Part 11 (1/2)
Milk is not included in the foregoing list of light articles; although Dr. C. was evidently extremely fond of prescribing it in chronic diseases. It does not fully appear, so far as I can learn from his writings, that he regarded it as by any means indispensable to those who were perfectly healthy, except during infancy and childhood. The following extract will give us--more than any other, perhaps--his real sentiments, though modestly expressed in the form of a conjecture, rather than a settled belief.
”I have sometimes indulged the conjecture that animal food, and _made_ or artificial liquors, in the original frame of our nature and design of our creation, were not intended for human creatures. They seem to me neither to have those strong and fit organs for digesting them (at least, such as birds and beasts of prey have that live on flesh); nor, naturally, to have those voracious and brutish appet.i.tes, that require animal food and strong liquors to satisfy them; nor those cruel and hard hearts, or those diabolical pa.s.sions, which could easily suffer them to tear and destroy their fellow-creatures; at least, not in the first and early ages, before every man had corrupted his way, and G.o.d was forced to exterminate the whole race by an universal deluge, and was also obliged to shorten their lives from nine hundred or one thousand years to seventy. He wisely foresaw that animal food and artificial liquors would naturally contribute toward this end, and indulged or permitted the generation that was to plant the earth again after the flood the use of them for food; knowing that, though it would shorten their lives and plait a scourge of thorns for the backs of the lazy and voluptuous, it would be cautiously avoided by those who knew it was their duty and happiness to keep their pa.s.sions low, and their appet.i.tes in subjection.
And this very era of the flood is that mentioned in holy writ for the indulgence of animal food and artificial liquors, after the trial had been made how insufficient alone a vegetable diet--which was the first food appointed for human kind after their creation--was, in the long lives of men, to restrain their wickedness and malice, and after finding that nothing but shortening their duration could possibly prevent the evil.
”It is true, there is scarce a possibility of preventing the destroying of animal life, as things are now const.i.tuted, since insects breed and nestle in the very vegetables themselves; and we scarcely ever devour a plant or root, wherein we do not destroy innumerable animalculae. But, besides what I have said of nature's being quite altered and changed from what was originally intended, there is a great difference between destroying and extinguis.h.i.+ng animal life by choice and election, to gratify our appet.i.tes, and indulge concupiscence, and the casual and unavoidable crus.h.i.+ng of those who, perhaps, otherwise would die within the day, or at most the year, and who obtain but an inferior kind of existence and life, at the best.
”Whatever there may be, in this conjecture, it is evident to those who understand the animal economy of the frame of human bodies, together with the history, both of those who have lived abstemiously, and of those who have lived freely, that indulging in flesh meat and strong liquors, inflames the pa.s.sions and shortens life, begets chronical distempers and a decrepit age.
”For remedying the distempers of the body, to make a man live as long as his original frame was designed to last, with the least pain and fewest diseases, and without the loss of his senses, I think Pythagoras and Cornaro by far the two greatest men that ever were:--the first, by vegetable food and unfermented liquors; the latter, by the lightest and least of animal food, and naturally fermented liquors. Both lived to a great age. But, what is chiefly to be regarded in their conduct and example, both preserved their senses, cheerfulness, and serenity to the last; and, which is still more to be regarded, both, at least the last, dissolved without pain or struggle; the first having lost his life in a tumult, as it is said by some, after a great age of perfect health.
