MARCH 221 



Some years ago all these symptoms in various degrees 

 were mine, and I fully expected that they would increase 

 with age ; but I was wrong — by gradual steps they all 

 disappeared. Nothing, of course, makes the old young; 

 but bad health, the chief dread of old age, I no longer 

 have. I can work out in the garden with even greater 

 impunity than I could have done twenty years ago. I 

 take long journeys — say, of twenty- seven hours— with- 

 out fatigue, and I sleep excellently. This all reads like 

 an advertisement for a patent medicine, but it is noth- 

 ing of the kind; in fact, for years I have taken no medi- 

 cine at all. But if I am asked to account for this im- 

 provement, in one word it is — diet. I have become an 

 ardent advocate of non-meat-eating, but without any of 

 those sentimental feelings about the killing of animals 

 which many people have who yet continue to partake of 

 ordinary food ; nor did it begin from the belief that 

 meat is a frequent conveyor of poisons. I left it off at 

 first simply as an experiment. I believe that meat, 

 especially if eaten daily — the small quantities ferment 

 the other foods — is on the whole deleterious to the health 

 of the human race, and simply poisonous to the gouty, 

 the rheumatic, or the neuralgic. 



All through my lifetime there seems to have been the 

 strongest belief everywhere in Europe, amongst all 

 classes (especially those who are habitually over -fed), 

 that if they feel weak or ansemie, or what is called ' be- 

 low par,* therefore they must try and eat more, and cram 

 themselves with stimulating food, such as meat-juices, 

 beef-tea, or even raw beef, and — as with drugs or alco- 

 hol — for a time it often answers. The origin of this 

 belief, no doubt, has come from the teaching of the 

 medical profession, only disputed now and then by a 

 solitary member. Surely this system is nearly on the 

 level, and only one degree less harmful, than yielding to 



