Spalding and Magan's Unpublished Manuscript Testimonies - Ellen G. White

urgent pleas were made that such an one was
unable to eat this or that, and that their stomach
could take care of meat better than it could
anything else. Then I was enticed to place it on my
table. The use of cheese began to creep in, because
some liked cheese; but I soon controlled that. But
when the selfishness of taking lives of animals to
gratify a perverted appetite was presented to me by
a Catholic woman, kneeling at my feet, I felt
ashamed and distressed. I saw it in a new light, and
I said, I will no longer patronize the butcher; I will
not have the flesh of corpses on my table.
You have told me what the advantage of a meat
diet is to you. I must tell you what a non-flesh diet
has done for me. Ever since the stone was thrown
in my face, when I was nine years old, I have had
difficulty. At that time I nearly lost my life through
the loss of blood. Dropsy then set in, and since I
have suffered very much from kidney affliction.
After a long sickness of eleven months of
malarial fever and rheumatism, I was not able to
ride without the most easy spring seat. Even when
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