Walt Whitman proposed something akin to a paleo diet in a manifesto on healthy living that has been published online after it was lost for 150 years.
“Let the main part of the diet be meat, to the exclusion of all else,” the American poet wrote as part of a nearly 47,000-word journalistic series called Manly Health and Training.
The strangely modern advice languished in an obscure newspaper that was only available in a few libraries, but last year an industrious graduate student called Zachary Turpin tracked down the full text on microfilm.
Now Whitman’s self-help series is being published online in its entirety by a scholarly journal.
Walt Whitman’s health tips:
On diet: “The simplest and most natural diet is the best; and lest we be misunderstood, we specify that we do not mean a vegetarian or water-gruel diet, but one of strengthening materials, beef, lamb, &c., and that fruits, wines, and the like, are not to be excluded.”
On breakfast: “The breakfast being limited to a small portion of meat, or perhaps a nearly raw egg, a slice of dry bread, and, if desired, a cup of tea, to be drank only when quite cool.”
On footwear: “In favorable weather, the shoe now specially worn by the base-ball players would be a very good improvement to be introduced for general use.”
On being active: “To you, clerk, literary man, sedentary person, man of fortune, idler, the same advice. Up! The world (perhaps you now look upon it with pallid and disgusted eyes) is full of zest and beauty for you, if you approach it in the right spirit! Out in the morning!”
On exercise: “Clerks, bookkeepers, literary persons, &c., need a regular, but never too violent, exercise of the whole of the frame, chest, arms, spine, legs and feet. They need early rising, simple food, and, almost always, would be bettered by acquiring more of an animal physique—unfashionable though it be.”
While the poet’s health tips are attracting attention, the discovery is also causing excitement among Whitman scholars. It sheds new light on his thinking when he was preparing the landmark 1860 third edition of Leaves of Grass.
“This is really a complete new work by Whitman,” David S. Reynolds, the author of Walt Whitman’s America and a professor of English at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, told the New York Times.