The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh EatingWilliams, Howard
Philosophy
The Ethics of Diet: A Catena of Authorities Deprecatory of the Practice of Flesh Eating
Williams, Howard
Diet; Vegetarianism
We have already mentioned Lord Erskine as one of the many eminent
friends of Dr. Lambe. That more humane and distinguished lawyer, in
a letter to his friend acknowledging the receipt of the _Reports_,
writes as follows: “I am of opinion that both this work and the other
referred to in it are deserving of the highest consideration. I read
them both with more interest and attention from the abuse of the
_British Critic_ [one of the periodicals of the day] mentioned in the
preface, as no periodical criticism ever published in this country is
so uniformly unjust, ignorant, and impudent.” Dr. Abernethy’s testimony
to the efficacy of abstinence in cases of cancer will be found in
the notice of that eminent practitioner. Amongst the most interesting
correspondence of his later years is his interchange of ideas with
Sylvester Graham--the first of the American prophets of the reformed
regimen. The letter to the celebrated American vegetarian is, as Dr.
Lambe’s latest biographer justly observes, “a most valuable relic,
because it continues the result of Dr. Lambe’s diet up to September,
1837--twenty-three years after the last notice of his health in the
account of his own case, which he published in November, 1814. It is,
besides, an admirable proof of his truthful and philosophic mind, which
was slow to arrive at conclusions, and willing rather to exaggerate
than otherwise the traces of disease which he still felt.” He proves,
also, in this letter, how slow and yet sure are the effects of diet,
and it supplies an answer to those objectors who complain that they
have tried the diet (perhaps for a few weeks only) without any good
result. After complimenting his transatlantic fellow-worker in the
cause of truth upon his zeal and industry, Dr. Lambe proceeds:--
“My book, entitled _Additional Reports on Regimen_, has now been
before the world three and twenty years. That it has attracted
little notice, and still less popular favour--though it may have
excited in the writer some mortification--has not occasioned
much surprise. The doctrine it seeks to establish is in direct
opposition to popular and deep-rooted prejudice. It is thought
(most erroneously) to attack the best enjoyments and most solid
comforts of life; and, moreover, it has excited the bitter
hostility of a numerous and influential body in society--I mean
that body of medical practitioners who exercise their profession
for the sake of its profits merely, and who appear to think that
disease was made for the profession and not the profession for
disease.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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