Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages / Including a System of Vegetable Cookery

by William A. Alcott

CHAPTER III.

REMARKS ON THE FOREGOING LETTERS.

Correspondence.—The "prescribed course of Regimen."—How many victims to it?—Not one.—Case of Dr. Harden considered.—Case of Dr. Preston.—Views of Drs. Clark, Cheyne, and Lambe, on the treatment of Scrofula.—No reports of Injury from the prescribed System.—Case of Dr. Bannister.—Singular testimony of Dr. Wright.—Vegetable food for Laborers.—Testimony, on the whole, much more favorable to the Vegetable System than could reasonably have been expected, in the circumstances.

"Reports not unfrequently reach us," says Dr. North, "of certain individuals who have fallen victims to a prescribed course of regimen. These persons are said, by gentlemen who are entitled to the fullest confidence, to have pertinaciously followed the course, till they reached a point of reduction from which there was no recovery." "If these are facts," he adds, "they ought to be known and published."

It was in this view, that Dr. North, himself a medical practitioner of high respectability, sent forth to every corner of the land, through standard and orthodox medical journals, to regular and experienced physicians—his "medical brethren"—his list of inquiries. These inquiries, designed to elicit truth, were couched in just such language as was calculated to give free scope and an acceptable channel for the communication of every fact which seemed to be opposed to the vegetable system; for this, we believe, was distinctly understood, by every medical man, to be the "prescribed course of regimen" alluded to.

The results of Dr. North's inquiries, and of an opportunity so favorable for "putting down," by the exhibition of sober facts, the vegetable system, are fully presented in the foregoing chapter. Let it not be said by any, that the attempt was a partial or unfair one. Let it be remembered that every effort was made to obtain truth in facts, without partiality, favor, or affection. Let it be remembered, too, that nearly two years elapsed before Dr. North gave up his papers to the author; during which time, and indeed up to the present hour—a period, in the whole, of more than fourteen years—a door has been opened to every individual who had any thing to say, bearing upon the subject.

Let us now review the contents of the foregoing chapter. Let us see, in the first place, what number of persons have here been reported, by medical men, as having fallen victims to the said "prescribed course of regimen."

The matter is soon disposed of. Not a case of the description is found in the whole catalogue of returns to Dr. N. This is a triumph which the friends of the vegetable system did not expect. From the medical profession of this country, hostile as many of them are known to be to the "prescribed course of regimen," they must naturally have expected to hear of at least a few persons who were supposed to have fallen victims to it. But, I say again, not one appears.

It is true that Dr. Preston, of Plymouth, Mass., thinks he should have fallen a victim to his abstinence from flesh meat, had he not altered his course; and Dr. Harden, of Georgia, relates a case of sudden loss of strength, and great debility, which he thought, at the time, might "possibly" be ascribed to the want of animal food: though the individual himself attributed it to quite another cause. These are the only two, of a list of thirty or forty, which were detailed, that bear the slightest resemblance to those which report had brought to the ear of Dr. N., and about which he so anxiously and earnestly solicited inquiry of his medical brethren.

As to the case mentioned by Dr. Harden, no one who examined it with care, will believe for a moment, that it affords the slightest evidence against a diet exclusively vegetable. The gentleman who made the experiment had pursued it faithfully three years, without the slightest loss of strength, but with many advantages, when, of a sudden, extreme debility came on. Is it likely that a diet on which he had so long been doing well, should produce such a sudden falling off? The gentleman himself appears not to have had the slightest suspicion that the debility had any connection with the diet. He attributes its commencement, if not its continuance, to the inhalation of poisonous gases, to which he was subjected in the process of some chemical experiments.