“He had, when living on the common diet, been habitually thirsty, and, like most persons inclined to studious and sedentary habits, was much attached to tea-drinking. But for the last two or three years he has almost wholly relinquished the use of liquids, and by the substitution of fruit and recent vegetables he has found that the sensation of thirst has been in a manner abolished. Even tea has lost its charms, and he very rarely uses it. He is therefore certain, from his own experience, that the habit of employing liquids is an artificial habit, and not necessary to any of the functions of the animal economy.”
Whatever may be thought of the theory of the possibility of entire abstinence from all extraneous liquids, there is not the least doubt that a judicious use of vegetable foods reduces to a minimum the feeling of thirst and craving for artificial drinks, an experience, we imagine, almost universal with abstinents from flesh-dishes.
Dr. Lambe concludes the first part of his valuable diagnosis with the assurance, “that if those for whose service these labours are principally designed, I mean persons suffering under habitual and chronic illness, are able to go along with me in my argument to form a general correct notion of what they are to expect from [219]
In 1805, at the age of forty, we find him established in practice in London. Five years later he was physician to the General Dispensary, Aldersgate Street. He was also elected Fellow and Censor of the College of Physicians, whose meetings he regularly attended. His peculiar opinions did not tend to secure popularity for him, and the adhesion of such men as Dr. Abernethy, Dr. Pitcairn, Lord Erskine, and of Mr. Brotherton, M.P. (one of the earliest members of the Vegetarian Society), served only to make the indifference of the mass of the community more conspicuous.
Not the least interesting fact in his life is his share in the conversion of Shelley, and his friendship with J. F. Newton and his interesting family, at whose house these earlier pioneers of the New Reformation were accustomed to meet, and celebrate their charming réunions with vegetarian feasts. A cardinal part of the dietetic system of Dr. Lambe was his insistance upon the use of distilled water. In his Reports on Regimen he writes of the Newton family: “I am well acquainted with a family of young children who have scarcely ever touched animal food, and who now for three years have drunk only distilled water. For clearness and beauty of complexion, muscular strength, fulness of habit free from grossness, hardiness, healthiness, and ripeness of intellect these children are unparalleled.”[220]
We have already mentioned Lord Erskine as one of the many eminent friends of Dr. Lambe. That more humane and distinguished lawyer, in a letter to his friend acknowledging the receipt of the Reports, writes as follows: “I am of opinion that both this work and the other referred to in it are deserving of the highest consideration. I read them both with more interest and attention from the abuse of the British Critic [one of the periodicals of the day] mentioned in the preface, as no periodical criticism ever published in this country is so uniformly unjust, ignorant, and impudent.” Dr. Abernethy’s testimony to the efficacy of abstinence in cases of cancer will be found in the notice of that eminent practitioner. Amongst the most interesting correspondence of his later years is his interchange of ideas with Sylvester Graham—the first of the American prophets of the reformed regimen. The letter to the celebrated American vegetarian is, as Dr. Lambe’s latest biographer justly observes, “a most valuable relic, because it continues the result of Dr. Lambe’s diet up to September, 1837—twenty-three years after the last notice of his health in the account of his own case, which he published in November, 1814. It is, besides, an admirable proof of his truthful and philosophic mind, which was slow to arrive at conclusions, and willing rather to exaggerate than otherwise the traces of disease which he still felt.” He proves, also, in this letter, how slow and yet sure are the effects of diet, and it supplies an answer to those objectors who complain that they have tried the diet (perhaps for a few weeks only) without any good result. After complimenting his transatlantic fellow-worker in the cause of truth upon his zeal and industry, Dr. Lambe proceeds:—
“My book, entitled Additional Reports on Regimen, has now been before the world three and twenty years. That it has attracted little notice, and still less popular favour—though it may have excited in the writer some mortification—has not occasioned much surprise. The doctrine it seeks to establish is in direct opposition to popular and deep-rooted prejudice. It is thought (most erroneously) to attack the best enjoyments and most solid comforts of life; and, moreover, it has excited the bitter hostility of a numerous and influential body in society—I mean that body of medical practitioners who exercise their profession for the sake of its profits merely, and who appear to think that disease was made for the profession and not the profession for disease.
“To drop, however, all idle complaints of public neglect, let us go to the more useful inquiry whether or not the principles propounded in these Reports have been confirmed by subsequent and more extensive experience. To this inquiry I answer directly and fearlessly, that in the interval between the present time and the year 1815 (the date of that publication) the practice recommended has succeeded in cases very numerous and of extreme variety, and I can promise the practitioner who will try it fairly and judge with candour that he will experience no disappointment. I say, let him try it fairly. I do not assert that it will succeed in cases where the powers of life are sunk, in confirmed hectic fever, in ulcerated cancer, in established chronic disease, or in the decrepitude of old age. I may have attempted the relief of such cases in an early stage of my experiments, but experience speedily demonstrated the hopelessness of such attempts. But let subjects be taken not far advanced in life, let them be tabid children (for example) with tumid abdomen, swelled joints, and depraved appetites, or with obstinate cutaneous diseases, erythema, scabus, rickets, epileptic convulsions (not grown habitual by long continuance). But a practitioner in moderate practice will find no difficulty in selecting proper subjects, if he is himself actuated by a regard to humanity united to principles of honour.
“Moreover, let not the patient, particularly if arrived at mature age, expect to receive a perfect cure. In many cases the consequences are rather preventive than curative. This I hold to be no objection. It is enough, surely, if a disease which, from its nature, might be expected to be continually on the increase, is obviously checked in its progress, if the symptoms become more and more mild, and if a human being is preserved in comfortable existence who would otherwise have been consigned to the grave.”
He devoted his great medical knowledge and experience particularly to the cure or mitigation of cancer. In the letter, from which we have already quoted, he informs his correspondent of this interesting fact:—