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

This food has also a beneficial influence on the powers of the mind, and tends to preserve a delicacy of feeling, and liveliness of imagination, and acuteness of judgment, seldom enjoyed by those who live principally on meat. It should also be added, that a vegetable diet, when it consists of articles easily digested, as potatoes, turnips, bread, biscuit, oatmeal, etc., is certainly favorable to long life." BARON CUVIER.[10] Perhaps it is not generally known that Baron Cuvier, the prince of naturalists, in the progress of his researches came to the most decisive conclusion, that, so far as any thing can be ascertained or proved by the investigation of science in regard to the natural dietetic character of man, he is a fruit and vegetable eater. I have not seen his own views; but the following are said, by an intelligent writer, to be a tolerably faithful transcript of them, and to be derived from his Comparative Anatomy. "Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons. "The ourang-outang perfectly resembles man, both in the order and number of his teeth. The ourang-outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other species of animals, which live on different food, in which this analogy exists. In many frugivorous animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct than those of man. The resemblance also of the human stomach to that of the ourang-outang, is greater than to that of any other animal. "The intestines are also identical with those of herbivorous animals, which present a large surface for absorption, and have ample and cellulated colons. The coecum also, though short, is larger than that of carnivorous animals; and even here the ourang-outang retains its accustomed similarity. "The structure of the human frame, then, is that of one fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential particular. It is true, that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus,