“The Most Wonderful Specimen of Man”

Abstract

Abstract In the early twentieth century, Eugen Sandow popularized bodybuilding by selling it as a scientific discipline to a wide and international clientele. Linking bodybuilding to medical science, Sandow marketed it as a therapeutic system that improved the whole body, internally and externally. While the field of Sandow studies has grown lately, with a couple of essays discussing his marketing techniques, no studies have closely considered his persistent use of popular science in the widescale selling of bodybuilding. This article aims to fill this gap. Drawing on Sandow's many publications, media coverage, and biographical information, it argues that Sandow's finesse in linking bodybuilding to popular science—practices in anatomical science, ideas from evolutionary biology, and rhetoric regarding energy efficiency, machine technology, and factory systems—helped him conceptualize a curative physical culture. With the new medical-scientific framework that Sandow promoted internationally through print media and publicity campaigns, bodybuilding became a mainstream activity for both men and women across class and cultural divides, and the health and fitness business grew into a lucrative global industry. Along the way, Sandow taught people about the human body and changed our ways of viewing and knowing it.