SECOND SERIES. No. 
 
 \' I N D T C A T I O N 
 
 NATURAL DIET 
 
 BEIXr; (^rcr in a SI^RLES of notes l^) nUEE^ AE\1] 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY P>YSSHP: SHELLEY 
 
 [Sl-COm) EDITIOS) 
 
 ilontjon 
 
 ERESENTED TO THE 
 MEMBERS OF THE SHELLEY SOClErV 
 
ser.Z 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Class JlS^4£^ C^* 
 5^1 <«; . ^ 3p" 
 

VINDICATION 
 
 OF 
 
 NATURAL DIET 
 
 BY 
 
 PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY. 
 
 A NEW EDITION. 
 
 " Our simple life wants little, and true taste 
 Hires not the pale drudge Luxury to waste 
 The scene it would adorn, and therefore still 
 Nature, with all her children, haunts the hill. " 
 
 Epipsycliidion. 
 
 LONDOX : F. Pitman, 20, Paternoster Row. 
 
 MANCHESTER : John Heywood, Ridgefield ; and Offices 
 
 OF THE Vegetarian Society, 75, Princess Street. 
 
 1SS4. 
 
PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 Shelley's "Vindication of Natural Diet" was first written 
 as part of the notes to " Queen Mab," which was privately 
 issued in 1813. Later in the same year the "Vindication" 
 was separately published as a pamphlet, and it is from this 
 later publication that the present reprint is made. The 
 original pamphlet is now exceedingly scarce, but it is said 
 to have been reprinted in 1835, as an appendix to an 
 American medical work, the "Manual on Health," by Dr. 
 TurnbuU, of New York. Two copies only are known to have 
 been preserved of this excessively rare pamphlet, though 
 possibly others may be hidden in unfrequented libraries and 
 out of the way country houses. One copy is in the British 
 Museum, and the other is in the possession of Mr. H. Buxton 
 Forman, who has reprinted it in his great edition of Shelley, 
 where it forms the openin^^urt of the second volume of the 
 "Prose Works." _— ^— - --- 
 
 The^iam object of Shelley's pamphlet was to show that a 
 vegetable diet is the most natural, and therefore the best for 
 mankind. It is not an appeal to humanitarian sentiment, 
 but an argument based on individual experience, concerning 
 the intimate connection of health and morality with food. 
 It has no claim to origuialiiy in the arguments adduced ; 
 its materials being avowedly drawn from the w^orks of Dr. 
 Lambe and Mr. Newton, of whom an account may be read 
 in Mr. Howard Williams' "Catena," but the style is 
 Shelley's own, and the pamphlet is in many ways one of the 
 most interesting and characteristic of his prose w^orks. 
 
 102460 
 
PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 Perhaps its most remarkable feature is to be found in the 
 very pertinent remarks as to the bearing of Vegetarianism 
 on those questions of economy and social reform, which are 
 now forcing themselves more and more on the attention of 
 the English people.* 
 
 At the time of writing his " Vindication of Natural Diet," 
 Shelley had himself, for some months past, adopted a 
 Vegetarian diet, chiefly, no doubt, through his intimacy 
 with the Newton family. There seems no reason to doubt 
 that he continued to practise Vegetarianism during the rest 
 of his stay in England, that is from 1813 to the spring of 
 1818. Leigh Hunt's account of his life at Marlow, in 1817, 
 is as follows : — "This was the round of his daily life. He 
 was up early, breakfasted sparingly, wrote this 'Eevolt of 
 Islam' all the morning ; w^ent out in his boat, or in the 
 woods, with some Greek author or the Bible in his hands ; 
 came home to a dinner of vegetables (for he took neither 
 meat nor wine) ; visited, if necessary, the sick and fatherless, 
 whom others gave Bibles to and no help ; wrote or studied 
 again, or read to his wife and friends the whole evening; 
 took a crust of bread or a glass of whey for his supper, and 
 went early to bed." 
 
 In 1818, he left England for Italy, and during his last 
 four years, the most dreamy and speculative period of his 
 life, he seems to have been less strict in his observance of 
 Vegetarian practice. It is not true however, as has some- 
 times been asserted, that Shelley lost faith in the principles 
 of Vegetarianism ; for his change in diet was owing partly to 
 his well-known carelessness about his food, which became 
 more marked at this time, and partly to a desire to avoid 
 
 * Shelley's pamphlet appeared In 1S13. The Vegetarian Society was not 
 founded until 1847. Information as to this Society, with list of its publications, 
 can be had free on application to the Secretary, 75, Princess Street, Manchester. 
 
PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 giving trouble to the other members of his household, which, 
 as we see from a line in his letter to Maria Gisborne, 
 written in 1820, "Though we eat little flesh and drink no 
 wine" was not entirely a Vegetarian one. Yet, even at this 
 period of his life, he himself was practically, if not 
 systematically, a Vegetarian, for all his biographers agree in 
 informing us that bread was literally his "stafl'of life." We 
 cannot doubt that if he had lived in the present time he 
 would have taken a leading part in the movement towards 
 Food Reform. As it is, he has left us an invaluable legacy 
 in his "Vindication of Natural Diet," perhaps the most 
 powerful and eloquent plea ever put forward in favour of the 
 Vegetarian cause. 
 
