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ARMY MEDICAL LIBRARY
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WASHINGTON. D.C 
 
 
FOOD  AND  CLIMATE,
u-*' f
CONSIDERED IN REFERENCE TO EACH OTHER.
AN ATTEMPT TO SOLVE THE PROBLEM OF THE NATURAL
        AND PROPER FOOD OF MAN.
V
BY PHILIP HARVEY, M. D.

PLURES CRAPULA QUAM SLADIUS.
-z

             ZANESVILLE:
PRINTED BY EDWIN C CHURCH, CORNER OF MAIN AND FIFTH STREETS,
                1849. 
WAA
H34?f
    24a

  Entered according to Act of Congress, by Philip Harvey, M. D.
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Ohio, A. D. 1849. 
CHAPTER  I.
                        INTRO DUCT OR V.

   Notwithstanding so much  has been said and written about the
 natural food of man, and as to  which of the  kingdoms of nature he
 should draw  his supplies from—the  animal or vegetable—or from
 both, the  subject is' still very far  from being settled.  Opinions  the
 most conflicting are entertained  upon it by different individuals, each
 magisterially claiming exclusive accuracy for his own; one set main-
 taining that man is entirely herbivorous in his nature, another that he
 is at all times, and  under all circumstances, adapted to a carnivorous
 diet, and a third that he is essentially omnivorous.
   In the  following pages I shall assume the task  of showing that
 man is not under all circumstances adapted to the same kind of food;
 but that he may with propriety, under certain conditions, take  it from
 either of  the  classes;  and that  criteria to guide him in his selection
 are furnished by temperature and climate.
   Medical men do  not in general turn their attention sufficiently to
 this part of the subject of dietetics; whilst they investigate the reme-
 dial  agency of aliment—its  adaptation to the control or  removal of
 morbid action—they commonly  neglect the study of the proper diet
 for a  state of  health; on this latter topic our attention has been  de-
 manded by various  visionary speculators  and enthusiasts, who have
 entertained us with  Utopian  descriptions of the physical and moral
 regeneration that is to follow the  adoption of their particular plans;
 the poets too have  declaimed tunefully upon this theme; we need
 not wonder, therefore, at  the conflict of opinions.   Our knowledge
 upon this  subject, as on most others, is to be advanced principally by
 the observation and  study of facts; to be  sure, we cannot in this way
 take such splendid flights as we  can in the  realms of fancy;  but
 whatever  progress we do  make  will be more apt to speed us on the
 way we ought to go.
   In thus presuming to step into the arena of discussion, I am not
urged on by the self-confident spirit of the Avell-trained gladiator; on 
4
INTRODUCTORY.
 the  contrary I confess  considerable misgiving.  I am aware that I
 shall be guilty of faults, both  of omission  and commission, and  lay
 myself open to criticism: neither my abilities  nor  opportunities per-
 mit  me to treat the subject in  a Avay to do  it justice; but its impor-
 tance, and the  general neglect of it, induce me to  take  it up, and
 urge the propriety—the necessity—of  adapting our food to  climate
 and to season.  I do not claim for my views entire  originality; I pre-
 sume, hoAvever, that much of what Avill be here  advanced  will  be
 found to be  new—at  least to  many of my readers—and, noAV that
 novelty is so  much sought after, be  entitled to a  passing  glance;
 and I am  Avilling to undergo  the ordeal of criticism for the sake of
 draAving attention to it; so that if 1^ am Avrong, I  may be set right;
 and if right, others may become so too.
   It is an old  remark that "a great book  is a great evil."  If this
 should be  considered at all an evil, at least the magnitude of it shall
 not be complained of;  making no pretensions to style, or elegance of
 composition, I shall content myself Avith  the  endeavor to combine
 brevity Avith perspicuity as far as I may be able;  but, though sim-
 plicity has been kept in vieAv, to have avoided  technicalities entirely
 would have  occasioned an unnecessary prolixity and degradation of
 style; I have, therefore, for the  convenience of the  non-professional
 reader, added a glossary of such terms as are not in common use, or
 not to be found in our ordinary dictionaries.
   I   do not  intend  to discuss  the merits of  the  different  materia
 alimentaria, or enquire into the  absolute Avholesomeness of the vari-
 ous  articles of animal or vegetable food in general use; this has been
'sufficiently attended to by others, and I have nothing new to offer on
 this  head.   It is simply my intention to revieAV a broad, fundamental
 question;  that as to Avhether,  and under Avhat circumstances, man
 should confine  himself to animal or vegetable food, or  make use of
 both; and  this I shall do as briefly as possible.
   I  have  paid some attention  to the subject experimentally;  having
 observed  the effects of different habits  of diet on myself and others
 in the West  Indies, and in the northern part of the United  States
 for many years.  For one year  I rigidly abstained from eating any
 kind of animal food, living entirely (except a  little salt) upon vege-
 tables and water;  and for five years I abstained from eating meat    I
 found these plans unadapted to our changeable climate, though they
 did very well in the West Indies.  The exposure to the inclemen- 
I XTltO I) l/C'TOR Y.
5
cies of weather incidental to a country practice in Ohio, in the win-
ter season, I  found required a more liberal diet; for, by  adherence to
this abstemious regimen, I not only suffered more from cold, but also
impaired  the digestive  powers so as to bring on severe attacks of
gastrodynia, pyrosis, and duodenal  dyspepsia; all  of  Avhich,  hoAv-
ever, have since disappeared under the influence of more appropriate
aliment.   My OAvn experience in this matter has aided in convincing
me that our diet should be adapted to the climate Ave inhabit; at  the
same  time alloAving other circumstances due Aveight; that in  hot
climates we should live  materially upon vegetable food; that in cold
ones our food should be more of an animal character; and that in the
temperate End variable regions  it should consist of a preponderance
of one or the other kind, in accordance with the Aveather and  the
season; in warm AA-eather conforming more to  the appropriate food of
AA-arm  climates,  and in  cold Aveather to that of cold  climates.  A
temperature  of  zero of  Fahrenheit I suppose to require  an exclu-
sively  animal diet, or nearly  so;  one at or near blood heat I suppose
to be incompatible with the salutary use of meat.  Milk,  cheese,
and eggs  occupy a position  by themselves, and can be used at any
time Avhen from labor or  exhaustion, concentrated focd is needed.
   In speaking of temperature, it will of  course be understood that  I
allude  to  the temperature of the atmosphere  respired and lived in,
and not that of the external air;  for, in heated  rooms one may be sur-
rounded with the Avarmth of the tropics,  while the temperature  with-
out is  freezing.   There  are, hoAvever, other things to be considered,
particularly  exercise and clothing,  as  modifying the  nature and
amount of the requisite food. Labor calls for proportional nourish-
ment,  and promotes  the toleration  to some extent  of  animal food,
where, AATith sedentary habits, it should be abstained from.  Clothing
may be to some degree  a substitute  for food; this, hoAvever, will be
explained hereafter.  These things do not affect the rule that cseteris
paribus, the  greater the cold we.are exposed to the more animal food
do we require ;  a temperature  of about 90, marking the point of
total abstinence from it.  Spirituous and  fermented liquors,  I suppose
to have some analogy to animal food in their effects upon the system.
   I suppose man to have been originally created an  inhabitant of  a
tropical climate, to which, with  a vegetable diet, his  organization is
expressly fitted; but that subsequent  events have scattered his race,
developed new  propensities, and rendered other habits  necessary. 
I)
I \ 1' RODIT C T O R V.
    Of  the  causes  in  general operation, I look upon nutriment and
  temperature as the great efficients in modifying the development and
  health of the animal  body, and  the Avant of adaptation in them the
  prevailing source of disease.
    This is, in brief, a general statement of the views to be advocated
  in the folloAving pages.   They refer to a subject, at all times of high
  importance; and it becomes doubly so Avhen impending  morbid in-
  fluences are to be guarded against.  It is universally conceded  that
  the observance of correct rules of diet forms the most effectual means
  of protection against epidemics.   As to AAdiat should constitute these
  rules, there exists,  as  has been said,  considerable  difference  of
  opinion;  thus  much may be safely  said, however, without  fear  of
  contradiction, the  plan that  is best adapted to sustain  the health in
  general  is also best adapted to sustain it through an epidemic period.
  The one here offered is that on which the vital powers will undergo
 the least fluctuation; for it forms a check, or balance, to the ordinary
 disturbing causes, changes of temperature, counteracting their effects,
 and at the  same time supplying  the needful demands of the system
 in  a manner best adapted to it.   It is  a system, too, that is readily
 fallen in with;  nature herself cries  out in its favor, and it is the force
 of  perverse habit alone  that stifles those cries.   Many  people  in-
 stinctively,  and Avithout at all understanding the reason of it, pursue  a
 way of living similar to the one here recommended; abstaining in  a
 great measure from  animal food in  summer, and  partaking&more
 freely of it  in winter;  but this adaptation is usually neglected;  not
 only in health,  but also  in  the  remedial  management of disease.
 How few among out physicians take into consideration the effect of
 season or of climate in their prescriptions as to diet; but how impor-
 tant the bearing of  such a course, may be gathered from the perusal
 of the following pages.
  When we consider the absurd dietetic  practices  that have  been
 so generally recommended and  adopted during  the prevalence of
 epidemic cholera, for its prevention; and which have doubtless con-
 spired with  the epidemic influence to extend  and  aggravate  the
 disease, we  cannot fail to be convinced that general information upon
 this head is much  needed.  Without particularizing, I will merelv
remark, that these practices have  been mostly opposite to the princi-
ples here laid down; and the fatality and spread of the disease have
been an apt commentary upon them.  The "Ohio Medical and Sur 
INTRODUCTORY.
7
gical Journal," for July,  1849,  in noticing the  appearance  of  the
Cholera in the Penitentiary, &c. at Columbus,  uses the following
language, "Whatever the strictest cleanliness and  abstinence from
vegetable  diet Avill do towards warding off the disease from these in-
stitutions Avill be effected.  The weather, for the greater part of the
time since the appearance of the epidemic, has been excessively hot
and sultry; the thermometer, on many days, standing as high as  92°
in the shade."  Now, Avhat effect had this regimen in warding off the
disease in the penitentiary, Avhere, Ave may presume,  it was most
rigidly enforced?   In about a month  from the appearance of the  epi-
demic, out of about 450 convicts  a fourth part had died of the disease,
and nearly all had suffered under  it,  more or  less; thus affording
strong evidence that the regimen adopted as a preventive in reality
encouraged the disease; for we can scarcely find an instance of such
universality of incursion of the  disease among a body of people un-
constrained  as  to  diet, even under  circumstances otherwise  most
favorable  to its spread;  and let us bear in mind  that the  disease  wTas
comparatively inactive  in the immediate vicinity of the  penitentiary*
and in the town and country round.   Whilst upon  this subject I will
remark that, as far as  my experience  in epidemic cholera extends,.
the disease is more dependent  upon the abstinence from fruit  and
vegetables during warm weather, and the  consequent exce-ssive  con-
sumption of animal food, or that of a greasy character, than upon the
use of the former.   During  the epidemic of 1832,  I was practising
in Brooklyn, N. Y. and being a physician to the  dispensary there,,
met with a good deal of the disease.   I can recollect many instances
confirmatory of the above remark.   I lived then entirely upon, fruits
 and vegetables, using  no animal  matter in any shape, flesh,  milk,
 butter, cheese,  nor eggs, &c;  but, though continually Avhere the
disease Avas  prevailing  most, I did not experience the slightest symp-
 tom of it; and during the summer noAv  preceding, (1849) the disease
 prevailing over the west and northern portions of  Ohio, and cholera
 morbus, diarrhcea, and dysentery of a fatal character, around the
 place  of my abode, (Somerset) my family consisting of  eight, five of
 them  children, and all subsisting mostly upon  vegetable food,  have
 been  exempt from bowel complaints, and indeed  all other diseases.
 I am  inclined to  think that in nearly all bowel complaints, the pre-
 disposing irritability of the mucous  surfaces is first developed by an
 excessively  stimulating and carbonaceous diet; and the train being 
8
I X TROD I CTOR Y.
  thus laid, any irritating substance, even the most Avholesome  nutri-
  ment, may serve to ignite it.   This may account for these diseases
  being attributed, occasionally,  to all  the customary articles of food.
  In the irregular actions of the animal economy, people are too apt to
  imagine every post hoc to  be a propter hoc—in other Avords, they
  think  that every unusual symptom depends upon  the  use of some
  article  of  food or medicine  that  has  immediately  preceded  it;
  Avhereas, in truth, such symptom may have been  altogether  inde-
  pendent of such cause.
   Upon the proper kind  of food the appetite  becomes a sufficient
  criterion of its  indulgence as  to quantity;  and there is no need of
  having  recourse to Aveight and measure, as with  the habits usually
 pursued is sometimes recommended.
   When the climate  is uniform, or nearly so, the natives, "to the
 manner born,"  most commonly adopt instinctively the  kind of food
 that is most suitable; but in the variable regions this is not the case;
 m these, habits of stimulation, begot by the influence of cold weather,
 are sometimes,  nay mostly, with difficulty  laid aside in warm; for
 these habits cling to us with a two fold force; first as habits, and
 besides as means of pleasurable excitement: therefore, a set of rules,
 founded on a knowledge and  understanding of the matter, become in
 these climates necessary for our guidance.
  Most of  our treatises  on diet  are mere  apologies for the  artificial
and perverse habits that prevail.  Few (none that I have seen) advo-
cate the due adaptation of our food to the temperature, or a regimen
strictly in accordance with our organization and necessities.  I do not
promise here to supply that desideratum fully; but if  I shall  be  able
to any extent to  point out the proper course, and induce others more
capable to explore it and make it more fully  known, I shall not write
in vain.
   In  a country so extensive, and with seasons so very variable as
ours,  a knowledge of the art of suiting our habits of life, especially
our diet, to the varying temperature, becomes of proportionably more
importance than in less fluctuating climates;  indeed, it is almost the
only means within our reach of preventing our health from becoming-
like the weather, changeable.  To those engaged in the navigation of
die Mississippi and its tributaries-streams extending continuously'
for upwards of three thousand miles, through nearly twenty degrees
of latitude, and consequently through a great variety of climates, an 
INTRODUCTORY.
9
acquaintance with the doctrines here  inculcated is of much conse-
quence;  and an observance of these rules indispensable to the pre-
servation of health; with habits at  all right in other respects, they
would, I have no doubt, secure the traveller in the enjoyment of his
health throughout all the regions in which these streams meander.
Not  alone, however,  to  travellers in these  regions, but to all who
change their climate, or inhabit one that is changeable, the  obser-
vance of some such rules as these is necessary.
  It is  not intended that every nice variation  of temperature should
be noted, and the diet changed to suit it, such minute accuracy is not
essential; but that those changes that decidedly produce an impres-
sion  on the system require an adaptation of diet; mere change  of
clothing is not enough; more of those complaints called colds proceed
from  ill adapted food than  ill adapted  clothing;  changes in the
weather people commonly suit their habitations and apparel(to, but
other adaptation is  neglected.
  Nature always aids  us in our well regulated efforts  to  conform  to
her demands;  she is  an alma mater, (a tender mother) and with a
gentle admonition intimates the first violation  of her rules.   Slight
derangements of digestion, taste, appetite, and spirits warn us of our
first  excesses;  these, if neglected,  are succeeded by  more serious
sickness;  it is only to the transgressor that her ways are hard.  By
the study of, and confirmation  to, her laws,  most of what are called
"the ills of life" may be avoided.   In referring diseases to improper
habits, I do not include the effects of specific contagion;  though even
these may be  much mitigated, and  disarmed of their fatal shafts by
proper  habits of  life,  particularly in respect  to diet.   Ninety-nine
hundredths  of our  ailments, however, proceed manifestly from our
own errors.
  The following chapters are  not by any means  intended as essays
under their respective heads; they are composed merely of a few
remarks that  appeared illustrative of the subject,  and  are thus
arranged solely for convenience. 
CHAPTER  II.
    ALIMENT.  DIGESTION  AND ITS APPARATUS.  DIVERSITY  OF MAN'S
        CONDITION, AND NECESSITY OF DIVERSITY  OF FOOD, &C.

    It is hardly necesssary to inform the reader that the animal  body
  is continually undergoing a disintegration, the old parts being carried
  away, and their places supplied  by neAv matter,  under the operation
  of appropriate vital  forces;  and that  those beings that  have not
  attained their full growth require an increment of matter proportioned
  to their expansion;  this supply for the wear and  tear, and growth of
  the body is effected from the aliment, and  is called nutrition; a due
  balance being preserved between the waste and the supply essential-
  ly constitutes the state  of health;  the  disturbance of this  balance,
  disease.
    Besides nutrition, alimentation has  another important end to sub-
 serve,  the generation of animal  heat; this will  be treated  of here-
 after.
   The want of a suitable supply for these  purposes is expressed by
 the sensations of  hunger and thirst.  A number  of hypotheses have
 been advanced to account for the sensation of hunger; it has been
 attributed to  the irritation of the folds  of the  collapsed stomach
 rubbing  against  each  other;  to  the  irritation of  the  gastric juce
 acting upon the coats of the empty organ; to sensations of Aveakness
 and inanity from  its emptiness; and feelings of fulness from deter-
 mination of blood to it.   Other  causes, chemical,  mechanical,  and
 vital  have  been  assigned, equally unsatisfactory.   It  is  probably
 purely a  vitai action, and the following  theory, in the absence of a
 better may serve  to satisfy  us on  the subject.   The corporeal body
 rnay be compared to a state, or body politic, in which all  the subor-
 dinate parts communicate by means of an electric  telegraph vvith the
 capital;   transmitting to  that  place  their  wants  and feelings  and
 receiving thence their orders and rules of conduct.  In the corporeal
 body, the nerves  perform the  part  of this electric telegraph; they
 communicate sensations and perceptions  to  the brain, ana  take back
 from it the voliUons and impulses  that govern the bodily motions   In
 hunger,  I suppose that part of the  body requiring to be resupphed
thus communicate* its  wants to the  brain, which  Then transmits  its 
ALIMENT AND DIGESTION.
11
orders, by means of the pneumo-gastric "line,"  to its  commissary,
the stomach; this  in  its turn calls for a supply;  the foragers, the
hands and feet, go forth to seek it, and the senses act as inspectors,
under their particular  orders from head-quarters, to  see that all  is
right and wholesome.   If all these organs be in a healthy state their
functions are performed  harmoniously; but it is easy to see how, if
one be Avrong, the rest  may be throAvn out; if the nerves be wrong,
they may communicate erroneous  feelings;  if the brain be wrong, it
may transmit erroneous orders; if the stomach, it may make a wrong
demand;  if the limbs  be unable to  execute their movements, the sup-
ply may  not be obtained;  and if  some of the senses be deranged,
they may sanction the admission of materials  detrimental to the
whole system;  or  if any of these  parts be very much disordered, it
may not  be able to perform its office at all.   The sensations, percep-
tions, and in fact-all the vital operations, being much under the con-
trol of habit, other rules for our  guidance, besides those furnished
by the sensations themseh'es, become necessary; these rules must be
founded  on experience and observation. We may see from this, how
necessary it is that our habits should be  correct in  all particulars:
for, if, by erroneous ones, Ave  derange any one function, that one
may disturb all the rest.  The causes of thirst are analogous, and  its
effects similarly manifested.  This view enables us to have a slight
idea how the need of  a supply is felt, and how the  particular kind
of aliment required  is  pointed out;  it gives us an  instance of the
wonderful adaptation of means to ends that prevails in nature, and of
that consent called sympathy, that obtains in all vital operations.
   But, in our artificial  state of life, these  natural sensations are not,
of themselves, sufficient for our guidance.  Doubtless much diges-
tive and constitutional derangement may be, and is occasioned by the
use of food, not in itself unwholesome, but unadapted to the particu-
lar condition of the system.   Thus, Avhen unstimulating and cooling
fruits and vegetables are called for, the substitution of the reverse
(i. e. flesh and fat)  may excite the  evils of plethora  and pyrexia.
When very efficient  nutrition is demanded, impotent and bulky food
may  occasion  deranged and painful performance of  the  digestive
functions, as well as the consequences  of inanition.   To contribute
some assistance to the  intimations of appetite in  these  particulars,
and make reason its handmaid, is a material object of the present
disquisition. 
12
ALIMENT AND  DIGESTION.
   It would not comport with the limits assigned to this little essay to
 enter fully into the doctrines of digestion and nutrition, or to describe
 the properties of the different alimentary articles; I shall presume
 my readers to be somewhat acquainted with these things, and refer
 to them no more than may be deemed necessary to illustrate the sub-
 ject of  the adaptation of food to climate and  season.  For this  pur-
 pose it will  be sufficient if we consider food under its  two leading
 classes, animal and vegetable.
   Alimentary substances, whether animal  or vegetable,  are  divided
 into the azotized and non-azotized.  Of the  former are albumen, or
 the  principle of white of  eggs; fibrine, or the  principle of flesh;
 caseine, that  of  cheese;  and  gelatine,  of animal jelly, glue,  &c.
 Of the latter  are reckoned  fat, starch, sugar, gums, vegetable jelly,
 and vinous fluids.   These,  though not absolutely  elementary  sub-
 stances, are called the elements of nutrition and  of respiration; for,
 they constitute the organic particles by which, with some modifica-
 tion, the system is nourished and warmed, and the animal economy
 is able to go no farther than these in the selection and appropriation
 of matters to  its  sustenance.   Plants, on the  other hand, are  able to
 appropriate the absolute elements.   Albumen, fibrine, and caseine,
 are  elements of nutrition;  for  they consist of matter  that  can be
 appropriated to the animal fabric generally; gelatine is supposed to
 be capable of nourishing the gelatinous tissue only;  the remainder of
 the materials  above enumerated are considered elements of respira-
 tion; for not consisting of matter analogous to the  substance of the
 body, it is asserted that they  can be applied to no other purpose in it
 than that of respiration; this, however, will be more fully considered
 in the succeeding chapter.
   Albumen,  fibrine,  and  caseine  are identical  in their absolute
 elements, they are, therefore, called isomeric,* and can  be used in-
differently in the nourishment of the body.   Their organic portion,
alike .in all of them, is called  proteine,t because it holds the first rank
as a nutrient.  It is the  substance that nearly all  the animal  tissues
are composed of, and is  contained in  all  nutritious   substances,
 whether animal or vegetable.
  With  regard to  their uses and  effects  as  nutriment, the most
material differences between vegetable and animal food depends  up-
  * lire;,  equal  and fjapo: a part.
  t yrfvxtum, to hold the first place. 
ALIMENT AND  DIGESTION.
13
on the former containing a large amount of insoluble matters, which
become excrementitious; it  is, therefore, less applicable Avhere very
efficient  alimentation  is needed;  besides,  the elements of both are
held together by different, and in the latter  frequently Aveaker, chemi-
cal affinities; they, therefore, require modifications of digestive func-
tion and apparatus to suit their particular use.  The digestive organs
of a carnivorous animal are  not adapted to contain and act upon suf-
ficient bulk  of vegetable food;  nor  is the  gastric juice of the one
kind of animal adapted to restrain the affinities or dissolve the food of
the other.
   Flesh and fat constitute,  as will be  explained  hereafter, the
most  stimulating and  heat-engendering food; they are, therefore,
best adapted to  sustain the  system  under a Ioav  temperature.
Caseine  and albumen are  adapted  to  the repair of  the exhausted
tissues at all times; and may be preferably used,  instead  of flesh,
when  from  violent exercise  or otherwise,  in warm  weather, very
efficient  nutriment is  needed; the superiority of these things  to
flesh  as nutrients in warm weather,  is probably OAving to their being
less prone to decomposition.
   It is the office of digestion to  dissolve  the elements of nutrition
and respiration, and put them into a fit condition to be absorbed by
the lacteals; the extremities of which are scattered throughout  the
inner surface of the intestines, and drink up from the dissolved food
the materials of the blood, by means of the  circulation of which the
body is nourished and warmed.   The portions of food that are of no
further use  become excrementitious; and materials that may have
been  absorbed, but which are not needed in the system, are elimi-
nated by various secreting organs,  as the kidneys, liver, cutaneous
pores, mucous membranes,  and intestinal  glands; these parts, if too
much imposed upon by the ingestion of superfluous matters, are apt
to become  diseased.
   The areolar tissue has the power  of saving, in the form of fat, the
surplus hydrogen and carbon, Avhich may  serve to ansAver future de-
mands for animal heat.  Other materials cannot accumulate much be-
yond the present wants of the system without unpleasant consequen-
ces.  A body,  like  a market is best kept in a  healthy  state  by
adapting the supply to the demand.
   With  all  animals, probably, in the independent  state of their ex-
istence, some kind of digestion is necessary to nutrition;  at least with 
14
ALIMENT AND  DIGESTION.
 the  higher orders nothing but the immediate results of that process
 can  be appropriated in  that Avay;  these should  proceed from those
 articles that their organs  are adapted to act upon, and be suited to the
 Avants of the system, or  Ave. cannot expect a healthy assimilation to
 take place; to suppose  the contrary Avould be as unreasonable as to
 expect to "gather grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles."
   Some form of organic matter is necessary to the sustenance of all
 animals; to some  animal matter, to some vegetable matter,  and to
 some both, according to  the  constitution of their organs.   The ana-
 tomical conformation of the digestive apparatus furnishes us with an
 indication of the kind of aliment its possessor  is  adapted to;  its  ex-
 tent  and  complexity are in the ratio  of the bulk of the food to be
 acted upon, the indigestibility of it, and  the  amount  of unnutritious
 matter it contains.  The carnivorous animals of warm climates have
 a comparatively small and simple digestive apparatus;  thosevof cold
 climates a more extensive one; and herbivorous animals, generally,
 the most extensive and complex of  all.
   That climate as AA-ell as food requires and has an adaptation of di-
 gestive organs to it, Avhere the nature of the food cannot be modified,
 has hitherto, I believe, been overlooked.  That the carnivorous tribes
 and even some others, of cold climates, possess more capacious diges-
 tive  organs than those of Avarm ones, Avill, I am persuaded, be con-
 finned by more extended observation.
   The  feline  races of hot climates have,  in general, the intestines
 about three times their bodily length;  the  canine  genus and  domes-
tic cat of  temperate regions have it  extended  to about  five times;
 these latter cannot modify the  nature of their food, or adopt a more
 stimulating diet, to suit their colder climate, but nature thus enables
 them to act upon a larger quantity.   The Avhite or polar bear  has in-
 testines ten times its length, and lives on flesh entirely; whilst the
 broAvn bear, an omnivorous animal  of a milder climate, has intestines
 only eight times its  length.  The  same thing is found among some
 herbivorous animals; thus the African elephant  has an intestinal
 length of  about seven times,  and the Asiatic elephant ten times that
 of its body.  The latter yields more readily to the varying circum-
 stances of domestication, and is able to endure greater vicissitudes of
 climate.   These things  shoAv that there  must be a  modification of
digestive organs,  or of food,  or both, to  suit diversity of climates; a
 larger amount of heat-engendering food  being  necessary in cold 
ALIMENT  AND DIGESTION.
15
climates  to  keep  up  the  bodily warmth; this will  be spoken of,
however, more fully Avhen  we come to treat of animal heat.
  The stomachs of sheep, cattle, deer, camels, and some others of the
purely herbivorous animals, that extend their races into almost all the
regions of the world, are not only very capacious, but are also com-
plicated, there being as many as four distinct digestive compaitments
in some  of  these.   In carnivorous animals the stomach is  ahvays
simple.
  In the camel,  deer, sheep, ox, and horse, the length of intestine  is
from twelve to twenty-four times that of their respective bodies.   In
them, and all herbivorous  animals, the ccecum  and colon are large,
and drawn up into saculi or cells by  longitudinal bands.
  Not only are  the intestines usually  shorter in the  carnivorous
classes, but their calibre is less, and they have feAA-er folds of the mu-
cous membrane  Avithin; their cceca and colons are  not draAvn  up  by
longitudinal  bands into  cells, as in herbivorous animals and man;
their  stomachs,  also, are much less  capacious; in fact  every thing
conspires to occasion a diminution of  the interior or absorbing surface.
  In  man, the stomach is  of a medium capacity, and the intestines
are from six to eight times  the length of  his body; from the extent of
his digestive organs it is evident that he is not adapted to feed on
very concentrated aliment,  unless there are large demands for animal
heat;  and his cellubar ccecum and colon  point him out as adapted to
the use  of  vegetable aliment,  without Avhich  he is  never so Avell
nourished as Avith it.
   The cc»cum has been called  another stomach; it in fact performs
the office of one; for, Avhile flesh is  ahvays dissolved in the stomach
in  healthy  digestion,  and  reduced  to the pultaceous  mass called
chyme, a considerable  amount of vegetable aliment passes out of it
undigested; this is  submitted  to  another digestive  process  in  the
ccecum, and the nutriment is  absorbed  there, and in the saculi, or
cells of the colon.   Dupuytren informs us that in wounds of the hu-
man intestines, he observed that alimentary matters escaped from the
wounds  low down the course of the bowels in proportion to the in-
digestibility of the food, and that animal matters did not appear at all.
   The machinery of mastication is  also in different animals adapted
to theit particular kind of  food.  In the carnivorous  tribes the teeth
are pointed, or Avedge shaped;  the lower ones close within the upper 
16
ALIMENT AND DIGESTION.
and  act like scissors;  the canine teeth, or fangs, are very long and
conical, and the lateral motion of the jaws is slight; the shape of
their jaws and the muscles that move them are also adapted to their
predatory habits.  In  the  herbivorae  the contrary  prevails;  their
teeth are mostly flat on the surface, of an  equal  length, and opposed
against each other in the upper and lower  jaws; the lateral motion of
their jaAvs is considerable; in short, the arrangement is evidently for
the purpose of bruising and grinding the refractory substances that
constitute  their food, so that the solvent powers of the gastric juice
may be brought to bear upon them.
  In man the teeth are of an equal length; there are but two pointed
ones in each jaw, with four incisors, and ten  grinders; and there is
considerable lateral motion of the jaws.   The stomach more nearly
resembles  that of the carnivorse  than the  herbivores; but in  the
ccecum and colon there is a nearer approximation to the latter.
  It has  generally been concluded  that man,  in his form and struc-
ture, is placed midway between carnivorous and herbivorous animals,
and that consequently he is essentially, and at all times adapted to an
omnivorous diet; this inference is  evidently draAvn  more  from a
limited observation of his prevailing habits, than from physiology, or
comparative anatomy.  Man's  digestive organs resemble those of a
class  of animals that  are purely frugiverous in their  native  state.
The conformation of the orang-outang (Simia Satyrus) and the larger
species of the ape  tribe in general, bears a close general analogy to
that of man; and with regard to those parts that act upon their food
they are nearly identical in structure.  In the number, situation, and
shape of the teeth, and in the formation and articulation of their jaws,
they are alike, except that  the canine teeth  are  longer and  more
pointed in the ape, and the muzzle is more projecting; its intestines,
too, are on an  average somewhat shorter  proportionally; these facts
would indicate that man should be, in warm climates, the less car-
nivorous of the two;  but it is a well known fact, that when in a state
of nature, and left to the guidance of their natural  instincts, the ape
tribe  is frugiverous, confining  themselves exclusively to vegetable
food when it can be procured; though when it cannot, they are capa-
ble of subsisting temporarily upon an animal  diet.   The native  cli-
mates of these animals are the hottest regions  of the earth; Avhere in
their natural state, they  are  probably invariably healthy; but  Avhen 
ALIMENT ANB DIGESTION.
17
removed thence to colder regions, or deprived of their appropriate
food, they languish, sicken, and soon die; under these circumstances
they are particularly subject to tubercular consumption.
  The lights of comparative anatomy, and the consideration of man's
internal structure, are clearly in favor  of  the  opinion of his adap-
tation to a vegetable diet; though his digestive organs and  general
habit of body are, so constituted as  to  admit of the  use of animal
foodj when circumstances require it.   The  absence  of all preda-
tory advantages of tooth and  claw proclaim him to  to be naturally
badly adapted to Avage war upon his felloAy denizens of nature; and
his naked skin pronounces him originally an offspring of the tropics,
or  AATarmer regions of the  globe.  In these regions we  have  the
strongest authority to bear out the inference that man and the Simise
are intended by nature for the same kind of food; but beyond this the
analogy must cease;  for, whilst  the ape tribe  is confined to the
tropics, and even  there within very narrow limits, the superior flexi-
bility of constitution,  and vastly greater intellectual endowments that
man possesses, enable him to conform  to all varieties of climate and
season; to turn all the conditions of the universe to  his advantage,
and provide for his wants in Avhatever part of the Avorld his lot may
be  cast.
  Let us for  a moment  turn  our attention to the extremely various
circumstances under  which the human race subsists.
   The  Greenlanders and Esquimaux live  between the 70th and 80th
parallels of north latitude, in regions of ahnost perpetual frost, where
scarcely any kind of  nutritious fruit or vegetable can be obtained.
   English, Russian,  and  Dutch sailors have,  at  different times,
wintered at Spitzbergen, Nova Zembla, and Melville  Island, Avhere
mercury and spirits froze to solid masses, even in the rooms where
they had fires.
   Our  Indians are able to endure an intense degree of cold with but
very little aid from clothing.   Lewis and  Clarke inform us in  their
"Travels," that two  Indians  slept on  the  snow, in ordinary  light
dresses, when the thermometer at sunrise was at forty degrees below
 zero; the  one, a man, sustained no inconvenience; the other, a boy,
 had his feet frozen, but  they were restored by washing in cold water.
    It is notorious that sailors,  and others, suffer less mortality and
 sickness in cold  climates  than in the tropics.   This indicates that
 their habits are better suited to the  former regions  than  the  latter.
                      3 
18
ALIMENT AND DIGESTION.
Man's nature, however, is better suited to the latter; the sickness he
suffers there is mainly owing to his neglect of the proper adaptation
of his diet, which is conformed to in the other instance.
   Denham  and Clapperton observed  the thermometer to stand  at
130°  in their tent, on the banks of lake Tchad; and it  commonly as-
cends to above 90° in the shade, and 140° in the sun throughout the
greater part of Africa.   When the Sirocco blows in Sicily, it rises to
112°.   Dr. Chalmers observed a  heat  of 115° in  South  Carolina,  in
the shade;  and Humboldt, in the Llanos, or deserts near the Orinoco,
a temperature varying from  110°  to 115°.
   Under all these circumstances, and others infinitely various, man
is able to subsist in health and comfort.  Overcoming adverse circum-
stances by means of  his arts and  inventions,  he establishes  himself
the monarch of all the realms on earth.  He may in truth exclaim—

