Here you can download Vegetable Diets By William Andrus Alcott Pdf book free online – from Vegetable Diets By William Andrus Alcott Pdf book; In answer to your inquiry, whether I ascribe the cure, in the cases alleged, to the abstinence from animal food or from stimulating drinks, or from both, I cannot but give it as my confident opinion that the result is to be attributed to a general abandonment of the diffusive stimuli, under every shape and form.
An increase of flesh was one of the earliest effects of the anti-stimulating regimen, in those cures in which the system was in low condition. The animal spirits became more cheerful, buoyant, and uniformly pleasurable. Mental and bodily labor was endured with much less fatigue, and both intellectual and corporeal exertion was more vigorous and efficient.
In the language of Addison, this system of ultra temperance has had the happy effect of “filling the mind with inward joy, and spreading delight through all its faculties.”
But, although I have thus made the experiment of abstaining wholly from the use of liquid and solid stimulants, and from every form of animal food, I am not fully convinced that it should be deemed improper, on any account, to use the more slightly stimulating forms of animal food. Perhaps fish and fowl, with the exception of ducks and geese, turtle and lobster, may be taken without detriment, in moderate quantities. And I regard good mutton as being the lightest, and, at the same time, the most nutritious of all meats, and as producing less inconvenience than any other kind, where the energies of the stomach are enfeebled. And yet there are unquestionably many constitutions which would be benefited by living, as I and others have done, on purely vegetable diet and ripe fruits.