 He found in this the presage of his ideal future. To his 
 enthusiastic faith in the transforming effect of the Vegetarian 
 principle, we owe some of the finest passages in his poetry. 
 In the close of the eighth canto of " Queen Mab," we have a 
 picture of a time when man no more 
 
 Slays the lamb that looks him in the face. 
 It is the same ideal of bloodless innocence as that of Israel's 
 prophet-poet, who declares that in the Holy Mountain they 
 shall not hurt nor destroy. Never did sage or singer, 
 prophet or priest, or poet, see a brighter vision of the future 
 than that which is imaged in the description of a glorified 
 earth, from which cruelty, bloodshed, and tyranny, have 
 been banished. 
 
 " My brethren, we are free ! The fruits are glowing 
 Beneath the stars, and the night-winds are flowing 
 O'er the ripe corn. The birds and beasts are dreaming. ' 
 IsTever again may blood of bird or beast 
 Stain with its venomous stream a human feast, 
 
PREFATORY NOTICE. 
 
 To the pure skies in accusation steaming ; 
 Avenging poisons shall have ceased 
 To feed disease and fear and madness ; 
 
 The dwellers of the earth and air 
 Shall throng around our steps in gladness, 
 Seeking their food or refuge there. 
 Oar toil from thought all glorious forms shall cull, " 
 To make this earth, our home, more beautiful ; 
 And Science, and her sister Poesy, 
 Shall clothe in light the fields and cities of the free ! " 
 
 Over the plain the throngs were scattered then 
 In groups around the fires, which from the sea 
 
 Even to the gorge of the first mountain-glen 
 Blazed wide and far. The banquet of the free 
 Was spread beneath many a dark cypress- tree ; 
 
 Beneath whose spires which swayed in the red flame 
 Reclining as they ate, of liberty. 
 
 And hope; and justice, and Laone's name. 
 
 Earth's children did a woof of happy converse frame. 
 
 Their feast was such as Earth, the general mother, 
 Pours from her fairest bosom, when she smiles 
 
 In the embrace of Autumn. To each other 
 As when some parent fondly reconciles 
 Her warring children, she their wrath beguiles 
 
 With her own sustenance ; they relenting weep : — 
 Such was this festival, which, from their isles 
 
 And continents and winds and oceans deep, 
 
 All shapes might throng to share that fly or walk or creep. 
 
 That this was no mere poetic sentiment is proved by this 
 pamphlet, which is an earnest yindication of Vegetarianism. 
 
 H. S. S. 
 W. E. A. A. 
 
[original title page.] 
 
 VINDICATION 
 
 NATUEAL DIET 
 
 BEINa ONE m A SERIES OF NOTES TO QUEEN MAB 
 
 (A PHILOSOPHICAL POEM). 
 
 Iax€TL0VL8r], iravTtjov irepi fjLTjdea etdujcr, 
 'KatpeLcr irvp KkexpcKT, /cat eyuao" (ppevac r)irepoirev(T(X(y ; 
 Soir' avTO) pLeya irrj/JLa kul avdpacnu eaaofievoiai. 
 Tol<t8' eyco avrt Trvpoa dooaoj kukov, cj ksv airavrea 
 TepTTitJVTaL Kara, dvfxov, eov kolkov afKpayairujvTea. 
 
 HSmA. Op. et Dies. 1, 5i. 
 
 ^^4i£gS^^ LONDON: 
 
 Printed for J. Callow, Medical Bookseller, Crown Court, 
 
 Prince's Street, Soho, 
 
 By Smith & Davy, Queen Street, Seven Dials. 
 
 1813. 
 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING AND SIXPENCE 
 
A VINDICATION OF NATURAL DIET. 
 
 I HOLD that the depravity of the physical and moral nature 
 of man originated in his unnatural habits of life. The origin 
 of man, like that of the universe of which he is a part, is 
 enveloped in impenetrable mystery. His generations either 
 had a beginning, or they had not. The weight of evidence 
 in favour of each of these suppositions seems tolerably equal; 
 and it is perfectly unimportant to the present argument 
 which is assumed. The language spoken, however, by the 
 mythology of nearly all religions seems to prove, that at some 
 distant period man forsook the path of nature, and sacrificed 
 the purity and happiness of his being to unnatural appetites. 
 The date of this event seems to have also been that of some 
 great change in the climates of the earth, with which it has 
 an obvious correspondence. The allegory of Adam and Eve 
 eating of the tree of evil, and entailing upon their posterity 
 the wrath of God, and the loss of everlasting life, admits of 
 no other explanation than the disease and crime that have 
 flowed from unnatural diet. Milton was so well aware of 
 this, that he makes Raphael thus exhibit to Adam the 
 consequence of his disobedience : — 
 
 . Immediately a place 
 Before his eyes appeared : sad, noisome, dark : 
 A lazar-house it seemed ; wherein were laid 
 Numbers of all diseased : all maladies 
 Of ghastly spasm, or racking torture, qualms 
 Of heart-sick agony, all feverous kinds, 
 
10 A Vindication of Natural Diet. 
 
 Convulsions, epilepsies, fierce catarrhs ; 
 Intestine stone and ulcer, cholic pangs, 
 Dsemoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, 
 And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, 
 Marasmus, and wide-wasting pestilence, 
 Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums. 
 
 And how many thousands more might not be added to this 
 frightful catalogue ! 
 
 The story of Prometheus is one likewise which, although 
 universally admitted to be allegorical, has never been satis- 
 factorily explained. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, and 
 was chained for this crime to Mount Caucasus, where a 
 vulture continually devoured his liver, that grew to meet its 
 hunger. Hesiod says, that, before the time of Prometheus, 
 mankind were exempt from suffering ; that they enjoyed a 
 vigorous youth, and that death, when at length it came, 
 approached like sleep, and gently closed their eyes. Again, 
 so general w\as this opinion, that Horace, a poet of the 
 Augustan age, writes : — 
 
 Audax omnia perpeti. 
 