         "Creation's heir, the world, the  world is mine!"

There is no other animated being that can sustain  itself  under such
diversity of surrounding influences, or  endure them without degene-
rating into Avider varieties than those  of man.
  Was this aptitude, this flexibility of  constitution, conferred on man
without an  object,  or to "rust unused"?  or was it the  design of the
Creator that those  regions, incapable  of producing fruits  for his sub-
sistence, should be unoccupied by man?   If not, Ave must conclude
that a vegetable diet  is not, at all times, necessary, or even proper for
his subsistence.  Even if  vegetables could be procured inifrigid cli-
mates, the  demand  for materials  of calorification is there so great,
that the extent and power  of his digestive organs are  not sufficient
to contain and act upon vegetable food enough to furnish those ma-
terials.
  Experience teaches us that the constant use of animal food  alone
is the  most wholesome, as well as necessary diet to the Esquimaux,
the Samoiedes, the inhabitants of Terra del  Fuego and  other high
latitudes.   We find that the Russians,  who winter on Nova Zembla,
are obliged to  imitate the Samoiedes,  by drinking fresh rein-deer's
blood, and  eating  raAV flesh, in order to preserve their  health.*  Dr.
Aikin, in a "Memoir on the attempts to AArinter in high northern lati-
tudes," informs us that these practices  were found most conducive  to
health in those climates.
            *  LaAvrence's Lectures On Physiology, &c. 
ALIMENT AND DIGESTION.
19
   Dr. Richardson,  on being asked hoAv he, accustomed to the bread
and vegetables of the temperate regions, Avas able to endure the pure
animal diet that formed his only support in his expedition to the Polar
sea, along Avith Captain Franklin, replied  that  the  effect  of the ex-
treme dry cold to which he and his companions Avere  constantly ex-
posed, living as they did in the open air, Avas to produce a desire for
the most stimulating food they could obtain; that bread in such a cli-
mate  Avas not  only not  desired, but comparatively impotent as an
article of diet;  that pure animal  food,.and the fatter the better, Avas
the only sustenance that maintained the tone of the corporeal system;
but that, when it  was  abundant, (and the quantity  required  Avas
much greater  than  in  the milder latitudes,)  a delightful vigor of
mind and body were enjoyed, that rendered life highly agreeable.*
   We need not, therefore, be surprised to find man, in these cold
climates, living and enjoying health, upon Avhat to us appears the most
disgusting  food.  The Greenlanders,  and other dwellers  within or
near the Arctic Circle, enjoy the raw flesh and blubber of the whale;
they eat the half frozen or half  putrid flesh of  the seal with, as great
a relish as the enlightened American or European does his greatest
dainties; they drink the blood of the seal  while warm, and  esteem
dried fish moistened with whale oil a luxury.   Bread and fruits are
disliked by these people, and spit out with disgust; and I have heard
that, Avhen farinaceous food, and other articles of the diet of civilized
life, were introduced  by some  missionaries among a tribe of Esqui-
maux, they became a source of sickness to them.
   The dwellers in  these cold countries are not  so well nourished by
their exclusive animal diet, as the inhabitants of milder regions are
upon their vegetable or mixed food;  but on any  other kind of food
they  would not be  able to exist  at all.
   The  principal reason  for the use of these articles of diet in cold
climates exists in the necessity that obtains there of using food abound-
ing in soluble carbon and hydrogen, or what Liebig calls the elements
of respiration.  This is the source of animal  heat, which  will form
the subject of  the ensuing chapter.
                 * Combe on the  Constitution of Man. 
CHAPTER  III.
     ANIMAL HEAT.   ANIMAL FOOD  THE GREAT EXCITER OF IT.

  As on the topic of Digestion.  I  shall treat but briefly on that of
respiration; saying no more upon it than I shall deem  necessary  to
illustrate my subject.
  That the  heat of the  body is excited  by the  combination of the
oxygen of the atmosphere with the  carbon and hydrogen of the blood,
is  now generally conceded.   The theories in explanation of this
subject, first advanced, I believe, by Drs. Black and Crawford, have
been amplified and confirmed by Liebig.
  The fact that oxygen disappears, and carbonic  acid  and aqueous
vapor are given out, in respiration, is easily demonstrable.   It is well
knoAvn, too, that oxygen  cannot combine with carbon to form carbonic
acid, without the production of heat.   Whether the combination  be
very rapid, as in a fire, or very slow, as in ordinary decay, the amount
of heat evolved is the same; though it may be distributed through
unequal times.
  It is immaterial to  the purposes of this essay, whether we consider,
with Crawford, that  the  combination  takes  place  in  the lungs,  or
whether we suppose, with Liebig, the red globules  of the  blood to  be
the carriers of the oxygen  Avhich combines  writh the  carbon in the
course of the circulation; the consequent  carbonic  acid being given
out by the lungs.   The latter supposition, however, is  probably the
correct one.
  The  temperature of the  human  body is nearly the same in all cli-
mates; if there be any difference, it is ordinarily higher  in cold cli-
mates.   The healthy standard is about 98° of Fahrenheit; but it is
evident that  the amount of heat given off must  be greater in cold
weather than in warm.   With an  atmosphere at zero, the loss must
be immense;  while, within  the tropics, where the air is  nearly of the
temperature of the body, the loss will be comparatively trifling.   This
loss of caloric must be immediately replaced; for the  temperature of
the blood being reduced a few degrees is  injurious, and even fatal.
   This re-supply of the heat of the body lost  by evaporation, radia-
tion and conduction,  is effected by the combination of the oxygen of
the atmosphere with the carbon and hydrogen originally supplied by 
ANIMAL HEAT.                       21
 the food, in the same way that the heat of a fire is occasioned by the
 combination of the oxygen Avith the  carbon and hydrogen of the fuel.
 The food thus becomes ultimately the fuel to supply the animal ma-
 chine  with heat; and  the  greater the demand for heat, the more the
 appetite increases, and the keener is the demand for aliment abound-
 ing in carbon and hydrogen, or heat-engendering elements.
    Under  certain circumstances, the (absence of a large demand of
 food for calorification, and the use  of  no more  than the necessary
 amount of food  for nutriment,) all of the food  may, previous to its
 final application to the formation of  heat, be applied to the nutrition
 of the body;  and the  removed and  worn-out parts of this alone be
 used for purposes of heat.  Still the materials of bodily Avarmth are
 ultimately derived from the food.  Under other and opposite circum-
 stances, a large proportion of the means of bodily warmth may be
 draAvn directly from the food.
    An Esquimaux  could not endure  his climate for" a single day upon
 the diet of the Hindoo;  nor  could the  Hindoo digest a single meal
 like that  of an  Esquimaux.   Any  attempt even to approximate in
 diet, between  these two,  would occasion the one to freeze to death,
 and the other to perish of a fever, or diseased liver.   ,
    Food, as we  have seen, furnishes  the elements of nutrition, or
 those  particles that can  be appropriated to the fabric of the body; and
, the elements of  respiration, or those particles that cannot be  applied
 that way, but which, consisting partly of soluble carbon and hydro-
 gen, may be made to furnish heat by means of respiration.
    Except fats, the articles called elements of respiration are not those
 that are able to contribute most to animal heat; for they contain much
 less carbon and hydrogen than most animal matters do.   Animal food
 is a more powerful exciter of systemic heat than starch, sugar, or
 gum; though these latter are  supposed by Liebig to be merely sub-
 servient to  the  purposes of respiration in warming the body; but  it
 is certain that, in  man, they are comparatively inefficient in that
 way.   Indeed, I am inclined to think that sugar must perform some
 other offices in  the economy  than  simply those of respiration.  In
 warm climates  and weather, when there is the  least demand for
 means of heat, there is the greatest craving for sweets.   All persons
 conversant with the sugar plantations,  are aAvare of the fact that the
 Negroes upon them become healthy and fat during crop time, who
 were otherwise previously.   They are then allowed  to  ~
use susfar 
ANIMAL  HEAT.
  freely, which gives a healthy tone to the digestive organs;  and, with
  the children, it pnwes an  excellent vermifuge.   Most persons who
  have been much  confined to animal food, in Avarm climates, have, in
 consequence, experienced a desire for saccharine substances.   This,
  if not gratified, is apt to be follo\Ared by disease.
    Many of our best and  most obsen^ant physicians have noticed  the
 good effects of sugar in the presentation of health.   Sir John Pringle
 asserts that the  plague does not visit  regions Avhere sugar constitutes
 a material part of the diet of the inhabitants.   Cullen, Rush, Fother-
 gill, and many other eminent physicians, think that malignant fevers
 are lessened in their virulence by  the  use of sugar.   Well  knoAArn
 maritime facts prove it to be a most valuable antiscorbutic.   In China
 and India it is a main  article of diet for the inhabitants.  In* Cochin
 China, the  king's body-guards are obliged to eat, every day, a certain
 quantity of sugar,  in  order  to preserve their embonpoint and good
 looks.  It is quite a mistake to suppose that sugar injures the teeth.
 No persons have Avhiter or better teeth than the Negroes on  the sugar
 plantations; and it  is equally erroneous to suppose  that it occasions
 worms in children; these more frequently arise from excess in the
 use of greasy and animal  food.  Saccharine food  appears to act as
 an antidote to the injurious effects of the excessive use of animal
 matter; and this result probably  depends upon  its antiseptic pro-
 perties, which it is Avell known to possess in an eminent degree;  re-
 straining decomposition, and an excessive affinity for oxygen, in those
 parts of the system  obnoxious  to  such influences.   (This will  be
 better understood after reading the appended chapter on malaria, &c.)
 Its free use I consider very salutary in Avarm  Aveather; and if gener-
 ally adopted, it Avould, I have no doubt, go far to prevent many of the
 epidemics of those  times.
   The  indomitable perseverance Avith Avhich children  pursue and
 possess themselves  of sweetmeats, in defiance of interdictions, threats,
 and even lock and key, is a forcible expression of  their need  in  the
 economy  of the "system.   Fortunately the calls  of nature are  not
easily silenced; in  spite  of tyranny, ignorance and bigotry, she will
 makes'her pleadings heard and effectual.
   Nature produces the greatest abundance of saccharine fruits and
vegetables in the  Avarmest  climates, Avhich,  to  a  believer in final
causes, would be an argument of their being serviceable to  man and
                * New Monthly Magazine, March, 1831. 
ANIMAL  HEAT.
23
animals otherwise than by  engendering heat.  Be this as it may, it
is certain that flesh and fatty9 matters are the most efficient means of
engendering animal heat; more especially the latter, Avhich, consisting
almost wholly of carbon and hydrogen, is capable of combining with
a large amount of oxygen,  and  consequently of furnishing a large
amount of heat.
  Fat meats  contain from  sixty to eighty  per  cent, of carbon, and
from six to ten of hydrogen.  Starch, sugar, and the gums,  contain
nearly as much oxygen as they do of hydrogen  and carbon; and the
fruits so much used by the natives of the AA^armer regions contain, in
their  recent state, not more than tAvelve  per cent, of carbon, and a
very  immaterial amount  of hydrogen, except  that combined  with
oxygen, and forming  Avater, Avhich, Avith the excess of oxygen that
they OAve their acidity to, tends to the reduction of the bodily warmth.
   Chemistry thus reveals to us Avhy fat and flesh should excite more
heat in the system than any form of vegetable food except the vege-
table  fats;  but we must not neglect the vital laws that  may conduce
to this effect.  Animal food is more stimulating  to the vital forces, as
Avell as capable of  giving out more heat.   Stimulation,  though of it-
self it cannot create heat, may, by quickening the vital  motions, act
like an increased draught  to a furnace, or stirring up a fire;  and, by
enablino- the oxygen to come more raj idly in contact with the carbo-
naceous matters, thus favor their more rapid combination.
   As in a furnace, by the laws of matter, so in the animal machine,
by the laws of life, the heating process, once commenced, produces
results that favor its continuance and increase as long as heat-engen-
 dering matter enough remains.  Carbonated blood is the appropriate
 stimulus of the right side  of the  heart, which,  Avhen in health, like.
 every  other organ, acts in proportion to the application of its proper
 irritant; an increased  action in this, the pulmonary heart,  calls  forth
 a correspondingly increased performance of the pulmonary function,
 respiration.  By this means oxygenated and decarbonated blood, the
 proper stimulus of the left side of the heart, is transmitted there with
 increased force; this side—the  systemic heart—in its turn acts with
 increased energy, and propels  the blood more  rapidly around the
 body.  In this way is increase of heat developed, and  heat  itself  is
 a general stimulus that quickens all the vital motions.  Thus, by the
 intervention of the nervous system, the different forces  are made  to
 act in  accordance  with the amount of work to be performed, at least 
24
ANIMAL  HEAT.
  to some extent.   The only limits imposed to this increase of heat and
  action, are the natural limits of the functions of innervation, digestion
  and of respiration.   These are, however, not at all times restrained
  to the mere Avants of the system;  they sometimes overact, and may
  then produce disease and death.   The only effectual safeguard is to
  administer to the system, in all things, simply in accordance Avith its
  wants.
    The functions of the liver are  connected with  the phenomena of
 animal heat;  for Avhether, Avith Liebig, we suppose  the carbon and
 hydrogen of its secretion, the bile, to .be  usually absorbed, combined
 with oxygen, and made  to give out heat, which is  perhaps the  more
 probable  theory; or Avith older physiologists, Ave consider it to become
 excrementitious, after assisting in chylification,  Ave  must in either
 vieAV allow its influence, though in different ways, upon the caloric of
 the system.   The  bile is  a  saponaceous compound, containing a
 large amount of  fatty matters;  it is combustible, and of course capa-
 ble of yielding heat largely by  combining with oxygen.  The liver,
 it is seen, then, separates heat making elements from the blood;  they
 may usually be absorbed again, and burnt in the  system; but there
 can be no doubt that when the liver acts inordinately, and secretes an
 unusual amount  of bile,  that fluid may  become excrementitious, and
 pass  off by the boAvels.   This state of things is apt to take place  in
 hot climates, and weather, Avhen people indulge much in animal, or
 greasy food, and  vinous  drinks; and thus the bile  carries off with it
 the superfluous  elements of heat; but if this increased action of the
 liver and bowels, or some substitute for it, do not take place, the un-
 due quantity of carbon and  hydrogen in the system are laid hold  of
•by the oxygen, and an evolution of heat beyond the requirements  of
 health is the result.  The.  continued  influence of the same causes
 produces many of the A-arious diseases of the liver, and fevers of hot
 climates; and we can thus perceive how increasing the secreting ac-
 tion of of  the liver and boAvels may aid in resolving these diseases.
 Heat end  a carbonaceous diet are the means pursued  tc  enlarge the
 livers of geese as Strasbourg, to make the celebrated pates  defoie
 gras.  In hot weather,  upon a too highly stimulating diet, diseases
 of the liver, and in cold weather, diseases of the lungs, are produced;
 in each instance by the particular organs being overtasked.
   The old and effete  parts of the body  that are absorbed, and thus
 reintroduced into the circulation, are incapable  of  further purposes 
ANIMAL HEAT.
25
of nutrition; the impulse of decomposition has been given to them,
and the vital forces are insufficient to atone for  the feeble chemical
affinities of their  elements; or  in  other words  to  overpower  the
stronger affinities between them and oxygen; their carbon and hy-
drogen therefore subserve the  purposes of respiration, and their ni-
trogen is principally eliminated by the kidneys.
   The product of this metamorphosis of the tissues, as it is called, is
sufficient, probably,  in warm climates to sustain the bodily warmth
of man; but in cold climates something more must be made use of.
It is easy to understand how the dissolved animal matter of our food,
may very much resemble in its condition in the system, and the uses
it is  there applied to, the absorbed or metamorphosed tissues of  the
body; .they are both  derived from animal matter that is in a condition
adapted to incipient  decomposition, if it be not already in that state;
and are consequently very ready to be laid hold of by the oxygen.
Because its  elements are  more disposed to combine Avith oxygen, is
one reason,  probably, Avhy flesh, partly decomposed is relished or
preferred by  men and animals  who use it as a means of enabling
them to withstand a low  temperature; another reason is, it is more
readily  digested;  and the stomach is  able to  dispose  of a larger
quantity of it;  on both accounts it is  better adapted to engender heat
than meat that is very fresh.
   Those people who feed exclusively on animal matters, as the Bu-
rats, Samoiedes &c, are badly nourished, light  and feeble in body,
though well warmed by  their food.  Those on the  contrary,  who
feed exclusively, or almost so, on vegetable products, as the Hindoos,
some. Africans, and the natives of many other  warm climates, are
sufficiently  well nourished, though not much heated by their diet.
From  these facts we may infer that  vegetable  aliment  is better
adapted to nourish the body, and animal food to warm it.
   That, in the human  subject, the pabulum furnished to the blood  '
by animal matter has its  elements  held together by  weaker affini-
ties  than that furnished by vegetable matter,  and is  consequently
more ready to combine Avith oxygen, is evinced by the fact that those
who indulge largely in  the use of meat, especially in warm weather,
almost invaribly have the smell of putrefaction in  their breath;  this
would seem to indicate  that materials furnished to the economy from
the digestion of flesh, are less fitted to  hold their place in it as nutri-
ents than those supplied by vegetable matter.   Hence we may see
            4 
26                        ANIMAL HEAT.
the impropriety of allowing animal food, even in the smallest quanti-
ties, in fevers; and not only as it may furnish increased heat and distur-
bance by its OAvn decomposition,  but also as  it may become a source
of more active decomposition in other particles oftthe blood, upon the
principle, that bodies, themselves prone to combine with oxygen, may
confer a similar disposition on other bodies AAnth Avhich they may be
in contact, as of ferments; this will  be more fully explained in the
appendix, concerning miasms &c.
  Man is the most highly organized, impressible, vascular, and ple-
thoric of all beings, more especially in his brain and dermal system;
AArhich latter is, naturally unprotected and highly sensitive.   For his
size, he has perhaps the most active circulation according to the usual
ratio of increased size occasioning diminished frequency of pulse. For
instance the heart of the elephant contracts a very few times in a min-
ute; that of a horse or an ox about 30 times;  that of a sheep about 64
times; that of a dog nearly 78; and a man  about 72-times;  the  or-
dinary standard of health being taken.   In man there is also prob-
ably,  the most rapid disengagement of caloric, and  disintegration
of the tissues;  he therefore stands in  need of a large supply of the
elements of nutrition and respiration; and in cold climates, of the
arts for his protection.   Some animals possess a higher bodily tem-
perature, as birds and the fur animals; but this is  most likely much
owing to the retention of the heat by their non-conducting coverings.
  Thus then is food necessary to supply the growth, the waste, and
the warmth of  the body; and the greater the functional  exercise of
any organ, the  more rapid is its AA'aste; for it is  a haw of nature that
there shall  be no manifestation of poAver or force of any kind, with-
out a  decomposition of substance.   Even the phenomena of mind
are produced at the expense of the substance of the brain: how, or
why  it is so, is not at present understood; and perhaps in this state
of existence never will be; increased exercise of any kind, therefore
as well as increased cold, calls for a corresponding increase of food.
  Previous to birth  there can be but little necessity for the evolution
of heat in the foetal  system;  therefore there is but  little oxygen-
ation  of the blood,  or  transformation of the tissues.  The kidneys
and liver are  almost  quiescent, neither secreting urine or bile in any
considerable quantity;  the condition  of the circulation may account
for  this; carbonated  blood  passing through the renal arteries, and
depurated through the  portal system;  the former  possessing no ex- 
WARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
27
cess of nitrogen for the formation of urea, and the latter but little of
carbon and  hydrogen for that of bile; both conditions contrary to the
state of after life, and unadapted to the functions  of those organs.—
The foetal blood can be but little  oxygenated, for but a small portion
of it passes through  the hypogastric arteries  to the placenta, in its
circulation;  and that  of the parent  can do no more than share its ox-
ygen with it, and take away a moiety of  its carbon.  On respiration
taking place, a different state of things is established; oxygen reaches
the lungs and  begins to prey upon the carbon and  hydrogen of the
blood, and heat is  evolved; the tissues begin to waste more rapidly,
the liver to  pour out bile,  and the  kidneys urine;  food is therefore
required, or in other words the elements of respiration and nutrition,
to meet these demands.
   Enough has been said to shoAv the connexion in the animal system
between temperature and food.
                         CHAPTER  IV.

