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ing lectures in the village, and sometimes at the seminary, on the subject of health, and the necessity of labor, exercise, and attention to diet, in order to preserve it.

C. H.

CASE OF JOHN BURDELL, DENTIST, OF NEW YORK.

MR. BURDELL is now forty-four years of age. He was from Oneida County, State of New York. He has resided in this city twenty-two years, before that time always in the country. His parents lived a number of miles distant from neighbors, in a wild part of the country, and the occupation of the male members of the family was clearing of land, farming, and agricultural pursuits generally. His parents were comparatively healthy. On his father's side they predisposed to paralysis; his mother died of apoplexy. Mr. Burdell ate plentifully of flesh meat, as was customary in those times, but the bread eaten was mostly of the coarser forms until his coming to the city.

He was always rather delicate in health; had frequent sick headache with nausea; was habitually costive; and often had nightmare. The first that he ever went to school was when he was sixteen years old.

Mr. Burdell has now been engaged in dentistry twenty years. He lived about two years as people ordinarily do, and then commenced the "vegetarian system," using, however, a little milk and flesh for about one year. He has not eaten flesh more than three weeks in all since that time, now a period of eighteen years. He has used milk he judges not more than one year in the aggregate since that time, and then only in a slight quantity at intervals.

On commencing the new diet he could perceive that his mind gradually became more clear. Sleep grew better; and his strength of mind he regards remained about the same. Headache appeared to disappear just in proportion as animal substances were given up; and he has not experienced this affection in a single instance, now several years. Constipation, from which he had suffered from a child, became very soon removed. Bodily strength was not materially changed. He can now, he judges, bear more exercise of any kind to which he is accustomed than ever before in his life. He has for years known no such sensation as fatigue; and yet his occupation

von rÞeir pursued, as it is case, is a very fatiguing one, *** De FTS TVs, and head.

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Dout night years suce, M. Burdell after having spent some Benins ʼn unpicasant mental excitement, and ate, as he now beves, 200 many sour sppies, he was attacked in the month of Apud with diarrhoea, the first he ever had after commencing his now regimed. Regarùng homeopathic practice the safest sua; he knew of at that time, and having a particular friend, a homeopathic physician, in whom he ecriided, he consented to have him prescribe, on the condition, however, that no calomel or mineral poisons of whatever kind should be administered. The physician, however, believing, doubtless, that it was his duty to deceive him, administered both calomel and arsenic, and that in no very small quantities. Moreover, he has reason to believe that he was over-drugged by an evil-minded person whose duty it was a part of the time to act as nurse. At all events the complaint became much worse, and severe dysentery set in.

This continued for more than a month, and he says

that the smell coming from his body was as bad as that of rats poisoned with arsenic. As soon as he found that he had been taking calomel and arsenic, he dismissed the practitioner, and declared he would take no more of his medicine. All of the extremities became nearly powerless, as is common from the effects of arsenic. It was more than a year before they fully regained their power. It was at the time of this illness that he was persuaded to break a little over the rules to which he had been accustomed. He continued to use a little beef-steak about two weeks, but became so nauseated and disgusted with the flesh that he resolved never to eat of it again. On discontinuing its use he grew better. And substituting for it Indian meal gruel, bread, and the free use of fruits, he grew rapidly better in every respect, except the extremities. It was toward

two years before his limbs regained their full vigor.

Since the above illness, our subject has taken but two meals a day, morning and evening, never touching food of any kind between meals. Having experimentally ascertained the quantity of nutriment required by him, he weighs or measures according to their quality the amount for each meal, so as to be uniform in the quantity taken. His food consists in summer wholly of unholded wheat bread, and fruits of all kinds as they successively appear throughout the season. He regards the indigenous as the best. In winter his table supply is made up with farinaceous, and baked potatoes and apples.

Previously to commencing the vegetarian experiments and bathing, Mr. Burdell was every winter subject to colds; some of which were very severe upon the lungs. He repeatedly experienced pulmonary hemorrhage. He has seldom been troubled with symptoms of the kind since. He thinks taking too much food, even of the simplest kinds, has in some instances caused him to raise streaks of blood.

His daily aliment consists now (September, 1849) of brown wheaten bread sometimes leavened and sometimes unleavened, and peaches. He uses no butter, salt, nor spices of any description. He takes no alcoholic or fermented liquors, no coffee or tea, and does not now recollect when he last took milk or even water, the juices of the fruits meeting and satisfying the demand which is naturally much diminished by the total absence of animal food, salt, and spices, with the febrile excitement they serve to produce. He not only bathes in cold water regularly every morning throughout the year, but sleeps with open windows summer and winter. He has passed most of the days during the present sickly season in the city. Dur

ing the three cholera seasons of '32, '34, and '49, he passed on unharmed. It is many years since he has taken the slightest cold, or experienced the least nausea, headache, disorder of the bowels, or indisposition of any kind; and for the last seven years has not omitted a single meal. "He seems," says a friend, "in perfect health, with skin clear and mildly suffused with a natural tinge in the place of the bloated flush of drunkenness and gluttony; mind unclouded and active; spirits gentle and cheerful; and conversation fluent, easy, and instructive. Altogether he appears a very happy man. His wants, with his mode of life, are few, and require very moderate ends to meet them; these are obtained by industry in the prosecution of his professional pursuits. Much may be learned from this case, and the inference will naturally arise that much sickness, with its attendant calamities, is superinduced among mankind by unintelligent and beast-like indulgence in improper and pernicious articles of food and drink.”

THE END.

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