William Alcott - Vegetable Diet - As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages

Sir, – I deem it necessary, first, to mention the situation of my health, at the time of commencing abstinence from animal food. I was recovering from an illness of a nervous fever . A sudden change respecting my food not sitting well, rendered it necessary for me to abstain from all kinds, excepting dry wheat bread and gruel, for several weeks. By degrees I returned to my former course of diet, but as yet not to its full extent, as I cannot partake of animal food of any kind whatever, nor of vegetables cooked therewith.

1. Diminished.

2. —

3. I do not perceive the mind to be clearer, and the power of investigation less.

4. Distress in the stomach and pain in the head removed.

5. —

6. Six years and ten months.

7. Unusual proportion of animal food.

8. The first year, I drank only warm water, sweetened; since that, tea.

9. —

10. I do not.

11. I find beets particularly hard to digest.

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

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.

1. Her bodily strength was greatly increased by excluding animal food from her diet.

2. The animal sensations connected with the process of digestion have been decidedly more agreeable.

3. The mind is much clearer, the spirits much better, the temper more even, and "less irritability pervades the system." The mind can continue a laborious investigation longer than when she subsisted on a mixed diet.

4. Her health, which was before feeble, has, by the change, been decidedly improved.

5. She has certainly had fewer colds, and no febrile attacks of any consequence, since she has practiced rigid abstinence from meats.

6. She has abstained entirely for three years, and has taken but little for seven or eight years; and whenever she has, from necessity (in being from home, where she could procure nothing else), indulged in eating meat, she has universally suffered severely in consequence.

7. The change to a vegetable diet was preceded, in her case, by the use of an uncommon proportion of animal food, highly seasoned with stimulants.

8. Tea and coffee she has not used for thirteen years. She has used, for substitutes, water, milk and water, barley water, and gruel. She found tea and coffee to have an exceedingly pernicious effect upon her nervous and digestive system.

9. A vegetable diet is more aperient than a mixed. Habitual constipation has been entirely removed by the change.

10. She sincerely believes, from her experience, that the health of laborers and students would be generally promoted by the exclusion of animal food from their diet.

11. She considers hominy , as prepared at the South, particularly healthy; and subsists upon this, with bread made from coarse flour, with broccoli, cauliflower, and all kinds of vegetables in their season.

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.

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.

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.

The results of Dr. North's inquiries, and of an opportunity so favorable for "putting down," by the exhibition of sober facts, the vegetable system, are fully presented in the foregoing chapter. Let it not be said by any, that the attempt was a partial or unfair one. Let it be remembered that every effort was made to obtain truth in facts , without partiality, favor, or affection. Let it be remembered, too, that nearly two years elapsed before Dr. North gave up his papers to the author; during which time, and indeed up to the present hour – a period, in the whole, of more than fourteen years – a door has been opened to every individual who had any thing to say, bearing upon the subject.

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.