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

coffee, when the latter are first presented to him. Gutzlaff, the Chinese traveler and missionary, has found that the Chinese of the interior, who have scarcely ever tasted flesh or fish, soon acquire a wonderful relish for it, just as our children do for spirituous or exciting drinks and drugs, and as savages do for tobacco and spirits. But he has also made another discovery, which is, that flesh-eating almost ruins them for labor. Instead of being strong, robust, and active, they soon become lazy, self-indulgent, and effeminate. This is a specimen--perhaps a tolerably fair one--of the natural tendency of such food in all ages and countries. Man every where does best, nationally and individually, other things being equal, on a well-chosen diet of vegetables, fruits, and water. In proportion as individuals or families, or tribes or nations, depart from this--other things being equal--in the same proportion do they degenerate physically, intellectually, and morally. Such a statement may startle some of my New England readers, perhaps, who have never had opportunity to become acquainted with facts as they are. But can it be successfully controverted? Is it not true, that, with a few exceptions--and those more apparent than real--nations have flourished, and continued to flourish, in proportion as they have retained the more natural dietetic habits to which I have alluded; and that they have been unhappy or short-lived, as nations, in proportion as exciting food and drink have been used? Is it not true, that those individuals, families, tribes, and nations, which have used what I call excitements, liquid or solid, have been subjected by them to the same effects which follow the use of spirits--first, invigoration, and subsequently decline, and ultimately a loss of strength? Why is it that the more wealthy, all over Europe, who get flesh more or less, deteriorate in their families so rapidly? Why is it that every thing is, in this respect, so stationary among the middle classes and the poor? In short--for the case appears to me a plain one--it is the simple habits of some, whether we speak of nations, families,