Читать книгу Vegetable Diet: As Sanctioned by Medical Men, and by Experience in All Ages - William A. Alcott - Страница 60

Dear Sir,—As to food, my course of living has been quite uniform for the last two or three years—principally as follows. Wheat meal bread, potatoes, butter, and baked sweet apples for breakfast and dinners; for suppers, old dry flour bread, which, eaten very leisurely without butter, sauce, or drink, sits the lightest and best of any thing I eat. But I cannot make this my principal diet, because the bowels will not act (without physic) unless they have the spur of wheat bran two thirds of the time. I have at times practiced going to bed without any third meal; and have found myself amply rewarded for this kind of fasting, and the consequent respite thereby afforded the stomach, in quiet sleep and improved condition the next day. And as to drink, I still use cold water, which I take with as great a zest, and as keen a relish, as the inebriate does his stimulus. I seldom drink any thing with my meals; and if I could live without drinking any thing between meals, I think I should be rid of the principal "thorn in my side," the acetous fermentation so constantly going on in my epigastric storehouse.

As to exercise, I take abundance; perform all my practice (except in the winter) on horseback, and find this the very best kind of exercise for me. I seldom eat oftener than at intervals of six hours, and am apt to eat too much—have at various times attempted Don Cornaro's method of weighing food, but have found it rather dry business, probably on account of its conflicting with my appetite; but I actually find that my stomach does not bear watching at all well.

My brother continues to practice nearly total abstinence from animal food. I have seen him but once in two and a half years, but learn his health has greatly improved, so that he was able to take charge of a high school in the fall of 1836, of an academy in the spring of the present year, and also again this fall. During his vacation last July, he took a tour into the interior of Worcester county, Mass., and came home entirely on foot by way of the Notch of the White Hills, traveling nearly three hundred miles. This speaks something in favor of rigid abstinence—as when he commenced this regimen he was extremely low.

Yours sincerely,

H. A. Barrows.