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

on vegetable food, and had never received substances into the stomach which were unduly stimulating, we should find the intestinal or peristaltic action quite sufficient. The apparent sluggishness of the bowels, when we first exchange an animal diet for a vegetable one, is probably owing to our former abuses. At present, I find my plain vegetable food, in moderate and reasonable quantity, quite as aperient as it ought to be, and, if I exceed a proper quantity, too much so. I have now no remaining doubts of the vast importance that would result to mankind, from an universal training from childhood, to the exclusive use of vegetable food. I believe such a course of training, along with a due attention to air, exercise, cleanliness, etc., would be the means of improving our race, physically, intellectually, and morally, beyond any thing of which the world has yet conceived. But my reasons for this belief will be seen more fully in another place. They are founded in science and the observation of facts around me, much more than on a narrow individual experience. There is one circumstance which I must not omit, because it is full of admonition and instruction. I have elsewhere stated that, twenty-three years ago, I had incipient phthisis. Of this fact, and of the fact that there were considerable inroads made by disease on the upper lobe of the right lung, I have not the slightest doubt. The symptoms were such at the time, and subsequently, as could not have been mistaken. Besides, what was, as I conceive, pretty fully established by the symptoms which existed, is rendered still more certain by auscultation. The sounds which are heard during respiration, in the region to which I have alluded, leave no doubt on the minds of skillful medical men, of their origin. Still I doubt whether the disease has made any considerable progress for many years. But, during the winter of 1837-8, my employments became excessively laborious; and, for the whole winter and spring, were sufficient for at least two healthy and strong men. They were also almost wholly