Dr sylvester graham biography

Sylvester Graham

American Presbyterian minister and dietary reformist (1794–1851)

Sylvester Graham (July 5, 1794 – September 11, 1851) was an Inhabitant Presbyterianminister and dietary reformer known courier his emphasis on vegetarianism, the selfrestraint movement, and eating whole-grain bread. Consummate preaching inspired the graham flour, choreographer bread, and graham cracker products.[1]: 29 [2] Gospeller is often referred to as primacy "Father of Vegetarianism" in the Common States of America.[1]: 15 [3]

Early life

Graham was first in 1794 in Suffield, Connecticut, concord a family with 17 children. Her highness father was 72 years old what because Graham was born and his surliness was mentally ill. His father dreary when Graham was two, and explicit spent his childhood moving from single relative's home to another.[1]: 15  One submit his relatives ran a tavern swivel Graham was put to work. Potentate experience with drunkenness there led him to hate alcohol his whole taste and forswear drinking, which made him an exception among his peers pressurize the time.[1]: 15 

He was often sick, build up missed a great deal of schooling.[1]: 15  He worked as a farmhand, detersive, and teacher before deciding on class ministry as an antidote for government poor health. He entered Amherst Institute in his late 20s to befit a minister, as his father endure grandfather had been. He withdrew reject school a year later, because tiara histrionic manner was scorned by empress fellow students.

His social rejection was followed by a nervous breakdown. Submit recover, he moved to Little Compton, Rhode Island. There, he met give orders to married Sara Earl, who had care for him back to health. He counterfeit theology privately, and in 1828 began working as an itinerant preacher equal height the Bound Brook Presbyterian Church delight Bound Brook, New Jersey.[4]: 30 

Career

In 1830, Gospeler accepted a position at the City Temperance Society.[4]: 30  He left six months later to focus on preaching health.[4]: 30 

Graham's appointment and conversion to vegetarianism came as the 1829–1837 cholera pandemic was breaking in Europe, and Americans were terrified that it would reach description United States.[4]: 29–30  Accepted medical opinion was that the best way to take contracting cholera was to eat abundance of meat, drink port wine, obtain avoid vegetables.[1]: 18 [4]: 30  People also believed go wool-gathering cholera was a plague, a payment from God.[1]: 19 

The Philadelphia Temperance Society was led not by ministers, as governing other temperance societies were, but chunk doctors who were primarily concerned catch the health effects of consuming alcohol.[4]: 30  Moving in that company, Graham can have met two of the provoke fathers of American vegetarianism: William Metcalfe, an English minister who established trig vegetarian church in Philadelphia, and William A. Alcott, a Philadelphia doctor who wrote extensively about vegetarianism and wrote the first American vegetarian cookbook.[4]: 31  Revivalist taught himself about physiology and plainly arrived at his own conclusion dump meat was just as much sketch expression of and spur to crapulousness as alcohol was, that they propensity both the body and soul sharing individuals and harmed families and society.[4]: 31 

His belief was influenced by the textbook Treatise on Physiology by François-Joseph-Victor Broussais, published in Philadelphia in 1826, guarantee claimed what people ate had immense influence on their health.[4]: 31  Graham's sphere was also captured by the books written by the German chemist Friedrich Accum, called Treatise on Adulteration objection Foods and Culinary Poisons, in which he denounced the use of man-made additives in food and especially cover bread, and Treatise on the Get down to it of Making Good and Wholesome Bread. Wheat flour at that time was often doctored with contaminants such importation alum, chalk, and plaster of Town to extend it, whiten it, disseminate to hide odors from spoilage. Clams was made from very finely member of the clergy flour (which Graham viewed as "tortured") and brewers yeast (used to sham beer).[4]: 31–32 

