The following is a condensed account of Dr. L.'s views, as obtained from his "Additional Reports," above mentioned. Some of the first paragraphs relate to the effects of vegetable food on those who are predisposed to scrofula, consumption, etc.
"We see daily examples of young persons becoming consumptive who never went without animal food a single day of their lives. If the use of animal food were necessary to prevent consumption, we should expect, where people lived almost entirely upon such a diet, the disease would be unknown.
"Now, the Indian tribes visited by Mr. Hearne live in this manner. They do not cultivate the earth. They subsist by hunting, and the scanty produce of spontaneous vegetation. But, among these tribes consumption is common. Their diseases, as Mr. Hearne informs us, are principally fluxes, scurvy, and consumption.
"In the last four years, several cases of glandular swellings have occurred to me at the general dispensary, and I have made particular inquiries into the mode of living of such children. In the majority, they had animal food. In opposition to the accusation of vegetable food causing tumefaction of the abdomen, I must testify, that twice in my own family I have seen such swellings disappear under a vegetable regimen, which had been formed under a diet of animal food.
"Increasing the strength, for a time, is no proof of the salubrity of diet. The increased strength may not continue, though the diet should be continued. On the contrary, there is a sort of oscillation; the strength just rising, then sinking again. This is what is experienced by the trainers of boxers. A certain time is necessary to get these men into condition; but this condition cannot be maintained for many weeks together, though the process by which it was formed is continued. The same is found to hold in the training of race-horses, and fighting-cocks.
"It seems certain that animal food predisposes to disease. Timoric, in his account of the plague at Constantinople, asserts that the Armenians, who live chiefly on vegetable food, were far less disposed to the disease than other people. The typhus fever is greatly exasperated by full living.
"It seems, moreover, highly probable that the power inherent in the human living body, of restoring itself under accidents or wounds, is strongest in those who use most a vegetable regimen.
"Contagions act with greater virulence upon bodies prepared by a full diet of animal food.
"Since fishing has declined in the isles of Ferro, and the inhabitants have lived chiefly on vegetables, the elephantiasis has ceased among them.
"Those monks who, by the rules of their institution, abstain from the flesh of animals, enjoy a longer mean term of life, as the consequence. Of this there can be no doubt. Of one hundred and fifty-two monks, taken promiscuously in all times and all sorts of climates, there lives produced a total, according to Baillot (a writer of eminence), of 11,589 years, or an average of seventy-six years and a little more than three months.