The natural food of man : being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts / by Hereward Carrington.

  • Carrington, Hereward, 1880-1959.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The natural food of man : being an attempt to prove from comparative anatomy, physiology, chemistry and hygiene, that the original, best and natural diet of man is fruit and nuts / by Hereward Carrington. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    more than refer. Bush, in his “ Works,” vol. iv., p. 55, observed that the negroes of the West India Islands, were at that time almost wholly exempt from yellow fever, which cut off the resident upper classes in large numbers. Mr Hardy, a noted Scotch philanthropist, escaped the yellow fever in New York, he asserts, by his course of living ; while Mr Whitlaw, of New Orleans, Dr Rush, of Philadelphia, and Dr Copeland, also assert that they escaped yellow fever by abstinence. The poet Shelley, in his “ Vindication of Natural Diet,” p. 18, says: “ There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adop- tion of vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthfulness ; madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the uncontrollable irrationalities of ill-temper, that makes a hell of domestic life, into a calm and considerable evenness of temper—^that alone might offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of Society. 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 pre- clude others from enjoyment of it. All sensational delights would be infinitely exquisite and perfect; the very sense of being would then be a continued pleas- sure, such as we now feel in some few and favoured moments of our youth. 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. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits and experience of six months would set rest. But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected—even though its ultimate excellence would not admit of dispute.” Another argument in favour of the vegetarian dietary, as against meat-eating, is found in the fact that such a