34 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
‘‘ Ladies are requested to come early, in order to be agreeably accommodated
with seats, as the Lecture will be$n exactly at Seven o’clock.
“ N.B.-Dr. G. has not the least intention of lecturing any more for several
years in Edinburgh than the above four nights; and if the Chapel is not
pretty full the two first nights, he will not repeat the lecture as proposed the
two last nights, viz. on Wednesday and Thursday ; and as the shilling paid for
admission can only defray the various expenses, Dr. G. hopes that the inhabitants
of Edinburgh will esteem these lectures as very great and important favours
conferred upon them.
“ December, 1 7 8 3.
“All Dr. G.’s books and pamphlets are to be had at the Doctor’s house, and
at Mr. Brown’s, bookseller, Bridge Street.”
While his Temple of Health was in its glory, it cannot be doubted that
such an exhibition, lauded as it was on all hands in the most extravagant terms,
must have produced a great deal of money in such a city as London, where
every species of quackery is sure to meet with support and ehcouragement ; but
Doctor Graham, instead of realising a fortune, deeply involved himself by the
great expense he was put to in maintaining the establishment in proper splendour.
In his own expenditure he was very moderate ; for he not only abstained
from wine, spirits, and all strong liquors, but even from animal food-and,
consistently with this mode of life, he recommended the same practice to others ;
and whilst confined in the Jail of Edinburgh, for his attack on the civic authorities,
he preached-Sunday, August 17, 1783-a discourse upon Isaiah, XI.
6, “All flesh is grass;” in which he strongly inculcates the propriety of
abstinence from animal food. In this odd production, of which two editions
were afterwards published, he says, “ I bless God ! my friends ! that he has given
me grace and resolution to abstain totally from flesh and blood-from all liquors
but cold water and balsamic milk-and from all inordinate sensual indulgences.
Thrice happy ! supremely blessed is the man who, through life, abstains from
these things ; who, like me, washes his body and limbs every night and morning
with pure cold water-who breathes continually, summer and winter, day and
night, the free open cool air-and who, with unfeigned and active benevolence
towards every thing that hath life, fears and worships God in sincerity and in
truth.”
In addition to the peculiarities pointed out by the Doctor in his discourse,
he dissented in many other respects from the ordinary usages of mankind. He
wore no woollen clothes ; he slept on a hair-mattress, without feather-bed or
blankets, with all the windows open ; he said, and perhaps with some degree of
truth, that most of our diseases are owing to too much heat :-and he carried
his cool regimen to such an extent, that he was in terms with the tacksman of
the King‘s Park, for liberty to build a house upon the top of Arthur’s Seat, in
order to try how far he could bear the utmost degree of cold that the climate
