“are able and willing to abstain from everything hurtful, and to deny themselves anything their appetites craved, to conform to any rules for a tolerable degree of health, ease, and freedom of spirits. It is for these, and these only,” he proceeds, “the following treatise is designed. The robust, the luxurious, the pot-companions, &c., have here no business; their time is not yet come.”
It is generally acknowledged to be one of the best books on the subject. Haller pronounced it to be “the best of all the works bearing upon the health of sedentary persons and invalids.” It went through several editions in the space of two years, and in 1726 was enlarged by the author and translated by his friend and pupil John Robertson M.A. into Latin, and three or four editions were quickly exhausted in France and Germany. In this book, while reducing flesh-meat to a minimum, and insisting upon the necessity of abstinence from grosser food and of the use of vegetables only, at the morning and evening meals, he had not advanced as yet so far as to preach the truth in its entirety. He arrived at it only by slow and gradual conviction. Expatiating on the follies and miseries of bon-vivantism, he proceeds to affirm that—
“All those who have lived long, and without much pain, have lived abstemiously, poor, and meagre. Cornaro prolonged his life and preserved his senses by almost starving in his latter days; and some others have done the like. They have, indeed, thereby, in some measure, weakened their natural strength and qualified the fire and flux of their spirits, but they have preserved their senses, weakened their pains, prolonged their days, and procured themselves a gentle and quiet passage into another state.... All the rest will be insufficient without this While the Essay of Health added greatly to his reputation with all thinking people, it also exposed him (as was to be expected) to a storm of small wit, ridicule, and misrepresentation:— “Some good-natured and ingenious retainers to the Profession,” he tells us, “on the publication of my book on Long Life and Health, proclaimed everywhere that I was turned mere enthusiast, advised people to turn monks, to run into deserts, and to live on roots, herbs, and wild fruits! in fine, that I was, at bottom, a mere leveller, and for destroying order, ranks, and property, everyone’s but my own. But that sneer had its day, and vanished into smoke. Others swore that I had eaten my book, recanted my doctrine and system (as they were pleased to term it), and was returned again to the devil, the world, and the flesh. This joke I have also stood. I have been slain again and again, both in prose and verse; but, I thank God, I am still alive and well.” His next publication was his English Malady: or, a Treatise of Nervous Diseases of all kinds, which was also well received, going through four editions in two years. The incessant ridicule with which the gourmands had assailed his last work seems to have made him cautious in his next attempt to revolutionise dietetics; and he is careful to advertise the public that his milk and vegetable system was for those in weak health only. Denouncing the use of sauces and provocatives of unnatural appetite, “contrived not only to rouse a sickly stomach to receive the unnatural load, but to render a naturally good one incapable of knowing when it has enough,” he asks, “Is it any wonder then that the diseases which proceed from idleness and fulness of meat should increase in proportion?” He is bold enough by this time to affirm that, for the cure of many diseases, an entire abstinence from flesh is indisputably necessary:— “There are some cases wherein a vegetable and milk diet seems absolutely necessary, as in severe and habitual gouts, rheumatisms, cancerous, leprous, and scrofulous disorders; extreme nervous colics, epilepsies, violent hysteric fits, melancholy, consumptions (and the like disorders, mentioned in the preface), and towards the last stages of all chronic distempers. In such distempers I have seldom seen such a diet fail of a good effect at last.” Six years later, in 1740, appeared his Essay on Regimen: together with Five Discourses Medical Moral and Philosophical, &c. Since his last exhortation to the world Cheyne had evidently convinced himself, by long experience as well as reflection, of the great superiority of the vegetable diet for all—sound as well as sick; and, accordingly, he speaks in strong and clear language of the importance of a general reform. As a consequence of this plain speaking, his new book met with a comparatively cold reception. Perhaps, too, its mathematical and somewhat abstruse tone may have affected its popularity. As regards its moral tone it was a new revelation, doubtless, for the vast majority of his readers. He boldly asserts:— “The question I design to treat of here is, whether animal or vegetable food was, in the original design of the Creator, intended for the food of animals, and particularly of the human race. And I am almost convinced it never was intended, but only permitted as a curse or punishment.... At what time animal [flesh] food came first in use is not certainly known. He was a bold man who made the first experiment.