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

remembered that every effort was made to obtain _truth in facts_, without partiality, favor, or affection. Let it be remembered, too, that nearly two years elapsed before Dr. North gave up his papers to the author; during which time, and indeed up to the present hour--a period, in the whole, of more than fourteen years--a door has been opened to every individual who had any thing to say, bearing upon the subject. Let us now review the contents of the foregoing chapter. Let us see, in the first place, what number of persons have here been reported, by medical men, as having fallen victims to the said "prescribed course of regimen." The matter is soon disposed of. Not a case of the description is found in the whole catalogue of returns to Dr. N. This is a triumph which the friends of the vegetable system did not expect. From the medical profession of this country, hostile as many of them are known to be to the "prescribed course of regimen," they must naturally have expected to hear of at least a few persons who were supposed to have fallen victims to it. But, I say again, not one appears. It is true that Dr. Preston, of Plymouth, Mass., thinks he should have fallen a victim to his abstinence from flesh meat, had he not altered his course; and Dr. Harden, of Georgia, relates a case of sudden loss of strength, and great debility, which he thought, _at the time_, might "possibly" be ascribed to the want of animal food: though the individual himself attributed it to quite another cause. These are the only two, of a list of thirty or forty, which were detailed, that bear the slightest resemblance to those which report had brought to the ear of Dr. N., and about which he so anxiously and earnestly solicited inquiry of his medical brethren. As to the case mentioned by Dr. Harden, no one who examined it with care, will believe for a moment, that it affords the slightest evidence against a diet exclusively vegetable. The gentleman who made