 Gens humana ruit per vetitum nefas, 
 
 Audax lapeti genus 
 
 Ignem fraude mala gentibus intulit. 
 
 Post ignem ajtherea domo 
 
 Subductum, macies et nova febrium 
 
 Terris incubuit cohors 
 
 Semotique prius tarda necessitas 
 
 Lethi corripuit gradum. 
 
 How plain a language is spoken by all this. Prometheus 
 (who represents the human race) effected some great change 
 in the condition of his nature, and applied fire to culinary 
 purposes; thus inventing an expedient for screening from 
 
V 
 
 A Vindication of Natural Diet, 11 
 
 his disgust the horrors of the shambles. From this moment 
 his vitals were devoured by the vulture of disease. It con- 
 sumed his being in every shape of its loathsome and infinite 
 variety, inducing the soul-quelling sinkings of premature 
 and violent death. All vice arose from the ruin of health- 
 ful innocence. Tyranny, superstitution, commerce, and 
 inequality, were then first known, when reason vainly 
 attempted to guide the wanderings of exacerbated passion. 
 I conclude this part of the subject with an extract from Mr. 
 Newton's Defence of Vegetable Regimen, from whom I have 
 borrowed this interpretation of the fable of Prometheus. 
 
 " Making allowance for such transposition of the events 
 of the allegory as time might produce after the important 
 truths were forgotten, which this portion of the ancient mytho- 
 logy was intended to transmit, the drift of the fable seems 
 to be this : Man at his creation was endowed with the gift 
 of perpetual youth ; that is, he was not formed to be a 
 sickly suffering creature as we now see him, but to enjoy 
 health, and to sink by slow degrees into the bosom of his 
 parent earth without disease or pain. Prometheus first 
 taught the use of animal food (primus bovem occidit Pro- 
 metheus)^ and of fire, with which to render it more 
 digestible and pleasing to the taste. Jupiter, and the rest 
 of the gods, foreseeing the consequences of these inventions, 
 were amused or irritated at the short-sighted devices of the 
 newly-formed creature, and left him to experience the 
 sad effects of them. Thirst, the necessary concomitant of 
 a flesh diet," (perhaps of all diet vitiated by culinary pre- 
 paration) " ensued ; water was resorted to, and man forfeited 
 the inestimable gift of health which he had received from 
 
 *" Plin. Nat. Hist.," Lib. vii., Soc. 57. 
 
12 A Vindication of Natural Diet, 
 
 heaven ; he became diseased, the partaker of a precarious 
 existence and no longer descended slowly to his grave."*^ 
 
 But just disease to luxury succeeds, 
 And every death its own avenger breeds ; 
 The fury passions from that blood began, 
 And turned on man a fiercer savage — Man. 
 
 Man and the animals whom he has infected with his 
 society, or depraved by his dominion, are alone diseased. 
 The wild hog, the mouflon, the bisoQ, and the wolf are per- 
 fectly exempt from malady, and invariably die either from 
 external violence or natural old age. But the domestic hog, 
 the sheep, the cow, and the dog are subject to an incredible 
 variety of distempers; and, like the corrupters of their 
 nature, have physicians who thrive upon their miseries. The 
 supereminence of man is like Satan's, a supereminence of 
 pain ; and the majority of his species, doomed to penury, 
 disease, and crime, have reason to curse the untoward event 
 that, by enabling him to communicate his sensations, raised 
 him above the level of his fellow animals. But the steps 
 that have been taken are irrevocable. The whole of human 
 science is comprised in one question — How can the advan- 
 tages of intellect and civilisation be reconciled with the 
 liberty and pure pleasures of natural life^ How can we 
 take the benefits and reject the evils of the system which is 
 now interwoven with all the fibres of our being ? I believe 
 that abstinence from animal food and spirituous liquors 
 would in a great measure capacitate us for the solution of 
 this important question. 
 
 Comparative anatomy teaches us that man resembles 
 frugivorous animals in everything, and carnivorous in 
 
 * ♦* Return to Nature." Cadell, 1811. 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet 
 
 nothing : he has neither claws wherewith to seize his prey, 
 nor distinct and pointed teeth to tear the living fibre. A 
 mandarin of the first class, with nails two inches Icnf^, 
 would probably find them alone inefficient to hold even a 
 hare. After every subterfuge of gluttony, the bull must be 
 degraded into the ox, and the ram into the wether, by an 
 unnatural and inhuman operation, that the flaccid fibre may 
 offer a fainter resistance to rebellious nature. It is only by 
 softening and disguising dead flesh by culinary preparation 
 that it is rendered susceptible of mastication or digestion, 
 and that the sight of its bloody juices and ra^v horror does 
 not excite intolerable loathing and disgust. Let the advo- 
 cate of animal food force himself to a decisive experiment on 
 its fitness, and, as Plutarch recommends, tear a living lamb 
 w^ith his teeth, and plunging his head into its vitals, slake 
 his thirst with the steaming blood ; when fresh from the 
 deed of horror, let him revert to the irresistible instincts of 
 nature that would rise in judgment against it, and say, 
 Nature formed me for such w^ork as this. Then, and then 
 only, would he be consistent. 
 
 Man resembles no carnivorous animal. There is no 
 exception, except man be one, to the rule of herbivorous 
 animals having cellulated colons. 
 
