Abstract
This chapter examines a series of essays on dietetics and digestive health by Walt Whitman in which he navigates the transition between humoral medicine and nutrition science. Whitman’s claim that indigestion is the “great American evil” threatening the health of the American body politic , and his claim that the healthiest diet consists almost exclusively of meat, are intimately connected. Whitman’s resistance to vegetarianism is best understood as a rejection of the Christian moralism that accompanied vegetarianism in the nineteenth century. In sum, digestion is political for Whitman insofar as healthy bodies require proper diet, while democracy requires a host of healthy bodies able to fully digest their food.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Rebrovick, “The Politics of Diet : ‘Eco-Dietetics,’ Neoliberalism , and the History of Dietetic Discourses.”
- 2.
Foucault, The Archaeology of Knowledge; and, the Discourse on Language.
- 3.
Taylor, “Foucault on Freedom and Truth,” 279.
- 4.
Temkin, Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy.
- 5.
Shapin, “‘You Are What You Eat.’”
- 6.
Scrinis, “On the Ideology of Nutritionism”; Scrinis, Nutritionism; and Shapin, “‘You Are What You Eat.’”
- 7.
Liebig , Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology .
- 8.
Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry and Its Relation to Commerce, Physiology , and Agriculture.
- 9.
Kant , The Conflict of the Faculties (Der Streit Der Fakultäten), 199.
- 10.
Liebig , Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology , 64.
- 11.
Ibid.
- 12.
Ibid., 70.
- 13.
Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry and Its Relation to Commerce, Physiology , and Agriculture, 74.
- 14.
Rebrovick, “The Politics of Diet : ‘Eco-Dietetics,’ Neoliberalism , and the History of Dietetic Discourses”; Scrinis, Nutritionism; and Shapin, “‘You Are What You Eat.’”
- 15.
Cullather, “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie”; Levine, School Lunch Politics.
- 16.
Foucault, Security, Territory, Population.
- 17.
Brock, Justus von Liebig ; Finlay, “Quackery and Cookery”; and Finlay, “Early Marketing and the Theory of Nutrition: The Science and Culture of Liebig’s Extract of Meat.”
- 18.
Finlay, “Quackery and Cookery”; Finlay, “Early Marketing and the Theory of Nutrition: The Science and Culture of Liebig’s Extract of Meat”; and Rosenberg, “And Heal the Sick.”
- 19.
“Workers pressed animal flesh into a pulp with steam powered iron rollers. This pulp was then dropped into hot water, and steamed for one hour. The liquid was then allowed to ooze off into another vat, where workers removed the fat , and finally used heat and a vacuum evaporation pan to reduce the juice into a thick gravy . After several hours of cooling, the liquid was refiltered, packaged into small tins or pots, and reading for export.” Finlay, “Early Marketing and the Theory of Nutrition: The Science and Culture of Liebig’s Extract of Meat,” 58.
- 20.
Finlay, “Quackery and Cookery.”
- 21.
Graham, A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity.
- 22.
Graham summarizes his conclusions as follows: “Improper diet —the free use of flesh, with more or less of stimulating seasonings and condiments, together with coffee , tea , rich pastry, and compounded and concentrated forms of food; and too often, chewing and smoking tobacco , and drinking wine and other intoxicating liquors;—all of which unduly stimulate and irritate the nervous system, heat the blood , and early develop a preternatural sensibility and prurience of the genital organs” ibid., 152–153.
- 23.
Whitman, The Correspondence, vol. 7, 5.
- 24.
Turpin , “Introduction to Walt Whitman ’s ‘Manly Health and Training ,’” 148.
- 25.
Ibid., 149.
- 26.
Ibid., 159.
- 27.
Whitman, “Review of Liebig’s Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology .”
- 28.
Whitman, Poetry and Prose, 496.
- 29.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 184.
- 30.
Ibid.
- 31.
Ibid., 209.
- 32.
Ibid., 210.
- 33.
Ibid.
- 34.
Ibid., 209.
- 35.
Ibid., 185.
- 36.
Ibid., 271.
- 37.
Ibid., 184.
