F. A. Hornibrook

Frederick Arthur Hornibrook (1878–1965) was an Irish physical culturalist and writer best known for his book The Culture of the Abdomen.

Biography

Hornibrook was born in Dublin in 1878 from a middle-class professional family. He was influenced by Eugen Sandow and trained at Sandow's London Institute. Hornibrook became a physical culture instructor and lecturer. In the early 20th century he emigrated to New Zealand and established a Sandow Room fitted with dumb-bells at the Avon Prince Sanatorium in Christchurch. He lectured on physical culture and promoted it as cure for alcoholism and other ills. Hornibrook and his wife have been described as "tireless popularizers of Lane's theories and the wider aims of the society". Hornibrook and Lane were advocates of auto-intoxication. He attributed constipation to the faulty posture common amongst people in industrialized societies. Politician John A. Lee attended a lecture of Hornibrook and later exchanged letters. Lee wrote that he owed his life to Hornibrook's "deep breathing apostleship and still later to his famous Culture of the Abdomen".

Selected publications

The Culture of the Abdomen: The Cure of Obesity and Constipation (with a preface by Sir William Arbuthnot Lane, 1924, republished in 1933) Physical Fitness in Middle Life (1926) Without Reserve (autobiography, 1935) Health Culture for Women: The Sane Way to Slim (with Ettie Rout. With a preface by Arthur Keith, 1959)