Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages: Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

a sort of authority for those anecdotes. They are the following: "Josephus informs us that the Essenes were very long lived; many lived upward of one hundred years, solely from their simple habits and sobriety. Aristotle and Plato speak of Herodicus the philosopher, who, although of a feeble and consumptive habit, lived, in consequence of his sobriety, upward of one hundred years. Phabrinus, mentioned by Athenius, lived more than one hundred years, drinking milk only. Zoroaster, according to Pliny, remained twenty years in a desert, living on a small quantity of cheese only." THE AUTHOR OF "SURE METHODS," ETC. The British author of "Sure Methods of Improving Health and Prolonging Life," supposed by many to be the distinguished Dr. Johnson, speaks thus: "It must be confessed that, in temperate climates, at least, an animal diet is, in one respect, more wasting than a vegetable, because it excites, by its stimulating qualities, a temporary fever after every meal, by which the springs of life are urged into constant, preternatural, and weakening exertions. Again; persons who live chiefly on animal food are subject to various acute and fatal disorders, as the scurvy, malignant ulcers, inflammatory fevers, etc., and are likewise liable to corpulency, more especially when united to inordinate quantities of liquid aliment. There appears to be also a tendency in an animal diet to promote the formation of many chronic diseases; and we seldom find those who indulge much in this diet to be remarkable for longevity. "In favor of vegetables, it may be justly said, that man could hardly live entirely on animal food, but we know he may on vegetable. Vegetable aliment has likewise no tendency to produce those constitutional disorders which animal food so frequently occasions. And this is a great advantage, more especially in our country (he means in Great Britain), where the general sedentary mode of living so powerfully contributes to the formation and establishment of numerous severe chronic maladies. Any unfavorable effects vegetable food may have on the body, are almost wholly confined to the stomach and bowels, and rarely injure the system at large.