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

the meetings grew thin. They had no Joe Smith or Gen. Taylor to lead them--and mankind without leaders and without deep-toned principle, soon grow tired of war. Few will fight in such circumstances. CHAPTER VIII. VEGETABLE DIET DEFENDED. General Remarks on the Nature of the Argument--1. The Anatomical Argument.--2. The Physiological Argument.--3. The Medical Argument.--4. The Political Argument.--5. The Economical Argument.--6. The Argument from Experience.--7. The Moral Argument.--Conclusion. In the progress of a work like this, it may not be amiss to present, in a very brief manner, the general arguments in defence of a diet exclusively vegetable. Some of them have, indeed, already been adverted to in the testimony of the preceding chapters; but not all. Besides, it seemed to me desirable to collect the whole in a general view. There are various ways of doing this, according to the different aspects in which the subject is viewed. Every one has his own point of observation. I have mine. Conformably to the view I have taken, therefore, I shall endeavor to arrange my remarks under the nine following heads, viz., the ANATOMICAL, the PHYSIOLOGICAL, the MEDICAL, the POLITICAL, the ECONOMICAL, the EXPERIMENTAL, the MORAL, the MILLENNIAL, and the BIBLE ARGUMENTS. Dr. Cheyne relied principally on what I have called the medical argument--though what I mean by this may not be quite obvious, till I shall have presented it in its proper place. Not that he wholly overlooked any thing else; but this, as it seems to me, was with him the grand point. Nearly the same might be said of Dr. Lambe, and of several others. Dr. Mussey seems to place the anatomical and physiological arguments in the foreground. It is true he makes much use of the medical and the moral arguments; but the former appear to be his favorites. Dr. Whitlaw, and some others, incline to make the moral and political arguments more prominent. Mr. Graham, who has probably done more to reduce the subject of vegetable dietetics to a _system_ than any other individual,--though he makes much use of _all_ the rest, especially the moral and