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
"The intestines are also identical with those of herbivorous animals,
which present a large surface for absorption, and have ample and
cellulated colons. The coecum also, though short, is larger than that
of carnivorous animals; and even here the ourang-outang retains its
accustomed similarity.
"The structure of the human frame, then, is that of one fitted to a pure
vegetable diet, in every essential particular. It is true, that the
reluctance to abstain from animal food, in those who have been long
accustomed to its stimulus, is so great in some persons of weak minds,
as to be scarcely overcome; but this is far from being any argument in
its favor. A lamb, which was fed for some time on flesh by a ship's
crew, refused its natural diet at the end of the voyage. There are
numerous instances of horses, sheep, oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having
been taught to live upon flesh, until they have loathed their natural
aliment."
No one will deny that Baron Cuvier was in favor of flesh eating; but it
was not because he ever believed, for one moment, that man was
_naturally_ a flesh-eating animal. Man is a reasoning animal (he
argues), and intended to be so. If left to the guidance of his
instincts, the same yielding to the law of his structure which would
exclude flesh meats, should also exclude cookery. Or, in other words, if
he is not permitted to depart from the line of life which his structure
indicates, he must no more cook his vegetables than eat animal food.
Besides, he is made, as Cuvier supposes, for artificial society, and the
Creator designed him to _improve_ his food; and, if I understand his
reasoning, he is better able, with his present structure of teeth, jaws,
stomach, intestines, etc., to make this improvement, and rise above his
nature, and yield to the force and indications of reason and experience,
than if he possessed any other known living structure.
To this structure, however, as well as to the same power of adaptation,
the monkey race, and especially the ourang-outang, closely typo
approximates. Cuvier's reasoning, in my view, applies only to the
adaptability (if I may be allowed the expression) of the human animal,
without deciding how far he should avail himself of his power to make
changes.
DR. LUTHER V. BELL.
I have alluded, in another part of this work, to the prize essay of Dr.
Bell, awarded to him by the Boylston Medical Committee on the subject of
the diet of laborers in New England. Dr. Bell is a physician of
respectable talents, and is at present the Physician to an Insane
Hospital in Charlestown, near this city.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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