OF  WARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.  Man's  DIET THERE AND  ITS
                           EFFECTS  &C
  Having, previous to the preceding reflections on animal heat, made
a few remarks  upon  cold climates, and man's  appropriate  diet in
them, let us noAV turn our attention for  a feAV moments to his dietetic
habits, and condition in warm and temperate climates.
  The food and appetites of the natives of hot climates, are, as we
might expect, in perfect contrast Avith  those that prevail among the
inhabitants  of cold ones.   This is  not, as some maintain,  because
flocks and herds cannot be so easily  raised  there;  for in many,  nay
most of the warm  climates, the facilities for  raising cattle are very
great.   The absence of Avinter dispenses with the necessity of pro-
vidino- hay, grain,  or  shelter for them; the constant warmth  main-
tains a constant groAvth of herbage, and is in general so well adapted
to their nature, that they are enabled to subsist and increase with lit-
tle  or no attention  from their owners.   Different appetites,  and the
dictates of experience furnish us with more  valid reasons for the dif-
ferent practices pursued in these different regions.
  Warm climates are commonly considered by the inhabitats  of cold-
er ones  as  necessarily sickly;  but it would be very easy to prove,
that with appropriate  habits, they are  in general as  healthy, as the 
2S
WARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
colder ones; or even more so; the causes of sickness in them are, as
in other places, mostly dependent upon violations of the  laws of  our
being; in other words, upon improper  habits.
   It will, I suppose, be very generally confirmed by observation, that
warm climates, with  their appropriate habits, are the healthiest.—
The Hindoos, Pacific Islanders, some of the South American Indians,
Caffres, and even the Negroes in Avhat is usually considered the sick-
liest part of the world, the  western coast of Africa, are among  the
healthiest, best formed, and most active people in the world: they al-
so furnish, perhaps, the most striking  instances of  longevity.
   The Hindoos, whose climate is so exceedingly unfriendly to peo-
ple  from northern  regions who carry with them their  carnivorous
practices, that feAV of them retain their health there many years,  are
themselves described as being remarkably exempt from disease. Ab-
stinence from animal food  constitutes a leading feature in their cus-
toms; *it is enjoined by their religion as Avell as by their climate; and
to its observance is their immunity from disease to be ascribed.  This
abstinence is found to be consistent with the most enduring muscular
exertions; for though the flesh eating European  there finds  the con-
veyance of his own  person from place to place to require an inconve-
nient effort; and (by such  slender  means is  his health disturbed,)
he is as afraid of night air and atmospheric changes as  of poison, a
set of Hindoo palanquin  bearers, Avhose chief  diet is a little rice,
Avill convey him upon their  shoulders  in  a palanquin  for miles,  be-
neath a burning sun, over hills, and through streams;  and at  night
will sleep upon the bare ground, and in the open air, enjoying unin-
terrupted health.  They,  poor fellows! from their sensations would
scarcely know they have a liver; but their master  is most feelingly
convinced of the  existence of his; for  from the  heat, and excessive
use of carbonaceous food, it becomes enlarged and painful; still is he
wedded to  his northern habits,  and appears incapable of learning,
either by experience or example.
   "The  natives of  Sierra Leone, whose climate  is  said to be  the
worst on earth, are very temperate; they subsist entirely on small
quantities of boiled  rice, with occasional supplies of fruit, and drink
only cold water; in consequence  they  are  strong and healthy; and
live as long as men in the most propitious climates."*
   The laborers on  the coast  of Africa  Avho  go from tribe to tribe to
                       * Monthly Magazine. 
WARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
29
perform the manual labor, and whose  strength is  said to be Avonder-
ful, are said to  live avholly upon rice and other vegetable products;
and Denham and Claperton  assert that the eboe negroes, who live
entirely upon vegetable food, are the most athletic, finely formed, and
healthy men they had ever seen.  Hoav comes it then that the ex-
ploration of the  countries inhabited by these people has occasioned
the death of nearly all the white travellers Avho have undertaken it?
Is it from a radical difference  betAveen the constitutions of the races?
I think not; for we find that  the African race,  when living under
the same circumstances as the European, is subject to precisely the
same diseases;  it is principally because the travellers have continued
to use a flesh diet when exposed to a temperature, at all times nearly
equal to, and sometimes even above that of their bodies; and this, as
has been said, is entirely incompatible with the salutary use of meat.
From  ignorance of the necessity of adapting  food to climate, they
have attempted to live in these warm regions  as they had been accus-
tomed to do at home;  perhaps using stimulating liquors, intentionally
to mitigate, but in  reality  to aggravate the effects of climate;  and in
consequence they Avere destroyed by Avhat are called the  "malignant
fevers and fluxes of those sickly countries."
   Humbolt describes  the  Indians of Peru,  Mexico, Quito, and New
Granada as a  peaceful set of cultivators, remarkably exempt from
diseases, and accustomed to uniform nourishment almost entirely  of a
vegetable character, that of their maize and cereal gramina.*  "They
are hardly subject to any deformity.   I never  saw a hunch-backed
Indian; and it is extremely rare to see  any who squint, or who are
lame in the arm or leg.  In the countries where the inhabitants  suf-
fer from  goitre, this affection of the thyroid gland is never observed
among the  Indians, and  very seldom  among  the Mestizoes,' \ (the
offspring of of a white parent and an Indian.)   In  his personal nar-
rative he repeats the  same testimony very strongly concerning vari-
ous other South American tribes.
   How then  did it  happen,   that during the late Avar with Mexico,
our men suffered far more  from febrile affections and bowel complaints
than from the  enemy? That  these Avere not  the results of climate
merely, is sufficiently proved by the exemption of the natives from
them; they must have proceeded from something wherein our men
differed from  the  natives; and this was undoubtedly their dietetic
       * Political essay on the kingdom of New  Spain Vol.  I p. 152. 
30
AVARM AND TEMPERATE  CLIMATES.
habits; their  food  consisting largely of meat, and their drink of ar-
dent spirits; both, to the extent that they Avere used, counterindicated
by the climate, and inevitable causes of those diseases  there.
  The inhabitants of the islands of the Pacific ocean were, Avhen first
discovered, but little subject to disease.  Their forms Avere  symme-
trical, their features commonly agreeable, and their manners mild and
pleasing.   We are told in Cook's Voyages  that the English sailors
stood no chance Avith them in boxing or Avrestling; and  the same has
been remarked by others.  From their contracted territories, density
of population, and the absence of domestic animals,  the use of flesh
was, to a great extent, precluded,  even had they been  inclined to it.
Yams, plantains, bread-fruit, and the cocoa-nut; and Avith those Avho
inhabited the coasts, the occasional addition of fish,  constituted  their
customary diet.   Of fish diet in general it  may be remarked that it
is not so stimulating and heating as flesh, and, in this respect, may be
said to stand  midAA-ay between flesh and vegetable food.
  It were easy to multiply  instances to prove that the diet of natives
of hot climates is generally of a vegetable  character,  and that it  is
necessary to  health that it  be so; but the foregoing are sufficient.  I
Avill remark,  however, that I am not aAvare  of an instance of the in-
habitants in general of a hot climate pursuing very carnivorous habits,
and possessing healthy characteristics.  We may indeed meet with
occasional instances of individuals Avhose peculiar habits of life and
constitution favor the toleration of a larger   use of animal food than
would be right or safe  for others.   Of these habits active exercise
has the greatest effect that Avay; for it occasions a more rapid removal
of the muscular fabric, and consequently a greater demand for similar
matter for a re-supply.  This has been alluded to before.   Exercise
has also the effect of  giving tone and vigor  to the nervous system;
rendering it more robust, less irritable, and  consequently  less  sus-
ceptible to the effects of those external and internal agents that Avould
be  apt to derange the functions of systems more delicately nerved.
   The developement of a  part is increased, or altogether  excited by
its  exercise;  indolence and debility must, therefore, go together.  It
cannot be said, however, that hard labor, or great muscular exertion^
is necessary to the enjoyment of the most perfect health; on the con-
trary, it may become injurious.  All that is  needful is that the differ-
ent functions should be moderately exercised, and that the food should
be  adapted to the  real Avants of the various organs.   Though much 
AVARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
31
exercise may serve to promote the tolerance of stimulating food, and,
under the combined influence of both,  Ave may Avitness a favorable
state of health, Ave must not thence infer that the same, or a superior
degree of vigor, health and longevity are  unattainable upon a simpler
diet.
   Observation among our Indian tribes may convince  us that  a  diet
at all times largely constituted  of animal  matters, in our climate,
favours neither  health nor longevity; for they  are very  subject to
suffer  from febrile epidemics  and  contagions.    Whole tribes are
sometimes sAA'ept off by  small-pox, measles, &c.   In  this  Avay the
Mandans, a western tribe, have  lately been exterminated, and other
of their  neighboring tribes much thinned.  A  singular instance  is
recorded in the  Philosophical Transactions,  Vol.  54, for the year
1764, of a very  fatal  inflammatory fever,  Avhich  appeared on the
islands of Nantucket and Martha's Vineyard, on the coast of Massa-
chusetts, and was confined entirely to  the Indian population.  Not a
single white person having been affected on either island.  The Avhole
number of Indians on Nantucket Avas 340.   Of these, 258 had the
distemper in the  course of six months, and only 56 recovered.   Of
those Avho did not take the disease, 40 lived in  English families and
eight dwelt separate.   In Martha's Vineyard, it Avent through every
Indian family into which it came, not  one escaping.  Of 52 persons
affected 39 died.   A few individuals of  mixed breed  (European and
Indian,)  and one of Indian and Negro, had  the distemper, but re-
covered.  None, indeed, died, but such as were entirely of  Indian
blood:  hence it was called the  Indian sickness.*   The only rational
way of accounting for this exclusive preference of the disease to those
of Indian blood, is by supposing that it depended upon their peculiar
way of living.   A greater addiction to  th£ use of animal food  is at
all times a sufficient  reason for a greater  liability to inflammatory
complaints; and  doubtless it had its influence in occasioning the dis-
ease in question.
   The Hottentots and New Hollanders possess a soil and climate
well adapted to  the human race;  yet these varieties are feAv and
sparse in numbers, apt  to  be ill  formed, stunted,  sickly,  and short
lived.   Buffon states that the Hottentots seldom attain a greater age
than forty; and Barrow, that they pay no attention to  the cultivation
* Lawrence's Lectures on Physiology, &c. 
32
AVARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
 of the soil, living mostly on animal food, and are in their persons ill
 formed and diminutive,  Collins* describes the New Hollanders, and
 natives of Van  Dieman's land, as the most miserable savages; Avith-
 out morality, religion, or ideas of right or wrong; Avithout chiefs, arts,
 arms or agriculture;  deriving no  other sustenance from the earth
 than fern-roots and a few orchises;  and living on Avhat chance affords
 —fish,  frogs, lizards, serpents, the  larva of'insects,  and AA-hatever
 other animal  matter they can  obtain.  Inhabiting Avarm  climates,
 these people  fail to  supply themselves with a sufficiency of vege-
 table  aliment; subsisting principally upon  what is adapted neither to
 their  nature nor  circumstances.  A continuance of the same influ-
 ences must result  in their  further  degeneration  and ultimate ex-
 tinction.
   In  the East and West Indies the European residents commonly pur-
 sue even a more heat engendering and stimulating diet than  they
 were  accustomed to  in their native  places.  They partake more large-
 ly of  animal food, instead of less, and their flagging  appetites are
 goaded  by curry and other stimulating sauces; they drink Avine and
 spirituous liquors in larger quantities; and in all things regarding their
 diet too commonly pursue the rule of Avrong.   This proceeds  from
 prejudice and habit,  and the extended means of their indulgence; for
 in the north this stimulating course is much—too much even for those
 climates—practised and esteemed; happy is he thought, whose means
 enable him to follow  it.  We listen  more to habit than to reason;  and
 habits of stimulation, as I have before remarked, are laid aside Avith
 difficulty; thus it is with those who change a cold for a warm climate;
 they have been accustomed to regard the use of stimulating meats and
drinks as a mere source of gratification; and with increased facilities
for procuring them, they will indulge more largely, rather than reduce
their use to suit  climate  and other  circumstances;  hence  increased
 vital action, and fevers of a rapid and fatal character are the results.
  Upon the principles here endeavored to be explained, it is not very
difficult  to see how warm climates must of necessity be sickly to those
who pursue the  practices adapted to colder ones.   Pathologists need
not look for gasses and atmospheric impregnations to account for the
evil; the fault lies in the perverse  habits of the individuals, though
they do  not like to confess it.  We are naturally inclined to excuse
* Acct. of English Colony in New South Wales. 
WARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
33
ourselves; and have even gone so far as to "make guilty of our disas-
ters the sun, the moon and the stars; as if Ave were drunkards by an
enforced obedience to planetary influence; and all that we are evil in,
by a divine thrusting on."*
  The dietetic habits of the French are better adapted to warm cli-
mates than those of the English, Irish, Scotch, or North Americans.
They are habitually more abstemious, and  consequently endure the
effects of the change of climate better.
  The diet of the white Creoles in general, and the negroes in the W.
Indies, is much more in conformity with the requisitions of the climate
than that of the Europeans and N. Americans.  Yams, plantains, cocoas
maize, ochroes,  and other vegetables and fruits constitute the bulk of
their food;  and they seldom have much relish for stimulating drinks.
With these  habits they are remarkably healthy; their skin  is mostly
cool and comfortable; they are never known to take the yelloAv fever,
and seldom  any other kind; and instances of remarkable longevity are
by no means rare among them.  Those, however, among the wealthier
Creoles,  who for fashion sake conform to  English dietetic  usages,
are about as prone  to sickness as those whose habits  and examples
they strive  to imitate.
   It is an old saying that those Avho cross the sea change their climates
but not their inclinations.   ("Coelum non  animum mutant qui trans
mare currunt.")  As far as dietitic habits are concerned it should be
otherAvise however; in this respect the sooner the one change is adap-
ted to the other, the better it will be.   Change of diet and change of
clothing constitute all that is necessary to enable the system to accom-
modate  itself to the new influences;  no  change  of constitution is
necessary, though  the contrary is commonly said and supposed; were
 this the  fact, in°our climate we should need  to be as  perpetually
 changing our constitutions, as our garments.
    Some people adopt and advocate the plan  of continuing to Avear
 flannel   and  warm clothing during  summer and in warm climates;
 this keeps  up a perpetual drain of perspiration, and at the same time
 guards against changes of temperature; and thus  may to some ex-
 tent counteract the effects of repletion  and over stimulation.   It is,
 •however, an oppressive plan, and one that is entirely unnecessary
 and improper in connexion with a correct system as to diet.
                           *Shakspeare.
                5 
 34              WARM  AND TEMPERATE  CLIMATES.

   It is in the temperate regions that man appears the most decidedly
 of an  omnivorous  character;  and from  attention  to  his usages in
 these regions, persons have concluded that he is by nature constituted
 at all times and under all circumstances to be so;  a conclusion drawn
 from a too narrow observation of facts.  Animal food can here be
 abundantly and easily procured, and is to a certain extent necessary;
 most fruits and vegetables can here also be obtained; and experience
 teaches us that both  kinds of aliment  are capable of being, in these
 regions, advantageously applied to the use of man.   In the  northern
 parts Ave  find  the meats and fish to be  mostly  of a better quality,
 more palatable and wholesome than in the  south.   In Avarm  waters
 poisonous  fish are  not uncommon;  and  some kinds become  so in
 them,  that do not possess that quality in cold ones.  Those accustom-
 ed to pass up and doAvn the Mississippi  remark that  the meat and
 fish obtained beloAV the mouth of the Ohio river, are in general infe-
 rior to those obtained  above.
   Admitting man to be omnivorous in the temperate  regions, it is not
 therefore to be inferred  that the indiscriminate use  of both  kinds of
 food at all  times and  seasons, as is the common practice, is correct
 and adapted to the wants of the system.  It is, indeed, usually sup-
 posed to be so, but this I shall endeavor to shoAv is an error.
   We find that  many  portions of what are  called the temperate
 zones possess, at  different seasons, great extremes of heat and cold;
 and  few have this character  more than our oAvn country; let  us for
 a moment turn our  attention to the nature and constitution of our cli-
 mate.  The temperature of a country does not depend on latitude
 alone;  it is much under the influence of it's  prevailing  winds,  which
 owe their  temperature to the surfaces over which they pass.   Our
 states are  situated towards  the  eastern side of a large continent; and
 the prevailing winds,  as in all latitudes beyond the thirtieth parallel
 are from  the westAArard.   These  in Avinter traverse  snow-covered
 mountains, frozen lakes, streams, and plains, and bring  with them all
 the coldness they acquire in passing over  these surfaces; Avhen they
 incline from the north they retain their arctic coldness, and carry it
 very far into southern latitudes, occasionally  depressing the  ther-
 mometer to zero even as  far as  the thirty-fifth  degree.   In summer
 the winds  reaching us from vast extents of  shadeless plains, heated
by the sun, become  also heated to some extent  like  the sirocco and
simoom of Italy and Arabia; so that as far north as the 45th parallel 
AVARM AND  TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
:15
it is no uncommon thing for the thermometer to stand at 90 in the
shade.  In the same latitudes in winter, it sometimes sinks as Ioav as
thirty or forty below zero; though a change of  Avind may, on a sud-
den, bring on all the mildness of spring.   Over the northern parts of
the United States the thermometer has an annual range of over 100
degrees.   The same state of things obtains in China.  It is, perhaps,
someAvhat of a misnomer to call climates characterized by  these ex-
tremes temperate.   On the western sides of both the old  and new
worlds,  in  corresponding  latitudes, the climates are more  equable.
There the prevailing Avinds, coming directly from the Atlantic and
Pacific oceans, become, like these oceans, of a  milder and more uni-
form temperature.   Countries thus situated may properly  be  called
temperate; such  are California and Oregon, towards the  sea-board;
as well as England, France, Spain, &c.
   Now, if the adaptation of food to climate have any thing to do with
the preservation of health, it is obvious that countries having seasons
of great extremes of temperature—the coldness of Lapland, and the
Avarmth of Africa—require  in  the  inhabitants  appropriate modifica-
tions  of dietetic  habits;  Lapland  Aveather requiring to  some  extent
a Lapland diet; and African weather the food of Africa. But the ex-
clusive animal diet of  some northern tribes cannot be needed here, as
the comforts  and  conveniences  of civilization  protect us largely
against extremes of weather;  and our cold  spells being generally  of
short duration, Ave should hold ourselves in readiness for the sudden
raise  of temperature Ave may expect to ensue upon them; these sud-
den changes of weather, surprising the system, as it were, in a condi-
tion not adapted to them, occasion the unpleasant  effects  commonly
called "colds."   Our diet should, therefore, be arranged upon  a kind
of a compromise; both to suit  the state  of things we have, and what
 we may expect; precise  adaptation, in  regions subject to very sud-
 den changes, not being practicable.   The same may be said  of our
 warm weather; an  exclusively vegetable diet seldom, perhaps, being
 necessary;  the rule being to adapt the general character of our diet
 to the average temperature of a given period; the closer  this is ob-
 served, the more uninterrupted will be the health.  Thus in Ohio,
 the principal adaptation called for is to subsist  mostly upon vegetable
 food  during the warmer months, and partake more largely of  animal
 food during  the colder.   Of  the latter, however, we generally take
 enough,  and from  the influence  of habit, in summer we  are  apt to 
36
AVARM AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.
take  too  much.   Previous to the setting  in of spring, Avhen the
effects of the returning sun are beginning  to be  felt, it becomes of
importance to check the carnivorous propensities  contracted during
winter; for this it would be kwise to institute a period of abstinence
about that time; the occasional abstinence from meat, too, serves  to
curb our appetites for it, and  prevent  their acquiring an undue as-
cendancy.   The  observances  to this effect  followed  by a portion of
our fellow citizens, and kept in Catholic countries  generally, become
valuable as sanatory regulations.
  It is a common  error, and even inculcated  by medical writers,* that
exposure  to  a warmer temperature  occasions an expansion of the
fluids of the body.  The blood retains the same temperature in sum-
mer as in winter;  but  the  less  demand for animal heat, in the former,
may occasion  an accumulation of the matters that supply it, in the
system, unless the habits are modified to suit the Aveather.
  We must expect a  very variable climate to be a sickly one, unless
some  plan similar to the one here laid  doAvn be folloAved; it is to the
neglect of this that the reputed sickliness of our country is to be as-
cribed;  AA'ith proper habits I have no doubt  the United States Avould
be as  healthy as any other portion of the Avorld.
  It  may  perhaps be  objected that the free  use of fruits and vegeta-
bles  is  apt  to occasion bowel complaints in  the  summer  and fall,
especially with  children.   "Cave autumnos fructus"  (Avoid au-
tumnal  fruits,) has become a  proverb;  but I am satisfied it is a very
fallacious one.  The sickliness of summer and fall is not OAving  so
much to the use of fruits, as to other causes, of Avhich a very opera-
tive one is an excess of animal food.   In Avarm  climates, with the
natives, who indulge  largely in the use  of  fruits, bowel  complaints
are of rare occurrence;  and  in our  own country, I have always
observed that  on  farms and  in  country locations, Avhere  children
range the  fields and orchards, and use fruits as freely as their appe-
tites call for them, which we all know as  very craving that Avay, they
are but little affected with diarrhoea, and cholera infantum is almost
unknown; but  in our cities, where they are much restricted  in the
use of fruit, from over caution or necessity, these  complaints in hot
weather become a deadly scourge.  In all climates that will produce
esculent fruits  and vegetables, man's  organization and nature are

        * As in Jackson on remittent fever—Dickson on heat, &c. 
                WARM  AND TEMPERATE CLIMATES.             37

adapted to  their use;  and Ave  might as  Avell suppose an herbivorous
animal liable to be made sick by wholesome grass, as man by the
temperate use of "the kindly fruits of the earth."  Excess of animal
food may so  deprave and  debilitate the digestive organs, that they
may for a time lose the  faculty of digesting vegetable matters, which
require more  energetic solvent  powers; but correct  habits Avill
generally restore their proper functions.  Because the stomach be-
comes depraved, is a very  foolish reason for persisting in the use  of
a depraving cause.  Even cattle, after being kept over Avinter on dry
food, Avill sometimes  kill themselves on pasture, if suddenly turned
into an abundant groAvth of it;  but will any one deny, on this account,
that herbage is their most natural  and Avholesome food? it proAres,
hoAvever, that  great  changes in dietetic habits  should never  be
adopted suddenly: Non subito muta assueta, nam consuetudo altera
natara est, (Change not suddenly your habits,  for  use is second
nature,) is  an aphorism of Hippocrates, and  a valuable one.  Still,
depraving usages must  be  corrected, but Avith an eye  to  reason; and
the changing seasons call for appropriate changes  in our food; but as
summer does  not suddenly  succeed to Avinter,  so should Ave not
change at once from a merely, or even  mostly, animal diet,  to an en-
tirely vegetable one.
   There' is perhaps a degree of incompatibility in the  free use of fat
and animal food, and that of the  acid fruits and vegetables,  that may
give  to  their  combination a degree  of  deleteriousness,  in some
respects, that neither may  have separately; if so, it Avould go to show
that each class of esculents has  its appropriate province, as is here
contended for, and that  they should not be made to interfere with each
other, to an undue extent.   This is enlarged upon someAvhat in the
appended chapter on cholera.
   In very variable climates,  the  art of adapting our habits to the
changing seasons  requires  all  the aids of reason and  experience for
its acquisition, and  to  overcome the force  of habit;  accordingly  in
those countries where this adaptation is most needed, we find man to
be endowed with the highest  mental attributes; the necessity of this
adaptation is perhaps a final cause of this endoAvment—one reason
that Infinite Wisdom has ordained it so. 
CHAPTER  V.
           OF  THE NATURAL  STATE AND FOOD OF  MAN.

   There has been much speculation and difference of opinion among
 writers, concerning man's state of nature; which state  we  are told
 he ought to conform to in his  diet;  some contending for  the proprie-
 ty of his uniform use of one kind of food, some  another.  In oppo-
 sition to these theories, I contend that he is noAv  the creature of cir-
 cumstances, whatever he may have been in former times.
   If by a state of nature  Ave mean the happy, innocent,  and health-
 ful state  that man is  supposed to  have existed in before the institu-
 tion of arbitrary social regulations,  Ave may search in vain for such a
 state in actual existence; the only such  a one he ever lived  in must
 have  been his primeval  one; that, probably, described by the an-
 cients as the  golden age;  and  by our sacred Avrit as paradise.
   Even if such a state could any where noAvbe found, it Avould hardly
 furnish appropriate rules for man's observance every where;  neither
 do the accounts Ave have of such a former state give rules adapted  to
 his present lot.  The Avorld is noAv  given  to him for his abode, and
 reason for his guide;  consequently his  condition  and habits must be
 muchmodified by circumstances. Custom, convenience, and necessity
 govern him;  thus in Lears'  phrase; he becomes "sophisticated;" his
 "forked animal,"  "unaccommodated man," can,  as a class, have no
 existence.  Whatever accords with our organization may  be said to
 be natural; whatever  disagrees  with it, unnatural; this  is the chief
 criterion  Ave  noAv have of what is right or  Avrong, natural or un-
 natural.
   Animals have a cogent instinct  given for  their guidance, which
 when uncontrolled is adequate to that purpose, and generally unde-
 viating; this  leads  them  in their  one  path, their state of nature,
 which they are incapable  of transcending.  Arriving early at matu-
 rity, they make no progress with the lapse of ages; communities  of
 bees, or beavers are in the same condition now that they  were in five
 thousand years ago.   Instinct impels every being to conform to the
 habits of its kind;  the full fledged  nestling would spread its pinions,
and launch itself  upon the air, even if it had never seen its parent 
NATURAL STATE  AND  FOOD OF MAN.
39
fiy; the duckling hastens to the pond, and  trusts its bosom to  the
liquid  element, heedless of the solicitous calls of its foster  mother,
the hen; Galen's neAv born kid, Avhen placed in a room where there
were  three vessels  filled Avith  honey, wine, and milk, respectively,
smelt the tAvo former and passed on; but coming to the third, it drank.
What this feeling is, we cannot define otherwise than as "the Divin-
ity that stirs Avithin"  all living  things; one  of those indications of
which the AA'orld is full  pointing to an intelligence as the controlling
PoAver.   It arises independent of volition; and arrives at its greatest
perfection coetaneously  Avith  the development of the bodily facul-
ties.  It is not  necessary that man  should have  this faculty noAv to
the extent that  animals possess it; he has the attribute of reason  giv-
en for his  guide; this results from the voluntary  study of the facts
and circumstances  connected with a given subject;  and is the  pre-
sumption of truth drawn from  their comparison; it requires cultiva-
tion, and time for its development; and  it may improve indefinitely,
and advance from  age to age  towards perfection; man is therefore a
social, reasoning, and progressive being; and it is impossible to define
the limits of his advancement, or predict to what extent his faculties
may ultimately reach; for they strengthen with their exercise,  and
increased powers in the parent entail increased capacity in  the off-
spring.
   Man then is  not limited to any one condition that can be  called his
state of nature.  In the infancy of his race, and  anterior  to the de-
velopment of his present faculties, it seems necessary that he should
have  lived in such  a state;  and  we have  evidence accordingly  that
he did so, which Ave  will refer to presently;  this state has long since
ceased; the  period of the direct guidance of the  Deity  through the
operations of instinct, with  man has terminated;  neAv faculties have
been  unfolded, necessary to his adaptation to the varying conditions
of the Avorld; to their guidance  he is  now  resigned.  The uniform
guidance of  instinct would not seem to comport  with the designs of
the Creator,  which appear to be noAv calculated for the indefinite  pro-
gress of the  human race.
   In saying that man is guided by reason,  and  animals are by in-
stinct, I do not mean to  assert that man is absolutely independent of
instinct, or that animals  are entirely without reason;  but merely  that
in man reason is  the predominant  faculty,  and in  animals instinct,
though neither of them  are wholly  under the guidance of either fac- 
40
NATURAL STATE AND FOOD  OF MAN.
ulty;  man has  the remains of one,  and animals  the dawning of the
other.
  We do many things from habit, necessity, the force of example, or
erroneous judgment,  that are in  violation of our instinctive feelings;
and by a continual tyranny over them they may become extinct. How
many pernicious  habits  are there from these causes? our tastes thus
become perverted, our appetites depraved and our feelings, moral and
physical,  deranged.   The use of hot and heating  food, intoxicating
drinks,  and tobacco, excesses in animal food and  other things; the
undue indulgence of our  appetites and  passions  in various ways;
yielding to the erroneous  dictates of fashion; wearing  superfluous,
tight and inconvenient apparel; among a host  of other  things, may
be enumerated as proceeding from this cause; all  militating against
our true happiness and enjoyment.   To counteract and cure the evil
Ave must have resourse to reason; in the indulgence of our appetites
Ave should consider the ends for Avhich they were ordained;  and only
yield to their demands as far as may be conducive to those ends; "we
should eat to live, not live to eat;" and in all our  indulgences hold
in view the duty we  owe to ourselves and others.
  Were we to attend to the instincts of our nature, Ave could hardly
say that a flesh diet  is ahvays conformable to them; though its use
from necessity at  some times, induces us to take it  from habit at oth-
ers, Avhen not needed.   The smell and taste of  raw flesh is general-
ly nauseous; and it  is only by  condiments and cookery  that it be-
comes palatable; art  then triumphs over nature,  and it may be neces-
sary at times that it should do so; we should be  careful however not
to become too artificial, and thus  completely silence "the  still small
voice" of  nature that pleads Avithin;  by so doing we add to the origi-
nal "fall," and sink ourselves still deeper in degradation.
  The flesh of horses, dogs, cats, rats, snakes, and of many other things
eaten in various parts of the world, and perhaps as nutritious,  pala-
table, and Avholesome as  most  other kinds of  flesh, is looked upon
with disgust in the United States, and Europe;  and nothing short of
dire necessity could  in  these places enforce  its use for food.   The
people of  temperate and Avarm regions view with supreme disgust the
practices of  the Esquimaux in feeding on raw, half putrid flesh blub-
ber, and entrails of Avhales and seals; this kind of  aliment  hoAvever
we have seen is necessary in  their frozen country; and to them it ap-
pears as natural as our choicest fare to us.  Necesitas non  habet le- 
NATURAL STATE  AND FOOD OF MAN.
41
gem.  (Necessity has no law.)   Necessity  compels the adoption of
these things, and habit reconciles them, however disgusting they may
at first appear.   Vis consuetudinis vim naturae obtinet.  (The force
of habit has the poA\rer of nature.)
  On the other hand any neAv kind of fruit or vegetable excites no
such repugnance,  unless nauseous to the  smell or taste.  These
things seem to indicate that the early instincts of our nature are not
entirely lost, although Ave have acquired the guidance  of other fac-
ulties.
  Horror at the sight of blood is a feeling common to  herbivorous
animals and man, and sometimes  in the latter very difficult to over-
come.  On this account  unusual  strength of nerve  is required in a
surgeon; and I have known many persons deterred from entering the
profession by inability to overcome this feeling.
  The sight of a dead carcass of any kind excites  emotions  quite
contrary to appetite.   Were we by nature, and instinctively, carnivo-
rous and sanguinary,  (for the two must go  together,)  it would be
paradoxical to suppose that the sight of blood, or of a carcass, could
be associated with the unpleasant emotions we  find  them to be; on
the contrary, they AArould be connected only with agreeable feelings.
  The conflict that obtains betAveen the moral  and physical wants
and dictates of  our nature, and  our habits  and  necessities, tend  to
confirm the doctrine of our lapse  from  an original condition.
  I contend, then, that a warm climate and a vegetable  diet are most
in conformity Avith man's original  nature, and that  his  instincts that
way are net  entirely lost;  but that his organization admits the use of
a diet of flesh under certain circumstances, as a matter of necessity;
that the principal end of using that kind of food is to engender heat,
or rather to combine a high degree of calorification with nutrition,
and enable him to  inhabit  the colder  regions of the earth, and  the
rule should be to limit its use to the accomplishment of  that intent.
  But it may be said, if man were first created  for  a warm  climate
and a vegetable diet, and the human  race  were at first confined to
them, we  ought to have some evidence, traditional or otherwise, to
that effect.   We have such evidence: the  most ancient records and
traditions clearly point that way.
   Of the traditional accounts, the most ancient are probably some of
those connected with the Grecian mythology.   They probably have
reference to events occurring,  some  of them, anterior to the  Mosaic
                     6 
42
NATURAL STATE AND FOOD OF  MAN.
 deluge;  and are supposed to be  remnants of the Samian idolatry, a
 religious  system older than that of Moses.   The framers of the
 myth  sought to envelope its doctrines in an intricate garb of allegery
 and fable, Avhich, it becomes a task of considerable ingenuity to un-
 fold and explain.  One of the most ancient of these allegories is  that
 of Prometheus.  It is related somewhat variously,  but the following
 are its most material points.  Prometheus, son of Iapetus, sacrificed
 the  first ox, and offering  the  bones to Jupiter,  retained the flesh.
 The god, in revenge  for  this indignity, deprived  mankind of fire,
 which, hoAvever, Prometheus managed to  steal  from heaven.   In
 punishment for this offence he  was chained  to  Mount Caucasus,
 where an eagle preyed upon his liver, Avhich greAv by night as much
 as it was consumed by day.  After a great length  of time, (30,000
 years according to some,)  Hercules  slew  the eagle and released the
 captive.   This allegory has given rise to much  speculation; it is con-
 sidered to have reference  to that alteration in  the human  condition
 commonly called the fall of man.  The folloAving is probably a fair
 explanation of  it.    Before  the time of Prometheus [that  is,  fore-
 thought, wisdom, &c.,] Ave are told  that,   under  the direct reign of
 Saturn, the sire of gods,*  the  golden age  prevailed;  and men sub-
 sisted in health, innocence, and happiness, upon the spontaneous pro-
 ducts of the earth;  perpetual  summer reigned,  and property,  the
 arts, and inequality were unneeded and unknown.   This happy state,
 hoAvever, did not last; the silver age succeeded, in which the  different
 portions of the earth were allotted out to individuals to hold as special
 property;  and Iapetus, (that is Japhet,) having  colonized the colder
 regions of the north-western  part of the  old  world—Europe—his
 descendants found it necessary to  have recourse to  fire and the arts
 dependent thereon;  among others the culinary  and the use of flesh
for food.   Prometheus (the inventive  genius of  the  European race)
taught mankind these things,  and they  became  a prey  to cares,.
anxiety and disease, (typified by the eagle.)  Hercules, (that is labor
and improvement,) in the course of time, removed these  evils.  Pro-
metheus being chained to Mount Caucasus, (which is situated near
the confines of Europe and Asia, north of that part of  Asia Avhich
our records point to as the cradle  of  the human race, and between;

