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

buckwheat cakes, hot short-cakes, swimming, almost, in butter;--yes, and sometimes he will even cover his potatoes with gravy, mustard, salt, etc. It is in vain for mankind to abstain from animal food, as they call it, and yet run into these worse errors. The lean parts of animals not much fattened, and only rarely cooked, eaten once a day in small quantity, are far less unwholesome than many of the foregoing. But to return to Dr. C. In speaking of the proper drink for persons inclined to gout, he thus remarks: "With respect to drink, fermented liquors are useful only when they are joined with animal food, and that by their acescency; and their stimulus is only necessary from custom. When, therefore, animal food is to be avoided, fermented liquors are unnecessary, and by increasing the acescency of vegetables, these liquors may be hurtful. The stimulus of fermented or spirituous liquors is not necessary to the young and vigorous: and, when much employed, impairs the tone of the system." Dr. C. might have added--what indeed we should infer by parity of reasoning--that when fermented liquors are avoided, animal food is no longer necessary, and by increasing the alkaline state of the stomach and fluids, may be hurtful. The truth is, they go best together. If we use flesh and fish, which are alkaline, a small quantity of gently acid drink, as weak cider or wine, taken either _with_ our meals, or _between_ them, may be useful. It is better, however, to abstain from both. For if a purely vegetable aliment, with water alone for drink, is safe to all young persons inclining at all to gout, to whom is it unsafe? If it tends to render a young person at all weaker, that very weakness would predispose to the gout, in some of its forms, if a person were constitutionally inclined to that disease--if not to some other complaint, to which he was more inclined. It cannot, therefore, be unsafe to any, if Dr. C. is right. But if those who are trained to it, _lose_ nothing, even in the