The Doctor Weighs In

Brian Klepper

One of my early morning pleasures is reading the day's edition of Garrison Keillor's Writer's Almanac - click on the link to sign up for the daily email newsletter - which contains a poem and then usually several short summaries of writers' lives. They always manage to focus on the particularly human part of each subject. More often than not, I think to myself that each entry is a gem.

 One of today's entries was new to me. Born on this day in 1868, Bernarr Mcfadden, was an early popular fitness advocate, and a website about him refers to him as "The Father of Physical Culture." Since the heart of TDWI is health, nutrition, fitness and all the social dynamics that swirl around those values, I thought this might be a nice entry.

It's the birthday of the man who created the True Story and True Romance magazines, Bernarr Macfadden, born in Mill Spring, Missouri (1868). His parents both died when he was a boy, his father of alcoholism and his mother of consumption. His uncle sold him off as an indentured servant to work on a farm. After he almost died of malnutrition, he became obsessed with his health. He started doing daily exercises and became a vegetarian. When he was 18, he ran away from the farm and eventually set up his own business in New York City, teaching people to exercise and eat right.

He invented a muscle-building machine and wrote a pamphlet to advertise it. The pamphlet grew into his first magazine, Physical Culture, which came out in March 1899. His first editorial was titled, "Weakness Is a Crime, Don't Be a Criminal." His magazine was such a success that he became one of the first health and fitness gurus.

Readers of Physical Culture often wrote letters to the magazine asking for advice on their love lives or describing unhealthy experiences they regretted. McFadden got the idea to publish these letters in a separate magazine called True Story. It was the first true confessions magazine, published in 1919. When other popular women's magazines were publishing articles about the love lives of duchesses and princesses, True Story published articles about the love lives of secretaries and shop girls. It was one of the most popular magazines of its time.

On the Mcfadden website, there's a quote on the home page that says, "Muscle building is surely the first step toward acquiring strength and the only means by which bodily perfection may be attained."

So here's to another person who pioneered a new idea of health, and stood by his convictions way before it was fashionable.