| Chapter 1: | The Uncorseted Bostonian: Health, Physical Culture, and Dress Reform for Women in Nineteenth-Century Boston |
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It was Lewis' friend and colleague, Nathaniel T. Allen, who extended the invitation to come to Boston.30 Allen's school was progressive on a number of fronts; he offered a coeducational experience for girls and boys, he worked as an abolitionist and opened the school to African Americans, and he believed in physical activity as part of a well-rounded education.31 Allen's school was a good fit for Lewis' progressive ideas, and their professional association lasted through 1868.32 Lewis began to integrate the theories he had studied at home and abroad into his “new gymnastic” system while teaching at Allen's School. Unfortunately, his teaching position provided an inadequate salary, so Lewis also taught in surrounding communities and established a gymnasium on Essex Street in downtown Boston in 1860.33
Lewis' experiences as a child and young adult influenced his lifelong commitment to exercise, health, and social reform. He was an intelligent, engaged child whose physical size and fitness made an impression on his contemporaries.34 By the age of fifteen, Lewis was already a resourceful schoolteacher who understood that children needed a balance of academics and physical activity to thrive.35 He abandoned the accepted highly rigid model of classroom education for one that incorporated energetic walks in the nearby woods and the occasional casual game of hide and seek.36 Although the community was skeptical about his methods, Lewis' students excelled in their studies.37
Health problems curtailed Lewis' teaching career in 1842,38 and financial difficulties cut short a brief course of study at Harvard Medical School in 1845, but Lewis was a resourceful young man whose interest in health and education propelled him to search for an alternative career in the medical profession.39
Conventional nineteenth-century medicine offered limited therapies for its patients and often inflicted greater harm. For example, treatments often included mercury, which led to permanent nerve damage. Consequently, many Americans sought alternative practices to treat illness and disease. Some popular methods such as Thomsonianism40 encouraged a return to herbal remedies, while others such as homeopathy41 sought to cure illness through small dosages of medications that would create similar symptoms