mies to this kind of diet, and do not quite suppose, that with every slice of beef, we actually swallow a dose of poison, still are inclined to attribute a variety of diseases to this source, and to suppose that vegetable aliment would at the least insure against their easy induction. An extended disquisition on this contested point, would properly embrace the following particulars of inquiry. First, how far is man shown to be carniverous or herbiverous, by the form and structure of his body, and by the display of his natural or unsophisticated propensities? Secondly, what were the habits of our species, as it respects food, at former periods? Thirdly, what is the diet, and what, so far as they can be judged of, are the consequences of such diet in different parts of the world? Fourthly, what correspondence would there appear to be between our aliment and the more prevalent ailments of this country, now, and in the time of our forefathers? And lastly, is that class of our countrymen, at the present time, which consumes the greatest proportion of animal food, in the same ratio obnoxious to constitutional disease? As far as structure would determine the question of man's alimentary destination, the vegetable apologists seem to consider themselves as almost invincible, since, in the human species, as they urge, those teeth are wanting, that are invariably found in carniverous animals: at least, the teeth which are termed canine, in man, have nothing in their make answerable to the teeth of the same name in those brutes which refuse vegetable, and live upon animal food. But in their hurry to seize upon this fact, our speculatists have overlooked the circumstance, that almost all the carnivora, except man, are in some measure animals of prey, and that nature has provided them with the teeth in question, both for procuring and for tearing their food. Now, neither of these processes is performed by man; he is not accustomed to take his meat raw, nor by force, in the way of seizure. The molares, or grinding teeth, moreover, correspond, as it regards structure, in a very marked manner to the teeth of the omniverous class of animals, or those which are capable of being sustained, either by a mixture of both kinds, or exclusively by one kind of aliment. With respect to the other principal distinction in structure, namely, the form and length of the intestinal canal, although man, in this particular, 'is removed to a considerable distance from the proper carnivora, he cannot be classed with the herbivora: in fact, as it regards both the teeth and the intestines, there are indications which must be satisfactory to any sober judgment, that it was the design of Providence, that man's proper food should be of a mixed kind, while at the same time he should be enabled occasionally to accommodate himself to a protracted use of either species of aliment alone. With regard to early propensities, as marks of original destination, we see no great force in the inference deduced from the alleged fact, of a few 'wild men of the woods,' having evinced an exclusive propensity for fruits and herbs, since, from the mode in which they had been sustained from infancy, such aliment was the only one with which they had been made acquainted. All that has been adduced on the subject of propensity and structure, avails to prove, certainly, that man is not an animal of prey, but, the argument avails no farther. . The inquiry, What were the habits of man in the earliest periods of society? would lead to the question of antediluvian diet and longevity; but the only records which exist, descriptive of the world before the flood,' contain, in respect to diet, no positive information. We must commence our comparison of ancient and modern customs, from patriarchal times subsequent to the deluge; and if abstaining from animal food and from drink, are dictates of nature, it will be seen that man very soon learned to disregard them, and degenerated into a carniverous, a drinking,'* and a cooking' animal. We read that Abraham, when entertaining his celestial guests, 'ran unto the herd and fetched a calf, tender and good, and gave it unto a young man, and he hasted to dress it. And he took butter and milk, and the calf which he had dressed, and set it before them, and he stood by them under the tree, and they did eat.' We have upon record, even before this time, the express command of God to Noah on this head: Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you: even as the green herb have I given you all things.' Genesis ix. 3. Again. When Isaac was 'advanced to a good old age,' he instructs Esau to make him some 'savoury meat,' such as he loved, and, by implication, such as he had been in the practice of eating. So that we have very early proofs of what the maintainers of the herbaceous hypothesis are disposed to deny, namely, the compatibility of long life and animal diet. But let us come to the test of what may be considered a fairer comparison, that of the respective diet and corresponding longevity of different parts of the world in the present time. On this head, a great deal of labour has been employed to prove, that in those regions of the globe, for instance, in extensive districts of the eastern world, where, from religious or other motives, man lives exclusively upon vegetable matter, instances of longevity are more frequent, than in countries where opposite habits are prevalent. But all the ingenuity of sophistry is found unavailing, to enable the abettors of this doctrine to make any way against the strong current of opposing and unsuspicious evidence. It has been asserted by witnesses who have not any particular case to make out, that, on the one hand, the vegetable-eaters of India scarcely ever ad *It has been asserted by one theorist, who maintains the vegetable creed with great pertinacity, that were man to live upon esculent and undressed vegetables, there would be no occasion for him to drink at all; and that he is not by nature a drinking animal!!' vance beyond, or even attain the age of sixty. On the other hand, the inhabitants of Lapland and Iceland, countries in which so much animal food in the form of fish is consumed, are distinguished by more than ordinary longevity. Much more, probably, in either case, is attributable to climate and other physical causes, than to the mode and matter of sustenance; but even in this particular, the advocate of fish, flesh, and fowl,' has quite as much to favour his side of the question, as the stickler for the superior salubrity of vegetable fare. 、 We have hitherto been advancing upon ground, over which, the generality of our readers, will not have felt much hesitation in following us. The solution of the two remaining questions, however, involves positions somewhat more debatable. The quantum of animal food consumed in this country, as connected with the quantum of disease, is a question of high interest to parents who are anxious for the welfare of their offspring. Now, it is a fact too often overlooked by advocates for a meagre regimen, that a much larger proportion of animal food was consumed, by some classes of society at least, formerly, than in our own time. Let the breakfast of a maid of honour in Elizabeth's court, be contrasted with the corresponding meal of the same description of personage in the present day, and then, until it can be proved to us that the chinedevouring dames of the period alluded to, were more liable to 'constitutional maladies' than our present tea-drinking court ladies, we shall take leave to doubt the direct connexion between quantity of food and quantity of disease, in the way that the defenders of abstemiousness suppose. Again: we are told by sir John Fortescue, who wrote in the fifteenth century, when he is setting the health and happiness of the British poor against those of other nations, that they,' the poor, are fed in great abundance with all sorts of flesh and fish, of which they have plenty every where.'