  * Does not this refer to instinct?—
           "Nor think in Nature's state they  blindly trod;
           The state of Nature was  the reign of God."—PorE 
NATVRAL STATE  AND TOOD OF MAX.
43
 the colder and  warmer regions,  Avhere  the climate  undergoes its
 greatest change of temperature,) would indicate that the carnivorous
 habits of the race of Japhet fitted  them for the colder  regions of the
 earth, and  prohibited them from extending  southward beyond that
 boundary Avithout disease.   The consumption of the liver by day and
 reproduction of it by night would seem to indicate the diseases arising
 from a stimulating diet in summer, and their disappearance in Avinter.
 The slaying of the eagle may refer to the effects  of the progress of
 reason and experience  in the  removal of our  e\-ils.   Some  writers
 have gone so far as not only to make this fable have reference to the
 fall of man, but also to the promise of a redeemer.  It  has, however,
 more probably only a temporal signification.  It has been much com-
 mented  upon, both by ancient  and  modern Avriters, and considered
 pregnant with meaning;  this, will excuse the introduction of  it here,
 and its application to the illustratidn of the doctrines of this essay.
   The  mythology  was succeeded by  the  Mosaic system; to Avhich,
 (as it is not my province to treat  of it as a matter of revelation,) I
 shall allude  as to a mere historical or traditionary record.   It is by
 tar the  most important and explicit  one Ave  have  of the cosmogony
 and man's early state.   We here find  allusions  to a state of man
 similar to that described in the mythology.  That  much of the nar-
 rative is figurative, we are forced  to suppose;  Ave should otherwise
 find ourselves involved in inextricable  conflict  with the established
 facts of  modern science;  this too was the uniform style of the ancient
 writers of the east.   We are  informed in it,  that man was at first
 placed in  a garden abounding in the  usual  products  of tropical cli-
 mates,* and with fruits, seeds and vegetables of every variety adapted
 to his subsistence, Avhich he was told Avere placed there for his food; I
 but of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, of good and of evil, he was
 told not  to eat.  This command, hoAvever, he broke, and thus forfeit-
 ed the innocence and  simplicity of his nature; in punishment, he
 was expelled the garden, and forced to earn his food by his labor; his

  * Genesis Chap.  i. verse 9. "And out of the ground made the Lord to grow
 everytree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food."—Verse ]2. "There
 is found bdellium, &c."
  t Gen. Chap i. verse 29. "And God said, Behold I have given you every
herb-bearing seed which is upon the face of all the  earth, and every tree in
 which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat." 
44
NATURAL STATE  AND  FOOD OF  MAN.
food was still  confined to vegetable products.*  All the ills of life
flowed in,, in  consequence  of this act of disobedience.  At length
men became so depraved, that a deluge was sent for their destruction,
except one family, which escaped and  settled the A'arious parts of the
earth as they are at present peopled.   Then Avere  men  first alloAved
to use the flesh of animals for food.t  All this is so  clearly applicable
to my tenets here, that it scarcely needs any further adaptation.   At
first man was innocent and  happy; he Avas guided by his natural in-
stincts, no changing seasons disturbed  him, and the earth spontane-
ously produced all things necessary or desirable for him; but he be-
came in time  less innocent and obedient to the inspirations of his
Creator;  and  more inquisitive and knoAving; violating the laAvs and
dictates of his nature; Avhence shame,  sin, sickness,  discontent and
toil  came upon him;  these things progressively  increased; and at
length a vast cataclysm came, destroying most, and scattering the re-
mainder of  his race into the remotest regions  of the  earth; Europe
being colonized by Japhet.  Mankind then first began to make use
of flesh as food.
  In confirmation of these accounts of the first  condition of the hu-
man race,  I may remark that during its infancy,  and anterior to the
unfolding of its intellectual faculties,  and the  acquisition of the arts
so  necessary to its  existence under present circumstances, it  must,
from its very nature, have dAvelt in some such  state as that described.
  There are other traditions of ancient  nations pointing to the same
circumstances; but it is needless to folloAv the  subject further.  We
have sufficient evidence of an alteration in man's condition; which
alteration consisted, in part at least, in his removal from  a warm cli-
mate, and his departure  from the vegetable diet there adapted to his
nature, and exclusively followed; this is all we are in search of.
   A vegetable diet and warm climate  Avere, then, the primeval lot of
man; they  are, in connexion, therefore,  fitted to his  nature;  a flesh
diet, hoAvever, has become necessary, in  consequence of the change
of  this lot;  and his intellectual  endowments and pliability of consti-
tution furnish him Avith the ability of accommodating himself to this
change of circumstances.
  * Gen. Chap. iii. verse 18. "Thorns and thistles shall it bring foith for thee
and thou shalt  eat the herbs of the field."
  t Gen. Chap. ix. verse 3.  "Every moving thing that  liveth shall be meat
 for you; even as the green herbs have I given you all things." 
CHAPTER  VI.
OF THE VARIETIES OF  THE HUMAN  RACE; AND AVHETHER THEY ARE
 DEPENDENT ON FOOD  AND CLIMATE. THE SAME  OF OUR DISEASES.

  It  is asserted  by those who maintain that animal  food is at  all
times  improper to man,  that his use of it  is ahvays a source of
disease and degradation; others on  the contrary contend that superi-
ority, particularly in strength and courage, is induced by it.  I shall
endeaATor to show that  there is no foundation for either  supposition.
  That animal food is not a peculiar source of strength and courage
is made sufficiently evident by those Avho feed exclusively upon it, as
the inhabitants of high latitudes in general.   The Esquimaux, Lap-
landers,  Samoiedes, Ostiaes, Tungooses, Burats,  the  natives   of
Kamschatka, and of Terra del Fuego, who subsist almost wholly up-
on it, are perhaps the smallest, Aveakest, and most coAvardly people
in the Avorld.  The "e\-idence of Pallas concerning  the  Burats, a
Siberian tribe, strikingly disproves the  fancied connection between
the use of animal food and the possession of strength.  "Their  ap-
pearance," says he, "is generally effeminate, and they are mostly so
small in stature, and weak, that five or six Burats are often unable to
effect what a  single Russian  can accomplish.   This Avant of power
is not the only circumstance Avhich  proves, in the  Burats  and other
Siberian nomadic people, that a mere animal diet is unnatural and in-
capable of maintaining in perfection the physical prerogatives of  our
species."
   On the other hand it cannot be said that deficiency in strength and
courage is necessarily attendant upon  a vegetable diet.  What  has
already been  said is sufficient to prove, that in the warmer regions of
the  earth,  a  vegetable diet  is perfectly consistent with,  and even
necessary to,  a full development of bodily form and vigor;  and as for
mental greatness and  courage,  Ave are told that  in the  periods of
their  greatest simplicity, manliness and bravery, the Greeks  and
Romans lived mostly upon plain vegetable  preparations;  in fact, in
conformity Avith  the indications of  their climate, and the rules here
sought to be explained.
   That animal food is altogether improper and unwholesome for man,
and the use of it under all circumstances depraving to his  physical 
46
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
 and moral nature, as some eloquent writers have  maintained, cannot
 be conceded; for Ave find that  the  mixed diet  made  use of in the
 temperate regions  is accompanied Avith the  best combined condition
 of mind  and body that the world affords.  Shakspeare, Milton, and
 Newton; Washington, Jefferson, and Franklin; and a host of other
 brilliant names, attest that the mind, in these climates, undergoes no
 deterioration from the use of a mixed diet; Avhile the  conquests and
 dominant position of our  variety of the human  race, for the last tAvo
 or three  thousand  )rears, attest at once its superiority in  war  and
 policy.
   Warm climates, when accompanied Avith their appropriate habits,
 appear to be the  best adapted to our physical development, and the
 variable regions to our mental; in the frigid climates man is stunted
 alike in mind and body.   The varying seasons and their accompany-
 ing demands urge to mental activity; the sameness of the tropics is
 apt to lead to stagnation of the  mind; and extreme cold torpifies the
 faculties; while an exclusive animal  diet is unfavorable to our nature.
   But it has been said  that Ave should not ascribe the superiority or
 inferiority of different tribes to their food or climate, but to the breed,
 or variety of the race.   Upon Avhat,  then, does  the  A'ariety of the
 race depend?  This  question has  been  much agitated.   Some, as
 Lawrence,* denying the operation of external causes, argue that they
 originated in mere variations from the natural standard, and are pro-
 pagated by the union of parents possessing the requisite peculiarity
 of conformation.  In Lawrence's  language, "The variety does  not
 depend upon specific  difference,  but upon  variation."  This  is a
 mere evasion of the  question; upon  what causes does  this A^ariation
 depend?  To assert  that  it has no cause,  or that it is independent of
 extrinsic causation, is to appropriate the Epicurean doctrines to phy-
 siology, and  contend for the "fortuitous concourse of  atoms" in  the
 growth  of man and animals.   The mind refuses  to rest satisfied Avith
 this kind of reasoning,  and seeks  for something more  definite to
 repose upon.
  I contend that variation in man and animals depends upon the cir-
 cumstances under which they are placed, especially Avith  regard to
 food and climate;  and they become superior or inferior in  proportion
as these comport Avith their  nature and organization.   That we can-
Lectures on Physiology, &c. 
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
47
not trace the operation of these causes step by step, and demonstrate
them by experiment, is no proof that they have no existence; for the
laAvs of vitality elude our deepest search; the influences under which
men live are infinitely various, and the length of time they may have
operated is incalculable; our vieAvs as to their effects  must therefore
be mostly beyond the reach of demonstration, and depend much upon
theory.
   True Ave do not see the offspring of negro parents becoming white
in Europe; nor  that of European parents black  in Africa; but many
other circumstances besides climate may  have conspired to occasion
these extremes  of  variation; and they  may have  been in  operation
for an enormous length of time, of Avhich Ave can form no idea.   We
knoAv, however, from actual observation that warm climates favor the
production of dark  hues in the skin, hair, and iris;  for Ave seldom see
the offspring of fair skinned and light eyed and haired parents in hot
climates, possessing those peculiarities to the same  extent  as their
immediate parents even; and  the descendants of the  English,  Irish,
and Scotch in the East and West Indies are  mostly characterized by
dark hair, eyes, and complexion, which Ave  knoAV are not marks  of
their ancestry.  To what extent the change might pass in the course
of time, Ave cannot  say.
   As  nature  knows  no  intermission in her operations, and' all her
phenomena are  linked by the catenation of causation with something
that has preceded them extrinsically,  (for they cannot  cause  them-
selves) it is a fair inference that variations in a race of beings depend
upon  exterior causes; which must be  the peculiar circumstances in
which the race  is placed.   On reaching a certain  point, the variation
becomes transmissible by the law of generation that like produces like.
   By the  proneness of living being beings to run  into varieties, we
mean their faculty of adaptation to circumstances; and the terms are
convertible; for a faculty of adaptation infers a disposition to run into
varieties;  they  are natural consequences  of,  or  rather they mutually
 imply each other.  Superiority in a living  being is occasioned by a bet-
ter adaptation of external influences to its nature; and inferiority by
 those less fitted to it.  The operation of external influences then
and an  internal principle of  adaptation to them,  are the occasion  of
all  the  varieties  of animated beings.   In  the present state of our
knowledge we cannot perhaps, have much more definite ideas upon
 the subject. 
48
A'ARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
   The infinite mutability of external influences occasions an endless
 diversity in the productions of nature;  no tAVO being precisely alike;
 to counteract the tendency towards degeneration from this cause, it
 is Avisely provided  that there shall be an universal strife and rivalship
 among all organic  beings  for individual preservation,  and the per-
 petuation  of their  races, and that the superior shall prevail.' Plants
 vie Avith each other for possession of the soil and  light;  and among
 all animals, the stronger  will prevail over the weaker; the same in
 man;  though Avith  him the  intellectual  AA'ill be more apt to achieve a
 supremacy over the physical, in proportion to the superiority or his
 general social condition.
   To  show the effects of insufficient, or unwholesome aliment upon
 the form and condition of the human body, I will make the folloAving
 quotation.*   "There  are  parts of Ireland  inhabited by a population
 descended from those Avho were treated by the English as rebels tAvo
 centuries since, and who  were driven  into mountainous tracts, bor-
 dering the sea, Avhere they have been exposed to the two great bru-
 talizers of the human  race, hunger and  ignorance.   The  present
 race is distinguished physically from the kindred race of Meath and
 other  neighboring  districts, where the same causes have  not been
 in  operation, by their low stature, (not exceeding  five  feet two
 inches,)  their pot bellies,   and  bow legs;  Avhilst  their open pro-
 jecting mouths, Avith prominent  teeth,  and  exposed gums, their
 advancing cheek bones and depressed noses, bear barbarism in their
 very front.  "These spectres of a people that once were well groAvn,
 able bodied, and comely, stalk abroad into the daylight of civilization,
 the animal  apparitions of  Irish  ugliness, and Irish Avant."   The
 whole  aboriginal population of Ncav Holland  presents a similar as-
 pect;   and apparently from the operation of the same causes.
   To illustrate the  effects of other causes in producing alterations in
 an organism,  I will refer  the  reader to  the accounts Ave have of the
 finny tenants of the  streams that run through the dark, extensive
 caverns of Kentucky and Tennessee; neither vouching for the fact
 nor denying the possibility of its truth.   The fishes inhabiting these
 dark abodes are said to be destitute of eyes.  If this be true shor^1
 we account  for it by supposing that these gloomy waters have 'r
quired a distinct effort of Creative Power to furnish them with living

    * Carpenter's Elements of Physiology-} 420-Philadelphia, 1846. 
VARIETIES OF THE  HUMAN RACE.
49
 things adapted to them? or that  in accordance with the laws of that
 Power certain organs should gradually disappear when circumstances
 no longer call for their use?*
    This faculty of adaptation is confined Avithin certain limits, beyond
 which it cannot  pass.  When a living being is exposed to a state of
 things very foreign to its nature; or rather that is more adverse  to it
 than  its poAvers  of adaptation will enable it to comply Avith, it must
 deteriorate, sicken, and eventually die.
    We must allow, then, to food  and climate prominent places among
 those causes that tend to produce varieties in man; they are intimate-
 ly connected with all his  habits; his very existence depends upon
 the one, and much of his comfort upon the other;  and if to any thing,
 we must alkrw to them the  poAArer of affecting his organization.  This
 point granted, Ave  certainly cannot look upon the  climate of the tem-
 perate regions, and the mixed diet there used, as  generally detrimen-
 tal, or unfavorable to the human race; these causes  have  produced
 no degradation there; taking all their attributes together, the natives
 of the temperate regions stand foremost in the ranks of men.
    It must, hoAvever, be admitted that on the score  of health there is
 something still  lacking.   Although there are not in these  regions in
 general, causes  in  operation sufficiently  depraving to  occasion a
 degeneration of the races, still  departure from health is so frequent
 an occurrence as to render it very desirable that its cause and remedy
 should be made  known.
    The causation of disease may be  considered  analogous  to that of
 variety.   It consists in the  operation of influences unfavorable to the
 organism, Avhich produce either  change of function, or change of form
 in the part diseased,  or both.   If the deranging causes be not of suf-

    * It is remarkable that the influence on plants and animals, of the medium
• in which they live, or through which they are sustained, appears to be recog-
  nized in the Mosaic  account of creation.  Thus it is there written "And God
  said let the earth  bring forth grass  &c," "and  it was so."  "And the ear*A
  brought forth grass."  "And God said let the waters bring forth abundantly the
  moving  creature  that  hath life, &c."   "And God said  let the  earth  bring
 forth the  living creature after his  own kind, &c."  Here we see a remarka-
  ble, peculiar, and consistent phraseology running through the whole, doubt-
  \i'ss replete with signification.  In  the  succinct style of that venerable re-
  cord it appears to me that the influence of the  medium is  distinctly alluded
  to;  we do not see this  with regard  to things not dependent on the medium in
  which they are placed.  It is not said let the firmament bring forth, &c.
                       7 
50
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
 ficient  intensity  to  subvert  vitality, they  may, if continued  long
 enough, eventuate in permanent changes of form; these may be per-
 petuated and increased in the offspring, if the producing causes con-
 tinue to operate; as  is instanced  in the Cretins of the Valois, and
 other places.   Persons living in the gloomy valleys among the Alps,
 and other mountainous regions, become subject to an enlargement of
 the thyroid gland, called goitre; the continued operation of the causes
 that produce  this, with  the  union of goitrous parents,  produce the
 same result in the offspring, Avith the addition of a disease of the
 brain  and  osseous  system  called cretinism;  it is marked  by an
 enlargement of the head, and loss  of intellect.   The same doctrine
 will apply in  explanation of  the origin of other hereditary affections;
 for example, scrofula, gout, consumption, mania, and others.   They
 are all  liable to be continued and increased to an indefinite extent, as
 long as theis  causes  continue to operate; and  they  will sometimes
 even continue for several generations after their  first  causes have
 been removed.
   "We know,"  says Haller,* "a very remarkable instance of two
.noble females, Avho got husbands on account of their wealth,  although
 they were nearly idiots,  and  from whom this mental defect has ex-
 tended for  a  century into several families;  so  that  some of their
 descendants still continue idiots in the fourth and even in the fifth
 generation."
   The characteristics of hereditary morbid states, however, differ from
 those that distinguish varieties in many particulars.  The causes and
 effects  of disease are  more active;  destroying the subjects of them in
 the course of a few generations, at most, if  continued; and  being re-
 moved, the system shows a greater alacrity in returning to the regu-
 lar condition.  Variation,  on the  other  hand, is of an  exceedingly
 chronic character, commonly taking many ages to be produced, and
 upon the causes being  removed, requiring great length of time to
 pass aAvay.
   Animals, under  the undisturbed guidance of their  instincts  are
 almost  invariably healthy; in a state of domestication they  are more
 apt to become  diseased, and to run into varieties;  and the nosological
 distinctions of man are  about  as preeminent as  his other attributes
 Nearly all  the diseases of the  mind, nervous system, cutaneous sur-
* Elements of Physiology; lib. 29. Sect. 7. 38. 
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
51
face, and teeth;  eruptive  fevers, hemorrhages,  and prolapses; can-
cerous and venereal affections,  and gout, are  peculiar to man;  he
certainly has  not in these particulars  a  very enviable  distinction!
Whence does it arise? not from the necessity of things, or the inevi-
table laws of God;  for all His laAvs conspire  to a beneficial end; and
all the evil in the world is the  result  in some shape or other of their
misappliance or perverted use.   The  vicissitudes of weather, storms,
earthquakes, and volcanoes; all  the materials and  conditions of the
universe, perform  useful  parts  in the grand design of the creation;
but they may become—as also the  necessary elements of fire, air,
and Avater—under certain circumstances,,prolific of destruction.  Our
faculties have been conferred upon us to enable us to avoid the evil,
and  select the good; we are unable  to do this completely  however,
from their imperfections;  Ave should therefore labor to improve them;
study the laws of nature and of God, (they are identical,)  and learn
to adapt our conduct  to them.   Thus  only  can  we improve our
present lot.
  The organization of man is not more defective than that of animals;
nor of itself more liable to disease.  On the contrary, man is the mas-
ter  piece of organization; though it  will  be granted, that  from  his
higher, and more complex endoAvments, the operations of his economy
will, when exposed to  deranging causes, exhibit a  greater variety of
morbid  phenomena.
  That neither climate, change  of weather, nor the seasons, necessari-
ly produce disease  is evident; for we  find by proper arrangements in
our  diet, clothing, and  habitations,   their tendency to disturb  the
health can be counteracted, and commonly is so; for, of the masses of
mankind exposed  to their effects at any one  time, comparatively few
suffer from them.   Neither is  malaria, as we generally meet with it,
though commonly considered the grand efficient of  periodic diseases,
of itself capable of engendering  them; for we do not observe that  de-
gree of regularity in its operations which is necessary to constitute a
single cause;  many people being at times insusceptible of its effects.*
We see, then, that to derange the health, something superadded to
these causes, a predisposition  to be   affected by them,  is  required;
which predisposition is constituted by a wrong condition  of the solids
or fluids of the body, dependent upon their wrong nutrition, and most
* See Appendix on Malaria. 
52               VARIETIES  OF THE  HUMAN RACE.
commonly occasioned by erroneous diet.  In fact the causes  of dis-
ease are tAvo-fold, predisposing and exciting.
  It may seem foreign to this subject to discuss largely that of etiolo-
gy; but as the principal object of these feAv pages is  to  assist  in
making known some of the most important rules of health, it becomes
necessary and proper to explain to some extent the doctrines of the
causation of disease. It is a subject of considerable intricacy; the ori-
gin of morbid action being seldom single; and commonly depending
on very many causes;  and the just discrimination  of them is by no
means an easy task.
  Medical writers call the  causes of diseases remote  and proximate;
the latter is nothing but the deranged action  constituting the  disease
itself.   Remote causes are divided into predisposing and exciting
ones, each of which may,  and  usually  does, consist of a variety of
antecedent circumstances,  each constituting a link  in  the chain of
causation.
  Predisposition is that peculiar habit of body, or constitution of the
components  of it, that is favorable  to  the  production of  the disease;
and predisposing causes are all those  things that may develope that
predisposition.  The operation of the exciting causes is more imme-
diately precedent to the disease; they ignite, as it were, the train that
the predisposing causes have laid in the system.   Being, frequently,
the close predecessors  of a disease, these latter are popularly looked
upon as the  main producers of  it;  whereas, in reality, they are, most
commonly, the least operative, the predisposing causes haA'ing brought
the system so near the disease  that very slight  exciting causes  are
sufficient to develope it.  Predisposition is mostly  the  result of die-
tetic errors.
   The absence of  one of these  causes  Avill usually   render   the
other inoperative; hence it happens that those causes that are some-
times followed very closely by  disease appear to be at others tardy or
altogether  inefficient  in  exciting  it.    We  should be,  therefore,
careful in concluding that certain usages and circumstances are right
because they sometimes are not  followed  by ill  consequences;  for
other links in the chain of causes, necessary to  excite  those conse-
quences, may be wanting.   For instance, contagion and malaria will
generally only produce their peculiar effects upon  the  system Avhen
it is predisposed to be acted upon by them; at other times they "pass
by us as the idle wind which we regard not."  Thus it is that isolated 
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
53
facts are sometimes a fallacious guide.   For the ascertainment of cor-
rect dietetic rules, Ave  should  observe  upon an extensive  scale; this
would teach us that, for the avoidance  of disease, the diet should be
adapted to the climate  and season, upon the principles here laid down,
though  some  feAv  isolated instances  may seem to teach  another
doctrine.
   Physicians a few generations ago used to attribute every departure
from health directly or indirectly to error in the "non-naturals;" by
Avhich term they meant  those  things  that are necessary  to our exis-
tence, yet do not form a part of our  natural  bodies.  They enume-
rated six of them—diet, air, exercise, sleep, the  excretions,  and  the
passions.  There Avas much of truth  and reason in this way of con-
sidering the subject, and it is hoav too much laid aside.   A proper
attention to these things, the non-naturals, conduces to  the preserva-
tion of  health.
   As this is an  important  practical part of the subject, I will speak
of erroneous diet as a cause of disease a little more  specifically.
   Errors in diet  have,  at all times, been considered the most fertile
source of sickness.  Contaminated air, filth, ill clothing,  cold, damp,
mental depression, fatigue, the passions, &c, are all, doubtless, fre-
quent causes of disease;  but they yield  in  efficiency  to erroneous
diet; not so much, perhaps, as being  less potent, but as less widely
spread and suffered under.
   The following quotation from the pathology of Jean Francois Fer-
nel,* a prominent French physician of the 16th century, well explains
the force of diet in engendering disease:  "Maximam  in gignendis
morbis vim obtinet, pabulum, materiamque morbi suggerens; nam
nee ab aere, nee perturbationibus,  velaliis evidentibus causis morbi
sunt, nisi consentiant corporis preparatio, et humorum  constitutio.
 Ut semel dicam una  gula est omnium morborum mater, ^etiamsi
 alius est genitor.   Ab  hac morbi sponte scepe emanant, nulla alia
 cogente causa;" i. e., It possesses  the greatest power in engendering
 diseases, yielding them materials and aliment; for neither do diseases
 proceed from air,  nor perturbations,  nor  any other evident causes,
 unless the preparation of the body  and  constitution of the humors
 concur.   So that I may say the throat is the mother of  all  diseases,
 although some other cause is the father.  By this alone  diseases fre-
 quently arise, no other cause assisting.
                      * Pathologia, Liber 1. cap. 2. 
54
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
   The proximate  cause of every disease depends  upon  the  faulty
 nutrition of the part affected; either an improper pabulum is furnished
 by digestion, or the mode of nutrition is altered  by the operation of
 some exterior cause,  as  heat, cold, miasms, mechanical and chemical
 causes, and influences operating upon the  nervous system; for  I hold
 that, as long as parts are  constituted right they will perform  their
 functions right; and if, in this  latter respect, any thing go wrong, it
 is a sign  of some  error  in the constitution, or state of being, of the
 part affected.  Lesions of innervation, merely as such, I cannot con-
 sider as capable of being the proximate  cause of diseases; nutrition,
 and not innervation, is the true starting point  of animal, and indeed
 all organic function,  both healthy and diseased.  Before  a  function
 can be performed it is necessary that the organ should exist;  and be-
 fore a function, previously  healthy,  can  be deranged, it is necessary
 that the  organ be  depraved.  This  error in nutrition is either  in
 quantity or quality; it  may be excessive, deficient, or depraved.   The
 first perceptible effect of the wrong nutrition of a  part is an alteration
 of its vital manifestations; this is succeeded by a change of structure.
 When the disease  depends  upon Avrong  general alimentation, the
 nature of the affection will frequently point out the dietetic error; and
 on the other hand, the error may sometimes lead to an anticipation of
 the disease; thus they may mutually explain each  other.   For in-
 stance, one of  the offices of  the liver is to act as a diverticulum for
 the escape of carbon  and hydrogen not needed for respiratory pur-
 poses, Avhich it secretes as superfluous  bile,  and thus relieves the
 lungs from too  much  labor, and the body from  too much heat; hence,
 in hot weather, excess of these elements  in  our food and drink  is
 very apt to excite the liver to undue  efforts; and it may consequently
 become inflamed; or if it do  not act  sufficiently  the  lungs may  be
 called upon to consume the surplus  carbon, the  blood may  become
 diseased,  and fever be the  result.*   When cold  Aveather  tasks the
 lungs, a too stimulating diet is apt to excite disease in them.
  What is called sympathy, or the consent of morbid action between .
 distant parts at the same time, is very frequently dependent upon a
 disordered condition of the blood, which produces various derange-
ments of function.
  Most forms of fevers  and inflammatory diseases, effusions, hemor-
rhages, and vascular  and cardiac enlargements may arise from ex-
              s*See Appendix, No. 1. Theory of Fever. 
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
55
cessive stimulation and nutrition.   These states are relieved by what
is called the antiphlogistic treatment,  and by remedies that carry off
the bile.   Some of the low forms of  fever may depend upon a de-
praving and insufficient diet, and be rather marked by inanition than
repletion; here the former treatment Avould be injurious.
  Inflammation  of the fibrous  and gelatinous tissues, as gout  and
rheumatism, may be  excited by the  excessive use of corresponding
articles  of food, especially if accompanied  by  vinous  stimulants.
They may be relieved by the diminution or entire abstraction of ani-
mal food and vinous drinks.
   Dyspepsia most commonly proceeds from overburdening the stom-
ach; the best remedy is then to give  it rest by abstinence.
   If our food be not of too stimulating a character,  and fever  be not
excited, the excess of carbon and'hydrogen  may to some  extent be
stoAved away  in the  form of fat throughout  the body, as a hoard of
materials for respiration; a wise provision, as  the demands for animal
heat  are usually great  and unintermitted  beyond  all  other wants
of  the system.  There is no such reservoir for superfluous nitrogen-
ized elements otherwise than a state  of plethora; in this state there-
fore,  for the avoidance of disease, all these elements not needed for
nutrition, must be thrown off by the  various emunctories adapted to
that purpose, of which in the normal state, the kidneys are  the prin-
cipal; hence excess of highly nitrogenized food, that is flesh &c, is
apt to overwork the kidneys,  and bring  on inflammation and organic
diseases in them, albumenuria, and the general ill habit of the body de-
pendent thereupon.  If the emunctories be unable to throw off the sur-
plus, diseased condition of the blood, and ultimately death may ensue.
   Diarrhoea and cholera morbus are frequently salutary efforts of na-
ture to relieve plethora, and throw off offensive matters; they should
not, therefore, be always stopped immediately; but after the above
object has  been fulfilled, should the morbid irritation continue, it
should  be allayed; for this purpose a mild anodyne will commonly
be sufficient.   From the engrossing importance of the subject of ep-
idemic cholera,  and the errors prevalent concerning it, I have thought
proper to treat of it in a separate appended chapter.
   Diseases of  the brain frequently  arise,  and may be anticipated
from the  use of articles that have an effect  in exciting  and disturb-
ing the circulation and nutrition of that viscus; as intoxicating and
narcotic articles. 
56
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.
  Gastrodynia and pyrosis may arise from the use of unnutritious ar-
ticles and insufficiency of animal food in cold climates and  weather;
Avhereby the stomach  becomes overburdened by the bulk of the ma-
terials to  be  digested, and necessary to  supply the elements  of
Avarmth and nutriment; it consequently falls  into a Avrong and pain-
ful  mode of action.  These affections  are  prevalent in Ireland and
Scotland among the poorer people* with Avhom poverty of diet is a too
common occurrence.
  Diseased lungs are exasperated by an animal diet, and pacified by
one of an opposite kind;  this is occasioned by the greater or less de-
mands that these  diets respectively  make  upon them for the  perfor-
mance of  their function.  "The  celebrated diver Mr.  Spalding, ob-
served that AArhenever he used  a diet of animal food,  or drank spirit-
uous liquors,  he consumed in  a much shorter period the oxygen of
the atmospheric  air of his diving bell; and he therefore learnt from
experience to confine himself upon  such occasions to vegetable diet.
He also found the same effect to arise  from the use of fermented li-
quors; and he accordingly restricted himself to the potation of simple
Avater.  The truth of  these  results  is confirmed by the habits of the
Indian pearl divers."*
  I have sometimes found the  vegetable regimen  of itself materially
to keep off attacks of asthma; and to be very necessary towards a per-
fut cure of that disease, in aid  of other treatment.
  The lungs throAv off offensive effluvia when the system is under
the influence of intoxicating drinks, or excess of  animal food.  The
odour of the breath affords a valuable indication of the condition of the
blood, though one that is but little  attended  to.   It  generally gives
early admonition of a state of  repletion, which if neglected is apt to
be followed by disease.  The  breath  in a state of health should al-
ways be sweet, unless impregnated Avith the smell of certain  vegeta-
ble matters that have recently  been  eaten.
   Sea scurvy, and purpura are diseases of the blood, (probably septic)
commonly arising  from the use -of  unwholesome  and  irritating arti-
cles of food, as bad and salted meats, and breathing a damp and im-
pure air;  they may be accompanied with inflammatory action, or de-
bility, to suit which their treatment should be modified.  The same
remarks apply to scorfula; remedially  a supply of wholesome vegeta-
* Paris on Diet. 
VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN RACE.              57
ble food, cleanliness,  and pure warm air are necessary in these
cases;  they also are effectual preventives;  on which account these
diseases are rarely seen in warm climates.
   Diseases of the skin are much under the control of dietetic regu-
lations.  They  may be  occassioned by excessive, defective, or im-
proper nutriment; especially when combined  with filth.   Excessive
use of animal food in warm Aveather is a fertile  source of many of
these  diseases.   Correction  of  the error in these particulars is  al-
ways necessary, and will frequently  alone be sufficient,  to  effect a
cure.
   What are called malignant diseases, such as the varieties of can-
cer,  are connected Avith  constitutional  disorder, and manifest them-
selves by  excessive and depraved nutrition  of a part.  They  are
probably much  occasioned by the undue use of animal food;  and  are
generally mitigated by the vegetable regimen, though commonly in-
curable.
   Colic is  commonly a consequence of  the  digestive function being
disturbed by excesses  in diet.   It is sometimes, probably, a form of
coecal dyspepsia, occasioned by undigested vegetable matters. Exces-
sive use of flesh  prevents the digestion of vegetable food by rendering
the organs unaccustomed, and therefore less fitted to act upon it;  and
when sufficient  aliment is taken in the form of meat, vegetable mat-
ters, from their greater indigestibility, will be apt to be left undissolved.
Over-stimulating food  of any kind will render the stomach incompe-
tent to act  properly upon simpler aliment.
   "Abercrombie relates a case of a young gentleman who had been
for many years  a  martyr to stomach complaints, seldom passing a day
in which he did not suffer  greatly from pain  in the  stomach, flatu-
lence, acidity, and the  usual train of dyspeptic symptoms;  and in par-
ticular, he could not take a bit  of vegetable without  suffering from it
severely.  He had gone on  in this manner for years, when he was
seized with complaints in his head threatening apoplexy: Avhich after
being relieved by the  usual means, showed such a constant tendency
to recur that it has been necessary ever since  to restrict him to a diet
almost entirely of vegetables, and in very moderate quantity. Under
rthis regimen, so different from his-former mode of living, he has con-
tinued free from any recurrence of the pains in his head, and has ne-
ver been known to complain of his stomach."  Contrast  this with a
case of a similar character, of a young nobleman, related by  Dr.
                      8 
58
VARIETIES OF THE ill MAN RACE.
Paris, in his work on diet, where the unpleasant symptoms excited
by  vegetables and a mixed diet, Avere sought  to be prevented and
remedied by a diet of animal food;  though the use of fruits by them-
selves could be freely indulged in without unpleasant consequences.
The patient ultimately died of disease of the  heart, doubtless excited
by  a too stimulating diet.   We cannot fail to be struck with the
greater propriety of the plan pursued in the former case.
  Decayed  teeth  and tooth  ache are  commonly caused by hot food,
by  passing  suddenly from  the cold into heated  rooms, and the
exposure of the teeth to the direct rays of the fire.   Their hard and
dense substances are badly adapted to Avithstand the  effects of sudden
changes of temperature upon their organic parts; especially changes
from cold to warm.   Their fine vessels being incapable of expansion
upon the increased  determination of  blood to  them excited by the
heat, is probably one reason Avhy disorganization is  apt to ensue;
perhaps from the  error loci of the old pathologists.   The aching oc-
casioned by this cause previous to disorganization, is  relieved  by
washing the mouth Avith cold AA'ater.   Excessive stimulation, particu-
larly by alcoholic drinks, also  occasions  diseased  teeth.  Man  is
almost the only being that suffers from tooth ache, and the only one
that uses hot food, and fermented drinks.
  Improper liquid aliments are of course as liable to produce disease
as  solid  matters.   Their effects will be referred to in  the  next
chapter.
  There can be no doubt that nine tenths of  our ailments proceed
from excesses of one kind or another, and may be remedied by  time-
ly abstinence and moderation.  It  is an old and true remark, that  if
men understood the art of fasting,  there Avould  be but little occasion
for  the physician.   All our diseases depend in some way or other up-
on our OAvn errors or those of our ancestors.
  From what has been said  we  can see hoAV change of climate may
relieve or cure many morbid states; for instance hoAV Avarm climates
by requiring but a small  consumption  of carbon in the system, may
quiet diseased lungs; how cold ones, by increasing that consumption,
may pacify the  liver;  how warm weather, from  the  consequent
increased perspiration, may relieve the kidneys and urinary appara-
tus; how scrofula and scurvy should more seldom occur in warm cli-
mates;  fevers and fluxes  more frequently;  but I will not enlarge up-
on this point. 
LIQUID ALIMENTS, &C.
59
  I have said thus much concerning the causation of disease by food,
&c. (somewhat incidentally perhaps,) principally to impress upon the
non-professional reader the necessity of moderation and adaptation in
diet.
                        CHAPTER  VII.

