11. The answer to this question, though I think it would be important and interesting, with many other particulars, I must defer for the present. The experiments of Dr. F., a young man in this neighborhood, and of several other individuals, would, I know be in point; but I have not at my command the time necessary to present them.
LETTER III.—FROM DR. D. S. WRIGHT.
Whitehall, Washington Co., N. Y., March 17, 1835.
Dear Sir,—I noticed a communication from you in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of the 5th instant, in which you signify a wish to collect facts in relation to the effects of a vegetable diet upon the human system, etc. I submit for your consideration my own experience; premising, however, that I am a practicing physician in this place—am thirty-three years old—of a sanguine, bilious temperament—have from youth up usually enjoyed good health—am not generally subject to fevers, etc.
I made a radical change in my diet three years ago this present month, from a mixed course of animal and vegetable food, to a strictly vegetable diet, on which I subsisted pretty uniformly for the most part of one year. I renewed it again about ten moths ago.
My reasons for adopting it were: 1st. I had experienced the beneficial effects of it for several years before, during the warm weather, in obviating a dull cephalalgic pain, and oppression in the epigastrium. 2dly. I had recently left the salubrious atmosphere of the mountains in Essex county, in this state, for this place of musquitoes and miasmata. 3dly, and prominently. I had frequent exposures to the variolous infection, and I had a dreadful apprehension that I might have an attack of the varioloid, as at that time I had never experimentally tried the protective powers of the vaccine virus, and had too little confidence in those who recommended its prophylactic powers. The results I submit you, in reply to your interrogatories.
1. I think each time I tried living on vegetable food exclusively, that for the first month I could not endure fatigue as well. Afterward I could.
2. The digestive organs were always more agreeably excited.
3. The mind uniformly clearer, and could endure laborious investigations longer, and with less effort.
4. I am constitutionally healthy and robust.