1822. ] 
De Lue and other late writers,” is not 
so “ extremely blameable” as the tra- 
veller imagines it to be. 
Alion Pari. JOHN SMITH. 
a 
for the Monthly Magazine. 
The EFFECT of mere HERBACEOUS 
FOOD upon the HUMAN CONSTITU- 
TION, communicated by Mir. JOSEPH 
HOULTON. of SAFFRON WALDEN; 
from the Journal de Physiologie Ez- 
perimentale. 
T is with pain that I depict a scene, 
the sight of which was so distress- 
ing to me and to all feeling minds, that 
T should not refer to it, were I certain 
that any one had published the valua- 
ble facts connected with the laws of 
animal life, and the preservation of 
health which that mournful event af- 
forded. 
Taliude to the awful famine, which 
in 1817 desolated the central coast of 
France, and I shall now state what un- 
happily occurred under my own per- 
sonal observation. The continual rains 
of 1816 destroyed or prevented the 
ripening of nearly all the grain sown in 
the departments of the Ain, the Jura, 
the Doubs, the Haute Saéne, the 
Vosges, and a part of the Sadéne and 
Loire, &c. from which cause a dread- 
ful famine arose, which continued dur- 
ing the first six months of 1817. The 
sufferers subsisted during the months 
of January, February, and March on 
potatoes, oat-bread, pollard er bran, 
and other inferior articles; the abso- 
lutely destitute were compelled to beg. 
At length ail resources being ex- 
hausted, and every article of food hav- 
ing reached a price tili then unheard of, 
the three following months presented 
scenes of the moi appalling character ; 
the meadows and fields were covered 
with our starving felluw-creatures, who 
were, so to speak, contending with the 
cattle for the herbage. Hunger at this 
riod reduced them to live solely on 
erbaceous vegetables, such as goats- 
beard, wild sorrel, nettles, thistles, 
bean tops, leaves of trees, &c.; these 
herbs were chopped up, boiled, and 
mashed: when they were too old and 
tough to eat in that state, they express- 
_ed the juice; and, according to their 
means, they either used these pulps or 
* Various rules have been given by phi- 
losophers for the measurement of altitudes 
by the barometer. ‘Those of Dr. Robison, 
De Luc, Sir George Shickburgh, and Dr. 
Hutton, may be seen in Dr. Gregory’s Me- 
chanics, beok 5, chap 2 
~“ 
Effects of mere Herlaceous Food on the Constitution. 
199 
juices alone, or mixed with a little 
coarse meal.* 
This new kind of food did not agree 
with the human constitution, and the 
general and constant result of this ex- 
clusive herbaceous regimen, continued 
for such a Jength of time, was univer- 
sal anasareca, without ascites or disease 
of the liver, or of any abdominal viscus. 
This state of dropsical effusion of 
which I have just spoken, continued 
during the whole of the time that such 
fool was used, even during the heat of 
suminer, and it did not disappear till 
after the harvest of 1817 by the return 
to a natural diet; but a few indivi- 
duals continued to have the face, abdo- 
men, legs or feet bloated for some 
months afterwards. 
But, unfortunately, all did not es- 
cape so cheaply, for many of the less 
vigorous, or who used this bad food too 
long, or too exclusively, or who de- 
pended for their subsistence upon the 
precarious support of .mendicity, fell 
victims, and were frequently found 
dead by the road side. My friend 
Guillaumed, having opened the bodies 
of six of these unfortunate beings, 
found the stomach and _ intestines 
extremely contiacted, and containing 
only masticated vegetables and her- 
baceous feeces; other individuals 
perished. not from hunger, but froma 
species of indigestion occasioned by the 
eating at the harvest too voraciously of 
barley bread. 
There were but few prevailing dis- 
eases this year, and very few patients. 
‘To confirm this grand but too me- 
lancholy faet, and to show how con- 
stant nature is, I shall add three ob- 
servations analogous to those I have 
already stated. 
1. The philosopher Heraclitus hav- 
ing, from misanthropy, retired. into 
the mountains, and having there lived 
entirely on herbs, became dropsical 
and died. 
YZ. In the year 536, under king 
Gontram, a famine similar to that of 
* Many of these poor creatures appeased 
their hunger with snails, of which they 
destroyed an ineredible number in the 
mountainous parts; those who eat them to 
excess were effected (as observed by Guil- 
Jaumod,) with a kind of stupor and nareo- 
ticism analogous to that which accom- 
panies slight poisoning by belladonna ; 
nevertheless, ihey suffered no eruption or 
cutaneous inflammation, similarto what has 
been many times observed to succeed the 
eating of mussels, &c. 
1817, 
