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

at which he ate heartily and drank wine--sometimes several bottles. Indeed, he habitually ate and drank freely; and, as he had by nature a very strong constitution, he thought nothing which he ate or drank injured him. Things went on in this manner, as I have already intimated, till he was fifty years of age. One day, about this time, having made a long journey in the cold, he returned very much fatigued, and in this condition went to dine with a party, where he ate and drank in his usual manner. Soon after dinner, he was seized with a fit of apoplexy, followed by palsy; but by bleeding, and other energetic measures, he was partially restored. He was now, by the direction of his physician, put upon what was called a low diet. It consisted of vegetable food and milk. For nearly forty years he tasted no meat, drank nothing but water and a little weak tea, and took no suppers. If he ventured, at any time, upon more stimulating food or drink, he soon had a full pulse, and hot, restless nights. His bowels, however, seemed to be much affected by the fit of palsy; and not being inclined, so far as I can learn, to the use of fruit and coarse bread, he was sometimes compelled to use laxatives. When he was about seventy years of age, however, all his paralytic symptoms had disappeared; and his health was so excellent, for a person of his years, as to excite universal admiration. This continued till he was nearly ninety. His mind, up to this time, was almost as entire as in his younger days; none of his bodily functions, except his sight, were much impaired. So perfect, indeed, was the condition of his physical frame, that nobody, who had not known his history, would have suspected he had ever been apoplectic or paralytic. When about ninety years of age, his health began slightly to decline. A little before his death, he began to take a little meat. This, however, did not save him--nature being fairly worn out. On