 The orang-outang perfectly resembles man both in the 
 order and number of his teeth. The orang-outang is the 
 most anthropomorphous of the ape tribe, all of which are 
 strictly frugivorous. There is no other species of animals 
 in which this analogy exists."^ In many frugivorous 
 animals, the canine teeth are more pointed and distinct 
 
 ■ Cuvier, Legons d'Anat. Comp. torn, iii., pages 1C9, 373, 448, 465, and 480. 
 Eees's Cyclopaedia, article Man. 
 
14 A Vindication of Natural Diet, 
 
 than those of man. The resemblance also of the human 
 stomach to that of the orang-outang is greater than to that 
 of any other animal. 
 
 The intestines are also identical with those of herbivorous 
 animals, which present a large surface for absorption, and 
 have ample and cellulated colons. The caecum also, though 
 short, is larger than that of carnivorous animals ; and even 
 here the orang-outang retains its accustomed similarity. 
 
 The structure of the human frame then is that of one 
 fitted to a pure vegetable diet, in every essential particular. 
 It is true that the reluctance to abstain from animal food, 
 in those who have been long accustomed to its stimulus, is 
 so great in some persons of weak minds, as to be scarcely 
 overcome ; but this is far from bringing any argu- 
 ment in its favour. A lamb which was fed for some time 
 on flesh by a ship's crevf, refused its natural diet at the end 
 of the voyage. There are numerous instances of horses, 
 sheep, oxen, and even wood-pigeons, having been taught to 
 live upon flesh, until they have loathed their natural aliment. 
 Young children evidently prefer pastry, oranges, apples, and 
 other fruit, to the flesh of animals, until, by the gradual 
 depravation of the digestive organs, the free use of vege- 
 tables has, for a time, produced serious inconveniences ; for 
 a time, I say, since there never was an instance wherein a 
 change from spirituous liquors and animal food to vegetables 
 and pure water, has failed ultimately to invigorate the body, 
 by rendering its juices bland and consentaneous, and to 
 restore to the mind that cheerfulness and elasticity, which 
 not one in fifty possesses on the present system. A love of 
 strong liquors is also with difficulty taught to infants. 
 Almost every one remembers the wry faces the first glass of 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet. 15 
 
 port produced. Unsophisticated instinct is invariably un- 
 erring ; but to decide on the fitness of animal food, from the 
 perverted appetites which its constrained adoption produce, 
 is to make the criminal a judge in his own cause ; it is even 
 worse, it is appealing to the infatuated drunkard in a 
 question of the salubrity of brandy. 
 
 What is the cause of morbid action in the animal 
 system ? Not the air we breathe, for our fellow denizens of 
 nature breathe the same uninjured ; not the water we drink, 
 if remote from the pollutions of man and his inventions, for 
 the animals drink it too ; not the earth we tread upon ; not 
 the unobscured sight of glorious nature, in the wood, the 
 field, or the expanse of sky and ocean ; nothing that we are 
 or do in common with the undiseased inhabitants of the 
 forest. Something then w^herein we differ from them ; our 
 habit of altering our food by fire, so that our appetite is no 
 longer a just criterion for the fitness of its gratification. 
 Except in children there remains no traces of that instinct 
 which determines, in all other animals, what aliment is 
 natural or otherwise ; and so perfectly obliterated are they 
 in the reasoning adults of our species, that it has become 
 necessary to urge considerations, drawn from comparative 
 anatomy, to prove that we are naturally frugivorous. 
 
 Crime is madness. Madness is disease. Whenever the 
 cause of disease shall be discovered, the root, from which 
 all vice and misery have so long overshadowed the globe, 
 will lie bare to the axe. All the exertions of man, from 
 that moment, may be considered as tending to the clear 
 profit of his species. No sane mind in a sane body resolves 
 upon a real crime. It is a man of violent passions, blood- 
 shot eyes, and swollen veins, that alone can grasp the knife 
 
16 A Vindication of Natural Diet. 
 
 of murder. The system of a simple diet promises no 
 Utopian advantages. It is no mere reform of legislation, 
 whilst the furious passions and evil propensities of the 
 human heart, in which it had its origin, are still unassuaged. 
 It strikes at the root of all evil, and is an experiment 
 which may be tried with success, not alone by nations, but 
 by small societies, families, and even individuals. 
 
 In no cases has a return to vegetable diet produced the 
 slightest injury : in most it has been attended with changes 
 undeniably beneficial. Should ever a physician be born 
 with the genius of Locke, I am persuaded that he might 
 trace all bodily and mental derangements to our unnatural 
 habits, as clearly as that philosopher has traced all know- 
 ledge to sensation. What prolific sources of disease are 
 not those mineral and vegetable poisons that have been 
 introduced for its extirpation'? How many thousands have 
 become murderers and robbers, bigots and domestic tyrants, 
 dissolute and abandoned adventurers, from the use of 
 fermented liquors; who had they slaked their thirst only 
 at the mountain stream, would have lived but to diffuse 
 the happiness of their own unperverted feelings. How many 
 groundless opinions and absurd institutions have not 
 received a general sanction from the sottishness and intem- 
 perance of individuals'? Who will assert that, had the 
 populace of Paris drank at the pure source of the Seine, 
 and satisfied their hunger at the ever-furnished table of 
 vegetable nature that they would have lent their brutal 
 suffrage to the proscription-list of Robespierre 1 Could a set 
 of men, whose passions were not perverted by unnatural 
 stimuli, look with coolness on an auto dafe? Is it to be 
 believed that a being of gentle feelings, rising from his 
 meal of roots, would take delight in sports of blood ? 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet, 17 
 
