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. L. is now eighty-four years of age, and has lived on vegetable diet
forty-two years. He commenced this course to cure himself of internal
gout, and continued it because he found it better for his health. He is
now only troubled with it slightly, at his extremities, which he thinks
highly creditable to a vegetable course--having thrown it off from his
vital organs. He is cheerful and active, and able to discharge the
duties of an extensive medical practice. He walks into town, a distance
of three miles from his residence, every morning, and back at night; and
thinks himself as likely to live twenty years longer as he was, twenty
years ago, to live to his present age.
The following is a condensed account of Dr. L.'s views, as obtained from
his "Additional Reports," above mentioned. Some of the first paragraphs
relate to the effects of vegetable food on those who are predisposed to
scrofula, consumption, etc.
"We see daily examples of young persons becoming consumptive who never
went without animal food a single day of their lives. If the use of
animal food were necessary to prevent consumption, we should expect,
where people lived almost entirely upon such a diet, the disease would
be unknown.
"Now, the Indian tribes visited by Mr. Hearne live in this manner. They
do not cultivate the earth. They subsist by hunting, and the scanty
produce of spontaneous vegetation. But, among these tribes consumption
is common. Their diseases, as Mr. Hearne informs us, are principally
fluxes, scurvy, and consumption.
"In the last four years, several cases of glandular swellings have
occurred to me at the general dispensary, and I have made particular
inquiries into the mode of living of such children. In the majority,
they had animal food. In opposition to the accusation of vegetable food
causing tumefaction of the abdomen, I must testify, that twice in my own
family I have seen such swellings disappear under a vegetable regimen,
which had been formed under a diet of animal food.
"Increasing the strength, for a time, is no proof of the salubrity of
diet. The increased strength may not continue, though the diet should be
continued. On the contrary, there is a sort of oscillation; the strength
just rising, then sinking again. This is what is experienced by the
trainers of boxers. A certain time is necessary to get these men into
condition; but this condition cannot be maintained for many weeks
together, though the process by which it was formed is continued. The
same is found to hold in the training of race-horses, and
fighting-cocks.
"It seems certain that animal food predisposes to disease. Timoric, in
his account of the plague at Constantinople, asserts that the Armenians,
who live chiefly on vegetable food, were far less disposed to the
disease than other people. The typhus fever is greatly exasperated by
full living.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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