For the next two centuries, though, even though explicit appeals to religious faith became less common, the underlying belief remained: health was a moral choice, secured by choosing the right habits. Of course, that meant that if illness did come, it was a reflection of failure. Take, for example, what a most unlikely wellness influencer, Walt Whitman, had to say in his 1858 series on “Manly Health and Training.”
Whitman offered plenty of idiosyncratic advice: avoid catsup; eat rare beef, maintain “a cheerful and gay temper during and immediately after meals,” and so on. But he anticipated current health influencers on the crucial question. “The cause of disease,” he wrote, “is bad blood, often hereditary, more often from persistence in bad habits.” No need to bother with conventional medicine, then, with “the great requisites of health being good air, proper food, and appropriate exercise.”