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

sedentary. At the end of May, I took a long and rather fatiguing journey through a country by no means the most healthy, and came home somewhat depressed in mind and body, especially the former. I was also unusually emaciated, and I began to have fears of a decline. Still, however, my appetite was good, and I had a good share of bodily strength. The more I directed my attention to myself, the worse I became; and I actually soon began to experience darting pains in the chest, together with other symptoms of a renewal of pulmonary disease. Perceiving my danger, however, from the state of my mind, I at length made a powerful effort to shake off the mental disturbance--which succeeded. This, together with moderate labor and rather more exercise than before, seemed gradually to set me right. Again, in the spring of 1848, after lecturing for weeks and months--often in bad and unventilated rooms and subjecting myself, unavoidably, to many of those abuses which exist every where in society, I was attacked with a cough, followed by great debility, from which it cost me some three months or more of labor with the spade and hoe, to recover. With this and the exceptions before named, I have now, for about twenty years, been as healthy as ever I was in my life, except the slight tendency to cold during the winter of which I have already taken notice. I never was more cheerful or more happy; never saw the world in a brighter aspect; never before was it more truly "morning all day" with me. I have paid, in part, the penalty of my transgressions; and may, perhaps, go on, in life, many years longer. I now fear nothing in the future, so far as health and disease are concerned, so much as excessive alimentation. To this evil--and it is a most serious and common one in this land of abundance and busy activity--I am much exposed, both from the keenness of my appetite, and the exceeding richness of the simple vegetables and fruits of which I partake.