HIST 410: Week 4

Natural and Moral Diets of the 1800s

The dietary advice we saw directly primarily toward the upper classes in the previous week moves into the emerging middle class in the early 19th century. In particular, physicians and moral reformers see diets changing as a result of industrialization and urbanization as a distinct societal ill. We look at how moral and dietary advice become even more tightly coupled throughout the 1800s. Later in the course, we’ll see how that link has persisted into the present day.

Due this week

W: Optional extra credit lecture quiz
W: Group response
F: Weekly reflection

Mon 9/07 (Labor Day)

Relax

Nothing due today! Enjoy your virtual BBQs!!

Tue 9/08

BRIEF LECTURE: Mostly a review lecture with a BRIEF intro to 19th-century diet (link TBP; also via the course YouTube Channel)
EXTRA CREDIT Lecture quiz (via Learn as always) due WEDNESDAY NIGHT. Like the lecture, this is mostly course review, but a little bit on diet stuff for this week. This quiz is OPTIONAL. If you don’t want extra points, don’t take this quiz! That doesn’t mean it will be easy, but the points are EXTRA.

Double Trouble

I’m leaving the original syllabus entry for today unedited above, but I ended up making two shorter videos and corresponding quizzes, to keep things a bit more compartmentalized. So there is a broader themes review video and a week 4 background and preview video. The accompanying EXTRA CREDIT quizzes are self-explanatory and in Learn as always.

Primary Sources in Action

I’ve uploaded a short video that highlight a few passages from four early nineteenth-century texts. This is just to help give you a sense of some of the texts and ideas circulating about natural diet right before Graham become well known.

William Buchan, Domestic Medicine (1812).
John Frank Newton, The Return to Nature: Or, A Defence of the Vegetable Regimen; with Some Account of an Experiment Made during the Last Three or Four Years in the Author’s Family (1811)
John Ayrton Paris, A Treatise on Diet with a View to Establish …: A System of Rules for the Prevention and Cure of Diseases Incident to a Disordered State of the Digestive Functions (1829).
Charles Turner Thackrah, Lectures on Digestion and Diet (1824).

Wed 9/09

Adam D. Shprintzen, The Vegetarian Crusade, Chapter 1: Proto-vegetarianism, 10-27; 32-38. This chapter briefly describes some early religious sentiments supporting vegetarianism, but most importantly (and the main reason we’re reading it), it introduces Sylvester Graham and his historical context (who we’ll read on Friday).

Questions to keep in mind while reading: How did Graham establish his authority as a dietary reformer? How was cholera related to his success and thinking about diet? How was Graham’s argument for a meat-free diet different from the Bible Christians discussed early in the chapter?

Reading Reflections

Group 1: Prompt Reflection
Group 2: Response Reflection (remember these are due by the end of THURSDAY)
Group 3: Standard Reflection
Group 4: Comparative Reflection

Fri 9/11

Sylvester Graham, A Defence of the Graham System of Living: Or, Remarks on Diet and Regimen. Dedicated to the Rising Generation, 7–15; 88–89; 95–104.
Sylvester Graham, Lectures on the Science of Human Life, preface (i-vii), and skim Table of Contents that follows. What topics stand out to you? What were you expecting to see? How is it different from what you expected?

Weekly reflection

First, compare and contrast Graham’s advice for healthy living with that of Cheyne. Be specific, but don’t lose sight of the big picture! More broadly: how is the rhetoric similar to and different from what we’ve seen in the course so far? How is it similar to and different from our own rhetoric about a healthy diet? (To be clear: rhetoric refers to the way that someone tries to persuade you of something.)