722 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



since the fighting of un-nature first became a science. If contradictory 

 tenets imply error, we surely are further from unitary truth here than 

 anywhere except in the Babel of speculative theology ; and even there 

 only dogmatic assertion, but not inconsistenc}', could ever go further. 

 Just compare the gospel of Pythagoras with that of Dr. Brown, the 

 Berwick prophet. Abstinence from wine — alcoholic stimulants, we 

 would say at present — and from all animal food is the keystone of the 

 Pythagorean system, which also denounced the shedding of blood, and 

 recommended the use of "food which needs no cooking" — fruit, nuts, 

 honey, milk, and the like. But John H. Brown, M. D., divides all pos- 

 sible states of health into the " sthenic and asthenic conditions," the 

 first to be toned down by bleeding, cathartics, etc., the second to be 

 rallied by a liberal use of brandy and strong meats, which in more mod- 

 erate quantities are to constitute our normal food, while all raw vege- 

 table products are to be avoided, especially "acid and subacid fruit." 



Is there a greater antagonism in all the toto-coelo distance from Odin 

 to Mother Ann Lee ? If either was right, the other must have been 

 portentously wrong ; yet the school of Berwick, not less than that of 

 Samos, counted its disciples by tens of thousands. Again, is there an 

 hygienic tenet which seems more incontrovertible to us than the pro- 

 priety of the three daily meals ? Yet the Romans of the ante-Csesarean 

 era, who as physical beings were so strangely superior to us, restricted 

 themselves to a single meal in the twenty-four hours, for which they 

 chose the very time when we dread repletion most — the end of the day, 

 the hour between sunset and darkness. 



Moses transmits from the lips of Jehovah his by-laws against pork 

 and rabbit-flesh, and we know how many of his followers preferred 

 death to the obnoxious diet, but our Saxon forefathers exalted the pigs' 

 feet of Valhalla as the supreme reward of heroic virtue, and, dying, the 

 Baresark could grin through his tortures at the thought of celestial 

 spareribs. Charlemagne, when informed that his life depended on a 

 change of regime, declared that if he could purchase immortality by 

 absenting himself from the customary tri-weekly barbecues, he would 

 think the price too high. He may have doubted the efficacy of the 

 sacrifice, but the Mingrelian ambassadors, after receiving Abu-Hassan's 

 stern ultimatum, " Islam or the sword ! " informed him that, however 

 willing they might be to propitiate the wrath of Allah, the national as- 

 sembly preferred war and pork to peace without it. 



Thales considered water as the summum bonum, and many of his 

 teachings seem to anticipate the hydropathic school and our temper- 

 ance dogmas ; but Paracelsus proclaimed to the world that he had found 

 the true panacea and the elixir of life by the discovery of alcohol, and 

 seems to have been only too successful in his propaganda. " He finds 

 believers who himself believes " ; and Paracelsus certainly proved per- 

 sonal confidence in his doctrine by swallowing (in the city of Salzburg, 

 1541), as the "grand quintessence of life," a five-pint bottle of alcohol, 



