Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages Part 26

The system of diet in question, greatly improves, exalts, and perfects the senses. The sight, smell, and taste are rendered greatly superior by it. The difference in favor of the hearing and the touch may not be so obvious; nevertheless, it is believed to be considerable. But the change in the other senses--the first three which I have named--even when we reform as late as at thirty-five or forty, is wonderful. I do not wish to encourage, by this, a delay of the work of reformation; we can never begin it too early.

Vegetable diet favors beauty of form and feature. The forms of the natives of some of the South Sea Islands, to say nothing of their features, are exceedingly fine. They are tall and well proportioned. So it is with the j.a.panese and Chinese, especially of the interior, where they subsist almost wholly on rice and fruits. The j.a.panese are the finest men, physically speaking, in Asia. The New Hollanders, on the contrary, who live almost wholly on flesh and fish, are among the most meagre and ugly of the human race, if we except the flesh-eating savages of the north, and the Greenlanders and Laplanders. In short, the principle I have here advanced will hold, as a _general rule_, I believe, other things being equal, throughout the world. If it be asked whether I would exalt beauty and symmetry into virtues, I will only say that they are not without their use in a virtuous people; and I look forward to a period in the world's history, when all will be comparatively well formed and beautiful. Beauty is exceedingly influential, as every one must have observed who has been long in the world; at least, if he has had his eyes open. And it is probably right that it should be so. Our beauty is almost as much within our control, as a race, as our conduct.

A vegetable diet, moreover, promotes and preserves a clearness and a generally healthful state of the mental faculties. I believe that much of the moral as well as intellectual error in the world, arises from a state of mind which is produced by the introduction of improper liquids and solids into the stomach, or, at least, by their application to the nervous system. Be this as it may, however, there is nothing better for the brain than a temperate diet of well-selected vegetables, with water for drink. This Sir Isaac Newton and hundreds of others could abundantly attest.

It also favors an evenness and tranquillity of temper, which is of almost infinite value. The most fiery and vindictive have been enabled, by this means, when all other means had failed, to transform themselves into rational beings, and to become, in this very respect, patterns to those around them. If this were its only advantage, in a physiological point of view, it would be of more value than worlds. It favors, too, simplicity of character. It makes us, in the language of the Bible, to remain, or to become, as little children, and it preserves our juvenile character and habits through life, and gives us a green old age.

Finally and lastly, it gives us an independence of external things and circ.u.mstances, that can never be attained without it. In vain may we resort to early discipline and correct education--in vain to moral and religious training--in vain, I had almost said, to the promises and threatenings of heaven itself, so long as we continue the use of food so unnatural to man as the flesh of animals, with the condiments and sauces, and improper drinks which follow in its train. Our hope, under G.o.d, is, in no small degree, on a radical change in man's dietetic habits--in a return to that simple path of truth and nature, from which, in most civilized countries, those who have the pecuniary means of doing it have unwisely departed.

III. THE MEDICAL ARGUMENT.

If perfect health is the best preventive and security against disease, and if a well-selected and properly administered vegetable diet is best calculated to promote and preserve that perfect health, then this part of the subject--what I have ventured to call the medical argument--is at once disposed of. The superiority of the diet I recommend is established beyond the possibility of debate. Now that this is the case--namely, that this diet is best calculated to promote perfect health--I have no doubt. For the sake of others, however, it may be well to adduce a few facts, and present a few brief considerations.

It is now pretty generally known, that Howard, the philanthropist, was, for about forty years a vegetable-eater, subsisting for much of this time on bread and tea, and that he went through every form of exposure to disease, contagious and non-contagious, perfectly unharmed. And had it not been for other physical errors than those which pertain to diet, I know of no reason why his life might not have been preserved many years longer--perhaps to this time.

Rev. Josiah Brewer, late a missionary in Smyrna, was very much exposed to disease, and, like Mr. Howard, to the plague itself; and yet I am not aware that he ever had a single sick day as the consequence of his exposure. I do not know with certainty that he abstains entirely from flesh meat, but he is said to be rigidly temperate in other respects.

Those who have read Rush's Inquiries and other writings, are aware that he was very much exposed to the yellow fever in Philadelphia, during the years in which it prevailed there. Now, there is great reason for believing that he owed his exemption from the disease, in part, at least, to his great temperance.

Mr. James, a teacher in Liberia, in Africa, had abstained for a few years from animal food, prior to his going out to Africa. Immediately after his arrival there, and during the sickly season, one of his companions who went out with him, died of the fever. Mr. James was attacked slightly, but recovered.

Another vegetable-eater--the Rev. Mr. Crocker--went out to a sickly part of Africa some years since, and remained at his station a long time in perfect health, while many of his friends sickened or died. At length, however, he fell.