          OF DRINKS, LIQUID ALIMENTS,  STIMULANTS, &C.

  Food may be  liquid or solid; liquid food is provided in various
forms for our use by nature and the hand of man; and exercising the
same influences upon the animal economy, it is as neeessary that it
should be  adapted to  climate,  season, and  other circumstances, as
solid food.
  Water is the universal diluent provided by nature for man and ani-
mals.  Having no other effects upon the system than those proceed-
ing from  dilution and evaporation, I shall say nothing more upon it
than  that it is the best refrigerant  Ave  can take  when the system
needs cooling, and the most Avholesome and  effectual means of allay-
ing thirst.   The vegetable juices used by man consist principally of
water, and are generally analogous to it in their effects; being mostly
acidulous, and  containing but little nutriment,  or of the elements of
respiration, they are commonly cooling and antiseptic.   They are
less adapted to our general use in  cold climates; where, accordingly,
they are not produced;  and more in warm, where  they abound.
  The effects of the vegetable infusions in common use, as tea, coffee,
chocolate, &c. besides  those dependent on dilution, are owing to the
materials infused and to their temperature.   Hot fluids, especially in
cold weather, brought in contact with the teeth, are very apt to excite
destructive  inflammation or caries  in them; to this  cause  is greatly to
be attributed the prevalence of this affection in  our climate.  A tem-
perature of any of the ingestss much above  that  of the stomach
relaxes and debilitates  that organ, and may inflame it.  Sugar, cream,
and  the fatty particles of chocolate have been  already alluded to in
the  chapter on animal  heat; their  quantity in these  preparations
being usually very small, their  effects cannot  be very decided;  still
they should not be  altogether  overlooked.   Tea, coffee, and choco-
late contain three analogous principles, theine,  caffeine, and theobro- 
60
LIQUID ALIMENTS, &C.
 mine, perhaps the most  highly azotized of all vegetable substances;
 they may, therefore, be capable of contributing to nutrition where an
 annualized or highly azotized diet is  not  made  use of;  and  it is
 remarkable that we have learned their use from the vegetable eating
 races of warm climates; to them these articles are almost necessaries;
 to us,  combining their use Avith animal  food, mere superfluities;  and ,
 probably  frequently injurious  ones; . especially Avhen indulged in
 excessively, or of too high a temperature.
   Tea and coffee are nervous stimulants, producing exhiliration  and
 wakefulness;  their use is therefore counterindicated in certain cases
 of cerebral and nervous irritability; especially in children AArho are
 constitutionally more prone to nervous irritability.
   Milk and soups are capable of contributing both to the nourishment
 and  dilution of the system.   They may be, and usually are, some-
 what analagous in their character, being both composed  of water
 mixed Avith animal and  vegetable  matter.   When taken into  the
 stomach, their Avatery parts are absorbed, and the more solid residue
 undergoes the usual process of digestion.  The soups, with regard
 to their effects, of course stand in the same predicament as the sub-
 stances, animal or  vegetable, of which they are composed.   Of these
 I have already, perhaps, said enough.
   Milk constitutes the natural  food of all the mammaliae during the
 early period of their existence; and in general no change occurs in
 their organization  or functions  at any subsequent period to render it
 unwholesome.   It contains all the elements necessary to the animal
 organism.  It usually consists of  fat, sugar,  caseine, some salts,  and
 water.  When introduced into  the stomach, it undergoes coagulation
 by the solidification of its caseine.  It partakes largely of  the  char-
 acter of the food it is drawn from.  The milk of purely carnivorous
 animals is said to be destitute of sugar;  consisting, like their aliment,
 of proteinaceous and fatty matters, Avith the  usual salts and water.
   Man has used the milk of  the  herbivorse  from very remote times;
 but never, I believe, to any extent, that of the carnivorse; this would,
 I have no  doubt, partake of  the  properties  of the aliment it is com-
 posed of, and be, like animal food, too stimulating for  his use under
 a warm temperature.
   The injurious effects of breast milk  on infants, when the nurse
 uses more animal food than is necessary for the temperature she and
the infant are  exposed to, depend upon  its being too highly animal- 
LIQUID ALIMENTS, &C.
61
ized.   This is a too frequent condition of it; hence proceed much of
the fevers, fits, eruptions-, bowel  complaints, and other irritative dis-
eases of infants.   This is  a subject that has hitherto  received but
little attention, though of the most vital importance.   The tender in-
fant is generally well Avrapped up, and kept carefully warm; as warm,
or nearly so, as if it dwelt in a tropical  climate;  the  mother, also, is
seldom exposed to much cold, at least during the  early  period of her
babe's  existence;  but her diet is  too frequently of a very stimulating
character; as much so, indeed, as  would be required Avere she  ex-
posed to a rigorous  climate.  A  vegetable diet is  seldom recom-
mended to, or pursued by nursing  Avomen; and yet, in the early part
of the time, which is passed in warm rooms, with little exercise, it is
clearly indicated.   Can it be wondered at, then, that both parent and
.child should be so liable to fever and  inflammatory attacks, and that
they  should so frequently fall victims?   The circumstances of an in-
fant newly born, and also of the  mother in the early periods of lacta-
tion,  are those that call for vegetable,  or milk  supplied by vegetable
diet;  and if these indications be not to a certain extent complied with,
both  are apt to suffer ill effects;  more  especially, however, the child.
Sir George Mackenzie, in his history  of Iceland,  remarks that, in an
island near Iceland, where no vegetables are to  be  got, the children
invariably die  of  tetanus before  they  are  three  weeks old, and the
. population has to be  kept up from the main land.
   It  used to be customary in the West Indies to allow an extra quan-
tity of animal food to the Negro women after confinement; these, too,
entertained great prejudices against  allowing cool air and water to
come in contact with  their infants. In consequence of this manage-
ment, tetanus, or jaw-falling as  it was commonly called, was of fre-
quent occurrence before the child Avas nine days old, and always fatal;
cool air and bathing were,  however, effectual preventive means.
   Milk, partaking of the  character of the nutriment  it is derived
 from, becomes imbued with alcoholic  particles when the food is min-
 gled with liquids of that nature.  Hence the  diseases of vinous
stimulation are liable to be ingrafted upon the infant, whose nourish-
ment is imparted by a nurse addicted to fermented liquors;  and be-
sides the formation of~an attachment to these stimulants may be thus
early laid, which may,  in time,  progress into habitual  drunken-
 ness.   The  supposition that stimulating potations  are favorable to
lactation has been a most fatal error, and one that has been the means 
CrZ
LIQUID A I, IMK NTS, &C
 of introducing much disease and vice into the world.   It hhs polluted
 natures  fountain at its source.  Fortunately the idea is noAv pretty
 generally exploded.
   Spirituous liquors of any kind, Avhen used in a state of health, are
 very apt to prove injurious.  Taken into the  stomach, they undergo
 no digestion, but are at once absorbed into the blood, Avhere they be-
 come highly stimulating;  and, containing  nothing adapted to the
 healthy nutrition of the body,  they task the  vital  poAA'ers to throAV
 them off as  fast as possible; but, containing hydrogen and  carbon
 largely, in a form appropriate for absorption, they are capable of sub-
 serving the purposes  of respiration more promptly than any other
 articles, and are, therefore, adapted to the stimulation and calorifica-
 tion  of  the system in those Ioav forms of fever in which  digestion is
 suspended, as the latter stages of typhus.   They have been usually
 considered as tonics, but  this is a perversion of the term,  for  they
 confer no strength, but merely stimulate and heat the system.  When
 not called for, or indeed at all times, they are apt to produce too  high
 excitement, and subsequent prostration, and are liable to kindle disease
 of almost every form, and in any part of the system.
  The blood, when impregnated Avith spirituous particles, appears to
 have a peculiar  effect upon the brain, and the sensorial functions be-
come much modified by it.  To this effect, probably, and the facility
 of obtaining the means, is the general adoption of this  mode of  exci-
 tation OAving. Under its influence, pain, danger, and, in short, all  disa-
 greeable emotions,  diminish  or disappear;  and in  their place, emo-
 tions of a contrary  kind  ensue;  and Arery frequently, complete
 insensibility.    The  inhalation  of several  spirituous substances,  as
 ether, chloroform, &c, appear to act  similarly, though their effects
 are far more evanescent.   These spirituous  matters, then, seem to  be
 capable  of permeating the tissue of the lungs  either by  endosmose
 or exosmose; for, as has been before remarked, they may be evolved
 in respiration.
  There is some analogy in their effects upon the system, between
 spirituous and vinous liquors, and animal food.  They are both poAV-
 erful stimuli, contain carbon  and hydrogen largely in a  form fit for
 respiratory purposes, and are therefore capable of heating the body
 and enabling it  to withstand Ioav temperatures;  on the same accounts
 they are both liable to excite undue and morbid action Avhen  circum-
 stances  do not  require their  use; the  circumstances requiring their 
                      LIQUID  ALIMENTS, &C.                    63
         t
use may be cold, and exhaustion by famine, sickness and labor;  even
under these conditions stimulating liquors should be used cautiously,
lest the standard of healthy reaction be transcended, and  a morbid
one set up.  In these conditions, Avhen the digestive powers are  at
all active, the Avell proportioned use of animal food is commonly bet-
ter  adapted to produce the requisite effects; for  it at once nourishes,
strengthens, stimulates, and warms;  while fermented and spirituous
liquors  are principally  confined in their effects to the twolast; and
being very transitory in their effects, and ultimately  debilitating, they
are apt to leave the system in a Avorse condition than it Avas in before.
  Excesses both in animal food and fermented liquors conduce to the
production of inflammatory scurvy.  Huxham remarks:* "I find this
disease chiefly among those who drink heavy  fulsome  malt liquors,
such as  Ave generally have in this country, (England,)  Avho eat very
feAV vegetables, and live mostly on flesh and fish; that  lead  inactive
lives,  and  indulge  too  much in ease and appetite.   Many of our
sedentary tradesmen very often fall into it, Avhen  they constantly drink
the gross ale and beer of this country, and live chiefly on fish and
salt provisions.  On the other hand,  the active laborious  husband-
man, Avho drinks  chiefly cider, eats much herbage, fruits, &c, and
breathes a free open country air, seldom or never is affected Avith it."
  Like that of animal  food, the use of spirituous liquors  is more
tolerable in cold climates than in warm.   Montesquieu  remarks, "Go
from the equator to our pole and you will find drunkenness increasing
together with the degree of latitude.  Go from the same equator to
the opposite pole, and you will find drunkenness travelling south, as
on  the other side  it travels towards the  north."   It is principally a
vice of cold climates;  a habit  less injurious there, and mostly carried
into warm climates by adventurers from the north; where the excita-
tion of warmth constitutes a redeeming  feature in its effects; but in
Avarm regions its  use in health is  an unmitigated evil, and a mere
source of depravation to body and mind.  That  quantity of liquor
that will warm a Russian, will make a German  stupid,  and an Italian

   Alcoholic liquids are, however, a dangerous and deceitful means of
counteracting cold, as their effects  soon  subside, and the powers of
life then sink  as much  below the regular standard as  they were  be-
»Letter to Dr. Lind. 
64
LIQUID ALIMENTS, &C
 fore elevated  above it.   In this  condition a  fatal prostration may
 ensue.
    But it has been remarked that, in warm climates, those who con-
 fine themselves to water as a drink are nevertheless sometimes subject
 to the active forms of fever that there prevail.   The reason of this is
 Jthat their appetites  are keener, and their digestion is better, than they
 are with those who render the energies of their  stomachs dull  by
 .spirituous drinks; and they consequently are  liable  to indulge  too
 freely in animal food.   They  may almost as readily eat themselves
 into a fever, as drink themselves into one.  With habits right in both
 respects, I have no  doubt that  people could accommodate themselves
 .to almost any climate without difficulty.
    Over stimulation,  either by eating or  drinking, is the same  or
 nearly  so in its  effects.  As  has been already said,  most  of our
 ■diseases are the results of it; and it is easy  to see how they are  so;
 for all the healthy vital manifestations are the results of Avell propor-
 tioned excitation; but when the stimulus is inappropriate either in kind
 or degree, it necessarily  leads  to improper performance of function.
 When  the fluids  are accumulated to the utmost that  the  containing
 vessels  will allow by abundant  nutrition, and the circulation is urged
 to  undue rapidity by excess of excitement, the most favorable state
 exists for the  origination of inflammatory and congestive  affections,
 hemorrhages, extravasations and effusions;  and when the excitement
 has died  away the  powers are to some extent exhausted, and the
 system  is particularly apt to suffer from almost any deranging cause.
 Contagion, miasm, cold, checked perspiration, or any other secretion,
 can then  produce their effects almost Avithout resistance.   These  af-
 fections constitute most  of the diseases the  body is  liable to; and
 intemperance in drinking is  more apt to favor their production than
 intemperance in eating, because its effects are more intense, sudden,
 and eventually exhausting.
   Some diseases are peculiarly the result of the use of alcholic stimu-
 lants, and it is remarked that these diseases,  though of frequent oc-
 currence  in  Europe and  North  America,  are  unknown in  more
temperate  nations.  Among these affections are  gout and  stone.
These diseases are only found in those countries where  intoxicating
 liquors  are freely used.  Dr. Ure, in alluding  to  the  frequency  of
 calculous  disorders  in  England, remarks  that  the cause  must be
 looked for in the use of something from which irrational animals ab- 
LIQUID ALIMENTS, &C
65
stain; which, he says, is to be found in fermented liquors, and appa-
rently in nothing  else.*  Linneus  remarks of the Laplanders that
they have few diseases, and that the gout and stone are unknown
among them; which he  attributes  to their water, and to their absti-
nence  from  all fermented  liquors, especially  spirits.   Rumazini
affirms that the Persians who abstain from wine are free from  gout
and  stone; and  Tavernier states, "As for  the gout and gravel the
Persians know  not what it  means; but the Armenians  are troubled
Avith the latter, especially those that in their  youth accustom them-
selves to more Avine than water."
   Different kinds  of vinous stimulants may induce different diseases.
Dr.  Rush observes in his medical observations, that "physicians have
remarked that  a number of new diseases have  appeared  among us
since the introduction of spirituous liquors into such general use."
In England  the consequences of  spirit drinking were so serious in
1725, as to cause  the College of Physicians to make a public repre-
sentation of them; and in 1750, when these pernicious poisons were
very generally used, the same body stated  that they had 14,000 gin
cases under  their  care, most  of  which baffled  all their  skill in
medicine.!
   Even when no very evident organic disease is the result, habitual
excess in the use  of fermented  liquors  deadens the sensibilities, ob-
scures the intellect, and depraves the moral feelings; a state of things
more truly deplorable than bodily pain and infirmities.
   Dr. Beaumont,  of the U. S. Army, made some interesting obser-
vations on the effects of spirituous liquors, and stimulants in general,
upon the stomach, in the case of his patient Alexis St. Martin.  This
man received a charge of duck shot in his side, which  laid open his
stomach.   After  he had recovered there remained a considerable
opening into the  stomach, by means of which Dr. Beaumont was
able, for several years, to make a  series of valuable observations on
the  process of digestion.  After Alexis had been indulging for several
days in ardent spirits, the doctor found the mucous membrane of the
stomach covered with erythematic and apthous patches, the secretions
vitiated, and the gastric juice diminished in quantity, viscid  and un-
healthy, although he still complained of nothing, not even impaired

   *  Ure's Chemical Dictionary—Art. Calculus.
   t  Gent's Magazine, vol. 30, p. 21.
                     9 
66
LIQUID ALIMENTS, &C
appetite.  In two days later, matters became worse, "the inner mem-
brane was unusually morbid, the erythematic appearance  more ex-
tensive, the spots more livid than usual, from the surface of some  of
them exuded small drops of grumous blood;  the  apthous patches
were larger and more numerous, the mucous  covering  thicker than
common, and the gastric secretions much more vitiated.   The gastric
fluids extracted Avere mixed with a large portion of thick ropy mucus,
and considerable muco-purulent discharge slightly tinged with blood,
resembling the discharge from the bowels in some cases of dysentery.
NotAvithstanding this diseased appearance of the stomach, St. Martin
complained of no symptoms  indicating any general derangement of
the system, except an uneasy sensation and a tenderness  at the  pit
of the stomach, and some vertigo, with dimness of vision, on stooping
down and  rising again; he had a thin yellowish  brown coat on his
tongue, and his  countenance was  rather sallow,  pulse  uniform and
regular, appetite good, rests quietly  and sleeps as usual."  A few
days temperance restored matters.  Dr. Beaumont, after remarking
that these  symptoms Avere frequent in the course of his experiments,
observes:  "Improper indulgence in eating and drinking was the most
common precursor  of these diseased conditions.   The free use  of
wine, ardent spirits, beer, or any intoxicating liquor, when  continued
for some days, invariably produced these morbid changes."
   Thus we see, from their powerful effects upon  the system, the use
of fermented and spirituous liquors cannot be long continued without
detriment  to it;  and what is worse, the evil does not terminate with
the individual;  for it has been remarked that all the diseases arising
from their use  are liable to become hereditary, even to  the third
generation; gradually increasing if the cause be continued, till the
family becomes extinct.*
   Living as we do  in the midst of abundance, the great dietetic error
to be guarded against is  over-stimulation and  nutrition.  It has been
shoAvn how, from the force of habit, the former is perpetually liable
to be increased; besides, the use of one kind  of unnecessary  stimu-
lant begets a desire for another; so that  it is important to check our
propensities that way in the bud.   Plutarch, who was an advocate of
temperance and the -vegetable  regimen, condemns  the use of  stimu-
lants, as being provocatives  of depraved  and unnecessary appetite-
* Dr. Erasmus Darwin. 
                MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, &C.              67

and tells us that the ancients used but two sauces, hunger and salt;
all that are needful; for,  as  he says,  the healthy should only  eat
when they are hungry, and the sick should not be made hungry, for
the food would make them worse.
  Of salt it may be here remarked, that it is a condiment, necessary
to healthy digestion, composed of soda and muriatic acid; it furnishes
the soda to form  bile,  and for other purposes, whilst its acid  gives to
the  gastric juice much  of its  solvent powers.   In  warm  climates
the appropriate food—vegetable—is  naturally less saline than  the
animal diet of the north, and the increased perspiration throws off a
greater amount of salt from the cutaneous pores, which must be resup-
plied to preserve the due constitution of the fluids; accordingly we in
these climates find the greatest desire for salt. Mungo Park tells us that
the mothers in Africa pacify their children with a piece of salt, as in
Europe they  do with  sugar.   In Holland it  was  formerly  a part  of
the  punishment of criminals to be kept  Avithout salt; they  conse-
quently fell into a diseased  condition.  Being thus  necessary,  it  is
provided by  nature  for  man  and animals in all parts of the  AArorld;
but, as with every thing else, its too free use may be  a  source of  evil.
 It may over-stimulate and  consequently debilitate the organs,  and
 render the stomach averse to act on milder articles; it may also excite
a scorbutic condition of the body.  Another consequence of  excess
 in its use is,  that, being  a provocative of thirst,  and perverting the
 taste, it excites a demand for stimulating drinks—the root of so much
 evil in the world—doubtless this cause has aided in producing many
 drunkards; the same may be said of  many other condiments.
                       CHAPTER VIII.

ILLUSTRATIONS, PROOFS, MISCELLANEOUS  OBSERVATIONS, &C ON  THE
             PRECEDING DOCTRINES; AND CONCLUSION.