”A plain, natural, and philosophical reason why vegetable food is preferable to all other food is, that abounding with few or no salts, being soft and cool, and consisting of parts that are easily divided and formed into chyle without giving any labor to the digestive powers, it has not that force to open the lacteals, to distend their orifices and excite them to an unnatural activity, to let them pa.s.s too great a quant.i.ty of hot and rank chyle into the blood, and so overcharge and inflame the lymphatics and capillaries, which is the natural and ordinary effect of animal food; and therefore cannot so readily produce diseases. There is not a sufficient stimulus in the salts and spirits of vegetable food to create an unnatural appet.i.te, or violent cramming; at least, not sufficient to force open and extend the mouths of the lacteals, more than naturally they are or ought to be. Such food requires little or no force of digestion, a little gentle heat and motion being sufficient to dissolve it into its integral particles: so that, in a vegetable diet, though the sharp humors, in the first pa.s.sages, are extended, relaxed stomach, and sometimes a delightful piquancy in the food, may tempt one to exceed in quant.i.ty; yet rarely, if spices and sauces--as too much b.u.t.ter, oil, and sugar--are not joined to seeds[9] and vegetables, can the mischief go farther than the stomach and bowels, to create a pressed load, sickness, vomiting, or purging, by its acquiring an acrimony from its not being received into the lacteals;--so that on more being admitted into the blood than the expenses of living require, life and health can never be endangered by a vegetable diet. But all the contrary happens under a high animal diet.”
Now I will not undertake to vouch--as indeed I cannot, conscientiously, do it--for the correctness of all Dr. C.'s notions in physiology or pathology. The great object I have in view, by the introduction of these quotations, may be accomplished without it. His preference for vegetable food, or for what he calls a milk and seed diet, is the point which I wish to make most prominent.
In the following paragraphs, he takes up and considers some of the popular objections of the day, to his doctrines and practice.
”One of the most terrible objections some weak persons make against this regimen and method, is, that upon accidental trials, they have always found milk, fruit, and vegetables so inflate, blow them up, and raise such tumults and tempests in their stomach and bowels, that they have been terrified and affrighted from going on. I own the truth and fact to be such, in some as is represented; and that in stomachs and entrails inured only to hot and high meats and drinks, and consequently in an inflammatory state and full of choler and phlegm, this sensation will sometimes happen--just as a bottle of cider or fretting wine, when the cork is pulled out, will fly up, and fume, and rage; and if you throw in a little ferment or acid (such as milk, seeds, fruit, and vegetables _to them_), the effervescence and tempest will exasperate to a hurricane.
”But what are wind, flatulence, phlegm, and choler? What, indeed, but stopped perspiration, superfluous nourishment, inconcocted chyle, of high food and strong liquors, fermented and putrifying? And when these are shut up and corked, with still more and more solid, strong, hot, and styptic meats and drinks, is the corruption and putrefaction thereby lessened? Will it not then, at last, either burst the vessel, or throw out the cork or stopples, and raise still more lasting and cruel tempests and tumults? Are milk and vegetables, seeds and fruits, harder of digestion, more corrosive, or more capable of producing chyle, blood, and juices, less fit to circulate, to perspire, and be secreted?
”But what is to be done? The cure is obvious. Begin by degrees; eat less animal food--the most tender and young--and drink less strong fermented liquors, for a month or two. Then proceed to a _tr.i.m.m.i.n.g_ diet, of one day, seed and vegetables, and another day, tender, young animal food;--and, by degrees, slide into a total milk, seed, and vegetable diet; cooling the stomach and entrails gradually, to fit them for this soft, mild, sweetening regimen; and in time your diet will give you all the gratification you ever had from strong, high, and rank food, and spirituous liquors. And you will, at last, enjoy ease, free spirits, perfect health, and long life into the bargain.
”Seeds of all kinds are fittest to begin with, in these cases, when dried, finely ground, and dressed; and, consequently, the least flatulent. Lessen the quant.i.ty, even of these, below what your appet.i.te would require, at least for a time. Bear a little, and forbear.
”Virtue and good health are not to be obtained, without some labor and pains, against contrary habits. It was a wild bounce of a Pythagorean, who defied any one to produce an instance of a person, who had long lived on milk and vegetables, who ever cut his own throat, hanged, or made way with himself; who had ever suffered at Tyburn, gone to Newgate, or to Moorfields; (and, he added rather profanely,) or, would go to eternal misery hereafter.
