The powers of his digestion had always been weak and imperfect. He suffered under frequent and severe attacks of constitutional dispepsia, which could not be corrected by medicine. In his twentieth year he unfortunately induced an inveterate dry habit, by wearing a flannel waistcoat next his skin, during about twelve months; flannel, at that time, being pronounced a defence against colds, and a strengthener of the animal frame. This experiment super-induced a disagreeable affection, to which he has ever since been subject.
In the year 1793 he read Rousseau's Treatise on Education, which contains Plutarch's Essay on Flesh Eating. [This essay appears at p.p. 125—129, of this work.] His sensations would not permit him to eat animals any longer, since the action appeared to include in it an outrage both against Nature and Nature's God.
During his adherence to a vegetable regimen, the publisher was most agreeably surprised in finding his indigestion and flatulency wear off, and, at length subside. The state of his health was never so perfect as at the present time. He suffered much from the tooth-ach, which discontinued when he left off eating animals; and if his teeth had then been sound, he believes they would have been so at this hour.
He brought up one of his children on a vegetable diet to his fourteenth year; and the other to her sixth. Two healthier or stouter children, at these ages, could not be found. Various circumstances, which are not necessary to be detailed, estranged them, as associates in his favourite diet. He contemplates, with peculiar pleasure, the good fortune of Mr. Newton (author of "A Return to Nature; or
