Graham, Sylvester

Graham, Sylvester a Presbyterian minister and reformer, was born in Sheffield, Connecticut, in 1794. From childhood he was troubled with weak digestion and rheumatism, and was compelled to abandon one employment after another on account of poor health. He finally studied at Amherst College, and became a Presbyterian preacher about 1826. In 1830 the Pennsylvania Temperance Society employed him as a lecturer. This led him to the study of human physiology, by which he became convinced that the only cure for intemperance was to be found in correct habits of living and judicious diet.

This idea was set before the world in permanent form in his Essay on Cholera (1832), and Grsaham Lectures on the Science of Human Life (Boston, 1839, 2 volumes). He died at Northampton, Massachusetts, September 11, 1851. His other publications were a Lecture to Young Men on Chastity: — a Treatise on Bread-Making, from which we have the name "Graham bread" and the Philosophy of Sacred History, of which only one volume was finished by him, and published after his death. In this work he attempted to show the harmony between the teachings of the Bible and his views on dietetics. See Appleton's Amer. Cyclop. 8:142.