Gen. Thomas Sheldon, of this state, a vegetable-eater, spent several years in the most sickly parts of the Southern United States, with an entire immunity from disease; and he gives it as his opinion that it is no matter where we are, so that our dietetic and other habits are correct.

Mr. G. McElroy, of Kentucky, spent several months of the most sickly season in the most unhealthy parts of Africa, in the year 1835, and yet enjoyed the best of health the whole time. While there and on his pa.s.sage home, he abstained wholly from animal food, living on rice and other farinaceous vegetables and fruits.

In view of these facts and many others, Mr. Graham remarks: "Under a proper regimen our enterprising young men of New England may go to New Orleans or Liberia, or any where else they choose, and stay as long as they choose, and yet enjoy good health." And there is no doubt he is right.

But it is hardly worth while to cite single facts in proof of a point of this kind. There is abundant testimony to be had, going to show that a vegetable diet is a security against disease, especially against epidemics, whether in the form of a mere influenza or malignant fever.

Nay, there is reason to believe that a person living according to _all_ the Creator's laws, physical and moral, could hardly receive or communicate disease of any kind. How could a person in perfect health, and obeying to an iota all the laws of health--how could he contract disease? What would there be in his system which could furnish a nidus for its reception?

I am well aware that not a few people suppose the most healthy are as much exposed to disease as others, and that there are some who even suppose they are much more so. "Death delights in a s.h.i.+ning mark," or something to this effect, is a maxim which has probably had its origin in the error to which I have adverted. To the same source may be traced the strange opinion that a fatal or malignant disease makes its first and most desperate attacks upon the healthy and the robust. The fact is--and this explains the whole riddle--those who are regarded, by the superficial and short-sighted in this matter, as the most healthy and robust, are usually persons whose unhealthy habits have already sown the seeds of disease; and nothing is wanting but the usual circ.u.mstances of epidemics to rouse them into action. More than all this, these strong-looking but inwardly-diseased persons are almost sure to die whenever disease does attack them, simply on account of the previous abuses of their const.i.tutions.

During the prevalence of the cholera in New York, about the year 1832, all the Grahamites, as they were called, who had for some time abstained from animal food--and their number was quite respectable--and who persevered in it, either wholly escaped the disease, or had it very lightly; and this, too, notwithstanding a large proportion of them were very much exposed to its attacks, living in the parts of the city where it most prevailed, or in families where others were dying almost daily.

This could not be the result of mere accident; it is morally impossible.

But flesh-eaters--admitting the flesh were wholesome--are not only much more liable to contract disease, but if they contract it, to suffer more severely than others. There is yet another important consideration which belongs to the medical argument. Animal food is much more liable than vegetable food, to those changes or conditions which we call poisonous, and which are always, in a greater or less degree, the sources of disease; it is also more liable to poisonous mixtures or adulterations.

It is true, that in the present state of the arts, and of agriculture and civic life generally, vegetables themselves are sometimes the sources of disease. I refer not to the spurred rye and other substances, which occasionally find their way into our fields and get mixed with our grains, etc., and which are known to be very active poisons,--so much as to the acrid or otherwise improper juices which are formed by forced vegetation, especially about cities, whether by means of hot-beds, green-houses, or new, strong, or highly-concentrated manures. I refer also to the crude, unripe, and imperfect fruits and other things with which our markets are filed now-a-days; and especially to _decaying_ fruits and vegetables. But I cannot enlarge; a volume would be too little to do this part of the subject justice. Nothing is more wanted than light on this subject, and a consequent reform in our fas.h.i.+onable agriculture and horticulture.

And yet, although I admit, most cheerfully, the danger we are in of contracting disease by using diseased vegetables, the danger is neither so frequent nor so imminent, in proportion to the quant.i.ty of it consumed, as from animal food. Let us briefly take a view of the facts.

Milk, in its nature, approaches nearest to the line of the vegetable kingdom, and is therefore, in my view, the least objectionable form of animal food. I am even ready to admit that for persons affected with certain forms of chronic disease, and for all children, milk is excellent. And yet, excellent as it is, it is very liable to be injurious. We are told, by the most respectable medical men of France, that all the cows about Paris have tubercles (the seeds or beginning of consumption) in their lungs which is probably owing to the unnatural state in which they are kept, as regards the kind, and quant.i.ty, and hours of receiving their food; and especially as regards air, exercise, and water. Cows cannot be healthy, nor any other domestic animals, any more than men, when long subjected to the unnatural and unhealthy influences of bad air, want of exercise, etc. Hence, then, most of our cows about our towns and cities must be diseased, in a greater or less degree--if not with consumption, with something else. And of course their milk must be diseased--not, perhaps, as much as their blood and flesh, but more or less so. But if milk is diseased, the b.u.t.ter and cheese made from it must be diseased also.

