Page images
PDF
EPUB

the effect of all such matters, of every kind, ought to be taken into the account, and their action distinctly considered. But this is a task, the proper accomplishment of which cannot at present be hoped for. Man, in the wantonness of power, or under the caprices of appetite, makes almost every thing he can lay his hands on subservient to his real or artificial wants. We must therefore of necessity confine ourselves to those agents which are most universally applied, and which appear to be the most effective.

With regard to the generation of constitutional diseases, we may, I think, safely confine ourselves to four principal agents. These are, 1st, impure air; 2d, impure water; 3d, improper aliment; and, 4th, fermented liquors. These are the things which appear really and effectively to produce the great bulk of the reigning diseases, or at least to form the morbid constitution out of which these diseases spring. I always except those which are produced from contagions. Each of these agents is of itself, perhaps, under certain circumstances, powerful enough to produce disease, and even death; and very commonly men are exposed to them simultaneously. In a systematic treatise each ought to be separately considered. But as my own immediate object is principally to confirm the propriety of the treatment I myself proposed in constitutional disease, I must confine myself to what I deem more directly connected with this end. On air I have nothing to say. On water I have nothing further to add to what I have already laid before the public. Some observations on the utility of vegetable regimen, the mischiefs of the regimen in common use, and a few remarks on fermented liquors, is all that I propose to add to the introductory part of my present undertaking.

CHAPTER V.

The power of Habit.-Diseases exasperated by a full diet.-Illustrations of the beneficial effects of abstemiousness.-Dr. Barwick.- Francis Pechi.-Wood, the miller of Billericay.-Apologie du Jeune.-Estimate of the powers of Vegetable Regimen.

HOWEVER pernicious any substance or application may be, we find that use in a certain degree reconciles us to it; that which was at first offensive may become at length agreeable; and what was at first manifestly injurious may become apparently

indifferent, or even salutary. Such is the influence of habit, by which the constitution is rendered insensible of constant irritations, if they possess only a moderate degree of force; and a craving or appetite is formed for things hurtful in themselves and most foreign from our proper nature. But this habit, if considered in the body itself, must consist of a series of motions and actions, the seat of which is the sensorium; which motions must have an opposite direction to, and so counteract the effect of the irritating cause. In this way only, according to the known properties of the nervous system, is the power of habit conceivable. But however it be, the body must be under the constant influence of a foreign and external force; this force must subvert the natural actions of the system, and warp them from their proper objects, which must ultimately produce effects proportionable to the magnitude and duration of the irritations applied.

We deceive ourselves, then, if we think that any thing which is wrong in itself can be made right by habit, or that what is hurtful, if done seldom, will become innocent by being constantly repeated. By this repetition we may become insensible to the momentary irritation, but only to suffer with the more severity ultimately.*

The use of animal food is one of these habitual irritations to which most persons, who have it in their power, voluntarily subject themselves. Nothing need be said to show that this custom produces a great change in the system in its ordinary state of health. This is a change which, as long as health continues, is commonly thought to be for the better. But omitting wholly that consideration, it seems certain that it predisposes to disease, and even of those kinds the immediate origin of which may be traced to other causes.

It has been observed that the laboring negroes of the West Indian islands are almost wholly exempt from the scourge of the yellow fever, which has cut off such numbers of the other classes of the residents. Upon this observation it was proposed, when the same disease invaded Philadelphia, and was

#

It may be observed, that when by habit we have conquered any dislike or formed any appetite for any substance, however unnatural, the dislike does not appear to return by relinquishing the habit. Tobacco is at first abominable; but let a man once become fond of it, the relish will continue for life. He may cease to smoke or to take snuff, because he thinks it wrong or hurtful; but the original disgust never returns. So it is of olives, fermented liquors, and other things. This shows the impropriety of giving children wine, or any thing else which it would be better that they should never like.

thought contagious, to employ negroes to attend the sick. But here it was found that negroes were some of those who were the most subject to the disease. The principal cause of this difference is said, by the physician on whose authority I relate the fact, to be, that in Philadelphia the manner of living of negroes was as plentiful as that of white people in the West Indies; the reverse of which is known to be the fact in the islands.

For the same reason, of living much more upon vegetables, and being more sparing of fermented liquors, the French are known to have suffered much less from the ravages of yellow fever than the English, who use the same diet to which they had been accustomed in northern regions. Something of the same kind has been observed with regard to the plague at Constantinople. Timoni, in his account of this disease, asserts that the Armenians, who live chiefly on vegetable food, were far less disposed to the disease than other people.*

I have little doubt, from what I have observed during the course of my own practice, that the common contagious, or, as it is called, the typhus fever of this country is greatly exaspe rated by full living. This fever rarely attacks persons in the better lines of life, obviously because they are little exposed to the exciting causes of it. But when they suffer it is very apt to be fatal. Several medical students have been cut off (I speak of what happened some years ago), both in London and Edinburgh, under the care of the best physicians of the country. But among paupers, and in the workhouses, the danger is, commonly speaking, very little, and they recover readily in circumstances under which it is probable that those who are called their betters would have sunk.t

*The Greeks in Smyrna, during Lent, Howard tells us in his work on Lazarettos, page 41, edition of 1792, at which time they ate only vege tables, were very seldom attacked with the plague, while among those who ate flesh the contagion made great havoc.-S.

