In reply to the charge of infidelity, the Grahamites proclaimed that the assertion that "every misfortune and sickness is a dispensation of Divine Providence, which no foresight nor care on our part could have prevented" is "unreasonable and irreligious, and only a miserable apology for our own ignorance and indiscretion, and intended to throw from ourselves the blame upon Him who never afflicts willingly. It is no further evidence of Divine will, than as it teaches us that the laws of Nature and of Nature's God cannot be broken with impunity by any creature. How common it is for the unhappy dyspeptic to cram his diseased stomach to a painful repletion, and then quietly address his friends and his conscience with the soothing reflection that it is God's will that he should thus suffer, and therefore he should not murmur! As well may the beastly inebriate who reels into the ditch and breaks his head, moralize upon the wise

Providence of God in having so ordered it. and thus endeavor to repress the complaints and griefs of his afflicted family."

Some of Graham's followers thought that "the doctrines are not of Graham nor of any man, but of God! and the excellency of the power is in Him".

Among the uninformed such objections were offered as, "of all the deaths in the world, death by starvation is the most terrible". Graham and his followers did not merely oppose the use of alcohol and tobacco, but they opposed the use of tea, coffee, white bread, condiments, animal foods, and all other bad habits. Graham declared that "Health without good habits is a superstructure without a base, and the attempt to restore lost health by a course of drugging without reforming bad habits, is as useless as to attempt to ease a burn whilst remaining in the fire". It was held that the appetite has held regency over the nobler part of man so long that the whole world is sick. The difficulty of securing the living reform necessary to health was seen to lie chiefly in the difficulty of convincing the people of the need for reform. "For such a conviction would be wholly at war with those opinions and practices which they greatly prefer."

To those who attempted to distort his teaching and make it seem ridiculous in the eyes of a meat-loving people, by declaring his system to be merely one of abandoning meat, Graham replied in a talk before the Health Convention in Boston, May 1S3S, "Flesh-eating, whatever may be true of its propriety, is of small importance in comparison with many other errors in the voluntary habits of man. The success of our cause demands not merely that its followers should abstain from this or that kind of food or drink, or subsist on this or that kind; but that they should have a clear cut perception of first principles,--that they should understand the physiological laws of their nature--*** in short, they should know clearly and fully understand the science of life."

Although many doctors of the various schools of "healing" embraced Grahamism, in whole or in part, most of them carried on a regular campaign against this form of "quackery". The Grahamites replied: "Let medical men be what they should be and quackery would die of starvation," a fact that medical men of the present would do well to consider. The followers of Graham asserted that "both Nature and common sense are struggling for the ascendency over the mysticism that has so long dimmed the eyes of the community", and said to the doctors who condemned their plan of eating; "if men stop breaking the laws of life, and eat simple natural food", their medical critics "and the rest of the medical faculty, would find their sources of gain dried up".

In spite of the opposition of ignorance, habits, the clergy, the medical professions, distillers, brewers, tobacco growers and sellers, millers, bakers, packers, butchers, and condiment sellers, Grahamism spread so fast that the medical journals carried articles against the Graham system, while professors in Medical Colleges felt it necessary to combat Grahamism in their class rooms. Prof. A. G. Smith, in his introductory lecture before the New York College of Physicians and Surgeons, 1837, felt it necessary to discuss Grahamism. This should indicate the extent to which the new doctrines had spread in the short space of five years. In that same year, Dr. Drake, of Cincinnati, writing in the Western Journal of Medical and Physical Science, refers to the new movement as the "Graham School".

Graham was scheduled to lecture March 2nd, 1837, in Armory Hall, Boston, to ladies, on Physical Education. Many women attended, but so great was the tumult made by persons adverse to Graham, the object of the lecture was defeated. Graham afterwards completed his course of lectures to women in the Hall of Marlborough Hotel, protected by the city authorities. Subsequently a new and well-attended course of lectures was given in Armory Hall without disturbance.

Graham was persecuted not alone by the medical profession, but by the butchers and bakers as well. As a matter of fact, in the same town where Garrison and Phillips were mobbed, Graham was set upon by a mob also. He continued to outrage the butchers by preaching the physical and moral advantages of a vegetable diet and the bakers by extolling the superiority of home-made whole wheat bread. The bakers took measures to suppress him. It was in the winter of 1837, while he was lecturing in Armory Hall, Boston, that the uprising of the bakers occurred. The owners of the Hall, fearing for the safety of their property, closed it on him.

The dining room of the nearly completed Marlborough Hotel was offered to Graham in which to complete his lectures. Graham had been and still was a temperance lecturer, and it was fitting that he should find shelter in the first temperance house in America, which this hotel had the honorable distinction of being. The mayor interposed, protesting that he could not protect the meeting with his constables, but the warning was unheeded and the meeting held.

The lower story of the hotel was barricaded and the upper stories provided with a quantity of slacked lime and a shovel brigade. The hotel proprietor parleyed with the mob that gathered, and then, as the crisis approached, gave the signal, which caused the shovelers above to throw lime on the mob and they hurriedly adjourned.

Walter's own family was not in full sympathy with his work and I am informed that his own wife destroyed the manuscript of Vol. 2 of Life's Great Law after his death. Dewey and Tilden each had their share of persecution, in fact, Tilden is still the object of medical attacks.

Brave men, these, who deliberately chose to uphold unpopular doctrines, principles and practices, because they were convinced these were right, and fought it out with the powerful opposition until the latter was not only beaten, but forced to accept, even if only to pervert, at least part of what these men stood for, in order to prevent being destroyed altogether.

In spite of all opposition, the orthopathic principle has, at long last, found its way into modern biology and the hygienic practice has found an ever-widening acceptance, until, today:

Heteropaths start and wonder At the Orthopathic thunder; While it shakes their sandy footing,

From the mountain to the shore. And the doctors in their raging, Seem to think the war that's waging, Will be all their thoughts engaging,

Making trouble ever more.