The Jeffersonian. [volume] (Stroudsburg, Pa.) 1853-1911, 1853-06-02
DIE ETICS.
BY T. L. NICHOLS, NJ. b.

enjoyment even of the pleasures of the ia
BILE, by living upon vegetables, they would
scarcely slaughter the myriads of animals
that are now annually butchered so use.
lessly and so cruelty. Why should we
take the life of one of Gods innocent
creatures in the midst of its enjoyments
Why imbrue our hands in blood and steep
our hearts in cruelty? Why have about
us portions of mangled corpses which can
only be kept from putrefaction by the use
of the most powerful antisectics One
would think that men would not do such
deeds without some terrible necessity.
1t is because he is naturally carniv-
orous animal ! because God made him
for life of slaughter! No; his anato-
my shows he has but distant relation
to the fesh-eating tribes-the lions, tigers,
wolves and hyenas. 1t proves him to be
an eater of fruits, seeds and vegetables.
There is no man who, if he were obliged
to select diet all flesh, or all vegetables,
would not choose the latter. Give any
man his choice to live month on nothing
but bread, or nothing but beef, and he
would choose the bread.
Is it because flesh is necessary to our
health! Certainly not, Every physician
knows that vegetables contain the purest
form of food. In certain cases they rig
idly restrict their patients to a vegetable
diet. Flesh is known to be infammatory,
putrefying, and liable to be diseased
In certain conditions it develops the most
deadly poisons. Persons who eat much
flesh have violent diseases, and are diff
cult to cure. They are peculiarly subject
to the plague, the smallpox, the cholera,
and other fatal epidemics. In Smyrna,
during Lent, which is kept by the Greeks,
very few of them are attacked by the
plague, even while the fesh-eating inhabi-
itants are dying all around them.
Is flesh cheaper than vegetables =
There is wide differnce the other way.
Wheat, the best article of human nutri-
ment, contains 65 per cent. of nutritious
matter in the exact proportions required
to make the best blood for the nourish-
ment of the system, while the best flesh
contains but % per cent. of nutritious
matter, and that in the best proportions,
while pound of flesh costs as much as
several pounds of wheat. The corn re-
quired to make pork enough to support a
man one hundred days, would, if eaten in
its pure original and far more healthy
condition, afford him as much nutriment
for $50 days, to say nothing of the time
lost in feeding the animal. In fattening
a hog, certain number of bushels of good
healthy corn and potatoes, are converted
into mass of greasy, and in many cases
scrofulous pork, with great loss and trou-
BILE, while the flesh thus made does not
contain one principle necessary to the
human constitution which did not exist
in far better form in the vegetables on
which it fed. In short it has been found
by an accurate calculation that vegetable
food is not merely better, but five hundred
per cent. cheaper than the flesh of ami
mails.
Since the attention of men of science
has been turned to organic chemistry, the
proportions of nutritive matter in various
substances have been accurately ascer-
tanned. The following is the result of
some of these inquiries
Turnips contain Il per cent. of nutri-
tive matter; beets IL; carrots 13; flesh 25;
potatoes %; oats 81; peas "a; wheat s44;
beans Sc; oatmeal 81. Corn is about the
same as oats and wheat. Thus 100 pounds
of flesh contain but 25 pounds of nutri-
tive matter, and rs lbs. of water, while
the same quantity of potatoes contains
% lbs. of nutritive matter, and wheat s59;
lbs.
But this is not all. The best food is
that which contains the materials for
muscles, nerves, bones, &C., and the mat
ter for combustion which keeps up the vi
tai heat, in proper proportions. The a.
nalysis of wheat shows US that these prin-
ciples are found in it, in almost exactly
the same proportion as in the blood and
this is the case to a great extent with
most of the vegetable productions used
for food, whereas flesh contains but one
of these principles, and can but very i'm
perfectly subserve the purposes of human
nutriment.
- Is flesh better than vegeta-
bles! This question is already answer
ed. Chemical analysis proves that vege-
tables, especially the farinacea, as wheat,
corn, rice, &c. contain the purest nutri-
ment, and in the requisite proportions
Why not! Do we want strength See
the powerful muscles of the OK and the
horse, made from grass and grain. They
need no beef steak to enable them to per-
form their labor and if we eat the flesh
of the OK, we only eat the grass and grain
at second hand, mixed with effete animal
matter, often with the poison of disease,
and always deprived of some of its most
important principles. Contrive as wemay,
we must live on vegetables, and the only
question is, whether we shall eat them
at second hand, impure, unpleasant, and
in many respects Objectionable, as they
are converted into the tissues of animals.
1t is a question of science, of expert
ence, of principle, and of taste. Science
has demonstrated that the products of the