and epidemical causes; and that, being reduced by
voluntary and necessary poverty, they are not able to manage with care
and caution the rest of the non-naturals, which, for perfect health and
cheerfulness, must all be equally attended to, and prudently conducted;
and their ignorance and brutality is owing to the want of the
convenience of due and sufficient culture and education in their youth.

"But the only conclusion I would draw from these historical facts is,
that a low diet, or living on vegetables, will not destroy life or
health, or cause nervous and cephalic distempers; but, on the contrary,
cure them, as far as they are curable. I pretend to demonstrate from
these facts, that abstinence and a low diet is the great antidote and
universal remedy of distempers acquired by excess, intemperance, and a
mistaken regimen of high meats and drinks; and that it will greatly
alleviate and render tolerable the original distempers derived from
diseased parents; and that it is absolutely necessary for the deep
thinking part of mankind, who would preserve their faculties sound and
entire, ripe and pregnant to a green old age and to the last dregs of
life; and that it is, lastly, the true and real antidote and
preservative from heavy-headedness, irregular and disorderly
intellectual functions, from loss of the rational faculties, memory, and
senses, and from all nervous distempers, as far as the ends of
Providence and the condition of mortality will allow.

"Let two people be taken as nearly alike as the diversity and the
individuality of nature will admit, of the same age, stature,
complexion, and strength of body, and under the same chronical
distemper, and I am willing to take the seeming worse of the two; let
all the most promising nostrums, drops, drugs, and medicines known among
the learned and experienced physicians, ancient or modern, regular
physicians or quacks, be administered to the best of the two, by any
professor at home or abroad; I will manage my patient with only a few
naturally indicated and proper evacuations and sweetening innocent
alternatives, which shall neither be loathsome, various, nor
complicated, require no confinement, under an appropriate diet, or, in a
word, under the 'lightest and the least,' or at worst under a milk and
seed diet; and I will venture reputation and life, that my method cures
sooner, more perfectly and durably, is much more easily and pleasantly
passed through, in a shorter t