Pro-Vegetarian Pro-Vegan

Among the foremost activists opposing the drug therapists and offering another option was New York City's own Russell Trall, M.D., who was also a leading advocate of vegetarianism. Most who denounced medical mayhem and instead employed holistic, drugless, natural medicine were convinced that flesh foods had no place on the menu. (Anyone for bringing back the term "flesh foods"?)

In 1852, Trall founded the New York Hygieo-Therapeutic College, the first medical school to admit women on equal terms with men. Trall was influenced by Sylvester Graham and Isaac Jennings, M.D., who taught that the body is governed by natural laws originating from God and verified by observation.

Trall contended that when these laws were broken, sickness and death could result. A frugivorous diet--as mandated in Genesis and verified as natural for human beings by 19th-century studies of human anatomy--was one of the laws. When illness developed, rather than suppressing symptoms the drugless doctors sought to remove the causes. Once the causes were removed, the body tended to heal itself. Trall maintained that drugs harmed the body; they did not act upon the body but the body acted upon the drugs. For example, a laxative drug seemed to work only because the body rejected it. The drug itself did not cause the bowels to work.

Trained as an allopath, Trall had observed patients who had become well without drug intervention and those who had been made sicker by drugs. He noticed how the body was helped when patients were prescribed rest, "vegetable diets," treatments such as massage and hydrotherapy (the "water cure"), and direction to fill the mind with higher thoughts.

Trall was a sought-after doctor who even lectured at the Smithsonian Institution during the Civil War on behalf of soldiers. The doctor published more than a dozen books, which found an audience hungry to help themselves and to avoid the horrors and the sometimes fatal results of the regular doctors' medicine.

Hygieo-therapeutic Dr. Trall told his students that his practice was not lucrative, and the only reason they should become physicians was that they wanted to help the sick and teach them how to avoid sickness in the future.

Trall's views about medicine led to his vegetarianism and a vice presidency of the American Vegetarian Society. Like other vegetarians of his time, he abhorred cruelty to animals. In the 20th century, Herbert Shelton studied and then expanded Trall's work, which is today known as natural hygiene. Yet more than 100 years after Trall's death, and after billions of tax-payer dollars have been spent on health care, the nation has yet to examine the drugless doctor's ideas seriously.

He was an influential promoter of vegetarianism and was Vice-President of the American Vegetarian Society.[10] Trall's The Hygeian Home Cook-Book published in 1874 is the first known vegan cookbook in America.[11] The book contains recipes "without the employment of milk, sugar, salt, yeast, acids, alkalies, grease, or condiments of any kind."[11] Trall opposed the consumption of alcohol, coffee, meat, tea and the use of salt, sugar, pepper and vinegar.[7] He believed that spices were dangerous to health.[7]

In 1910, physician David Allyn Gorton noted that Trall's diet was "most simple and abstemious, consisting chiefly of Graham bread, hard Graham crackers, fruits, and nuts—two meals a day, without salt."[12]

https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/010747022

Fruits and farinacea the proper food of man :
being an attempt to prove, from history, anatomy, physiology, and chemistry, that the original, natural, and best diet of man is derived from the vegetable kingdom /
by John Smith, with notes and illustrations by R.T. Trall, M.D

 That the aboriginal diet of mankind was fruit, and that amongst persons and tribes of any degree of sensibility and refinement, butchering has been regarded as offensive, disgusting, and barbarous, are facts that indicate beyond controversy, on which side pure Nature and our moral Instincts range themselves in this discussion. 

“And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree in which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed, to you it shall be for food.” (Gen. i. 29.) 

Justifications of the slaughter and consumption of animals founded on the permissions of Scripture, prove far too-much. They would not only justify slavery, divorce, and polygamy,—which were equally departures and descents from the original and highest order of social-life,—but they would destroy all faith in scripture revelation itself. Christ, with a Divine indignation, has for ever rebuked and repudiated this shocking style of inference. 

Ellen White [prophet of Seventh-day Adventism] received her first major health reform vision, June 6, 1863, in the home of Aaron Hilliard, at Otsego, Michigan. In this vision, for the first time, God’s people were urged to abstain from flesh food in general and from swine’s flesh in particular. Ellen White characterized this vision as “great light from the Lord,” adding, “I did not seek this light; I did not study to obtain it; it was given to me by the Lord to give to others.”

Amplifying this upon another occasion, she added, "The Lord presented a general plan before me. I was shown that God would give to His commandmentkeeping people a reform diet, and that as they received this, their disease and suffering would be greatly lessened. I was shown that this work would progress." 

Ellen's personal response was prompt and positive: 

"I accepted the light on health reform as it came to me."

 "I at once cut meat out of my bill of fare."  

"I broke away from everything at once—from meat and butter, and from three meals." 

At the dedication of Battle Creek College, January 4, 1875 Ellen White described a vision given the day before in which she saw printing presses in different countries, publishing the message. When James, her husband, pressed her to name the countries, she said she could not recall the names. “Oh, yes,” she said, “I remember one - the angel said ‘Australia.’” - DF 105j, WCW, “A Comprehensive Vision.” S. N. Haskell was present, and he made up his mind he would proclaim the message in Australia. But it was ten years before the church reached the point in growth that it felt it could support him in carrying the message to that faraway land in the South Pacific. (4BIO 12.3)

https://m.egwwritings.org/en/book/665.1440 

Chapter 19:

On the day of the races at Krasnoe Selo, Vronsky had come earlier
than usual to eat beefsteak in the common messroom of the
regiment. He had no need to be strict with himself, as he had
very quickly been brought down to the required light weight; but
still he had to avoid gaining flesh, and so he eschewed
farinaceous and sweet dishes. He sat with his coat unbuttoned
over a white waistcoat, resting both elbows on the table, and
while waiting for the steak he had ordered he looked at a French
novel that lay open on his plate. He was only looking at the
book to avoid conversation with the officers coming in and out;
he was thinking.

