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

great age the Eastern Christians, who retired from the persecutions into the deserts of Egypt and Arabia, lived healthful on a very little food. We are informed, by Cassian, that the common measure for twenty-four hours was about twelve ounces, with only pure water for drink. St. Anthony lived to one hundred and five years on mere bread and water, adding only a few herbs at last. On a similar diet, James the Hermit lived to one hundred and four years. Arsenius, the tutor of the emperor Arcadius, to one hundred and twenty--sixty-five years in society, and fifty-five in the desert. St. Epiphanius, to one hundred and fifteen; St. Jerome, about one hundred; Simon Stylites, to one hundred and nine; and Romualdus, to one hundred and twenty. "It is wonderful in what sprightliness, strength, activity, and freedom of spirits, a low diet, even here in England, will preserve those who have habituated themselves to it. Buchanan informs us of one Laurence, who preserved himself to one hundred and forty, by the mere force of temperance and labor. Spotswood mentions one Kentigern (afterward called St. Mongah, or Mungo, from whom the famous well in Wales is named), who lived to one hundred and eighty-five years; and who, after he came to years of understanding, never tasted wine or strong drink, and slept on the cold ground. "My worthy friend, Mr. Webb, is still alive. He, by the quickness of the faculties of the mind, and the activity of the organs of his body, shows the great benefit of a low diet--living altogether on vegetable food and pure water. Henry Jenkins lived to one hundred and sixty-nine years on a low, coarse, and simple diet. Thomas Parr died at the age of one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months. His diet was coarse bread, milk, cheese, whey, and small beer; and his historian tells us, that he might have lived a good while longer if he had not changed his diet and air; coming out of a clear, thin air, into the thick air of London, and being taken into a