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

of curses, _war_; for those who are so conscientious as not to kill animals, will never murder human beings. On all these accounts the system cannot be too much recommended. The practice of abstaining cannot be wrong; it must therefore be some consolation to be on the side of duty. If we err, we err on the sure side; it is innocent; it is infinitely better authorized and more nearly associated with religion, virtue, and humanity, than the contrary practice--and we have the sanction of the wisest and the best of men--of the whole Christian world, for several hundred years after the commencement of the Christian era." ORPHAN ASYLUM OF ALBANY. I class this as a community, because it is properly so, and because I cannot conveniently class it otherwise. The facts which are to be related are too valuable to be lost. They were first published, I believe, in the Northampton Courier; and subsequently in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, and in the Moral Reformer. In the present case, the account is greatly abridged. The Orphan Asylum of Albany was established about the close of the year 1829, or the beginning of the year 1830. Shortly after its establishment, it contained seventy children, and subsequently many more. The average number, from its commencement to August 1836, was eighty. For the first three years, the diet of the inmates consisted of fine bread, rice, Indian puddings, potatoes, and other vegetables and fruits, with milk; to which was added flesh or flesh-soup once a day. Considerable attention was also paid to bathing and cleanliness, and to clothing, air, and exercise. Bathing, however, was performed in a perfect manner, only once in three weeks. As many of them were received in poor health, not a few continued sickly. In the fall of 1833, the diet and regimen of the inmates were materially changed. Daily ablution of the whole body, in the use of the cold shower or sponge bath--or, in cases of special disease, the tepid bath was one of the first steps taken; then the fine bread was laid aside