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

as to the effects, they are such, and have all along been such, as to make me wonder at myself, whenever I think of it. Instead of being constantly subject to cold, and nearly dying with consumption in the spring, I am almost free from any tendency to take cold at all. During the winter of 1837-8, by neglecting to keep the temperature of my room low enough, and by neglecting also to take sufficient exercise in the open air, I became unusually tender, and suffered to some extent from colds. But I was well again during the spring, and felt as if I had recovered or nearly recovered my former hardihood. In regard to other complaints, I may say still more. Of rheumatism, I have scarcely had a twinge in twelve or fourteen years. My eruptive complaint is, I believe, _entirely_ gone. The weakness of my eyes has been wholly gone for many years. Indeed, the strength and perfection of my sight and of all my senses, till nearly fifty years of age--hearing perhaps excepted, in which I perceive no alteration--appeared to be constantly improving. My stomach and intestines perform their respective duties in the most appropriate, correct, and healthful manner. My appetite is constantly good, and as constantly improving;--that is, going on toward perfection. I can detect, especially by taste, almost any thing which is in the least offensive or deleterious in food or drink; and yet I can receive, without immediate apparent disturbance, and readily digest, almost any thing which ever entered a human stomach--knives, pencils, clay, chalk, etc., perhaps excepted. I can eat a full meal of cabbage, or any other very objectionable crude aliment, or even cheese or pastry--a single meal, I mean--with apparent impunity; not when fatigued, of course, or in any way debilitated, but in the morning and when in full strength. It is true, I make no experiments of this sort, except occasionally _as_ experiments. In my former statements I gave it as my opinion that vegetable food was less aperient than animal. My opinion now is, that if we were trained