Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages Part 12

"I am morally certain, and am myself entirely convinced, that a milk and seed, or milk and turnip diet, duly persisted in, with the occasional helps mentioned (elsewhere) on exacerbations, will either totally cure or greatly relieve every chronical distemper I ever saw or read of."

Another chapter is thus concluded, and with it I shall conclude my extracts from his writings.

"Some, perhaps, may controvert, nay, ridicule the doctrine laid down in these propositions. I shall neither reply to, nor be moved with any thing that shall be said against them. If they are of nature and truth, they will stand; if not, I consent they should come to nought. I have satisfied my own conscience--the rest belongs to Providence. Possibly time and bodily sufferings may justify them;--if not to this generation, perhaps to some succeeding one. I myself am convinced, by long and many repeated experience, of their justness and solidity. If what has been advocated through this whole treatise does not convince others, nothing I can add will be sufficient. I will leave only this reflection with my readers.

"All physicians, ancient and modern, allow that a milk and seed diet will totally cure before fifty, and infinitely alleviate after it, the consumption, the rheumatism, the scurvy, the gout--these highest, most mortal, most painful, and most obstinate distempers; and nothing is more certain in mathematics, than that which will cure the greater will certainly cure the lesser distempers."

DR. GEOFFROY.

Dr. Geoffroy, a distinguished French physician and professor of chemistry and medicine in some of the inst.i.tutions of France, flourished more than a hundred years ago. The bearing of the following extract will be readily seen. It is from the Memoirs of the Royal Academy for the year 1730; and I am indebted for it to the labors of Dr. Cheyne.

"M. Geoffroy has given a method for determining the proportion of nourishment or true matter of the flesh and blood, contained in any sort of food. He took a pound of meat that had been freed from the fat, bones, and cartilages, and boiled it for a determined time in a close vessel, with three pints of water; then, pouring off the liquor, he added the same quant.i.ty of water, boiling it again for the same time; and this operation he repeated several times, so that the last liquor appeared, both in smell and taste, to be little different from common water. Then, putting all the liquor together, and filtrating, to separate the too gross particles, he evaporated it over a slow fire, till it was brought to an extract of a pretty moderate consistence.

"This experiment was made upon several sorts of food, the result of which may be seen in the following table. The weights are in ounces, drachms, and grains; sixty grains to a drachm, and eight drachms to an ounce.

Kind of Food. Amount of Extract.

oz. dr. gr.

One lb. Beef 0. 7. 8.

" Veal 1. 1. 48.

" Mutton 1. 3. 16.

" Lamb 1. 1. 39.

" Chicken 1. 4. 34.

" Pigeon 1. 0. 12.

" Pheasant 1. 2. 8.

" Partridge 1. 4. 34.

" Calves' Feet 1. 2. 26.

" Carp 1. 0. 8.

" Whey 1. 1. 3.

" Bread 4. 1. 0.

"The relative proportion of the nourishment will be as follows:

Beef 7 Veal 9 Mutton 11 Lamb 9 Chicken 12 Pigeon 8 Pheasant 10 Partridge 12 Calves' Feet 10 Carp 8 Whey 9 Bread 33

"From the foregoing decisive experiments it is evident that white, young, tender animal food, bread, milk, and vegetables are the best and most effectual substances for nutrition, accretion, and sweetening bad juices. They may not give so strong and durable mechanical force, because being easily and readily digestible, and quickly pa.s.sing all the animal functions, so as to turn into good blood and muscular flesh, they are more transitory, fugitive, and of prompt secretion; yet they will perform all the animal functions more readily and pleasantly, with fewer resistances and less labor, and leave the party to exercise the rational and intellectual operations with pleasure and facility. They will leave Nature to its own original powers, prevent and cure diseases, and lengthen out life."

