Read Ebook: Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men and by Experience in All Ages Including a System of Vegetable Cookery by Alcott William A William Andrus

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e from all drinks but water, may also have had much influence, as well as other causes.

WHITEHALL, Washington Co., N. Y., March 17, 1835.

DEAR SIR,--I noticed a communication from you in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of the 5th instant, in which you signify a wish to collect facts in relation to the effects of a vegetable diet upon the human system, etc. I submit for your consideration my own experience; premising, however, that I am a practicing physician in this place--am thirty-three years old--of a sanguine, bilious temperament--have from youth up usually enjoyed good health--am not generally subject to fevers, etc.

I made a radical change in my diet three years ago this present month, from a mixed course of animal and vegetable food, to a strictly vegetable diet, on which I subsisted pretty uniformly for the most part of one year. I renewed it again about ten moths ago.

Yours, etc., D. S. WRIGHT.

PLYMOUTH, Mass., March 26, 1835.

DEAR SIR,--When I observed your questions in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, of the 11th of March, I determined to give you personal experience, in reply to your valuable queries.

In the spring of 1832, while engaged in more than usual professional labor, I began to suffer from indigestion, which gradually increased, unabated by any medicinal or dietetic course, until I was reduced to the very confines of the grave. The disease became complicated, for a time, with chronic bronchitis. I would remark, that, at the time of my commencing a severe course of diet, I was able to attend to my practice daily.

In answer to your inquiries, I would say to the 1st--very much diminished, and rapidly.

Crude as these answers are, they are at your service; and I am prompted to give them from the fact, that very few persons, I presume, have been so far reduced as myself, with dyspepsia and its concomitants. In fact, I was pronounced, by some of the most scientific physicians of Boston, as past all prospect of cure, or even much relief, from medicine, diet, or regimen. My attention has naturally been turned with anxious solicitude to the subject of diet, in all its forms. Since my unexpected restoration to health, my opportunities for observation among dyspeptics have been much enlarged; and I most unhesitatingly say, that my success is much more encouraging, in the management of such cases, since pursuing a more liberal diet, than before. Plain animal diet, avoiding condiments and tea, using mucilaginous drink, as the Irish Moss, is preferable to "absolute diet,"--cases of decided chronic gastritis excepted.

Yours, etc., H. N. PRESTON.

PHILLIPS, Somerset Co., Me., April 28, 1835.

DEAR SIR,--I have a brother-in-law, who owes his life to abstinence from animal food, and strict adherence to the simplest vegetable diet. My own existence is prolonged, only by entire abstinence from flesh-meat of every description, and feeding principally upon the coarsest farinacea.

With these views, I very cheerfully comply with your general invitation, on page 77, volume 12, of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. The answers to your interrogatories will apply to the case first referred to, to my own case, and to nearly every one which has occurred within my notice.

Yours, etc., HORACE A. BARROWS.

PHELPS, N. Y., May 4, 1835.

SIR,--My age is fifty-three. My ancestors had all melted away with hereditary consumption. At the age of twenty, I began to be afflicted with pain in different parts of the thorax, and other premonitory symptoms of phthisis pulmonalis. Soon after this, my mother and eldest sister died with the disease. For myself, having a severe attack of ague and fever, all my consumptive symptoms became greatly aggravated; the pain was shifting--sometimes between the shoulders, sometimes in the side, or breast, etc. System extremely irritable, pulse hard and easily excited, from about ninety to one hundred and fifty, by the stimulus of a very small quantity of food; and, to be short, I was given up, on all hands, as lost.

From reading "Rush" I was induced to try a milk diet, and succeeded in regaining my health, so that for twenty-four years I have been entirely free from any symptom of phthisis; and although subject, during that time, to many attacks of fever and other epidemics, have steadily followed the business of a country physician.

The quantity that I ate at a time so far from satisfying my appetite, only served to increase it; and this inconvenience continued during the whole term, without the least abatement;--and the only means by which I could resist its cravings, was to live entirely by myself, and keep out of sight of all kinds of food except the scanty pittance on which I subsisted. And now to the proposed questions.

CALEB BANNISTER.

FRANKLIN, Vermont, June 22, 1835.

SIR,--In answer to your inquiries, in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, vol. xii., page 78, I can say that I have lived entirely upon a bread and milk diet, without using any animal food other than the milk.

We are carnivorous, as well as granivorous animals, having systems requiring animal, as well as vegetable food, to keep all the organs of the body in tune; and perhaps we need a greater variety than other animals.

Yours, etc., LYMAN TENNY.

LIBERTY COUNTY, Georgia, July 15, 1835.

