We are carnivorous, as well as granivorous animals, having systems requiring animal, as well as vegetable food, to keep all the organs of the body in tune; and perhaps we need a greater variety than other animals.
Yours, etc.,
Lyman Tenny.
LETTER VIII.—FROM DR. J. M. B. HARDEN.
Liberty County, Georgia, July 15, 1835.
Sir,—Having observed, in the May number of the "American Journal of the Medical Sciences," certain inquiries in relation to diet, proposed by you to the physicians of the United States, I herewith transmit to you an account of a case exactly in point, which I hope may prove interesting to yourself, and in some degree "assist in the settlement of a question of great interest to the country."
The case, to which allusion is made, occurred in the person of a very intelligent and truly scientific gentleman of this county, whose regular habits, both of mind and body, added to his sound and discriminating judgment, will tend to heighten the value and importance of the experiment involved in the case I am about to detail.
Before proceeding to give his answers to your interrogatories, it may be well to premise, that at the time of commencing the experiment, he was forty-five years of age; and being an extensive cotton planter, his business was such as to make it necessary for him to undergo a great deal of exercise, particularly on foot, having, as he himself declares, to walk seldom less than ten miles a day, and frequently more; and this exercise was continued during the whole period of the experiment. His health for two years previously had been very feeble, arising, as he supposed, from a diseased spleen; which organ is at this time enlarged, and somewhat indurated. His digestive powers have always been good, and he had been in the habit of making his meals at times entirely of animal food. His bowels have always been regular, and rather inclined to looseness, but never disordered. He is five feet eight inches high, of a very thin and spare habit of body, with thin dark hair, inclining to baldness; complexion rather dark than fair; eyes dark hazel; of very studious habits when free from active engagements; with great powers of mental abstraction and attention, and of a temper remarkably even.
In answer to your interrogatories, he replies,—
1. That his bodily strength was increased, and general health became better.