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

it is no wonder we feel, for a time, a faintness if we discontinue its use. This only shows the power of habit, and the over-stimulating character of our accustomed food. Nor does the simple vegetable-eater suffer, during the spring, as other people say they do. All is cheerful and happy with him, even then. Nor, lastly, is he subject to hypochondria or depression of spirits. He is always lively and cheerful; and all with him is bright and happy. As it has been expressed elsewhere, with the truly temperate man it is "morning all day." The system of diet in question, greatly improves, exalts, and perfects the senses. The sight, smell, and taste are rendered greatly superior by it. The difference in favor of the hearing and the touch may not be so obvious; nevertheless, it is believed to be considerable. But the change in the other senses--the first three which I have named--even when we reform as late as at thirty-five or forty, is wonderful. I do not wish to encourage, by this, a delay of the work of reformation; we can never begin it too early. Vegetable diet favors beauty of form and feature. The forms of the natives of some of the South Sea Islands, to say nothing of their features, are exceedingly fine. They are tall and well proportioned. So it is with the Japanese and Chinese, especially of the interior, where they subsist almost wholly on rice and fruits. The Japanese are the finest men, physically speaking, in Asia. The New Hollanders, on the contrary, who live almost wholly on flesh and fish, are among the most meagre and ugly of the human race, if we except the flesh-eating savages of the north, and the Greenlanders and Laplanders. In short, the principle I have here advanced will hold, as a _general rule_, I believe, other things being equal, throughout the world. If it be asked whether I would exalt beauty and symmetry into virtues, I will only say that they are not without their use in a virtuous people; and I look forward to