  If there be any truth in the dietetic regulations here laid down, we
should of course expect to meet with an increase of disease, not  only
in those climates, but also in those seasons, wherein these rules are
least observed; and such we find to be the fact.   Our hottest months
are generally the sickliest, and  our coolest are the healthiest.  This
is so commonly the case, that people  are led to the conclusion that 
6S
MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, &C.
wrarm weather is naturally and necessarily sickly; an  erroneous one
however, as more extended observation might convince us.  Now if
Ave enquire into the general  dietetic habits of our  people  in  the
different seasons, Ave shall find that a more  stimulating, heat engen-
dering course is frequently pursued in the  warmer months than in
the colder.   It is notorious that more stimulating drinks are used du-
ring the former;  and  the  following table  goes to show  that more
animal food is also then used; it  is a carefully prepared statement of
the amount of live stock received monthly at the Philadelphia cattle
market during the year 1847; and that city it will  not be supposed
is singular in respect to the  dietetic practices of its inhabitants.
	BEEVES, c	OWS & CALVI	:s. SHEEP.	SWINE.	TOTAL
January,	3620	950	1900	3800	10270
February,	3650	900	1459	4150	10150
March,	4000	1070	1425	4530	11025
April,	4590	1570	2590	5190	13940
May,	4240	1080	3280	3740	12340
June,	5570	1120	4030	5350	16070
July,	4070	1040	3970	4800	13880
August,	4100	970	3600	5560	14230
September,	4420	1060	3340	5370	14190
October,	4560	890	3620	5190	14270
November,	4280	1140	3570	4860	13850
December,*	4450	1200	3640	4590	13880
  From a series of observations by Dr. Emerson, embracing a period
of twenty years, the  relative  mortality of the  different months in
Philadelphia stood as follows—the months being equalized and pre-
sumed to consist of thirty one days each.
Aug.  6632
July,  5889
Sept.  5309
June, 4699
Oct.  4554
Mar.  4371
April, 4370
Nov.   4361
Feb.   4283
Jan.  4112
Dec.  4072
May,  3892
  By this it appears that the mortality is nearly in proportion to the
warmth of the month; and with the exception of the month of May
* Ohio Cultivator.  Quoted from a Philadelphia paper. 
MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, &C
69
the coldest months are most favorable to life.   Are we to account for
this by supposing that it is a laAv of man's nature that  the tempera-
ture most disagreeable to his  feelings should  be  the best adapted to
his health?  or that it is in consequence of his not adapting his habits
of life to the season  in the warmer months; and his pursuing the re-
gimen adapted  to winter during  the heats  of  summer?   Unques-
tionably the latter furnishes the better explanation.
   With correct habits of life, the warmer months would, I  have  no
doubt, be the more  healthy, as well as agreeable.  According to the
observations of M. M. Edwards, Villerme, Trevisen, &c. the mortali-
ty of children  in  the south of Europe, (where a vegetable and  fruit
diet is much used,) is  the  greatest in  the  coldest  months, and the
 least in the Avarm months at the beginning of summer; though it be-
comes  slightly  increased  when  the extreme heat  of summer  has
 endured  a considerable  time; probably from insufficient attention to
 dietetic adaptation.   With us, the mortality among  children in our
 cities is immensely  greater in summer than in winter, from the very
 erroneous customs that are pursued.  As has before been remarked
 from dread of their  use, or inability to procure them,  fruits are almost
 interdicted to our city children, in fall and  summer, when they are
 most beneficial.
    Among  old  people, the mortality is  generally the greatest  in the
 coldest months.  With this class of persons use has  become a second
 nature.  They have taught the  system to conform to their habits,
 whieh, if regular, no longer derange it;  but the declining  powers of
 life are unable to resist  the  adverse influences of a low temperature,
 and they consequently succumb to it.
    To see further the utter neglect that  so  generally prevails of any
 attempt to suit the  food to the indications of climate cr of season, con-
 trast the dietaries (or diet tables) of the  English paupers, with those
 for victualling troops for India.
    Dietary of the East India Company for victualling troops for India,
 for mess of six men, per week:

       Meat,  40 lbs.
       Suet,    11"
       Rice,    3 "
       Flour, 10  "
Peas,     5 pints,     Vinegar, 3 pints,
Plums,    li  lbs.      Tea,     1 lb.
Biscuits, 30  "       Sugar,   6 lbs.
Mustard,   I  lb.  Best London Porter, 42 pts. 
70
MISCELLANEOUS  OBSERVATIONS, &C
   Some  of the pauper dietaries  for the cool climate  of England,
(where, from the extent of pauperism, they are desirous of finding
out and giving the smallest amount of food that will  sustain human
nature,) prescribe about 18 ounces of bread, and 3 ounces of cheese,
per diem, Avith 3 or 4  ounces of meat on Sundays only, and water
alone for drink.  This is found by  experiment to be  in  general
sufficient to meet the absolute demands of nature there; but we see
that more than twice the amount of nutriment of a more stimulating
character, besides a highly stimulating drink,  is  furnished  to  the
India soldiers, who, from  their warmer climate,  need these things
much less.  Need we wonder, then, at the effects of over  nutrition
and stimulation among the latter.
   Too little attention is paid to the demands of season and climate in
forming the dietaries of public institutions.   There is no instance, as
far as I  am  aware, of any being framed  to suit the temperature,
although  a  most essential  thing to  health.   A reform is much
needed in this particular; especially in the United States.
   Our penitentiaries  in  particular are  prone  to be sickly in  the
warmer months;  this is very much  the case  in that  situated at
Columbus.  In these institutions the most rigid and invariable diet is
pursued;  and  they consequently furnish the most marked evidences
of the necessity of  change  and adaptation  in it.  The  injured or
broken down constitutions  of the inmates, arising  from intemperance
and other causes, render them more liable to be affected by deranging
influences.  The same remarks will apply to some of our alms  and
poor houses.
   As a  proof of the  connection between the diseases of a country,
.and the  diet there used, we may remark that a change in the latter
is followed by a  corresponding one in the former.*  "We learn from
the London bills of mortality, that scurvy raged to such an extent in
the 16th century as to have occasioned a very great mortality; at this
period the art of gardening had not been introduced.  It appears  that
the most  common articles of the kitchen garden, such as cabbages,
were not cultivated  in  England until  the time of  Catherine of
Arragon; indeed we are told that this queen could not procure a salad
until a gardener was sent  for from the Netherlands to raise it.  Since
the change thus happily introduced  into our diet, the  ravages of
* Paris on Diet. 
MISCELLANEOUS  OBSERVATION'S,  &C.
71
scurvy have been much less severely experienced."   It may be said
in addition, that this is now an exceedingly rare disease on land;  and
much less frequent at sea than it used to be, owing to the adoption of
better preventive regulations.
   According  to  Sir  Gilbert  Blane scurvy continued  a  common
scourge in England  until the general  introduction of garden plants
as food, which only began  to take place in  the reign of Henry  the
VIII.   Up to this period, the common food of the  people  was salt
beef and  pork &c, AA'ith bread;  scarcely  any vegetable  production
beino- used in the winter season: and in the summer season garden
vegetables Avere exceedingly rare and  dear, and  only used  on Sun-
days and at festivals.   It had  not been the custom to  lay up hay for
the Avinter season, and cattle were consequently  slaughtered in  the
fall, and the winter Avas passed upon salt provisions.   Macaulay tells
us, "in the reign of Henry the VII, fresh meat Avas never eaten even
by the gentlemen attendant on a great earl, except  during the short
interval between midsummer and Michaelmas.  But in the course ol
two centuries an  improvement had taken place;  and under Charles
the II. it was not till the beginning of November  that families laid in
 their stock  of salt provisions, then called Martinmas beef."  "The
quantity of beer consumed in those days was'indeed enormous; for
beer then was to the  middle  and lower classes not only all that beer
 now is, but all that wine, tea, and ardent spirits now are."   In those
 days, the scurvy, dysentery, and malignant fevers  Avere far more
 prevalent; and the plague, and Sudor Anglicanus, (or sweating sick-
 ness,) made frequent, and fearful ravages among the people.   Now
 that more appropriate habits are pursued, these last named diseases,
 are unknown there;  the plague has not occurred  for nearly tAvo, and
 the Sudor for nearly three hundred years;  indeed of this,  nearly all
 memory  has passed away  except of its name;  we do not know in
 what the disease consisted, only that it was attended with copious
 sweating, and was very fatal; confining its  ravages to the English in
 whateve&r  country they might  be; doubtless from  their more gross
 and improper dietetic habits.
   Fortescue, who was  chancellor  under  Henry  VI.  of England, in
 his work "De Laudibus Legum Anglise," draws a striking contrast
 between the food of the English and French. Of the French  peasantry
 he says their constant drink is water, neither do they taste through-
 out the year any other liquor, unless upon some extraordinary times 
72
MISCELLANEOUS  OBSERVATIONS,  &C
 or days.    *     *    *    "They do not eat flesh, except in very
 small quantities, with which they make a soup &c."   Of the Eng-
 lish, after speaking of their superior wealth, he says:  "They drink no
 water, unless at certain times, upon  a religious score, and by way of
 doing penance.  They are  fed in great abundance, with all  sorts of
 flesh and fish, of which they have  plenty everywhere &c."  The
 antithesis is here strongly draAvn,  and as the book is written with a
 national feeling, and to display  the  superiority of the English laws
 and constitution, the facts are probably colored somewhat highly; but
 there is doubtless  much of  truth in them,  and the Avork has  ahvays
 been held of good authority.
  Avicenna remarks that after the famine that occurred in the city of
 Bochara, many of those who had lived on roots and herbs and retain-
 ed their health, became  diseased as soon as they returned to a full
 diet of flesh and bread.  This was in a thermo-temperate climate.
 Dr.  Paris quotes  this  as an  instance of the ill effects of  sudden
 changes.   It is however more illustrative  of those of excess;  for
 when people who were healthy upon one  system  of living, become
 diseased upon another, it is  certainly a fair inference that the former
was better adapted to their nature than the  latter.  Most probably
those Avho did not suffer in their health were not much straightened
for food by the famine;  but merely underwent a forced, but moderate
abstinence; a state of things frequently most salutary.
  A remarkable instance of the benefit  derived from forced absti-
nence in warm  climates, is related in a work recently published:  "A
great number of British officers  who surrendered with General Mat-
thews, and who were taken in action Avith Hyder  Ali and his son,
were long kept in the dungeons  of Seringapatam; and it is a  curious
fact that they returned to the army in perfect health.   Now, all they
had to live upon Avas a handful of rice each every day, and a little
water.  It appears that when these  officers were captured, many of
them labored under liver complaints, and had, also,  received severe
Avounds; yet, upon getting back to their regiments, after years of con-
finement in a dungeon, living all the time on rice  and water, they
found themselves high in rank by the death of their brethren, who
 had been cheering themselves with good old Madeira, Claret, Cham-
paigne, brandy, together with all the variety of a groaning table."*
  The Jewish sect of the Essenes, whose rules forbade the use  of
    * "Forty years in the world," by the author of "Sketches in India." 
MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, &C.             73
animal  food, which, in  the  warm climate  of  Judea,  is  scarcely
needed, enjoyed a marked immunity from disease, compared with the
other Jews, whose diet, for their climate, was  apt to be too gross, not-
withstanding the salutary restrictions of the  Mosaic  code in that re-
spect.  Of the former Josephus thus speaks: "They addict them-
selves entirely to husbandry, and  is their course of  life better  than
that of other men?   *  *  *  They are long lived,  also, insomuch
that many of them live above a hundred years by means of the sim-
plicity of their diet."
   In Kippis' life of Capt. Cook, it is remarked: "One circumstance
 peculiarly Avorthy of notice is, the  perfect  and uninterrupted health
 of the inhabitants of New Zealand.  In all  the visits made to their
 town, where old and young, men and women, crowded about our
 voyagers, they never observed a single person who appeared to have
 any bodily complaint; nor among  the numbers that were seen naked,
 was once perceived the slightest  eruption  on the skin, or the least
 mark that indicated that such an eruption had formerly existed.
 Another proof of the health of these people is the facility Avith Avhich
 the wounds they at any time receh'ed are  healed.  An  additional
 evidence of human  nature's being untainted Avith  disease in New
 Zealand, is the great number of old  men with whom it abounds.
 Many of them, by the loss of their hair and teeth, appeared  to be
 very ancient, and yet none of them Avere  decrepid.   Although they
 were not equal to the young in muscular strength, they did not come
 in the least behind them in regard  to cheerfulness and  vivacity.
 Water, as far as our navigators could  discover, is the universal and
 only liquor of the NeAv  Zealanders."   They also  subsisted  mostly
 upon vegetable food;  and their climate is  very mild  and equable.
    A  melancholy  change has,  however,  taken place  among these
 people,  and others of the  Pacific islands,  in  consequence  of their
 intercourse with the self-styled civilized  and enlightened traders.*
 Disease  and mortality, arising from the introduction of ardent  spirits
 among them, have threatened to depopulate these countries.  For
 instance, the Sandwich Islands, in Captain Cook's time, are estimated
 to have contained a population  of not less than four hundred thou-
 sand.   The  fact is now well known that the population  of these
 islands, at the present time, only amounts to a hundred and  thirty-
   * Remarks on the Sandwich Islands, by Alonzo Chapin, M. D., late a resi-
 dent Missionary at those islands.
                       10 
74
MISCELLANEOUS  OBSERVATIONS, &C
five thousand.  A diminution chargeable to  the  introduction of the
customs and vices of other places.
   Barrow, in his  "Southern Africa," tells us that  "there is, perhaps,
no nation  on the earth, taken collectively, that can produce so fine a
race of men as the Kaffers;  they are tall, stout muscular, well made,
elegant figures.   They  are exempt indeed  from  many of those
causes that,  in more civilized societies, contribute to impede the
growth of the body.   Their diet is simple; their  exercise of a salu-
tary nature; their body is neither cramped  nor  encumbered by clo-
thing; the air they breathe is pure, their rest is not disturbed by vio-
lent love, nor their minds ruffled by jealousy; they are free from those
licentious  appetites which proceed, frequently, more from a depraved
imagination than a real natural Avant; their frame is neither shaken
nor enervated by  the use of intoxicating  liquors,  which they are not
acquainted Avith;  they eat when hungry and sleep Avhen nature de-
mands it.   With  such a kind  of life, languor and melancholy have
nothing to do.  The countenance  of a Kaffer is  always cheerful; and
the Avhole of  his demeanor bespeaks content and  peace of mind."
   To  show that  this  happy physical condition is  not the  peculiar
attribute of the races in the tAvo last instances, but that,with appropriate
habits, it may be attained by others, I will refer to the accounts of the
offspring  of  the  English sailors, the mutineers  of  the  Bounty, on
Pitcairn's  Island; a mixed breed, to be sure, but  their physical attri-
butes  appear to have suffered  no  deterioration from the admixture of
European  blood.   The story  is doubtless  familiar  to  many of my
readers.   Nearly forty years after the colonization  of the island,  to
Avhich the mutineers had fled for concealment, taking wTith them their
Tahitian wives, the little colony Avas discoArered by some vessels acci-
dentally touching there.   Only one of the mutineers remained alive,
but their progeny was numerous.   They used but little animal food,
living mostly upon fruits and  vegetables.   Yams, bananas, plantain,
bread-fruit, cocoanuts, appoi,  &c, constituted  their principal  food.
The warmth of the climate rendered clothing  but  little  necessary.
They rose early and took much exercise.   With  diet and habits thus
simple, "they were a finer and more athletic race than are  usually
found among the  families  of man."   Parturition AAras easy, and  unat-
tended with danger, not a single  fatal case having  occurred.   The
children enjoyed  uniform good health; their teething was easily got
over; they suffered no bowel complaints; and were exempt from  those 
MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, &C.
75
contagious diseases from which children suffer so much in large com-
munities.  In short, for health, strength, amiability,  and innocence,
this  little  community afforded one of the most  delightful examples.
ever offered for the contemplation of the philanthropist.
   From gradual improvements in general dietetic practices, in reme-
dial management, and a better knowledge of the laws  of life, the rate
of mortality in Europe, and probably in our own country, has of late
years been undergoing a constant diminution.   The average duration
of life is now nearly one third longer in England than it was two
hundred years ago.   In large towns and cities, where the males are
usually more intemperate and dissipated than the females, the latter
generally enjoy a greater exemption from disease, and live about five
years longer than  the former; and their lives are usually considered
worth about  that much more at the insurance offices.
   The average duration of life in the British islands is  at this time
probably somewhat over forty years, and throughout Europe some-
what  less; the latter is, I presume, also  the case  throughout the
northern portions of the United States, though I believe we have no
accurate data upon the subject.  The duration of life is known to be
greater in the north than in the south, both in our own country and
in Europe; probably the disparity is much the greater'in this country,
on account of the more inappropriate dietetic usages observed in our
southern states,  the great vicissitudes of temperature there, and the
neglect of all adaptation in diet to suit the wants of the system in the
warmer months.   The average length of life among the whites in the
southern states is, probably,  not  over thirty  years.   This state of
thino-s, so unfavorable to prosperity and improvement, is attributable
 to errors in diet, both in eating and drinking; it calls aloud for refor-
 mation.   Practical attention to these  rules would, I am  convinced,
 remedy the  evil, and enable the south to rival  the north, in this, or
 any country in the world, in  health, prosperity and population.   To
 most of our southern states nature has been prodigal in all the gifts
 of soil and climate, and of every thing needful to the welfare of man;
 but used inappropriately, the greatest blessings ahvays become the
 greatest evils.   Intemperance in our southern  states is notoriously
 more prevalent than in any country  in  the world of equal warmth;
 the numbers of its victims are  incalculable; they are of all classes,
 the rich, the poor, the ignorant and the enlightened; surely  these
 last, when they can  see  and understand the evils that threaten all 
To-
miscellaneous OBSERVATIONS, &C.
 that should constitute their dearest hopes, will make  an effort to
 avert it.
%  Were it not for our vicious habits, I have no doubt that the age of
 man would be in  general what the psalmist says of it, and extend to
 three score and ten years.
   It has noAv been made sufficiently apparent,  probably, that man's
 constitution is particularly adapted to a warm climate and a vegetable
 diet;  and that such was his primeval state; that the extension of his
 race into the colder regions has begot the necessity for the use of ani-
 mal food, which  should accordingly  be principally limited  to the
 necessary purposes of combining warmth with  nutrition; that in the
 very  cold climates it must be used  largely; in the very hot ones
 abstained  from entirely; and in the variable ones, the diet should be
 adapted to the season.   That Avarm climates and weather, with their
 appropriate regimen, are not in their nature sickly.  That diversity
 of circumstances,  especially as to food and climate, conduce to the
 production of varieties;  and adversity of circumstances, to  disease.
 That the  temperate climates, and the mixed diet there  used, due
 adaptation being  observed, are not detrimental to the human  race.
 That  in his present state, having lost much of the control  of in-
 stinct, man must depend more upon the control of  cultivated reason.
 That the  use of  spirituous and fermented liquors is improper in a
 state of health, and apt to be subversive of it.  That over excitation
 is the source of most of our diseases;  and temperance and due adap-
 tation in all things the  best preventive of them.
   The modern epicure, and the votary of custom and of fashion, will
 be  apt to complain of the stringency of these rules;  to them appetite,
 habit, and custom are imperious, and must be bowed to;  they conse-
 quently will continue to indulge in stimulating food and drink,  at all
 times and seasons, without regard to reason or the wants of the econo-
 my.  With these confirmed sensualists we  do  not look to prevail*
 they must be taught by their sufferings, and be convinced, perhaps,
 when it is too late; when the  greatest  boon the outraged  laws of
 nature can bestow, may be a premature death.   It is  to  those only
 who can listen to reason and regulate their conduct  by it, that  these
 remarks  are addressed; these  have  always constituted the fewest
  number among men; hence it has been  the fate of truth and reason
  to  make  slow progress against established errors.
    I have endeavored to make known the right, not mincing the mat- 
               MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS, &C             77

ter, as most of our popular writers on diet do;  who half condemn,
half palliate, established  errors.   This  lukeAvarmness—this  being
neither one thing nor the other—is a fallacious course, and  one, it is
said, that "neither Gods nor men endure."
  Let no one condemn these rules because he may have seen some
few instances of their infringement without the consequent penalty of
disease;  for erroneous habits may sometimes be tolerated for a while;
some organs taking on themselves the office of casting out  offending
matters;  and in this  way the system may get along tolerably well for  '
a  time;  but sooner or later  the overtasked   organs  will become
diseased;  in the majority  of  cases this tolerance of improper arti-
cles of food and drink is not established; the constitution has not the
strength, nor the organs the complacency, (if I may use the term,) to
get rid of the offending matters;  and the health suffers more  imme-
diately.
   Under the influence of congenial habits, the feelings are apt to give
timely intimation of the presence of morbid causes, and intimate  the
 proper  course  for  their removal; these  nice  perceptions become
 deadened under the influence of uncongenial habits.  Intemperance in
 eating and drinking has a great effect in deadening these perceptions;
 and  so depraves the appetite, that it becomes  a very  uncertain in-
 formant of the real wants of the system.
    I do not indulge in the Utopian anticipations of the benefits  to flow
 from dietetic reform that some have done.   Correct diet alone is not
 going all  at once to make  men healthy, wise, and virtuous, as some
 declaimers would have us suppose.   Under the  best of circumstances
 there will always be considerable infirmity in human nature, and hu-
 man conduct, and all that can be reasonably expected is, that  correct
 habits will place us in  the  best condition our present lot admits of.
    Those who may have deranged their health by improprieties in
 diet, and who may feel induced to seek a remedy in the adoption of
 the  advice here given, I would caution not to indulge in extravagant
 expectations;  perverted functions, the results of protracted errors, are
 not  to be  corrected immediately upon  the  abandonment of the prac-
 tices that  have occasioned them; for  they have probably  become
 habitual.   Diseases are commonly proportionally slow in their oc-
 currence  and removal; let the convert to correct practices persevere,
 however, and he will hardly fail  in due time to reap his reward; but
 if the constitution be exhausted and  broken down by over excitation, 
78
MISCELLANEOUS OBSERVATIONS.
 it would be  folly to  expect  a reformation of conduct to reform the
 body; it is too late!
   To those in health, Avho, from what  has been said, may renounce
 the usual routine of eating and drinking, forego excessive stimulation,
 and endeavor to adapt their aliment to their real wants, and to the
 requirements of climate and of season, I would remark that they may
 expect difficulty  in contending with their habits  in proportion to their
 inveteracy; and  that  the abstraction of  a stimulus must  be expected
 to be follovA-ed by some degree of depression and debility;  but this is
 only  temporary;  the  system will soon accustom itself to the new
 state  of things; and its various functions will then be performed more
 pleasantly and evenly than before.
   If  half the pains were  taken  to acquire correct  habits that  are
 sometimes bestowed on learning vicious ones, the latter would seldom
 acquire the ascendancy.   In all our contests between  reason and
 appetite, let us remember that by every triumph of the one, the other
 becomes weakened, and  less able to  obtain the  mastery.  Hoav im-
 portant, then, is it that reason should preA-ail; seeing that otherwise
 appetite must usurp its place!  How doubly important, too, that rea-
 son should be properly guided! not only for its  present good; but as
 a perpetually increasing source of benefit.  The  undue indulgence of
 passion and appetite,  on the other hand, is not only a temporary evil;
 but a source  of continually increasing suffering and degradation.
   This  little book, I  deem, if rightly used, Avould constitute  a safe-
 guard in a sickly season; and form  the best passport a man  could
 take with him, should he visit foreign  climes—a protection  against
 the exactions of the king of terrors—exactions  that those who visit
 the tropics, or warmer regions, are, under present circumstances, ex-
 ceedingly exposed to.
   Prevention is proverbially better than a cure;  and  rules calculated
 for the avoidance of an evil, have stronger claims upon  the attention
 of mankind,  than any remedy that can be  proposed.   This is my
apology for casting these remarks upon  the world. 
APPENDIX  No. 1.
ON MALARIA, ITS  EFFECTS AND ANTIDOTES.   THEORY  OF FEVER  &C

  On the subject of miasms, or the volatile.infecting agents proceed-
ing from decomposing animal and  vegetable matters, there appears
to me to be  much misapprehension.  They are commonly viewed as
influences  positively  and necce§sarily injurious to the animal econo-
my;  capable  of  themselves of exciting  diseases of a peculiar char-
acter under all conditions of the system; and as constituting the sole
object of attention and avoidance to enable  us to escape those dis-
eases.   This way of  vieAving the subject is erroneous and mischiev-
ous1;  nor is  this the only prevalent misunderstanding upon it; let us
therefore devote  a feAV minutes to its consideration.
   The  science of medicine  certainly recognizes predisposing, as well
 as exciting causes; the thing I deprecate is the general practical for-
 getfulness of  the former that obtains.  We do not take the trouble of
 discriminating; and are  too apt to allow  exclusively to the occasional,
 a power that should be divided with other causes.
   There is no branch of the medical sciences on which more vague
 and unphilosophical  doctrines are  inculcated, even ex cathedra, than
 on that of etiology, or the causation of  disease.  The  invariable at-
 tendance of the  sequent upon the  antecedent circumstances, necces-
 sary to invest the latter  with the essential attribute  of a cause, is very
 commonly  lost sight of;  two obvious facts  alone are noticed; for in-
 stance, the exposure to a miasm,  and the supervention of a disease;
 and the consideration of the intermediate circumstances necessary to
 the  result  is  neglected.  These two prominent facts are arbitrarily
 coupled together, as absolute cause and  effect, by  some observers,
 while  others,  noticing that  the  alleged result sometimes fads  to ap-
 pear, plunge into the opposite error, and deny all etiological connex-
  on beLee'n the facts in question.   Hence much of  the prevalent ob-
 scurity and contradiction in this part of medtcal science; and of the
 d sPuL about the potency  of certain agents; as those concerning an-
 imal^malaria as  a cause of  fever;  and the  existence or nori-existene
 ^numerous contagions; disputes which have ^^d,^
  divide the medical  world;  some contending for an absolute  efficiency
  in Le things, and others altogether  denying their powers.   The
f 
80
APPENDIX.
 editors of an approved Avork on medicine* have cut this Gordian knot,
 and thus solved the difficulty, by  denying  the applicability to the
 science  of medicine of the axiom "a like  cause, under  similar cir-
 cumstances, will produce a like effect."  Thus  removing the foun-
 dation of all rational science from medicine, and condemning it to end-
 less doubt and conjecture.
   We not unfrequently  meet Avith remarks of a similar tendency to
 the  folloAving.t  "It is of little consequence to seek the predisposing
 cause, when the atmospheric miasm, the occasional cause, was suffi-
 cient to  infect the  most healthy and robust,  and even to make on
 them the greatest impression."   Now, were no predisposition neces-
 sary, all exposed to an epidemic influence must experience its effects,
 and  that  continually, till the  influence shall cease.  That tensely
 strong and  plethoric condition of the  system,  commonly called  a
 "healthy and robust" one,  is  one  in Avhich it generally abounds in
 surplus matters; which, as  will presently be explained, very materi-
 ally constitutes the  state of predisposition to the action of malaria.
 The foregoing quotation is,  in the original, (a  description  of a malig-
 nant epidemic,) preceded by a  statement  that the season of the epi-
 demic "was otherwise  uncommonly salubrious."  A  circumstance
 not unfrequently noticed during the prevalence of malarious and oth-
 er diseases;  and one that as plainly directs us to the study of the pre-
 disposing, as of the  exciting causes.
  This skipping over the  intermediate links of causation, and con-
necting together the two extremes of the chain, as .the absolute cause
and effect, is irrational, and  an  inevitable source of error  and confu-
 sion.   It naturally begets the idea that the origin of the disease is in
a single  cause;  Avhich, apart  from  direct  poisons, and  mechanical
 causes, it seldom or never is; a variety  of causes conspiring to bring
 about the result.  We need not look for improvement in this impor-
 tant branch of the art, until, in all our investigations into the matter,
 we shall be influenced  by the  axiom that it is  the invariableness of
 antecedence alone, in a given phenomenon,  that  indicates the cause
 and the invariableness of sequence the effect;  and if in any instance'
 be it only once in a  thousand times, this relation do  not  subsist, the'
 occurrences cannot be correctly joined as cause and effect; but some

