remembered, too, that
nearly two years elapsed before Dr. North gave up his papers to the
author; during which time, and indeed up to the present hour--a period,
in the whole, of more than fourteen years--a door has been opened to
every individual who had any thing to say, bearing upon the subject.

Let us now review the contents of the foregoing chapter. Let us see, in
the first place, what number of persons have here been reported, by
medical men, as having fallen victims to the said "prescribed course of
regimen."

The matter is soon disposed of. Not a case of the description is found
in the whole catalogue of returns to Dr. N. This is a triumph which the
friends of the vegetable system did not expect. From the medical
profession of this country, hostile as many of them are known to be to
the "prescribed course of regimen," they must naturally have expected to
hear of at least a few persons who were supposed to have fallen victims
to it. But, I say again, not one appears.

It is true that Dr. Preston, of Plymouth, Mass., thinks he should have
fallen a victim to his abstinence from flesh meat, had he not altered
his course; and Dr. Harden, of Georgia, relates a case of sudden loss of
strength, and great debility, which he thought, _at the time_, might
"possibly" be ascribed to the want of animal food: though the
individual himself attributed it to quite another cause. These are the
only two, of a list of thirty or forty, which were detailed, that bear
the slightest resemblance to those which report had brought to the ear
of Dr. N., and about which he so anxiously and earnestly solicited
inquiry of his medical brethren.

As to the case mentioned by Dr. Harden, no one who examined it with
care, will believe for a moment, that it affords the slightest evidence
against a diet exclusively vegetable. The gentleman who made the
experiment had pursued it faithfully three years, without the slightest
loss of strength, but with many advantages, when, of a sudden, extreme
debility came on. Is it likely that a diet on which he had so long been
doing well, should produce such a sudden falling off? The gentleman
himself appears not to have had the slightest suspicion that the
debility had any connection with the diet. He attributes its
commencement, if not its continuance, to the inhalation of poisonous
gases, to which he was subjected in the process of some chemical
experiments.

But why, then, it may be asked, did he return