"About London, we can scarce have any but crammed poultry or stall-fed butchers' meat. It were sufficient to disgust the stoutest stomach to see the foul, gross, and nasty manner in which, and the fetid, putrid, and unwholesome materials _with_ which they are fed. Perpetual foulness and cramming, gross food and nastiness, we know, will putrefy the juices, and corrupt the muscular substance of human creatures--and sure they can do no less in brute animals--and thus make our food poison. The same may be said of hot-beds, and forcing plants and vegetables. The only way of having sound and healthful animals, is to leave them to their own natural liberty in the free air, and their own proper element, with plenty of food and due cleanliness; and a shelter from the injuries of the weather, whenever they have a mind to retire to it." The argument then is, that, for healthy adults at least, a well-selected vegetable diet, other things being equal, is a preventive of disease, and a security against its violence, should it attack us, in a far greater degree than a diet which includes animal food in any of its numerous forms. It will either prevent the common diseases of childhood, including those which are deemed contagious, or render their attacks extremely mild: it will either prevent or mitigate the symptoms of the severe diseases of adults, not excepting malignant fevers, small-pox, plague, etc.; and it will either prevent such diseases as cancer, gout, epilepsy, scrofula, and consumption, or prolong life under them. Who that has ever thought of the condition of our domestic animals, especially about towns and cities--their want of good air, abundant exercise, good water, and natural food, to say nothing of the butter-cup and the other poisonous products of over-stimulating or fresh manures which they sometimes eat--has not been astonished to find so little disease among us as there actually is? Animal food, in its best state, is a great deal more stimulating and heating to the system than vegetable food;--but how much more injurious is it made, in the circumstances in which most animals are placed? Do we believe that even a New Zealand cannibal would willingly eat flesh, if he knew it was from an animal that when killed was laboring under a load of liver complaint, gout, consumption, or fever? And yet, such is the condition of most of the animals we slay for food. They would often die of their diseases if we did not put the knife to their throats to prevent it.