SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

In this two-part article, Nichols presents “my own dietetic experience, and the results of my own observation, before giving the historical, scientific, and other arguments upon the subject” (61). He reports having first adopted a vegan diet “[s]ixteen years ago,” then and still “commonly, but very improperly, called the Graham system of diet” (61). Nichols thinks it should be called “the Pythagorean, or even the Adamic” system, given that it was already “practiced by the primeval races of mankind, by many of the sages of antiquity, by the wisest and purest men of every age, and by a majority of the human race in all ages” (61). After having intermittently returned to a mixed diet, Nichols took up veg*ism again in 1848. He describes his current dietary regime as follows:

I rise at half past five, in full vigor; I eat a breakfast of boiled cracked wheat, or hominy with milk and sirop, potatoes, bread and butter, with such fruit as is in season. For dinner we have potatoes, peas, beans, turnips, beets, &c., with bread, rice, puddings, fruit, and a more spare and simple supper, drinking cold water at every meal. Occasionally we have eggs or fish, but I rarely partake of the latter (62).

He notes that he is now “stronger, heavier, more active, more enduring, and far more happy than [he] ever was upon a mixed flesh diet, with tea and coffee” (62). Nichols concedes, however, that “a badly chosen vegetarian diet may be more pernicious than a carefully selected mixed diet, of which flesh makes a part” (62). He then provides reasons to support his claim that “a vegetable diet is the one best adapted to the human constitution” (62):

• human anatomy and physiology make them fruit and vegetable eaters by nature
• the Bible suggests we should be vegans
• eating animals is akin to cannibalism
• historical evidence and argument from authority: most philosophers were vegans
• the consumption of animal food correlates with the consumption of alcohol, drugs, and other stimulants (62-63).

While he recommends “total abstinence” from animal food, Nichols wants “no controversy. Let every man act conscientiously, according to his knowledge, reason, or instincts. If a man, after a fair examination of the subject, think he ought to eat like a tiger or a hog, I have nothing to say” (63).

The second installment begins with the question why we still insist on “slaughter[ing] the myriad of animals that are now yearly butchered so uselessly and so cruelly” (89). We are not natural carnivores nor is meat conducive to our health, as it “is known to be inflammatory, putrefying, and liable to be diseased” (89). Meat is less economical, as “vegetable food is not merely better, but five hundred per cent cheaper than the flesh of animals” (89). “Chemical analysis proves,” Nichols adds, “that vegetables, especially the farinacea, as wheat, corn, rice, &c., contain the purest nutriment, and in the requisite proportions” (89). Overall, Nichols contends, the question of diet is “a question of science, of experience, of principle, and of taste”:

Science has demonstrated that the products of the vegetable kingdom are the natural food for man, most admirably adapted to all the wants of his system. Experience has shown that men can be sustained under all circumstances, on vegetable food, in their highest health and vigor. It should be a matter of principle not to inflict needless suffering, nor condemn thousands of our fellow men to follow cruel and brutalizing employments. As to the question of taste, I fancy there can be no two opinions (90).

Concerning this last point, Nichols asks:

What is more beautiful than corn and fruits? What more revolting than dead corpses? Who does not gather the vegetable portion of his food with pleasure? Who would butcher his own meat if he could have it done for him? What more graceful present than cakes and fruit? What more ridiculous than the present made to the Queen of England, the other day, of a lot of sausages? (90).

In closing, Nichols insists “that a very large proportion of the disease and premature mortality in this country comes from our inordinate eating of flesh, and when the question is fairly examined, all medical men will be of the same opinion” (90).