In 1829, Presbyterian minister Sylvester Graham invented crackers made from coarse wheat that he believed would help restore the health of Americans. he I lamented He considered the “wretched rubbish” that made up the average diet, especially white bread, and believed that the cracker that bears his name would inhibit masturbation, which was detrimental to both moral and physical well-being. he thought. (As someone who condemns sweet treats, he would have viewed s’mores as an abomination.)
Graham was, in many ways, the same person we are today. phone Wellness influencer. Nineteenth-century Americans opened Grahamian boarding houses so that travelers could eat Graham’s chaste, bland cuisine and read the week’s magazines. of graham health longevity journal. And like many of today’s wellness influencers, he put forward an ideology that mixed truth and nonsense. Yes, eating fiber is healthy. No, pleasurable foods are not associated with deviant sexual behavior. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the health and human services influencer whom President-elect Donald Trump nominated to be Secretary of Health and Human Services, has been similarly inconsistent. Although Kennedy pinpointed the link between America’s ultra-processed foods and high rates of chronic disease, he was also an anti-vaccine advocate and suggested that deaths from AIDS were caused by: popper and the seed oil poison.
In recent weeks, journalists, doctors and scientists have rushed to correct President Kennedy’s erroneous statements. 75+ Nobel Prize Winners signed the letter This week, he urged senators to oppose Kennedy’s confirmation, citing his “lack of qualifications” in medicine, science and public health. But a better way to understand his appeal is to place him, along with Graham, in a long lineage of American wellness luminaries waging war against conventional medicine. For more than a century, alternative health practices (what we now call wellness) have fascinated Americans not because of the accuracy of their claims, but because of what they offer: a sense of certainty; This is an outlet for distrust, something pseudo-religious. Belief in “nature” and affirmation of the limits of modernity. Even though the goals of health are fundamentally different from those of public health, health meets these needs and has a pattern of success as an alternative to medical failures. Health history suggests that the best way to quell Kennedy’s power is not to litigate every single one of his beliefs, which are irrefutable truisms about health, but to explain why the promise of good health is so enduring. This suggests that it is important to understand what makes someone attractive.
Our Goop-ized world may seem radically modern, but today’s wellness industry and what was then called “informal” medicine exploded in popularity in the 1800s. There is a linear relationship between age and age. Throughout the early 20th century, people used homeopathy, osteopathy, naturopathy, cure with waterchiropractor. Religious and spiritual movements such as New Thought and Christian Science promoted the idea that physical health was important. came from Not drugs, but the right state of mind.
These health interventions were largely a response to disillusionment with 19th century medicine, which was painful and ineffective by today’s standards. Doctors relied heavily on bloodletting drugs, emetics, etc. “Heroic” treatment It shocked the body and expelled its contents. Calomel, a commonly used drug, is made with mercury compounds and causes bleeding gums, swelling of the mouth, and tooth loss. Irregular medical care offered another option with conspiratorial overtones. There was a gentler treatment that traditional doctors weren’t telling me about. (And, unlike calomel, irregular treatment will not cause teeth to fall out.) A 1903 osteopathic document states: Same price. ”
Similar to the uproar over unsafe food handling revealed in the Upton Sinclair case, in response to the distribution of unregulated health products by informal practitioners and conventional doctors. junglethe modern American public health apparatus was born. The FDA was established to enforce the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906. The law required, among other things, the safe production of food, medicine, medicine, and alcoholic beverages and the labeling of products containing hazardous ingredients. Laws restricting medical practice to those with appropriate licenses became more widespread and more consistently enforced. Benedict Rust, the father of American naturopathic medicine, had to pay hundreds of dollars in fines and court costs after incriminating one of America’s newly trained doctors. electric light batha treatment that involves sitting in a cabinet and shining an incandescent light onto your body.
Rast and other undocumented doctors are also active in defending nature. opposed vaccine. Last called forced vaccination “the most heinous of all crimes.” He also helped nominate a chiropractor for president in 1920 and joined him in promoting what was called the American Drugless Platform. Greed bore a striking resemblance to President Kennedy, who has denounced pesticides, opposed fluoride in tap water, and long stoked unfounded fears about vaccines. President Kennedy said doctors should recommend Gym memberships and “good” meals for people with diabetes. He said people who are addicted to antidepressants or opioids “wellness farmThis idea is very similar to Rust’s famous naturopathic retreat in New Jersey in 1896. “His argument is a variation on the same theme that has long existed in public discussions about health in the Western world,” Colleen said. Mr. Derkach is a professor of rhetoric at Toronto Metropolitan University and author of “ Why wellness sellshe told me.
