“There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the uncontrollable irrationalities of ill-temper, that makes a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerable evenness of temper—that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of Society. On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only malady: the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude others from enjoyment of it. All sensational delights would be infinitely exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now feel in some few and favoured moments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race I conjure those who love happiness and truth to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits and experience of six months would set for ever at rest. But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected—even though its ultimate excellence would not admit of dispute.” Another argument in favour of the vegetarian dietary, as against meat-eating, is found in the fact that such a diet is conducive to symmetry and normal development of the human frame. We shall see (p. 142) how the abdomens of the pigmies were greatly reduced, as a result of abandoning their exclusive flesh diet. Many men are said to have reduced their weight from ten to one hundred and fifty pounds by an abstemious, non-flesh diet. The body also assumes a more symmetrical form, and the skin and complexion a ruddier and more healthful glow. It must be admitted, however, that the flesh of meat is not, of itself, a fat-forming food; and many persons are put upon a diet of minced beef and hot water, in order to reduce their weight. This they do, generally, however, at the expense of the general bodily health. In the Banting cure, and the various cures which are followed in America and in England, the weight is reduced, but with doubtful benefit to the patient. The large amount of beef creates an excess of acid within the system, which has a tendency to eat away the fatty tissues; and it is in this manner that they are destroyed. The excess of acid which is thus manufactured, however, remains in the system, and is the chief cause of resulting diseases of various kinds.