before
laws, or property, or arts made entrance among them; and so their
customs may be concluded to have been yet more simple than either of the
other two. They lived without business or labor, further than for their
necessary food, by gathering fruits, herbs, and plants. They knew no
other drink but water; were not tempted to eat or drink beyond common
appetite and thirst; were not troubled with either public or domestic
cares, and knew no pleasures but the most simple and natural.
"From all these examples and customs, it may probably be concluded that
the common ingredients of health and long life are, great temperance,
open air, easy labor, little care, simplicity of diet--rather fruits and
plants than flesh, which easier corrupts--and water, which preserves the
radical moisture without too much increasing the radical heat. Whereas
sickness, decay, and death proceed commonly from the one preying too
fast upon the other, and at length wholly extinguishing it."
CICERO.
This eminent man sometimes, if not usually, confined himself to
vegetable food. Of this we have evidence, in his complaints about the
refinements of cookery--that they were continually tempting him to
excess, etc. He says, that after having withstood all the temptations
that the noblest lampreys and oysters could throw in his way, he was at
last overpowered by paltry beets and mallows. A victory, by the way,
which, in the case of the eater of plain food, is very often achieved.
CYRUS THE GREAT.
This distinguished warrior was brought up, like the inferior Persians,
on bread, cresses, and water; and, notwithstanding the temptations of a
luxurious and voluptuous court, he rigorously adhered to his simple
diet. Nay, he even carried his simple habits nearly through life with
him; and it was not till he had completely established one of the
largest and most powerful empires of antiquity that he began to yield
to the luxuries of the times. Had he pursued his steady course of
temperance through life, the historian, instead of recording his death
at only seventy, might have told us that he died at a hundred or a
hundred and fifty.
PETER GASSENDI.
Two hundred and twenty years ago, Peter Gassendi, a famous French
philosopher--and by the way, one of the most learned men of his
time--wrote a long epistle to Van Helmont, a Dutch chemist, on the
question whether the teeth of mankind indicate that they are naturally
flesh-eaters.
In this epistle, too long for insertion here,[18] Gassendi maintains,
with great ingenuity, that the human teeth were not made for flesh. He
does not evade any of the facts in the case, but meets them all fairly
and discusses them freely. And after having gone through with all parts
of the argument, and answered every other conceivable objection, he thus
concludes:
"And here I feel that it may be objected to me: Why, then, do you not,
yourself, abstain from flesh and feed only on fruits and vegetables? I
must plead the force of habit, for my excuse. In persons of mature age
nature appears to be so wholly changed, that this artificial habit
cannot be renounced without some detriment. But I confess that if I were
wise, and relinquishing the use of flesh, should gradually accustom
myself to the gifts of the kind earth, I have little doubt that I should
enjoy more regular health, and acquire greater activity of mind. For
truly our numerous diseases, and the dullness of our faculties, seem
principally produced in this way, that flesh, or heavy, and, as I may
say, too substantial food, overloads the stomach, is oppressive to the
whole body, and generates a substance too dense, and spirits too obtuse.
In a word, it is a yarn too coarse to be interwoven with the threads of
man's nature."
I know how it strikes many when they find such men as Gassendi,
admitting the doctrines for which I contend, in theory, and even
strenuously defending them, and yet setting them at naught in practice.
Surely, say they, such persons cannot be sincere. For myself, however, I
draw a very different conclusion. Their conduct is perfectly in harmony
with that of the theoretic friends of cold water, plain dress, and
abstemiousness in general. They are compelled to admit the truth; but it
is so much against their habits, as in the case of Gassendi, besides
being still more strongly opposed to their lusts and appetites, that
they cannot, or rather, will not conform to what they believe, in their
daily practice. Their testimony, to me, is the strongest that can be
obtained, because they testify against themselves, and in spite of
themselves.
PROF. HITCHCOCK.
This gentleman, a distinguished professor in Amherst College, is the
author of a work, entitled "Dyspepsia Forestalled and Resisted," which
has been read by many, and execrated by not a few of those who are so
wedded to their lusts as to be unwilling to be told of their errors.
I am not aware that Professor H. has any where, in his writings, urged a
diet exclusively vegetable, for all classes of the community, although
I believe he does not hesitate to urge it on all students; and one might
almost infer, from his works of various kinds, that if he is not already
a believer in the doctrines of its universal superiority to a mixed
diet, he is not very far from it. In a sermon of his, in the National
Preacher, for November, 1834, he calls a diet exclusively vegetable, a
"proper course of living."
I propose to add here a few anecdotes of his, which I know not how to
find elsewhere.
"Pythagoras restricted himself to vegetable food altogether, his dinner
being bread, honey, and water; and he lived upward of eighty years.
Matthew (St. Matthew, I suppose he means), according to Clement, lived
upon vegetable diet. Galen, one of the most distinguished of the ancient
physicians, lived one hundred and forty years, and composed between
seven and eight hundred essays on medical and philosophical subjects;
and he was always, after the age of twenty-eight, extremely sparing in
the quantity of his food. The Cardinal de Salis, Archbishop of Seville,
who lived one hundred and ten years, was invariably sparing in his diet.
One Lawrence, an Englishman, by temperance and labor lived one hundred
and forty years; and one Kentigern, who never tasted spirits or wine,
and slept on the ground and labored hard, died at the age of one hundred
and eighty-five. Henry Jenkins, of Yorkshire, who died at the age of one
hundred and sixty-nine, was a poor fisherman, as long as he could follow
this pursuit; and ultimately he became a beggar, living on the coarsest
and most sparing diet. Old Parr, who died at the age of one hundred and
fifty-three, was a farmer, of extremely abstemious habits, his diet
being solely milk, cheese, coarse bread, small beer, and whey. At the
age of one hundred and twenty he married a second wife by whom he had a
child. But being taken to court, as a great curiosity, in his one
hundred and fifty-second year, he very soon died--as the physicians
decidedly testified, after dissection, in consequence of a change from a
parsimonious to a plentiful diet. Henry Francisco, of this country, who
lived to about one hundred and forty, was, except for a certain period,
remarkably abstemious, eating but little, and particularly abstaining
almost entirely from animal food; his favorite articles being tea, bread
and butter, and baked apples. Mr. Ephraim Pratt, of Shutesbury, Mass.,
who died at the age of one hundred and seventeen years, lived very much
upon milk, and that in small quantity; and his son, Michael Pratt,
attained to the age of one hundred and three, by similar means."
