This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1907 edition. Excerpt: ... CHAPTER SEVEN SOME LITERARY ESSAYS (By Frederick Beck) In December, 1880, Frederick Beck read a paper on "Sylvester Graham and His Followers," some of which will be of interest, dealing as it does with dietary concerns. Graham was a man of extreme views who played a great part in the world of dietetics about sixty years ago. He was an extremist, of course, and went the way of other extremists in the world. All that remains of the mighty fabric of reform which he instituted in diet and regimen is the bread which bears his nama Your grandfather made a careful study of the theories and influence of Sylvester Graham, and embodied them in the paper from which are culled the following extracts. They are interesting in the light of the history of food crankism, of which the world has been just as full in the fifty years since Sylvester Graham left it. "There is perhaps no subject on which more twaddle and rubbish have been written than dietetics, theology alone excepted. Graham contributed his full quota to this worthless literatures--of grub. For a time he was the 'observed of all observers.' He was mobbed by butchers who feared their craft was endangered by his mighty eloquence in behalf of vegetarianism. He was overwhelmed with ridicule, lampooned, caricatured, maligned, but he persisted with a dogged and heroic obstinacy till he had converted a large multitude to his way of thinking, including the Hon. F. W. Bird, who at that time had no prefix to his name. What has become of all this mighty commotion? A 'Grahamite' to-day is as rare as a dodo. Graham himself has passed into oblivion, or is recalled only as a voice, unprofitable and barren. "Sylvester Graham was born in 1794 and died in 1851, at the comparatively early age of fifty-seven--...