The case, to which allusion is made, occurred in the person of a very intelligent and truly scientific gentleman of this county, whose regular habits, both of mind and body, added to his sound and discriminating judgment, will tend to heighten the value and importance of the experiment involved in the case I am about to detail.

In answer to your interrogatories, he replies,--

However it may be, he again returned to a mixed diet , and, after six months' continuance in this state, he rapidly recovered his usual health and strength, which, up to this day--two full years after the expiration of six months--have continued good. In the treatment of his case no medicine of any kind was given, to which any good effect can be attributed; and indeed he may be said to have undergone no medical treatment at all.

Yours, etc., J. M. B. HARDEN.

NEW BEDFORD, 8th month, 26th, 1835.

RESPECTED FRIEND,--Perhaps before giving answers to thy queries in the American Journal of Medical Science, it may not be amiss to give thee some account of my family and manner of living, to enable thee to judge of the effect of a vegetable diet on the constitution.

I have a wife, a mother aged eighty-eight, and two female domestics. It is now near three years since we adopted what is called the Graham or vegetable diet, though not in its fullest extent. We exclude animal food from our diet, but sometimes we indulge in shell and other fish. We use no kind of stimulating liquors, either as drink or in cookery, nor any other stimulants except occasionally a little spice. We do not, as Professor Hitchcock would recommend, nor as I believe would be most conducive to good health, live entirely simple; sometimes, however, for an experiment, I have eaten only rice and milk; at other times only potatoes and milk for my dinner; and have uniformly found I could endure as much fatigue, and walk as far without inconvenience, as when I have eaten a greater variety. We, however, endeavor to make our varieties mostly at different meals.

For breakfast and tea we have some hot water poured upon milk, to which we add a little sugar, and cold bread and butter; but in cold weather we toast the bread, and prefer having it so cool as not to melt the butter. We seldom eat a meal without some kind of dried or preserved fruit, such as peaches, plums, quinces, or apples; and in the season, when easily to be procured, we use, freely, baked apples, also berries, particularly blackberries stewed, which, while cooking, are sweetened and thickened a little. Our dinners are nearly the same as our other meals, except that we use cold milk, without any water. We have puddings sometimes made of stale bread, at others of Graham or other flour, or rice, or ground rice, usually baked; we have also hasty puddings, made of Indian meal, or Graham flour, which we eat with milk or melted sugar and cream; occasionally we have other simple puddings, such as tapioca, etc. Custards, with or without a crust, pies made of apple, and other fruits either green or preserved; but we have no more shortening in the crust than just to make it a little tender.

Dr. Keep, of Fairhaven, Connecticut, was here about a year since, in very bad health, since which I learn he has recovered by abstaining from animal food and other injurious diet. As he is a scientific man, I think he can give thee some useful information.

Thy friend, JOSEPH RICKETSON.

NEW BEDFORD, Sept., 1835.

ANSWERS to Dr. North's inquiries on diet.

JOSEPH CONGDON.

NEW BEDFORD, 9th month, 10, 1835.

DR. M. L. NORTH,--Agreeably to request, the following answers are forwarded, which I believe to be correct as far as my experience has tested.

Thy assured friend, GEO. W. BAKER.

NEW BEFORD, 9th month, 10th day, 1835.

FRIEND,--As I have lived nearly three years upon a vegetable diet, I cheerfully comply with thy request.

I would remark that during the season of fruits, I eat freely of them, with milk; and consider them to be healthy.

JOHN HOWLAND, JR.

BATAVIA, N. Y., Oct. 21, 1835.

SIR,--Some months since, I read your inquiries on diet in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal; and subsequently in the Journal of Medical Sciences, Philadelphia.

I will answer your questions, numerically, from my knowledge of a case somewhat in point, and with which I am but too familiar, as it is my own. But, first, let me premise a few points in the history of my health, as a kind of key to my answers.

In 1826, I commenced the practice of physic. From this time, to the winter of 1831-2, I found it necessary gradually to diminish my indulgence in the luxuries of the table--especially in animal food, and distilled and fermented liquors. On one of the most inclement nights of the winter of 1831-2, a fire broke out in our village, at which I became very wet by perspiration, and the ill-directed efforts of some to extinguish it. This was followed by a severe inflammatory attack upon the digestive organs generally, and especially upon the renal region, which confined me to the house for more than eight months; and, for the greatest share of that time, with the most excruciating torture. On getting out again, I found myself in a wretched condition indeed--reduced to a skeleton--a voracious appetite, which could not be indulged, and which had scarcely deserted me through the whole eight months. I could not regain my flesh or strength but by almost imperceptible degrees; indeed, loaf-sugar and crackers were almost the only food I could use with impunity for the first year.

But I have already surpassed my limits, and here are my answers.

Yours, etc., W. H. WEBSTER.

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