Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages Part 20

I propose to add here a few anecdotes of his, which I know not how to find elsewhere.

"Pythagoras restricted himself to vegetable food altogether, his dinner being bread, honey, and water; and he lived upward of eighty years.

Matthew (St. Matthew, I suppose he means), according to Clement, lived upon vegetable diet. Galen, one of the most distinguished of the ancient physicians, lived one hundred and forty years, and composed between seven and eight hundred essays on medical and philosophical subjects; and he was always, after the age of twenty-eight, extremely sparing in the quant.i.ty of his food. The Cardinal de Salis, Archbishop of Seville, who lived one hundred and ten years, was invariably sparing in his diet.

One Lawrence, an Englishman, by temperance and labor lived one hundred and forty years; and one Kentigern, who never tasted spirits or wine, and slept on the ground and labored hard, died at the age of one hundred and eighty-five. Henry Jenkins, of Yorks.h.i.+re, who died at the age of one hundred and sixty-nine, was a poor fisherman, as long as he could follow this pursuit; and ultimately he became a beggar, living on the coa.r.s.est and most sparing diet. Old Parr, who died at the age of one hundred and fifty-three, was a farmer, of extremely abstemious habits, his diet being solely milk, cheese, coa.r.s.e bread, small beer, and whey. At the age of one hundred and twenty he married a second wife by whom he had a child. But being taken to court, as a great curiosity, in his one hundred and fifty-second year, he very soon died--as the physicians decidedly testified, after dissection, in consequence of a change from a parsimonious to a plentiful diet. Henry Francisco, of this country, who lived to about one hundred and forty, was, except for a certain period, remarkably abstemious, eating but little, and particularly abstaining almost entirely from animal food; his favorite articles being tea, bread and b.u.t.ter, and baked apples. Mr. Ephraim Pratt, of Shutesbury, Ma.s.s., who died at the age of one hundred and seventeen years, lived very much upon milk, and that in small quant.i.ty; and his son, Michael Pratt, attained to the age of one hundred and three, by similar means."

Speaking, in another place, of a milk diet, Professor H. observes, that "a diet chiefly of milk produces a most happy serenity, vigor, and cheerfulness of mind--very different from the gloomy, crabbed, and irritable temper, and foggy intellect, of the man who devours flesh, fish, and fowl, with ravenous appet.i.te, and adds puddings, pies, and cakes to the load."

LORD KAIMS.

Henry Home, otherwise called Lord Kaims, the author of the "Elements of Criticism," and of "Six Sketches on the History of Man," has, in the latter work, written eighty years ago, the following statements respecting the inhabitants of the torrid zone:

"We have no evidence that either the hunter or shepherd state were ever known there. The inhabitants at present subsist upon vegetable food, and probably did so from the beginning."

In speaking of particular nations or tribes of this zone, he tells us that "the inhabitants of Biledulgerid and the desert of Sahara, have but two meals a day--one in the morning and one in the evening;" and "being temperate," he adds, "and strangers to the diseases of luxury and idleness, they generally live to a great age."[19] Sixty, with them, is the prime of life, as thirty is in Europe. "Some of the inland tribes of Africa," he says, "make but one meal a day, which is in the evening."

And yet "their diet is plain, consisting mostly of rice, fruits, and roots. An inhabitant of Madagascar will travel two or three days without any other food than a sugar-cane." So also, he might have added, will the Arab travel many days, and at almost incredible speed, with nothing but a little gum-arabic; and the Peruvians and other inhabitants of South America, with a little parched corn. But I have one more extract from Lord Kaims:

"The island of Otaheite is healthy, the people tall and well made; and by temperance--vegetables and fish being their chief nourishment--they live to a good old age, with scarcely an ailment. There is no such thing known among them as rotten teeth; the very smell of wine or spirits is disagreeable; and they never deal in tobacco or spiceries. In many places Indian corn is the chief nourishment, which every man plants for himself."

DR. THOMAS d.i.c.k.

