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

the time, or nearly at the time, of commencing the practice of medicine, I laid aside my feather bed, and slept on straw; and in December, of the same year, I abandoned spirits, and most kinds of stimulating food. It was not, however, until nineteen years ago, the present season, that I abandoned all drinks but water, and all flesh, fish, and other highly stimulating and concentrated aliments, and confined myself to a diet of milk, fruits, and vegetables. In the meantime, the duties of my profession, and the nature of my studies led me to prosecute, more diligently than ever, a subject which I had been studying, more or less, from my very childhood--the laws of Human Health. Among other things, I collected facts on this subject from books which came in my way; so that when I went to Boston, in January, 1832, I had already obtained, from various writers, on materia medica, physiology, disease, and dietetics, quite a large parcel. The results of my reflections on these, and of my own observation and experience, were, in part--but in part only--developed in July, of the same year, in an anonymous pamphlet, entitled, "Rational View of the Spasmodic Cholera;" published by Messrs. Clapp & Hull, of Boston. In the summer of 1833, the Boylston Medical Committee of Harvard University offered a prize of fifty dollars, or a gold medal of that value, to the author of the best dissertation on the following question: "What diet can be selected which will ensure the greatest health and strength to the laborer in the climate of New England--quality and quantity, and the time and manner of taking it, to be considered?" At first, I had thoughts of attempting an essay on the subject; for it seemed to me an important one. Circumstances, however, did not permit me to prosecute the undertaking; though I was excited by the question of the Boylston Medical Committee to renewed efforts to increase my stock of information and of facts. In 1834, I accidentally learned that Dr. Milo L. North, a distinguished practitioner of medicine in Hartford,