Ernest Bonnejoy

Ernest Bonnejoy (1833 – 1896) was a French physician and vegetarianism activist.

Biography

Bonnejoy was born in Val-d'Oise. He was educated at the College of Pontoise and studied medicine in Paris. In 1862, he completed his doctoral thesis on the application of electricity to therapy. He was a hydrotherapist at Forges and moved to Chars in 1870. He was a member of the Société d'Hydrologie (Hydrological Society).

Bonnejoy aimed to rationalize vegetarianism. He favoured health over moral arguments. He argued meat was harmful for health and that vegetarianism could reverse the degeneration of the French population. Bonnejoy considered himself the only serious vegetarian activist in France during the 1880s and was scornful of rival vegetarian authors such as Edmond Pivion and Emile Tanneguy de Wogan.

His book Vegetarianism and the Rational Vegetarian Regime (1891) was influenced by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and the then new germ theory of disease. Bonnejoy promoted "muscular vegetarianism" to boost the immune system and improve public health. In the book he argued that meat eating causes degeneration, disease and immorality whilst vegetarianism is favourable to moral development and health.

Publications

Principes d'alimentation rationnelle hygienique et economique avec des recettes de cuisine vegetarienne (1884) Le Végétarisme et le Régime Végétarien Rationnel (1891) Principes d'alimentation rationnelle et de cuisine végétarienne (1896)