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

I think each time I tried living on vegetable food exclusively, that for the first month I could not endure fatigue _as well_. Afterward I could. 2. The digestive organs were always more agreeably excited. 3. The mind uniformly clearer, and could endure laborious investigations longer, and with less effort. 4. I am constitutionally healthy and robust. 5. I believe I have more colds, principally seated on the mucous membranes of the lungs, fauces, and cavities of the head. (I do not, however, attribute it to diet.) 6. The first trial was one year. I am now ten months on the same plan, and shall continue it. 7. I never used a large quantity of animal food or stimulants, of any description. 8. I have for several years used tea and coffee, usually once a day--believe them healthy. 9. Vegetable diet is less aperient than a mixed diet, if we except _Indian corn_. 10. I do not think that common laborers, in health, could do as well without animal food; but I think students might. 11. I have selected _potatoes_, when _baked_ or _roasted_, and all articles of food usually prepared from _Indian meal_, as the most healthy articles on which I subsist; particularly the latter, whose aperient and nutritive qualities render it, in my estimation, an invaluable article for common use. Yours, etc., D. S. WRIGHT. LETTER IV.--FROM DR. H. N. PRESTON.[1] PLYMOUTH, Mass., March 26, 1835. DEAR SIR,--When I observed your questions in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, of the 11th of March, I determined to give you personal experience, in reply to your valuable queries. In the spring of 1832, while engaged in more than usual professional labor, I began to suffer from indigestion, which gradually increased, unabated by any medicinal or dietetic course, until I was reduced to the very confines of the grave. The disease became complicated, for a time, with chronic bronchitis. I would remark, that, at the time of my commencing a severe course of diet, I was able to attend to my practice daily. In answer to your inquiries, I would