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Yours, etc., W. H. WEBSTER.

MOUNT-JOY, Pa., Oct. 27, 1835.

SIR,--I hereby transmit to you, answers to a series of dietetic queries which you have recently submitted.

Yours, etc., JOSIAH BENNETT.

SIR,--The following answer to the interrogations in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of March 1835, on diet, etc., as proposed by yourself, has been through the press of business, neglected until this late period. Trusting they may be of some use, I now forward them.

WM. VINCENT.

L. R. B.

The foregoing statements and answers are in her own way and manner.

Yours, etc., GEO. H. PERRY.

FALMOUTH, Mass., March 28, 1835.

SIR,--In compliance with the request you recently made in the Medical Journal, I inclose the following answers to the queries relative to regimen you have propounded. They are given by a lady, whose experience, intelligence, and discernment, have eminently qualified her to answer them. She, with myself, is equally interested with you in having this important question settled, and is extremely happy that you have undertaken to do it. This lady is now fifty years of age; her constitution naturally is good; her early habits were active, and her diet simple, until twenty years of age. After that, until within a few years, her living consisted of all kinds of meats and delicacies, with wine after dinners, etc., etc.

Be assured, dear sir, that these answers have come from a high source, to which private reference may at any time be made, and consequently are entitled to the highest consideration.

Yours, etc., L. W. SHERMAN.

NOTE.--If I have not been minute enough in the relation of this case, I shall hereafter be happy to answer any questions you may think proper to propose. It is a very interesting and important case, in my opinion. The lady has been under my care a number of times, while laboring under slight indisposition. She has always been very regular and systematic in all her habits. She is healthy and robust in appearance, and looks as though she might not be more than forty. This is the only case of the kind within my knowledge. I have practiced on her plan for a few weeks at a time, and, so far as my experience goes, it precisely comports with hers. But I love the "good things" of this world too well to abstain from their use, until some formidable disease demands their prohibition.

Yours, etc., L. W. S.

FOOTNOTES:

Dr. Preston has since deceased.

Mr. Vincent is of Stonington, Ct.

REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING LETTERS.

Correspondence.--The "prescribed course of Regimen."--How many victims to it?--Not one.--Case of Dr. Harden considered.--Case of Dr. Preston.--Views of Drs. Clark, Cheyne, and Lambe, on the treatment of Scrofula.--No reports of Injury from the prescribed System.--Case of Dr. Bannister.--Singular testimony of Dr. Wright.--Vegetable food for Laborers.--Testimony, on the whole, much more favorable to the Vegetable System than could reasonably have been expected, in the circumstances.

"Reports not unfrequently reach us," says Dr. North, "of certain individuals who have fallen victims to a prescribed course of regimen. These persons are said, by gentlemen who are entitled to the fullest confidence, to have pertinaciously followed the course, till they reached a point of reduction from which there was no recovery." "If these are facts," he adds, "they ought to be known and published."

It was in this view, that Dr. North, himself a medical practitioner of high respectability, sent forth to every corner of the land, through standard and orthodox medical journals, to regular and experienced physicians--his "medical brethren"--his list of inquiries. These inquiries, designed to elicit truth, were couched in just such language as was calculated to give free scope and an acceptable channel for the communication of every fact which seemed to be opposed to the VEGETABLE SYSTEM; for this, we believe, was distinctly understood, by every medical man, to be the "prescribed course of regimen" alluded to.

Let us now review the contents of the foregoing chapter. Let us see, in the first place, what number of persons have here been reported, by medical men, as having fallen victims to the said "prescribed course of regimen."

The matter is soon disposed of. Not a case of the description is found in the whole catalogue of returns to Dr. N. This is a triumph which the friends of the vegetable system did not expect. From the medical profession of this country, hostile as many of them are known to be to the "prescribed course of regimen," they must naturally have expected to hear of at least a few persons who were supposed to have fallen victims to it. But, I say again, not one appears.

As to the case mentioned by Dr. Harden, no one who examined it with care, will believe for a moment, that it affords the slightest evidence against a diet exclusively vegetable. The gentleman who made the experiment had pursued it faithfully three years, without the slightest loss of strength, but with many advantages, when, of a sudden, extreme debility came on. Is it likely that a diet on which he had so long been doing well, should produce such a sudden falling off? The gentleman himself appears not to have had the slightest suspicion that the debility had any connection with the diet. He attributes its commencement, if not its continuance, to the inhalation of poisonous gases, to which he was subjected in the process of some chemical experiments.

