The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams.
- Q15442840
- Date:
- 1883
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The ethics of diet : a catena of authorities deprecatory of the practice of flesh-eating / by Howard Williams. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Francis A. Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School.
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![What name should we bestow upon a Supreme Being whose whole endeavourv were employed, and whose whole pleasure consisted, in terrifying, ensnaring, tormenting, and destroying mankind; whose superior faculties were exerted in fomenting animosities amongst them, in contriving engines of destruction, inciting them to use them in maiming and murdering each other; whose power over them was employed in assisting the rapacious, deceiving the simple, and oppressing the innocent ? Who, without provocation or advantage, should continue, from day to day, void of all pity and remorse, thus to torment mankind for diversion; and, at the same time, endeavouring, with the utmost care, to preserve their lives and propagate their species, in order to increase the number of victims devoted to his malevolence ? I pay, what name detestable enough could we find for such a being. Yet if we impartially consider the case, and our intermediate situation, with respect to inferior animals, just such a being is a ' Sportsman,' [and let us add, by way of corollary, a fortiori one who consciously sanctions the daily and hourly cruelties of the Slaughter- HouseandtheButcher.]—Disquisition II. On Cruelty to Animals, by Soame Jenyns, XIII. PRESSAVIN. 1750. An eminent Surgeon of Lyon, in the Medical and Surgical College of which city he held a professorship, and where he collected an extensive Anatomical Museum. At the Revolution of 1789 he embraced its principles with ardour, and filled the posts of Municipal Officer and of Procureur de la Commune. On the clay of the Lyon executions, under the direction of the revolutionary tribunals, Sept. 9, 1792, Pressavin intervened, and attempted to save several of the condemned. In the Convention Nationale, to which he had been elected deputy, he voted for the execution of the King; in other respects he was opposed to the extreme measures of the violent revolutionists, and in Sept., 1793, he was expelled from the Society of the Jacobins. In 1798 he was named Member of the Council of Five Hundred, for two years, by the department of the Rhone. The date of his death seems to be uncertain. His chief writings are :— Traite des Maladies des JVerfs, 1769. Traite des Maladies Veneriennes, oii Von indique un Nouveau Remede, 8vo., 1773. Last, and most important, I?Art de Prolongerla Vie et d&Conserver la Sante, 8vo. Paris, 1786. It was translated into Spanish, Madrid, 8vo., 1799. Pressavin thus expresses his convictions as to the fatal effects of Kreophagy:— We cannot doubt that, if Man had always limited himself to the use of the nourishment destined for his organs, he would not be seen, to-day, to have become the victim of this multitude of maladies which, by a premature death, mows down (moissonne) the](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b21084324_0340.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
