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

"It is true, there is scarce a possibility of preventing the destroying of animal life, as things are now constituted, since insects breed and nestle in the very vegetables themselves; and we scarcely ever devour a plant or root, wherein we do not destroy innumerable animalculæ. But, besides what I have said of nature's being quite altered and changed from what was originally intended, there is a great difference between destroying and extinguishing animal life by choice and election, to gratify our appetites, and indulge concupiscence, and the casual and unavoidable crushing of those who, perhaps, otherwise would die within the day, or at most the year, and who obtain but an inferior kind of existence and life, at the best.

"Whatever there may be, in this conjecture, it is evident to those who understand the animal economy of the frame of human bodies, together with the history, both of those who have lived abstemiously, and of those who have lived freely, that indulging in flesh meat and strong liquors, inflames the passions and shortens life, begets chronical distempers and a decrepit age.

"For remedying the distempers of the body, to make a man live as long as his original frame was designed to last, with the least pain and fewest diseases, and without the loss of his senses, I think Pythagoras and Cornaro by far the two greatest men that ever were: – the first, by vegetable food and unfermented liquors; the latter, by the lightest and least of animal food, and naturally fermented liquors. Both lived to a great age. But, what is chiefly to be regarded in their conduct and example, both preserved their senses, cheerfulness, and serenity to the last; and, which is still more to be regarded, both, at least the last, dissolved without pain or struggle; the first having lost his life in a tumult, as it is said by some, after a great age of perfect health.

"A plain, natural, and philosophical reason why vegetable food is preferable to all other food is, that abounding with few or no salts, being soft and cool, and consisting of parts that are easily divided and formed into chyle without giving any labor to the digestive powers, it has not that force to open the lacteals, to distend their orifices and excite them to an unnatural activity, to let them pass too great a quantity of hot and rank chyle into the blood, and so overcharge and inflame the lymphatics and capillaries, which is the natural and ordinary effect of animal food; and therefore cannot so readily produce diseases. There is not a sufficient stimulus in the salts and spirits of vegetable food to create an unnatural appetite, or violent cramming; at least, not sufficient to force open and extend the mouths of the lacteals, more than naturally they are or ought to be. Such food requires little or no force of digestion, a little gentle heat and motion being sufficient to dissolve it into its integral particles: so that, in a vegetable diet, though the sharp humors, in the first passages, are extended, relaxed stomach, and sometimes a delightful piquancy in the food, may tempt one to exceed in quantity; yet rarely, if spices and sauces – as too much butter, oil, and sugar – are not joined to seeds⁹ and vegetables, can the mischief go farther than the stomach and bowels, to create a pressed load, sickness, vomiting, or purging, by its acquiring an acrimony from its not being received into the lacteals; – so that on more being admitted into the blood than the expenses of living require, life and health can never be endangered by a vegetable diet. But all the contrary happens under a high animal diet."

Now I will not undertake to vouch – as indeed I cannot, conscientiously, do it – for the correctness of all Dr. C.'s notions in physiology or pathology. The great object I have in view, by the introduction of these quotations, may be accomplished without it. His preference for vegetable food, or for what he calls a milk and seed diet, is the point which I wish to make most prominent.

In the following paragraphs, he takes up and considers some of the popular objections of the day, to his doctrines and practice.

"One of the most terrible objections some weak persons make against this regimen and method, is, that upon accidental trials, they have always found milk, fruit, and vegetables so inflate, blow them up, and raise such tumults and tempests in their stomach and bowels, that they have been terrified and affrighted from going on. I own the truth and fact to be such, in some as is represented; and that in stomachs and entrails inured only to hot and high meats and drinks, and consequently in an inflammatory state and full of choler and phlegm, this sensation will sometimes happen – just as a bottle of cider or fretting wine, when the cork is pulled out, will fly up, and fume, and rage; and if you throw in a little ferment or acid (such as milk, seeds, fruit, and vegetables to them), the effervescence and tempest will exasperate to a hurricane.

