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Falmouth, Mass., March 28, 1835.

Sir,—In compliance with the request you recently made in the Medical Journal, I inclose the following answers to the queries relative to regimen you have propounded. They are given by a lady, whose experience, intelligence, and discernment, have eminently qualified her to answer them. She, with myself, is equally interested with you in having this important question settled, and is extremely happy that you have undertaken to do it. This lady is now fifty years of age; her constitution naturally is good; her early habits were active, and her diet simple, until twenty years of age. After that, until within a few years, her living consisted of all kinds of meats and delicacies, with wine after dinners, etc., etc.

1. Her bodily strength was greatly increased by excluding animal food from her diet.

2. The animal sensations connected with the process of digestion have been decidedly more agreeable.

3. The mind is much clearer, the spirits much better, the temper more even, and "less irritability pervades the system." The mind can continue a laborious investigation longer than when she subsisted on a mixed diet.

4. Her health, which was before feeble, has, by the change, been decidedly improved.

5. She has certainly had fewer colds, and no febrile attacks of any consequence, since she has practiced rigid abstinence from meats.

6. She has abstained entirely for three years, and has taken but little for seven or eight years; and whenever she has, from necessity (in being from home, where she could procure nothing else), indulged in eating meat, she has universally suffered severely in consequence.

7. The change to a vegetable diet was preceded, in her case, by the use of an uncommon proportion of animal food, highly seasoned with stimulants.

8. Tea and coffee she has not used for thirteen years. She has used, for substitutes, water, milk and water, barley water, and gruel. She found tea and coffee to have an exceedingly pernicious effect upon her nervous and digestive system.

9. A vegetable diet is more aperient than a mixed. Habitual constipation has been entirely removed by the change.

10. She sincerely believes, from her experience, that the health of laborers and students would be generally promoted by the exclusion of animal food from their diet.

11. She considers hominy, as prepared at the South, particularly healthy; and subsists upon this, with bread made from coarse flour, with broccoli, cauliflower, and all kinds of vegetables in their season.

Be assured, dear sir, that these answers have come from a high source, to which private reference may at any time be made, and consequently are entitled to the highest consideration.

Yours, etc.,

L. W. Sherman.

Note.—If I have not been minute enough in the relation of this case, I shall hereafter be happy to answer any questions you may think proper to propose. It is a very interesting and important case, in my opinion. The lady has been under my care a number of times, while laboring under slight indisposition. She has always been very regular and systematic in all her habits. She is healthy and robust in appearance, and looks as though she might not be more than forty. This is the only case of the kind within my knowledge. I have practiced on her plan for a few weeks at a time, and, so far as my experience goes, it precisely comports with hers. But I love the "good things" of this world too well to abstain from their use, until some formidable disease demands their prohibition.

Yours, etc.,

L. W. S.