Now if this experiment proves what Dr. C. supposes in favor of the lighter meats and vegetables taken together, how much more does it prove for bread alone? For it cannot escape the eye of the least observing that this article, though placed last in the list of Dr. Geoffroy, is by far the highest in point of nutriment; nay, that it is about three times as high as any of the rest. I am not disposed to lay so much stress on these experiments as Dr. C. does; nevertheless, they prove something Connected with the more recent experiments of Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin and others, how strikingly do they establish one fact, at least, viz., that bread and the other farinaceous vegetables cannot possibly be wanting in nutriment; and how completely do they annihilate the old-fashioned doctrine--one which is still abroad and very extensively believed--that animal food is a great deal more nourishing than vegetable! No careful inquirer can doubt that bread, peas, beans, rice, etc., are twice as nutritious--to say the least--as flesh or fish.

MESSRS. PERCY AND VAUQUELIN.

As I have alluded, in the preceding article, to the experiments of Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin, two distinguished French chemists, their testimony in this place seems almost indispensable, even though we should not regard it, in the most strict import of the term, as medical testimony. The result of their experiments, as communicated by them to the French minister of the interior, is as follows:

In bread, every one hundred pounds is found to contain eighty pounds of nutritious matter; butcher's meat, averaging the different sorts, contains only thirty-five pounds in one hundred; French beans (in the grain), ninety-two pounds in one hundred; broad beans, eighty-nine pounds; peas, ninety-three pounds; lentils (a species of half pea little known with us), fifty-four pounds in one hundred; greens and turnips only eight pounds of solid nutritious substance in one hundred; carrots, fourteen pounds; and one hundred pounds of potatoes yield only twenty-five pounds of nutriment.

I will just affix to the foregoing one more table. It is inserted in several other works which I have published; but for the benefit of those who may never yet have seen it, and to show how strikingly it corresponds with the results of the experiments of Geoffroy, Percy, and Vauquelin, I deem it proper to insert it.

Of the best wheat, one hundred pounds contain about eighty-five pounds of nutritious matter; of rice, ninety pounds; of rye, eighty; of barley, eighty-three; of beans, eighty-nine to ninety-two; peas, ninety-three; lentils, ninety-four; meat (average), thirty-five; potatoes, twenty-five; beets, fourteen; carrots, ten; cabbage, seven; greens, six; and turnips, four.

DR. PEMBERTON.

Dr. Pemberton, after speaking of the general tendency, in our highly fed communities, to scrofula and consumption, makes the following remarks, which need no comment:

"If a child is born of scrofulous parents, I would strongly recommend that it be entirely nourished from the breast of a healthy nurse, for at least a year. After this, the food should consist of milk and farinaceous vegetables. By a perseverance in this diet for three years, I have imagined that the threatened scrofulous appearances have certainly been postponed, if not altogether prevented."

SIR JOHN SINCLAIR.

Sir John Sinclair, an eminent British surgeon, says, "I have wandered a good deal about the world, my health has been tried in all ways, and, by the aid of temperance and hard work, I have worn out two armies in two wars, and probably could wear out another before my period of old age arrives. I eat no animal food, drink no wine or malt liquor, or spirits of any kind; I wear no flannel; and neither regard wind nor rain, heat nor cold, when business is in the way."

DR. JAMES, OF WISCONSIN.

Dr. James, of Wisconsin, but formerly of Albany, and editor of a temperance paper in that city, one of the most sensible, intelligent, and refined of men, and one of the first in his profession, is a vegetable eater, and a man of great simplicity in all his physical, intellectual, and moral habits. I do not know that his views have ever been presented to the public, but I state them with much confidence, from a source in which I place the most implicit reliance.

DR. CRANSTOUN.