"But what are wind, flatulence, phlegm, and choler? What, indeed, but stopped perspiration, superfluous nourishment, inconcocted chyle, of high food and strong liquors, fermented and putrifying? And when these are shut up and corked, with still more and more solid, strong, hot, and styptic meats and drinks, is the corruption and putrefaction thereby lessened? Will it not then, at last, either burst the vessel, or throw out the cork or stopples, and raise still more lasting and cruel tempests and tumults? Are milk and vegetables, seeds and fruits, harder of digestion, more corrosive, or more capable of producing chyle, blood, and juices, less fit to circulate, to perspire, and be secreted?

"But what is to be done? The cure is obvious. Begin by degrees; eat less animal food – the most tender and young – and drink less strong fermented liquors, for a month or two. Then proceed to a trimming diet, of one day, seed and vegetables, and another day, tender, young animal food; – and, by degrees, slide into a total milk, seed, and vegetable diet; cooling the stomach and entrails gradually, to fit them for this soft, mild, sweetening regimen; and in time your diet will give you all the gratification you ever had from strong, high, and rank food, and spirituous liquors. And you will, at last, enjoy ease, free spirits, perfect health, and long life into the bargain.

"Seeds of all kinds are fittest to begin with, in these cases, when dried, finely ground, and dressed; and, consequently, the least flatulent. Lessen the quantity, even of these, below what your appetite would require, at least for a time. Bear a little, and forbear.

"Virtue and good health are not to be obtained, without some labor and pains, against contrary habits. It was a wild bounce of a Pythagorean, who defied any one to produce an instance of a person, who had long lived on milk and vegetables, who ever cut his own throat, hanged, or made way with himself; who had ever suffered at Tyburn, gone to Newgate, or to Moorfields; (and, he added rather profanely,) or, would go to eternal misery hereafter.

"Another weighty objection against a vegetable diet, I have heard, has been made by learned men; and is, that vegetables require great labor, strong exercise, and much action, to digest and turn them into proper nutriment; as (say they) is evident from their being the common diet of day-laborers, handicraftsmen, and farmers. This objection I should have been ashamed to mention, but that I have heard it come from men of learning; and they might have as justly said, that freestone is harder than marble, and that the juice of vegetables makes stronger glue than that of fish and beef!

"Do not children and young persons, that is, tender persons, live on milk and seeds, even before they are capable of much labor and exercise? Do not all the eastern and southern people live almost entirely on them? The Asiatics, Moors, and Indians, whose climates incapacitate them for much labor, and whose indolence is so justly a reproach to them, – are these lazier and less laborious men than the Highlanders and native Irish?

"The truth is, hardness of digestion principally depends on the minuteness of the component particles, as is evident in marble and precious stones. And animal substances being made of particles that pass through innumerable very little, or infinitely small excretory ducts, must be of a much finer texture, and consequently harder, or tougher, in their composition, than any vegetable substance can be. And the flesh of animals that live on animals, is like double distilled spirits, and so requires much labor to break, grind, and digest it. And, indeed, if day-laborers, and handicraftsmen were allowed the high, strong food of men of condition, and the quiet and much-thinking persons were confined to the farmer and ploughman's food, it would be much happier for both.

"Another objection, still, against a milk and vegetable diet is, that it breeds phlegm, and so is unfit for tender persons, of cold constitutions; especially those whose predominant failing is too much phlegm. But this objection has as little foundation as either of the preceding. Phlegm is nothing but superfluous chyle and nourishment, as the taking down more food than the expenses of living and the waste of the solids and fluids require. The people that live most on such foods – the eastern and southern people and those of the northern I have mentioned – are less troubled with phlegm than any others. Superfluity will always produce redundancy, whether it be of phlegm or choler; and that which will digest the most readily, will produce the least phlegm – such as milk, seeds, and vegetables. By cooling and relaxing the solids, the phlegm will be more readily thrown up and discharged – more, I say, by such a diet than by a hot, high, caustic, and restringent one; but that discharge is a benefit to the constitution, and will help it the sooner and faster to become purified, and so to get into perfect good health. Whereas, by shutting them up, the can or cask must fly and burst so much the sooner.

