hat my success
is much more encouraging, in the management of such cases, since
pursuing a more liberal diet, than before. Plain animal diet, avoiding
condiments and tea, using mucilaginous drink, as the Irish Moss, is
preferable to "absolute diet,"--cases of decided chronic gastritis
excepted.

Yours, etc.,
H. N. PRESTON.

LETTER V.--FROM DR. H. A. BARROWS.

PHILLIPS, Somerset Co., Me., April 28, 1835.

DEAR SIR,--I have a brother-in-law, who owes his life to abstinence from
animal food, and strict adherence to the simplest vegetable diet. My own
existence is prolonged, only (according to human probabilities) by
entire abstinence from flesh-meat of every description, and feeding
principally upon the coarsest farinacea.

Numberless other instances have come under my observation within the
last three years, in which a strict adherence to a simple vegetable diet
has done for the wretched invalid what the best medical treatment had
utterly failed to do; and in no one instance have I known permanently
injurious results to follow from this course, but in many instances have
had to lament the want of firmness and decision, and a gradual return to
the "_flesh-pots of Egypt_."

With these views, I very cheerfully comply with your general invitation,
on page 77, volume 12, of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. The
answers to your interrogatories will apply to the case first referred
to, to my own case, and to nearly every one which has occurred within my
notice.

1. Increased, uniformly; and in nearly every instance, without even the
usual debility consequent upon withdrawing the stimulus of animal food.

2. More agreeable in every instance.

3. Affirmative, _in toto_.

4. None aggravated, except flatulence in one or two instances. All the
horrid train of dyspeptic symptoms uniformly mitigated, and obstinate
constipation removed.

5. Fewer colds and febrile attacks.

6. Three years, with my brother; with myself, eighteen months partially,
and three months wholly; the others, from one to six months.

7. Negative.

8. Cold water--my brother and myself; others, hot and cold water
alternately.

9. More aperient,--no exceptions.

10. I believe the health of _students_ would uniformly be promoted--and
the days of the laborer, to say the least, would be lengthened.

11. I have; and that is, simple bread made of wheat meal, ground in
corn-stones, and mixed up precisely as it comes from the m