 Was Nero a man of temperate life 1 Could you read calm 
 health in his cheek, flushed with ungovernable propensities 
 of hatred for the human race 1 Did Muley Ismael's pulse 
 beat evenly, was his skin transparent, did his eyes beam 
 with healthfulness, and its invariable concomitants, cheer- 
 fulness and benignity'? Though history has decided none 
 of these questions, a child could not hesitate to answer in 
 the negative. Surely the bile-suffused cheek of Buona- 
 parte, his wrinkled brow, and yellow eye, the ceaseless 
 inquietude of his nervous system, speak no less plainly 
 the character of his unresting ambition than his murders 
 and his victories. It is impossible had Bonaparte descen- 
 ded from a race of vegetable feeders, that he could have 
 either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne 
 of the Bourbons. The desire of tyranny could scarcely 
 be excited in the individual; the power to tyrannise 
 would certainly not be delegated by a society neither 
 frenzied by inebriation, nor rendered impotent or irrational 
 by disease. Pregnant, indeed, with inexhaustible calamity 
 is the renunciation of instinct, as it concerns our physical 
 nature ; arithmetic cannot enumerate, nor reason perhaps 
 suspect, the multitudinous sources of disease in civilised 
 life. Even common water, that apparently innoxious 
 pabulum, when corrupted by the filth of populous cities, is a 
 deadly and insidious destroyer."^ Who can wonder that 
 all the inducements held out by God himself in the 
 Bible to virtue should have been vainer than a nurse's 
 tale ; and that those dogmas, apparently favourable to 
 the intolerant and angry passions, should have alone 
 
 *See Dr. Lambe'a " Report on Cancer." 
 
18 A Vindication of Natural Diet, 
 
 been deemed essential ; whilst Christians are in the daily 
 practice of all those habits which have infected with disease 
 and crime, not only the reprobate sons, but these favoured 
 children of the common Father's love. Omnipotence itself 
 could not save them from the consequences of this original 
 and universal sin. 
 
 There is no disease, bodily or mental, which adoption of 
 vegetable diet and pure water has not infallibly mitigated, 
 wherever the experiment has been fairly tried. Debility 
 is gradually converted into strength, disease into healthful- 
 ness : madness, in all its hideous variety, from the ravings 
 of the fettered maniac, to the unaccountable irrationalities 
 of ill-temper, that make a hell of domestic life, into a calm 
 and considerable evenness of temper, that alone might 
 offer a certain pledge of the future moral reformation of 
 society. On a natural system of diet, old age would be 
 our last and our only malady : the term of our existence 
 would be protracted ; we should enjoy Jife, and no longer 
 preclude others from the enjoyment of it ; all sensational 
 delights would be infinitely more exquisite and perfect ; the 
 very sense of being would then be a continued pleasure, 
 such as we now feel it in some few and favoured moments 
 of our youth. By all that is sacred in our hopes for the 
 human race, I conjure those who love happiness and truth, 
 to give a fair trial to the vegetable system. Reasoning is 
 surely superfluous on a subject whose merits an experience 
 of six months would set for ever at rest. But it is only among 
 the enlightened and benevolent that so great a sacrifice of 
 appetite and prejudice can be expected, even though its 
 ultimate excellence should not admit of dispute. 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet. 19 
 
 It is found easier, by the short-sighted victims of disease, 
 to palliate their torments by medicine, than to prevent 
 them by regimen. The vulgar of all ranks are invariably 
 sensual and indocile ; yet I cannot but feel myself per- 
 suaded, that when the benefits of vegetable diet are 
 mathematically proved ; when it is as clear, that those 
 who live naturally are exempt from premature death, 
 as that nine is not one, the most sottish of mankind will 
 feel a preference towards a long and tranquil, con- 
 trasted with a short and painful life. On the average, 
 out of sixty persons, four die in three years. In April, 
 1814, a statement will be given that sixty persons, all 
 having lived more than three years on vegetables and 
 pure water, are then in perfect health. More than two 
 years have now elapsed ; not one of them has died ; no 
 such example will be found in any sixty persons taken at 
 random. Seventeen persons of all ages (the families of Dr. 
 Lambe and Mr. Newton) have lived for seven years on this 
 diet without a death, and almost without the slightest 
 illness. Surely, when we consider that some of these were 
 infants, and one a martyr to asthma, now nearly subdued, 
 we may challenge any seventeen persons taken at random 
 in this city to exhibit a parallel case. Those who may have 
 been excited to question the rectitude of established habits of 
 diet, by these loose remarks, should consult Mr. Newton's 
 luminous and eloquent essay. "^ It is from that book, and 
 from the conversation of its excellent and enlightened author, 
 that I have derived the materials which I here present to 
 the public. 
 
 * ReturnJo Nature, or Defence of Vegetable Regimen. Cadell, 1811 
 
20 A Vindication of Natural Diet, 
 
 When these proofs come fairly before the world, and are 
 clearly seen by all who understand arithmetic, it is scarcely 
 possible that abstinence from aliments demonstrably perni- 
 cious should not become universal. 
 
 In proportion to the number of proselytes, so will be the 
 weight of evidence ; and when a thousand persons can be 
 produced, living on vegetables and distilled water, who have 
 to dread no disease but old age, the world will be compelled 
 to regard animal flesh and fermented liquors as slow but 
 certain poison. The change which would be produced by 
 simpler habits on political economy is sufficiently remarkable. 
 The monopolising eater of animal flesh would no longer 
 destroy his constitution by devouring an acre at a meal, and 
 many loaves of bread would cease to contribute to gout, 
 madness, and apoplexy, in the shape of a pint of porter or a 
 dram of gin, when appeasing the long-protracted famine of 
 the hard-working peasant's hungry babes. The quantity of 
 nutritious vegetable matter consumed in fattening the 
 carcase of an ox, would aflbrd ten times the sustenance, 
 undepraving indeed, and incapable of generating disease, if 
 gathered immediately from the bosom of the earth. 
 
