WHAT IS VEGETARIANISM?
An Address at the Annual Meeting of the Vegetarian Society,
held at Manchester, Oct. 14th, 1885, and now revised.
By JOHN E. B. MAYOR.
N the June and July numbers of the Nineteenth Century, for 1879,[1] Sir Henry Thompson confessed (a) that the vegetable eater, pure and simple, can extract from his food all the principles necessary for the growth and support of the body, as well as for the production of heat and force; (b) that by most stomachs haricot beans are more easily digested than meat is, and consuming weight for weight, the eater feels lighter and less oppressed, as a rule, after the beans, while the comparative cost is greatly in favour of the latter; (c) a given area of land cropped with cereals and pulse will support a population more than three times as numerous as that which can besustained on the same land devoted to the growth of cattle.
In the May number of the same magazine for this year (1885, pp. 777-799), Sir Henry, in an article on diet, approves our teaching, but threatens to rob us of our name. The Rev. James Clark (D.R. for July, pp. 189-192) has appealed from the charge there brought against us, to the definition of Vegetarianism, not only as given by those who, in 1847, gave currency to the name, but as contained in the official documents of the Society, and blazoned on the frontispiece of the D.R.[2]
- ↑ Reviewed by our late V.P., the Rev. C. H. Collyns, in D.R., 1880, pp. 49–52.
- ↑
VEGETARIANISM
(V.E.M.)That is, the practice of living on the products of the Vegetable kingdom, with or without the addition of Eggs, and Milk and its products (butter and cheese), to the exclusion of fish, flesh, and fowl.