Speaking, in another place, of a milk diet, Professor H. observes, that
"a diet chiefly of milk produces a most happy serenity, vigor, and
cheerfulness of mind--very different from the gloomy, crabbed, and
irritable temper, and foggy intellect, of the man who devours flesh,
fish, and fowl, with ravenous appetite, and adds puddings, pies, and
cakes to the load."
LORD KAIMS.
Henry Home, otherwise called Lord Kaims, the author of the "Elements of
Criticism," and of "Six Sketches on the History of Man," has, in the
latter work, written eighty years ago, the following statements
respecting the inhabitants of the torrid zone:
"We have no evidence that either the hunter or shepherd state were ever
known there. The inhabitants at present subsist upon vegetable food,
and probably did so from the beginning."
In speaking of particular nations or tribes of this zone, he tells us
that "the inhabitants of Biledulgerid and the desert of Sahara, have but
two meals a day--one in the morning and one in the evening;" and "being
temperate," he adds, "and strangers to the diseases of luxury and
idleness, they generally live to a great age."[19] Sixty, with them, is
the prime of life, as thirty is in Europe. "Some of the inland tribes of
Africa," he says, "make but one meal a day, which is in the evening."
And yet "their diet is plain, consisting mostly of rice, fruits, and
roots. An inhabitant of Madagascar will travel two or three days without
any other food than a sugar-cane." So also, he might have added, will
the Arab travel many days, and at almost incredible speed, with nothing
but a little gum-arabic; and the Peruvians and other inhabitants of
South America, with a little parched corn. But I have one more extract
from Lord Kaims:
"The island of Otaheite is healthy, the people tall and well made; and
by temperance--vegetables and fish being their chief nourishment--they
live to a good old age, with scarcely an ailment. There is no such thing
known among them as rotten teeth; the very smell of wine or spirits is
disagreeable; and they never deal in tobacco or spiceries. In many
places Indian corn is the chief nourishment, which every man plants for
himself."
DR. THOMAS DICK.
Dr. Dick, author of the "Philosophy of Religion," and several other
works deservedly popular, gives this remarkable testimony:
"To take the life of any sensitive being, and to feed on its flesh,
appears incompatible with a state of innocence, and therefore no such
grant was given to Adam in paradise, nor to the antediluvians. It
appears to have been a grant suited only to the degraded state of man,
after the deluge; and it is probable that, as he advances in the scale
of moral perfection in the future ages of the world, the use of animal
food will be gradually laid aside, and he will return again to the
productions of the vegetable kingdom, as the original food of man--as
that which is best suited to the rank of rational and moral
intelligence. And perhaps it may have an influence, in combination with
other favorable circumstances, in promoting health and longevity."
PROFESSOR GEORGE BUSH.
Professor Bush, a writer of some eminence, in his "Notes on Genesis,"
while speaking of the permission to man in regard to food, in Genesis i.
29, has the following language:
"It is not perhaps to be understood, from the use of the word _give_,
that a _permission_ was now granted to man of using that for food which
it would have been unlawful for him to use without that permission; for,
by the very constitution of his being, he was made to be sustained by
that food which was most congenial to his animal economy; and this it
must have been lawful for him to employ, unless self-destruction had
been his duty. The true import of the phrase, therefore, doubtless is,
that God had _appointed_, _constituted_, _ordained_ this, as the staple
article of man's diet. He had formed him with a nature to which a
vegetable aliment was better suited than any other. It cannot perhaps be
inferred from this language that the use of flesh-meat was absolutely
forbidden; but it clearly implies that the fruits of the field were the
diet most adapted to the constitution which the Creator had given."
THOMAS SHILLITOE.
Mr. Shillitoe was a distinguished member of the Society of Friends, at
Tottenham, near London. The first twenty-five years of his life were
spent in feeble health, made worse by high living. This high living was
continued about twenty years longer, when, finding himself fast failing,
he yielded to the advice of a medical friend, and abandoned all drinks
but water, and all food but the plainest kinds, by which means he so
restored his constitution that he lived to be nearly ninety years of
age; and at eighty could walk with ease from Tottenham to London, six
miles, and back again. The following is a brief account of this
distinguished man, when at the age of eighty, and nearly in his own
words:
It is now nearly thirty years since I ate fish, flesh, or fowl, or took
fermented liquor of any kind whatsoever. I find, from continued
experience, that abstinence is the best medicine. I don't meddle with
fermented liquors of any kind, even as medicine. I find I am capable of
doing better without them than when I was in the daily use of them.
"One way in which I was favored to experience help in my willingness to
abandon all these things, arose from the effect my abstinence had on my
natural temper. My natural disposition is very irritable. I am persuaded
that ardent spirits and high living have more or less effect in tending
to raise into action those evil propensities which, if given way to, war
against the soul, and render us displeasing to Almighty God."
ALEXANDER POPE.
Pope, the poet, ascribes all the bad passions and diseases of the human
race to their subsisting on the flesh, blood, and miseries of animals.
"Nothing," he says, "can be more shocking and horrid than one of our
kitchens, sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of
creatures expiring, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung
up here and there. It gives one an image of a giant's den in romance,
bestrewed with the scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were
slain by his cruelty."
SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS.
Sir Richard Phillips, in his "Million of Facts," says that "the mixed
and fanciful diet of man is considered as the cause of numerous
diseases, from which animals are exempt. Many diseases have abated with
changes of natural diet, and others are virulent in particular
countries, arising from peculiarities. The Hindoos are considered the
freest from disease of any part of the human race. The laborers on the
African coast, who go from tribe to tribe to perform the manual labor,
and whose strength is wonderful, live entirely on plain rice. The Irish,
Swiss, and Gascons, the slaves of Europe, feed also on the simplest
diet; the former chiefly on potatoes."
He states, also, that the diseases of cattle often afflict those who
subsist on them. "In 1599," he observes, "the Venetian government, to
stop a fatal disease among the people, prohibited the sale of meat,
butter, or cheese, on Pain of death."
SIR ISAAC NEWTON.
This distinguished philosopher and mathematician is said to have
abstained rigorously, at times, from all but purely vegetable food, and
from all drinks but water; and it is also stated that some of his
important labors were performed at these seasons of strict temperance.
While writing his treatise on Optics, it is said he confined himself
entirely to bread, with a little sack and water; and I have no doubt
that his remarkable equanimity of temper, and that government of his
animal appetites, throughout, for which he was so distinguished to the
last hour of his life, were owing, in no small degree, to his habits of
rigid temperance.
THE ABBE GALLANI.