 The most fertile districts of the habitable globe are now 
 actually cultivated by men for animals, at a delay and waste 
 of aliment absolutely incapable of calculation. It is only the 
 wealthy that can, to any great degree, even now, indulge the 
 unnatural craving for dead flesh, and they pay for the greater 
 licence of the privilege, by subjection to supernumerary 
 diseases. Again, the spirit of the nation that should take 
 the lead in this great reform would insensibly become 
 agricultural : commerce, with all its vice, selfishness, and 
 corruption, would gradually decline ; more natural habits 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet. 21 
 
 would produce gentler manners, and the excessive complica- 
 tion of political relations would be so far simplified that 
 every individual might feel and understand why he loved 
 his country, and took a personal interest in its welfare. How 
 would England, for example, depend on the caprices of 
 foreign rulers, if she contained within herself all the neces- 
 saries, and despised whatever they possessed of the luxuries 
 of life ? How could they starve her into compliance with 
 their views? Of what consequence would it be that they 
 refused to take her woollen manufactures, when large and 
 fertile tracts of the island ceased to be allotted to the waste 
 of pasturage ? On a natural system of diet, we should re- 
 quire no spices from India ; no wines from Portugal, Spain, 
 France, or Madeira ; none of those multitudinous articles of 
 luxury, for which every corner of the globe is rifled, and 
 which are the causes of so much individual rivalship, such 
 calamitous and sanguinary national disputes. 
 
 In the history of modern times, the avarice of commercial 
 monopoly, no less than the ambition of weak and wicked 
 chiefs, seems to have fomented the universal discord, to have 
 added stubbornness to the mistakes of cabinets, and 
 indocility to the infatuation of the people. Let it ever be 
 remembered, that it is the direct influence of commerce to 
 make the interval between the richest and the poorest man 
 wider and more unconquerable. Let it be remembered that 
 it is a foe to every thing of real worth and excellence 
 in the human character. The odious and disgusting aristoc- 
 racy of wealth, is built upon the ruins of all that is good in 
 chivalry or republicanism ; and luxury is the forerunner of 
 a barbarism scarce capable of cure. Is it impossible to 
 realize a state of society, where all the energies of man 
 shall be directed to the production of his solid happiness ? 
 
A Vindication of I^atural Diet. 
 
 Certainly, if this advantage (the object of all poHtical 
 speculation) be in any degree attainable, it is attainable 
 only by a community which holds out no factitious incentives 
 to the avarice and ambition of the few, and which is in- 
 ternally organized for the liberty, security, and comfort of 
 the many. None must be entrusted with power (and money 
 is the completest species of power) who do not stand pledged 
 to use it exclusively for the general benefit. But the use 
 of animal flesh and fermented liquors, directly militates 
 with this equality of the rights of man. The peasant 
 cannot gratify these fashionable cravings without leaving 
 his family to starve. Without disease and war, those 
 sweeping curtailers of population, pasturage w^ould include 
 a waste too great to be afforded. The labour requisite to 
 support a family is far lighter"^ than is usually supposed. 
 The peasantry work, not only for themselves, but for the 
 aristocracy, the army, and the manufacturers. 
 
 The advantage of a reform in diet is obviously greater 
 than that of any other. It strikes at the root of the evil. 
 To remedy the abuses of legislation, before we annihilate 
 the propensities by which they are produced, is to suppose, 
 that by taking away the effect, the cause will cease to 
 operate. But the efficacy of this system depends entirely 
 on the proselytism of individuals, and grounds its merits, 
 as a benefit to the community, upon the total change of 
 
 * It has come under the author's experience that some of the workmen on 
 an embankment in North Wales who, in consequence of the inability of the pro- 
 prietor to pay them, seldom received their wages, have supported large families 
 by cultivating small spots of sterile ground by moonlight. In the notes to Pratt's 
 Poem, " Bread for the Poor, " is an account of an industrious labourer, who by 
 working in a small garden, before and after his day's task, attained to an enviable 
 state of independence. 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet. 23 
 
 the dietetic habits in its members. It proceeds securely 
 from a number of particular cases to one that is universal, 
 and has this advantage over the contrary mode, that one 
 error does not invalidate all that has gone before. 
 
 Let not too much, however, be expected from this system. 
 The healthiest among us is not exempt from hereditary 
 disease. The most symmetrical, athletic, and long-lived, 
 is a being inexpressibly inferior to what he would have 
 been, had not the unnatural habits of his ancestors accumu- 
 lated for him a certain portion of malady and deformity. 
 In the most perfect specimen of civilized man something 
 is still found wanting by the physiological critic. Can a 
 return to nature, then, instantaneously eradicate predis- 
 positions that have been slowly taking root in the silence 
 of innumerable ages ? Indubitably not. All that I contend 
 for is, that from the moment of the relinquishing all un- 
 natural habits, no new disease is generated ; and that the 
 predisposition to hereditary maladies gradually perishes 
 for want of its accustomed supply. In cases of consumption, 
 cancer, gout, asthma, and scrofula, such is the invariable 
 tendency of a diet of vegetables and pure water. 
 
 Those who may be induced by these remarks to give the 
 vegetable system a fair trial, should, in the first place, date 
 the commencement of their practice from the moment of 
 their conviction. All depends upon the breaking through a 
 pernicious habit resolutely and at once. Dr. Trotter* 
 asserts that no drunkard was ever reformed by gradually 
 relinquishing his dram. Animal flesh, in its effects on the 
 human stomach, is analogous to a dram. It is similar in 
 
 * Sec Trotter on "The Nervous Temperament." 
 
24 A Vindication of Natural Diet. 
 
 the kind, though differing in the degree, of its operation. 
 The proselyte to a pure diet must be warned to expect a 
 temporary diminution of muscular strength. The subtrac- 
 tion of a powerful stimulus will suffice to account for this 
 event. But it is only temporary, and is succeeded by an 
 equable capability for exertion far surpassing his former 
 various and fluctuating strength. Above all, he will acquire 
 an easiness of breathing, by which the same exertion is per- 
 formed with a remarkable exemption from that painful and 
 difficult panting now felt by almost every one after hastily 
 climbing an ordinary mountain. He w411 be equally capable 
 of bodily exertion or mental application after as before 
 his simple meal. He will feel none of the narcotic effects 
 of ordinary diet. Irritability, the direct consequence of 
 exhausting stimuli, would yield to the power of natural 
 and tranquil impulses. He will no longer pine under the 
 lethargy of ennui, that unconquerable weariness of life, 
 more dreaded than death itself He will escape the epidemic 
 madness that broods over its own injurious notions of 
 the Deity, and " realizes the hell that priests and beldams 
 feign." Every man forms, as it were, his god from his 
 own character ; to the divinity of one of simple habits, no 
 offering would be more acceptable than the happiness of his 
 creatures. He would be incapable of hating or persecuting 
 others for the love of God. He will find, moreover, a system 
 of simple diet to be a system of perfect epicurism. He will 
 no longer be incessantly occupied in blunting and destroy- 
 ing those organs from w^hich he expects his gratification. 
 . The pleasures of taste to be derived from a dinner of pota- 
 toes, beans, peas, turnips, lettuces, wdth a dessert of apples, 
 gooseberries, strawberries, currants, raspberries, and in 
 
A Vindication of Natiiral Diet. 25 
 
 winter, oranges, apples, and pears, is far greater than is 
 supposed. Those who wait until they can eat this plain fare 
 with the sauce of appetite w411 scarcely join with the hypo- 
 critical sensualist at a lord mayor's feast, who declaims 
 against the pleasures of the table. Solomon kept a thousand 
 concubines, and owned in despair that all was vanity. The 
 man whose happiness is constituted by the society of one 
 amiable woman would find some difficulty in sympathising 
 wdth the disappointment of this venerable debauchee. 
 
 I address myself not only to the young enthusiast, the 
 ardent devotee of truth and virtue, the pure and passionate 
 moralist, yet unvitiated by the contagion of the world. He 
 will embrace a pure system, from its abstract truth, its 
 beauty, its simplicity and its promise of wide-extended 
 benefit ; unless custom has turned poison into food, he wdll 
 hate the brutal pleasures of the chase by instinct ; it will 
 be a contemplation full of horror and disappointment to his 
 mind, that beings capable of the gentlest and most admir- 
 able sympathies, should take delight in the death-pangs 
 and last convulsions of dying animals. The elderly man 
 w^hose youth has been poisoned by intemperance, or who 
 has lived with apparent moderation, and is afilicted with a 
 variety of painful maladies, would find his account in a 
 beneficial change, produced without the risk of poisonous 
 medicines. *^The mother, to whom the perpetual restless- 
 
 * See Mr^ewton's book. His children are the most beautiful and healthy- 
 creatures iFT^pOBStbte to conceive ; the girls are perfect models for a sculptor ; 
 their dispositions are also the most gentle and conciliating ; the judicious treat- 
 ment which they experience in other points, may be a correlative cause of this. 
 In the first five years of their life, of 18,000 children that are born, 7,600 die of 
 various diseases ; and how many more of those that survive are rendered miser- 
 able by maladies not immediately mortal ? The quality and quantity of a woman's 
 milk are materially injured by the use of dead flesh. In an island, near Iceland, 
 where no vegetables are to be got, the children invariably die of tetanus, before 
 they are three weeks old, and the population is supplied from the mainland. — 
 S)ir G. Mackenzie's History of Iceland. See also J'mi^e, chap, i., p. 53, 55, 56. 
 
26 A Vindication of Natural Diet. 
 
 ness of disease, and unaccountable deaths incident to lier 
 children, are the causes of incurable unhappiness, would 
 on this diet experience the satisfaction of beholding their 
 perpetual health and natural playfulness. 
 
 The most valuable lives are daily destroyed by diseases, 
 that it is dangerous to palliate and impossible to cure by 
 medicine. How much longer will man continue to pimp 
 for the gluttony of death, his most insidious, implacable, 
 and eternal foe ? The proselyte to a simple and natural 
 diet, who desires health, must from the moment of his 
 conversion attend to these rules — 
 
 Never take any substance into the stomach that 
 once had life. 
 
 Drink no liquid but water restored to its original 
 purity by distillation. 
 
A Vindication of Natural Diet. 27 
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 Persons on vegetable diet have been remarkable for longevity. The 
 first Christians practised abstinence from animal flesh, on a principle 
 of self mortification. Other instances are, Old Parr 152 ; Mary- 
 Patten 136 ; A Shepherd in Hungary 126 ; Patrick O'Neale 113 ; 
 Joseph Elkins 103; Elizabeth de Val 101; Aurungzebe 100; St. 
 Anthony 105 ; James, the Hermit 104 ; Arsenius 120 ; St. Epiphanius 
 115 ; Simeon 112 ; and Kombald 120. 
 
