sical nature. Arithmetic cannot
enumerate, nor reason perhaps suspect, the multitudinous sources of
disease in civilized life. Even common water, that apparently innoxious
_pabulum_, when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a deadly
and insidious destroyer.

"There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of vegetable diet
and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, wherever the experiment
has been fairly tried. Debility is gradually converted into strength,
disease into healthfulness; madness, in all its hideous variety, from
the ravings of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities
of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm and
considerate evenness of temper, that alone might offer a certain pledge
of the future moral reformation of society.

"On a natural system of diet, old age would be our last and our only
malady; the term of our existence would be protracted; we should enjoy
life, and no longer preclude others from the enjoyment of it; all
sensational delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect; the
very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, such as we now
feel it in some few and favored moments of our youth.

"By all that is sacred in our hopes for the human race, I conjure those
who love happiness and truth, to give a fair trial to the vegetable
system. Reasoning is surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an
experience of six months should set forever at rest.

"But it is only among the enlightened and benevolent that so great a
sacrifice of appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its
ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. It is found easier by
the short-sighted victims of disease, to palliate their torments, by
medicine, than to prevent them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are
invariably sensual and indocile; yet I cannot but feel myself persuaded,
that when the benefits of vegetable diet are mathematically proved--when
it is as clear, that those who live naturally are exempt from premature
death, as that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will feel a
preference toward a long and tranquil, contrasted with a short and
painful life.

"On the average, out of sixty persons, four die in three years. Hopes
are entertained, that in April, 1814,[20] a statement will be given that
sixty persons, all having lived more than three years on vegetables and
pure water, are then in _perfect health_. More