I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He will embrace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its beauty, its simplicity and its promise of wide-extended benefit; unless custom has turned poison into food, he will hate the brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct; it will be a contemplation full of horror and disappointment to his mind, that beings capable of the gentlest and most admirable sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs and last convulsions of dying animals. The elderly man whose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who has lived with apparent moderation, and is afflicted with a variety of painful maladies, would find his account in a beneficial change, produced without the risk of poisonous medicines.[9]The mother, to whom the perpetual restlessness of disease, and unaccountable deaths incident to her children, are the causes of incurable unhappiness, would on this diet experience the satisfaction of beholding their perpetual health and natural playfulness.
The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases, that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by medicine. How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, implacable, and eternal foe? The proselyte to a simple and natural diet, who desires health, must from the moment of his conversion attend to these rules—
Never take any substance into the stomach that once had life.
Drink no liquid but water restored to its original purity by distillation.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Shelley's pamphlet appeared in 1813. The Vegetarian Society was not founded until 1847. Information as to this Society, with list of its publications, can be had free on application to the Secretary, 75, Princess Street, Manchester.
[2] "Plin. Nat Hist.," Lib. vii, Soc. 57.
[3] "Return to Nature." Cadell, 1811.
[4] Cuvier, Leçons d'Anat. Comp. tom. iii., pages 169, 373, 448, 465, and 480. Rees's Cyclopædia, article Man.
[5] See Dr. Lambe's "Report on Cancer."
[6] Return to Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. Cadell, 1811.