Page:Substance of the Work Entitled Fruits and Farinacea The Proper Food of Man.djvu/32

 abhor plum-pudding; so accustomed were their stomachs to whale-blubber and train-oil. So far from envying the refined tables of the south, only the impulse of starvation would have induced them to partake of our food. Such is the power of habit. Bremner, in his "Excursions into Russia," moralizes on the devotion of the Russians to the soup called Batinia, which they regard as the greatest delicacy on earth; while he entitles it an atrocious compound, and knows not how otherwise to express his disgust but by comparing it to witches broth. We learn from him that it combined spoonfuls of mustard and ice, rotten sturgeon, and bitter cucumber. "The mouthful of ice" (says he) "was the worst we ever swallowed, and we resolved to make no new experiments on Russian dishes."

Sylvester Graham well reasons that national customs of diet have always been determined either by necessity or by a view to present enjoyment. Mankind have tried how far they can go in unnatural food, dwelling, or other habits, without sensible immediate mischief. But in many cases their error in food is partially compensated by circumstances favourable to health in climate and out-door life. The stronger they have been from salutary climate and general habits, the greater liberty they have taken in dietetic excesses; then a sort of balance arises, and, on a superficial view, no result seems to follow as to health, vigour, and longevity, let nations live as they may. But their actual life shows only what is possible to human nature, not what is best, most natural, most desirable, most reasonable. This actual life does not invalidate the evidence of comparative anatomy that man is, naturally and purely, a frugivorous animal.

agree with Shakespere, when he says—

For we know that lower animals, whose nervous system is less developed than ours, are less sensitive to pain, and often suffer little inconvenience from the loss of one or two limbs. We must beware of morbid sensibility, yet, avoiding all exaggeration, none can deny that those animals which chiefly furnish human food have a nervous system similarly developed to our own, and are acutely sensible both of pleasure and pain.