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water-gruel, milk, and vegetables. Dr. Vogel also asserts, that animal food is falsely held to be a cause of atrophy, and that children, from whom such food is withheld, oftener fall into an atrophy than those to whom it is allowed. (C. G. T. Kortum de vitus scrophulosis. I. 3. 50.) These testimonies may be received with fuller assurance, because in other respects the authors are strongly disposed in favor of that theory, which still not unfrequently deludes English parents with the false hope of rendering the blood of their children pure, and their humors mild, by millet pudding, and by other preparations of vegetable substances in over-proportion."

It is no wonder that, with such strong assertions as these staring them in the face, parents should be terrified at the thoughts of confining their children to vegetable food; and should apprehend that they were inflicting an irreparable injury on the dearest objects of their affection. These are the doctrines, which, coming from what has been thought the best authority, pass from mouth to mouth, and have excited such an hostility to simple nutriment. It is therefore incumbent on me to examine a little the validity of this accusation.

"When children are fed on vegetables, with little or no admixture of animal food, they die in great numbers of scrofulous affections." It is difficult to disprove assertions to which we cannot attach definite ideas. Scrofulous affections are commonly external disorders, unattended with danger. What diseases Dr. Beddoes understood by this term, is not very clear; I will suppose, however, fatal chronical diseases attended with ulcerations, or abscesses, as lumbar abscess, psoas abscess, white swelling, etc.

Now, Dr. Watt has given us (annexed to his treatise on chincough) a register of all the deaths of children to the age of ten years at Glasgow, for thirty years. The diseases are arranged under the following heads: Small-pox, Measles, Chincough, Stopping, Water in the Head, Teething, Bowelhives, Still-born. I cannot find here a single head under which these fatal "scrofulous affections" can be properly included. Though, certainly, some such diseases must in thirty years have occurred, and even not unfrequently, and we may therefore allow that these bills are defective, yet it is equally evident that such cases must have formed a small proportion indeed of the mass of mortality in childhood.

The London bills of mortality give as little countenance to this assertion. Let us take a single year: it shall be the first that offers, namely, the years 1795 and 1796, which are the

first found in Dr. Willan's " Reports on the diseases of London." The whole mortality of London, from the 22d of December, 1795, to the 17th of December, 1796, stated in the bills, is 18,664.* Of these there are stated to have died of abscess, twenty-one; sores, four; evil, five; ulcers, two; rickets, one: total, thirty-three. These are the only heads, out of this great mass of mortality, under which fatal "scrofulous affections" can be arranged. Of this whole mortality of London, two thirds of the deaths take place before sixteen years of age. We see, therefore, how small a proportion of the diseases of early life are fatal "scrofulous affections."

I look in vain for a private authority for the support for this assertion. Dr. Woolcombe has given a catalogue of nearly 5000 patients, admitted at the Plymouth public dispensary, for near seven years. In this long catalogue there are found, arthropuosis, one; hydrarthus, ten; rachitis, nineteen; scrofula, forty-one. Of these cases, one under the head of rachitis is marked as having been fatal. If it were true, that " great numbers' of children die of this sort of disorders, we should certainly have some vestiges of the fact, either in public or in private records.

In opposition to the accusation of vegetable diet causing tumefaction of the abdomen, I must testify that, twice in my own family, I have seen such swellings disappear under a vegetable regimen, which had been formed under a diet of animal food. I must refer to pp. 161 and 166 of this work. These facts I cannot but regard as entitled to infinitely more attention than any observations on the poor, who are addicted to many depraved habits, and exposed to complicated causes of disease.

We may judge from these facts, how idle and ill grounded these apprehensions really are. But the general charge of vegetable diet causing scrofulous disease must be allowed so much weight, as to amount to a demonstration, that it has often been observed under such a diet; and, in consequence, that such a diet has of itself no tendency to cure it. In the last four years, several cases of glandular swellings have occurred to me at the general dispensary; and I have made particular inquiries into the mode of living of such children. In the majority they had animal food. In one child, of under

* In the same work, the total number of deaths, in the year 1796, is stated at 19,228. (See Willan on the diseases of London, p. 58.) There must be an error, therefore, in the number given above; but it does not affect the argument.

two years of age, with many swellings of this kind, the appetite for animal food was so strong that the mother thought it right to check it. In a few, there was hardly any animal food given, probably from poverty. These children appeared healthy; but in every case, except one, they had a considerable thirst upon them.

To those who think that animal food has the smallest tendency to prevent the appearance of glandular swellings, I recommend the consideration of the following facts taken from the mouth of a patient of this institution, on whom I observed these glandular swellings on each side of the neck, and was informed that they existed also under the armpits, and in the groins.

