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

are always, in a greater or less degree, the sources of disease; it is also more liable to poisonous mixtures or adulterations. It is true, that in the present state of the arts, and of agriculture and civic life generally, vegetables themselves are sometimes the sources of disease. I refer not to the spurred rye and other substances, which occasionally find their way into our fields and get mixed with our grains, etc., and which are known to be very active poisons,--so much as to the acrid or otherwise improper juices which are formed by forced vegetation, especially about cities, whether by means of hot-beds, green-houses, or new, strong, or highly-concentrated manures. I refer also to the crude, unripe, and imperfect fruits and other things with which our markets are filed now-a-days; and especially to _decaying_ fruits and vegetables. But I cannot enlarge; a volume would be too little to do this part of the subject justice. Nothing is more wanted than light on this subject, and a consequent reform in our fashionable agriculture and horticulture. And yet, although I admit, most cheerfully, the danger we are in of contracting disease by using diseased vegetables, the danger is neither so frequent nor so imminent, in proportion to the quantity of it consumed, as from animal food. Let us briefly take a view of the facts. Milk, in its nature, approaches nearest to the line of the vegetable kingdom, and is therefore, in my view, the least objectionable form of animal food. I am even ready to admit that for persons affected with certain forms of chronic disease, and for all children, milk is excellent. And yet, excellent as it is, it is very liable to be injurious. We are told, by the most respectable medical men of France, that all the cows about Paris have tubercles (the seeds or beginning of consumption) in their lungs which is probably owing to the unnatural state in which they are kept, as regards the kind, and quantity, and hours of receiving their food; and especially as regards air, exercise, and water. Cows cannot