  * Gregorie's Practice, by Colhoun & Potter.
  t American Medical  Recorder.  Vol. 13. p: 55. 
APPENDIX.
81
other condition or circumstance must be sought for.  In seeking for
causes and effects we should look for those things that are really and
invariably connected; thus only can we redeem this branch of  the
science from the  imputation to which it is now obnoxious, of being
conjectural and vague.
  Now if we consider malaria, and miasms generally, in accordance
with this rule,  Ave  certainly   cannot  usually  look  upon  them  as
single, or absolute causes  of disease; for it is not the invariable con-
sequence of exposure to their influences;  very many persons being
unaffected by them in times and  places where the}' much abound;
to say  nothing of the inaptitude of animals to be affected  by them.
At the same time Ave cannot deny to them an efficient agency in the
matter; for universal observation leaves no room to doubt that, under
certain conditions, animal and vegetable malaria may become a source
of fever, and other diseases; but it is only under these conditions that
they do so.  These conditions, then, the predisponents, are as much
entitled to our attention as the  excitants of the disease.
  I will now proceed to enquire into the essential nature of malaria;
how it excites its peculiar manifestations in the system;  and in what
way our remedies act in controlling them.
  There has been much speculation concerning the matter of malaria.
It has, at different times, been attributed to almost all the gases; car-
bonic acid; nitrous oxide,  and  other compounds of oxygen and azote;
hydrogen;  carburetted, phosphuretted, and sulphuretted hydrogen;
&c. &c. have each been  supposed to be the active principle;  ideas,
however, that have  been  abandoned; as the characteristic effects of
malaria cannot be  produced by these gases in the laboratory; neither
Can the existence of any of them be detected by the nicest analysis of
the most concentrated malaria.  It has also been referred  to animal-
cute floating in the atmosphere;  a supposition purely gratuitous, as
their existence has never  been demonstrated; nor if it had, Avould it
account for the phenomena of malaria.   Of the nature of this noxious
exhalation many of the most prominent writers upon the subject have
expressed their  ignorance.  Dr.  Maculloch  remarks, "Perhaps  the
best arid truest account of its nature Avould be an acknowledgment of
utter ignorance!"  A more grievous Hibernicism could hardly  be
conceived!   Lat us hope that a better account than "an acknowledg-
ment of utter ignorance,"  may be in time obtained of that, and  many
other things, at present more recondite.
                     11 
82                        APPENDIX.
  Although, as far as my limited acquaintance with the writings of
the great organic chemist, Liebig, extends, he has touched but briefly
upon  the  subject of malaria, still his remarks  upon it, and upon
miasms and  contagions  generally, towards  the conclusion of his
"Agricultural Chemistry,"*  appear to me so capable of elucidating
the matter, that I shall take the liberty of making use of them in the
construction of a theory upon the subject under consideration.  I do
this the more  readily, as I  observe,  by several recent systematic
works on medicine, that his views do not appear  to receive the atten-
tion that I consider them entitled to.
  It can be made apparent, I think, that the active principle of mala-  *
ria, as Avell as of miasms generally, consists in a subtle, impalpable
matter in the active state  of decomposition, or oxidation, that floats -in
the atmosphere, and produces its effects on the corporeal system by
extending the action of its  OAvn  particles, or a  similar one, among
those  atoms of the  living system that are capable of  consenting, and
sustain the necessary contact; according to the  axiom of La Place,
"A molecule set in motion by any power  can impart its own motion
to another molecule with Avhich it may be in  contact."   In this way
an inconceivably minute  portion of matter, in a  certain state of de-
composition, may disturb the  combining forces in any amount of mat-
ter, the particles  of which  possess the  requisite susceptibility, by
communicating its own motions to it, from atom  to atom, until  the
mass  becomes affected, acting in the manner of a ferment.
  It is a well known fact that certain substances, while undergoing
decomposition, or oxidation, are capable of exciting  a corresponding
action in some other substances with  which they may be brought in
contact.   Ferments of all kinds are probably nothing more than par-
ticles  of an azotized substance, undergoing the process of oxidation,
(or in an active state of decomposition,) and consequently possessing
the faculty of exciting  a corresponding action  among  the ultimate
atoms of other substances that possess the requisite conditions.
   The analogies in fermentative, putrefactive, and miasmatic actions
are so numerous and striking, that Ave have  strong  grounds to sup-
pose them similar in their natures.  They are excited by, and consist
in  the  decomposition of animal  and  vegetable  matters;  warmth,
moisture, and exposure to the atmosphere, are  in all equally neces-
* Philadelphia, 1843. 
APPENDIX.
83
sary; a temperature of about blood heat being the most favorable;
they are controlled  by empyreumatics and antiseptics; chlorine and
mineral acid fumes decompose miasms and putrefactive vapors, and
when condensed, check fermentation and putrefaction in any substance;
in short,  in  whatever way  we  look at these modes of action, Ave
cannot fail to perceive resemblances, and find evidences that the
action of malaria upon the system, bears strong analogies, at least,  to
fermentative or decomposing actions;  indeed, I think it can be  made
tolerably clear that its influence  on the living organism  is nothing
more than an extension  or modification of the action that occasions
the miasm, malaria, or contagion.  In addition I may mention that it
has been shoAvn by M. M. Liebig, Julin, and others, that the  mois-
ture condensed on ice  in a  miasmatic atmosphere, and the   deAV
gathered in the neighborhood  of swamps, are capable of undergoing
fermentation and putrefaction.
  Though I speak of this theory of the fermentative  origin of  fever
as being drawn from Liebig, still he is  not to be considered as the
originator of it;  it is alluded to by several older writers;  and, as with
Crawford's theory of animal heat, Liebig is entitled  only to the credit
of its illustration and  improvement.   Good supposes that contagions
act  as ferments in the system, and Cullen remarks, "Those remote
causes of fever, human and marsh effluvia, seem to be  of a debili-
tating, or sedative  quality.   They arise from a putrescent  matter.
Their production is favored,  and their poAver  increased, by circum-
stances which  favor putrefaction, and they often prove putrefactive
ferments with respect to the animal fluids."   As it would have con-
flicted with Cullen's favorite idea of spasm of the extreme vessels,  as
the universal proximate  cause of  fever, to have supposed that this
tendency to putrefaction  could act as  such, he affirms that it does not,
but that it is merely an accidental concomitant.
  The doctrine  that the proximate  cause of fever consists in a ten-
dency to putrefaction in the fluids is of high antiquity, and Avas main-
tained by the most prominent' advocates of the humoral  pathology.
Hippocrates seems to  have had some notion of the kind; Athenseus
taught it more distinctly; and Galen went so  far as  to aver that  a pu-
trefactive disposition in different fluids excites different forms of fever,
as that in the blood, it occasions continued fever;  in the phlegm, a
quotidian; in the yellow  bile, a tertian; and in the black bile, a  quar-
tan  ague; distinctions, however,  that are apparently hypothetical. 
84
•APPENDIX.
 These  doctrines of the  putrefactive origin of fever reposed  pretty
 much undisturbed during the night science; but upon the dawn of
 learning again,  and in its deceptive twilight, as it were, strange no-
 tions on the subject, as might be expected, were entertained; myste-
 rious shapes that the object  appeared to take in the uncertain' and
 varying light.   The chemical reactions of sulphur, nitre, mercury,
 acids, alkalis, &c; the  mechanical impediments of lentor, or visci-
 dity, and the error loci;  the  vital actions of the dynamic power, the
 sentient principle, of capillary spasm, of sthenia and  asthenia; and
 innumerable other  vague imaginings, Avere, in turn, looked upon as
 the true cause of fever.
   That the theory here offered  will be found perfect, or that  it will
 be exempt from the fate of its predecessors, I cannot venture to pre-
 dict;  but I think that it may assist in obtaining a correct knoAvledge
 of the matter, and that it is at least entitled to attention.
   The following is probably the way in which malaria is formed, and
 acts upon the system.   Under appropriate pircumstances  as to heat,
 moisture, exposure to air,&c, decaying animal and vegetable matters
 give  off portions of their own substance,  the atoms  of which, not
 finally separated, are  in commotion, constituting the active state of,
 oxidation, or decomposition.   These are capable, of solution  in the
 atmospheric moisture, or of diffusion through the air;  and like fer-
 ments in genera] acquire activity from exposure to it.   When  a per-
 son is exposed to an atmosphere thus tainted, the decomposing par-
 ticles become absorbed. AA'ith the ajr, in respiration, and  if the system
 be predisposed to be acted upon by  them—that is,  if the blood con-
 tain matter  capable of taking on the requisite  action—they commu-
 nicate their own condition, a tendency  to  oxidation, to  that matter,
and. a kind of decomposition or fermentation in it is the result.
   I do not mean to say that.it is a true putrefactive action  that these
particles excite in the blood;  for the blood of patients laboring  under
contagions, or miasmatic  diseases,  may betray no peculiar tendency
 to putrefaction, when abstracted; but  it is an action sui generis in each
 disease; and analagous to fermentation and putrefaction, as these are
 to each other. Neither do I mean to say that the Avhole matter of the
 blood becomes affected in these septic, or fermentative, diseases; but
only- certain particular constituents of it.
   As different ferments may excite different kinds of fermentation in-
similar matters, so may different infecting agents excite different, dis- 
A P P K N D I X
H5
eases.   These  latter may be  looked  upon as different  morbid fer-
ments, producing different kinds of decomposition in the blood; some
the variolous, some the rubeolous, some the ordinary continued fe-
brile, some the  intermittent,  &c.   Again,  the morbid  action may be
modified by the condition of the matter acted  on;  in  the  same way
that the same ferment may produce different kinds  of fermentation in
different fluids.   Thus, the  same morbid ferment may produce, quo-
tidian, tertian, or  quartan intermittent, in one instance, and common
continued, or typhoid, fever in another.
   A peculiar condition of the corporeal fluids is usually necessary to
■the development  of the morbid consequences of miasmata; it is not
upon the regularly constituted organism or right condition of the blood
that they beget disease; but, as a  general rule, upon the system pre-
disposed to their  effects.   If all the parts  of the system  are duly un-
der the control of the vital forces, miasms, properly so called, and as
we commonly meet them, are incapable of disturbing it;  though from
some accounts, it appears probable that the concentrated miasms of
some mephitic districts of hot climates, may operate as a direct poison
on man and animals; of these however I do not speak    This pre-
disposition to infection must  be considered a casual  condition; for it
is not  essential to a perfect state of  the system; it can be, and very
frequently is, prevented from  being established; and when establish-
ed, can be removed with .positive advantage to  the organism.
   By the term miasm I do not mean irrespirable, or asphyxiating,
vapors;  these are direct poisons; but only those emanations from  de-
composing substances, that, as Ave meet  with  them, are  sufficiently
respirable, but are sometimes  found to superinduce disease.
   A susceptibility to the  morbid impressions of miasms is apt to be
engendered by superfluous, unwholesome, or badly assimilated  ali-
ment; imperfect chyle from bad  digestion; a defective  depuration of
the blood by the proper emunctories; or  any thing that may charge
the system with'crudities, superfluities, or matters having an unusual
 tendency to decomposition.  Also, all things  that weaken the vital
 forces, or unduly accelerate the  decomposition of the tissues, as in-
 temperance in drinking, exhausting  labor, &c. tend to  bring about a
 state of the system favorable to  the morbid impressions of  malaria,
 miasms, and contagions.  In  these conditions of the system a ten-
 dency to decomposition and  oxidation in the  blood commonly exists; 
86
APPENDIX.
 as is  proved by fetor in the breath and feverishness; and we might
 a priori suppose that it Avould second the action of a suitable ferment.
   I presume the  reader to be acquainted with the Avay in AAdiich those
 materials  in  the  blood  that are prone to decompose, and a fortiori,
 those  that  have   received  the  impulse  of decomposition  from  a
 decomposing  substance,  are  disposed to  combine  with  oxygen,
 through the means of respiration,  and engender animal  heat.  This
 I have already attempted  to explain, and it is not necessary to repeat
 it.*   The decomposing particles of the blood, the result of this quasi
 fermentative process in it, possess an eager affinity for the oxygen
 introduced by respiration;  occasioning, in  combining  with  it, an
 increase of heat,  a deranged  condition of the blood, and  a general
 disturbance of the vital functions;  in fact,  the leading  features of  a
 febrile paroxysm.
   An attack of fever I suppose to be commonly produced in this Avise.
 The  system  is  first predisposed  to it  by the blood being impreg-
 nated with matters less  than ordinarily under the control of the  vital
 influences; and therefore  more  obnoxious  to  the common chemical
 ones;  this of itself may give rise to a degree of feverishness, or mild
 ephemera; but for a  specific fever, something  more  is  generally
 requisite;  this may be furnished by particles of animal  or vegetable
 matter in a state of decomposition,  which are brought in contact with
 these  matters in the blood, and in  the manner of fermentation, excite
 among the molecules of these latter, motions similar to their own,
 characterized by  an increased affinity for oxygen.  Usually, at first,
 a torpor seizes the heart and lungs, as  if they were desirous of
 obviating  the heat, excitement, and disturbance that must necessarily
 be consequent upon the exposure to oxygen, of these matters ripe for
 combination Avith  it;  it is probable  that the first changes in the blood,
 previous to the increased absorption of oxygen, make it less stimulating
to the moving forces; and thus the  chill, or congestive stage is formed,
 marked by a want of action, and  external shrinking, and coldness,
 but internal engorgement.   The spongy texture of the spleen, acting
 as a diverticulum to the morbid blood, thus prevented  from passing
 on its round, becomes distended Avith it, and  if the process be oft re-
 peated, may  become  much  enlarged.   The  heart  usually soon
arouses from its torpor;  for the blood becomes stimulating, in propor-
                 * See Chap. III. on Animal Heat, &c.
1 
APPENDIX.
87
tion  as its  oxidation progresses;  and  increased  heat and  arterial
action take place;  during  which  the  chemical vie Avith the  vital
forces in acting on the blood; should the former prevail, beyond a
certain point, death, with or Avithout perceptible organic lesion, will
ensue;  if the latter acquire  their due ascendancy the disease becomes
subdued.   All the emunctories are capable of aiding in  throwing off
the offending  matters, and,  by over-excitation, may become diseased.
During this re-action, or fever proper, which is of uncertain duration,
depending upon the condition of  the system, and the nature of the
exciting cause, the blood  may, and mostly does, become purified by
the combination of its effete matters Avith oxygen, and their expulsion
in respiration, and  by other secretions,  visible or invisible, natural or
artificial, and the system returns  to a more healthy state; but as the
excitement, and diseased  condition of the blood  produced by this
decomposition, disorders all the functions to a greater or less extent,
it may by  greatly disturbing  them, or  their organs, destroy  vitality
before the  healthy crisis can arrhre.
   The periodicity  of the usual diseases of malaria may be OAving to
the decomposing substances  in the blood being almost wholly con-
sumed, or  expelled, by the respiratory and secerning processes,  du-
ring  each paroxysm;  Avhen the fire, as it were, goes out  for want of
fuel.   A spark—or leaven—hoAA-ever appears to  remain, which acts
upon the appropriate matters as soon as they shall  have sufficiently
re-accumulated;  and  thus the paroxysm  is reproduced.   It takes a
leno-th of time for this re-accumulation proportional to the ill condition
of the system, and the activity of the excitement;  if the condition of
the system be getting more depraved, the paroxysms will anticipate;
if it  be improving, they will  postpone.   A continuance of this  latter
state  will gradually extinguish the disease; this is the natural cure.
   After a  temporary interruption  by the use of remedies, the interval
being of several days, or  even weeks, evincing, however, a partiality
in the disease to septenary periods, these periodical diseases not  un-
frequently return;  and it has been observed that after  exposure to
malaria, its effects  are  seldom observed before  the  seventh  day;
oftener  on or  about the  fourteenth;  and  frequently  about  the
twentieth.   Thus showing that the matter of infection, original  or re-
sulting, is capable of remaining dormant, or  brooding, if .1 may  use
the term, in the system for an indeterminate length of time.
   These periodical diseases are commonly not  contagious, either be- 
88
APPENDIX.
 cause the requisite matter of infection is not reproduced in the sys-
 tem, or  it is  decomposed before it is  expelled.  In contagious dis-
 eases the infectious matter is reproduced, and throAvn off in an active
 state, and consequently capable of spreading the disease.
   A ferment  may excite transformations in only one of the compo-
 nents of a mixed liquid acted on by it; and its own reproduction may
 or may not result.  If the ferment act upon a  substance of its own
 kind, as yeast on gluten, it wrill be  reproduced;  if on a  substance of
 another kind, as yeast on sugar, it will not be reproduced.   This kv\v
 may aid in  explaining how some morbid effluvia may excite conta-
 gious, and others noncontagious diseases.
   Agues, especially vernal ones, are  frequently the means of clean-
 ing up the  system; of "purging it to a sound and pristine  health."
 This admits of a ready explanation  upon the  foregoing principles;
 the dietetic  habits necessary to enable the system to  withstand the
 cold  of winter,  are apt,  if continued when the  weather  becomes
 warmer, to superinduce a state of plethora,' and load the body with
 superfluities.  A mild ague, Avhen malaria is neither rife nor active,
 and  the body not debilitated or depraved by long exposure to sicken-
 ing influences, becomes a  safe and effectual means  of removing these
 superfluities, and re-establishing the  health upon  a firmer basis.—
 Hence the old proverb.

              "An ague in the spring, is physic for a king."

  I do not contend  for exclusive humoralism, or mean to say that the
 first  morbid action  in a fever  is always in the  blood;  for deranged
 nutrition of a part, or  perverted function of an oTgan, may be excited
by the application of a deranging irritant to it, and  the blood may be-
 come affected  secondarily; the ground assumed is, that the proximate
 cause  of fever (properly so called)  is a depraved  condition  of the
 blood, of the kind stated,
  I will now  proceed to say a few words concerning the antidotes to
 malaria, &c. It is only over the periodical effects of vegetable malaria,
 or marsh m'asm, that our remedies are capable of exercising a specific
 control.  Taking the  preceding theory of the  cause and  nature  of
 these affections as true, it might, a priori, be supposed  that the spe- '.
 cific remedies must act either  upon  the miasm  in the  system, ren-
 dering it inoperative,  or upon those parts  of the  system capable of
 responding to its  action,  rendering them  insensible  to its effects.   I 
APPENDIX.
89
suppose the remedial action to be mostly upon these latter; certainly
not upon the nerves alone, as some would have us suppose.
   The modus operandi (or mode of action) of medicines has always
been a dark corner of medical science,  and must continue to  be so
until the  causes of disease are better  understood.   Until we  can
trace the fons  et  origo—the fountain and source of morbid actions,
we cannot reasonably expect to understand very accurately the mode
of their  removal.  "Sublata causa,  tollitur  effectus,"—the  cause
being removed, the effect is removed; though many who profess the
healing art, satisfied with an empirical routine, trouble their heads
but little about effects and causes.
   The specific remedies for ague may be said rather to act as pre-
ventives than as cures.  They do not appear capable of controlling
the fit  itself, when established;  but  their exhibition in the interval
prevents the recurrence of the paroxysm.  On this account they are
incompetent to  the cure of the  continuous diseases  resulting from
decomposing miasms and contagions.   In these cases, to arrest the
further decomposition and elimination of decomposing particles, would
be to lock them up in the system, to its probable detriment; but Avhere
the tendency to decomposition in the fluids is  unusually great, (for
instance, in what have been called putrid fevers,) a due exhibition of
remedies that have the  faculty of  curbing decomposition may act
beneficially by moderating that tendency and  bringing it within the
constitutional powers of endurance, till the depuration of the system
shall be gradually achieved.
   That a remedy may produce its peculiar or specific action directly
on the system generally, it is necessary that it be soluble, and capable
of being absorbed into the system undecomposed, or  recombined  m
such a way as not to destroy  its qualities.   The antidotes  to the
known and ordinary effects of malaria  are, as might  be anticipated
upon the previous views, those  articles that,  according to the above
law, are capable of introduction into the system, and there restraining
decomposition of the  fluids.  They  are  arsenical, and some other
fcilts and oxides, some of the vegetable bitters and astringents,  and,
- n short,  those articles that are  capable of exercising an antiseptic
influence, in the  system as well as out of it.   These  remedies  may
be said to take the case  out of the hands of nature; for they check
the natural actions growing out of the morbid causes,  without expel-
ling those causes.   The adjuvants are those articles that tend to re- 
90
APPENDIX.
 move the  crudities and superfluities, or  the fomes morborum,  from
 the system, as emetics, cathartics,  diaphoretics,  diuretics, and the
 antiphlogistics generally.  These latter second the designs of nature
 by throAving off the morbid causes.
   Among the palliatives of fever may perhaps also  be  placed some of
 those remedies that are supposed to have a refrigerant effect upon the
 system,  as nitrate and  chlorate of potash,  and some  of the acids.
 These probably operate by imparting oxygen  to the  blood, and thus
 lessening  the  consumption of  it in respiration,  and  consequently
 diminishing the evolution of heat.
   Antiseptics appear to act by controlling the affinity  of substances
 for oxygen, as is evinced not only by their resistance  of putrefaction,
 but, among other things, by the facts that arsenic, and the carbona-
 ceous paints, as lamp and ivory black, retard  the  hardening of  flax-
 seed oil,  and charcoal prevents rancidity in fats, Avhich hardening and
 rancidity depend upon oxidation.
   The power of arsenic to restrain decomposition is well known.  In
 fact, it is, even in  very  minute quantities, perhaps the most effectual
 antiseptic known.   It is used to preserve subjects for dissection; a
 weak solution of it being injected into the vascular  system.   It is also
 used  to  preserve  specimens of natural history.  Indeed,  its  great
 powers in curbing, decomposition  constitute an objection to its use as
 a medicine, for, when applied to a living organism,  even in minute
quantities,  it may prevent the necessary physiological transformations,
and consequently  destroy vitality.   Bodies  thus deprived  of life, if
the poison  be retained in them, possess a remarkable exemption  from
decay.   Malaria is not the only  septic poison that arsenic is known
to be capable of counteracting;  it is a powerful antidote to the poison
of venomous serpents—a poison that occasions rapid decomposition
in the system, and is, perhaps, the most  potent septic agent, or ani-
mal ferment, that  is  known.   In India arsenic is much  depended
 on for  this effect,  though  I should  presume  more as a preventive
of morbid action, before the poisonous action is fully developed,  than
as a restorative subsequently.
   As has been said, however, arsenic is an objectionable remedy, be-
cause its  action may extend beyond those particles, the decomposition
of which it may be proper to restrain, and it may render those parts
of the system subject to its action  intractable to the vital powers- for
we must  recollect that, in these fermentative diseases, two sets of de- 
APPENDIX.
91
composing forces are at Avork upon the system; the one pathological,
and partaking more closely of the chemical laws  of decomposition;
the other physiological, and subservient to the necessary vital func-
tions.  To the  restraint of the  former only should the action of our
remedies be directed.
   Huxham, than whom a better authority on  fever cannot be con-
sulted, though near a century old, supposes the morbid effluvia that
cause putrid fever to  resemble,  in  their effects upon  the blood, the
poison of a viper.  His favorite  remedy in this form of disease was
a tincture of bark, called after him Huxham's  Tincture.
   By those who suppose that all the direct remedies  for ague must
be tonics, arsenic is placed among that class; than which there could
not be a  greater error; it is a  decided general debilitant; speedily
producing a feeble and intermitting  pulse; and any reaction that it
may occasion is the  result of local inflammation.  To be sure any
remedy may be  called a tonic,  in  one sense of the  term, that will
have the  effect of arresting morbid action, and consequently occasion-
ing a restoration of the strength; and in this sense alone may arsenic
be called tonic;  its primary effect, however, is antiseptic.
   We have a much  safer and  better remedy for the common effects
of malaria, in the Peruvian Bark.  This noble remedy ranks high as
an antiseptic, or conservative; and is one that is well adapted to inter-
nal exhibition; as Avhile it is usually  sufficient, when timely adminis-
tered, to check  morbid  decomposition, it  is not powerful  enough to
interfere  with the necessary vital changes.  As a local application to
putrid sores, and as a gargle for a sloughy and apthous condition of
the mouth and  throat, it is much used.   With the mineral acids,
and Avith chlorine, it is used to  arrest the  progress of those diseases
 that are attended with a depressed condition of the vital forces, and a
 tendency to decomposition in the fluids, as Typhus, Scarlatina, Pur-
 pura, &c.  In fact,  its conservative properties are those most dis-
 tinctly recognized; and upon the preceding views, they are sufficient
 to account for its property of checking intermittent paludal fever.   It
 has the  additional  recommendation of being a tonic, and  in  this
 respect has a great advantage over arsenic.
    As has been remarked, intermittents are sometimes prone to return
 after the effects of the remedies have worn away; even without rea-
 son to suspect a repetition of the infection.  This might induce us to
 suppose  that the influence of the remedies has been confined to those 
 92                       APPENDIX.
                 v
 particles that are obnoxious to the impressions of the infecting agent;
 leaving the agent itself,  or a reproduction of  it, capable of future
 activity; and this we might, a priori, suppose; for antiseptics have
 less effect when decomposition has commenced; and  are entirely in-
 capable of re-instating matter once  tainted.   When the  disease is
 thus disposed to recur, the most effectual preventive  treatment is, in
 addition to the administration of antiperiodics, to remove crudities  and
 superfluities from  the blood, by means of evacuants and alteratives;
 as venaesection, cathartics, diaphoretics, &c. and then  invigorate,  and
 put the system in  the best possible condition.  Piperine appears to
 have some effect in preventing the return of an ague.   It might be
 worth while to try the effects of a solution of chlorine, for the same
 purpose, administered after the  interruption  of the  disease by  the
 usual remedies, as a dis-infectant.
  Not only are ill cured  agues very liable to return, but in the au-
tumnal season, and in sickly places, they are apt to be succeeded by
more serious complaints; as dysentery, dropsy, and visceral engorge-
ments.  The consideration of  these circumstances may serve to  im-
press upon us the  impropriety of an exclusive reliance upon antipe-
riodic  remedies.   Unless the  system has  been  cleansed of  its
impurities, either by the action of the disease  itself, or the remedies
used, we may in vain expect a permanent cure.  This tendency to
relapse is favored by  those causes that I have enumerated  as predis-
posing to the disease.
  The two remedies I have  described, arsenic and  bark,  are  the
most effective ones Ave know of for controlling the periodic  diseases
excited by malaria; they are also the most effectual constitutional an-
tiseptics  that we  are,  at  present, acquainted  with; and  viewing
malarious diseases as  of a  septic  character, we have every reason to
believe that the power of their antidotes depends upon the possession
of antiseptic virtues.   It is unnecessary to go into a  detail  of other
remedies; suffice  it,  that unless they  act  by evacuating  morbid
humors, they will all probably be found to have constitutional anti-
septic properties in proportion to their real ability to cure  the ague.
In  this  latter case we may fairly place  them in the same category
with bark and arsenic; and refer  that power to their antiseptic action.
If other articles of the same  class have not  the  faculty  of curing
intermittents, it is  because they cannot comply Avith the before men- 
APPENDIX.
93
tioned law of constitutional specifics;  that they  be capable of being
absorbed into the system in such a Avay as to retain their qualities.
  Although it has become the fashion  to decry  theories, they are
alike  necessary and useful.  The mind instinctively seeks an expla-
nation of what is seen; and Avithout one, all conduct concerning it is
empirical and vague.  As has been  said by Darwin, "to theorize is
to think; we cannot direct  a cu:e without thinking, and happy is that
patient whose physician possesses the best  theory."   The  present
one has the recommendation of harmoniousness; there  is an agree-
ment in all its parts, that we may look for in vain in any other on the
subject that I  am acquainted with, and which diffuses an air of proba-
bility, at least, through it.   It makes the cause, the effect,  and the
remedy responsive in their natures;  and is  so  far philosophical;  at
the same time it is consistent with the facts;  and Avith slight modifi-
cations is capable of explaining the nature and mode of action  of  all
feverous miasms and infections.   I  may be alloAved, perhaps, to say
thus  much in its favor, as I do not claim the exclusive paternity of it, 
APPENDIX  No. 2.
                        ON  CHOLERA, &C

   As  the  opinions advocated in this essay are very different  from
 those  generally  current Avith  regard to  the  causes of  epidemic
 cholera, it may be expected that I  should, upon that point, more
 especially  attempt to fortify the positions  I  have taken.   I  therefore
 deem it proper to explain my vieAvs a little more fully Avith reference
 to that disease; and for this purpose shall append a few pages.
   I shall briefly endeavor to explain the nature of Avhat I consider may
 be the remote and  proximate causes of that disease;  in other words,
 how  it  may  originate,  and  in  Avhat its essential nature  consists.
 Should I be able to succeed in this, it would materially guide us to
 the proper plan of prevention and cure;  upon both of which points
 there is at  present  so much  discrepancy, that it can hardly be said
 that Ave  have any  guide or  authority upon  them—the  conflict  of
 authorities  having pretty much the effect of neutralizing them.
  The views  advanced  in this  chapter  may perhaps be esteemed
 somewhat  hypothetical;  I Avish  it to  be understood, hoAvever, that  I
 do not advance them positively, as ascertained and settled facts, but
merely as speculations, deserving, perhaps,  further investigation.
  There has been a prevalent opinion, from very early times, that an
effective  external  cause  of  epidemics  exists  in  the atmosphere;
although I  believe it has  never yet been demonstrated in what it con-
sists.   This opinion is, probably, to a certain extent, correct; I think
there  are evidences that the  causes of epidemic cholera  are  partly
atmospheric, and partly dietetic.
  The nature of epidemic cholera has been but little understood.
From the rapidity with which it sometimes  passes to  a fatal issue, it
has been supposed  to be a disease of innervation, and that the senso-
rial energy becomes exhausted suddenly in it, like the discharge of a
Leyden jar.*  This theory appears to me to be entirely  gratuitous;
the sensorial  powers, in this disease, appear  to  suffer  least,  and
remain in considerable perfection till the last; but the great circle of
* See Good's Study of Medicine—Vol. 1, Art. Cholera Spasmodi 
APPENDIX.
95
vital functions, performed by the liver, lungs, and kidneys, is de-
ranged, or entirely subverted;  and the blood,  in the  course  of  the
disease, becomes  unfitted for the purposes of nutrition and respira-
tion.   It is more than probable, then, that the disease  originates in a
lesion of nutrition and sanguification.
   The  different varieties of cholera, and of some other boAvel com-
plaints, as Avell as of many forms of fever, have in their causation
much  in  common Avith  each other.   There are  many reasons  for
supposing that a state of predisposition to these affections  may be
owing to an excess of carbon and hydrogen, or the  fatty elements of
bile, in the olood.  This  must of course depend upon an excessive
use of matters abounding in carbon  and hydrogen—as adipose mat-
ters, &c.—with  the  food.  One of the first  consequences  of  this
state of things Avould  be a demand upon the  liver to separate and
throAV off these matters  in the form of bile; Avhich  is a saponaceous
compound, composed principally of fatty matters and soda.  If all the
materials for the formation of this be present in due proportions, and
the fiver be in a  healthy condition, the secretion may be in proportion
to the elements of bile present in the system, and adapted to that pur-
pose;  and a natural cure of the loaded state  of the  system  may be
effected by the Avay of a bilious diarrhoea or cholera  morbus; or the
oxygen supplied by respiration may  lay hold of these superfluous
matters, and engender fever; but if, in this condition of the  system,
any obstacle exist to the due elimination of bile, either from the ab-
sence of one or more of its necessary  ingredients, (for instance soda,)
or from a want of action of the  liver, congestion of the liver,  from its
obstructed functions and circulation, and consequent engorgement of
the blood vessels of the intestines, may ensue, attended Avith irritabili-
ty of the boAvels, and a transudation, or exhalation into them of the
 thinner and more transmissable particles of the blood,  and the evacua-
 tion of these,  untinged  with bile, at either orifice of the alimentary
 canal.   In this way a non bilious cholera morbus, cholera infantum*
 diarrhoea, or dysentery  may be caused.
   I would here  beg the reader to bear in mind the  nature of the por-
 tal circulation, the offices of the liver, and the  relation of these things
 to the general circulation, and  more  particularly to that of the intes-
 tines; to remember, that if the. portal circulation  be  impeded, the
 return of blood  from  the intestines  is cut oft; in proportion to the ex-
 tent of the obstruction;  and that an entire stoppage must occasion as 
96    •
APPENDIX.
 great an engorgement of the veins of the intestines, with  exudation
 from, and irritation of their mucous surface, as if the veins that return
 the blood from the intestines had been tied.
   The liver is the great organ for the separation of fatty matters from
 the blood, and is probably a check to the improper admission of such
 into the general circulation Avith the fluids absorbed by the veins from
 the intestines.  It secretes these matters, combined with soda, in the
 form of bile.  If the blood, from the lymphatic and lacteal absorption,,
 contain more of such matters than is  proper for its due constitution,
 or for the supply of animal heat, they must pass off with the carbona-
 ceous secretions, especially the bile, or be consumed by a preternatur-
 al increase of the respiratory function, Avith augmentation of heat, &c;
 or if the blood  be not in some such way depurated, not only will  the
 liver, from the nature of its  office, be averse to the transmission of the
 impure fluid, and  probably cause  the visceral  engorgements above
 referred to, but also an  oily condition of the blood might be antici-
 pated, from an accumulation of these matters in it.  This  condition
 of the blood, Dr. Macintosh tells us, has been found to  exist in those
 who have died in the  collapsed stage  of epidemic cholera.  This
 excess of carbonaceous matter in the blood  is probably one cause of
 the  fever that commonly  ensues,  in  those  cases that survive  the
 collapse.
   In the healthy condition, there is reason to believe that the soda of
 the bile is not excreted; but with the bile,  absorbed  from the intes-
 tines; and after the loss  of the carbon and hydrogen of the bile by
 respiration, the same soda may go to form fresh  bile Avith other  car-
 bonaceous  matters, &c.    But Avhen fatty materials abound in the
 blood to a greater extent  than can  be  appropriated to the use of the
 economy, or got  rid of by  other means, it  becomes necessary that
 they  should be poured  out  by  the  liver,  and be  excreted;   and
 this will be apt to be effected as long as the formation of bile can take
 place; but this excretion occasions a waste of soda as  well as fatty
 matters;  and if the former  do  not  exist  in the  system in  sufficient
 quantity,  which, from various reasons,  is frequently the case,  the
 secretion of bile must stop.   The demand for soda is, perhaps, not so
 great in the system as that of the organic materials  of bile, as, ac-
 cording to Liebig's views,  the carbon and  hydrogen of the  bile is
 consumed in the process  of  calorification, leaving the soda at liberty,
and  capable of being reapplied to the  purpose of rendering the fats 
APPENDIX.                        97
soluble and oxydizable; this being the fact, the supply of the alkali
Avould not  be needed in proportion to that of the other principles of
bile, and consequently would not be provided by the system to the
same extent.  It would, therefore, be liable to be exhausted first, un-
der that state of things that occasions a waste of both the organic and
inorganic elements;  and the soda being  exhausted,  the formation of
bile must stop, with  all the consequences thereupon dependent.
   When the blood  is loaded  with the organic elements of bile, any
thing that  deprives  the  system of its soda will be apt to stop the se-
cretion of bile, and produce the consequences heretofore detailed.  It
is from  this  cause,   probably,  that acid  fruits and  vegetables, and
sour drinks,  are so frequently  followed  by bowel complaints.   The
neutral salt,  formed  by the soda and  the  acid, may  pass  off by the
boAvels, skin, or kidneys; more probably by the first.  That the free
use of acid fruits occasions a loss of soda is evinced by the fact that,
after living much upon them, there is generally, perhaps always, an
increased desire for salt; for the soda of the bile is mostly drawn from
the salt of our food.
   Our Indian tribes have suffered much from cholera.   They use  a
diet at all  times composed largely  of animal matter, with but  little
salt;  to both which circumstances is their liability to this disease to
be ascribed.
   As well as the excessive use of fat as  food, the use of spirituous
liquors may have the  effect of loading the blood,  liver, and system
generally,  with adipose matter, besides deranging and torpifying the
liver; and we have  the strongest evidence that the addiction to intoxi-
cating drinks is  a great predisposing cause to epidemic cholera in all
parts°of the world.   In India, Rammohun Fingee, a native physi-
cian of great celebrity,  declares that "people who do not  take spirits
 or opium, do not catch the disorder,  even when they are  with those
who have it."   "In the army under the command  of the Marquis  of
 Hastings,  in India, consisting of eighteen thousand men, more than
half died  of cholera in twelve days.  This dreadful mortality need ex-
  cite little  surprise,  when  the effect of free indulgence in intoxicating
  liquors, in a hot climate, is taken into consideration.*"  And in every
  other part of the world, intemperance, as a qualification for the attacks
  of cholera,  has been most plainly proclaimed.