The Abbé Gallani ascribes all social crimes to animal destruction--thus,
treachery to angling and ensnaring, and murder to hunting and shooting.
And he asserts that the man who would kill a sheep, an ox, or any
unsuspecting animal, would, but for the law, kill his neighbor.
HOMER.
Even Homer, three thousand years ago, says Dr. Cheyne, could observe
that the Homolgians--those Pythagoreans, those milk and vegetable
eaters--were the longest lived and the honestest of men.
DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.
Dr. Franklin, in his younger days, often, for some time together, lived
exclusively on a vegetable diet, and that, too, in small quantity.
During his after life he also observed seasons of abstinence from animal
food, or _lents_, as he called them, of considerable length. His food
and drink were, moreover, especially in early life, exceedingly simple;
his meal often consisting of nothing but a biscuit and a slice of bread,
with a bunch of raisins, and perhaps a basin of gruel. Now, Dr. F.
testifies of himself; that he found his progress in science to be in
proportion to that clearness of mind and aptitude of conception which
can only be produced by total abstinence from animal food. He also
derived many other advantages from his abstinence, both physical and
moral.
MR. NEWTON.
This author wrote a work entitled "Defence of Vegetable Regimen." It is
often quoted by Shelley, the poet, and others. I know nothing of the
author or of his works, except through Shelley, who gives us some of his
views, and informs us that seventeen persons, of all ages, consisting of
Mr. Newton's family and the family of Dr. Lambe, who is elsewhere
mentioned in this work, had, at the time he wrote, lived seven years on
a pure vegetable diet, and without the slightest illness. Of the
seventeen, some of them were infants, and one of them was almost dead
with asthma when the experiment was commenced, but was already nearly
cured by it; and of the family of Mr. N., Shelley testifies that they
were "the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to
conceive"--the girls "perfect models for a sculptor"--and their
dispositions "the most gentle and conciliating."
The following paragraph is extracted from Mr. Newton's "Defence," and
will give us an idea of his sentiments. He was speaking of the fable of
Prometheus:
"Making allowance for such transposition of the events of the allegory
as time might produce after the important truths were forgotten, the
drift of the fable seems to be this: Man, at his creation, was endowed
with the gift of perpetual youth, that is, he was not formed to be a
sickly, suffering creature, as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and
to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth, without
disease or pain. Prometheus first taught the use of animal food, and of
fire, with which to render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste.
Jupiter and the rest of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these
inventions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the
newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the sad effects of
them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a flesh diet, ensued; other
drink than water was resorted to, and man forfeited the inestimable gift
of health, which he had received from heaven; he became diseased, the
partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer descended into his
grave slowly."
O. S. FOWLER.
O. S. Fowler, the distinguished phrenologist, in his work on Physiology,
devotes nearly one hundred pages to the discussion of the great diet
question. He endeavors to show that, in every point of view, a flesh
diet--or a diet partaking of flesh, fish, or fowl, in any degree--is
inferior to a well-selected vegetable diet; and, as I think,
successfully. He finally says:
"I wish my own children had never tasted, and would never taste, a
mouthful of meat. Increased health, efficiency, talents, virtue, and
happiness, would undoubtedly be the result. But for the fact that my
table is set for others than my own wife and children, it would never
be furnished with meat, so strong are my convictions against its
utility."
I believe that L. N. Fowler, the brother and associate of the former, is
of the same opinion; but my acquaintance with him is very limited. Both
the Fowlers, with Mr. Wells, their associate in book-selling, seem
anxiously engaged in circulating books which involve the discussion of
this great question.
REV. MR. JOHNSTON.
Mr. Johnston, who for some fifteen or twenty years has been an American
missionary in different foreign places--Trebizond, Smyrna, etc.--is,
from conviction, a vegetable eater. The author holds in his possession
several letters from this gentleman, on the subject of health, from
which, but for want of room, he would be glad to make numerous extracts.
He once sent, or caused to be sent, to him, at Trebizond, a barrel of
choice American apples, for which the missionary, amid numerous Eastern
luxuries, was almost starving. Happy would it be for many other American
and British missionaries, if they had the same simple taste and natural
appetite.
JOHN H. CHANDLER.
This young man has been for eight or ten years in the employ of the
Baptist Foreign Missionary Board, and is located at Bangkok, in Siam.
For several years before he left this country he was a vegetable eater,
sometimes subsisting on mere fruit for one or two of his daily meals.
And yet, as a mechanic, his labor was hard--sometimes severe.
Since he has been in Siam he has continued his reformed habits, as
appears from his letters and from reports. The last letter I had from
him was dated June 10, 1847. The following are extracts from it:
"I experienced the same trials (that is, from others) on my arrival in
Burmah, in regard to vegetable diet, that I did in the United States.
This I did not expect, and was not prepared for it. Through the blessing
of God we were enabled to endure, and have persevered until now.
"Myself and wife are more deeply convinced than ever that vegetable diet
is the best adapted to sustain health. I cannot say that we have been
much more free from sickness than our associates; but one thing we can
say--we have been equally well off, and our expenses have been much
less."
After going on to say how much his family--himself and wife--saved by
their plain living, viz., an average of about one dollar a week, he
makes additional remarks, of which I will only quote the following:
"My labors, being mostly mechanical, are far more fatiguing than those
of my brethren; and I do not think any of them could endure a greater
amount of labor than I do."
It deserves to be noticed, in this connection, that Mr. Chandler has
slender muscles, and would by no means be expected to accomplish as much
as many men of greater vigor; and yet we have reason to believe that he
performs as much labor as any man in the service of the board.
REV. JESSE CASWELL.
Mr. Caswell went out to India about thirteen years ago, a dyspeptic,
and yet perhaps somewhat better than while engaged in his studies at
Andover. For several years after his arrival he suffered much from
sickness, like his fellow-laborers. His station was Bangkok. He was an
American missionary, sent out by the American Board, as it is called, of
Boston.
About six years ago he wrote me for information on the subject of
health. He had read my works, and those of Mr. Graham, and seemed not
only convinced of the general importance of studying the science of
human life, but of the superiority of a well selected vegetable diet,
especially at the East. He was also greatly anxious that missionaries
should be early taught what he had himself learned. The following is one
of his first paragraphs:
"I feel fully convinced that you are engaged in a work second to few if
any of the great enterprises of the day. If there be any class of men
standing in special need of correct physiological knowledge, that class
consists of missionaries of the cross. What havoc has disease made with
this class, and for the most part, as I feel convinced, because, before
and after leaving their native land, they live so utterly at variance
with the laws of their nature."
