Self Culture and Perfection of Character (1843)
AUTHOR: Fowler, Orson Squire
PUBLICATION: Self Culture and Perfection of Character Including the Management of Youth. New York: Fowlers and Wells, 1847.
https://archive.org/details/selfcultureandp00fowlgoog
https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.hnv5qn&view=1up&seq=12
KEYWORDS: animal welfare, birds, health, morality, Temperance
Alcott, William. “The Causes of Intemperance”
---. “Fair-Weather Vegetarians”
---. “Letters on Vegetarianism”
---. “Shooting Birds”
---. “Temperance in All Things”
---. Vegetable Diet
Bergh, Henry. “Letter from Mr. Bergh”
---. “Pigeon Shooting” (1872)
---. “Pigeon-Shooting” (1875)
Brotherton, Martha Jane. Vegetable Cookery
Clubb, Henry Stephen. “Summary of the Vegetarian System”
Cooper, James Fenimore. The American Democrat
Dodds, Susanna Way. Health in the Household
---. Race Culture
Fowler, Lydia Folger. Familiar Lessons on Physiology and Phrenology
---. Fowler's Practical Phrenology
---. Human Science, or, Phrenology
---. Life
Graham, Sylvester. Lectures on the Science of Human Life
Greeley, Horace. Recollections of a Busy Life
Jackson, James Caleb. The Debilities of Our Boys and The Early Decay of Our Young Men
---. The Training of Children
Kellogg, John Harvey. The Hygienic Family Physician
---. The Physical, Moral and Social Effects of Alcoholic Poison
---. Practical Manual of Health and Temperance
Moore, J. Howard. Ethics and Education
---. High School Ethics
Mussey, Reuben Dimond. Health: Its Friends and Its Foes
Nichols, Thomas Low. [Eating to Live] The Diet Cure
---. How to Behave
Sinclair, Upton. The Autobiography of Upton Sinclair
Stevens, Lilian M. N. Address of the President
Thoreau, Henry David. The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau
Trine, Ralph Waldo, Every Living Creature
---. The Power that Wins
Tryon, Thomas. Healths Grand Preservative
---. Tryon's Letters
---. Tryon's Letters upon several occasions
White, Ellen Gould Harmon. Counsels on Health and Instruction to Medical Missionary Workers
---. The Ministry of Healing
---. Testimonies for the Church
SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin; edited Deborah Madsen):
The summary below is based on an 1856 stereotype edition (held by Hathi Trust).
Fowler explicitly advocates for Temperance and a vegan diet as the basis of both physical and mental well-being. Generally, “intemperance, gormandizing, tea, coffee, and tobacco, condiments, colds, flesh-eating, sedentary habits, and the perpetual violation, by nearly all mankind, of the laws of health, must of necessity deprave the feelings by deranging the physiology, and of course the mentality” (58). Thus, “[m]ankind must abandon flesh, condiments, narcotics, gluttony, and fermented liquors, and substitute farinaceous food, cold water, and a light diet – must learn bow to EAT AND LIVE before they can expect to attain the exalted destinies and powers of which human nature is capable” (59). Alcoholic drinks “excite the brain and nervous system” (51) and “intoxication often renders good men real demons incarnate” (54). Overall, “[w]e should, therefore, take the right kinds and quantities of food, and keep our bodies in the best possible condition for mental action” (104). Fowler also condemns the shooting of birds and the slaughtering of animals, particularly if children are allowed to witness the atrocities (277-278).