by Colleen Derkach
Many of Kennedy’s most popular movements are easy to debunk, as is informal medicine in the early 20th century. Horace Fletcher, a fashionable nutritionist in the early 1900s, told Americans to chew their food until it became liquid before swallowing, and suggested this: solution To hunger and poverty. He inspired famous physician John Harvey Kellogg. His name still adorns cereal boxes. promotion Lightning bath and 15 quart water enema. Bernard McFadden, another very popular health expert and bodybuilder, believed that the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was caused by improper diet. Even at the time, these ideas were not mainstream among experts. But they attracted attention because they spoke to people’s real concerns, such as the impact of rapid urbanization on health and lifestyles and the inability of medicine to prevent widespread death.
The concerns of modern health advocates are just as valid as those of their 20th century counterparts. Medical care in general has become more effective, but there are still sins to atone for. The pharmaceutical industry has fueled an opioid epidemic that has killed 800,000 Americans and continues to rise, while drug prices in the United States have nearly tripled since then. teeth In other rich countries. largely These are some of the most ultra-processed foods available in the average American grocery store. Some aspects of the public health response to the coronavirus pandemic, such as shutdowns and school closures, have led to distrust of public health authorities. as it happened After the influenza pandemic 1918.
Stephanie Alice Baker, associate professor at City St. said. wellness culturehe told me.. Kennedy offers what informal medicine has brought to you. It’s an outlet for feelings of betrayal over medical failure, plus the promise of regaining control through “natural” means such as proper diet and supplements. “This is an empowering message,” said James Madison University professor of religion and “ Natural: How belief in the goodness of nature leads to harmful trends, unjust laws, and flawed science.he told me. “If you’re eating the right foods, you don’t have to be afraid of getting sick.”
Informal medical care isgolden age of medicineWhen conventional treatments become more effective and less scary. The first antibiotics were discovered in 1928 and became widely available after World War II. The polio vaccine was released in 1955, and two years later cases were occurring every year. dropped Almost 90 percent, making the old arguments against the “germ theory” much less persuasive. Practices such as homeopathy and osteopathy sat in the back seat We aim to create a “magic drug” that can treat infectious diseases such as smallpox and tuberculosis. However, after these successes, medical and public attention shifted to chronic non-communicable diseases such as cancer, diabetes, and heart disease. During the golden age of medicine, we were ill-equipped to combat these diseases, but as the luster of traditional health expertise faded, wellness once again proliferated.
Halbert L. Dunn, director of the National Bureau of Vital Statistics, coined the term. wellness in 1959 write Regarding health care providers’ dissatisfaction with health care’s ability to care for the “spirit.” He helped reignite interest in alternative medicine and its emphasis on vegetarianism, exercise, and natural living. Alternative medicine became a national trend in the 1970s and intertwined with the anti-authoritarian counterculture movement. Importantly, Dunn saw health as a complement to medicine, rather than a substitute or enemy. Medicine was a reaction to disease. Wellness was the habits you do when you are healthy. But doctors rushed to preserve traditional medical practices. In the late 1970s, eminent physician Lewis Thomas wrote: Explanation in New England Medical Journal He warned that the new field of lifestyle medicine is “widely open to magic”. Today, traditional, evidence-based doctors continue to debunk health practices, while health experts blame medical failures and Big Pharma corruption. .
The pull toward “nature” can be especially appealing when the world seems designed to make people sick. There are fears that food will arrive wrapped in plastic and chemicals will be released “forever” as bushfires send smoke across the continent. Levinowitz says that in the wellness world, the term nature It takes on a quasi-religious status. It provides comfort, ritual, and community. If wellness is a church that thinks of “clean” or “natural” food as; sacredif additives and vaccines are profane, Kennedy fits neatly into it. Religious beliefs famously cannot be dispelled by arguments over evidence, and this does not bode well for those hoping to wrest the American people from Kennedy’s hands.
Like religion, health does not attract believers by empirically proving its truth. However, it fulfills certain psychological needs. In contrast, the important project of the U.S. public health apparatus is not to alleviate the existential suffering of the population, but to develop policies that address the health of the population. An administration that prioritizes the sacrament of health above all else will not make Americans healthier, especially if it undermines the effectiveness of vaccines, cuts funding for infectious disease research, and cuts regulations on raw milk. I can’t. This country learned in the last century that the promise of health had its limits. Perhaps on this issue, Americans may resist substituting health for what public health provides.
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