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

by William A. Alcott

ENCYCLOPEDIA AMERICANA.

The following testimony is from the Encyclopedia. I do not suppose the writer was the friend of a diet exclusively vegetable; but his testimony is therefore the more interesting. His only serious mistake is in regard to the tendency of vegetable food to form weak fibres.

"Sometimes a particular kind of food is called wholesome, because it produces a beneficial effect of a particular character on the system of an individual. In this case, however, it is to be considered as a medicine; and can be called wholesome only for those whose systems are in the same condition.

"Aliments abounding in fat are unwholesome, because fat resists the operation of the gastric juice.

"The addition of too much spice makes many an innocent aliment injurious, because spices resist the action of the digestive organs, and produce an irritation of particular parts of the system.

"The kind of aliment influences the health, and even the character of man. He is fitted to derive nourishment both from animal and vegetable aliment; but can live exclusively on either.

"Experience proves that animal food most readily augments the solid parts of the blood, the fibrine, and therefore the strength of the muscular system; but disposes the body, at the same time, to inflammatory, putrid, and scorbutic diseases; and the character to violence and coarseness. On the contrary, vegetable food renders the blood lighter and more liquid, but forms weak fibres, disposes the system to the diseases which spring from feebleness, and tends to produce a gentle character.

"Something of the same difference of moral effect results from the use of strong or light wines. But the reader must not infer that meat is indispensable for the support of the bodily strength. The peasants of some parts of Switzerland, who hardly ever taste any thing but bread, cheese, and butter, are vigorous people.

"The nations of the north are inclined, generally, more to animal aliment; those of the south and the Orientals, more to vegetable. The latter are generally more simple in their diet than the former, when their taste has not been corrupted by luxurious indulgence. Some tribes in the East, and the caste of Bramins in India, live entirely on vegetable food."