"The novelty as well as simplicity of this prescription, greatly interested my mind, and I laid the case before my friends. But they, as with one voice, endeavored to dissuade me from a course which they said would certainly destroy me. They were particularly afraid of the sudden change from a full flesh diet to one entirely vegetable.[L] But I told them I might as well die in one way as another, and that I was resolved on the experiment. "At first I had no Graham crackers; I therefore used the common soft Graham bread cut in thin slices and thoroughly dried. Twenty-one ounces a week was my allowance. Of these I made three meals a day, at the hours of six, twelve, and six. Small as the allowance was, I spent half an hour in consuming it. Occasionally at evening, I omitted one-half of even these scanty rations. "My drink, for twenty-four hours, was one gill of water, divided into three equal parts, and one of them to be taken just two hours after each meal. I also used a cold shower-bath at rising in the morning, and walked a mile before breakfast, having retired at ten the previous evening. "Under this course, my flesh and strength wasted fast. I was weighed every week, and for the first three or four weeks, I lost half a pound a day. The daily loss then diminished somewhat, but was not entirely discontinued till the lapse of two months. At this time I had lost, in all, twenty pounds weight. "All this time the cry of starvation was heard from every quarter, and I must frankly own that, for a week or so, I was not myself wholly without fears. However, my head felt so much better, and my spirits so much revived, that I began to take courage. My bowels, moreover, which up to this time had rarely moved, and never to much purpose, now began to move more regularly, and in about three weeks they resumed their functions entirely, both as regarded time and quantity. "At the end of two months, I ceased to lose flesh, and remained, in this respect, about stationary for four weeks; but after this I began to gain. At first, the increase of weight was very slow indeed, but soon it became much more rapid, so that in two months more I gained nearly what I had lost, or at the average rate of five or six ounces a day. For a part of this time, however, the gain was half a pound a day, or nearly three times as much as the whole weight of my food, and more than the whole weight of my food and drink together. "I have said that I ate three ounces, by weight, of Graham bread, daily,--an ounce at each meal. But I afterwards procured the Graham crackers in Boston, and used them a part of the time. Of these, too, I continued frequently to omit half a cracker at evening. The water, also,--one-third of a gill,--was generally omitted at evening.