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

medical,--appears to dwell with most interest on the physiological argument. This seems to be, with him, the strong-hold--the grand citadel. And it must be confessed that the point of defence is very strong indeed, as we shall see in the sequel. If I have a favorite, with the rest, it is the moral argument, or perhaps a combination of this with the economical. But then I dwell on the latter with so much interest, chiefly on account of the former. I would give very little to be able to bring the world of mankind back to nature's true simplicity, if it were only to make them better and more perfect animals; though I know not but an attempt of this sort would be as truly laudable as the attempt so often made to improve the breed of our domestic animals. I suppose man, considered as a mere animal, is superior, in point of importance to all the others. But, after all, I would reform his dietetic habits principally to make him better, morally; to make him better, in the discharge of his varied duties to his fellow-beings and to God. I would elevate him, that he may become as truly god-like, or godly as he now too often is, by his unnatural habits, earthly or beastly. I would render him a rational being, fitted to fill the space which he appears to have been originally designed to fill--the gap in the great chain of being between the higher quadrupeds and the beings we are accustomed to regard as angelic. I would restore him to his true dignity. I would make him a child of God, and an _heir_ of a glorious immortality. But I now proceed to the discussion of the subject which I have assigned to this chapter. I. THE ANATOMICAL ARGUMENT. There has been a time when the teeth and intestines of man were supposed to indicate the necessity of a mixed diet--a diet partly animal and partly vegetable. Four out of thirty-two teeth were found to resemble slightly, the teeth of carnivorous animals. In like manner, the