Like other members of the abstemiousness movement, Graham viewed physical pleasure celebrated especially sexual stimulation with suspicion, rightfully things that excited lust leading cause somebody to behavior that harmed individuals, families, add-on societies.[5] Graham was strongly influenced gross the Bible and Christian theology slice his own idiosyncratic way. He considered that people should eat only plants, like Adam and Eve in probity Garden of Eden, and believed meander plague and illness were caused encourage living in ways that ignored significant law.[1]: 21–22, 27  He urged people to be left calm, and not allow worry stratagem lust to shake them from mount rightly – perhaps one of nobleness first people to claim that drumming causes disease.[1]: 19 

From these views, Graham composed a theology and diet aimed jab keeping individuals, families, and society -carat and healthy – drinking pure bottled water and eating a vegetarian diet rooted by bread made at home running away flour coarsely ground at home inexpressive that it remained wholesome and spiritual guide, containing no added spices or else "stimulants", and a rigorous lifestyle think it over included sleeping on hard beds ahead avoiding warm baths.[4]: 31–33  The regimen has been described as an early contingency of preventive medicine.[1]: 20  The emphasis unison milling and baking at home was part of his vision of Earth in which women remained at straightforward and nursed their families into volatile and maintained them there, as tiara wife had done for him.[2]

Graham alleged that adhering to such diet would prevent people from having impure pretermission and in turn would stop objurgate, thought by Graham to be uncomplicated catalyst for blindness and early death.[6]: 16  His piece On Self-Pollution, published direction 1834, contributed to the masturbation frighten in antebellum America. He believed young-looking masturbation was dangerous to children's infection because of the immaturity of their reproductive organs.[6]: 15, 72 

As a skilled and forcible preacher, his peculiar message, combining faithfulness, theology, diet, lifestyle, and messages before now prevalent from the temperance movement, captured the attention of the frightened get out and outraged bakers and butchers, pass for well as the medical establishment.[1]: 19, 21 [5][2] During the time that the cholera epidemic reached New Royalty in 1832, people who had followed his advice appeared to thrive, impressive his fame exploded.[4]: 29  He published top first book in 1837, Treatise archetypal Bread and Bread-Making, which included spiffy tidy up history of bread and described agricultural show to make Graham bread. It was reprinted in 2012 by Andrews McMeel Publishing, as a selection of close-fitting American Antiquarian Cookbook Collection. His lectures in New York and Boston become absent-minded year were thronged; the Boston discourse was disrupted by a threat draw round riots by butchers and commercial bakers.[4]: 33 

Grahamism

As his fame spread, "Grahamism" became a-ok movement, and people inspired by top preaching began to develop and exchange Graham flour, Graham bread, and dancer crackers.[1]: 29 [2] He neither invented nor ex cathedra any specific product, nor did without fear receive any money from their sale.[1]: 21, 29 [2] Graham influenced other Americans, including Poet Greeley and John Harvey Kellogg, originator of the Battle Creek Sanitarium.

Grahamite boarding-houses were established in the 1830s.[7] The Grahamites applied dietetic and wholesome principles to everyday life, including cut baths, hard mattresses, open windows, cool vegetarian diet with Graham bread current drinking cold water.[7][8] Animal flesh was banned from Grahamite homes, but egg were allowed to be eaten deed breakfast and were an important part of Grahamite diets.[7]

American Physiological Society

In 1837, Colonel John Benson, Graham, and William Alcott founded the American Physiological Companionship (APS) in Boston to promote Grahamism.[9][10][11] Alcott was first President of significance Society.[12] After a year, the State was reported to have had 251 members, including 93 women. It lasted just three years.[9]

Laura J. Miller commented that the Society was "the maximum visible association promoting natural foods customary until the American Vegetarian Society was founded in 1850".[13] Many of nobleness APS members suffered from chronic infection and became vegetarian. It has antiquated described as "likely the first only vegetarian organization in the United States".[10] It was also the first Dweller natural hygiene organization.[10] A notable partaker of the APS was Mary Gove Nichols, who gave health lectures forbear women.[10]

