The Bloodless Revolution

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Radical Vegetarians and the Discovery of India By Tristram Stuart. Published by HarperCollins, 2006. ISBN 0007128924. £25. This is an impressive book in several ways. Firstly, it is a thick book with 445 pages plus some 65 pages of bibliography and 90 pages of notes which reveal the deep scholarship. There are many illustrations to the text and some finely produced coloured plates. The publishers have produced a fine book. The Bloodless Revolution refers to the effect made on Western thinkers when they read the accounts of the navigators who discovered in India

peoples, mainly the Brahmins, who lived healthily without meat, condemned any cruelty to animals and absolutely forbade eating them. Moreover, they discovered a civilisation that pre-dated Christianity and seemed to challenge its ethical basis. These people who abstained from flesh foods were found to be perfectly healthy and gentle in their ways. This was a tremendous challenge to Western European thought and promoted a debate that has continued for the centuries up to the present. Francis Bacon, Chancellor in the early days of the 17th century was also a renowned philosopher, who was preoccupied with discovering the secrets of a long and healthy life, became convinced that eating plants was important for a healthy life. He inspired Thomas Bushell to take up a plant-based diet on which the latter subsisted until his death aged 80. There followed the intellectual ferment that led to the struggle between Parliamentarians and Royalists, and a questioning of the established order of things. Roger Crab, who had lived through the Civil War, turned against. the social order, became a pacifist and a vegan living outside society and arguing against the established Church. His book The English Hermit proudly proclaimed his

diet of roots and herbs (ie leafy greens). Another vegan follower of the plant-based diet was Thomas Tryon who praised the healthgiving properties of the vegetable diet in his book The Way to Health, Long Life and Happiness. He even pointed out all the environmental advantages of the plant-based diet - denouncing pollution, consumerism and deforestation. In a far different category, aristocratic and Royalist, John Evelyn, also proclaimed the virtues of vegetarianism. Disgusted with the dissolute court life of Charles II, he devoted himself to the study of plants and

gardening. At his estate of Sayes Court he developed 38 beds of vegetables and an orchard of 300 fruit trees leading to an 'apple tree walk' ending with a moated island covered in asparagus, fruit bushes and a mulberry tree. His book Acetaria. A Discourse of Sallets in 1699 was full of instructions on the growing and preparation of ingredients for Salads - a contrast to the prevalent flesh-filled banquets. The great scientist Isaac Newton, who discovered the force of gravity when musing upon falling apples, also studied diet and was convinced of

the value of the vegan diet. Apparently and appropriately, he was very fond of apples but not very interested in food, picking uninterestedly at the plate put before him, his mind being elsewhere, and only eating out of necessity. His search to find a common basis for various religions, led him to support the idea of vegetarianism but we have no evidence that he took up the plant diet. Philosopher Descartes came to the conclusion that, because they could not speak, animals have no souls and were considered as being mere automatons that humans, being superior, could use in any way they liked. Paradoxically, he was also convinced of the superiority of

the vegetable diet. At his own table, he ate turnips, potatoes, salads and wholemeal bread, believing this would prolong his life - having inherited a bad chest condition from his mother who had died young. In 1699, Edward Tyson who was anatomy lecturer at Surgeon's Hall in London, dissected an ape and saw its similarity to the body of a human. He quoted travel books that said that apes "feed upon fruits that they find in the woods and upon nuts; for they eat no kind of flesh". Here was more evidence for proving the vegetarian argument. The 18th century was the Age of Enlightenment when thinkers refused to accept the strict precepts from the Bible and dared to think independently. Many of them continued to assert the greater value of vegetable foods over that of flesh foods. The influential philosopher John Locke in his Thoughts Concerning Education, 1692, suggested that children would be much healthier if they "were kept wholly from flesh the first three or four years of their lives". Later in the 18th century, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the apostle of sentimental Romanticism, advocated the Return to Nature and vegetable foods. In his hugely popular sentimental novel Julie the heroine "liked neither meat, nor stews, nor salt and has never tasted wine straight. Excellent vegetable, eggs, cream, fruit; those are her daily fare, and were it not for fish, of which she is also very fond, she would be a true Pythagorean". However, when her lover was catching fishes, she insisted that he should throw his catches back into the water. She said, these are suffering animals, let us set them free; let us enjoy their pleasure at having escaped danger. In Emile, a treatise on education, Rousseau insists that his model child should be brought up on a meatless diet to avoid the

brutalising effect of meat eating, which is all too evident in carnivorous societies like the English who were "more cruel and ferocious", whereas vegetarian peoples like the Banians and Zoroastrians were "the gentlest of men" (Banians being a sect of Hinduism).The British of those days were very insistent on the virtues of roast beef. Many in 18th century Britain were greatly influenced by the persuasions and example of a Scot, George Cheyne, who suffered from severe obesity, weighing 34 stone when he indulged in the wining and dining of London society. By chance, he heard of a Doctor Taylor who had cured himself of epilepsy by

a diet of only milk. Cheyne adopted a diet of milk with seeds, bread, roots and fruit. Soon he lost 18 stone and although to the amusement of his contemporaries, he remained fat, he lived to the age of 72 and became a legendary and influential figure. Physician Antonio Cocchi of Florence, who lived in London for some years, was another staunch advocate of the vegetarian diet on the grounds of nutrition, focusing on the harmful effect of meat and the benefits of vegetables. Cocchi promulgated the theory discovered by Johann Bachstrom in 1734 that the scurvy that struck down naval crews in the 18th century was caused by a deficiency of

vegetables. Incidentally, the citrus cure for scurvy was well known to sailors as early as 1498. Of course, many were ready to refute and ridicule the vegetable diet. These countervegetarians justified meat-eating by arguing that if slaughter was quick and painless (which they assumed was the case) no harm was done by eating them and some argued that we benefited them and increased overall happiness by increasing the numbers of animals. Others said that if we did not kill animals they would be too numerous and pose a threat to humans. It can be seen that the arguments for vegetarianism and the counter arguments used today have been

running for centuries past. Travellers who visited places where no humans had been before, like the Falkland Islands, reported that the animals there had no fear of humans and far from fleeing before them, would perch on their shoulders and crawl between their legs. They concluded that it was only because humans had harmed them that they had learned to fear them.Peter H

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