“That such physicians do not consider that they are accountable to the community, to their patients, to their conscience, and to their Maker, for every hour and moment they shorten and cut off their patients’ lives _by their immoral and murderous indulgence_: and the patients do not duly ponder that suicide (which this is in effect) is the most mortal and irremissible of all sins, and neither have sufficiently weighed the possibility that the patient, if not quickly cut off by both these preposterous means, may linger out miserably, and be twenty or thirty years a-dying, under these heart and wheel-breaking miseries thus exasperated; whereas, by the methods I propose, if they obtain not in time a perfect cure, yet they certainly lessen their pain, lengthen their days, and continue under the benign influence of ‘the Sun of Righteousness, who has healing in His wings,’ and, at worst, soften and lighten the anguish of their dissolution, as far as the nature of things will admit.” Not the least useful and instructive portions of his treatise are his references to the proper regimen for mental diseases and disordered brains, which, he reasonably infers, are best treated by the adoption of a light and pure dietary. He despairs, however, of the general recognition, or at least adoption, of so rational a method by the “faculty” or the public at large, “Who do not consider that _nine parts in ten_ of the whole mass of mankind are necessarily confined to this diet (of farinacea, fruits, &c.), or pretty nearly to it, and yet live with the use of their senses, limbs, and faculties, without diseases or with but few, and those from accidents or epidemical causes; and that there have been nations, and now are numbers of tribes, who voluntarily confine themselves to vegetables only, ... and that there are whole villages in this kingdom whose inhabitants scarce eat animal food or drink fermented liquors a dozen times a year.” In regard to all nervous and brain diseases, he insists that the reformed diet would “Greatly alleviate and render tolerable original distempers derived from diseased parents, and that it is absolutely necessary for the deep-thinking part of mankind, who would preserve their faculties ripe and pregnant to a green old age and to the last dregs of life; and that it is the true and real antidote and preservative from wrong-headedness, irregular and disorderly intellect and functions, from loss of the rational faculties, memory, and senses, as far as the ends of Providence and the condition of mortality will allow.”--(_Nat. Method_, page 90.)