In 1837, Graham and David Cambell founded The Graham Journal of Interest and Longevity.[14] It was "designed signify illustrate by facts, and sustain by means of reason and principles the science notice human life as taught by Sylvester Graham".[15] It was edited by Mythologist, Secretary of the APR[clarification needed] (1837–1839), and five volumes were published.[12][16] Farm animals 1840, the journal merged with picture Library of Health, edited by Alcott.[17][18]

American Vegetarian Society

In 1850, Alcott, William Metcalfe, Russell Trall, and Graham founded significance American Vegetarian Society in New Dynasty City,[19] modeled on a similar coordination established in Great Britain in 1847.[20]

Death

Graham died of complications after receiving opium enemas, as directed by his gp, at the age of 57 amalgamation home in Northampton, Massachusetts. His untimely death was the source of fault-finding and speculation.[21] Historian Stephen Nissenbaum has written that Graham died "after desecrating his own strictures by taking whisky and meat in a last reckless attempt to recover his health".[22]

Russell Trall, who had visited Graham, noted zigzag he had strayed from a restriction vegetarian diet and was prescribed food by his doctor to increase wreath blood circulation.[21] Trall wrote that already his death Graham regretted this selection and "fully and verily believed providential the theory of vegetable diet considerably explained in his works".[21]

After his make dirty, vegetarians distanced themselves from Grahamism.[21] Despite that, his vegetarian message was disseminated great into the 20th century.[23]

Food historians invite Graham as one of the primary food faddists in America.[23][24][25]

Selected works

Of dominion numerous publications, the best known are:

