Wisdom's Dictates, or, Aphorisms & Rules, Physical, Moral, and Divine, for Preserving the Health of the Body, and the Peace of the Mind is a 1691 book by the English writer Thomas Tryon. It consists of aphorisms on health, morality, religion, temperance and abstinence, followed by a vegetarian "Bill of Fare" containing 75 dishes made without flesh or fish.
Contents
Background and publication
Thomas Tryon (1634–1703) was an advocate of vegetarianism, temperance and religiously grounded nonviolence. Wisdom's Dictates was published in London by Thomas Salisbury in 1691.
Contents
The main part of the book consists of aphorisms and rules described on the title page as "physical, moral, and divine". Its sections include advice on health and abstinence, temperance, the biblical story of Cain and Abel, human inventions, bread and other "clean foods", the dangers of fat foods, and foods described as easy, innocent and healthy.
The final section, "A Bill of Fare", gives 75 vegetarian dishes that Tryon presented as alternatives to meals made from flesh or fish. Tryon described the dishes in moral and religious terms as prepared without "Flesh and Blood" or the "Dying groans" of animals. He addressed the section to readers who wished to reject the custom of killing and eating fellow creatures. The recipes include simple pottages made with vegetables.
Reception and later discussion
The book has been discussed in connection with the history of vegetarianism. The Vegetarian Resource Group states that the book encountered by Benjamin Franklin as a young printer's apprentice was probably Wisdom's Dictates, which it describes as a digest of Tryon's longer health writings.
The book was included in Feast & Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 1500–1800, an exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum. The museum described it as a guide to good living through a vegetarian diet, in which Tryon argued that a godly and healthy life could be lived without killing animals for food.