But milk is sometimes diseased through the vegetables which are eaten by the cow. Every one knows how readily the sensible properties of certain acrid plants are perceived in the milk. Hence as I have elsewhere intimated, we are doubly exposed to danger from eating animal food; first, from the diseases of the animal itself, and secondly, from the diseases which are liable to be induced upon us by the vegetables they use, some of which are not poisonous to them, but are so to us. So that, in avoiding animal food, we escape at least a part of the danger.

Besides the general fact, that almost all medical and dietetic writers object to fat, and to b.u.t.ter among the rest, as difficult of digestion and tending to cutaneous and other diseases,--and besides the general admission in society at large that it makes the skin "break out,"--it must be obvious that it is liable to retain, in a greater or less degree, all the poisonous properties which existed in the milk from which it was made. Next to fat pork, b.u.t.ter seems to me one of the worst things that ever entered a human stomach; and if it will not, like pork, quite cause the leprosy, it will cause almost every other skin disease which is known.

Cheese is often poisoned now-a-days by design. I do not mean to say that the act of poisoning is accompanied by malice toward mankind; far from it. It is added to color it, as in the form of anatto; or to give it freshness and tenderness, as in the case of a.r.s.enic.[21]

Eggs, when not fresh, are more or less liable to disease. I might even say more. When not fresh, they _are_ diseased. On this point we have the testimony of Drs. Willich and Dunglison. The truth is, that the yolk of the egg has a strong tendency to decomposition, and this decomposing or putrefying process _begins_ long before it is perceived, or even suspected, by most people. There is much reason for believing that a large proportion of the eggs eaten in civic life,--except when we keep the poultry ourselves,--are, when used, more or less in a state of decomposition. And yet, into how many hundred forms of food do they enter in fas.h.i.+onable life, or in truth, in almost every condition of society! The French cooks are said to have six hundred and eighty-five methods of cooking the egg, including all the various sorts of pastry, etc., of which it forms a component part.

One of the grand objections against animal food, of almost all sorts, is, that it tends with such comparative rapidity to decomposition. Such is at least the case with eggs, flesh, and fish of every kind. The usual way of preventing the decomposition is by processes scarcely less hurtful--by the addition of salt, pyroligneous acid, saltpetre, lime, etc. These, to be sure, prevent putrefaction; but they render every thing to which they are applied, unless it is the egg, the more indigestible.

It is a strange taste in mankind, by the way, which leads them to prefer things in a state of incipient decomposition. And yet such a taste certainly prevails widely. Many like the flesh beaten; hence the origin of the cruel practice of the East of whipping animals to death.[22] And most persons like fresh meat kept till it begins to be _tender_; that is, begins to putrefy. So most persons like fermented beer better than that which is unfermented, although fermentation is a step toward putrefaction; and they like vinegar, too, which is also far advanced in the same road.

That diseased food causes diseases in the persons who use it, needs not, one would think, a single testimony; and yet, I will name a few.

Dr. Paris, speaking of fish, says,--"It is not improbable that certain cutaneous diseases may be produced, or at least aggravated by such diet." Dr. Dunglison says, bacon and cured meats are often poisonous. He speaks of the poisonous tendency of eggs, and says that all _made_ dishes are more or less "rebellious." In Aurillac, in France, not many years since, fifteen or sixteen persons were attacked with symptoms of cholera after eating the milk of a certain goat. The goat died with cholera about twenty-four hours after, and two men, no less eminent than Professors Orfila and Marc, gave it as their undoubted opinion that the cholera symptoms alluded to, were caused by the milk. I have myself known oysters at certain times and seasons to produce the same symptoms.

During the progress of a mortal disease among the poultry on Edisto Island, S. C., in 1837, all the dogs and vultures that tasted of the flesh of the dead poultry sickened and died. Chrisiston mentions an instance in which five persons were poisoned by eating beef; and Dunglison one in which fourteen persons were made sick, and some died, from eating the meat of a calf. Between the years 1793 and 1827, it is on record that there were in the kingdom of Wurtemberg alone, no less than two hundred and thirty-four cases of poisoning, and one hundred and ten deaths, from eating sausages. But I need not multiply this sort of evidence, the world abounds with it; though for one person who is poisoned so much as to be made sick immediately, hundreds perhaps are only slightly affected; and the punishment may seem to be deferred for many years.

The truth, in short, is, that every fas.h.i.+onable process of fattening and even of domesticating animals, induces disease; and as most of the animals we use for food are domesticated or fattened, or both, it follows that most of our animal food, whether milk, b.u.t.ter, cheese, eggs, or flesh, is diseased food, and must inevitably, sooner or later, induce disease in those who receive it. Those which are most fattened are the worst, of course; as the hog, the goose, the sheep, and the ox.

