Til l: VETERINARY ART IN INDIA. 
163 
An objection may be advanced to this, or, rather, a query. If 
the brute creation can accumulate fat from water, or the most com- 
mon and least nutritious herbs, why cannot the human subject 
receive the same benefit from water and vegetables 1 In reply, 1 
have to remark, that such instances are not uncommon. Many of 
the natives of India live on rice and water, the lower class of Irish 
on potatoes and skim-milk, many young children use scarcely any 
thing else; and there is scarcely a doubt that a person elevated from 
infancy on vegetables and water may be fat and healthy : yet I 
imagine the human subject requires a different kind of food; and 
it is known that persons using animal diet are much stronger than 
the former description of people. When once a person has been 
accustomed to animal food, he can seldom exist long without 
it, for the stomach and bowels, once accustomed to a strong sti- 
mulus, will suffer from so great a reduction as to vegetables and 
water ; and it is this deprivation of stimulus and want of solidity 
in the vegetable food which would injure the system more than 
the immediate want of nourishment, although the latter might 
exist to a considerable degree. Indigestion would take place, 
and the lacteals, losing their accustomed stimulus, would refuse 
to perform their functions; for it is an invariable rule in the laws 
of irritability, that the fibre, once stimulated, will require a yet 
stronger one to produce the same effect. 
Previous to my leaving England, a circumstance occurred 
which I think cannot well be accounted for by any other operation 
than by this property in the lacteals and glands. 
A French prisoner, of the name of Donery, taken in the Hoche 
by Sir J. B. Warren, was one of nine brothers remarkable lor 
their voracious appetite. The above prisoner was allowed the 
rations of ten men daily, which could not quiet his voracious 
craving for food. That the fact might be well attested, Admiral 
Child and his son, Doctors Cochrane and Johnson, and many other 
respectable persons, were present on a day appointed to witness 
the quantity of food he would eat, and the effects produced. The 
following is the quantity consumed in twelve hours, and he yet 
was requesting more, which was refused : — Cow’s raw udder, 4 lbs., 
solid beef, raw, 10 lbs., tallow candles, 2 lbs. : total of solids, 161bs., 
and five bottles of porter. 
When he was with the French army, and much distressed for 
food, he used to eat daily five or six pounds of grass ; but veget- 
ables, and even bread, in general did not agree with him. 
The diet which he preferred, and which also appears most grate- 
ful to his constitution, was entirely animal, and that raw. When 
in those situations in which he could not be supplied with whole- 
some provisions, he would eat live cats, dogs, and rats : of the 
