Chaz Allen
Little Known Facts Show
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Have you ever heard the name Sylvester Graham? If you listen to Little Known Facts radio show very much you have. You know that he is the fellow who invented Graham Crackers, which of course are named after him. But Sylvester wasn’t just a confection vendor, not even close! He was as close as you can get to a complete and total health nut - and radical in his day. Really! Now he did and advocated some very strange things, like sleeping every night with the windows wide open, even in the dead of winter. And by the way, he did this in New England, even before they had indoor plumbing. Brrrr! I can’t imagine. But old Sylvester was a popular lecturer and author, and frequently went around the country telling folks that eating meat would kill them and white bread was just about the most deadly thing they could put in their body. There are still some folks who feel that way. Now the history books show pretty clearly that, for the most part, the general public didn’t buy what the good Dr. Graham was selling. Oh, he had his followers all right, but the vast majority just thought that getting out of bed in the morning to a 15 degree below zero bedroom was not really the best thing for their health - or their mood! And really, the established medical community felt about the same way. But there is one thing that Dr. Graham advocated and pushed at every opportunity that the mainstream doctors of the 1840s did agree with, and we found written in an 1848 edition of a medical magazine. |
Something that pretty much we take for granted today, and I’ll bet you use. It was touted as one of the most effective controls of disease in the coming four decades. Almost nobody did it, but the medical community was sure getting on board with it. We found long (and I mean long) dissertations in magazines and newspapers on how to use the device and the great and good effects of it. Newspapers of the day and medical experts were telling the public that if they really wanted to live a healthier life, this was essential. The public was skeptical to say the least. Just didn’t make a lot of sense at first. And besides, it was expensive: $8.00. That’s what one cost in 1870. Eight dollars could be considered a tidy sum back then. And of course you had to find a place for it. It was bigger than a bread box, you know. Here’s an exact quote from the medical journal. “This may be used for all diseases of the head, for epilepsy, nervous complaints, headache, melancholy, hypochondriasis, obstruction of the menses and such complaints as arise therefrom, delirium, general debility and more. Hmmm. Quite a cure all, wouldn’t you say? That’s how it started - as a cure and treatment for disease. And I’ll bet you didn’t know that it was the same fellow who invented Graham Crackers that brought this modern miracle cure to the public, Sylvester Graham. But it was. And what was this amazing product that was going to cure all the ills of mankind? It’s a Little Known Fact that it was not convenience, nor comfort, but rather for the control of disease that people first stood up in the bath tub . . . and started taking showers! |