gently sought out substances, as condiments, to give more flavour to vegetables, and to render them more congenial and wholesome to the constitution.

It is here that we find arising one of the greatest evils consequent upon the changes which have occurred. The substances which man has added in order to ameliorate and render an unsuitable diet more fitted for his constitution, have, in many instances, made it less so; and have given origin to diseases, to which the use of the same diet, unsuitable as it was, would not have subjected him.

Vegetables are certainly, by the culinary art, rendered much more suitable as food for man than they are in their natural state; but still, when prepared in the best way, they remain deficient in the essential principles, and that deficiency has been improperly supplied by many of the seasonings and condiments which have come into use. The natural indication must be to render those articles of food, more, or as nearly as possible, like those which constitute man's natural food, and which are found most conducive to human health; and by which it is seen that the acid and saccharine substances, especially the acid, ought to be principally used for such purposes, instead of the hot, acrid, fiery, and saline. substances so much had recourse to.

mations

seasoned

The hot condiments made use of for seasoning Inflamfood, constitute a prolific source of inflammations, caused under their various and fatal forms; and which, on by hot account of their great prevalence and frequent oc- foods. currence, their real source being unsuspected, have been regarded as constitutional peculiarities, beyond the control of medicine for their removal, and only

yielding to its influence to return again at no great interval of time. Whilst the cause exists, assuredly medicine cannot generally prevent their periodical recurrence; but those occasional attacks do cease when the hot substances by which they have been caused are no longer taken with the food.

I have frequently known abstemious individuals drinking no wine and very little malt liquor, have periodical attacks of erysipelas of the face or legs, which I have distinctly traced to the too free, but not unusual use, of hot seasonings and peppers; the occurrence of which, on the discontinuance of those condiments, has ceased, although there had been periodical attacks for many years previously. Those hot substances, by an accumulation of their acridity in the system, also appear to be chiefly concerned in the production of most dangerous inflammations of the internal organs, often terminating fatally. The ill effects of a liberal use of such condiments render themselves manifest in a variety of ways, of which perhaps, one of the most common and disagreeable, is that of occasioning a pimply, blotchy state of the skin. In constitutions of some temperaments it commonly occasions those conspicuously red inflammatory noses and faces, by which some persons are so much disfigured.

The essential oil in which the pungency of peppers resides is of a very powerful nature, and when those powders are recently mixed with substantial food, persons commonly take more than they are at all aware of; for it is not until after maceration in the stomach that the fieriness of those solid, though small particles, is brought out.

CHAPTER IV.

OF ANIMAL FOOD, AND THE MEANS BY WHICH

IT AND VEGETABLES ARE RENDERED

MOST WHOLESOME.

ONE of the strongest proofs of the radical impropriety of man's feeding on flesh, must be that which is armed with the fact that the human body invariably withers and perishes most miserably when confined constantly to it. It cannot be denied that a diet consisting exclusively of fruit and farinaceous matters is favourable to the human constitution. But a diet composed entirely of animal matters has always been productive of the most terrible effects. By the force of long habit it becomes more tolerable to the constitution, but its pernicious influence never fails to render itself conspicuously apparent.

When flesh has been long and exclusively used Disease for food, it has always been found to overheat and caused by eating stimulate, and at length to exhaust and debilitate flesh. the system, although at first it might have appeared to derive nourishment and vigour from it. Under the influence of such a diet, the action of the nervous system speedily becomes deranged; an indescribable heaviness pervades the body; the functions of respiration, of digestion, and of the circulation of the blood, are no longer efficiently performed; the breath becomes fœtid, and the breathing hurried on the slightest occasion; the stomach is greatly oppressed and nauseated; the gums, and lining membrane

of the nose, are affected with a spongy enlargement and bleeding; the limbs become swollen, stiff, and discoloured; in fine, a loathsome disease arises from the general prostration of the vital functions. The mind is enveloped in the deepest melancholy and dejection, and there is the greatest indisposition to any sort of exertion; which complication of maladies, increasing with unerring certainty, gradually extinguish life under circumstances the most miserable and revolting. This is evidently the disease alluded to in the twentieth verse of the eleventh chapter of Numbers, when the Israelites are told they will eat flesh until it come out at their nostrils. That is, until the flesh produce such a superfluity of blood, as to occasion its exudation from the nostrils.

The unsuitableness of flesh for human food has been insisted on by philosophers of all ages. Celsus affirms that much animal food induces premature old age, and disease. The learned Theophrastus has also spoken particularly of the tendency which flesh has to obtund the intellectual faculties, and darken the mind of man. It is related that the ancient athlete, who were fed much on flesh, were universally observed to be the most stupid of men ; and Diogenes, when asked the cause of it, is said to have answered: "Because they are wholly formed of the flesh of swine and oxen."

Animal food, as usually made use of, evidently has a tendency to occasion a too succulent and full habit of body, as is particularly obvious in some constitutions, by a remarkable redness, or what is sometimes aptly termed a rawness, of the face, totally different from the bloomy blush of genuine

health, for which it is wont to be mistaken; but of which it is in reality, merely a morbid semblance. The redness to which I allude, may, by attentive observation, be seen to arise from an unnatural turgescence of the system; a too vascular, spongy, loose state of the parts. This is a habit of body which is particularly liable to consumption and other fatal diseases.

raw flesh.

haave's

sect. 1035.

The use of flesh must also have a tendency to Effects of render man's disposition unnaturally savage and ferocious, or like that of a carnivorous animal, as has been particularly observed. Boerhaave relates Boer-, that a man who had been for some time fed on Lectures, raw flesh, became extremely voracious, and fierce almost like a beast; his voracious appetite inclining him to fall on the first ox or other creature coming in his way. The Tartars, who live almost entirely on animal food, are remarkable for their atrocious ferocity and savageness.

The alimentary and digestive apparatus of carnivorous animals has been endowed with a remarkable power of resisting and preventing putrefaction, or of so elaborating and metamorphosing animal matter, that it passes little into that state during the nutrific operations. Man has not been furnished with a similar power of resisting putrefaction, and that circumstance again very strongly proclaims the impropriety of his eating flesh he being naturally a feeder on fruits, which are not liable like flesh to become intensely putrescent, his alimentary system. had not occasion for the possession of a power like that of a carnivorous animal, of resisting the putrefaction of food in the body; and consequently he has

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