”Another weighty objection against a vegetable diet, I have heard, has been made by learned men; and is, that vegetables require great labor, strong exercise, and much action, to digest and turn them into proper nutriment; as (say they) is evident from their being the common diet of day-laborers, handicraftsmen, and farmers. This objection I should have been ashamed to mention, but that I have heard it come from men of learning; and they might have as justly said, that freestone is harder than marble, and that the juice of vegetables makes stronger glue than that of fish and beef!
”Do not children and young persons, that is, tender persons, live on milk and seeds, even before they are capable of much labor and exercise?
Do not all the eastern and southern people live almost entirely on them?
The Asiatics, Moors, and Indians, whose climates incapacitate them for much labor, and whose indolence is so justly a reproach to them,--are these lazier and less laborious men than the Highlanders and native Irish?
”The truth is, hardness of digestion princ.i.p.ally depends on the minuteness of the component particles, as is evident in marble and precious stones. And animal substances being made of particles that pa.s.s through innumerable very little, or infinitely small excretory ducts, must be of a much finer texture, and consequently harder, or tougher, in their composition, than any vegetable substance can be. And the flesh of animals that live on animals, is like double distilled spirits, and so requires much labor to break, grind, and digest it. And, indeed, if day-laborers, and handicraftsmen were allowed the high, strong food of men of condition, and the quiet and much-thinking persons were confined to the farmer and ploughman's food, it would be much happier for both.
”Another objection, still, against a milk and vegetable diet is, that it breeds phlegm, and so is unfit for tender persons, of cold const.i.tutions; especially those whose predominant failing is too much phlegm. But this objection has as little foundation as either of the preceding. Phlegm is nothing but superfluous chyle and nourishment, as the taking down more food than the expenses of living and the waste of the solids and fluids require. The people that live most on such foods--the eastern and southern people and those of the northern I have mentioned--are less troubled with phlegm than any others. Superfluity will always produce redundancy, whether it be of phlegm or choler; and that which will digest the most readily, will produce the least phlegm--such as milk, seeds, and vegetables. By cooling and relaxing the solids, the phlegm will be more readily thrown up and discharged--more, I say, by such a diet than by a hot, high, caustic, and restringent one; but that discharge is a benefit to the const.i.tution, and will help it the sooner and faster to become purified, and so to get into perfect good health. Whereas, by shutting them up, the can or cask must fly and burst so much the sooner.
”The only material and solid objections against a milk, seed, and vegetable diet, are the following:
”_First_, That it is particular and unsocial, in a country where the common diet is of another nature. But I am sure sickness, lowness, and oppression, are much more so. These difficulties, after all, happen only at first, while the cure is about; for, when good health comes, all these oddnesses and specialities will vanish, and then all the contrary to these will be the case.
”_Secondly_, That it is weakening, and gives a man less strength and force, than common diet. It is true that this may be the result, at first, while the cure is imperfect. But then the greater activity and gayety which will ensue on the return of health, under a milk and vegetable diet, will liberally supply that defect.
”_Thirdly_, The most material objection against such a diet is, that it cools, relaxes, softens, and unbends the solids, at first, faster than it corrects and sweetens the juices, and brings on greater degrees of lowness than it is designed to cure; and so sinks, instead of raising.
But this objection is not universally true; for there are many I have treated, who, without any such inconvenience, or consequent lowness, have gone into this regimen, and have been free from any oppression, sinking, or any degree of weakness, ever after; and they were not only those who have been generally temperate and clean, free from humors and sharpnesses, but who, on the decline of life, or from a naturally weak const.i.tution or frame, have been oppressed and sunk from their weakness and their incapacity to digest common animal food and fermented liquors.
”I very much question if any diet, either hot or cool, has any great influence on the solids, after the fluids have been entirely sweetened and balmified. Sweeten and thin the juices, and the rest will follow, as a matter of course.”
At page 90 of Dr. Cheyne's Natural Method of Curing Diseases, he thus says: