Fruits and Farinacea the Proper Food of Man; being an Attempt to prove, from History, Anatomy, Physiology, and Chemistry, that the original, natural, and best Diet of Man is derived from the Vegetable Kingdom
Authors: John Smith, Russell Thacher Trall
Journal: BMJ (1845)

conducive to health with one that is exclusively derived from the vegetable kingdom."We then exposed the inconsistency of these amiable enthu- siasts, who would not hesitate to make an unrelenting crusade against fleas and bugs, cockroaches and black-beetles, cock-chaffer-grubs and wire-worms; but who think it a sin to rear animals in comfort and enjoyment, that their lives may be terminated by a procedure far less painful than the death to which the same animals in a state of nature would be subjected.And we pointed out some of the absurd fallacies into which those fall, who are so ready to lay a large proportion of the diseases of our time to the account of bad meat, whilst they entirely ignore the large admixture of bad wheat, which exists in most, if not all, of the bread sup- plied by the cheap baker to the working-classes.We then applied ourselves to the fundamental question, which is not now raised for the first time, but which has been brought again and again under consideration during every period of the world's history ; and which, by the zeal and assiduity of its present advocates, has been lately made to assume an importance, among certain sections of our community, which it never before presented.It was this which at first induced us to bring the matter under the consideration of our readers; and we now request their attention to a continuation of the inquiry, because we hope to show, that some beneficial results may accrue from the direction of their thoughts to the subject.The point to which we brought it in our former article was this:?After an examination of the evidence supplied by the physical and mental constitution of man, and his peculiar adaptability to varying conditions in regard to diet, as well as to climate, mode of life, &c., we came to the conclusion, that the Creator, by conferring upon him such an adaptiveness, had intended to qualify him for subsisting upon those articles of diet, whether animal or vegetable, which are most readily attainable in different regions of the globe; and thus to remove the ob- stacle which a necessary restriction to any one kind of food would have otherwise opposed to his universal diffusion.If we were to bring together the habitual diet-scales of the several races of men which people the surface of our globe, we apprehend, that the diversities which they would present, would be scarcely less strange than those which exist among the regimens of the most dissimilar species of Mammalia.We should find the purely animal-feeding on the one hand, the pure vegetarians on the other.Among the former we should find some who devour animal flesh, others fish, and others fowl, while others are even insectivorous; then, again, we should encounter some who devour their food raw, others who cook it; some preferring it immediately that it has ceased to live, while others do not relish it until it has become almost putrescent.So among the vegetablefeeders, we should find some subsisting upon soft fruits, others upon hard grains, others again chiefly upon succulent herbage, and others upon roots so tough as to require artificial means for their reduction.In the various devices by which man has succeeded in availing himself of these, and in the various tastes which have led some to avail themselves of articles of food which others would loathe, we see the evidence of the same wise Design, as that which has given to different tribes of animals their respective preferences; and we deduce from the whole the conclusion, that man is left by his Creator at perfect liberty to select that kind of nutriment which he finds most suitable to his tastes and to his wants; the former,