He then proceeds to say, that the American missionaries copy the example
of the English, and that they all eat too much high-seasoned food, and
too much flesh and fish; and argues against the practice by adducing
facts. The following is one of them:
"My Siamese teacher, a man about forty years old, says that those who
live simply on rice, with a little salt, enjoy better health, and can
endure a greater amount of labor, than those who live in any other way.
* * * The great body of the Siamese use no flesh, except fish. Of this
they generally eat _a very little_, with their rice."
The next year I had another letter from him. He had been sick, but was
better, and thought he had learned a great deal, during his sickness,
about the best means of preserving health. He had now fully adopted what
he chose to call the Graham system, and was rejoicing--he and his wife
and children--in its benefits. He says, "If a voice from an obscure
corner of the earth can do any thing toward encouraging your heart and
staying your hands, that voice you shall have." He suggests the
propriety of my sending him a copy of "Vegetable Diet." "I think," says
he, "it might do great good." He wished to lend it among his friends.
It must suffice to say, that he continued to write me, once or twice a
year, as long as he lived. He also insisted strongly on the importance
of physiological information among students preparing for the ministry,
and especially for missions. He even wrote once or twice to Rev. Dr.
Anderson, and solicited attention to the subject. But the board would
neither hear to him nor to me, except to speak kind words, for nothing
effective was ever done. They even refused a well-written communication
on the subject, intended for the Missionary Herald. Let me also say,
that as early as March, 1845, he told me that Dr. Bradley, his associate
(now in this country), with his family, were beginning to live on the
vegetable system; and added, that one of the sisters of the mission, who
was no "Grahamite," had told him she thought there was not one third as
much flesh used in all the mission families that there was a year
before.
Mr. Caswell became exceedingly efficient, over-exerted himself in
completing a vocabulary of the Siamese language, and in other labors,
and died in September last. He was, according to the testimony of Dr.
Bradley, a "_noble man_;" and probably his life and health, and that of
his family, were prolonged many years by his improved habits. But his
early transgressions--like those of thousands--at length found him out.
I allude to his errors in regard to exercise, eating, drinking,
sleeping, taking medicine, etc.
MR. SAMUEL CHINN.
This individual has represented the town of Marblehead, Mass., in the
state legislature, and is a man of respectability. He is now, says the
"Lynn Washingtonian," above forty years of age, a strong, healthy man,
and, to use his own language, "has neither ache nor pain." For the ten
years next preceding our last account from him he had lived on a simple
vegetable diet, condemning to slaughter no flocks or herds that "range
the valley free," but leaving them to their native, joyous hill-sides
and mountains. But Mr. Chinn, not contented with abstinence from animal
food, goes nearly the full length of Dr. Schlemmer and his sect, and
abjures cookery. For four years he subsisted--we believe he does so
now--on nothing but unground wheat and fruit. His breakfast, it is said,
he uniformly makes of fruit; his other two meals of unground wheat;
patronizing neither millers nor cooks. A few years since, being
appointed a delegate to a convention in Worcester, fifty-eight miles
distant, he filled his pocket with wheat, walked there during the day,
attended the convention, and the next day walked home again, with
comparative ease.
FATHER SEWALL.
This venerable man--Jotham Sewall, of Maine, as he styles himself, one
of the fathers of that state--is now about ninety years of age, and yet
is, what he has long been, an active home missionary. He is a man of
giant size and venerable appearance, of a green old age, and remarkably
healthy. He is an early riser, a man of great cheerfulness, and of the
most simple habits. He has abstained from tea and coffee--poisonous
things, as he calls them--forty-seven years. His only drinks are water
and sage tea. These, with bread, milk, and fruits, and perhaps a little
salt, are the only things that enter his stomach. How long he has
abstained from flesh and fish I have not learned, but I believe some
thirty or forty years.
Such is the appearance of this venerable man, that no one is surprised
to find in him those gigantic powers of mind, and that readiness to give
wise counsel on every important occasion, for which he has so long been
distinguished. It has sometimes seemed to me that no one would doubt the
efficacy of a well-selected vegetable diet to give strength, mental or
bodily, who had known Father Sewall.
MAGLIABECCHI,
An Italian, who died in the beginning of the eighteenth century, abjured
cookery at the age of forty years, and confined himself chiefly to
fruits, grains, and water. He never allowed himself a bed, but slept on
a kind of settee, wrapped in a long morning gown, which served him for
blanket and clothing the year round.
I would not be understood as encouraging the anti-cookery system of Dr.
Schlemmer and Magliabecchi; but it is interesting to know _what can be
done_. Magliabecchi lived to the age of from eighty to one hundred
years.
OBERLIN AND SWARTZ.
These two distinguished men were essentially vegetable eaters. Of the
habits of Oberlin, the venerable pastor and father of Waldbach, I am not
able to speak, however, with so much certainty as of those of Swartz.
His income, during the early part of his residence in India, was only
forty-eight pounds a year, which, being estimated by its ability to
procure supplies for his necessities, was only equal to about one
hundred dollars. He not only accepted of very narrow quarters, but ate,
drank, and dressed, in the plainest manner. "A dish of rice and
vegetables," says his biographer, "satisfied his appetite for food."
THE IRISH.
Much has been said of the dietetic habits of the Irish, of late years,
especially of their potato. Now, we have abundant facts which go to
prove that good potatoes form a wholesome aliment, equal, if not
superior, to many forms of European and American diet. Yet it cannot be
that a diet consisting wholly of potatoes is as well for the race as one
partaking of greater variety.
Mr. Gamble, a traveler in Ireland, in his work on Irish "Society and
Manners," gives the following statement of an old friend of his, whom he
visited:
"He was upward of eighty years when I had last seen him, and he was now
in his ninety-fourth year. He found the old gentleman seated on a kind
of rustic seat, in the garden, by the side of some bee-hives. He was
asleep. On his waking I was astonished to see the little change time had
wrought on him; a little more stoop in his shoulders, a wrinkle more,
perhaps, in his forehead, a more perfect whiteness of his hair, was all
the difference since I had seen him last. Flesh meat in my venerable
friend's house was an article never to be met with. _For sixty years
past he had not tasted it_, nor did he by any means like to see it taken
by others. His food was vegetables, bread, milk, butter, and honey. His
whole life was a series of benevolent actions, and Providence rewarded
him, even here, by a peace of mind which passeth all understanding, by a
judgment vigorous and unclouded, and by a length of days beyond the
common course of men."
