The Laws of Health (1857)

AUTHOR: Alcott, William Andrus

KEYWORDS: health, diet, dress reform, Free Produce Movement

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen):

The Laws of Health is a book on hygiene “[d]esigned for families and schools,” as an additional explanatory note on the cover clarifies. In the preface, Alcott defines hygiene as follows:

experience has shown that it is not anatomy, or the laws of structure, nor physiology, or the curious laws of living organs, which is so much needed by the mass of our citizens, as a knowledge of our relations to the things around us; or, in other words, HYGIENE. It is not so much a particular knowledge of bones, muscles, nerves, skin, etc., as an acquaintance with the laws by which these, and all other parts and organs of our bodies, perform their offices or functions, and a knowledge of the specific penalties which God, in his providence, has annexed to their violation (ix).

While the book is almost exclusively concerned with how the “offices or functions” of the body and its parts can best be supported, Alcott locates these processes within a larger ethical framework, as his reference to "providence" makes clear. Hence, a few lines later, he explicitly links hygiene to virtue: “The yearly public loss, in health and  happiness, — nay, in virtue, too, — which our citizens sustain, for want of such information concerning themselves, is incalculable” (x). Thus, the book's stated aim “to take men and women and children AS THEY ARE, and teach them, first, how to keep what health they already possess; and, secondly, how daily and hourly to manufacture more” (x) has to be understood as an ethical task. It is in this sense that Alcott's advocacy of veg*nism is ethical veganism but focused on the well-being of humans, not animals. Alcott has no qualms about using leather, for example (356).

Regarding nutrition and diet, Alcott's primary concern is with “plain food” (66) which, for him, means a predominantly vegetarian diet. Thus, “a bowl of bread and milk” (340) is a good choice for breakfast. He values bread, fruit, vegetables, and nuts – in that order: “Bread and fruits […] contain all the essentials of a correct human diet” (181). Of animal products, which should be avoided as much as possible, milk and eggs are the healthiest. He advises against the use of condiments and sugar (and thus all kinds of pastry, confectionery, and sweets) and promotes Temperance with respect to coffee, tea, alcohol, and tobacco. Water is the only acceptable drink (191). A “well-furnished table,” Alcott writes, contains “an extensive variety of farinaceous articles and fruits, with several agreeable and not hurtful roots; and, for those who can bear them, a variety of nuts” (177). The following passage neatly summarizes the most important of his dietary convictions:

Good bread, made of coarse meal, and — after the first years of infancy are passed over — well-selected, ripe fruits, most undoubtedly afford us the best proportion of nutritive properties on the one hand, and of fuel for combustion in the system on the other, which could possibly be found. They keep up the most steady and permanent fire. Pies, cakes, pastry, butter, cheese, eggs, flesh, fish, and fowl, render the internal flame more unsteady than plain food, and do not nourish us as well as that does, — whatever may be thought to the contrary. The more we adhere to the plain diet, the better the state of the digestive system, and the better the fire is kept up (341).

As to quantity, Alcott advises against eating between meals, which should be restricted to three per day. This even holds for fruit: “while I recommend fruit as an indispensable part of our table fare, daily,” Alcott writes, “I do not recommend its indiscriminate or illimitable use” (180).

The frequency of disease in animal products is a major reason why for Alcott a vegetable diet is preferable: “the ravages of disease, even among the potatoes, admit of no comparison with the ravages of disease among the animal tribes, from which man, to a very great extent, selects his daily food. Some of these are almost always diseased, and most of them more or less so” (157). The flesh of pigs is particularly affected in this respect, but beef, lamb, and fowl do not fare much better. Poor living conditions for livestock animals, along with the quantity and quality of food they are fed,  are primarily to blame for this situation. Alcott makes clear that wild animals are also prone to disease (157-161).

Alcott advocates for dress reform, explicitly connecting the question of dress to that of diet and other health-related issues: “Pure air, proper exercise, healthful food, and a good skin, all have influence. Yet, when all these have done their work, there is room enough for the influence of clothing and dress” (348). “What is best for health, provided it does not absolutely offend good taste, is the only fashion that should control us” (352). In general, Alcott recommends wool and cotton, the latter with the caveat that it would be even better suited if it were produced by “free labor” rather than the “comparatively unprofitable labor of slaves” (354).

Last updated on May 2nd, 2024

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