This is an important distinction. Many a person, who wishes to be abstemious, seems to think that if he only abstains from flesh and fish, that is enough. No matter, he supposes, what vegetables he uses, so they are vegetables; nor how much he abuses himself by excess in quantity. Nay, he will even load his stomach with milk, or butter, or eggs; sometimes with fish (we have often been asked if we considered fish as animal food); and sometimes, worse still, with hot bread, hot buckwheat cakes, hot short-cakes, swimming, almost, in butter;—yes, and sometimes he will even cover his potatoes with gravy, mustard, salt, etc.
It is in vain for mankind to abstain from animal food, as they call it, and yet run into these worse errors. The lean parts of animals not much fattened, and only rarely cooked, eaten once a day in small quantity, are far less unwholesome than many of the foregoing.
But to return to Dr. C. In speaking of the proper drink for persons inclined to gout, he thus remarks:
"With respect to drink, fermented liquors are useful only when they are joined with animal food, and that by their acescency; and their stimulus is only necessary from custom. When, therefore, animal food is to be avoided, fermented liquors are unnecessary, and by increasing the acescency of vegetables, these liquors may be hurtful. The stimulus of fermented or spirituous liquors is not necessary to the young and vigorous: and, when much employed, impairs the tone of the system."
Dr. C. might have added—what indeed we should infer by parity of reasoning—that when fermented liquors are avoided, animal food is no longer necessary, and by increasing the alkaline state of the stomach and fluids, may be hurtful. The truth is, they go best together. If we use flesh and fish, which are alkaline, a small quantity of gently acid drink, as weak cider or wine, taken either with our meals, or between them, may be useful. It is better, however, to abstain from both.
For if a purely vegetable aliment, with water alone for drink, is safe to all young persons inclining at all to gout, to whom is it unsafe? If it tends to render a young person at all weaker, that very weakness would predispose to the gout, in some of its forms, if a person were constitutionally inclined to that disease—if not to some other complaint, to which he was more inclined. It cannot, therefore, be unsafe to any, if Dr. C. is right.
But if those who are trained to it, lose nothing, even in the high latitude of Scotland—where Dr. C. wrote—by confining themselves to good vegetables and water, then they must necessarily gain, on his own principles, by this way of living, because they get rid of any sort of necessity (he might have added, lose their appetite) for fermented liquors.
More than this, as the doctor himself concludes, in another place, they prevent many acute diseases. His words are these:—"It is animal food which especially predisposes to the plethoric and inflammatory state; and that food is therefore to be especially avoided." It is true, he is here speaking of gouty persons: but his principles are also fairly susceptible, as I have shown, of a general application.
In short, it is an undeniable fact, that even a thorough-going vegetable eater might prove every thing he wished, from old established writers on medicine and health, though themselves were feeders on animal food; just as a teetotaler may prove the doctrine of abstinence from all drinks but water, from the writings of medical men, though themselves are still, in many cases, pouring down their cider, their beer, or their wine—or at least, their tea and coffee.