"The only material and solid objections against a milk, seed, and vegetable diet, are the following:

"First, That it is particular and unsocial, in a country where the common diet is of another nature. But I am sure sickness, lowness, and oppression, are much more so. These difficulties, after all, happen only at first, while the cure is about; for, when good health comes, all these oddnesses and specialities will vanish, and then all the contrary to these will be the case.

"Secondly, That it is weakening, and gives a man less strength and force, than common diet. It is true that this may be the result, at first, while the cure is imperfect. But then the greater activity and gayety which will ensue on the return of health, under a milk and vegetable diet, will liberally supply that defect.

"Thirdly, The most material objection against such a diet is, that it cools, relaxes, softens, and unbends the solids, at first, faster than it corrects and sweetens the juices, and brings on greater degrees of lowness than it is designed to cure; and so sinks, instead of raising. But this objection is not universally true; for there are many I have treated, who, without any such inconvenience, or consequent lowness, have gone into this regimen, and have been free from any oppression, sinking, or any degree of weakness, ever after; and they were not only those who have been generally temperate and clean, free from humors and sharpnesses, but who, on the decline of life, or from a naturally weak constitution or frame, have been oppressed and sunk from their weakness and their incapacity to digest common animal food and fermented liquors.

"I very much question if any diet, either hot or cool, has any great influence on the solids, after the fluids have been entirely sweetened and balmified. Sweeten and thin the juices, and the rest will follow, as a matter of course."

At page 90 of Dr. Cheyne's Natural Method of Curing Diseases, he thus says:

"People think they cannot possibly subsist on a little meat, milk, and vegetables, or on any low diet, and that they must infallibly perish if they should be confined to water only; not considering that nine tenths of the whole mass of mankind are necessarily confined to this diet, or pretty nearly to it, and yet live with the use of their senses, limbs, and faculties, without diseases, or but few, and those from accidents or epidemical causes; and that there have been nations, and now are numbers of tribes, who voluntarily confine themselves to vegetables only; as the Essenes among the Jews, some Hermits and Solitaries among the Christians of the first ages, a great number of monks in the Chartreux now in Europe, Banians among the Indians and Chinese, the Guebres among the Persians, and of old, the Druids among ourselves."

To illustrate the foregoing, I may here introduce the following extracts from the sixth London edition of Dr. Cheyne's Essay on Health and Long Life.

"It is surprising to what a great age the Eastern Christians, who retired from the persecutions into the deserts of Egypt and Arabia, lived healthful on a very little food. We are informed, by Cassian, that the common measure for twenty-four hours was about twelve ounces, with only pure water for drink. St. Anthony lived to one hundred and five years on mere bread and water, adding only a few herbs at last. On a similar diet, James the Hermit lived to one hundred and four years. Arsenius, the tutor of the emperor Arcadius, to one hundred and twenty – sixty-five years in society, and fifty-five in the desert. St. Epiphanius, to one hundred and fifteen; St. Jerome, about one hundred; Simon Stylites, to one hundred and nine; and Romualdus, to one hundred and twenty.

"It is wonderful in what sprightliness, strength, activity, and freedom of spirits, a low diet, even here in England, will preserve those who have habituated themselves to it. Buchanan informs us of one Laurence, who preserved himself to one hundred and forty, by the mere force of temperance and labor. Spotswood mentions one Kentigern (afterward called St. Mongah, or Mungo, from whom the famous well in Wales is named), who lived to one hundred and eighty-five years; and who, after he came to years of understanding, never tasted wine or strong drink, and slept on the cold ground.

"My worthy friend, Mr. Webb, is still alive. He, by the quickness of the faculties of the mind, and the activity of the organs of his body, shows the great benefit of a low diet – living altogether on vegetable food and pure water. Henry Jenkins lived to one hundred and sixty-nine years on a low, coarse, and simple diet. Thomas Parr died at the age of one hundred and fifty-two years and nine months. His diet was coarse bread, milk, cheese, whey, and small beer; and his historian tells us, that he might have lived a good while longer if he had not changed his diet and air; coming out of a clear, thin air, into the thick air of London, and being taken into a splendid family, where he fed high, and drank plentifully of the best wines, and, as a necessary consequence, died in a short time. Dr. Lister mentions eight persons in the north of England, the youngest of whom was above one hundred years old, and the oldest was one hundred and forty. He says, it is to be observed that the food of all this mountainous country is exceeding coarse."

