REV. JESSE CASWELL.
Mr. Caswell went out to India about thirteen years ago, a dyspeptic, and yet perhaps somewhat better than while engaged in his studies at Andover. For several years after his arrival he suffered much from sickness, like his fellow-laborers. His station was Bangkok. He was an American missionary, sent out by the American Board, as it is called, of Boston.
About six years ago he wrote me for information on the subject of health. He had read my works, and those of Mr. Graham, and seemed not only convinced of the general importance of studying the science of human life, but of the superiority of a well selected vegetable diet, especially at the East. He was also greatly anxious that missionaries should be early taught what he had himself learned. The following is one of his first paragraphs:
"I feel fully convinced that you are engaged in a work second to few if any of the great enterprises of the day. If there be any class of men standing in special need of correct physiological knowledge, that class consists of missionaries of the cross. What havoc has disease made with this class, and for the most part, as I feel convinced, because, before and after leaving their native land, they live so utterly at variance with the laws of their nature."
He then proceeds to say, that the American missionaries copy the example of the English, and that they all eat too much high-seasoned food, and too much flesh and fish; and argues against the practice by adducing facts. The following is one of them:
"My Siamese teacher, a man about forty years old, says that those who live simply on rice, with a little salt, enjoy better health, and can endure a greater amount of labor, than those who live in any other way. * * * The great body of the Siamese use no flesh, except fish. Of this they generally eat a very little, with their rice."
The next year I had another letter from him. He had been sick, but was better, and thought he had learned a great deal, during his sickness, about the best means of preserving health. He had now fully adopted what he chose to call the Graham system, and was rejoicing—he and his wife and children—in its benefits. He says, "If a voice from an obscure corner of the earth can do any thing toward encouraging your heart and staying your hands, that voice you shall have." He suggests the propriety of my sending him a copy of "Vegetable Diet." "I think," says he, "it might do great good." He wished to lend it among his friends.
It must suffice to say, that he continued to write me, once or twice a year, as long as he lived. He also insisted strongly on the importance of physiological information among students preparing for the ministry, and especially for missions. He even wrote once or twice to Rev. Dr. Anderson, and solicited attention to the subject. But the board would neither hear to him nor to me, except to speak kind words, for nothing effective was ever done. They even refused a well-written communication on the subject, intended for the Missionary Herald. Let me also say, that as early as March, 1845, he told me that Dr. Bradley, his associate (now in this country), with his family, were beginning to live on the vegetable system; and added, that one of the sisters of the mission, who was no "Grahamite," had told him she thought there was not one third as much flesh used in all the mission families that there was a year before.
Mr. Caswell became exceedingly efficient, over-exerted himself in completing a vocabulary of the Siamese language, and in other labors, and died in September last. He was, according to the testimony of Dr. Bradley, a "noble man;" and probably his life and health, and that of his family, were prolonged many years by his improved habits. But his early transgressions—like those of thousands—at length found him out. I allude to his errors in regard to exercise, eating, drinking, sleeping, taking medicine, etc.