as exercise a direct or indirect influence over the development of his organization, which is the foundation upon which the superstructure of all that is great, good, and desirable in human nature must be erected.
To no subject, perhaps, do these observations more directly apply, than to that of human diet. Every latitude of the earth has its peculiar productions; and every division of society has its special and long-established modes of satisfying the hunger and thirst, which remind man of the changes incessantly taking place in the animal structure. In the warmer regions of our planet, vegetable substances chiefly constitute the nutriment of our race; some feasting on delicious fruits; others on food of a more farinaceous description, such as rice, sago, and maize, with a variety of other grains and roots. In temperate climes, man appears of a more omnivorous character; and, while indulging his appetite with a multiplicity of rich dishes from the vegetable world, he is still more luxurious in highly-seasoned preparations from the flesh of almost every class and order of the animal kingdom. In the colder regions,—so unfavorable to the production of vegetable substances, as well as to human development,—man is under the necessity of resorting to an almost exclusively animal diet; so that the Esquimaux feeds with as great a relish upon train-oil and sawdust, as the Wallachian does on fruit, or the Brahman on rice; and to the Greenlander, the half-frozen, half-putrid flesh of the seal is as choice a morceau as a woodcock to an English gourmand. Thus, through the various climates of our globe, every variety of food—vegetable as well as animal—is compelled, in one shape or other, to supply nutriment to the human organism; yet health and long life seem limited to no particular district, nor confined to any precise kind of diet. We are not from this, however, to conclude, that man may indulge in all kinds of food with impunity; or that each kind, whether of an animal or vegetable nature, is equally productive of a healthy state of the body, or equally favorable to longevity; for though the habits of a nation may be correct as regards food, many other injurious customs or circumstances may neutralize the good effects of a natural diet, and place the people on a par with those whose food is not so well adapted to their constitution. Most people in this country are aware of the necessity of attending to diet; and it is a matter of universal experience, that in hot climates, a mixed diet, in which animal food abounds, is productive of disease; while in cold climates, fat, oil,[1] or other carbonaceous compounds, are
- ↑ This passage seems obscure. Fat and oil may be necessary as food in cold climates, because nothing else can be procured in sufficient quantity; not because of their carbonaceous nature merely. All ordinary vegetable foods contain all the carbon requisite for sustenance, respiration, and animal heat, as far as the element of carbon is concerned. T.