Dr. C., in his Natural Method, at page 91, thus continues his remarks:

"And there are whole villages in this kingdom, even of those who live on the plains, who scarce eat animal food, or drink fermented liquors a dozen times a year. It is true, most of these cannot be said to live at ease and commodiously, and many may be said to live in barbarity and ignorance. All I would infer from this is, that they do live, and enjoy life, health, and outward serenity, with few or no bodily diseases but from accidents and epidemical causes; and that, being reduced by voluntary and necessary poverty, they are not able to manage with care and caution the rest of the non-naturals, which, for perfect health and cheerfulness, must all be equally attended to, and prudently conducted; and their ignorance and brutality is owing to the want of the convenience of due and sufficient culture and education in their youth.

"But the only conclusion I would draw from these historical facts is, that a low diet, or living on vegetables, will not destroy life or health, or cause nervous and cephalic distempers; but, on the contrary, cure them, as far as they are curable. I pretend to demonstrate from these facts, that abstinence and a low diet is the great antidote and universal remedy of distempers acquired by excess, intemperance, and a mistaken regimen of high meats and drinks; and that it will greatly alleviate and render tolerable the original distempers derived from diseased parents; and that it is absolutely necessary for the deep thinking part of mankind, who would preserve their faculties sound and entire, ripe and pregnant to a green old age and to the last dregs of life; and that it is, lastly, the true and real antidote and preservative from heavy-headedness, irregular and disorderly intellectual functions, from loss of the rational faculties, memory, and senses, and from all nervous distempers, as far as the ends of Providence and the condition of mortality will allow.

"Let two people be taken as nearly alike as the diversity and the individuality of nature will admit, of the same age, stature, complexion, and strength of body, and under the same chronical distemper, and I am willing to take the seeming worse of the two; let all the most promising nostrums, drops, drugs, and medicines known among the learned and experienced physicians, ancient or modern, regular physicians or quacks, be administered to the best of the two, by any professor at home or abroad; I will manage my patient with only a few naturally indicated and proper evacuations and sweetening innocent alternatives, which shall neither be loathsome, various, nor complicated, require no confinement, under an appropriate diet, or, in a word, under the 'lightest and the least,' or at worst under a milk and seed diet; and I will venture reputation and life, that my method cures sooner, more perfectly and durably, is much more easily and pleasantly passed through, in a shorter time, and with less danger of a relapse than the other, with all the assistance of the best skill and experience, under a full and free, though even a commonly reputed moderate diet, but of rich foods and generous liquors; much more, under a voluptuous diet."

But I am unwilling to dismiss this subject without inserting a few more extracts from Dr. Cheyne, to show his views of the treatment of diseases. And first, of the scurvy, and other diseases which he supposes to arise from it.

"There is no chronical distemper, whatsoever, more universal, more obstinate, and more fatal in Britain than the scurvy, taken in its general extent. Scarce any one chronical distemper but owes its origin to a scorbutic tendency, or is so complicated with it, that it furnishes the most cruel and most obstinate symptoms. To it we owe all the dropsies that happen after the meridian of life; all diabetes, asthmas, consumptions of several kinds; many sorts of colics and diarrhœas; some kinds of gouts and rheumatisms, all palsies, various kinds of ulcers, and possibly the cancer itself; and most cutaneous foulnesses, weakly constitutions, and bad digestions; vapors, melancholy, and almost all nervous distempers whatsoever. And what a plentiful source of miseries the last are, the afflicted best can tell. And scarce any one chronical distemper whatever, but has some degree of this evil faithfully attending it. The reason why the scurvy is peculiar to this country and so fruitful of miseries, is, that it is produced by causes mostly special and particular to this island, to wit: the indulging so much in animal food and strong fermented liquors, sedentary and confined employments, etc.

"Though the inhabitants of Britain live, for the most part, as long as those of a warmer climate, and probably rather longer, yet scarce any one, especially those of the better sort, but becomes crazy and suffers under some chronical distemper or other, before he arrives at old age.