T. L., aged twenty-one, lived till he was fourteen years old with his father, the head servant or workman in the warehouse of a wholesale druggist. Being one of a large family living on servant's wages, their diet was principally vegetables; the family had commonly some meat on Sundays, but scarcely on any other day. Their drink was chiefly water. Under this manner of life he was without disease, but was not a strong hearty boy. At fourteen he was put apprentice to a goldsmith. Here he had meat daily, as much as he chose, for dinner; his drink was small beer, but he was allowed a little porter on Sundays. The consequence was that he improved considerably in strength and in appearance; and, as he expresses it, he thought himself becoming quite a hearty lad. This increased strength and apparently improved health lasted nearly two years. After that it began to decline. Though the diet continued unchanged, the strength diminished; and he is certain that, now at the age of twenty-one, he is not so strong as he was three years ago, at eighteen. He is not now able to raise weights which he could do then.

Besides this, mark well the sequel. During the second year of his living on the fuller diet, while he was flattering himself that he enjoyed so much better health, these tumors above mentioned first appeared upon him. And they have continued ever since, nearly as they are at present.

We see then, first, that though the strength may be increased by animal diet, yet the increased strength may not continue though the diet be continued. On the contrary, there is a sort of oscillation, the strength first rising and then sinking again. This is what is experienced by the trainers of boxers. A certain time is necessary to get these men into condition; but this condition cannot be maintained for many weeks together, though the

process by which it was formed is continued. The same is found to hold in the training of race horses and fighting cocks. Increasing the strength, then, is no proof of salubrity of diet.

Now let us suppose this young man had had these marks of scrofula upon him while he resided at home. It would most commonly have been ascribed to the poorness of his diet; the appearance of increased health and strength upon a fuller course of living would have been brought in support of this opinion; and it would have been probably said that if he had had the benefit of a good dinner of animal food, daily, these marks of scrofula would not have appeared. The faets, however, are in direct opposition to this supposition; for the signs of scrofula first appeared, as I have stated, when he was under the strongest influence of the apparently beneficial change introduced by the animal food.

With equal confidence has this writer enjoined the use of animal food to prevent consumption, as he would fain persuade

us.

He says, "In cases where habitual weakness or the history of the family gives reason to apprehend consumption, one of the most indispensable rules of preservation is to use animal food freely. There seems no limit to the quantity. but the indications furnished by the palate, and the power of the digestive organs. More should not be given, more will not be taken than is relished." One can hardly help staring with astonishment at seeing such directions as these; when we see examples daily of young persons becoming consumptive who never went without animal food for a single day of their lives; and consider that such is the constant habit of this country, where consumption destroys its thousands and tens of thousands.

If the use of animal food were necessary in northern latitudes to prevent consumption, we should expect that where the people lived almost entirely upon such a diet, the disease would be unknown. Now the Indian tribes, visited by Mr. Hearne, live in this manner. They do not cultivate the earth. They subsist by hunting, and the scanty produce of spontaneous vegetation. But among these tribes consumption is common. Their diseases, Mr. Hearne informs us, are principally fluxes, scurvy, and consumption. But to return to my present subject.

Scrofula, as affecting the whole constitution, is to be considered, probably, as a disease of organic power. If a bone exfoliates, for example, or a membrane loses its proper structure, as the cornea of the eye, there was probably some original organic defect. But the more common phenomenon of glandular swellings and suppurations is attributed, probably with jus

tice, to a vitiated state, or acrimony as it is called, of the lymph. It is to be considered that the lymph is not merely the exudation into the various cavities, which is reabsorbed, but the parts of the body which, being no longer fit to continue a part of the living system, are to be eliminated and thrown out of the body. The solid parts of the body must become fluid before they are absorbed and form part of the lymph. The lymph, therefore, must be considered in part as a dead, or at least, a dying part of the system; and hence it may readily be conceived to acquire occasionally a degree of virulence or poisonous acrimony; to be already, as it were, cadaverous, and therefore to be irritating to the parts through which it passes.

If this be correct, the glandular swellings in scrofula are secondary symptoms. Indeed, we often see conjoined to the glandular swellings in the neck, scabs or sores upon the scalp; and the thickness of the upper lip, and tumefaction and soreness of the nostrils, are so frequent as to be esteemed a common symptom of this disease. It is not improbable, therefore, that the glandular swellings always indicate some disease of the membranes, cavities, or other organs from which the lymphatics originate. It is not impossible that, as we see a portion of bone perish and be thrown out of the system, so a membrane, or other soft part, may occasionally perish, and be regenerated; it is possible that this process may take place without any external signs of it, and that during such a process the lymphatic glands may be irritated, tumefy, and suppurate.

Upon such a theory of scrofula, as this view of the phenomena points to, there is no immediate connection as cause and effect between impure water and scrofula. Impure water does not directly cause the scrofula; nor are we to suppose the glandular swellings to be occasioned by foreign matter passing through the glands irritating and inflaming them. But the putrescent matter of water acts on the scrofulous habit as upon others; only the scrofulous habit appears to be more than commonly irritable. This matter is a depressing power; the tone of the body is diminished by its action; the radical powers of the fibres are either destroyed or greatly impaired; of many parts the structure is altered; of others, the very substance is destroyed. But these processes are, in no circumstances, chemical processes, but universally vital processes.

This connection has been so often asserted, that it cannot be doubted that it has been really remarked, that scrofulous disorders are abundant where the water is very impure. Dr. Beddoes has furnished us with two such authorities, which I

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