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

and spirits, over those who partake largely of animal food. They are remarkable for the firm, healthy plumpness of their muscles, and the transparency of their skins. This assertion, though at variance with popular opinion, is amply supported by experience." At page 7 of the same volume of the Journal of Health we find the following remarks. The editors were alluding to those persons who think they cannot preserve their health and strength without flesh or fish, and who believe their children would also suffer without it: "For the information of all such misguided persons, we beg leave to state, that the large majority of mankind do not eat any animal food; or, if any, they use it so sparingly, and at such long intervals, that it cannot be said to form their nourishment. Millions in Asia are sustained by rice alone, with perhaps a little vegetable oil for seasoning. "In Italy and southern Europe, generally, bread, made of the flour of wheat or Indian corn, with lettuce and the like mixed with oil, constitutes the food of the most robust part of its population. "The Lazzaroni of Naples, with forms so actively and finely proportioned, cannot even calculate on this much. Coarse bread and potatoes is their chief reliance. Their drink of luxury is a glass of iced water, slightly acidulated. "Hundreds of thousands--we might say millions--of Irish do not see flesh-meat or fish from one week's end to another. Potatoes and oatmeal are their articles of food: if milk can be added it is thought a luxury. Yet where shall we find a more healthy and robust population, or one more enduring of bodily fatigue, and exhibiting more mental vivacity? What a contrast between these people and the inhabitants of the extreme north--the timid Laplanders, Esquimaux, and Samoideans, whose food is almost entirely animal?" Again, at page 187 we are told that "the more simple the aliment, and the less _altered_ by culinary processes, the slower is the change in digestion; but, at the same time, the less is the stimulation and wear of the powers of life.