description.

8. I have for several years used tea and coffee, usually once a day—believe them healthy.

9. Vegetable diet is less aperient than a mixed diet, if we except Indian corn.

10. I do not think that common laborers, in health, could do as well without animal food; but I think students might.

11. I have selected potatoes, when baked or roasted, and all articles of food usually prepared from Indian meal, as the most healthy articles on which I subsist; particularly the latter, whose aperient and nutritive qualities render it, in my estimation, an invaluable article for common use.

Yours, etc.,

D. S. Wright.

LETTER IV.—FROM DR. H. N. PRESTON.[1]

Plymouth, Mass., March 26, 1835.

Dear Sir,—When I observed your questions in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, of the 11th of March, I determined to give you personal experience, in reply to your valuable queries.

In the spring of 1832, while engaged in more than usual professional labor, I began to suffer from indigestion, which gradually increased, unabated by any medicinal or dietetic course, until I was reduced to the very confines of the grave. The disease became complicated, for a time, with chronic bronchitis. I would remark, that, at the time of my commencing a severe course of diet, I was able to attend to my practice daily.

In answer to your inquiries, I would say to the 1st—very much diminished, and rapidly.

2. Rather less; distinct local uneasiness—less disposition to drowsiness; but decidedly more troubled with cardialgia, and eructations.

3. I think not.

4. My disease was decidedly increased; as cough, headache, and emaciation; and being of a scrofulous diathesis, was lessening my prospect of eventual recovery.

5. My febrile attacks increased with my increased debility.

6. Almost four months; when I became convinced death would be the result, unless I altered my course.

7. I had taken animal food moderately, morning and noon—very little high seasoning—no stimulants, except tea and coffee. The latter was my favorite beverage; and I usually drank two cups with my breakfast and dinner, and black tea with my supper.

8. I drank but one cup of weak coffee with my breakfast, none with dinner, and generally a cup of milk and water with supper.

9. With me much less aperient; indeed, costiveness became a very serious and distressing accompaniment.

10. From somewhat extensive observation, for the last seven years, I should say, of laborers never; students seldom.

11. Among dyspeptics, potatoes nearly boiled, then mashed together, rolled into balls, and laid over hot coals, until a second time cooked, as easy as any vegetable. If any of the luxuries of the table have been noticed as particularly injurious, it has been cranberries, prepared in any form, as stewed in sauce, tarts, pies, etc.

Crude as these answers are, they are at your service; and I am prompted to give them from the fact, that very few persons, I presume, have been so far reduced as myself, with dyspepsia and its concomitants. In fact, I was pronounced, by some of the most scientific physicians of Boston, as past all prospect of cure, or even much relief, from medicine, diet, or regimen. My attention has naturally been turned with anxious solicitude to the subject of diet, in all its forms. Since my unexpected restoration to health, my opportunities for observation among dyspeptics have been much enlarged; and I most unhesitatingly say, that my success is much more encouraging, in the management of such cases, since pursuing a more liberal diet, than before. Plain animal diet, avoiding condiments and tea, using mucilaginous drink, as the Irish Moss, is preferable to "absolute diet,"—cases of decided chronic gastritis excepted.

Yours, etc.,

H. N. Preston.

LETTER V.—FROM DR. H. A. BARROWS.

Phillips, Somerset Co., Me., April 28, 1835.

Dear Sir,—I have a brother-in-law, who owes his life to abstinence from animal food, and strict adherence to the simplest vegetable diet. My own existence is prolonged, only (according to human probabilities) by entire abstinence from flesh-meat of every description, and feeding principally upon the coarsest farinacea.

Numberless other instances have come under my observation within the last three years, in which a strict adherence to a simple vegetable diet has done for the wretched invalid what the best medical treatment had utterly failed to do; and in no one instance have I known permanently injurious results to follow from this course, but in many instances have had to lament the want of firmness and decision, and a gradual return to the "flesh-pots of Egypt."

With these views, I very cheerfully comply with your general invitation, on page 77, volume 12, of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal. The answers to your interrogatories will apply to the case first referred to, to my own case, and to nearly every one which has occurred within my notice.

1. Increased, uniformly; and in nearly every instance, without even the usual debility consequent upon withdrawing the stimulus of animal food.

2. More agreeable in every instance.

3. Affirmative, in toto.

4. None aggravated, except flatulence in one or two instances. All the horrid train of dyspeptic symptoms uniformly mitigated, and obstinate constipation removed.

5. Fewer colds and febrile attacks.

6. Three years, with my brother; with myself, eighteen months partially, and three months wholly; the others, from one to six months.

7. Negative.

8. Cold water—my brother and myself; others, hot and cold water alternately.

9. More aperient,—no exceptions.

10. I believe the health of students would uniformly be promoted—and the days of the laborer, to say the least, would be lengthened.

11. I have; and that is, simple bread made of wheat meal, ground in corn-stones, and mixed up precisely as it comes from the mill—with the substitution of fine flour when the bowels become too active.

Yours, etc.,

Horace A. Barrows.

LETTER VI.—FROM DR. CALEB BANNISTER.

Phelps, N. Y., May 4, 1835.

Sir,—My age is fifty-three. My ancestors had all melted away with hereditary consumption. At the age of twenty, I began to be afflicted with pain in different parts of the thorax, and other premonitory symptoms of phthisis pulmonalis. Soon after this, my mother and eldest sister died with the disease. For myself, having a severe attack of ague and fever, all my consumptive symptoms became greatly aggravated; the pain was shifting—sometimes between the shoulders, sometimes in the side, or breast, etc. System extremely irritable, pulse hard and easily excited, from about ninety to one hundred and fifty, by the stimulus of a very small quantity of food; and, to be short, I was given up, on all hands, as lost.

From reading "Rush" I was induced to try a milk diet, and succeeded in regaining my health, so that for twenty-four years I have