James Haughton, I believe of Dublin--a correspondent of Henry C. Wright,
of Philadelphia, who is himself in theory a vegetable eater--has, for
some time past, rejected flesh, and pursued a simple course of living,
as he says, with great advantage. I have been both amused and instructed
by his letters.
I have met with several Irish people of intelligence who were vegetable
eaters, but their names are not now recollected. They have not, however,
in any instance, confined themselves to potatoes. One of the most
distinguished of these was a female laborer in the family of a merchant
at Barnstable. She was, from choice, a very rigid vegetable eater; and
yet no person in the whole neighborhood was more efficient as a laborer.
Those who know her, and are in the habit of thinking no person can work
hard without flesh and fish, often express their astonishment that she
should be able to live so simply and yet perform so much labor.
JOHN BAILIES.
John Bailies, of England, who reached the great age of one hundred and
twenty-eight, is said to have been a strict vegetarian. His food, for
the most part, consisted of brown bread and cheese; and his drink of
water and milk. He had survived the whole town of Northampton (as he was
wont to say), where he resided, three or four times over; and it was his
custom to say that they were all killed by tea and coffee. Flesh meat at
that time had not come into suspicion, otherwise he would doubtless have
attributed part of the evil to this agency.
FRANCIS HUPAZOLI.
This gentleman was a Sardinian ecclesiastic, at the first; afterward a
merchant at Scio; and finally Venetian consul at Smyrna. Much has been
said of Lewis Cornaro, who, having broken down his constitution at the
age of forty, renewed it by his temperance, and lasted unto nearly the
age of a century. His story is interesting and instructive; but little
more so than that of Hupazoli.
His habits were all remarkable for simplicity and truth, except one. He
was greatly licentious; and his licentiousness, at the age of
eighty-five, had nearly carried him off. Yet such was the mildness of
his temper, and so correct was he in regard to exercise, rest, rising,
eating, drinking, etc., that he lived on, to the great age of one
hundred and fifteen years, and then died, not of old age, but of
disease.
Hupazoli did not entirely abstain from flesh; and yet he used very
little, and that was wild game. His living was chiefly on fruits.
Indeed, he ate but little at any time; and his supper was particularly
light. His drink was water. He never took any medicine in his whole
life, not even tobacco; nor was he so much as ever bled. In fact, till
late in life, he was never sick.
MARY CAROLINE HINCKLEY.
This young woman, a resident of Hallowell, in Maine, and somewhat
distinguished as a poet, is, from her own conviction and choice both, a
vegetable eater. Her story, which I had from her friends, is
substantially as follows:
When about eleven years of age she suddenly changed her habits of
eating, and steadfastly refused, at the table, all kinds of food which
partook of flesh and fish. The family were alarmed, and afraid she was
ill. When they made inquiry concerning it, she hesitated to assign the
reasons for her conduct; but, on being pressed closely, she confessed
that she abstained for conscience' sake; that she had become fully
convinced, from reading and reflection, that she ought not to eat animal
food.
It was in vain that the family and neighbors remonstrated with her, and
endeavored, in various ways, to induce her to vary from her purpose. She
continued to use no fowl, flesh, or fish; and in this habit she
continues, as I believe, to this day, a period of some twelve or fifteen
years.
JOHN WHITCOMB.
John Whitcomb, of Swansey, N. H., at the age of one hundred and four was
in possession of sound mind and memory, and had a fresh countenance; and
so good was his health, that he rose and bathed himself in cold water
even in mid-winter. His wounds, moreover, would heal like those of a
child. And yet this man, for eighty years, refused to drink any thing
but water; and for thirty years, at the close of life, confined himself
chiefly to bread and milk as his diet.
CAPT. ROSS, OF THE BRITISH NAVY.
It is sometimes said that animal food is indispensably necessary in the
polar regions. We have seen, however, in the testimony of Professor
Sweetser, that this view of the case is hardly correct. But we have
positive testimony on this subject from Capt. Ross himself.
This navigator, with his company, spent the winter of 1830-31 above 70°
of north latitude, without beds, clothing (that is, extra clothing), or
animal food, and with no evidence of any suffering from the mere disuse
of flesh and fish.
HENRY FRANCISCO.
This individual, who died at Whitehall, N. Y., in the year 1820, at the
age of one hundred and twenty-five years, was, during the latter part of
his life, quite a Grahamite, as the moderns would call him. His favorite
articles of food were tea, bread and butter, and baked apples; and he
was even abstemious in the use of these.
PROFESSOR FERGUSON.
Professor Adam Ferguson, an individual not unknown in the literary
world, was, till he was fifty years of age, regarded as quite healthy.
Brought up in fashionable society, he was very often invited to
fashionable dinners and parties, at which he ate heartily and drank
wine--sometimes several bottles. Indeed, he habitually ate and drank
freely; and, as he had by nature a very strong constitution, he thought
nothing which he ate or drank injured him.
Things went on in this manner, as I have already intimated, till he was
fifty years of age. One day, about this time, having made a long
journey in the cold, he returned very much fatigued, and in this
condition went to dine with a party, where he ate and drank in his usual
manner. Soon after dinner, he was seized with a fit of apoplexy,
followed by palsy; but by bleeding, and other energetic measures, he was
partially restored.
He was now, by the direction of his physician, put upon what was called
a low diet. It consisted of vegetable food and milk. For nearly forty
years he tasted no meat, drank nothing but water and a little weak tea,
and took no suppers. If he ventured, at any time, upon more stimulating
food or drink, he soon had a full pulse, and hot, restless nights. His
bowels, however, seemed to be much affected by the fit of palsy; and not
being inclined, so far as I can learn, to the use of fruit and coarse
bread, he was sometimes compelled to use laxatives.
When he was about seventy years of age, however, all his paralytic
symptoms had disappeared; and his health was so excellent, for a person
of his years, as to excite universal admiration. This continued till he
was nearly ninety. His mind, up to this time, was almost as entire as in
his younger days; none of his bodily functions, except his sight, were
much impaired. So perfect, indeed, was the condition of his physical
frame, that nobody, who had not known his history, would have suspected
he had ever been apoplectic or paralytic.
When about ninety years of age, his health began slightly to decline. A
little before his death, he began to take a little meat. This, however,
did not save him--nature being fairly worn out. On the contrary, it
probably hastened his dissolution. His bowels became irregular, his
pulse increased, and he fell into a bilious fever, of which he died at
the great age of ninety-three.
