instantaneously eradicate predispositions that have been slowly taking
root in the silence of innumerable ages? Indubitably not. All that I
contend for is, that from the moment of relinquishing all unnatural
habits, no new disease is generated; and that the predisposition to
hereditary maladies gradually perishes for want of its accustomed
supply. In cases of consumption, cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula,
such is the invariable tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water.

"Those who may be induced by these remarks to give the vegetable system
a fair trial, should, in the first place, date the commencement of their
practice from the moment of their conviction. All depends upon breaking
through a pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter asserts,
that no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually relinquishing his dram.
Animal flesh, in its effects on the human stomach, is analogous to a
dram; it is similar to the kind, though differing in the degree of its
operation. The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a
temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtraction of a powerful
stimulus will suffice to account for this event. But it is only
temporary, and is succeeded by an equable capability for exertion, far
surpassing his former various and fluctuating strength.

"Above all, he will acquire an easiness of breathing, by which such
exertion is performed, with a remarkable exemption from that painful and
difficult panting now felt by almost every one, after hastily climbing
an ordinary mountain. He will be equally capable of bodily exertion or
mental application, after, as before his simple meal. He will feel none
of the narcotic effects of ordinary diet. Irritability, the direct
consequence of exhausting stimuli, would yield to the power of natural
and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the lethargy of
_ennui_, that unconquerable weariness of life, more to be dreaded than
death itself.

"He will no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroying
those organs from which he expects his gratification. The pleasures of
taste to be derived from a dinner of potatoes, beans, peas, turnips,
lettuce, with a dessert of apples, gooseberries, strawberries, currants,
raspberries, and in winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater
than is supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare with
the sauce of appetite, will scarcely join with the hypocritical
sens