Philip E. Muskett

Philip Edward Muskett (5 February 1857 – 25 August 1909) L.R.C.P., L.R.C.S was an Australian physician, health reformer and writer. He opposed excessive meat and tea consumption and recommended eating more fish, fruit and vegetables.

Biography

Muskett was born at Collingwood, Melbourne. He was educated at Melbourne Model School and Wesley College. In 1877, he studied medicine at the University of Melbourne and took further medical studies in Glasgow and Edinburgh, Scotland.

In 1888, Muskett became a licentiate of the Royal Colleges of Physicians and of Surgeons, Edinburgh.

The Art of Living in Australia

Muskett is best known for his book The Art of Living in Australia, published in 1873. Muskett's dietary advice was for the Australian population to eat more fish, salads and vegetables whilst reducing their meat intake. The book condemned the food-habits of Australians, their meat-eating three times a day and excessive beer and tea consumption. He noted how the consumption of butcher's meat and tea was in enormous excess, and was paralleled nowhere else in the world and how deep-sea fisheries were not developed. Muskett wrote that "consumption of butcher's meat and tea is enormously more than any common sense requirements" and an "injurious amount of meat" was eaten "to the exclusion of far more needed nourishment." Muskett was concerned that Australians consumed ten times the amount of meat than Italians do but both live in a similar climate. Muskett's diet favoring fruit, fish, vegetables and wine is a variant of the Mediterranean diet, proposed years later.

Muskett also promoted health advice in relation to clothing, exercise and hygiene. His advice was sometimes impractical to follow such as his belief that one should walk "not less than six or eight miles a day", before retiring to their bedroom.

Selected publications

The Health and Diet of Children in Australia (1888) Prescribing and Treatment in the Diseases of Children (1891) The Art of Living in Australia (1893, includes recipes by Harriet Wicken) The Book of Diet (1898) The Diet of Australian School Children and Technical Education (1899) Illustrated Australian Medical Guide (1903, 1909) The Attainment of Health (1908)