A new and curious treatise of the nature and effects of simple earth, water, and air, when applied to the human body: how to live for many weeks, months, or years, without eating anything whatever / [James Graham].

  • Graham, James, 1745-1794
Date:
1793
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A new and curious treatise of the nature and effects of simple earth, water, and air, when applied to the human body: how to live for many weeks, months, or years, without eating anything whatever / [James Graham]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    HOW TO LIVE WITHOUT EATING, &c. No one can be fo very abfurd and ridiculous as to imagine that the infinitely wife and good God who created and preferveth us, ever intended that we or any of his creatures fhould live without eating and drinking, moderately and thankfully, of fuch food and drink as he ordained and fuited to our refpe&ive natures, and as he, with ever- full and generally open hand, holdeth out to all the creatures which lie hath formed to inhabit this terraqueous globe. “ The eyes of all wait upon thee, O LORD! and thou gived them their meat in due feafon. Thou opened thine hand, and fatisfied the defire of every living thing.” Ffalm cxlv. 15, 16. My view, therefore, in making the above experiment, of living without eating, was not to perfuade any other perfon to do fo too, nor yet with the vain and empty ambition of being fingular and ad¬ mired in the world;—nor would I be fo finful in the fight of God, as wilfully to injure my health, or rilk my life, unneceflarily. No, 1 had other fentiments:—higher and more laudable motives. In the fird place, I meant to (hew by the above fworn-to experiment, and by a fimilar one which I have lately made, the perfect congeniality of the fimple earth to our corporeal frame;—that the repeated afiurances of Jehovah are true, that we were originally formed of the earth, and that we are bed nourifhed for bodily purity and health, and for mental tranquillity and elevation, till extreme old age, by its fimpled productions, viz. roots, herbs, fruits, and feeds—by fimple water,— by early fober deep—and by inhaling into our fyftem, dimmer and winter, day and night, afieep and awake, the fredi external air and light, which are the all-animating material breath of God! and the faired emblem of his power, purity and glory ! at once working and didenriing the lungs, which are the bellows of life—-and providing both wick and oil, and trimming, for our vital lamp—making it burn with a full, fteady, and brilliant flame, till the extremed age that the confutation and organization which we receive from our parents and progenitors will admit of. My fecond reafon for making thefe very extraordinary experi¬ ments was, to prove to mankind, that nature may be fupported, and better and lefs-interrupted health maintained, by eating and drinking things lefs cooked, and lefs compounded—and in far, far lefs quan¬ tities, and lefs often, than they in general actually do. Nature within us is ordained by God to be fimple, chade, and moderate: neverthelefs, fallen, frail, and degraded in every refpeCl as we now are, it is poflible to warp—10 corrupt—to debauch—to proditute the divipe, virgin innocency and integrity of Nature.— Luding after other midrefles, we go a whoring continually after our own inventions—the arts of cooKcry, dimulation, repetition, crudities, and excefs. Hence in¬ numerable and infupponable difeafes, pains, poverty, difgrace, anxie-