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
"It must be confessed that, in temperate climates, at least, an animal
diet is, in one respect, more wasting than a vegetable, because it
excites, by its stimulating qualities, a temporary fever after every
meal, by which the springs of life are urged into constant,
preternatural, and weakening exertions. Again; persons who live chiefly
on animal food are subject to various acute and fatal disorders, as the
scurvy, malignant ulcers, inflammatory fevers, etc., and are likewise
liable to corpulency, more especially when united to inordinate
quantities of liquid aliment. There appears to be also a tendency in an
animal diet to promote the formation of many chronic diseases; and we
seldom find those who indulge much in this diet to be remarkable for
longevity.
"In favor of vegetables, it may be justly said, that man could hardly
live entirely on animal food, but we know he may on vegetable. Vegetable
aliment has likewise no tendency to produce those constitutional
disorders which animal food so frequently occasions. And this is a great
advantage, more especially in our country (he means in Great Britain),
where the general sedentary mode of living so powerfully contributes to
the formation and establishment of numerous severe chronic maladies. Any
unfavorable effects vegetable food may have on the body, are almost
wholly confined to the stomach and bowels, and rarely injure the system
at large. This food has also a beneficial influence on the powers of the
mind, and tends to preserve a delicacy of feeling, and liveliness of
imagination, and acuteness of judgment, seldom enjoyed by those who live
principally on meat. It should also be added, that a vegetable diet,
when it consists of articles easily digested, as potatoes, turnips,
bread, biscuit, oatmeal, etc., is certainly favorable to long life."
BARON CUVIER.[10]
Perhaps it is not generally known that Baron Cuvier, the prince of
naturalists, in the progress of his researches came to the most decisive
conclusion, that, so far as any thing can be ascertained or proved by
the investigation of science in regard to the natural dietetic character
of man, he is a fruit and vegetable eater. I have not seen his own
views; but the following are said, by an intelligent writer, to be a
tolerably faithful transcript of them, and to be derived from his
Comparative Anatomy.
"Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no exception, unless man
be one, to the rule of herbivorous animals having cellulated colons.
"The ourang-outang perfectly resembles man, both in the order and number
of his teeth. The ourang-outang is the most anthropomorphous of the ape
tribe, all of which are strictly frugivorous. There is no other species
of animals, which live on different food, in which this analogy exists.
In many frugivorous animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and
distinct than those of man. The resemblance also of the human stomach to
that of the ourang-outang, is greater than to that of any other animal.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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