* And further, comparing one class of our fellow countrymen with another, at the present period, where do we find the maladies in question, existing in the greatest frequency and virulence? Do we expect to meet with cancer, and scrophula, and consumption, and madness, among rustic labourers, one of whom takes as much meat almost at a single meal, as serves a whole poor family in commercial and manufacturing towns? Or do we not rather look for such diseases either among the squalid and half-famished inhabitants of such towns, where vapid and merely stimulating fare usurps the place of solid sustenance, or among the superior classes of society, whose digestive organs, debilitated by habits of luxury, seldom demand or admit of much that is solid and supporting? Upon the whole, it may be safely concluded, that a due admixture of animal and vegetable food, (the proportion being greater on * Omni genere carnium et piscium ipsi in copia vescuntur. one side or the other, according to constitutional temperaments and external circumstances,) is decidedly the natural and legitimate diet of mankind in general, and of the inhabitants of temperate latitudes especially. To the burning countries under the equator, a diet more decidedly vegetable, seems more suitable; but with us, animal matter appears almost indispensable. With respect to quantity, there is no occasion for any great apprehensions, so long as a good digestion waits on appetite. It is not from the butcher, but from the cook, that we receive the slow poison which often preys upon the vitals. It is not by the quantity or kind of matter which we take, so much as by the mode in which it is furnished, and the times at which we take it, that our frames become radically impaired. Much difference of opinion has obtained with respect to drink also, in reference to its supposed connexion with different diseased states. Ever since observations on the ingesta have been methodized into any thing like system, water has been an object of minute inquiry, both as to its chemical composition and its physical effects; and no wonder, since it is natural for mankind to attach a considerable effect to a substance they are daily swallowing. These researches, however, have thrown very little light upon the quo modo of the salubrity or insalubrity of the different kinds of the fluid in question. There is, indeed, no small reason to be altogether sceptical on this point; for even the maladies of particular climates and places, attributed to the qualities of the water, are much more satisfactorily accounted for by other considerations: the goitre, for example, prevalent in some of the Alpine valleys, has been thought to be owing to the waters of the place, but in other districts, the waters of which are precisely the same in quality, the deformity is not known. Gravel and stone, the subjects of our more particular investigation, have likewise been ascribed to the impregnations of the waters used by the patient; but, besides that those concretions do not answer to any of the known combinations of materials found in waters, the maladies in question, happen indifferently to persons living upon soft waters, as those of the Thames or the Seine, or to those, who are the principal part of their lives, in the practice of drinking from springs impregnated with calcareous ingredients.' In fact, there are no well attested instances of any specific effects arising from the use of any waters, if we except those which either operate in the way of temperature, or which contain sulphureous, chalybeate, or saline components, in such measure as sensibly to act upon the animal organization. It is a law of life, that the more we enjoy, the more we suffer. We cannot have the advantages of civilization and refinement, without being exposed, in a greater or less measure, to the physical and moral evils which luxury brings in her train. Chronic, or constitutional maladies, are among the number of these evils, and theorists have erred in dissecting and analysing one supposed source of evil, to the exclusion of a multitude of others. But it is time that we should proceed to notice more particularly what are the facts upon which Dr. Magendie founds his hypothesis, of animal food being the cause of calculous complaints. It will be recollected, that in our review of Dr. Marcet's work, we stated, on the authority of that author, that in hot climates, and especially between the tropics, calculous affections are almost unknown.' Now, in these countries and climates, vegetable aliment constitutes almost exclusively, the sustenance of the inhabitants. This fact, Dr. Magendie seizes hold of with avidity, as amounting nearly to a demonstration in favour of his argument; but it is singularly unfortunate for the hypothesis, that the nations of the more northern and of arctic regions, enjoy an equal immunity from this class of disorders, notwithstanding that their food, far from consisting of vegetable productions, is almost exclusively, at least in the case of the latter, made up of animal matter, especially of fish. In reference to a particular district of our own country, we are told by Dr. Scudamore, who has had opportunities of personally observing the fact, that these ailments are exceedingly prevalent among the poorer classes in the neighbourhood of Tunbridge Wells, whose diet is almost wholly herbiverous. Mr. Copland Hutchinson also, in a paper recently published in the Transactions of the Medical and Chirurgical Society, has proved, by indisputable documents, that sailors enjoy a remarkable immunity from stone and gravel; men whom we all know to be peculiarly liable to suffer in other ways, from the effect of living upon one kind of animal diet, to which they are often under the necessity of being restricted. We are further told, by apparently a very candid and dispassionate observer, upon Dr. Magendie's theory, that he has repeatedly seen all the phenomena of gravel subdued, and the inordinate secretion of uric acid speedily reduced, by perseverence in a diet consisting of plain animal food, sea biscuit, rice, potato, and other farinaceous vegetables, with a moderate allowance of white wine or diluted brandy; and from which, animal fat and oils, fruit, salad, and other green vegetables, sugar, bread, pastry, and all alimentary substances prone to fermentation in the stomach, have been rigorously excluded.'† Dr. Magendie further alleges, that animals whose food is not naturally vegetable, and whose urine superabounds with a proportion of uric acid, may have the relative quantity of that acid reduced by confining them to vegetable diet. In this position he is in a great measure correct. Indeed, the fact that carniverous animals are the only ones in which uric concretions are detected, we regard as the strongest point in favour of our theorist's assump * Eclectic Review, vol. IX. N. S. p. 270. r |