"If Scotland," says Moore, "is less subject to pestilence, it is more exposed to famine, than England."

It is stated by Dr. Rush, that during a desolating fever at Leghorn, "Of the beggars who had scarcely any thing to eat, and who slept half naked every night upon hard pavements, not one died."

"It is a full rather than an empty stomach," says Dr. Paine, "that aids in breeding pestilence. And we may affirm, upon the broad ground of experience," this author further remarks, "that he will enjoy the best chances of escape who renounces a stimulant diet while his system may be only in a state of morbid predisposition. It was upon this ground that the beggars in Italy escaped; why Audubon and his party enjoyed the fullness of health in the jungles of Florida."-S.

It seems, moreover, highly probable that the power inherent in the living body, of restoring itself under accidents or wounds, is strongest in those who use most a vegetable regimen, and who are very sparing in the use of fermented liquors. This has been observed among the eastern nations. Sir George Staunton says on this subject: "It is, however, to be remarked that the Chinese recover from all kind of accidents more rapidly, and with fewer symptoms of any kind of danger, than most people in Europe. The constant and quick recovery from considerable and alarming wounds has been observed likewise to take place among the natives of Hindostan. The European surgeons have been surprised at the easy cure of sepoys in the English service, from accidents accounted extremely formidable.' This felicity the relator attributes to the causes which I have mentioned. I have received the same account from other quarters.

[ocr errors]

These facts are enough to induce a suspicion that our diseases are much exasperated by our manner of living, and the full diet of animal food, to which we are habituated. They may serve to show to what may be ascribed in some degree the great difference between the mortality which prevails in great towns and in the country. In all situations the mass of this mortality must be composed of the laboring classes. These classes are allured to the cities by the temptation of high wages, which are expended, partly in direct riot and excess, but even by the most sober-minded in procuring for their families a more luxurious mode of life than could be afforded by the customary rate of wages in the country. A daily meal of meat becomes to be thought necessary by persons who, in the country, must have been contented with a scanty portion once a week. To be able to procure this becomes a distinction in society which the people are taught to look up to as the reward of industry; while to be confined to what is called a poor diet, that is to say, to the diet of the poor, is reckoned low and disgraceful. Besides, the crowding together a number of persons in confined and ill-ventilated habitations favors the generation or the diffusion of a number of contagions. But these contagions act with greater virulence upon bodies pampered by a full diet of animal food. Thus,do these places become a species of hotbeds, in which the seeds of mortality are thickly scattered in the soil most favorable to their growth and propagation. bodies of men are most corrupted; the powers of life most enfeebled by destructive and enervating habits; moreover, putridity of all kinds, both of animal and vegetable matters, and

The

contagions of all kinds, are in such situations collected and accumulated. In a word, in great cities all the causes of mortality are concentred.

One would be apt to imagine, from the common practice of most of our physicians, and still more of our medico-chirurgeons, that excess and intemperance were the regular methods of curing diseases. They have been laboring, during almost the whole of my medical life, to prove to the public that the doctrines of abstemiousness, inculcated by several of our predecessors, are a mere prejudice and error. In almost all chronic diseases, to forbid the use of vegetables is a part of the established routine. If there be a little heart-burn or flatulency, all vegetables are instantly proscribed. Infants, even, are loaded with made dishes, and their breaths smell of wine and strong liquors. Nay, to such an extent are these abominations carried, that, when their stomachs revolt against these unnatural compounds, with instinctive horror, and the importunities of nature cannot be wholly resisted, a little fruit is held out to them as a sort of premium, and as a reward for forcing down the nauseous farrago which they loath.

Notwithstanding the prevalence of these abuses and absurdities, and the pertinacity with which they are defended, no truth is better established than the fact, that multitudes of valetudinarians have been restored to health by methods directly the reverse of those recommended by these practitioners. Many have been the examples of persons who, having been reduced from affluence to poverty, and forced to subsist upon hard fare, and to gain their livelihood by daily labor, have exchanged for their useless riches the inestimable treasure of health. Nor have instances been wanting, in which the constrained abstinence of a prison has proved a remedy for some obstinate disease.

"Dr. Bar

Dr. Cheyne has given us a history of this sort. wick tells us," says he, "in the life of his brother, who, in the late civil wars, had for many years been confined in a low room in the Tower, during the usurpation, that, at the time of his going in, he was under a phthisis, atrophy, and dyscasy, and lived on bread and water only several years there, and yet came out at the restoration, sleek, plump, and gay."

Ramazzini has recorded the history of a man who lived in prison for nineteen years upon bread and water only, and lived afterward healthy and free from the gout, from which he had before been a great sufferer.

In Schenk's collection, the following amusing story of the

« PreviousContinue »