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ONE OP THE CLASSIC CHARACTERS BRED BY AMERICAN CULture
of the past century and a half is the health fanatic, the
man who (in Twain's phraseology) eats what he doesn't
want, drinks what he doesn't like, and does what he'd
druther not, all the while smugly announcing himself to be
energetic, joyful, and certain of long life, and exhorting his
errant neighbor to reform.1 The comic stature he has
achieved is well deserved, but he has also a serious side that
has been badly neglected. Until recently at least, historians
have recognized health faddism primarily for its rich store
of anecdotes for illustrating human credulity and the possibilities
for distorting scientific thought. As a subject for serious
intellectual history it has gone begging, except for scattered
articles in scholarly journals and two recent
book-length studies: Ronald Numbers, Prophetess of Health:
a Study of Ellen G. White, and Stephen Nissenbaum, Sex,
Diet and Debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham
and Health Reform. Those volumes are valuable but still
leave much room for elaboration on health faddism as an
evolving, persistent phenomenon in American society
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