Written as part of the notes to Queen Mab and issued as a pamphlet in 1813, this short essay argues that humanity’s fall began with eating flesh and drinking spirits. Shelley ranges from the Prometheus myth to comparative anatomy and the filth of city water, claiming that a vegetable diet would cure disease, crime and tyranny together.
A key text in the history of vegetarianism; its medical claims are those of 1813, but the moral argument still provokes. Download the free EPUB.