Man's best diet, and twenty year's trial of it / by W. Couchman.

  • Couchman, W. (William)
Date:
[1873?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Man's best diet, and twenty year's trial of it / by W. Couchman. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Cost per stone of heat- giving aliment contained. Wheat,.£0 1 9 Oats,. 1 9 Peas,. 1 9 Beans,. 1 9 Bice,. 3 9 Potatoes,. 1 9 Butcher’s Meat,. 1 8 0 Cost per stone of flesh-forming aliment. Wheat,..£0 7 2 Oats,. 9 0 Peas,. 5 2 Beans,. 5 0 Bice,. 2 1 1 Potatoes,. 1 5 0 Butcher’s Meat,. 1 8 0 It is not meant that fourteen pounds of butcher’s meat costs 28s. ; but that this is the price of fourteen pounds of solid aliment after the water has been extracted, and so of all the other articles. Facts show that a very large portion of the great and noble of our race have been and are Vegetarians. Cyrus, the great Persian conqueror, lived from his youth on vegetables, and drank only water; and the best and most hardy soldiers of his army are said to have done the same. The brave and warlike Spartans were temperately fed on black bread and vegetables. The ancient Egyptians were religiously set against the killing of animals for food, and so far from being a feeble race, the ruins of their cities and the enduring solidity of their Pyramids are still the admiration of the world. The Brahmins of India, the finest and most intelligent of the native races, have for generations religiously abstained from animal food, and yet they have not diminished in stature or in mental or physical strength. In modern times we find almost universally that the labouring populations of the world, who perform no inconsiderable share of hard work, live chiefly on vegetable food. In Europe, we find the labouring classes subsisting on vegetable diet under almost every variety of climate, from sunny S])ain to the frost and snow of St Petersburg. The Bussian peasant is satisfied with the plainest food, and that wholly vegetable, and of the strength of Russian labourers, ship captains trading to St Petersburg have given many instances. The general food of the Norwegian is rye bread, milk, and cheese, and in no part of the world, in proportion to its inhabitants, do the people attain to greater lon¬ gevity. Dr Gapell Brooke says, that “notwithstanding the poor fare of the inhabitants, they are remarkably robust and healthy.” The boatmen and water-carriers of Constantinople, in regard to physical development, are said to be almost the finest men in Europe. Their diet is chiefly bread, with cucumbers, cherries, figs, dates, mulberries, and other fruits, with only occa- sonally a little fish. Their drink is water all the year round. The Polish and Hungarian peasants are among the most active and powerful men in the world, and that they are very brave their extraordinary struggles for freedom bear witness, and they live almost entirely on oatmeal, bread, and potatoes. The Swiss are a brave and hardy people, and their peasantry seldom taste anything but bread, butter, and cheese. The Greek boatmen are astonish¬ ingly athletic and powerful, and the labourers in the shipyards are no less so. They breakfast and dine upon a small quantity of coarse bread, and figs, grapes, or raisins, and yet there are no people in the world more athletic, graceful, and cheerful. In Spain, a hired attendant will accompany a travel¬ ler’s mule or carriage,forty or fifty miles a day, raw onions and bread being
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