“Here the greater part of the world take alarm. ‘How,’ say they, ‘can we be supported on Grains, which furnish but dry meal, fitter to cloy than to nourish; on Fruits, which are but condensed water; with vegetables, which are fit but for manure (fumier)?’ But this meal, well prepared, forms Bread, the strongest of all aliments, this condensed water is the same that has caused the Trees to attain so great bulk, this fumier becomes such only because they prepare vegetables badly, and eat of them to excess. Besides, how can men affect to fear failure in strength, in eating what nourishes even the most robust animals, who would become even formidable to us, if only they knew their own strength.”
In Chap. VII., Que l’Usage de la Viande n’est pas le plus naturel à l’Homme, ni absolument Nécessaire, he remarks:—
“It is incredible how much Prejudice has been allowed to operate in favour of [flesh] meat, while so many facts are opposed to the pretended necessity of its use.”
Having entered into the physiological argument, now so well-worn, among other reasons he adduces the fact that “the soundest part of the world, or the most enlightened, have believed in the obligation to abstain from flesh,” and “the very nature of flesh, which is digested with difficulty, and which furnishes the worst juices.”
Nature being uniform in her method of procedure, is anything else necessary to determine whether Man is intended to live upon flesh-meats than to compare the organs which have to prepare them for his nourishment, with those of animals whom Nature manifestly has destined for carnage? And herein it may be clearly recognised, since men have neither fangs nor talons to tear flesh, that it is very far from being the food most natural to them.
He quotes numerous examples of eminent persons, as well as of nations in all times, and adds, as an argument not easy to be answered, that:— “It is proved it would not be difficult to nourish animals who live on flesh with non-flesh substances, while it is almost impossible to nourish with flesh those who live ordinarily upon vegetable substances.”
Hecquet devotes several chapters to a description of various Fruits and Herbs, and also of various kinds of Fish, which he holds to be much less objectionable and more innocent food than flesh. Comparing the two diets, we must acknowledge:—
“It causes our nature to revolt, and excites horror to eat raw flesh, and as it is presented to us naturally; and it becomes supportable for us to the taste and to the sight only after long preparation of cooking, which deprives it of what is inhuman and disgusting in its original state; and, often, it is only after many various preparations and strange seasonings that it can become agreeable or sanitarily good. It is not so with other meats: the majority, as they come from the hand of Nature, without cookery and without art, are found proper to nourish, and are pleasant to the taste—plain proof that they are intended by Nature to maintain our health. Fruits are of such property that, when well-chosen and quite ripe, they excite the appetite by their own virtue, and might become, without preparation, sufficing.... If Vegetables or Fish have need of fire to accommodate them to our nature, the fire appears to be used less to correct these sorts of foods than to penetrate them, to make them soft and tender, and to develope what in them is most proper and suitable for health.... In fine, it is clear that vegetables and fish have need of less, and less strange and récherché, condiments—all sensible marks that these aliments are the most natural and suited to man.”[301]
Hecquet’s Traité des Dispenses received the formal approval and commendation of several “doctors regent” of the Faculty of Medicine of the Paris University, which testimonies are prefixed to the second edition of 1710. With his English contemporary, Dr. Cheyne, and other medical reformers, however, he experienced much insult and ridicule from anonymous professional critics.