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

They knew no other drink but water; were not tempted to eat or drink beyond common appetite and thirst; were not troubled with either public or domestic cares, and knew no pleasures but the most simple and natural. "From all these examples and customs, it may probably be concluded that the common ingredients of health and long life are, great temperance, open air, easy labor, little care, simplicity of diet--rather fruits and plants than flesh, which easier corrupts--and water, which preserves the radical moisture without too much increasing the radical heat. Whereas sickness, decay, and death proceed commonly from the one preying too fast upon the other, and at length wholly extinguishing it." CICERO. This eminent man sometimes, if not usually, confined himself to vegetable food. Of this we have evidence, in his complaints about the refinements of cookery--that they were continually tempting him to excess, etc. He says, that after having withstood all the temptations that the noblest lampreys and oysters could throw in his way, he was at last overpowered by paltry beets and mallows. A victory, by the way, which, in the case of the eater of plain food, is very often achieved. CYRUS THE GREAT. This distinguished warrior was brought up, like the inferior Persians, on bread, cresses, and water; and, notwithstanding the temptations of a luxurious and voluptuous court, he rigorously adhered to his simple diet. Nay, he even carried his simple habits nearly through life with him; and it was not till he had completely established one of the largest and most powerful empires of antiquity that he began to yield to the luxuries of the times. Had he pursued his steady course of temperance through life, the historian, instead of recording his death at only seventy, might have told us that he died at a hundred or a hundred and fifty. PETER GASSENDI. Two hundred and twenty years ago, Peter Gassendi, a famous French philosopher--and by the way, one of the most learned men of his time--wrote a long epistle to Van Helmont, a Dutch chemist, on the question whether the teeth of