Probably there are, on record, few cases of longevity more instructive
than this. Besides showing the evil tendency of living at the expense of
life, it also shows, in a most striking manner, the effects of simple
and unstimulating food and drink, even in old age; and the danger of
recurring to the use of that which is more stimulating in very advanced
life. In this last respect, it confirms the experience of Cornaro, who
was made sick by attempting, in his old age, and at the solicitation of
kind friends, to return to the use of a more stimulating diet; and of
Parr, who was destroyed in the same way, after having attained to more
than a hundred and fifty years.
But the fact that living at the expense of life, cuts down, here and
there, in the prime of life, or even at the age of fifty, a few
individuals, though this of itself is no trivial evil, is not all. Half
of what we call the infirmities of old age--and thus charge them upon
Him who made the human frame _subject_ to age--have their origin in the
same source; I mean in this living too fast, and exhausting prematurely
the vital powers. When will the sons of men learn wisdom in this matter?
Never, I fear, till they are taught, as commonly as they now are reading
and writing, the principles of physiology.
HOWARD, THE PHILANTHROPIST.
Although individual cases of abstinence from animal food prove but
little, yet they prove something in the case of a man so remarkable as
John Howard. If he, with a constitution not very strong, and in the
midst of the greatest fatigues of body and mind, could best sustain
himself on a bread and water, or bread and tea diet, who is there that
would not be well sustained on vegetable food? And yet it is certain
that Howard was a vegetable eater for many years of the latter part of
his life; and that had he not exposed himself in a remarkable manner,
there is no known reason why he might not have lasted with a
constitution no better than his was, to a hundred years of age.
GEN. ELLIOTT.
The following extract exhibits in few words, the dietetic history of
that brave and wise commander, General George Augustus Elliott, of the
British army:
"During the whole of his active life, Gen. Elliott had inured himself to
the most rigid habits of order and watchfulness; seldom sleeping more
than four hours a day, and never eating any thing but vegetable food, or
drinking any thing but water. During eight of the most anxious days of
the memorable siege of Gibraltar, he confined himself to four ounces of
rice a day. He was universally regarded as one of the most abstemious
men of his age.
"And yet his abstemiousness did not diminish his vigor; for, at the
above-mentioned siege of Gibraltar, when he was sixty-six years of age,
he had nearly all the activity and fire of his youth. Nor did he die of
any wasting disease, such as full feeders are wont to say men bring upon
them by their abstinence. On the contrary, owing to a hereditary
tendency, perhaps, of his family, he died at the age of seventy-three,
of apoplexy."
ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA.
The following testimony is from the Encyclopedia. I do not suppose the
writer was the friend of a diet exclusively vegetable; but his testimony
is therefore the more interesting. His only serious mistake is in regard
to the tendency of vegetable food to form weak fibres.
"Sometimes a particular kind of food is called wholesome, because it
produces a beneficial effect of a particular character on the system of
an individual. In this case, however, it is to be considered as a
medicine; and can be called wholesome only for those whose systems are
in the same condition.
"Aliments abounding in fat are unwholesome, because fat resists the
operation of the gastric juice.
"The addition of too much spice makes many an innocent aliment
injurious, because spices resist the action of the digestive organs, and
produce an irritation of particular parts of the system.
"The kind of aliment influences the health, and even the character of
man. He is fitted to derive nourishment both from animal and vegetable
aliment; but can live exclusively on either.
"Experience proves that animal food most readily augments the solid
parts of the blood, the fibrine, and therefore the strength of the
muscular system; but disposes the body, at the same time, to
inflammatory, putrid, and scorbutic diseases; and the character to
violence and coarseness. On the contrary, vegetable food renders the
blood lighter and more liquid, but forms weak fibres, disposes the
system to the diseases which spring from feebleness, and tends to
produce a gentle character.
"Something of the same difference of moral effect results from the use
of strong or light wines. But the reader must not infer that meat is
indispensable for the support of the bodily strength. The peasants of
some parts of Switzerland, who hardly ever taste any thing but bread,
cheese, and butter, are vigorous people.
"The nations of the north are inclined, generally, more to animal
aliment; those of the south and the Orientals, more to vegetable. The
latter are generally more simple in their diet than the former, when
their taste has not been corrupted by luxurious indulgence. Some tribes
in the East, and the caste of Bramins in India, live entirely on
vegetable food."
MR. THOMAS BELL, OF LONDON.
Mr. Thomas Bell, Fellow of the Royal Society, Member of the Royal
College of Surgeons in London, Lecturer on the Anatomy and Diseases of
the Teeth, at Guy's Hospital, and Surgeon Dentist to that institution,
in his physiological observations on the natural food of man, deduced
from the character of the teeth, says, "The opinion which I venture to
give, has not been hastily formed, nor without what appeared to me
sufficient grounds. It is not, I think, going too far to say, that every
fact connected with human organization goes to prove that man was
originally formed a frugiverous (fruit-eating) animal, and therefore,
probably, tropical or nearly so, with regard to his geographical
situation. This opinion is principally derived from the formation of his
teeth and digestive organs, as well as from the character of his skin
and general structure of his limbs."
LINNÆUS, THE NATURALIST.
Linnæus, in speaking of fruits and esculent vegetables, says--"This
species of food is that which is most suitable to man, as is evinced by
the structure of the mouth, of the stomach, and of the hands."
SHELLEY, THE POET.
The following are the views of that eccentric, though in many respects
sensible writer, Shelley, as presented in a note to his work, called
Queen Mab. I have somewhat abridged them, not solely to escape part of
his monstrous religious sentiments, but for other reasons. I have
endeavored, however, to preserve, undisturbed, his opinions and
reasonings, which I hope will make a deep and abiding impression:
"The depravity of the physical and moral nature of man, originated in
his unnatural habits of life. The language spoken by the mythology of
nearly all religions seems to prove that, at some distant period, man
forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed the purity and happiness of
his being to unnatural appetites. Milton makes Raphael thus exhibit to
Adam the consequence of his disobedience:
'----Immediately, a place
Before his eyes appeared; and, noisome, dark,
A lazar-house it seemed; wherein were laid
Numbers of all diseased; all maladies
Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms
Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds,
Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs,
Intestine stone and ulcer, colic pangs,
Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy,
And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy,
Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence,
Dropsies and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums.'
"The fable of Prometheus, too, is explained in a manner somewhat
similar. Before the time of Prometheus, according to Hesiod, mankind
were exempt from suffering; they enjoyed a vigorous youth; and death,
when at length it came, approached like sleep, and gently closed the
eyes. Prometheus (who represents the human race) effected some great
change in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary
purposes. From this moment his vitals were devoured by the vulture of
disease. It consumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and
infinite variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature and
violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of healthful innocence.
