Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders (1859)

AUTHOR: Alcott, William Andrus

KEYWORDS: food and diet, health, Temperance

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

Alcott advocates for general temperance and plain food (a diet without animal products) both for the cure of certain illnesses and for general health. This text is an autobiographical account of Alcott's life as a physician and social reformer, with respect to Temperance and related movements concerning health. He offers brief case studies that highlight the detrimental effects of certain kinds of food and drink, ranging from alcohol and coffee to butter and animal food in general. Conversely, Alcott repeatedly praises the advantages of  “exercise in the open air [...] and withal, a plain, unstimulating diet” (208), without any animal products and often inspired by the work of Sylvester Graham. Thus, Alcott notes of one of his patients and her friends: "They thought, as thousands have thought beside them, that without a stimulating diet she could not be properly nourished. But they learned at length that good bread of all sorts, rice, peas, beans, and fruits, especially the first two, while they were unstimulating, were even more nutritious than the more stimulating articles of flesh, fish, fowl, butter, and milk and its products" (255). Alcott explicitly notes the beneficial effects of the Graham diet in another account: "Falling in with the famous Sylvester Graham, who was lecturing near her at the time, she was overpersuaded to change her habits very suddenly, especially her dietetic habits. From a highly seasoned diet, she was at once transferred to a very plain one, to which was added cold bathing and abundant exercise in the open air. This change, though it caused great emaciation, appeared to restore her health entirely. Her appetite and general strength were such that she thought it almost impossible she could ever be sick again" (330-331). In general, Alcott judges food in New England to be “too stimulating, and too much refined by cookery” (302). He is also aware that poverty often precludes a healthy diet, as when he notes of one of his patients that “[t]here was, indeed, one apology to be found for his irregularity with regard to diet, in his extreme poverty” (238).

Alcott  describes his unsuccessful attempt to found a Temperance society, which drew no interest at all;  however, Alcott adhered to his own Temperance pledge: “in May, 1830, I abandoned all drinks but water, to which custom I have ever since adhered and in which I shall probably die” (86). Temperance and a plain diet are recommended as specific therapies in his account of how he successfully cured lameness in the knee of one of his patient by resolving the patient's coffee abuse ("He consented, at length, to leave off its use for two months, and see if it made any difference with him"), in conjunction with the application of hydrotherapy: "Being ... about half a convert to hydropathy, as was also his son, it was concluded, with my permission, to apply the cold douche every day to his knee, by way of an adjunct to the abstinence plan. No change was made in his diet; as, in fact, very little was needed after the coffee had been removed" (190). In a chapter entitled “Butter Eaters,” Alcott recounts how another patient suffers from a recurring skin rash due to her continued use of butter: "I inquired why, after a long period of abstinence from butter, she ever returned to its use. Her reply was that she was too fond of it to omit it entirely and forever. She preferred to use it till the eruption began to be quite troublesome, which was sometimes many weeks; then abstain from it till she recovered, and then return to it. This gave her an opportunity to use it from one-third to one-half of the time; and this she thought greatly preferable to entire abstinence" (202).

Alcott notes how a patient suffering from consumption “made an entire change in his dietetic habits, to which he still adheres. He avoids all stimulating food — particularly all animal food — and uses no drink but water” (214). It is worth quoting in full what Alcott has to say about his application of a restricted diet to a teenager prone to suffer from “protracted colds” (291), because this is the diet that he recommends globally for health, not just as therapy in this particular case:

I have said that no breakfast was taken by this young man, and no drink used but cold water. The dinner was also without drink, and so was the supper. The first consisted of a very few kinds of coarse food, — generally not more than two or three at once, — such as coarse whole-meal [i.e., Graham] bread, rice, potatoes, apples, etc., and was the principal meal. The supper was a lighter meal, both as respected quantity and quality, and was taken at about six o'clock. No condiments were allowed except salt, and very little of this; and no animal food, or the products of animals, except, occasionally, a little milk. Fruits, either raw or cooked, were frequently among the staples at dinner, but never at supper.

This treatment, with slight variations, would be applicable to most persons suffering with lingering complaints, and to persons in health, as a means of invigorating their systems (293).

Alcott reports that another patient improved significantly when he “abandoned tea and coffee (tobacco and rum he had never used), and drank only water […], abandoned all animal food and all concentrated substances and condiments, and lived simply on bread (unfermented), fruits, and a few choice vegetables” (359).

 

Last updated on May 2nd, 2024

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