Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages: Including a System of Vegetable CookeryAlcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Science
Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages: Including a System of Vegetable Cookery
Alcott, William A. (William Andrus)
Food; Vegetarianism
"Those who may be induced by these remarks to give the vegetable system
a fair trial, should, in the first place, date the commencement of their
practice from the moment of their conviction. All depends upon breaking
through a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter asserts,
that no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his dram.
Animal flesh, in its effects on the human stomach, is analogous to a
dram; it is similar to the kind, though differing in the degree of its
operation. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a
temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful
stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is only
temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capability for exertion, far
surpassing his former various and fluctuating strength.
"Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such
exertion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and
difficult panting now felt by almost every one, after hastily climbing
an ordinary mountain. He will be equally capable of bodily exertion or
mental application, after, as before his simple meal. He will feel none
of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irritability, the direct
consequence of exhausting stimuli, would yield to the power of natural
and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of
_ennui_, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to be dreaded than
death itself.
"He will no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying
those organs from which he expects his gratification. The pleasures of
taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips,
lettuce, with a dessert of apples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants,
raspberries, and in winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater
than is supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare with
the sauce of appetite, will scarcely join with the hypocritical
sensualist at a lord mayor's feast, who declaims against the pleasures
of the table."
REV. EZEKIEL RICH.
This gentleman, once a teacher in Troy, N. H., now nearly seventy years
of age, is a giant, both intellectually and physically, like Father
Sewall, of Maine. The following is his testimony--speaking of what he
calls his system:
"Such a system of living was formed by myself, irrespective of Graham or
Alcott, or any other modern dietetic philosophers and reformers,
although I agree with them in many things. It allows but little use of
flesh, condiments, concentrated articles, complex cooking, or hot and
stimulating drinks. On the other hand, it requires great use of milk,
the different bread stuffs, fruits, esculent roots and pulse, all well,
simply, and neatly cooked."
REV. JOHN WESLEY.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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