prevention may take place even
in persons who have a hereditary disposition to the disease. I must add,
here, that even when the disposition has discovered itself by severe
paroxysms of inflammatory gout, I am persuaded that labor and abstinence
will absolutely prevent any returns of it for the rest of life."

Again, in reference to the same subject, he thus observes:

"I am firmly persuaded that any man who, early in life, will enter upon
the constant practice of bodily labor and of abstinence from animal
food, will be preserved entirely from the disease."

And yet once more.

"If an abstinence from animal food be entered upon early in life, while
the vigor of the system is yet entire, I have no doubt of its being both
safe and effectual."

To guard against the common opinion that by vegetable food, he meant
raw, or crude, or bad vegetables, Dr. C. explains his meaning by
assuring the reader that by a vegetable diet he means the "farinaceous
seeds," and "milk;" and admits that green, crude, and bad vegetables are
not only less useful, but actually liable to produce the very diseases,
which good, mealy vegetable food will prevent or cure.

This is an important distinction. Many a person, who wishes to be
abstemious, seems to think that if he only abstains from flesh and fish,
that is enough. No matter, he supposes, what vegetables he uses, so they
are vegetables; nor how much he abuses himself by excess in quantity.
Nay, he will even load his stomach with milk, or butter, or eggs;
sometimes with fish (we have often been asked if we considered fish as
animal food); and sometimes, worse still, with hot bread, hot buckwheat
cakes, hot short-cakes, swimming, almost, in butter;--yes, and sometimes
he will even cover his potatoes with gravy, mustard, salt, etc.

It is in vain for mankind to abstain from animal food, as they call it,
and yet run into these worse errors. The lean parts of animals not much
fattened, and only rarely cooked, eaten once a day in small quantity,
are far less unwholesome than many of the foregoing.

But to return to Dr. C. In speaking of the proper drink for persons
inclined to gout, he thus remarks:

"With respect to drink, fermented liquors are useful only when they are
joined with animal food, and that by their acescency; and their stimulus
is only necessary from custom. When, therefore, animal food is to be
avoided, fermented liquors are unnecessary, and by increasing the
acescency of v