vessels of the face? This excitation cannot be supposed to be confined to the surface of the cheeks, but must extend to all the contiguous parts; to the internal as well as the external; to the parts within the cranium as well as the integuments; in a word, to the organ which regulates and connects all the other organs of the body-to the brain itself. If, therefore, the use of animal food be an unnatural custom, its primary operation is to give an unnatural excitation to the brain; and all its consequences of improved color, increased strength, and even of apparently improved health, must be reckoned consequences of this excitation.*

A further consequence is, that life is, in all its stages, hurried on with an unnatural and unhealthy rapidity. We arrive at puberty too soon; the passions are developed too early:† in the male they acquire an impetuosity approaching to madness; the females breed too quick; processes which ought to be distinct and successive are blended together and confounded; women who ought to be nurses become pregnant, even with the child at the breast; finally, the system becomes prematurely exhausted and destroyed: we become diseased and old when we ought to be in the middle of life.

After all that has been said, I can hardly be so misunderstood as if I asserted all this to be, in fact, the operation of ani

* Professor Sweetzer, of this city, in his interesting work on consumption, remarks: "That if diet is superabundant and exciting, a plethoric and inflammatory state of the system will be induced, highly incompatible with the equable and healthful play of the different functions, and tending indirectly to waste the energies of life. How often is it that fat, plethoric, flesh-eating children, their faces looking as if the blood were just ready to ooze out, are with the greatest complacency exhibited by their parents as patterns of health! But let it be ever remembered, that condition of the system popularly called rude or full health, and the result of high feeding, is too often closely bordering on a state of disease." The good sense of these remarks must be apparent to every one who thinks.-S.

In all the cases of precocious menstruation-and I have known anumber-such as in whom this function has appeared at the age of twelve or thirteen years, there has been very free use of and a great desire for flesh meat. I have been particular in noticing this fact.

I will admit that a very free use of milk, eggs, butter, salt, and other stimulants, might easily cause preocious puberty, without the use of flesh, especially in the hot-bed and unnatural life of cities.-S.

I have known more cases than one in the city of New York of flesheating mothers, of very feeble health, who yet have become pregnant, time after time, on an average of nearly every year, and each and every time after the first, while the child was yet at the breast. The undue stimulus of animal food has evidently a strong influence in these cases of premature pregnancy.-S.

mal food alone. All the habitual irritations appear to have similar effects on the body; they stimulate to excessive action, which is followed by premature exhaustion. But I cannot doubt that such would be the operation of animal food alone, if every other cause of disease were removed. An experiment which, as I have heard, has often been made upon chickens, illustrates its general action on animal bodies.* They feed hens upon flesh, to make them lay eggs faster. Every thing, therefore, that has been said in favor of animal diet; of its strengthening, and invigorating, and fattening, and so forth,t may be perfectly true; and still the consequences drawn from these appearances may be false, and its use may be, notwith-, standing, radically improper.

Now, if a body be, to the senses, modified by the action of animal food; if it be enlarged, and bloated, and reddened, it must necessarily happen that by its abstraction these effects must cease, and appearances the very opposite of these may be expected to take place, that is to say, the body may be expected to diminish, and to condense, and to become paler. If the face be highly colored or flushed, it may be expected to lose in a measure this appearance. A load of fat, which is but an incumbrance to its bearer, may perhaps vanish, and so the clothes may hang about the body. But if neither this color nor this fatness be health, nor indicative of health, what is there to fear from the loss of them? If, on the contrary, these appearances are wholly morbid, we surely ought rather to be pleased than mortified that we have got rid of them.‡

*I need hardly say, of animals not by nature carnivorous. Chicken are probably, in some degree, omnivorous. Though seeds is their favorite food, they would, I suppose, pick up insects, worms, slugs, etc.

Mr. Malthus was, I have little doubt, deceived from not making this distinction. He says, "Even in Norway, notwithstanding the disadvantage of a severe and uncertain climate, from the little I saw in a few weeks' residence in the country, and the information I could collect from others, I am inclined to think that the poor were, on the average, better off than in England. Their houses and clothing were superior, and though they had no white bread, they had much more meat, fish, and milk than our laborers; and I particularly remarked that the farmers' boys were much stouter and healthier-looking lads than those of the same description in England." If such a diet gave a more healthy race of people than one that was principally farinaceous, all that I have said must be wrong. But the tables of mortality prove the contrary; and, therefore, these appearances of stoutness and good looks, in the younger part of the community, are not indicative of superior health.

That the mere loss of flesh, and, to some degree, strength-circum stances which must sometimes, though by no means always, occur-on commencing vegetable diet, are not necessarily unfavorable, is abundantly

I cannot doubt that, as a general rule, it may be safely asserted that the florid are less healthy than those who have little color. An increase of color has been ever judged to be a sign of impending illness. "If a man becomes fuller," says one of the ancients, "and better looking, and with more color than usual, he ought to consider these blessings as suspicious." Our own vulgar, at this day, if told that they look much better than usual, regard it as a sign of approaching disease. How many, with what is thought the glow of health on their cheeks, are inwardly tabid? How many on the verge of the grave, about to be cut off by an acute illness? Every day gives such painful examples of these truths, that I should be ashamed to urge them, had I not heard even experienced medical practitioners refer to the fine color of the cheek as a proof of good health. The young lady who last gave occasion to this remark, has since, I believe, died of consumption.