Dr. Cranstoun, a worthy medical gentleman in England, became subject, by some means or other, to a chronic dysentery, on which he exhausted, as it were, the whole materia medica, in vain. At length, after suffering greatly for four or five years, he was completely cured by a milk and vegetable diet. The following is his own brief account of his cure, in a letter to Dr. Cheyne:

"I resolutely, as soon as capable of a diet, held myself close to your rules of bland vegetable food and elementary drink, and, without any other medicine, save frequent chewing of rhubarb and a little bark, I pa.s.sed last winter and this summer without a relapse of the dysentery; and, though by a very slow advance, I find now more rest.i.tution of the body and regularity in the economy, on this primitive aliment, than ever I knew from the beginning of this trouble. This encourages much my perseverance in the same method, and that so religiously, as, to my knowledge, now for more than a year and a half I have not tasted of any thing that had animal life. There is plenty in the vegetable kingdom."

DR. TAYLOR, OF ENGLAND.

This gentleman, who had studied the works of Dr. Sydenham, and was therefore rather favorably inclined toward a milk and vegetable diet, became at last subject to epileptic fits. Not being willing, however, to give up his high living and his strong drinks, he tried the effects of medicine, and even consulted all the most eminent of his brethren of the medical profession in and about London; but all to no purpose, and the fits continued to recur. He used frequently to be attacked with them while riding along the road, in pursuance of the business of his profession. In these cases he would fall from his horse, and often remain senseless till some pa.s.senger or wagon came along and carried him to the nearest house. At length his danger, not only from accidents, but from the frequency and violence of the attacks, became so imminent that he was obliged to follow the advice of his master, Sydenham. He first laid aside the use of all fermented and distilled liquors; then, finding his fits became less frequent and violent, he gave up all flesh meat, and confined himself entirely to cows' milk.

In pursuance of this plan, in a year or two the epilepsy entirely left him. "And now," says Dr. Cheyne, from whom I take the account, "for seventeen years he has enjoyed as good health as human nature is capable of, except that once, in a damp air and foggy weather in riding through Ess.e.x, he was seized with an ague, which he got over by chewing the bark." He a.s.sured Dr. C. that at this time--and he was considerably advanced in life--he could play six hours at cricket without fatigue or distress, and was more active and clear in his faculties than ever he had been before in his whole life. He also said he had cured a great many persons, by means of the same diet, of inveterate distempers.

DRS. HUFELAND AND ABERNETHY.

The celebrated Dr. Hufeland taught that a simple vegetable diet was most conducive to health and long life. The distinguished Dr. Abernethy has expressed an opinion not very unlike it, in the following eccentric manner:

"If you put improper food into the stomach it becomes disordered, and the whole system is affected. Vegetable matter ferments and becomes gaseous, while _animal_ substances are changed into a putrid, abominable, and acrid stimulus. Now, some people acquire preposterous noses; others, blotches on the face and different parts of the body; others, inflammation of the eyes; all arising from the irritations of the stomach. I am often asked why I don't practice what I preach. I reply by reminding the inquirer of the parson and sign-post--both point the way, but neither follows its course."

DR. GREGORY.

Dr. Gregory, a distinguished professor and pract.i.tioner of medicine in Scotland, in a work published more than seventy years ago, strongly recommends plain and simple food for children. Till they are three years old, he says, their diet should consist of plain milk, panada, good bread, barley meal porridge, and rice. He also complains of pampering them with animal food. The same arguments which are good for forming them to the habits of vegetable food exclusively for the first three years of life, would be equally good for its continuance.

DR. CULLEN, OF EDINBURGH.

The name of Dr. Cullen is well known, and he has long been regarded as high authority. Yet this distinguished writer and teacher expressly says, that a very temperate and _sparing_ use of animal food is the surest means of preserving health and obtaining long life. But I will quote his own language, in various parts of his writings. And first, from his Materia Medica:

"Vegetable aliment, as never over-distending the vessels or loading the system, never interrupts the stronger emotions of the mind, while the heat, fullness, and weight of animal food, is an enemy to its vigorous efforts. Temperance, then, does not consist so much in the quant.i.ty, for that will always be regulated by our appet.i.te, as in the _quality_, viz., a large proportion of vegetable aliment."