Introduction. The Model Potato (1872)

AUTHOR: Trall, Russell Thacher

KEYWORDS: agriculture, food, health, land use

SUMMARY (Ridvan Askin, edited Deborah Madsen)

Trall's Introduction to this book, written by his former student John McLaurin, provides a short history and an outline of the major tenets of the water-cure. According to Trall, the “principle of health reform” was first properly laid out by “that masterly work of Sylvester Graham, entitled 'The Science of Human Life'” (6). This was followed by Vincent Priessnitz's system of hydropathy, which Trall adopted and institutionalized in the United States. Trall emphasizes the religious nature of the water-cure, which demands “unconditional obedience to all of God's laws, as manifested in the organic or the spiritual domain” (7), employing only “natural remedies” and curing “without employing medicines” (7).

Trall recounts how McLaurin, after graduating from Trall's institute, “was employed as a missionary to seek a suitable location for a proposed vegetarian colony” (8). He gives the following account:

Kansas was selected as the most promising territory for exploration, and Dr. McLaurin spent several months in travelling over the area now known as a State. Kansas was then uninhabited, except in few and distant places, by white people. Indians and animals constituted the principal population, and even these were only to be found in particular “neighborhoods,” and were remote from each other. Of course our traveller had a rough time of it. Stages were unknown. Hotels were not. Houses had not invaded much of the territory, and even “shebangs” were scarce.

After roaming over a good part of the territory, camping out in all kinds of weather, exposed to rains, winds, sultry heats, and chilling frosts, and having accomplished the object of his mission, Dr. McLaurin returned to New York (8-9).

Trall criticizes “the prevalent system of agriculture” that results in “improper,” “diseased,” and “unwholesome” food, promoting instead “hygienic agriculture” (10). This is where McLaurin's interest in the proper cultivation of potatoes originates, particularly in the context of the 1845 “potato disease” and subsequent “'great famine'” in Ireland (10, 11). According to Trall, McLaurin's observations about potatoes not only provide the farmer with guidelines for “the renovation and improvement” of potatoes, but of “all other crops” as well. Trall maintains that they may be successfully applied “to the purification and invigoration of his [sic] domestic animals” (16) and even “the prevention of all contagious diseases among human beings, and, to a great extent, of all other maladies” (17). In one of his annotations, he expresses his disdain for “the filthy and troublesome” practice of using animal manure (51) – a practice already rejected by the community at Fruitland earlier in the century – and Trall reproduces in this Introduction a scientific article on this issue (51-66).

Trall reminds his readers that “a large proportion of the ills that flesh is heir to are caused by improper and unwholesome articles of food, drink, and condiments, while all morbid conditions are aggravated by them.” Hence, “the dietary constitutes an important feature, and, in many cases, the leading and most important feature of hygienic medication” (17). Trall explains how over time he gradually moved from prescribing a mixed to a vegetarian to a fully vegan diet. In addition to the exclusion of meat and other animal products, he now also discourages his patients from “the use of sugar and milk” in their diet:

Although my table has been supplied with a variety of breads, pies, cakes, mushes, soups, puddings, fruits and vegetables, nothing artificial or inorganic has been put in any article of food. Nor has any process of cooking been employed except boiling, baking, or steaming. Nothing has been mixed with or added to any dish or article prepared for or supplied to the table, except soft pure water and heat. No drink is allowed at meals (18).

For Trall, McLaurin's book on the potato is only the first step towards “a general improvement and reformation in all of the culinary modes of cultivating the things which are to be used for the sustenance of human beings” (21).