Dr. d.i.c.k, author of the "Philosophy of Religion," and several other works deservedly popular, gives this remarkable testimony:

"To take the life of any sensitive being, and to feed on its flesh, appears incompatible with a state of innocence, and therefore no such grant was given to Adam in paradise, nor to the antediluvians. It appears to have been a grant suited only to the degraded state of man, after the deluge; and it is probable that, as he advances in the scale of moral perfection in the future ages of the world, the use of animal food will be gradually laid aside, and he will return again to the productions of the vegetable kingdom, as the original food of man--as that which is best suited to the rank of rational and moral intelligence. And perhaps it may have an influence, in combination with other favorable circ.u.mstances, in promoting health and longevity."

PROFESSOR GEORGE BUSH.

Professor Bush, a writer of some eminence, in his "Notes on Genesis,"

while speaking of the permission to man in regard to food, in Genesis i.

29, has the following language:

"It is not perhaps to be understood, from the use of the word _give_, that a _permission_ was now granted to man of using that for food which it would have been unlawful for him to use without that permission; for, by the very const.i.tution of his being, he was made to be sustained by that food which was most congenial to his animal economy; and this it must have been lawful for him to employ, unless self-destruction had been his duty. The true import of the phrase, therefore, doubtless is, that G.o.d had _appointed_, _const.i.tuted_, _ordained_ this, as the staple article of man's diet. He had formed him with a nature to which a vegetable aliment was better suited than any other. It cannot perhaps be inferred from this language that the use of flesh-meat was absolutely forbidden; but it clearly implies that the fruits of the field were the diet most adapted to the const.i.tution which the Creator had given."

THOMAS s.h.i.+LLITOE.

Mr. s.h.i.+llitoe was a distinguished member of the Society of Friends, at Tottenham, near London. The first twenty-five years of his life were spent in feeble health, made worse by high living. This high living was continued about twenty years longer, when, finding himself fast failing, he yielded to the advice of a medical friend, and abandoned all drinks but water, and all food but the plainest kinds, by which means he so restored his const.i.tution that he lived to be nearly ninety years of age; and at eighty could walk with ease from Tottenham to London, six miles, and back again. The following is a brief account of this distinguished man, when at the age of eighty, and nearly in his own words:

It is now nearly thirty years since I ate fish, flesh, or fowl, or took fermented liquor of any kind whatsoever. I find, from continued experience, that abstinence is the best medicine. I don't meddle with fermented liquors of any kind, even as medicine. I find I am capable of doing better without them than when I was in the daily use of them.

"One way in which I was favored to experience help in my willingness to abandon all these things, arose from the effect my abstinence had on my natural temper. My natural disposition is very irritable. I am persuaded that ardent spirits and high living have more or less effect in tending to raise into action those evil propensities which, if given way to, war against the soul, and render us displeasing to Almighty G.o.d."

ALEXANDER POPE.

Pope, the poet, ascribes all the bad pa.s.sions and diseases of the human race to their subsisting on the flesh, blood, and miseries of animals.

"Nothing," he says, "can be more shocking and horrid than one of our kitchens, sprinkled with blood, and abounding with the cries of creatures expiring, or with the limbs of dead animals scattered or hung up here and there. It gives one an image of a giant's den in romance, bestrewed with the scattered heads and mangled limbs of those who were slain by his cruelty."

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS.

Sir Richard Phillips, in his "Million of Facts," says that "the mixed and fanciful diet of man is considered as the cause of numerous diseases, from which animals are exempt. Many diseases have abated with changes of natural diet, and others are virulent in particular countries, arising from peculiarities. The Hindoos are considered the freest from disease of any part of the human race. The laborers on the African coast, who go from tribe to tribe to perform the manual labor, and whose strength is wonderful, live entirely on plain rice. The Irish, Swiss, and Gascons, the slaves of Europe, feed also on the simplest diet; the former chiefly on potatoes."

He states, also, that the diseases of cattle often afflict those who subsist on them. "In 1599," he observes, "the Venetian government, to stop a fatal disease among the people, prohibited the sale of meat, b.u.t.ter, or cheese, on Pain of death."

