Among the civilized as among savages, social activities center about sex and food. Civilization grew up in fertile sections, where food was abundant--where food was scarce nomadic tribes roamed in savagery or semi-savagery. Man's food and his ways of procuring his food have largely shaped his whole social, political and religious history.

The study of food and its relations to the structures and functions of the body constitutes one of the most important subjects that can occupy our minds. It is unfortunate that the knowledge of diet possessed by the ancients was permitted to perish during the Christian era and people were taught to "take no thought of what ye shall eat or drink," for "it is not what goeth into a man's body, but that which cometh out that defileth him."

It is now over a hundred years since the study of food was revived and, while much valuable knowledge has been accumulated during that time, it has been slow in reaching the minds of the people. The spread of such knowledge has met with organized opposition from the medical profession, which has been able to keep many people in almost complete ignorance of how to feed their bodies.

Modern dietary science (trophology) may be said to have had its beginning with Sylvester Graham, and his Lectures on the Science of Human Life is still abreast of our time in most particulars. If you want "the newer knowledge of nutrition," you'll find most of it in this book.

It will be recalled that in Vol. I of this series we recounted Graham's experiences in preventing cholera by dietetic and general hygienic means and how the movement initiated by him grew and spread. Despite its overwhelming success, the medical profession, as stubborn then as now, in its opposition to dietary advancement, heaped ridicule and slander upon Graham and the Grahamites.

In his efforts at diet reform, as in all of his other efforts at living reform, Graham ran up against the stone wall of established prejudices and practices and the active opposition of vested interests who saw in his efforts a serious threat to their incomes and investments. Not the least of these interests was the medical profession.

From Europe the early American settlers had brought the idea that fruits and vegetables and, especially uncooked fruits and vegetables, were to be avoided. The New York Mirror warned, Aug. 28, 1830, that fresh fruits should be religiously forbidden to all classes and especially to children. Two years later the same paper carried the information that all fruit is dangerous and, because of the cholera epidemic city councils prohibited their sale in the cities. "Salads were to be particularly feared." Robley Dunglison, the famous physiologist of the period, appears also to have shared this view.

In August 1832 the Board of Health of Washington, D. C. prohibited, for the space of ninety days, the importation into the city of "cabbage, green corn, cucumbers, peas, beans, parsnips, carrots, egg plants, cimblings or squashes, pumpkins, turnips, water melons, cantaloupes, muskmelons, apples, pears, peaches, plums, damsons, cherries, apricots, pineapples, oranges, lemons, limes, coconuts, ice cream, fish, crabs, oysters, clams, lobsters and craw fish.

"The following articles the Board have not considered it necessary to prohibit the sale of, but even these they would admonish the community to be moderate in using: potatoes, beets, tomatoes and onions."

Beef, bacon and bread, with beer and wine were about all they left for the people of Washington to eat. The Board said that the prohibited articles, "are, in their opinion highly prejudicial to health at the present season." The Board were probably afraid that these wholesome foods would cause ague, chills, fever and even cholera.

In that very year (1832) Dr. Martyn Paine, of the New York University Medical School was arguing that garden vegetables and almost every variety of fruit had been known to develop the deadly cholera and that to avoid it the people should restrict themselves to lean meat, potatoes, milk, tea and coffee.

It was in New York City in 1832, the very year that the cities were prohibiting the sale of fruits and vegetables because they cause cholera, that Graham launched his attack upon the false beliefs concerning fruits and vegetables and endeavored to induce Americans and, indeed, the world, to eat more fruits and vegetables and cease eating animal foods.

Graham not only challenged the view that fruits and vegetables cause cholera and that plenty of meat and wine will prevent it; but he declared that a diet of fruits and vegetables with entire abstinence from all alcoholics, tobacco, condiments, etc., and from all animal foods, was the best preventive of cholera.

It is interesting to note, in this connection, that Graham's first observations of the effects of diet upon health were made in Philadelphia and related to the part a vegetable diet apparently played in preventing Cholera. A small sect of Bible Christians had migrated from England to Philadelphia. These people abstained from all animal foods--flesh, eggs, milk, cheese, etc.--and from all condiments and stimulants. They used no tea, coffee, alcohol or tobacco. It was their view that flesh eating violated the first command given by God to man--the instruction to Adam that he should eat the fruit of the trees of the Garden.

Ten years before Graham lectured in Philadelphia for the Pennsylvania Temperance Society, this city had experienced a severe epidemic of cholera. There were many cases with a high death rate. Contrary to what was expected from the medical teachings of the time, not a single member of the Bible Christian Church had cholera. This fact made a deep and lasting impression upon Graham and caused him to turn his attention to the study of diet. No longer was he a mere temperance lecturer. His first series of lectures given the following year in New York were upon the causes and prevention of cholera. So radical and revolutionary did his lectures seem to the medical profession and most of the educated people of the time that it required nearly another quarter of a century for them to discard their false notions about vegetables and fruits causing cholera and concede that Graham may have been right. Fallacy dies slowly. Deep-rooted prejudices are not easily uprooted. Old habits are not quickly abandoned. The world's leaders do not like to admit that they have been wrong and have been misleading the people. They did not give up without a struggle--indeed, it may be truthfully said that they nave not given up entirely to this day.

Many who heard Graham's lecture followed his advice and, thereupon, the physicians, butchers and others of New York reported that the Grahamites were dying like flies of the cholera. Graham returned to New York and being unable to find a single instance of death from cholera, and only one or two instances of cholera (these in people who had not carried out his advice) among those who had adopted the plan of eating and living he offered, challenged, through the public press of the city, his traducers to bring forth a case of death among his followers. This they did not and could not do, but they did not cease to peddle the lie.