Effect of Diet | AdventAI

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Nov 16, 1882

Effect of Diet.

DR. J. B. FINLEY was for many years chaplain of the Ohio penitentiary. He was very careful to study the characters and observe the change in the dispositions of the convicts. Of the effect of diet, he says in his "Memorials of Prison Life," p. 40:—

"These men were once among the boldest of villians, but the diet, the temperance, the active and steady labor, and the moral discipline of a prison, soon soften down the most daring and reckless spirits, and sometimes effect a perfect change in their dispositions. We learn from the facts here daily presented, the great law, that the dispositions of men are made very much by their habits. Let a person eat much meat, feed abundantly, drink spirituous liquors, spend much time in idle and wicked conversation, and take no thought of governing or even checking his natural appetites, and he is almost sure to become a fearless, violent, ambitious villian; but take him now from the excessive indulgence of his animal propensities, oblige him to spend his time in silence, keep him from the use of spirits, let his diet be nourishing but not exciting, consisting chiefly of vegetables, then raise his mind to intellectual, moral, and religious topics, even though it be only occasionally, and the whole man begins to wear a new aspect—to feel a new current of emotions—to enjoy a serener and higher kind of being. Imprisonment, therefore, on any plan, is often a blessing to these desperate characters, some of whom go out reformed in soul, mind, and body. We see, too, that the world at large has a great interest in the habits of the people. Savages, who live mostly on flesh, are the most ferocious of mankind; while those nations and tribes which feed on vegetables, chiefly, are generally the most peaceable, docile, and intellectual."