- 38.
Coleman, “Health and Hygiene in the Encyclopédie”; Rather, “The ‘Six Things Non-Natural’: A Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and a Phrase.”
- 39.
Shapin, “How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England”; Siraisi, Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine.
- 40.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 196.
- 41.
Ibid., 189.
- 42.
Ibid., 195. Emphasis original.
- 43.
Foucault, The History of Sexuality . Vol. 2: The Uses of Pleasure; Shapin, “How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England”; and Shapin, “‘You Are What You Eat.’”
- 44.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 197.
- 45.
Ibid., 212.
- 46.
Ibid., 307.
- 47.
Ibid., 197.
- 48.
Ibid., 201.
- 49.
Ibid., 269.
- 50.
Foucault, The History of Sexuality . Vol. 2: The Uses of Pleasure; Shapin, “How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England”; and Shapin, “‘You Are What You Eat.’”
- 51.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 203.
- 52.
Ibid., 306–307.
- 53.
Ibid., 225.
- 54.
Ibid., 221.
- 55.
Rabinbach , The Human Motor.
- 56.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 276.
- 57.
Ibid., 289.
- 58.
Rabinbach , The Human Motor.
- 59.
Ibid.
- 60.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 243.
- 61.
Ibid., 281.
- 62.
Ibid., 268. Emphasis original.
- 63.
Ibid., 269. Emphasis original.
- 64.
Graham, A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity, 152–153.
- 65.
Ibid., 156.
- 66.
Ibid., 163.
- 67.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 199.
- 68.
Ibid., 296.
- 69.
Graham, A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity, 156.
- 70.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 197.
- 71.
Whitman, Walt Whitman ’s Songs of Male Intimacy and Love, 234.
- 72.
Whitman, “Manly Health and Training , With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions,” 269.
- 73.
Ibid., 223.
- 74.
Ibid., 225.
- 75.
Ibid.
- 76.
Ibid., 268.
- 77.
Ibid., 269–270.
- 78.
Ibid., 201.
- 79.
Ibid., 226.
- 80.
Ibid., 307.
- 81.
Ibid., 245.
- 82.
Finlay, “Quackery and Cookery”; Finlay, “Early Marketing and the Theory of Nutrition: The Science and Culture of Liebig’s Extract of Meat”; and Rosenberg, “And Heal the Sick.”
- 83.
Whitman, Poetry and Prose, 199.
- 84.
Ibid., 389.
- 85.
Ibid., 26.
- 86.
Ibid., 1033.
- 87.
Ibid., 495.
- 88.
Ibid., 496.
- 89.
Liebig, Familiar Letters on Chemistry , in Its Relation to Physiology , Dietetics, Agriculture, Commerce, and Political Economy, 181.
- 90.
Ibid., 973.
Bibliography
Brock, W. H. Justus von Liebig: The Chemical Gatekeeper. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2002.
Coleman, William. “Health and Hygiene in the Encyclopédie: A Medical Doctrine for the Bourgeoisie.” Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 29, no. 4 (1974): 399–421. https://doi.org/10.1093/jhmas/xxix.4.399.
Cullather, Nick. “The Foreign Policy of the Calorie.” The American Historical Review 112, no. 2 (April 1, 2007): 337–364. https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr.112.2.337.
Finlay, Mark R. “Early Marketing and the Theory of Nutrition: The Science and Culture of Liebig’s Extract of Meat.” In The Science and Culture of Nutrition, 1840–1940, edited by Harmke Kamminga and Andrew Cunningham, 48–74. Amsterdam and Atlanta, GA: Rodopi, 1995.
———. “Quackery and Cookery: Justus von Liebig’s Extract of Meat and the Theory of Nutrition in the Victorian Age.” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 66, no. 3 (Fall 1992): 404–420.
Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge; And, the Discourse on Language. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972.
———. The History of Sexuality. Vol. 2: The Uses of Pleasure. Translated by Robert Hurley. New York: Vintage Books, 1990.
———. Security, Territory, Population: Lectures at the Collège de France 1977–1978. New York: Picador, 2009.