"Nothing less than a very moderate use of animal food, and that of the least exciting kind, and a more moderate use of spirituous liquors, due exercise, etc., can keep this hydra under. And nothing else than a total abstinence from animal food and alcoholic liquors can totally extirpate it."

The following are extracted from his "Natural Methods." I do not lay them down as recipes, to be followed in the treatment of diseases; but to show the views of Dr. Cheyne in regard to vegetable regimen.

"1. Cancer.– Any cancer that can be cut out, contracted, and healed up with common, that is, soft, cool, and gently astringent dressings, and at last left as an issue on the part, may, by a cow's milk and seed diet continued ever afterward, be made as easy to the patient, and his life and health as long preserved, almost, as if he had never been afflicted with it; especially if under fifty years of age.

"2. Cancer.– A total ass's milk diet – about two quarts a day, without any other meat or drink – will in time cure a cancer in any part of the body, with mere common dressings, provided the patient is not quite worn out with it before it is begun, or too far gone in the common duration of life and even in that case, it will lessen the pain, lengthen life, and make death easier, especially if joined with small interspersed bleedings, millepedes, crabs' eyes prepared, nitre and rhubarb, properly managed. But the diet, even after the cure, must be continued, and never after greatly altered, unless it be into cow's milk with seeds.

"3. Consumption.– A total milk and seed diet, gentle and frequent bleedings, as symptoms exasperate, a little ipecacuanha or thumb vomit repeated once or twice a week, chewing quill bark in the morning, and a few grains of rhubarb at night, will totally cure consumptions, even when attended with tubercles, and hemoptoe, and hectic, in the first stage; will greatly relieve, if not cure, in the second stage, especially if riding and a warm clear air be joined; and make death easier in the third and last stage.

"4. Fits.– A total cow's milk diet – about two quarts a day – without any other food, will at last totally cure all kinds of fits, epileptical, hysterical, or apoplectic, if entered upon before fifty. But the patient, if near fifty, must ever after continue in the same diet, with the addition only of seeds; otherwise his fits will return oftener and more severely, and at last cut him off.

"5. Palsy.– A total cow's milk diet, without any other food, will bid fairest to cure a hemiplegia or even a dead palsy, and consequently all the lesser degrees of a partial one, if entered upon before fifty. And this distemper I take to be the most obstinate, intractable, and disheartening one that can afflict the human machine; and is chiefly produced by intemperate cookery, with its necessary attendant, habitual luxury.

"6. Gout.– A total milk and seed diet, with gentle vomits before and after the fits, chewing bark in the morning and rhubarb at night, with bleeding about the equinoxes, will perfectly cure the gout in persons under fifty, and greatly relieve those farther advanced in life; but must be continued ever after, if such desire to get well.

"7. Gravel.– Soap lees, softened with a little oil of sweet almonds, drunk about a quarter of an ounce twice a day on a fasting stomach; or soap and egg-shell pills, with a total milk and seed diet, and Bristol water beverage, will either totally dissolve the stone in kidneys or bladder, or render it almost as easy as the nail on one's finger, if the patient is under fifty, and much relieve him, even after that age.

"In about thirty years' practice, in which I have, in some degree or other, advised this method in proper cases, I have had but two patients in whose total recovery I have been mistaken, and these were both scrofulous cases, where the glands and tubercles were so many, so hard, and so impervious that even the ponderous remedies and diet joined could not discuss them; and they were both also too far gone before they entered upon them; – and I have found deep scrofulous vapors the most obstinate of any of this tribe of these distempers. And indeed nothing can possibly reach such, but the ponderous medicines, joined with a liquid, cool, soft, milk and seed regimen; and if these two do not, in due time, I can boldly affirm it, nothing ever will."

Dr. Cheyne goes on to speak of the cure, on similar principles, of a great many other difficult or dangerous diseases, as asthma, pleurisy, hemorrhage, mania, jaundice, bilious colic, rheumatism, scurvy, and venereal disease; but he modestly owns that, in his opinion on these, he does not feel such entire confidence as in the former cases, for want of sufficient experiments. He, however, closes one of his chapters with the following pretty strong statement:

"I am morally certain, and am myself entirely convinced, that a milk and seed, or milk and turnip diet, duly persisted in, with the occasional helps mentioned (elsewhere) on exacerbations, will either totally cure or greatly relieve every chronical distemper I ever saw or read of."

