By the first meeting of the Union, Nordhausen, 19th May, 1869 (Ibid. No. 10, pp. 149, 150), Baltzer had learnt better.Various names had been proposed, "Self-reformers," "Frugalists," "Fruit-eaters." Vienna friends wished to retain the term Vegetarian, as it had been naturalised and was historically significant. It was resolved to keep it, understanding that it denoted "the vigour of the whole man" (die Kräftigkeit des gesammten Menschen).
At the same meeting (p. 156) the question was put, milk, eggs, honey? "Are animal products (pace Sir H. Thompson) of living creatures allowable as food, or to be recommended?" After some discussion, the President remarked that such questions could only be settled by very detailed investigations from various points of view. The German society proscribes narcotics and intoxicants, but is still neutral with regard to animal products.[1]
In No. 33, p. 516 (9th Oct., 1871), K. Fischer is rebuked by Baltzer for deriving Vegetarian from "vegetable"; we do not call ourselves "Vegetabilians"; yet even here Baltzer has not quite learnt the truth. He still makes vegetare the root.[2]
In No. 39 (26th April, 1872), pp. 614-6, after some unfortunate suggestions, Colonel Altmann sensibly urges that it is a little too late to change the name, though the captious may insist on understanding that the grasses are our chief dish; or that we barely "vegetate," lead a life too low for an animate creature.
In No. 43 (10th September, 1872), p. 686, Baltzer clearly defines the relation of Vegetarianism to medicine:—
Vegetarianism is the theory, and, so far as it is reduced to practice, the art, of healthy life: it lays down the standard and teaches us to follow it. Medicine has to do with the diseased man, and should teach how, in the given case, to aid nature in her efforts to cure.
Theodore Hahn, Baltzer's father in Vegetarianism, in his Paradise of Health, Lost and Regained ("Das Paradies der Gesundheit, das verlorene und das wiedergewonnene, Cöthen, Schettler, 1879") p. 2, says that what was known to the Greeks as hygiene or general dietetics,—to Hufeland as Makrobiotik or the art of long life,—has, of late, from the Latin word vegetus, lively, brisk, active, vigorous, been called Vegetarianism.