Graham, Sylvester. A Lecture to Young Men on Chastity: Intended Also for the Serious Consideration of Parents and Guardians. G.W. Light, 1838.
Kant, Immanuel. The Conflict of the Faculties = Der Streit Der Fakultäten. Janus Series 3. New York: Abaris Books, 1979.
Levine, Susan. School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America’s Favorite Welfare Program. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2010.
Rabinbach, Anson. The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue, and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992.
Rather, L. J. “The ‘Six Things Non-Natural’: A Note on the Origins and Fate of a Doctrine and a Phrase.” Clio Medica 3 (1968): 337–347.
Rebrovick, Tripp. “The Politics of Diet: ‘Eco-Dietetics,’ Neoliberalism, and the History of Dietetic Discourses.” Political Research Quarterly 68, no. 4 (December 1, 2015): 678–689. https://doi.org/10.1177/1065912915605183.
Rosenberg, Charles E. “And Heal the Sick: The Hospital and the Patient in the 19th Century America.” Journal of Social History 10, no. 4 (1977): 428–447.
Scrinis, Gyorgy. “On the Ideology of Nutritionism.” Gastronomica 8, no. 1 (February 2008): 39–48. https://doi.org/10.1525/gfc.2008.8.1.39.
———. Nutritionism: The Science and Politics of Dietary Advice. Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2013.
Shapin, Steven. “How to Eat Like a Gentleman: Dietetics and Ethics in Early Modern England.” In Right Living: An Anglo-American Tradition of Self-Help Medicine and Hygiene, edited by Charles E. Rosenberg, 21–58. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003.
———. “‘You Are What You Eat’: Historical Changes in Ideas About Food and Identity.” Historical Research 87, no. 237 (August 2014): 377–392. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2281.12059.
Siraisi, Nancy G. Medieval & Early Renaissance Medicine: An Introduction to Knowledge and Practice. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990.
Taylor, Charles. “Foucault on Freedom and Truth.” Political Theory 12, no. 2 (May 1, 1984): 152–183. https://doi.org/10.1177/0090591784012002002.
Temkin, Owsei. Galenism: Rise and Decline of a Medical Philosophy. Cornell Publications in the History of Science. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1973.
Turpin, Zachary. “Introduction to Walt Whitman’s ‘Manly Health and Training.’” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 33, no. 3 (April 29, 2016): 147–183. https://doi.org/10.13008/0737-0679.2205.
von Liebig, Justus. Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology. Edited by Lyon Playfair Playfair. J. Owen, 1842.
———. Familiar Letters on Chemistry and Its Relation to Commerce, Physiology, and Agriculture. Edited by John Gardner. 1st ed. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1843.
———. Familiar Letters on Chemistry, in Its Relation to Physiology, Dietetics, Agriculture, Commerce, and Political Economy. Edited by John Blyth. 3rd ed. London: Taylor, Walton, & Maberly, 1851.
Whitman, Walt. “Review of Liebig’s Chemistry in Its Application to Agriculture and Physiology.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 28 June 1847.
———. Poetry and Prose. 1st Library of America College Editions. New York: Library of America, 1996.
———. The Correspondence. Edited by Ted Genoways. Vol. 7. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2004.
———. Walt Whitman’s Songs of Male Intimacy and love: “Live Oak, with Moss” and “Calamus.” Edited by Betsy Erkkila. The Iowa Whitman Series. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 2011.
———. “Manly Health and Training, With Off-Hand Hints Toward Their Conditions.” Walt Whitman Quarterly Review 33, no. 3 (April 29, 2016): 184–310. https://doi.org/10.13008/0737-0679.2206.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2018 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Rebrovick, T. (2018). The Great American Evil—Indigestion: Digestive Health and Democratic Politics in Walt Whitman. In: Mathias, M., Moore, A.M. (eds) Gut Feeling and Digestive Health in Nineteenth-Century Literature, History and Culture. Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01857-3_2
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-01857-3_2
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-01856-6
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-01857-3
eBook Packages: Literature, Cultural and Media StudiesLiterature, Cultural and Media Studies (R0)