Читать книгу Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages - Alcott William Andrus - Страница 7

Whitehall, Washington Co., N. Y., March 17, 1835.

Dear Sir, – I noticed a communication from you in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal of the 5th instant, in which you signify a wish to collect facts in relation to the effects of a vegetable diet upon the human system, etc. I submit for your consideration my own experience; premising, however, that I am a practicing physician in this place – am thirty-three years old – of a sanguine, bilious temperament – have from youth up usually enjoyed good health – am not generally subject to fevers, etc.

I made a radical change in my diet three years ago this present month, from a mixed course of animal and vegetable food, to a strictly vegetable diet, on which I subsisted pretty uniformly for the most part of one year. I renewed it again about ten moths ago.

My reasons for adopting it were: 1st. I had experienced the beneficial effects of it for several years before, during the warm weather, in obviating a dull cephalalgic pain, and oppression in the epigastrium. 2dly. I had recently left the salubrious atmosphere of the mountains in Essex county, in this state, for this place of musquitoes and miasmata. 3dly, and prominently. I had frequent exposures to the variolous infection, and I had a dreadful apprehension that I might have an attack of the varioloid, as at that time I had never experimentally tried the protective powers of the vaccine virus, and had too little confidence in those who recommended its prophylactic powers. The results I submit you, in reply to your interrogatories.

1. I think each time I tried living on vegetable food exclusively, that for the first month I could not endure fatigue as well. Afterward I could.

2. The digestive organs were always more agreeably excited.

3. The mind uniformly clearer, and could endure laborious investigations longer, and with less effort.

4. I am constitutionally healthy and robust.

5. I believe I have more colds, principally seated on the mucous membranes of the lungs, fauces, and cavities of the head. (I do not, however, attribute it to diet.)

6. The first trial was one year. I am now ten months on the same plan, and shall continue it.

7. I never used a large quantity of animal food or stimulants, of any description.

8. I have for several years used tea and coffee, usually once a day – believe them healthy.

9. Vegetable diet is less aperient than a mixed diet, if we except Indian corn.

10. I do not think that common laborers, in health, could do as well without animal food; but I think students might.

11. I have selected potatoes, when baked or roasted, and all articles of food usually prepared from Indian meal, as the most healthy articles on which I subsist; particularly the latter, whose aperient and nutritive qualities render it, in my estimation, an invaluable article for common use.

Yours, etc.,

D. S. Wright.