But why, then, it may be asked, did he return to a mixed diet, if he had imbibed no doubts in regard to a diet exclusively vegetable; and, above all, how happened he to recover on it? To this it may be replied, that there is every reason to believe, from the tenor of the letter, that he acted against his own inclination, and contrary to his own views, at the request of his friends, and of Dr. Harden, his physician; though Dr. Harden does not expressly say so. Besides, it does not appear that under his mixed diet there was any favorable change, till something like six months had elapsed. This was a period, in all probability, just sufficient to allow the poison of the gases to disappear; after which he might have been expected to recover on any diet not positively bad. If this is not a true solution of the case, how happens it that there was no disease of any organ or function, except the nervous function? There is every reason for believing that Dr. Harden, at the date of his letter, had undergone a change of opinion, and was himself beginning to doubt whether the regimen had any agency in producing the debility.

Dr. Preston was evidently timid and fearful--foreboding ill--during the whole progress of his experiment. We think his story fully justifies this conclusion. In such circumstances, what could have been expected? There is no course of regimen in the world which will succeed happily in a state of mind like this.

Dr. Cheyne, in his writings, not only gives it as his opinion that a milk diet, long continued, or a milk and vegetable diet and mild mercurials, are the best means of curing scrofula; but he also says, expressly, that "in all countries where animal food and strong fermented liquors are too freely used, there is scarcely an individual that hath not scrofulous glands." A sad story to relate, or to read! But, Dr. Lambe, of London, and other British physicians, entertain similar sentiments; and Dr. Lambe practices medicine largely, while entertaining these sentiments. I could mention more than one distinguished physician, in Boston and elsewhere, who prescribes a vegetable and milk diet in scrofula.

It is also worthy of particular notice, that not a fact is brought, or an experiment related, in a list of from thirty to forty cases, reported too by medical men, which goes to prove that any injury has arisen to the healthy, from laying aside the use of animal food. This kind of information, though not the principal thing, was at least a secondary object with Dr. North; as we see by his questions, which were intended to be put to those who had excluded animal food from their diet for a year or more.

But, let us take a general view of the replies to the inquiries of Dr. North. The sum of his first three questions, was,--What were the effects of excluding animal food from your diet on your bodily strength, your mental faculties, and your appetite and animal spirits?

The answers to the three questions, of which this is the same, are, as will be seen, remarkable. In almost every instance the reply indicates that bodily and mental labor was endured with less fatigue than before, and that an increased activity of mind and body was accompanied with increased cheerfulness and animal enjoyment. In nearly every instance, strength of body was actually increased; especially after the first month. A result so uniformly in favor of the vegetable system is certainly more than could have been expected.

One physician who made the experiment, indeed, says, that though his mind was clearer than before, he could not endure, so long, a laborious investigation. Another individual says, he perceived no difference in this respect. A third says, she found her bodily strength and powers of investigation somewhat diminished, though her disease was removed. With these exceptions, the testimony on this point is, as I have already said, most decidedly--I might say most overwhelmingly--in favor of the disuse of animal food.

Among the diseases and difficulties which were removed, or supposed to be removed, by the new diet, were dyspepsia, with the constipation which usually attends it, general lassitude, rheumatism, periodical headache, palpitations, irritation of the first passages, eruptive diseases of the skin, scurvy, and consumption.

The case of Dr. Bannister, who was, in early life, decidedly consumptive, is one of the most remarkable on record. Though evidently consumptive, and near the borders of the grave, between the ages of twenty and twenty-nine, he so far recovered as to be, at the age of fifty-three, entirely free from every symptom of phthisis for twenty-four years; during which whole period, he was sufficiently vigorous to follow the laborious business of a country physician.

The confidence of Dr. Wright in the prophylactic powers of a diet exclusively vegetable, so far as the mere opinion of one medical man is to be received as testimony in the case, is also remarkable. He not only regards the vegetable system as a defence against the diseases of miasmatic regions, but also against the varioloid disease. On the latter point, he goes, it seems, almost as far as Mr. Graham, who appears to regard it not only as, in some measure, a preventive of epidemic diseases generally, in which he is most undoubtedly correct, but also of the small-pox.

The testimony on another point which is presented in the replies to Dr. North's questions, is almost equally uniform. In nearly every instance, the individuals who have abandoned animal food have found themselves less subject to colds than before; and some appear to have fallen into the habit of escaping them altogether. When it is considered how serious are the consequences of taking cold--when it is remembered that something like one half of the diseases of our climate have their origin in this source--it is certainly no trifling evidence in favor of a course of regimen, that, besides being highly favorable in every other respect, it should prove the means of freeing mankind from exposure to a malady at once troublesome in itself and disastrous in its consequences.

In reply to the question,--Is a vegetable diet more or less aperient than a mixed one,--the answers have been the same, in nearly every instance, that it is more so.

On one more important point there is a very general concurrence of opinion. I allude to the choice of articles from the vegetable kingdom. The farinacea are considered as the best; especially wheat, ground without bolting. The preference of Dr. Preston is an exception; and there are one or two others.

On the whole--I repeat it--the testimony is far more favorable to the "prescribed course of regimen," both for the healthy and diseased than under the circumstances connected with the inquiry the most thorough-going vegetable eater could possibly have anticipated. If this is a fair specimen--and I know no reason why it may not be regarded as such--of the results of similar experiments and similar observations among medical men throughout our country, could their observations and experiments be collected, it certainly confirms the views which some among us have long entertained on this subject, and which will be still more strongly confirmed by evidence which will be produced in the following chapters. Had similar efforts been made forty or fifty years ago, to ascertain the views of physicians and others respecting the benefits or safety of excluding wine and other fermented drinks in the treatment of several diseases, in which not one in ten of our modern practitioners would now venture to use them, as well as among the healthy, I believe the results would have been of a very different character. The opinions, at least, of the physicians themselves, would most certainly have been, nearly without a dissenting voice, that the entire rejection of wine and fermented liquors was dangerous to the sick, and unsafe to many of the healthy, especially the hard laborer. And there is quite as much reason to believe that animal food will be discarded from our tables in the progress of a century to come, as there was, in 1800, for believing that all drinks but water would be laid aside in the progress of the century which is now passing.

FOOTNOTES:

See a more recent letter from Dr. Harden, in the next chapter.

Besides, it is worthy of notice, that Dr. Preston did not long survive on his own plan. He died about the year 1840.

ADDITIONAL INTELLIGENCE.

Letter from Dr. H. A. Barrows.--Dr. J. M. B. Harden.--Dr. J. Porter.--Dr. N. J. Knight.--Dr. Lester Keep.--Second letter from Dr. Keep.--Dr. Henry H. Brown.--Dr. Franklin Knox.--From a Physician.--Additional statements by the Author.

I have also received interesting letters from several other physicians in New England and elsewhere--but particularly in New England--on the same general subject, which, with an additional statement of my own case, I have added to the foregoing. I might have added a hundred authentic cases, of similar import. I might also have obtained an additional amount of the same sort of intelligence, had it not been for the want of time, amid numerous other pressing avocations, for correspondence of this kind. Besides, if what I have obtained is not satisfactory, I have many doubts whether more would be so.

The first letter I shall insert is from Dr. H. A. Barrows, of Phillips, in Maine. It is dated October 10, 1837, and may be considered as a sequel to that written by him to Dr. North, though it is addressed to the author of this volume.

DEAR SIR,--As to food, my course of living has been quite uniform for the last two or three years--principally as follows. Wheat meal bread, potatoes, butter, and baked sweet apples for breakfast and dinners; for suppers, old dry flour bread, which, eaten very leisurely without butter, sauce, or drink, sits the lightest and best of any thing I eat. But I cannot make this my principal diet, because the bowels will not act unless they have the spur of wheat bran two thirds of the time. I have at times practiced going to bed without any third meal; and have found myself amply rewarded for this kind of fasting, and the consequent respite thereby afforded the stomach, in quiet sleep and improved condition the next day. And as to drink, I still use cold water, which I take with as great a zest, and as keen a relish, as the inebriate does his stimulus. I seldom drink any thing with my meals; and if I could live without drinking any thing between meals, I think I should be rid of the principal "thorn in my side," the acetous fermentation so constantly going on in my epigastric storehouse.

As to exercise, I take abundance; perform all my practice on horseback, and find this the very best kind of exercise for me. I seldom eat oftener than at intervals of six hours, and am apt to eat too much--have at various times attempted Don Cornaro's method of weighing food, but have found it rather dry business, probably on account of its conflicting with my appetite; but I actually find that my stomach does not bear watching at all well.

My brother continues to practice nearly total abstinence from animal food. I have seen him but once in two and a half years, but learn his health has greatly improved, so that he was able to take charge of a high school in the fall of 1836, of an academy in the spring of the present year, and also again this fall. During his vacation last July, he took a tour into the interior of Worcester county, Mass., and came home entirely on foot by way of the Notch of the White Hills, traveling nearly three hundred miles. This speaks something in favor of rigid abstinence--as when he commenced this regimen he was extremely low.

Yours sincerely, H. A. BARROWS.

GEORGIA, Liberty Co., Oct. 19, 1837.

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