Elmer Lee

Elmer Lee (March 12, 1856 – June 13, 1945) was an American physician and advocate of natural hygiene and vegetarianism. He was the founder and editor of the health magazine Health Culture.

Elmer Lee was born in Ohio in 1856; he graduated from Ohio Wesleyan University, in 1877, with an A.B.; Lee received his A.M. in 1880. He then moved to St. Louis, where he taught in public schools and worked in newspapers. Lee earned his M.D. from the Missouri Medical College (now the Washington University School of Medicine) in 1880 and his Ph.D. from Saint Louis University in 1886. He then moved to Chicago, where he lived for ten years. Lee studied cholera in Germany and Russia, living for a time in Saint Petersburg.

Lee started the healthy living magazine Health Culture in 1894; it heavily promoted a plant-based diet. Lee remained as editor for 23 years, before being succeeded by Arthur Vos; the magazine continued publishing until 1964. Lee moved to New York City in 1898. He was acting Assistant Surgeon in the Spanish–American War. On November 23, 1898, he testified before a commission investigating conduct in the war. In 1902, Lee patented a reservoir for dispensing liquid soap.

In 1908, Lee authored an article in The New York Times about the founding of a "Hospital of Hygiene". Lee started working as a naturopath in 1910 and developed a health movement known as the "hygienic system", inspired by Russel Trall. In the same year, Lee was the subject of an article by The New York Times, entitled "Dr. Lee pleads for better foods", in which he advocated for curing disease through a diet of "live organic plant-foods" and asserted that societal maladies, such as drunkenness, were due to people not following a sufficiently nutritious diet; this article has been described as the first known use of the phrase "plant-foods" to describe a vegetarian diet.

In 1910, Lee reprinted Rupert H. Wheldon's No Animal Food and Nutrition and Diet with Vegetable Recipes, one of the first British vegan recipe books; it included a quote from Lee, stating that a "Plant diet with butter, cream, milk, cheese, eggs, lard, fat, suet, or tallow added to it, is not vegetarian; it is mixed diet; the same in effect as if meat were used." Around 1921, Lee invented a plant milk, derived from oats and peanut meal.

Lee served as the Vice-President of the American Academy of Medicine and held offices in the American Medical Association and the American Social Science Association; he was on the advisory committee of the American Super-Race Foundation and worked as a lecturer for the New York Board of Education.

Lee retired around 1935 and donated his medical books to Ohio Wesleyan University. He died at Cincinnati Sanitarium, College Hill, Cincinnati, on June 13, 1945.

• "Hydro-therapeutic Principles in the Treatment of Typhoid Fever". Medical Record. New York. 53 (9). 1891-02-26.
• Lee, E. (September 1894). "The Treatment of Typhoid Fever". The American Journal of Dental Science. 28 (5): 223–228. PMC 6115018. PMID 30757396.
• Lee, E. (October 1895). "Treatment of Asiatic Cholera". The American Journal of Dental Science. 29 (6): 250–258. PMC 6118763. PMID 30757708.
• "Diphtheria and its antitoxin". The Laryngoscope. 1 (2): 105–106. August 1896. doi:10.1288/00005537-189608000-00011.
• Lee, Elmer (1900-02-24). "Food and Drink". JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association. XXXIV (8): 465. doi:10.1001/jama.1900.24610080017001g. ISSN 0098-7484.