,
including those which are deemed contagious, or render their attacks
extremely mild: it will either prevent or mitigate the symptoms of the
severe diseases of adults, not excepting malignant fevers, small-pox,
plague, etc.; and it will either prevent such diseases as cancer, gout,
epilepsy, scrofula, and consumption, or prolong life under them.

Who that has ever thought of the condition of our domestic animals,
especially about towns and cities--their want of good air, abundant
exercise, good water, and natural food, to say nothing of the butter-cup
and the other poisonous products of over-stimulating or fresh manures
which they sometimes eat--has not been astonished to find so little
disease among us as there actually is? Animal food, in its best state,
is a great deal more stimulating and heating to the system than
vegetable food;--but how much more injurious is it made, in the
circumstances in which most animals are placed? Do we believe that even
a New Zealand cannibal would willingly eat flesh, if he knew it was from
an animal that when killed was laboring under a load of liver complaint,
gout, consumption, or fever? And yet, such is the condition of most of
the animals we slay for food. They would often die of their diseases if
we did not put the knife to their throats to prevent it.

One more consideration. If the exclusive use of vegetable food will
prevent a multitude of the worst and most incurable diseases to which
human nature, in other circumstances, seems liable; if it will modify
the diseases which a mixed diet, or absolute intemperance, or gluttony
had induced,--by what rule can we limit its influence? How know we that
what is so efficacious in regard to the larger diseases, will not be
equally so in the case of all smaller ones? And why, then, may not its
universal adoption, after a few generations, banish disease entirely
from the world? Every person of common observation, knows that, as a
general rule, they who approach the nearest to a pure vegetable and
water diet, are most exempt from disease, and the longest-lived and most
happy. How, then, can it otherwise happen than that a still closer
approximation will afford a greater exemption still, and so on
indefinitely? At what point of an approach toward such diet and regimen,
and toward perfect health at the same time, is it that we stop, and more
temperance still will injure us? In short, where do we cross the line?

IV. THE POLITICAL ARGUMENT