SIR ISAAC NEWTON.

This distinguished philosopher and mathematician is said to have abstained rigorously, at times, from all but purely vegetable food, and from all drinks but water; and it is also stated that some of his important labors were performed at these seasons of strict temperance.

While writing his treatise on Optics, it is said he confined himself entirely to bread, with a little sack and water; and I have no doubt that his remarkable equanimity of temper, and that government of his animal appet.i.tes, throughout, for which he was so distinguished to the last hour of his life, were owing, in no small degree, to his habits of rigid temperance.

THE ABBE GALLANI.

The Abbe Gallani ascribes all social crimes to animal destruction--thus, treachery to angling and ensnaring, and murder to hunting and shooting.

And he a.s.serts that the man who would kill a sheep, an ox, or any unsuspecting animal, would, but for the law, kill his neighbor.

HOMER.

Even Homer, three thousand years ago, says Dr. Cheyne, could observe that the h.o.m.olgians--those Pythagoreans, those milk and vegetable eaters--were the longest lived and the honestest of men.

DR. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN.

Dr. Franklin, in his younger days, often, for some time together, lived exclusively on a vegetable diet, and that, too, in small quant.i.ty.

During his after life he also observed seasons of abstinence from animal food, or _lents_, as he called them, of considerable length. His food and drink were, moreover, especially in early life, exceedingly simple; his meal often consisting of nothing but a biscuit and a slice of bread, with a bunch of raisins, and perhaps a basin of gruel. Now, Dr. F.

testifies of himself; that he found his progress in science to be in proportion to that clearness of mind and apt.i.tude of conception which can only be produced by total abstinence from animal food. He also derived many other advantages from his abstinence, both physical and moral.

MR. NEWTON.

This author wrote a work ent.i.tled "Defence of Vegetable Regimen." It is often quoted by Sh.e.l.ley, the poet, and others. I know nothing of the author or of his works, except through Sh.e.l.ley, who gives us some of his views, and informs us that seventeen persons, of all ages, consisting of Mr. Newton's family and the family of Dr. Lambe, who is elsewhere mentioned in this work, had, at the time he wrote, lived seven years on a pure vegetable diet, and without the slightest illness. Of the seventeen, some of them were infants, and one of them was almost dead with asthma when the experiment was commenced, but was already nearly cured by it; and of the family of Mr. N., Sh.e.l.ley testifies that they were "the most beautiful and healthy creatures it is possible to conceive"--the girls "perfect models for a sculptor"--and their dispositions "the most gentle and conciliating."

The following paragraph is extracted from Mr. Newton's "Defence," and will give us an idea of his sentiments. He was speaking of the fable of Prometheus:

"Making allowance for such transposition of the events of the allegory as time might produce after the important truths were forgotten, the drift of the fable seems to be this: Man, at his creation, was endowed with the gift of perpetual youth, that is, he was not formed to be a sickly, suffering creature, as we now see him, but to enjoy health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his parent earth, without disease or pain. Prometheus first taught the use of animal food, and of fire, with which to render it more digestible and pleasing to the taste.

Jupiter and the rest of the G.o.ds, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of a flesh diet, ensued; other drink than water was resorted to, and man forfeited the inestimable gift of health, which he had received from heaven; he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious existence, and no longer descended into his grave slowly."

O. S. FOWLER.

O. S. Fowler, the distinguished phrenologist, in his work on Physiology, devotes nearly one hundred pages to the discussion of the great diet question. He endeavors to show that, in every point of view, a flesh diet--or a diet partaking of flesh, fish, or fowl, in any degree--is inferior to a well-selected vegetable diet; and, as I think, successfully. He finally says:

"I wish my own children had never tasted, and would never taste, a mouthful of meat. Increased health, efficiency, talents, virtue, and happiness, would undoubtedly be the result. But for the fact that my table is set for others than my own wife and children, it would never be furnished with meat, so strong are my convictions against its utility."