Dr. Pierson, of Salem, in Massachusetts, a physician and surgeon of considerable eminence, in a lecture some time ago, before the American Institute of Instruction, observed that "young men who were anxious to avail themselves of the advantages of a liberal education, and were therefore compelled to consult economy, had found out that it was not necessary to pay three or four dollars a week for mere board, when the most vigorous and uniform health may be secured by a diet of mere vegetable food and water."
I know not that Dr. P. avows himself an advocate for the exclusive use of vegetable food, but if what I have quoted is not enough to satisfy us in regard to his opinion of its safety, and its full power to develop body and mind, I know not what would be. If the most vigorous and uniform health can be secured on vegetable food, what individual in the world—in view of the moral considerations at least—would ever resort to the carcasses of animals?
STATEMENT OF DR. C. BYINGTON, OF PHILADELPHIA.
A physician of some eminence, residing in Philadelphia, has been heard to say that it was his decided opinion that mankind would live longest, and be healthiest and happiest, on mere bread and water. I may add here, that there was every evidence but one that he was sincere in this statement, although I do not fully accord with him, believing that the best health requires variety of food—not, indeed, at the same meal, but at different ones. The exception I make in regard to his sincerity, is in reference to the fact, that while he professed to believe a bread and vegetable diet to be best for mankind, he did not adopt it.
TESTIMONY OF A PHYSICIAN IN NEW YORK.
In the work entitled "Hints to a Fashionable Lady," by a physician—his name not given—we find the following testimony:
"Young persons invariably do best on simple but moderately nutritious fare. Too large a proportion of animal food and fatty substances are pernicious to the complexion. On the contrary, a diet which is principally vegetable, with the luxuries of the dairy (not butter, surely, for that is elsewhere prohibited), is most advantageous. Nowhere are finer complexions to be found than in those parts of England, Scotland, and Ireland, where the living is almost exclusively vegetable.
"Those who subsist entirely on vegetable food have seldom, if ever, a constantly bad breath, or an offensive perspiration. It has been ascertained that the teeth are uniformly best in those countries where least animal food is used."
THE FEMALE'S CYCLOPEDIA.
From a fugitive volume, entitled "The Female's Cyclopedia," I have concluded to make the following extract, because I have reason to believe the writer to have been a physician: