Benjamin Smith Lyman – pioneer vegetarian

by Christine M.E. Guth in the Harvard Magazine (thanks to Ann M.)

BENJAMIN SMITH Lyman was living proof of the benefits to health and well-being of the lifestyle he advocated in his Vegetarian Diet and Dishes, self-published in 1917, when he was 82 years old. A graduate of the Harvard class of 1855 that included scientist Alexander Agassiz, Phillips Brooks, Rector of Boston’s Trinity Church, and journalist and abolitionist Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Lyman was an eminent mining geologist and published more than 150 articles on the topic. During his nine years as a mining engineer under contract to the Japanese government between 1872 and 1881, he also mastered that language. A linguistic rule involving the pronunciation of the initial consonant in compound words is still known as “Lyman’s Law.”

After becoming ill, possibly from poorly canned meats, while conducting a survey of mercury mines in California, Lyman became a vegetarian in 1864. His abstinence from meat was regarded as highly unusual at the time and shaped his work and relationships both at home and abroad: in India, where he carried out surveys in the Punjab for the British colonial government between 1869-70; in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he grew up and lived following his return from Japan; and in Philadelphia, the birthplace of American vegetarianism, where he lived from 1887 until his death in 1920. (continued)

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