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

The Bramins of Hindostan, who live on exceedingly simple food, are long livers, even in a hot and exhausting climate. The peasants of Switzerland and of Scotland, nourished on bread, milk, and cheese, attain a very old age, and enjoy great bodily strength. "Where there is too much excitement of the body, generally, from fullness of the blood-vessels, or of any one of the organs, owing to a wrong direction of the blood to it (and in one or the other of these conditions we find almost every body now-a-days), animal food, by being long retained in the stomach, and calling into greater action other parts during digestion, as well as furnishing them with more blood afterward, must be obviously improper. The more of this kind of food is taken under such circumstances, the greater will be the oppression; and the weakness, different from that of a healthy person long hungered, will only be increased by the increased amount of blood carried to the diseased part." It is true that the editors of the Journal of Health connect with the foregoing paragraphs the statement that, "if it be desirable to give nutriment in a small bulk, to obtund completely the sensation of hunger and restore strength to the body, a small quantity of animal will be preferable to much vegetable food." But then it is only in a few diseased cases that any such thing is desirable. And even then, if we look carefully at the language used, the comparison is not made between animal and vegetable food in moderate or reasonable quantities, but between a _small quantity_ of the former and _much_ of the latter. DR. J. V. C. SMITH, OF BOSTON. The following remarks are extracted from the Boston Medical Intelligencer, at a period when Dr. J. V. C. Smith was the editor. They have the appearance of being from Dr. Smith's own pen. Dr. S. is at present the editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal: "It is true[13] that animal food contains a greater portion of nutriment, in a given quantity, than vegetables; but the