"Man, and the animals which he has infected with his society, or
depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. The wild hog, the bison,
and the wolf are perfectly exempt from malady, and invariably die,
either from external violence or natural old age. But the domestic hog,
the sheep, the cow, and the dog are subject to an incredible number of
distempers, and, like the corrupters of their nature, have physicians,
who thrive upon their miseries.
"The supereminence of man is like Satan's supereminence of pain,--and
the majority of his species, doomed to penury, disease, and crime, have
reason to curse the untoward event, that, by enabling him to communicate
his sensations, raised him above the level of his fellow animals. But
the steps that have been taken are irrevocable.
"The whole of human science is comprised in one question: How can the
advantages of intellect and civilization be reconciled with the liberty
and pure pleasures of natural life? How can we take the benefits and
reject the evils of the system, which is now interwoven with our being?
I believe that _abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors
would, in a great measure, capacitate us for the solution of this
important question_.
"It is true, that mental and bodily derangement is attributable in part
to other deviations from rectitude and nature than those which concern
diet. The mistakes cherished by society respecting the connection of the
sexes, whence the misery and diseases of celibacy, unenjoying
prostitution, and the premature arrival of puberty, necessarily spring;
the putrid atmosphere of crowded cities; the exhalations of chemical
processes: the muffling of our bodies in superfluous apparel; the absurd
treatment of infants; all these, and innumerable other causes,
contribute their mite to the mass of human evil.
"Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles frugiverous animals
in every thing, and carnivorous in nothing; he has neither claws
wherewith to seize his prey, nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the
living fibre. A mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches long,
would probably find them, alone, inefficient to hold even a hare. It is
only by softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparations
that it is rendered susceptible of mastication and digestion, and that
the sight of its bloody juices does not excite intolerable loathing,
horror, and disgust. Let the advocate of animal food force himself to a
decisive experiment on its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a
living lamb with his teeth, and, plunging his head into its vitals,
slake his thirst with the steaming blood; when fresh from the deed of
horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of nature that
would rise in judgment against it, and say, Nature formed me for such
work as this. Then, and then only, would he be consistent.
"Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and other
fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, by the gradual depravation of the
digestive organs, the free use of vegetables has, for a time, produced
serious inconveniences. _For a time_, I say, since there never was an
instance wherein a change from spirituous liquors and animal food to
vegetables and pure water has failed ultimately to invigorate the body,
by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to restore to the
mind that cheerfulness and elasticity which not one in fifty possesses
on the present system. A love of strong liquor is also with difficulty
taught to infants. Almost every one remembers the wry faces which the
first glass of port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariably
unerring; but to decide on the fitness of animal food from the perverted
appetites which its constrained adoption produces, is to make the
criminal a judge in his own cause; it is even worse--it is appealing to
the infatuated drunkard in a question of the salubrity of brandy.
"Except in children, however, there remain no traces of that instinct
which determines, in all other animals, what aliment is natural or
otherwise; and so perfectly obliterated are they in the reasoning adults
of our species, that it has become necessary to urge considerations
drawn from comparative anatomy to prove that we are naturally
frugiverous.
"Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the cause of disease
shall be discovered, the root, from which all vice and misery have so
long overshadowed the globe, will be bare to the axe. All the exertions
of man, from that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear
profit of his species. No sane mind, in a sane body, resolves upon a
crime. It is a man of violent passions, blood-shot eyes, and swollen
veins, that alone can grasp the knife of murder. The system of a simple
diet is not a reform of legislation, while the furious passions and evil
propensities of the human heart, in which it had its origin, are
unassuaged. It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experiment
which may be tried with success, not alone by nations, but by small
societies, families, and even individuals. In no case has a return to a
vegetable diet produced the slightest injury; in most it has been
attended with changes undeniably beneficial.
"Should ever a physician be born with the genius of Locke, he might
trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural habits, as
clearly as that philosopher has traced all knowledge to sensation. What
prolific sources of disease are not those mineral and vegetable poisons,
that have been introduced for its extirpation! How many thousands have
become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, dissolute and
abandoned adventurers, from the use of fermented liquors, who, had they
slaked their thirst only with pure water, would have lived but to
diffuse the happiness of their own unperverted feelings! How many
groundless opinions and absurd institutions have not received a general
sanction from the sottishness and intemperance of individuals!
"Who will assert that, had the populace of Paris satisfied their hunger
at the ever-furnished table of vegetable nature, they would have lent
their brutal suffrage to the proscription-list of Robespierre? Could a
set of men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatural stimuli,
look with coolness on an _auto da fe_? Is it to be believed that a being
of gentle feelings, rising from his meal of roots, would take delight in
sports of blood?
"Was Nero a man of temperate life? Could you read calm health in his
cheek, flushed with ungovernable propensities of hatred for the human
race? Did Muley Ismail's pulse beat evenly? was his skin transparent?
did his eyes beam with healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants,
cheerfulness and benignity?
"Though history has decided none of these questions, a child could not
hesitate to answer in the negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of
Bonaparte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the ceaseless inquietude
of his nervous system, speak no less plainly the character of his
unresting ambition than his murders and his victories. It is impossible,
had Bonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders, that he could
have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the
Bourbons.
"The desire of tyranny could scarcely be excited in the individual; the
power to tyrannize would certainly not be delegated by a society neither
frenzied by inebriation nor rendered impotent and irrational by disease.
Pregnant, indeed, with inexhaustible calamity is the renunciation of
instinct, as it concerns our physical nature. Arithmetic cannot
enumerate, nor reason perhaps suspect, the multitudinous sources of
disease in civilized life. Even common water, that apparently innoxious
_pabulum_, when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly
and insidious destroyer.
"There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet
and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment
has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength,
disease into healthfulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from
the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities
of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and
considerate evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge
of the future moral reformation of society.
"On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only
malady; the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy
life, and no longer preclude others from the enjoyment of it; all
sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; the
very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now
feel it in some few and favored moments of our youth.
"By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those
who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable
system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an
experience of six months should set forever at rest.
"But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a
sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its
ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier by
the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments, by
medicine, than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are
invariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded,
that when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved--when
it is as clear, that those who live naturally are exempt from premature
death, as that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will feel a
preference toward a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and
painful life.
"On the average, out of sixty persons, four die in three years. Hopes
are entertained, that in April, 1814,[20] a statement will be given that
sixty persons, all having lived more than three years on vegetables and
pure water, are then in _perfect health_. More than two years have now
elapsed; _not one of them has died_; no such example will be found in
any sixty persons taken at random.
