Vegetarianism and Diet Reform

Other movements were on foot looking to reforms in diet. In 1809 there appeared in England a book by William Lambe, M.D., bearing the quaint title of Reports of the Effects of a Peculiar Regimen in Scirrhous Tumours and Cancerous Ulcers. The peculiar regimen referred to consisted for the most part in the discontinuance of flesh food, and the free use of water.SHM 42.2

“My opinion is,” he wrote, “that no case which is curable can resist the effect of this regimen, if persevered in steadily for three complete years; at the same time that one year or a year and a half will commonly afford much relief.”—P. 178.SHM 42.3

A layman named John Frank Newton, who had from childhood suffered from a chronic disease, read the book and made a personal application of the experiment to his own diet. So gratifying were the results that he was impelled to write a book setting forth the benefits he had experienced. In closing the first part of this work, he gives more than a suggestion of the opposition those early advocates of vegetarianism encountered. He cautioned “him who may become a convert to this simple method of preventing disease, not to lose his temper when assailed in argument by his tenacious opponents with violence almost inexplicable; and to be firm and constant in his own practice, in contempt of all the means which will be resorted to, whether threats or persuasions, to turn him aside from his offensive purpose.”—J. F. Newton, The Return to Nature, or a Defense of the Vegetable Regimen, 156, 157. London: J. McCreery, 1811.SHM 42.4