It seems very evident that our general manner of life tends to load the head, and give an unnatural fullness to the face. This has given us ideas both of beauty and proportion, which are far from just, as not coinciding with the most perfect specimens of the human form. It has corrnpted even the taste of our painters. I have heard from an eminent artist, that the custom of painting children with the cheeks enormously swollen is confined to the modern school; that it was not practiced by the ancient sculptors or painters. Though a well colored and full face cannot be otherwise than pleasing, yet it may be often observed in union with a narrow chest, shrunk limbs, and a tumid belly. Many an anxious mother says of her child, that its face is the only part about it which looks well. Now if, in such a case, by any course of dieting-for medicine is wholly out of the question-we can strengthen the limbs, cause the chest to expand, and the abdomen to shrink, we should hail these changes as signs of highly improved health. If then it should happen, at the same time, that the face becomes less full, and the color less florid, we ought certainly to reckon this fullness and color to be morbid, and as such be happy at the loss of it.

It affords no trifling grounds of suspicion against the use of animal food, that it so obviously inclines to corpulency. On

proved by the success of the hunger cure, which I have seen practiced in Germany. If a person is losing bad flesh, which, under a properly regulated vegetable diet, must often be the case, he is certain of growing stronger again as he gets better muscle. Flesh is absolutely no criterion of health, nor is a temporary loss of strength any evidence that an individual is growing worse.

.-S.

pocratic maxim is not founded in truth, which declares: "In bodies that are not pure, the more you nourish them, the more you injure them?”

It is said that there are great varieties of constitution, which produce corresponding varieties of diseases, and that it is impossible that the same regimen can be adapted to them all. The vulgar proverb is quoted, and, if I am rightly informed, by a gentleman who was an eye-witness of some of the facts contained in my "Reports on Cancer," that what is one man's meat is another man's poison; and many exclaim, A vegetable regimen may do very well with some, but I am sure it would not suit me; my own feelings tell me so, and what better guide can we possibly follow?

I shall consider these objections in their order.

I have already said, that however various constitutions may be, diseases, with different and even opposite symptoms, may be in their essence identical. The variety of constitution is displayed in the various and ever varying forms of disease, and in the irregular times at which they take place from infancy to extreme old age. The identity then is not in the forms and external signs of disease. It must consist in some circumstance which is common to them all. This circumstance is a decay and final destruction of the vital powers. Perhaps there is no single and infallible criterion by which to judge of this decay. It may exist, though the organization of the body is perfect. It is not incompatible with great apparent strength and energy of action. The principle of life is not an object of sense, and we infer both its existence and its modifications from the phenomena of living bodies. Whether in its decay, the loss of power be confined to the organ principally affected, or whether it extend primarily to the whole body, it is not easy to determine. But that it is general and uniform throughout the whole system, seems to me, from many circumstances which I have observed, to be by far the most probable opinion. Its total destruction is the death of the body.

If the gentleman who tells me that one man's meat is another man's poison, and who is so much better versed in the anatomy of the human body than I pretend to be, will show me in what I have mistaken when I have asserted that man is herbivorous in his structure; if he can show that there is any radical difference in this respect among the individuals of the human species, I shall then subscribe to the doctrine that there is a radical divinity in human constitutions beyond what I have acknowledged. But till this is done, I must agree with a

sprightly friend of my own, who says that the proverb justly interpreted means no more than that what is meat for the patient may, perchance, be poison to the doctor.

The question of feeling may deserve a little more consideration, since it is apt to deceive persons of good judgment. The impulse or feeling of the moment is that which is naturally the immediate motive for action. What gives pleasure we naturally seek; and we avoid what occasions uneasiness. And this seems so just and reasonable a ground of action that I can hardly doubt that, in a truly sound and healthy state of the system, we might safely trust to our sensations; that what is most agreeable would be most healthy, and what gives uneasiness would be also injurious.

But it is obvious that we cannot safely argue so in a diseased system. In this case agents may neither produce their natural and appropriate sensations; nor sensations inform us justly of the qualities of bodies. The same habit which has reconciled us to many unnatural and noxious substances has likewise given us a disrelish for those which are natural and salutary. Gassendi tells us of a lamb which, having been bred up on shipboard, refused to eat grass. We surely then cannot wonder that, having accustomed our stomachs to every thing which earth, sea, or air affords, we have obliterated our relish for simple vegetable food.

It may very well be, therefore, that by habit animal food may cause no uneasiness on the stomach; and vegetable food may have the very opposite effect. I can only say it is a great misfortune to have the feelings of the stomach so completely perverted. It may be that leaving off animal food may cause suffering and uneasy feeling. This a greater misfortune still, if the health require it. But it betrays a profound ignorance of the elementary principles of human nature to mention such things as serious objections to a vegetable regimen.

The case of spirituous liquors, in which every child knows how to reason properly, is exactly parallel. I should be ashamed to dwell upon it if I did not know that, in fact, such objections have been strongly and effectually urged. I would ask, then, would any one listen a moment to a gin drinker who should tell us how warm and comfortable his morning dram is to his stomach, and how low and cold and flatulent he is without it? In like manner, no doubt, the subduction of animal food is withdrawing an accustomed irritation; a strong, but an unnatural appetite remains unsatisfied; a craving takes place which it may require a determined effort to subdue; and it may