"When these proofs come fairly before the world, and are clearly seen by
all who understand arithmetic, it is scarcely possible that abstinence
from aliments demonstrably pernicious should not become universal.
"In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be the weight of
evidence; and when a thousand persons can be produced, living on
vegetables and distilled water, who have to dread no disease but old
age, the world will be compelled to regard animal flesh and fermented
liquors as slow but certain poisons.
"The change which would be produced by simple habits on political
economy, is sufficiently remarkable. The monopolizing eater of animal
flesh would no longer destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a
meal, and many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout,
madness, and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter, or a dram of
gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of the hard-working
peasant's hungry babes.
"The quantity of nutritious vegetable matter, consumed in fattening the
carcass of an ox, would afford ten times the sustenance, undepraving
indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if gathered immediately
from the bosom of the earth. The most fertile districts of the habitable
globe are now actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and
waste of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the
wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the unnatural
craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater license of the
privilege, by subjection to supernumerary diseases.
"Again--the spirit of the nation that should take the lead in this great
reform would insensibly become agricultural; commerce, with its vices,
selfishness, and corruption, would gradually decline; more natural
habits would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complication of
political relations would be so far simplified that every individual
might feel and understand why he loved his country, and took a personal
interest in its welfare.
"On a natural system of diet, we should require no spices from India; no
wines from Portugal, Spain, France, or Madeira; none of those
multitudinous articles of luxury, for which every corner of the globe is
rifled, and which are the cause of so much individual rivalship, and
such calamitous and sanguinary national disputes.
"Let it ever be remembered, that it is the direct influence of excess of
commerce to make the interval between the rich and the poor wider and
more unconquerable. Let it be remembered, that it is a foe to every
thing of real worth and excellence in the human character. The odious
and disgusting aristocracy of wealth, is built upon the ruins of all
that is good in chivalry or republicanism; and luxury is the forerunner
of a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to realize a
state of society, where all the energies of man shall be directed to the
production of his solid happiness?
"None must be intrusted with power (and money is the completest species
of power), who do not stand pledged to use it exclusively for the
general benefit. But the use of animal flesh and fermented liquors,
directly militates with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant
cannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leaving his family to
starve. Without disease and war, those sweeping curtailers of
population, pasturage would include a waste too great to be afforded.
The labor requisite to support a family is far lighter than is usually
supposed. The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the
aristocracy, the army, and the manufacturers.
"The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater than that of any
other. It strikes at the root of the evil. To remedy the abuses of
legislation, before we annihilate the propensities by which they are
produced, is to suppose that by taking away the effect, the cause will
cease to operate.
"But the efficacy of this system depends entirely on the proselytism of
individuals, and grounds its merits, as a benefit to the community, upon
the total change of the dietetic habits in its members. It proceeds
securely from a number of particular cases to one that is universal, and
has this advantage over the contrary mode, that one error does not
invalidate all that has gone before.
"Let not too much, however, be expected from this system. The
healthiest among us is not exempt from hereditary disease. The most
symmetrical, athletic, and long-lived is a being inexpressibly inferior
to what he would have been had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors
accumulated for him a certain portion of malady and deformity. In the
most perfect specimen of civilized man, something is still found wanting
by the physiological critic. Can a return to nature, then,
instantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been slowly taking
root in the silence of innumerable ages? Indubitably not. All that I
contend for is, that from the moment of relinquishing all unnatural
habits, no new disease is generated; and that the predisposition to
hereditary maladies gradually perishes for want of its accustomed
supply. In cases of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula,
such is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water.
"Those who may be induced by these remarks to give the vegetable system
a fair trial, should, in the first place, date the commencement of their
practice from the moment of their conviction. All depends upon breaking
through a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter asserts,
that no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his dram.
Animal flesh, in its effects on the human stomach, is analogous to a
dram; it is similar to the kind, though differing in the degree of its
operation. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a
temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful
stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is only
temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capability for exertion, far
surpassing his former various and fluctuating strength.
"Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such
exertion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and
difficult panting now felt by almost every one, after hastily climbing
an ordinary mountain. He will be equally capable of bodily exertion or
mental application, after, as before his simple meal. He will feel none
of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irritability, the direct
consequence of exhausting stimuli, would yield to the power of natural
and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of
_ennui_, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to be dreaded than
death itself.
"He will no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying
those organs from which he expects his gratification. The pleasures of
taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips,
lettuce, with a dessert of apples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants,
raspberries, and in winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater
than is supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare with
the sauce of appetite, will scarcely join with the hypocritical
sensualist at a lord mayor's feast, who declaims against the pleasures
of the table."
REV. EZEKIEL RICH.
This gentleman, once a teacher in Troy, N. H., now nearly seventy years
of age, is a giant, both intellectually and physically, like Father
Sewall, of Maine. The following is his testimony--speaking of what he
calls his system:
"Such a system of living was formed by myself, irrespective of Graham or
Alcott, or any other modern dietetic philosophers and reformers,
although I agree with them in many things. It allows but little use of
flesh, condiments, concentrated articles, complex cooking, or hot and
stimulating drinks. On the other hand, it requires great use of milk,
the different bread stuffs, fruits, esculent roots and pulse, all well,
simply, and neatly cooked."
REV. JOHN WESLEY.
The habits of this distinguished individual, though often adverted to,
are yet not sufficiently known. For the last half of his long life
(eighty-eight years) he was a thorough going vegetarian. He also
testifies that for three or four successive years he lived entirely on
potatoes; and during that whole time he never relaxed his arduous
ministerial labors, nor ever enjoyed better health.
LAMARTINE.
Lamartine was educated a vegetarian of the strictest sort--an education
which certainly did not prevent his possessing as fine a physical frame
as can be found in the French republic. Of his mental and moral
characteristics it is needless that I should speak. True it is that
Lamartine ate flesh and fish at one period of his life; but we have the
authority of Douglas Jerrold's London Journal for assuring our readers
that he is again a vegetarian.
FOOTNOTES:
[17] Some, however, represent the great apostle to have been a rigid
vegetable eater. On this point I have no settled opinion.
[18] It may be found at full length at page 233 of the 6th volume of the
Library of Health.
[19] Instances, he says, are not rare (but this I doubt), of two hundred
children born to a man by his different wives, in some parts of the
interior of Africa.
[20] A date but little later than that of the work whence this article
is extracted.