 Mr. Newton's mode of reasoning on longevity is ingenious and con- 
 clusive. " Old Parr, healthy as the wild animals, attained to the age of 
 152 years. All men might be as healthy as the wild animals. There- 
 fore all men might attain to the age of 152 years." The conclusion is 
 sufficiently modest. Old Parr cannot be supposed to have escaped the 
 inheritance of disease, amassed by the unnatural habits of his ancestors. 
 The term of human life may be expected to be infinitely greater, taking 
 into the consideration all the circumstances that must have contributed 
 to abridge even that of Parr. 
 
 It may be here remarked, that the author and his wife have lived on 
 vegetables for eight months. The improvements of health and temper 
 here stated, is the result of his own experience. 
 
THE ETHICS OF DIET 
 
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 **I consider it a very valuable work." — Colonel J. M. Earle. 
 *'The Catena is good and useful."— Frances E. Hogg an, M.D. 
 ** ' The Ethics of Diet' much pleases me." — T. K. Cheyne, M.A. 
 
 Price Five Shillings; Post free from the Office of the Vegetarian Society, 
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ESSAYS ON DIET, 
 
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 ''ALMONDS AND RAISINS" FOR 1884. 
 
 Edited by R. BAILEY WALKER, F.S.S. 
 
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THE SHELLEY SOCIETY 
 
 PUBLICATIONS FOR 1886 
 
THE SHELLEY SOCIETY 
 
 PUBLICATIONS FOR 1886. 
 
 The Society's Publications for 1886 will be at 
 least twelve of the following fourteen : — 
 
 1. Shelley's Adonais : an Elegy on the Death of John Keats. 
 Pisa, 4to, 1821. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper, edited, 
 with a Bibliographical Introduction, by Thomas J. "Wise. {Second 
 Edition, Revised.) 10s. [Issued. 
 
 2. Shelley's Review of Hogg's novel, ** Memoirs of Prince Alexy 
 HaimatofF." Now first reprinted from The Critical Beview, Deo. 
 1814, on hand-made Paper, with an Extract from Prof. Dowden's 
 article, "Some Early Writings of Shelley" {Contemp. Rev., Sept. 
 1884). Edited, with an Introductory Note, by Thos. J. Wise. 
 {Second Edition, Revised.) 25. M. [Issued. 
 
 3. Shelley's Alastor, or The Spirit of Solitude ; and other Poems. 
 London, fcap. 8vo., 1816. A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made 
 Paper, with a new Preface by Bertram Dobell. {Second Edition, 
 Revised. ) Qs. [Issued. 
 
 .4. A Shelley Bibliography, or "The Shelley Library." Part I. 
 First Editions and their Reproductions. By H. Buxton Forman. 
 
 [Issued. 
 
 5. Shelley's Vindication of Natural Diet. London, 12mo, 1813. 
 A Reprint, 1882, with a Prefatory Note by H. S. Salt and W. E. A. 
 Axon. Presented by Mr. Axon. {Second Edition.) [Issued. 
 
 6. A Memoir of Shelley, with a fresh Preface, by William 
 Michael Rossetti ; a Portrait of Shelley ; and an engraving of his 
 Tomb. [Issued. 
 
 7. Shelley's Cenci, (for the Society's performance in May), with 
 a prologue by Dr. John Todhunter, and an Introduction and Notes 
 by Harry Buxton Forman and Alfred Forman ; and a Portrait of 
 Beatrice Cenci. 2.;?. Qd. [Issued. 
 
8. Shelley's Hellas, a Lyrical Drama. London, 8vo, 1822. 
 A Facsimile Reprint on hand-made Paper ; edited, with an Intro- 
 duction, by Tlios. J. Wise. Presented hy Mr. F. S. Ellis. 
 
 YN'early ready. 
 
 9. Shelley's Epipsychidion, 
 Reprint on hand-made Paper. 
 
 London, 8vo, X;S21. A Facsimile 
 Presented ])y y R. A. Potts. 
 
 10. Shelley's Address to the Irish W 
 A Facsimile Reprin^ v^diand-made y / 
 duction, by.Tiios. JTWW^. Presen"''^ / 
 
 11. Shelley's Necessity of AtM- 
 1811). A Facsimile Reprint oi)/ 
 Introduction, by Thos. J. Wj/ 
 a Portrait of Shelley. 
 
 12. Biographical Art' 
 from his Budget, 182^'#^ 
 1832-3 ; by a ' N^ 
 Thornton Hunt^ ^ 
 
 by PeacocK^V 
 Edited V 
 
 \^At press. 
 
 iblin, 8vo, 1812. 
 I, with an Intro - 
 Iter B. Slater. 
 [At press. 
 
 12mo (n.d. but 
 
 edited, with an 
 
 ,e editor. With 
 
 lPre2)aring' 
 
 .10^460 
 
 )se by Stockdale, 
 
 mthly Magazine, 
 
 . ^une, 1841 ; by 
 
 >ruary, 1863 ; and 
 
 N\^ith two Portraits. ^> t \ 
 
 [PrepaHiig. ^> iSt^ 
 
 edited by S. E. Pre^VV'' 
 aready issued. 
 
 -y, by the Rev. Stopford Brooke : 
 ^ et, M.A. : Miss M. Blind: and 
 
 The Committee hope that the Shelley PrimeVy by 
 Mr. H. S. Salt, will be ready early in 1887. They 
 will also be glad to receive promises of Gift-books 
 for that year. 
 
 '^