He was thinking of Anna's promise to see him that day after the
races. But he had not seen her for three days, and as her
husband had just returned from abroad, he did not know whether
she would be able to meet him today or not, and he did not know
how to find out. He had had his last interview with her at his
cousin Betsy's summer villa. He visited the Karenins' summer
villa as rarely as possible. Now he wanted to go there, and he
pondered the question how to do it.

"Of course I shall say Betsy has sent me to ask whether she's
coming to the races. Of course, I'll go," he decided, lifting
his head from the book. And as he vividly pictured the happiness
of seeing her, his face lighted up.

"Send to my house, and tell them to have out the carriage and
three horses as quick as they can," he said to the servant, who
handed him the steak on a hot silver dish, and moving the dish up
he began eating.

From the billiard room next door came the sound of balls
knocking, of talk and laughter. Two officers appeared at the
entrance-door: one, a young fellow, with a feeble, delicate
face, who had lately joined the regiment from the Corps of Pages;
the other, a plump, elderly officer, with a bracelet on his
wrist, and little eyes, lost in fat.

Vronsky glanced at them, frowned, and looking down at his book as
though he had not noticed them, he proceeded to eat and read at
the same time.

"What? Fortifying yourself for your work?" said the plump
officer, sitting down beside him.

"As you see," responded Vronsky, knitting his brows, wiping his
mouth, and not looking at the officer.

"So you're not afraid of getting fat?" said the latter, turning a
chair round for the young officer.

"What?" said Vronsky angrily, making a wry face of disgust, and
showing his even teeth.

"You're not afraid of getting fat?"

"Waiter, sherry!" said Vronsky, without replying, and moving the
book to the other side of him, he went on reading.

The plump officer took up the list of wines and turned to the
young officer.

"You choose what we're to drink," he said, handing him the card,
and looking at him.

"Rhine wine, please," said the young officer, stealing a timid
glance at Vronsky, and trying to pull his scarcely visible
mustache. Seeing that Vronsky did not turn round, the young
officer got up.

"Let's go into the billiard room," he said.

The plump officer rose submissively, and they moved towards the
door.

http://www.publicbookshelf.com/romance/anna-two/day-races

After a spiritual crisis around the time of his 50th birthday, the Russian literary giant gave up smoking, drinking, eating meat and even the rights to his own work. He became a staunch advocate of pacifism and a vocal supporter of vegetarianism.

Unfortunately for Tolstoy, 19th-century Russia was short on quinoa and Quorn. Instead he became obsessed with eggs, living off a rotating menu of 12 egg dishes including poached eggs with croutons, eggs with Brussels sprouts and beans, and omelette in soup. Sweet pastries and baked items were off-limits – except on birthdays and special occasions when Mrs Tolstoy would prepare a very sour lemon pie.

As I put the finishing touches to the table, I imagine myself bustling around the kitchen at Yasnaya Polyana, being occasionally interrupted by one of the Tolstoys’s 13 children or Tolstoy wandering in wearing his two hats (in his later years he got very sensitive to cold on his head). The recipe book’s main protagonist is Tolstaya herself who, aside from catering to all of her husband’s vegetarian wishes (she remained a staunch meat-eater until just before her death) and putting up with him turning up late to every meal, also transcribed by hand the entirety of War and Peace in its original form – seven times longer than the multi-tome version we know today.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/06/war-and-no-pieces-of-cake-dining-from-the-tolstoy-family-cookbook

In the morning, I do a little reading on Tolstoy’s dietetics. The benefit of this is twofold: first, I can learn a little bit about why I’m eating what I’m eating, and second, I can fill the time before I’m allowed to have anything at all, which isn’t until mid-afternoon. Here’s what I learn: While most of us know Leo Tolstoy as the writer of books too long to suffer through, few are aware of the contributions the prolific Russian made to the world of dieting. Yes, amid the splendor of nineteenth-century Slavic cuisine — fish eggs, pork jelly, and veal topped with béchamel sauce — Tolstoy had the gall to extoll vegetarianism. Not only did he condemn carnivorous man as inevitably inert and amoral but he said that eating too much at all was a sign of lack of self-discipline and an impious nature.

But what I want to know is: what can rigid beliefs do for one’s waistline? Tolstoy’s manifestos on vegetarianism convinced Gandhi to adopt a plant-based diet, and he eventually got a body so trim he strutted about confidently on the international stage in nothing but a loincloth. Could a staunch belief in the nourishing power of bread, water, and egomania do the same for me?

For a moment, I pine for a few strips of bacon, but then I remember that Tolstoy insisted a man who ate an animal took on its characteristics, and also risked exciting carnal passions. “A man who eats too much,” he wrote in the introduction to The Ethics of Diet, “cannot strive against laziness, while a gluttonous and idle man will never he able to contend with sexual lust.”

Today I am fasting. Tolstoy believed that abstaining from meat eating is a step toward fasting, which is the key to living a Christ-like life and recreating the Kingdom of God here on earth.

https://www.thehairpin.com/2016/09/i-tried-tolstoys-diet/