Volume 1

The family oracle of health, economy, medicine, and good living adapted to all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage / By F. Crell ... and W. M. Wallace, Esq., assisted by a Committee of scientific gentlemen.

  • Crell, A. F.
Date:
1824-1827
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The family oracle of health, economy, medicine, and good living adapted to all ranks of society, from the palace to the cottage / By F. Crell ... and W. M. Wallace, Esq., assisted by a Committee of scientific gentlemen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

    72/516 (page 64)
    vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gra- dually converted into strength, and disease into healthfulness ; madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fet- tered maniac to the irrationalities of ill temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerate evenness of temper. 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 ot it; all sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect. 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. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a tem- porary diminution of muscular strength ; but it is only tempo- rary. Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and difficult panting, now felt by almost every one, after hastily climbing an ordinary mountain. He will feel none of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. He will find, moreover, a system of simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism. He will no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying those organs from which he expects gratification. The pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, with a dessert of apples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants, rasp- berries, and in winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater than is supposed.—-How much longer will man continue to pimp for the gluttony of Death, his most insidious, implacable, and eternal foe ! As a “ Counterblaste,” as King James would have said, to the pre- ceding diatribe, we subjoin the following paper by our amateur corres- pondent. It is not indeed, a reply to Mr. Shelly, but it takes up the general question, and will, as we like fair play, furnish our readers with arguments on both sides.—Editors. What is the Natural Food of Man ? [By an Amateur.] It is strange, that philosophers, whose sole aim should be utility—by which I mean the discovery or improvement of what * The great Naturalist, Linnaeus, was of a very different opinion. He found the Laplanders remarkably long-lived, though they live wholly on flesh and fish, and never taste any bread, or any vegetable, except a few raw turnips in the season, which they eat as we.eat apples. Linnraus ascribes their long life to the animal food. See next article.—Editors.