A long intellectual tradition holds that gathering local waste, turning it into compost, and applying it to fields can remind us of ostensibly natural connections among humans, animals, and plants. Yet, in the nineteenth century, physiological reformers led by Sylvester Graham saw the application of manure as an overstimulating, prurient, noxious, and unnatural practice with consequences for individual health and the social body. These reformers developed a powerful narrative about the interdependence between human and earthly metabolism. They believed humans, animals, plants, and soil were bound together in an unhealthy stew of stimulation, viciously and violently acting upon one another, and always reflecting the diseased condition of broader American society. Mid-nineteenth-century physiological reformers constituted a countercurrent regarding the meaning of nature and its implications for ideal agricultural practice and health, one that sheds new light on historical connections between medical discourse, agricultural practice, and environmental thought. Graham’s views lost salience with the decline of antebellum reform movements and with a shift away from the medical model of overstimulation. Yet agricultural experts argued for the self-sustaining power of the soil without amendments through the early twentieth century, and the Grahamite notion of “hygienic” agriculture, while marginal, found a following for well over a century.
...More
Article
Beatriz Corbacho González;
Roc Padró Caminal;
David Soto Fernández;
Lourenzo Fernández Prieto;
(2021)
Management of Soil Fertility and Agricultural Intensification in NW Iberia, 1750–1900
(/isis/citation/CBB564709618/)
Chapter
Cirillo, Vincent J.;
(1996)
Sylvester Graham and health reform
(/isis/citation/CBB000068449/)
Thesis
Cole, Edith W.;
(1975)
Sylvester Graham, lecturer on the science of human life: The rhetoric of a dietary reformer
(/isis/citation/CBB001563909/)
Book
Sokolow, Jayme A.;
(1983)
Eros and modernization: Sylvester Graham, health reform, and the origins of Victorian sexuality in America
(/isis/citation/CBB000050753/)
Book
Nissenbaum, Stephen;
(1980)
Sex, diet, and debility in Jacksonian America: Sylvester Graham and health reform
(/isis/citation/CBB000000944/)
Article
Coleman, John P.;
(1986)
Casting bread on troubled waters: Grahamism and the West
(/isis/citation/CBB000035150/)
Article
Jennifer Bonnell;
(January 2021)
Early Insecticide Controversies and Beekeeper Advocacy in the Great Lakes Region
(/isis/citation/CBB042359495/)
Book
Dean, Don Howard;
(2008)
The American Cane Mill: A History of the Machines, the Manufacturers, Sugar Cane and Sorghum
(/isis/citation/CBB000951982/)
Article
Pawley, Emily;
(2010)
Accounting with the Fields: Chemistry and Value in Nutriment in American Agricultural Improvement, 1835--1860
(/isis/citation/CBB001034645/)
Article
Adam Sundberg;
Sara Brooks Sundberg;
(2016)
Happy Land: Women Landowners in Early West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana, 1813–1845
(/isis/citation/CBB478712486/)
Article
Stewart, Mart A.;
(2007)
From King Cane to King Cotton: Razing Cane in the Old South
(/isis/citation/CBB000700459/)
Article
Collins, Steven G.;
(2001)
System, Organization, and Agricultural Reform in the Antebellum South, 1840-1860
(/isis/citation/CBB000102061/)
Book
David B. Danbom;
(2014)
Sod Busting: How Families Made Farms on the Nineteenth-Century Plains
(/isis/citation/CBB333691038/)
Book
Hahn, Barbara;
(2011)
Making Tobacco Bright: Creating an American Commodity, 1617--1937
(/isis/citation/CBB001220603/)
Book
Cohen, Benjamin R.;
(2009)
Notes from the Ground: Science, Soil and Society in the American Countryside
(/isis/citation/CBB001021102/)
Book
Cinotto, Simone;
(2012)
Soft Soil, Black Grapes: The Birth of Italian Winemaking in California
(/isis/citation/CBB001320946/)
Book
Curtis, Kent A;
(2013)
Gambling on Ore: The Nature of Metal Mining in the United States, 1860--1910
(/isis/citation/CBB001420380/)
Article
Spiekermann, Uwe;
(2011)
Redefining Food: The Standardization of Products and Production in Europe and the United States, 1880--1914
(/isis/citation/CBB001033640/)
Book
Phillip F. Beach;
(2018)
Wheat Country Railroad: The Northern Pacific's Spokane & Palouse and Competitors
(/isis/citation/CBB291746044/)
Book
Cunfer, Geoff;
(2005)
On The Great Plains: Agriculture and Environment
(/isis/citation/CBB000641550/)
Be the first to comment!