Emmet Densmore

Emmet Densmore (May 19, 1837 – March 2, 1911) was an American businessman, physician and natural hygiene advocate who promoted an early version of the Paleolithic diet.

Biography

Densmore was born in Crawford County, Pennsylvania. He was the son of Joel and Sophia Densmore. In his youth he worked at his father's sawmill and worked as a printer at Meadville, Pennsylvania. Densmore spent two years at Allegheny College. In 1862, he developed with his brothers one of the first successful oil wells in Oil Creek, Pennsylvania.

Densmore obtained his M.D. from the New York University Medical College in 1885. Densmore married several times. He married Elizabeth Heard in 1855, Helen Barnard in 1881 and Mabelle Hoff in 1905. He was President of the Barnard Densmore Company which manufactured distilled water and preserved fruits in Los Angeles.

Densmore was a proponent of intelligent design. He commented that "I am one of those unfashionable scientists who perceive design in the universe. It does not matter what title we give the Supreme Ruler: Natural Law, or God, or what you will: there seems to me conclusive evidence of intelligent design in the Great Artificer."

Dieting

Densmore promoted a fruit and meat diet, which he believed was the natural food of primal man. He stated that "bread is the staff of death". His recommended diet consisted of fruit, meat, nuts, fish, eggs and milk. He believed that the natural life of man should be 120 years. He advocated fasting as a treatment for illness.

Densmore argued that cereals were "unnatural and disease-inducing foods". James Burn described his diet as "anti-vegetarian quackery". Densmore edited the London monthly magazine, Natural Food (1890–1895) and with his wife Helen, edited the health magazine Earnest Words. In 1890, Densmore and Helen founded the Natural Food Society in London which offered a system of dietary principles that was more enjoyable and practical than "orthodox vegetarianism or the ordinary fare".

Death

Contradictory information exists about Densmore's death. Obituaries in several medical journals and newspapers have stated that Densmore died at Cassadaga, Florida after two years of illness on February 18, 1911. The American Library Annual lists his date of death as March 2, 1911, in New York.

Densmore left a large part of his fortune to the Tuskegee Institute. He requested for his body to be given to a medical school for dissection.

Publications

The Natural Food of Man: A Brief Statement of the Principal Arguments Against the Use of Bread, Cereals, Pulses, and All Other Starch Foods (1890) How Nature Cures (1892) Fruit as Food (1896) Consumption and Chronic Diseases (1899) Sex Equality: A Solution of the Woman Problem (1907)