Sylvester Graham, from the time he was a child, was frequently sick. Some think he had tuberculosis. As a young man he knew he didn't have the constitution for normal work. He tried teaching but found it exhausting. He concluded that the only job he was fit for was the ministry.Many famous people were his admirers. Henry David Thoreau (left) mentions Graham in Walden. Ralph Waldo Emerson called him "the poet of bran and pumpkins". The revivalist preacher, Charles Finney (right), was a strict Grahamite, but eventually rescinded and said he had become addicted to the diet.
The famous editor and presidential candidate, Horace Greeley, was a follower. Joseph Smith, the founder of Mormonism, was an adherant.As he advanced into late middle age his poor health was too much for even the Graham Diet to mask. He stopped lecturing, returned to eating meat and became taciturn and bitter. The Graham Diet faded as quickly as it had sprung up. He was 58 when he died.
In the next generation, John Kellogg was inspired by his reading of Graham to invent the corn flake and establish his sanitarium for quelling impure thoughts in Battle Creek, Michigan.
2 comments:
That's one of my favorite pictures of Charles Finney; one of my favorite preachers that I never heard. I don't think he died taciturn or bitter, although his picture may, to some, suggest bad effects due to the Graham Diet!
I don't know much about Finney but I admire people who are able to say, "I made a mistake" and then move on.
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