Читать книгу Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages - William A. Alcott - Страница 37

My Dear Sir,—For two years past, I have abstained from the use of all the diffusible stimulants, using no animal food, either flesh, fish, or fowl; nor any alcoholic or vinous spirits; no form of ale, beer, or porter; no cider, tea, or coffee; but using milk and water as my only liquid aliment, and feeding sparingly, or rather, moderately, upon farinaceous food, vegetables, and fruit, seasoned with unmelted butter, slightly boiled eggs, and sugar or molasses; with no condiment but common salt.

I adopted this regimen in company with several friends, male and female, some of whom had been afflicted either with dyspepsia or some other chronic malady. In every instance within the circle of my acquaintance, the symptoms of disease disappeared before this system of diet; and I have every reason to believe that the disease itself was wholly or in part eradicated.

In answer to your inquiry, whether I ascribe the cure, in the cases alleged, to the abstinence from animal food or from stimulating drinks, or from both, I cannot but give it as my confident opinion that the result is to be attributed to a general abandonment of the diffusive stimuli, under every shape and form.

An increase of flesh was one of the earliest effects of the anti-stimulating regimen, in those cures in which the system was in low condition. The animal spirits became more cheerful, buoyant, and uniformly pleasurable. Mental and bodily labor was endured with much less fatigue, and both intellectual and corporeal exertion was more vigorous and efficient.

In the language of Addison, this system of ultra temperance has had the happy effect of "filling the mind with inward joy, and spreading delight through all its faculties."

But, although I have thus made the experiment of abstaining wholly from the use of liquid and solid stimulants, and from every form of animal food, I am not fully convinced that it should be deemed improper, on any account, to use the more slightly stimulating forms of animal food. Perhaps fish and fowl, with the exception of ducks and geese, turtle and lobster, may be taken without detriment, in moderate quantities. And I regard good mutton as being the lightest, and, at the same time, the most nutritious of all meats, and as producing less inconvenience than any other kind, where the energies of the stomach are enfeebled. And yet there are unquestionably many constitutions which would be benefited by living, as I and others have done, on purely vegetable diet and ripe fruits.

In relation to many of the grosser kinds of animal food, all alcoholic spirits, all distilled and fermented liquors, tea and coffee, opium and tobacco,—I feel confident in pronouncing them not only useless, but noxious to the animal machine.

Yours, etc.,

Eleazer Parmly

New York, January 31, 1835.