        * Grinrod on the nature, causes, effects, &c, of intemperance,
                       13 
98
APPENDIX.
  When the bowels  are in a state of vascular engorgement and irri-
tability, upon the verge of active and evident disease,  a slight irri-
tating cause may be  sufficient to determine it; and  a small  quantity
of vegetable, or other indigestible food, may start  a train of violent
morbid actions; but we should not give too much credit to such slight
causes, but remember that the predisposition,  effected by other and
A'ery different means, AA*as already in existence.  It  is perfectly futile
to aver that a diet of fruits and  vegetables, in a climate or season
adapted to it, can found a predisposition to cholera.   Neither can
theory nor observation bear out such an averment.   In camps, cities,
and croAvded public institutions, where cholera has  ahvays most pre-
vailed, a sufficient supply of sound fruits and vegetables is seldom to
be procured;  and in times of the  prevalence of the epidemic, they
have  been almost wholly  excluded; but inferior and refuse animal
food is generally cheap,  abundant,  and easily obtainable; upon this
the poor feed largely; and, with intemperance,  it  has  been a most
prolific source of the disease.  Even where people are not straighten-
ed or controlled by circumstances, excesses in stimulating meats and
drinks are frequently committed, and thus the door is opened to the epi-
demic, though,  from a greater degree of caution, not so widely with
this class of people as with the poorer and more reckless.  Fat meats
are commonly supposed to go  further than lean, as articles of diet;
they are therefore mostly selected by the  poorer classes, the bulk of
whose animal  food  frequently consists of the  fattest  bacon.  The
Germans are proverbially greasy feeders, and with us have suffered
more than any other class from cholera.
   But nothing  has  been as yet said that can account for the preva-
lence of cholera as an epidemic; for the causes  enumerated are not
like epidemics, occasional and periodic in their  nature,  but more or
less continual.  To  account for epidemic cholera,  then, something
more is necessary.   This is probably, at least in part, an atmospheric
influence, and I think depends, to some  extent, upon an  acid vapor in
the air; not that this is the only epidemic on atmosphere influence,
but that it may be one.  I do not mean  to say that it can of itself oc-
casion cholera; on the contrary, I  deny  that atmospheric impurities
are the sole causes of any epidemic;  but  the predisposition existing,
I suppose it to have, in a considerable degree,  an  effect in exciting
the disease, though other causes,  at  present unknown, may be aux-
iliary.  From  the nature,  as  well  as novelty,  of the  subject,  our 
APPENDIX.
99
opinions upon this atmospheric influence  must as yet be somewhat
speculative.
  The occasional existence of a substance in the atmosphere,  called
ozone has been noticed of late years; and it has been supposed to be
a cause of some  epidemics, as influenza and cholera; between  which
diseases, it may be as Avell to remark that  there are some striking
points of analogy;  they have observed nearly the  same geographical
route;  both having their cradle in the east; the one affecting the mu-
cous membrane  of the air passages, the other that of the alimentary ca-
nal.  Of the nature of ozone I have met with very slight accounts; to
ascertain this, I instituted some experiments, (of which I gave a short
account in a paper published here, Somerset, Ohio, July 26th,  1849.)
These experiments led me to the conclusion that the  substance called
ozone  is nothing  more than the vapor of nitrous acid.   It is  said to
have a nitrous odor, to be engendered by the action of electricity upon
the atmosphere, to have considerable bleaching properties,  and to be
someAAmat analagous to chlorine.   A good test of  its presence  is said
to  be  furnished by  paper smeared with  a mixture  of  iodide of
potash and  starch paste and exposed to the air.  Its presence turn-
ing the paper at first yellowish, and then brown;  if absent the paper
remains  colorless.  In my observations  I  found the test  paper to
give the evidences of  the presence of ozone; turning yelloAvish in a
feAV hours, and quite brown in the course of a day or tAvo;  on being
moistened with AA-ater, it turned purple for a feAV  seconds; but if the
water  AA-ere rendered  alkaline, all color  was discharged.    In the
course  of a month, or so,  the color began to disappear in patches;
when it was  evident,  from the  paper sparkling on  combustion, that
the iodide of potash Avas to some extent converted into a nitrate.  Ex-
posed to the vapors of  nitric and nitrous acids, and nitrous oxide, the
test  paper immediately underwent  the same changes in color, with
the same consequences upon the contact of moisture, or an alkali. A
continuance  of contact of the acid vapor  soon destroyed all color.
Upon igniting the test  paper that had been acted upon, either by the
acid or the atmosphere, it was retentive of  the spark, in proportion
to the extent of action effected on it.  Thus the paper that had been
colored and subsequently  whitened  by the action of the acid, scintil-
lated, as if it  had been  impregnated Avith nitre; that  Avhich had been
but slightly acted upon, was but feebly  retentive of fire.
   Paper washed with a solution of carbonate of potash, and hungup 
100
APPENDIX.
in a rpom, I found, in the course of a month, to be considerably im-
pregnated with nitrate of potash.
   Old whiteAvash, scraped from the wall of a room, contained nitrate
of lime, and treated with solution  of potash, yielded nitrate of potash.
   These observations were  made during  the months of  June and
July 1849, during the prevalence of epidemic cholera in other parts
of the State;  non-bilious  cholera morbus, and other boAvel complaints,
prevailing in the vicinity of the place where  the observations were
made.  The exciting causes, I suppose, were not of sufficient inten-
sity to occasion epidemic cholera.
   In the month  of October folloAving, during a time of unusual health,
I exposed the test paper  for several days, in my office,  without its
undergoing any  change;—though when exposed to the vapor of nitric
acid, it immediately turned yellowish, then brown; and finally lost all
color, when it burnt and  scintillated very vividly.
   Upon these facts I came to the conclusion that during the former
months, there existed a certain quantity of nitrous acid fumes in the air;
and that the substance called ozone is, in reality, nothing else.   The
following  I suppose to be the  chemical changes that take place on
the test becoming colored.  The nitrous acid vapor at  first combines
with a part of the potash,  forming nitrate and  per-iodide  of potash;
to this latter the yellow or brown color is owing.  If the acid be pres-
ent in sufficient  quantity, free iodine is disengaged faster than it evap-
orates, which strikes a  purple color with the starch; moisture ap-
pears to facilitate the  production  of this purple color; and the disap-
pearance of the tinge is,  OAving to the evaporation of the iodine.  The
removal of the brown color by an alkali, I suppose is due to the com-
bination of the acid with  the alkali, reducing the  per-iodide again to
an iodide.
   Notwithstanding the fact has been but little noticed, still, upon a
consideration of the matter, we might, from reasons both of an a priori.
and a posteriori  nature,  anticipate the existence of this  acid in the
atmosphere.  Nitric acid is well known r to be generated by the elec-
tric spark acting on the atmospheric air—oxygen and nitrogen being
thus united  in the requisite proportions.   Also ammonia is said to be
liable to oxidation, under favorable circumstances, its nitrogen becom-
ing nitric  acid,  and its hydrogen Avater; noAv ammonia always exists
in the air; nitric acid must therefore, a priori be presumed to be pro-
duced by  lightning, and  other electric action; as probably by various 
APPENDIX.
101
other causes.  And to account for the fact that the potash of the soil,
and indeed all alkaline substances,  when exposed to the air in shel-
tered situations, being converted  into nitrates, the simplest and most
obvious reason is, their combination Avith the nitrous acid of the atmos-
phere.
   The older theories of  nitrification,  or the formation of  nitre^by at-
mospheric agency, are, objectionable as being complex, Avhen a simpler
and  more satisfactory  explanation is  at hand.   When  we observe
that  every alkaline substance,  Avhether volatile or fixed, is  liable by
exposure to the air, at times, to be converted into a nitrate, how much
more easy and obvious is the supposition that the necessary acid ex-
ists already in the air.
   It seems necessary to the preserA'ation of atmospheric purity that a
certain quantity of the  acid vapor should be formed in  it;  and that
Avhere  animal  and  vegetable  decomposition  goes forward the most
rapidly, there should be engendered the most acid; for  this decompo-
sition supplies ammonia in quantities that might, under some circum-
stances,  render the  air exceedingly  impure,  or even irrespirable,
were there not some  provision for the  neutralization of the  alkaline
fumes.  There appears to me to be a  precise and beautiful  adapta-
tion  and arrangement  to subserve this purpose; for we find active
electricity, and  the evidences of the acid vapor in the air, to exist in
the greatest  abundance in those times and regions  Avhen and where
animal and vegetable putrefaction is the most acthre.  There also the
nitrates form the most abundantly,  by  Avhich means, with  rain, &c.
the air is purified from the acid.  Is it not owing to this state of things
that thunder storms have acquired  the  reputation of charing Up the
air?  a reputation that they probably deserve.
   It appears that in  times and places at,  and  in  which, the cholera
prevails, this  acid  vapor exists in greater abundance; and  it is pro-
bable  that its  existence in  the atmosphere is intimately associated
with the prevalence of the epidemic.   This will explain at once how
it is that lime, scattered freely over the ground, should exercise such
a marked preventive  action as it is  said to have done, in some in-
stances.
   It is probable that various local causes may have the effect of favor-
ing  the combination of oxygen and nitrogen in the atmosphere.   It is
said that the presence of ammonia, in connection Avith organic decom-
position, has that effect.  Warmth and moisture are  highly condu- 
102
APPENDIX.
cive and even necessary to it.  Thus Ave might expect that a warm,
damp, and  impure air Avould  favor the spread of the disease;  and
such is notoriously the fact.
   In India where decomposition is very active,  and nitrification by
atmospheric agency equally so, and Avhere Ave may consequently  pre-
sume nitrous acid vapor to exist most abundantly in the air, the  epi-
demic cholera had its origin,  and continues mpst prevalent and fatal;
other bowel complaints, as dysenteries are likewise so.
   There are probably other causes,  not at present understood, the
combination of Avhich is necessary to the development of the epidemic.
It is doubtless the  occasional  coincidence of all the necessary  cau-
ses that brings about the occasional prevalence  of  an epidemic;  one
of the most obvious and effective of these causes of cholera I suppose
to be the existence of this acid  vapor in the air; and A\-here its pres-
ence does not occasion the disease, it is because the necessary combi-
nation of other causes does not exist.
   The quo modo of the excitation of the disease by this atmospheric in-
fluence remains to be explained; and  this I think can be done in a
very feAV  words.  The acid  is absorbed Avith the  oxygen in respira-
tion, and combines  with  the soda in  the blood, whence the soda be-
comes expelled as a nitrate, in the urine, sweat, or by other channels;
thus depriving the system of  a portion of its necessary soda, and  pre-
paring the way, should an excess of carbonaceous matter exist in the
blood,  for those consequences that Ave have already described  as de-
pending  upon an excess of the  organic elements of bile in the  blood,
and which the liver is unable to secrete for want of the proper inorgan-
ic parts.
   A variety of circumstances conspire, in Avarm  climates and weather,
to deprive the system of its soda, otherwise than by the excretion of bile.
Upon the supposition of  a precise adaptation  in all the  plans  and
operations of nature, a supposition, I take it, that cannot be gainsaid,
this fact would go to prove that bile is, under a warm temperature,
less  needed in the system; and that consequently fats, vinous  fluids,
and bile-making food generally, should then be  less used.   Sweating
is one  of the means by Avhich the  salts of soda are lost to the system;
in may  consequently  operate as  a check to the secretion of  bile.
From a deficiency of  saline  ingredients  in the  system, the copious
sweat of cholera patients is but slightly  salt, and  the blood is found
to be in the same condition. 
APPENDIX
103
   A reason Avhy the needful muriate of soda is less apt to be lost to
the system through those emunctories that transmit the neutral salts,
as the skin, kidneys, &c, than is the nitrate, is because the glands of
the stomach secrete free muriatic acid, on Avhich, Avith the addition of
pepsine, the solvent power  of the gastric juice is supposed princi-
pally to depend;  this muriatic acid is derived from the  salt  of the
food, the soda going to the bile.
   The coldness and blueness attendant upon cholera  plainly  indi-
cate an obstruction to the circulation, and congestion, existing in some
central part;  and other facts and circumstances shoAv that this ob-
struction and congestion  exist in the liver  and the portal system.
Frequently before death this obstruction yields, the blueness disap-
pears, and AArarmth returns;  this  is  the  reason Avhy Ave may some-
times see no evidences  of hepatic congestion on a  post  mortem in-
spection of the body; though eA'idences of the existence of such con-
gestion are most commonly to be found after death by cholera, cholera
infantum,  and  other kindred diseases.   This  congestion is said by
Dr. J. M. Good, and others, to have  been uniformly found in those
who died of  the disease in India.
   The cramps of cholera are probably  partly  dependent upon the
condition of the blood,  and  partly upon intestinal irritation.   They
are usually attendant, though  commonly less  severe, on the latter
affection alone.
   I have now perhaps said enough to" make it probable that epidemic
cholera is more dependent upon  the  too  free use of food composed
of the heat-making elements, or the organic materials  of bile, than is
generally supposed, and that the state of predisposition to  that disease
does not depend upon the use of fruits  and vegetable food, though,
when excess of animal food is used, especially the  fats, fruits and
vegetables may be incompatible, and excitants of the disease.
   Preventive and remedial management should  be  built upon  a
knoAvledo-e of the essential nature of the disease; without this it will
be apt to be  unstable and vague.  The nature of a disease being un-
derstood, the appropriate treatment becomes pretty obvious, though
success  in it is not always in our power.  Presuming the foregoing
opinions to be founded on truth, the prevention of cholera, and the
diseases akin thereto, would evidently consist in the first place in the
avoidance  of all undue  use of the organic materials of bile; especially
fat, animal,  and spirituous  ingestas.   A  proper conformity  to this 
101
APPENDIX.
rule would go far to  insure an  immunity from  the disease, and do
away with all risk of ill consequences from any reasonable use of
fruits and vegetables,  without which perfect  health in warm Aveather
is unattainable.   Should this leading rule, however, be violated, and
food of the proscribed character be made use of,  the next most mate-
rial means of safety would  be offered by the use of  a sufficiency of
soda to supply all waste of that material, and for the conversion of the
excess of carbonaceous matters into bile; and by the avoidance of the
undue use of acid fruits, and indigestible vegetables, and in fact of all
other acid or irritating matters.  Should irritability of the bowels su-
pervene, bulky food,  and that which may be difficult of  digestion,
should be avoided; and an  unstimulating, light,  and  abstemious diet
be observed.
  I can  answer, from my  OAvn experience and  obser\ration, that the
plan above recommended is safe and  effectual; having seen a good
deal of the disease in  1832, when I was a physician to the dispensary
at Brooklyn, N. Y.;  and some little subsequently; and never  did  I
know it to attack any Avho came at all near conformity to the rules I have
here laid down;  though every day experience during the epidemics
proved the fallacy of  the prevailing rules; and the more opposite to
the doctrines of  this essay Avere the habits, the greater, in general, was
the liability to the disease.  I most emphatically affirm, that under
my observation,  it was not  a deficiency of animal food that ever occa-
sioned the disease; on the  contrary, I  never knew a person to  suffer
from  that  scourge, who was  not  addicted to the use of fats, animal
food, or spirituous drinks, to an extent unnecessary and improper for
the climate and  AA-eather.
   On the view of the disease here taken, may  satisfactorily be ex-
plained  the reason of its  frequent intractability. In severe  cases,
Avhen, OAving to  the absence of the proper and necessary materials for
the formation of bile, or from organic disease, the liver is unable to
perform its office; when the portal circulation, and all absorption from
the alimentary canal  are utterly stopped, and the corporeal powers are
prostrated by the profuse discharges; we need scarcely expect to
derive much permanent benefit from  the exhibition  of remedies by
the mouth.  The exhaustion and  collapse  attendant on the disease
may be  the means of relieving the congestion, and re-establishing ab-
sorption, AA-hen  occasionally, and  under  some circumstances,  a
 recovery may ensue.   These cases, however, may frequently  rather 
APPENDIX.                      105
be said to get well than be cured.  In these desperate cases, the in-
jection of proper saline solutions into the veins, (as of the carbonate
and muriate of soda,) has sometimes  succeeded in snatching the pa-
tient, as it Avere, from the very jaAvs of death; and it  is,  probably, at
these times, the only treatment that Ave know of, though one full of
hazard, that candje said to be capable of exercising a positively cura-
tive influence.   In milder cases, Avhere absorption from the alimen-
tary surface  still to some extent takes place, the exhibition by the
mouth of the saline solution, copiously, is said to have been attended
Avith a happy effect;  and has been, by some physicians,  much relied
on.  It has, however, given rise to a sorry jest, that "hoA\rever it may
be Avith pigs and herrings, salting the patient is not always the same
as curing him."   But  I  shall not discuss the treatment of this epi-
demic, as it is not my object to furnish directions  for the  treatment of
diseases, but  dietetic rules  for their avoidance.  There is another
remark,  however,  that I  will  make,  regarding the  premonitory
diarrhoea  mostly attendant  on the  disease.   These  discharges  are
frequently established  for the removal of something noxious, and are
generally indicative of  a  deranged condition of the system.  Their
proper treatment, whether  by evacuants or astringents,  frequently
calls for a nice discrimination, and should depend upon the condition
of the system;  but it should be borne in mind that a diarrhoea is par-
ticularly dangerous during  the prevalence of the  epidemic, from its
being very liable to be followed by a stoppage of the hepatic secre-
tion, with all  the  phenomena of the  confirmed disease;  it should
therefore be watched with great anxiety, and checked as soon as the
condition of the sy«tem will admit of it.   It is at all times, however,
of the greatest importance to adopt  right dietetic rules.   How many
have there  not been cut off by cholera, from stopping discharges
adapted to the relief of the system, and at the same time continuing to
pursue the habits that have led to its derangement.
  Safety from this, and all other diseases, is  only to be attained by the
pursuit of correct habits of life; and it is my earnest hope that the
study of these few  pages  may assist the reader in determining what
those habits should be.
14 
                        GLOSSARY.

Affinity.  The attraction that different substances have for each other
     in chemical combinations.
Afortiore.  By a stronger inference.
Albumenuria.  A disease of the kidneys, characterized by albumi-
     nous, or coagulable matter in the urine.
Ammonia.  A pungent alkaline vapor, composed of hydrogen  and
     nitrogen.
Antiphlogistic.  That which will  allay inflammation.
Antiseptic,  Having the poAver of preserving from decomposition.
A posteriori.  An argument by which a fact is inferred from some-
     thing that has succeeded it.
A priori.  An argument in  which the conclusion is drawn from a
     pre-existing fact.
Apthous.  Resembling  aptha—the disease  commonly called  the
     thrush.
Areolar tissue.  The loose  substance  connecting  the skin to  the
     parts beneath, &c. mostly  containing fat.
Asthenia.  Debility.
Azotized.  Containing nitrogen combined chemically.

Caeterisparibus.  Other things being equal.
Caffeine.  An azotized principle in coffee.
Calorification.   The function of generating animal heat.
Capillary.   Hair like.  The minute branches  ©f the  blood vessels
     are so called.
Carbon.   An elementary substance, the principle of charcoal.
Carbonaceous.   Containing carbon.
Carbonic acid.  A gas'composed  of  carbon and oxygen.  Choke
     damp.
Carburetted hydrogen.   An inflammable  gas- composed of carbon
     and hydrogen.  Fire damp.
Cardiac.  Relating to the heart.
Carnivorse.   Beasts of prey; those species that are adapted to feed
     on flesh.
Cereal gramina.  The  grasses that produce the bread  grains; as
     wheat, rye, maize, rice,  &c. 
GLOSSARY.                      107
 Chlorate.  An alkaline, or other base, combined Avith chloric acid.
 Chlorine.  An elementary gas, possessing disinfecting and antisep-
     tic properties.
 Cholera infantum.  A vomiting and  purging  in infants; sometimes
     called the summer complaint.
 Cholera morbus.  A disease characterized by vomiting and purging.
 Chyle.  The milky nutritious fluid that  is absorbed by the  lacteals
     from the intestines.
 Chyme.  The  pulpy mass that the food is reduced to in the stomach.
 Cxcal.  Relating to the ccecum.
 Ccecum.  The first of the large intestines.
 Colon.  The second and largest portion of the large intestines.
 Congestion.   A preternatural  accumulation of any of the animal
     fluids in their proper vessels;  generally of the blood.
 Cretinism.  A disease  endemic in some  mountainous regions, some-
     Avhat like the rickets.

 Decarbonated.   Deprived of carbonic acid.
 Dermal.  Relating to the skin.
 Diverticulum.   A by way.   It sometimes means a temporary recep-
     tacle of any of the corporeal fluids, for the relief of another organ.
 Duodenal.  Relating to the duodenum, that portion of the small intes-
     tines  next to the stomach.
Dynamic.  Relating to force; especially the vital power.

Embonpoint.   Plumpness.
Endosmose.   Thejpassage of liquids or  gases through membranes
     from without inwards.
Error loci.  Error of place;  an old pathological term, signifying red
     blood forced into vessels unadapted to its transmission, and there
     impeded.
Erythematic.   Affected with a superficial inflammation or diffused
     redness.
Exosmose.  The passage of  liquids or  gases  through  membranes
     from within outAvards.
Ex cathedra.   Proceeding from an  authoritative  source;  dogmati-
     cally.
Foetal.  Appertaining to the fetus or embryo. 
109
GLOSSARY.
 Fomes morborum.  The fuel of diseases.

 Gastrodynia.  A painful affection of the stomach.
 Goitre.  A tumor in front of the neck; an enlarged thyroid gland.

 Herbivorse.  Those animals that feed on herbage.
 Humoral pathology.   Humoralism.  Doctrines that attribute disea-
     ses to a AA'-rong condition of the fluids.
 Hydrogen.  Inflammable gas; one of the elements of water.
 Hypogastric arteries.  Arteries of the lower belly, that,  in the fetus,
     go to form the navel chord.   The internal iliaes.

 Ingestse.   Things that are taken into the stomach.
 Innervation.  The process of supplying Avith nervous energy.
 Iodine.  An elementary solid.
 Iodide.  A compound of iodine.
 Isomeric.   Bodies having an identity of elementary structure, though
     differing in appearance, are  so called.

 Lacteal absorption.  The imbibition of chyle from the intestines by*
     the appropriate vessels called lacteals.
 Lesion.  An injury or derangement of a part.
 Leyden jar.   A glass vessel for  containing electric fluid.
 Lymphatic absorption.   The imbibition  of the old  or  superfluous
     matters from the animal system by the appropriate vessels called
     lymphatics.

Malaria.   The infecting vapor from marshes.
Mammalia.  Animals that suckle their young.
Materia alimentaria.   Those things that are used for food.
Miasma, (pi. miasmata).  An atmospheric impurity tending  to the
     production of disease.
Molecule.   An atom.   The least possible division of a body.
Mucous membrane.  The moist surface that lines all the cavities of
     the body that open externally.

Nitrate.  An alkaline or metallic base combined Avith nitric acid.
Nitric qcid.   Aqua fortis.  A corrosive liquid compound of four
     atoms of oxygen and one of nitrogen, with water. 
filOJSARY.
110
Nitric oxide.   A  suffocating gaseous  compound, of two atoms of
     oxygen and one of nitrogen.
Nitrogen:   Azote,—an inert gas; a principal constituent of the atmo-
     sphere and most animal matters.
Nitrous acid.   Similar to nitric acid, but having only three atoms of
     oxygen to one of nitrogen.
Nitrous oxide.  An exhilarating gas, composed of one atom each, of
     oxygen and nitrogen.
Normal.  Regular.

Orchis.  A tribe of plants, some of which  have roots slightly nu-
     tritious.
Organic disease.  One resulting in an evident  change of structure.
Oxidation.  The  process of combining. Avith oxygen.
Oxide.   A compound of oxygen with another body.
Oxygen.   Vital air; a constituent of the atmosphere; the great pro-
     moter of life, combustion and decay, and the most widely diffused
     and active element in nature.
Oxygenated.   Mixed  Avith oxygen.

Pabulum.   Food.   Aliment.
Paludal.   Relating  to marshes.
Pepsine.  An active principle of  the gastric juice;  an assistant  in
     digestion.
Per. In chemistry, a prefix denoting excess.
Periodicity.   A disposition to return at stated times.
Phosphuretted.  Combined with phosphorous.
Placenta.   The afterbirth.  The medium of connexion between the
     mother and the fetus.
Pneumo-gastric (nerves.)  The eighth pair of nerves, passing from
     the brain to the chest and abdomen, and the agents of digestive
     excitation.
Portal circulation.  That from the  veins of the intestines through
     the liver.
Post Mortem.  After death.
Prolapse.   A protrusion or falling down of  an internal part.
Proteine.   The basis  of animal nutrition, and substance  from which
     tlie tissues are mostly derived.
Proximate cause.   The disordered action in Avhich a disease consists. 
110
GLOSSARY.
 Pultaceous.   Of the consistence of mush or porridge.
 Pyrosis.   The water brash; a  painful affection  of the stomach, at-
     tended with a vomiting of  watery fluid.
 Purpura.  A disease  marked by the extravasation of blood in spots
     beneath the skin,  and elsewhere.
 Pyrexiae.  Febrile diseases.

 Quasi.   As though.
 Quartan.  Occurring every fourth day.
 Quo modo.   By Avhat method.
 Quotidian.   Occurring daily.

Rubeolous.   Of the  nature of measles.

 Sacculi.   Small cavities or cells.
 Sporadic.  Diseases not dependent on a general  cause.
 Sthenia.   Strength.   Excess of vital action.
 Sui  generis.  Of its oAvn kind.
 Sulphuretted hydrogen.   A gas composed of hydrogen and sulphur.

 Tertian.   Occurring every other day.
Tetanus.   A disease marked by spasm and muscular rigidity.
Theine.  An azotized principle in tea; the same as caffeine.
 Theobromine.  An azotized principle in chocolate.
Thyroid  gland.   A two lobed gland in front of the neck.
Tissue.   In anatomy, the  texture  of  the different organs.
Typhus.   A fever marked by depression of the vital powers.

Urea.  The characteristic constituent  of urine.

 Variolous.   Of the nature of small-pox.
Vensssection.  Bleeding by cutting a vein.
Viscera.   (Singular, viscus.)  The internal organs of the body. 
TABLE  OF  CONTENTS.
                                                                       PAGE.
Chapter I.  Introductory,.........'......................................    3
Chapter II.  Aliment.   Digestion and its apparatus.  Diversity of man's con-
                dition, and necessity of diversity of food, &c.................   10
Chapter III.  Animal heat.  Animal food the great exciter of it,............   20
Chapter IV.  Of warm and temperate climates; man's diet in them, and its
                effects, &c...............................................   27
Chapter V.  Of the natural state and food of man,..................*'.......   38
Chapti-k VI.  Of the varieties of the human race; and whether they are depen-
                dent on food and climate.  The same of our diseases,........   45
Chapter VII.  Of drinks, liquid aliments, stimulants, &c....................   59
Chapter VIII.  Illustrations,  proofs, miscellaneous observations,  &c. on  the
                 preceding doctrines; and conclusion,......................   67
Appendix No. 1.   On Malaria, its effects and antidotes.  Theory of fever, &c..   79
Appetoix No. 2.  On Cholera, &c.........................................   94
Glossary, ..............................................................  10^ 
(av
ERRATA
  The reader will please correct the following errata, which were overlooked
in the correction of the proof.   A few, having been discovered-when the edi-
tion was  partly worked off,  and corrected in the remainder of it, may have
found their way into the present copy;  for them, and for any that may have
remained undetected, the reader's indulgence is asked.

    Page'3, line 3 from top,  for "or from," read or whether from
      "  9,  " 11  "  bottom, for "confirmation" read conformation
      " 17,  "  9  "  top, omit "to"
      " 20,  top line, for "Digestion." read digestion,
      " 21, line 7 from top,  place the parenthesis before "the"
      "24,"  6  "  bottom, for "as" read at
      " 29,  "  3  "  top, for "eboe" read Eboe
      "  "   " 10  "  bottom, omit "of"
      " 33,  " 16  "    "    for "dietitic" read dietetic
      " 39, top line, for "fiy" read fly
      " 40, line 15 from top,  for "resource" read reconrse
                     bottom, after "flesh" put a comma
                       "    omit "being"
                     top, for "or" read of
                       " for "theis" read these
                       " for "exhiliration" read exhilaration
                     bottom, for "fewest" read smallest
                     top, omit c in "neccessarily"
                       "  "  "   "neccessary"
                     top, for "strong" read strung
                     bottom, for "Lat" read Let
                       "    for "excitement" read excitant

<< <l	" 4
" 47,	" 11
" 48,	" 10
" 50,	" 15
" 60,	" 9
" 76,	" 4
" 79,	" 4
It ii	" 19
" 80,	" 14
" 81,	" 3
" 87,	" 14
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