The more the animal is removed from a natural state, in fattening, the more does the fat acc.u.mulate, and the more it is diseased. Hence the complaints against every form of animal oil or fat, in every age, by men who, notwithstanding their complaints, for the most part, continue to set mankind an example of its use.

Let me here introduce a single paragraph from Dr. Cheyne, which is very much to my present purpose.

"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 b.u.t.ter-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 circ.u.mstances 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.

One more consideration. If the exclusive use of vegetable food will prevent a mult.i.tude of the worst and most incurable diseases to which human nature, in other circ.u.mstances, seems liable; if it will modify the diseases which a mixed diet, or absolute intemperance, or gluttony had induced,--by what rule can we limit its influence? How know we that what is so efficacious in regard to the larger diseases, will not be equally so in the case of all smaller ones? And why, then, may not its universal adoption, after a few generations, banish disease entirely from the world? Every person of common observation, knows that, as a general rule, they who approach the nearest to a pure vegetable and water diet, are most exempt from disease, and the longest-lived and most happy. How, then, can it otherwise happen than that a still closer approximation will afford a greater exemption still, and so on indefinitely? At what point of an approach toward such diet and regimen, and toward perfect health at the same time, is it that we stop, and more temperance still will injure us? In short, where do we cross the line?

IV. THE POLITICAL ARGUMENT.

I have dwelt at such length on the physiological and medical arguments in defence of the vegetable system, that I must compress my remaining views into the smallest s.p.a.ce possible; especially those which relate to its political, national, or general advantages.

Political economists tell us that the produce of an acre of land in wheat, corn, potatoes, and other vegetables, and in fruits, will sustain animal life sixteen times as long as when the produce of the same acre is converted into flesh, by feeding and fattening animals upon it.

But, if we admit that this estimate is too high, and if the real difference is only eight to one, instead of sixteen to one, the results may perhaps surprise us; and if we have not done it before, may lead us to reflection. Let us see what some of them are.

The people of the United States are believed to eat, upon the average, an amount of animal food equal at least to one whole meal once a day, and those of Great Britain one in two days. But taking this estimate to be correct, Great Britain, by subst.i.tuting vegetable for animal food, might sustain forty-nine instead of twenty-one millions of inhabitants, and the United States sixty-six millions instead of twenty; and this, too, in their present comfort, and without clearing up any more new land. Here, then, we are consuming that unnecessarily--if animal food is unnecessary--which would sustain seventy-nine millions of human beings in life, health, and happiness.

Now, if life is a blessing at all--if it is a blessing to twenty-two millions in Great Britain, and twenty millions in the United States--then to add to this population an increase of seventy-nine millions, would be to increase, in the same proportion, the aggregate of human happiness. And if, in addition to this, we admit the very generally received principle, that there is a tendency, from the nature of things, in the population of any country, to keep up with the means of support, we, of Great Britain and America, keep down, at the present moment, by flesh-eating, sixty-three millions of inhabitants.

We do not destroy them, in the full sense of the term, it is true, for they never had an existence. But we prevent their coming into the possession of a joyous and happy existence; and though we have no name for it, is it not a crime? What! no crime for thirty-five millions of people to prevent and preclude the existence of sixty-three millions?

I see no way of avoiding the force of this argument, except by denying the premises on which I have founded my conclusions. But they are far more easily denied than disproved. The probability, after all, is, that my estimates are too low, and that the advantages of an exclusively vegetable diet, in a national or political point of view, are even greater than is here represented. I do not deny, that some deduction ought to be made on account of the consumption of fish, which does not prevent the growth or use of vegetable products; but my belief is, that, including them, the animal food we use amounts to a great deal more than one meal a day, or one third of our whole living.

Suppose there was no _crime_ in shutting human beings out of existence by flesh-eating, at the amazing rate I have mentioned--still, is it not, I repeat it, a great national or political loss? Or, will it be said, in its defence, as has been said in defence of war, if not of intemperance and some of the forms of licentiousness, that as the world is, it is a blessing to keep down its population, otherwise it would soon be overstocked? The argument would be as good in one case as in the other; that is, it is not valid in either. The world might be made to sustain, in comfort, even in the present comparatively infant state of the arts and sciences, at least forty or fifty times its present number of inhabitants. It will be time enough a thousand or two thousand years to come, to begin to talk about the danger of the world's being over-peopled; and, above all, to talk about justifying what we know is, in the abstract, very wrong, to prevent a distant imagined evil; one, in fact, which may not, and probably will not ever exist.

V. THE ECONOMICAL ARGUMENT.

The economy of the vegetable system is so intimately connected with its political or national advantages; that is, so depends on, or grows out of them, that I hesitated for some time before I decided to consider it separately. Whatever is shown clearly to be for the general good policy and well-being of society, cannot be prejudicial to the best interests of the individuals who compose that society. Still, there are some minor considerations that I wish to present under this head, that could not so well have been introduced any where else.