about eighteen months since; when I put myself on the simple mode of living recommended in your lectures. For nearly a year, I subsisted principally upon coarse wheat-meal bread and milk, with great advantage to my health; when, happening to get some milk which tasted and smelt of garlics, I became so disgusted with it that, in May last (1832), I exchanged my milk for spring water; which, with the coarse bread, has constituted my diet, mainly, ever since. During the past summer, and especially the cholera season, my professional duties were exceedingly arduous; and I often felt myself nearly worn out, for want of rest and sleep. Yet, through the whole sickness, I subsisted on one pound per day of coarse, unleavened, wheat-meal crackers, with some fruit and spring water; and experienced no disorder of the stomach or bowels; but enjoyed, and still continue to enjoy, far better health than I have experienced before for the last fifteen years. I also gained several pounds in weight during the cholera season. Many people, and (among them) some of my own profession, have asserted, that simple vegetable diet is conducive to, and in many cases has actually produced, cholera. Both in hospital and private practice, I have taken considerable pains to investigate these matters; and in not a single instance have I been able to verify their assertions; but, on the contrary, I have uniformly found, that every person who has strictly and judiciously observed such a diet, under a well regulated general regimen, has not only escaped the cholera, but enjoyed excellent general health.” *

*GRAHAM'S LECTURES. Vol. II. P. 247.

397. Dr. D. M. Rees-whose practice and success were, at least, equal to any other physician's in New York -declares, that when the cholera broke out in that city, and he was called to practise among it, he found that the disease was making its greatest ravages among the excessive flesh-eaters; and he consequently went home, and requested his family to abstain entirely from the use of flesh during the continuance of the epidemic in the city; and he and his family subsisted wholly on a vegetable and milk-diet, while the cholera prevailed, without having anything of the disease; except in one instance, near the close of the sickness; when Mrs. R., without his knowledge, partook of flesh-meat; and, in a few hours. after, was taken with diarrhoea. Precisely the same thing happened to Mr. Henry R. Piercy and his wife; and Dr. Rees says, that all who conformed strictly to his advice, wholly escaped the disease."

398. "Dr. Tappan, who superintended the Park Hospital, has assured me," says Mr. Graham, "that out of twelve house-pupils (students of medicine and young physicians) who assisted him in the hospital, during the prevalence of the cholera, Mr. Sharrock, who had lived (more than a year) very strictly on a simple vegetable diet, was the only one who entirely escaped all symptoms of the disease;-all the others being attacked more or less violently, and some quite severely." Mr. Graham gives a great many more instances of persons who enjoyed good health, and were protected from the cholera, while they lived upon a purely vegetable diet; and this mode of living has made such rapid progress, in several parts

of the United States, that Graham Houses (that is, hotels where neither animal food nor fermented liquors are provided) are as common as Temperance CoffeeHouses in this country.

399. The observations of the poet Shelley may aptly conclude this portion of the subject:-"There is no disease, bodily or mental, which the adoption of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength; disease into healthfulness; madness, and all its hideous variety,—from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life,-into a calm and considerate evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of society. On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only malady; the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy life, and no longer preclude others from the enjoyment of it; all sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure,—such as we now feel it in some few and favoured moments of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an experience of six months would set at rest for ever. But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent, that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected; even though its ultimate excellence

should not admit of dispute. It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments by medicine, than prevent them by regimen. The vulgar, of all ranks, are invariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel persuaded that, when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved ;-when it is as clear, that those who live naturally are exempt from premature death, as that one is not nine,-the most sottish of mankind will feel a preference towards a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and painful life."

CHAPTER X.

VEGETABLE DIET CONDUCIVE TO SYMMETRY AND NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF THE HUMAN FRAME.

400. THERE are so many causes influencing the development of the human frame, and either contributing to or preventing its approximation to an ideal type of perfect symmetry and beauty, that I shall not attempt here to enumerate them. There cannot be a doubt, however, that after birth food has a very considerable influence. It has been shown that all animal bodies are in a state of constant mutation: millions of atoms are daily separating from our corporeal frame; and their place is supplied by newly organized matter, received from our food. Air, exercise, and many other circumstances, will (of course) materially influence the changes constantly taking place; but, all other things being equal, the more natural and appropriate the food, the more complete and normal will be the development. The lower ranks of creation supply us with many instances of the influence of food over development.

401. "If bees are deprived of their queen, and are supplied with comb containing young worker-brood only,