The Gospel and Science of Health: Hygienic Ideology in America, 1830-1920

Abstract

If book selections indicate cultural trends, then health is current fad in America. According to New York Times, four of nonfiction bestsellers deal with exercise and diet, as do three of top eleven trade paperbacks. They explain everything from physiology of aerobic exercise to daily routines for thinning one's thighs. Among authors are a fitness expert, founder of a weight control program, and a Hollywood celebrity. The bestseller lists also include parodies of health guides. Comedian George Bums offers the ultimate diet, sex and exercise book, while Plain Jane spoofs workout plan of her attractive namesake. Popular health books span sublime and ridiculous. Yet where is line between responsible information and sheer buffoonery? How does one differentiate between teacher, proselytizer, fanatic, huckster, and clown? Health advocates have been a part of American culture for generations, and stereotypes and suspicions about them are equally old. Contemporaries dismissed Sylvester Graham as a master of humbug in 1830s and today his legacy seems to be little more than a cracker. In Crusaders for Fitness, James C. Whorton concedes that the comic stature of American health reformer has been well deserved. His cast of characters, in several senses of word, include Sylvester Graham, William Andrus Alcott, Martin Luther Holbrook, Horace Fletcher, John Harvey Kellogg, professional physical educators, and many lesser-known figures who offered advice about diet, exercise, and hygiene between 1830 and 1920. Studying their biographies, Whorton finds some merit in caricature. Sickly as children or young adults, many regained health through self-experimentation and spent their lives popularizing their discoveries as both science and gospel, despite contrary medical opinion. Arguing, however, that their serious side . . . has been badly neglected (p. 3), Whorton looks for historical figure behind