The following extract exhibits in few words, the dietetic history of that brave and wise commander, General George Augustus Elliott, of the British army:
"During the whole of his active life, Gen. Elliott had inured himself to the most rigid habits of order and watchfulness; seldom sleeping more than four hours a day, and never eating any thing but vegetable food, or drinking any thing but water. During eight of the most anxious days of the memorable siege of Gibraltar, he confined himself to four ounces of rice a day. He was universally regarded as one of the most abstemious men of his age.
"And yet his abstemiousness did not diminish his vigor; for, at the above-mentioned siege of Gibraltar, when he was sixty-six years of age, he had nearly all the activity and fire of his youth. Nor did he die of any wasting disease, such as full feeders are wont to say men bring upon them by their abstinence. On the contrary, owing to a hereditary tendency, perhaps, of his family, he died at the age of seventy-three, of apoplexy."
The following testimony is from the Encyclopedia. I do not suppose the writer was the friend of a diet exclusively vegetable; but his testimony is therefore the more interesting. His only serious mistake is in regard to the tendency of vegetable food to form weak fibres.
"Sometimes a particular kind of food is called wholesome, because it produces a beneficial effect of a particular character on the system of an individual. In this case, however, it is to be considered as a medicine; and can be called wholesome only for those whose systems are in the same condition.
"Aliments abounding in fat are unwholesome, because fat resists the operation of the gastric juice.
"The addition of too much spice makes many an innocent aliment injurious, because spices resist the action of the digestive organs, and produce an irritation of particular parts of the system.
"The kind of aliment influences the health, and even the character of man. He is fitted to derive nourishment both from animal and vegetable aliment; but can live exclusively on either.
"Experience proves that animal food most readily augments the solid parts of the blood, the fibrine, and therefore the strength of the muscular system; but disposes the body, at the same time, to inflammatory, putrid, and scorbutic diseases; and the character to violence and coarseness. On the contrary, vegetable food renders the blood lighter and more liquid, but forms weak fibres, disposes the system to the diseases which spring from feebleness, and tends to produce a gentle character.