oatmeal
are their articles of food: if milk can be added it is thought a luxury.
Yet where shall we find a more healthy and robust population, or one
more enduring of bodily fatigue, and exhibiting more mental vivacity?
What a contrast between these people and the inhabitants of the extreme
north--the timid Laplanders, Esquimaux, and Samoideans, whose food is
almost entirely animal?"

Again, at page 187 we are told that "the more simple the aliment, and
the less _altered_ by culinary processes, the slower is the change in
digestion; but, at the same time, the less is the stimulation and wear
of the powers of life. The Bramins of Hindostan, who live on exceedingly
simple food, are long livers, even in a hot and exhausting climate. The
peasants of Switzerland and of Scotland, nourished on bread, milk, and
cheese, attain a very old age, and enjoy great bodily strength.

"Where there is too much excitement of the body, generally, from
fullness of the blood-vessels, or of any one of the organs, owing to a
wrong direction of the blood to it (and in one or the other of these
conditions we find almost every body now-a-days), animal food, by being
long retained in the stomach, and calling into greater action other
parts during digestion, as well as furnishing them with more blood
afterward, must be obviously improper. The more of this kind of food is
taken under such circumstances, the greater will be the oppression; and
the weakness, different from that of a healthy person long hungered,
will only be increased by the increased amount of blood carried to the
diseased part."

It is true that the editors of the Journal of Health connect with the
foregoing paragraphs the statement that, "if it be desirable to give
nutriment in a small bulk, to obtund completely the sensation of hunger
and restore strength to the body, a small quantity of animal will be
preferable to much vegetable food." But then it is only in a few
diseased cases that any such thing is desirable. And even then, if we
look carefully at the language used, the comparison is not made between
animal and vegetable food in moderate or reasonable quantities, but
between a _small quantity_ of the former and _much_ of the latter.

DR. J. V. C. SMITH, OF BOSTON.

The following remarks are extracted from the Boston Medical
Intelligencer, at a period when Dr. J. V. C. Smith was the editor. They
have the appearance of being from Dr. Smith's own pen. Dr. S. is at
presen