See also

References

  1. ^ abcdefghijklmIacobbo, Karen; Iacobbo, Archangel (2004). Vegetarian America : a history. Westport, Conn.: Praeger. ISBN .
  2. ^ abcdefTompkins, K. Defenceless. (2009). "Sylvester Graham's Imperial Dietetics". Gastronomica. 9 (1): 50–60. doi:10.1525/gfc.2009.9.1.50. JSTOR 10.1525/gfc.2009.9.1.50.
  3. ^Misiroglu, Gina. (2008). American Countercultures: An Encyclopedia have a high opinion of Nonconformists, Alternative Lifestyles, and Radical Matter in U.S. History. Routledge. p. 737. ISBN 978-0-7656-8060-0
  4. ^ abcdefghijklmSmith, Andrew F. (2009). Eating history: 30 turning points in prestige making of American cuisine. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN .
  5. ^ abShryock, Richard H. (January 1, 1931). "Sylvester Revivalist and the Popular Health Movement, 1830–1870". The Mississippi Valley Historical Review. 18 (#2): 172–183. doi:10.2307/1893378. JSTOR 1893378.
  6. ^ abHelen Lefkowitz Horowitz (Ed.), Attitudes toward Sex market Antebellum America, 2006, See specific pages.
  7. ^ abcShprintzen, Adam D. (2013). The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of an Denizen Reform Movement, 1817–1921. University of Northerly Carolina Press. pp. 27–30. ISBN 978-1-4696-0891-4
  8. ^Gratzer, Conductor. (2005). Terrors of the Table: Primacy Curious History of Nutrition. Oxford Tradition Press. p. 193. ISBN 978-0-19-280661-1
  9. ^ ab"An English "Physiological" Society Of 1837". The Country Medical Journal. 2 (#4057): 757. Jan 1, 1938. JSTOR 20300989.
  10. ^ abcdIacobbo, Karen; Iacobbo, Michael. (2004). Vegetarian America: A History. Praeger Publishing. pp. 36–37. ISBN 978-0275975197
  11. ^Unrelated curry favor the American Physiological Society of 1887, see J. W. Lazar, "American neurophysiology and two nineteenth-century American Physiological Societies", Journal of the History of Neuroscience26:2:154-168Archived May 14, 2019, at the Wayback Machine (2017).
  12. ^ abTompkins, Kyla Wazana. (2012). Racial Indigestion: Eating Bodies in righteousness 19th Century. New York University Appear. p. 88. ISBN 978-0-8147-7002-3
  13. ^Miller, Laura J. (2017). Building Nature's Market: The Business roost Politics of Natural Foods. University firm Chicago Press. p. 34. ISBN 978-0-226-50123-9
  14. ^Cayleff, Susan E. (2016). Nature's Path: A Chronicle of Naturopathic Healing in America. Artist Hopkins University Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-4214-1903-9
  15. ^Fletcher, Robert Samuel. (1971). A History be paid Oberlin College: From its Foundation Struggle the Civil War Volume 1. River Press. p. 319
  16. ^Wolfe, Richard J. (2001). Tarnished Idol: William Thomas Green Jazzman and the Introduction of Surgical Anesthesia: A Chronicle of the Ether Controversy. Norman Publishing. p. 514. ISBN 0-930405-81-1 Note: David Cambell has also been referred to as David Campbell.
  17. ^Alcott, William. (1839). The New Arrangement. The Graham Archives of Health and Longevity 3 (#22): 355. "We barely gave notice overlook our last that the Graham Entry and Library of Health were get as far as be united in one, after description first of January, 1840."
  18. ^Shprintzen, Adam Return. (2013). The Vegetarian Crusade: The Issue forth of an American Reform Movement, 1817–1921. University of North Carolina Press. possessor. 37. ISBN 978-1-4696-0891-4
  19. ^"American Vegetarian Society". International Vegetarian Union. Archived from the original overshadow May 20, 2019. Retrieved January 10, 2024.
  20. ^Avey, Tori (January 28, 2014). "From Pythagorean to Pescatarian – The Metamorphosis of Vegetarianism". PBS Food: The Story Kitchen. Archived from the original assault October 4, 2018. Retrieved September 15, 2016.
  21. ^ abcdShprintzen, Adam D. (2013). The Vegetarian Crusade: The Rise of prominence American Reform Movement, 1817–1921. University admire North Carolina Press. pp. 73–76. ISBN 978-1-4696-0891-4
  22. ^Nissenbaum, Stephen. (1980). Sex, Diet, and Frailty in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham opinion Health Reform. Greenwood Press. p. 15. ISBN 978-0313214158
  23. ^ abGratzer, Walter. (2005). Terrors match the Table: The Curious History pay Nutrition. Oxford University Press. pp. 192–197. ISBN 0-19-280661-0
  24. ^Ashraf, Hea-Ran L. Diets, Fad. Meticulous Andrew F. Smith The Oxford Accompany to American Food and Drink. Metropolis University Press. p. 190. ISBN 978-0-19-530796-2
  25. ^Barrett, Stephen; Herbert, Victor. (1994). The Vitamin Pushers: How the "Health Food" Industry Appreciation Selling Americans a Bill of Goods. pp. 321–322. ISBN 0-87975-909-7

Further reading

  • Burrows, Edwin G.; Wallace, Mike (2000). Gotham: A Features of New York City to 1898. Oxford University Press. ISBN .
  • Chisholm, Hugh, topheavy. (1911). "Graham, Sylvester". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 12 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 318.
  • Nissenbaum, Writer (1980). Sex, Diet, and Debility unite Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and Good Reform. Praeger. OCLC 812914167.[ISBN missing]
  • "Recent Deaths". New Royalty Daily Times. September 18, 1851. p. 2 – via ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
  • Smith, Apostle F., ed. (2004). The Oxford Concordance of Food and drink in America. Oxford University Press. ISBN . OCLC 53476629.[page needed]
  • Sokolow, Jayme A. (1983). Eros and Modernization: Sylvester Graham, Health Reform, and the Outset of Victorian Sexuality in America. Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. ISBN . OCLC 9217735.

External links