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

thought myself invincible, so far as disease was concerned. All pains and aches had left me, and all the functions of the body seemed to be performed in a healthy manner. My diet had consisted of rye and Indian bread, stale flour bread, sweet bread without shortening, milk, some ripe fruit, and occasionally a little butter. During this time, while I devoted myself to considerable laborious practice and hard study, there was no deficiency of muscular strength or mental energy. I am fully satisfied my mind was never so active and strong. Since last November I have, at times, taken animal food, in order that I might be absolutely satisfied that my mode of living acted decidedly in favor of my perfect health, and that a different course would produce organic derangement. I had only taken animal food about two months after the usual custom, before I had a severe attack, and only escaped an inflammatory fever by the most rigid antiphlogistic treatment. I again lived as I ought, and felt well; and having continued so some time, I resorted the second time to an animal diet. In two months' time, I was taken with the urticaria febrilis, of Bateman, which lasted me more than two weeks, and my suffering was sufficient to forever exclude from my stomach every kind of animal food. I am now satisfied, to all intents and purposes, that mankind would live longer, and enjoy more perfectly the "sane mind in a sound body," should they never taste flesh meat or fish. A simple farinaceous diet I have ever found more efficient in the cure of chronic complaints, where there was not much organic lesion, than every other medical agent. Mrs. A., infected with scrofula of the left breast, and in a state of ulceration, applied to me two years since. The ulcer was then the size of a half-dollar, and discharged a considerable quantity of imperfect pus. The axillary glands were much enlarged, and, doubting the practicability of operating with the knife in such cases, I told her the danger of her disease, and ordered