Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages / Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

by William A. Alcott

DR. JENNINGS.

Dr. Jennings is the author of a work published at Oberlin, Ohio, in 1847, entitled "Medical Reform." In this volume, at page 198, we find the following facts and statements. The author is comparing the effects of animal food on the human system with those of alcohol, from which we learn his views concerning the former:

"Position I.—Animal food, in common with alcohol, creates a feverish diathesis, evidences of which are—1. An impaired state of the respiratory function. 2. The pulse is rendered more frequent and irregular, both by alcohol and meat. 3. A feverish heat is generated in the system, and persons are made more thirsty, by the use of both these substances. 4. Both substances equally induce what is called the digestive fever.

"Position II.—Alcoholic drinks lay the foundation for occasional disturbances in the system, of different kinds and grades, as bilious bowel affections, etc., and so do flesh meats. In the production of colds, animal food is far the most efficient.

"Position III.—Animal food tends, quite as strongly as the moderate use of alcoholic liquors, to weaken and disturb the balance of action between the secerning and excerning systems of vessels, by which some persons become leaner and others fleshier than they should be.

"Position IV.—With about equal potency alcohol and flesh meats weaken the force of the capillaries of the system, on which healthy action so much depends.

"Position V.—A flesh diet, in common with the use of strong drink, impairs the tone of the nutritive apparatus, by which its ability to work up raw material and manufacture it into sound, well finished vital fabric, is diminished, and of course the appetite or call for food is satisfied with a less quantity of the raw material. This fact has given rise to the opinion that animal food contains more nutriment than vegetable.

"Position VI.—The total abandonment of an habitual use of animal food is attended with all the perplexing, uncomfortable, and distressing difficulties that follow the giving up of an habitual use of strong drink. A change from one kind of simple nutriment to another has no such effect. It is only when the constant use of some stimulating substance is abandoned that such difficulties are experienced."