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

present the Physician to an Insane Hospital in Charlestown, near this city. Dr. Bell admits, with the most distinguished naturalists and physiologists of Europe,--Cuvier, Lawrence, Blumenbach, Bell of London, Richerand, Marc, etc.,--that the structure of man resembles closely that of the monkey race; and hence objects to the conclusion to which some of these men have arrived (by jumping over, as it were), that man is an omnivorous animal. He freely allows--I use his own words--"that man does approximate more closely to the frugivorous animals than to any others, in physical organization." But then he insists that the conclusion which ought to be drawn from this similarity "is, that he is designed to have his food in about the same state of mechanical cohesion, requiring about the same energy of masticatory organs, as if it consisted of fruits, etc., alone." But, wherefore should we draw even this conclusion, if structure and instinct prove nothing, and if we are to be governed solely by reason, without regard to structure and instinct? For my own part, I believe reason is never true reason, when it turns wholly out of doors either instinct or the indications of organization. In other words, an enlightened reason would look both to the structure and organization of man, and to a large and broad experience, for the solution of a question so important as what diet is, on the whole, best for man. And the experience of the world, both in the present and all former ages, leads me to a conclusion entirely different from that to which Dr. Bell, and those who entertain the same views with him, seem to have arrived--a conclusion which is indicated by structure, and confirmed by facts and universal experience. But this subject will be further discussed and developed in another place. It is sufficient for my present purpose, to bring testimony in favor of the safety of vegetable eating, and of the doctrine that man is naturally a vegetable and fruit-eating animal; and especially if I produce, to this end, the testimony of flesh-eaters themselves. DR. WILLIAM BUCHAN, AUTHOR OF