ON CHOLERA IN DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 
219 
In India, where cholera is said first to have appeared, one 
■class of the natives, the Hindoos, live entirely on vegetable mat¬ 
ter; while the other, the Mahomedans, arc allowed to take a 
portion of animal food ; and while the one is cut off at once by 
the disease, the other is said to stand it much better and longer, 
and is not so liable to be attacked. In the track which the 
disease has pursued, I am inclined to think that its victims are 
not, whether from necessity or choice, much in the habit of enjoy¬ 
ing any great portion of healthy animal food : and in this country, 
a great proportion of those who have fallen as its victims have 
been in such circumstances, or addicted to such habits, as to render 
it not likely that they could obtain a sufficient portion of animal 
food for the keeping up the healthy action of omnivorous digestive 
organs. 
While the human body may be supported and health main¬ 
tained upon a vegetable diet, and that too for a considerable 
period, still it must be acknowledged that, had the Author of 
iSature not intended that the human appetite should be indulged 
with the enjoyment of animal food, the digestive apparatus with 
which he is provided would not have been given; and, as the 
natural stimulus is necessary in a certain degree for exciting the 
natural functions of parts, it is not to be wondered at, that, by 
reducing the human body to the same diet and nutritive sti¬ 
muli as the herbivorous animals, it should be reduced to a 
state capable of being acted on by the same causes as in them, 
and in a similar manner. 
That the greater number of those who have fallen victims to 
cholera have been placed under the circumstances to which I re¬ 
fer, will appear evident when it is allowed that a large proportion 
have been addicted to habits of dissipation (the effects of the es¬ 
sence of vegetable matter); and, as a necessary consequence of 
such habits, themselves and their families reduced by the squan¬ 
dering of their means, and the general distress and depression of 
trade, to subsist entirely on a vegetable diet. The wife and her 
children, suffering by the drunkenness of the husband and father, 
are unable to obtain any thing but the most meagre diet, and that, 
too frequently, without the means necessary for the proper pre¬ 
paring or cooking it; while many or most of those who, in better 
circumstances, have fallen a sacrifice to cholera, have been re¬ 
duced to the necessity of a vegetable diet either bv the effects of 
dissipation on the constitution, or a disgust of animal food, the 
effects and natural consequences of other diseases. 
It may perhaps be observed, that these remarks will not hold good 
in warm climates, because the system there loathes animal food ; 
but if the climate reduces the bodv to such a state of disease, or 
