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
Dr. Paris, speaking of fish, says,--"It is not improbable that certain
cutaneous diseases may be produced, or at least aggravated by such
diet." Dr. Dunglison says, bacon and cured meats are often poisonous. He
speaks of the poisonous tendency of eggs, and says that all _made_
dishes are more or less "rebellious." In Aurillac, in France, not many
years since, fifteen or sixteen persons were attacked with symptoms of
cholera after eating the milk of a certain goat. The goat died with
cholera about twenty-four hours after, and two men, no less eminent
than Professors Orfila and Marc, gave it as their undoubted opinion that
the cholera symptoms alluded to, were caused by the milk. I have myself
known oysters at certain times and seasons to produce the same symptoms.
During the progress of a mortal disease among the poultry on Edisto
Island, S. C., in 1837, all the dogs and vultures that tasted of the
flesh of the dead poultry sickened and died. Chrisiston mentions an
instance in which five persons were poisoned by eating beef; and
Dunglison one in which fourteen persons were made sick, and some died,
from eating the meat of a calf. Between the years 1793 and 1827, it is
on record that there were in the kingdom of Wurtemberg alone, no less
than two hundred and thirty-four cases of poisoning, and one hundred and
ten deaths, from eating sausages. But I need not multiply this sort of
evidence, the world abounds with it; though for one person who is
poisoned so much as to be made sick immediately, hundreds perhaps are
only slightly affected; and the punishment may seem to be deferred for
many years.
The truth, in short, is, that every fashionable process of fattening and
even of domesticating animals, induces disease; and as most of the
animals we use for food are domesticated or fattened, or both, it
follows that most of our animal food, whether milk, butter, cheese,
eggs, or flesh, is diseased food, and must inevitably, sooner or later,
induce disease in those who receive it. Those which are most fattened
are the worst, of course; as the hog, the goose, the sheep, and the ox.
The more the animal is removed from a natural state, in fattening, the
more does the fat accumulate, and the more it is diseased. Hence the
complaints against every form of animal oil or fat, in every age, by
men who, notwithstanding their complaints, for the most part, continue
to set mankind an example of its use.
Let me here introduce a single paragraph from Dr. Cheyne, which is very
much to my present purpose.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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