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

by William A. Alcott

SIR RICHARD PHILLIPS.

Sir Richard Phillips, in his "Million of Facts," says that "the mixed and fanciful diet of man is considered as the cause of numerous diseases, from which animals are exempt. Many diseases have abated with changes of natural diet, and others are virulent in particular countries, arising from peculiarities. The Hindoos are considered the freest from disease of any part of the human race. The laborers on the African coast, who go from tribe to tribe to perform the manual labor, and whose strength is wonderful, live entirely on plain rice. The Irish, Swiss, and Gascons, the slaves of Europe, feed also on the simplest diet; the former chiefly on potatoes."

He states, also, that the diseases of cattle often afflict those who subsist on them. "In 1599," he observes, "the Venetian government, to stop a fatal disease among the people, prohibited the sale of meat, butter, or cheese, on Pain of death."