Another chapter is thus concluded, and with it I shall conclude my extracts from his writings.

"Some, perhaps, may controvert, nay, ridicule the doctrine laid down in these propositions. I shall neither reply to, nor be moved with any thing that shall be said against them. If they are of nature and truth, they will stand; if not, I consent they should come to nought. I have satisfied my own conscience – the rest belongs to Providence. Possibly time and bodily sufferings may justify them; – if not to this generation, perhaps to some succeeding one. I myself am convinced, by long and many repeated experience, of their justness and solidity. If what has been advocated through this whole treatise does not convince others, nothing I can add will be sufficient. I will leave only this reflection with my readers.

"All physicians, ancient and modern, allow that a milk and seed diet will totally cure before fifty, and infinitely alleviate after it, the consumption, the rheumatism, the scurvy, the gout – these highest, most mortal, most painful, and most obstinate distempers; and nothing is more certain in mathematics, than that which will cure the greater will certainly cure the lesser distempers."

DR. GEOFFROY

Dr. Geoffroy, a distinguished French physician and professor of chemistry and medicine in some of the institutions of France, flourished more than a hundred years ago. The bearing of the following extract will be readily seen. It is from the Memoirs of the Royal Academy for the year 1730; and I am indebted for it to the labors of Dr. Cheyne.

"M. Geoffroy has given a method for determining the proportion of nourishment or true matter of the flesh and blood, contained in any sort of food. He took a pound of meat that had been freed from the fat, bones, and cartilages, and boiled it for a determined time in a close vessel, with three pints of water; then, pouring off the liquor, he added the same quantity of water, boiling it again for the same time; and this operation he repeated several times, so that the last liquor appeared, both in smell and taste, to be little different from common water. Then, putting all the liquor together, and filtrating, to separate the too gross particles, he evaporated it over a slow fire, till it was brought to an extract of a pretty moderate consistence.

"This experiment was made upon several sorts of food, the result of which may be seen in the following table. The weights are in ounces, drachms, and grains; sixty grains to a drachm, and eight drachms to an ounce.

"The relative proportion of the nourishment will be as follows:

"From the foregoing decisive experiments it is evident that white, young, tender animal food, bread, milk, and vegetables are the best and most effectual substances for nutrition, accretion, and sweetening bad juices. They may not give so strong and durable mechanical force, because being easily and readily digestible, and quickly passing all the animal functions, so as to turn into good blood and muscular flesh, they are more transitory, fugitive, and of prompt secretion; yet they will perform all the animal functions more readily and pleasantly, with fewer resistances and less labor, and leave the party to exercise the rational and intellectual operations with pleasure and facility. They will leave Nature to its own original powers, prevent and cure diseases, and lengthen out life."

Now if this experiment proves what Dr. C. supposes in favor of the lighter meats and vegetables taken together, how much more does it prove for bread alone? For it cannot escape the eye of the least observing that this article, though placed last in the list of Dr. Geoffroy, is by far the highest in point of nutriment; nay, that it is about three times as high as any of the rest. I am not disposed to lay so much stress on these experiments as Dr. C. does; nevertheless, they prove something Connected with the more recent experiments of Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin and others, how strikingly do they establish one fact, at least, viz., that bread and the other farinaceous vegetables cannot possibly be wanting in nutriment; and how completely do they annihilate the old-fashioned doctrine – one which is still abroad and very extensively believed – that animal food is a great deal more nourishing than vegetable! No careful inquirer can doubt that bread, peas, beans, rice, etc., are twice as nutritious – to say the least – as flesh or fish.

MESSRS. PERCY AND VAUQUELIN

As I have alluded, in the preceding article, to the experiments of Messrs. Percy and Vauquelin, two distinguished French chemists, their testimony in this place seems almost indispensable, even though we should not regard it, in the most strict import of the term, as medical testimony. The result of their experiments, as communicated by them to the French minister of the interior, is as follows: