| Chapter 1: | The Uncorseted Bostonian: Health, Physical Culture, and Dress Reform for Women in Nineteenth-Century Boston |
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to receive a basic education in physiology to break bad health habits. Her book, Letters to the People on Health and Happiness (c. 1855),was meant to act as a guide.22 Beecher's calisthenics took root in the higher education system, creating a new vision of American womanhood. Her work as a spokesperson for the benefits of women's calisthenics provided a basic level of acceptance and interest among Bostonians.
There were other existing methods of training the body in Boston and surrounding communities, but they were not necessarily welcoming to women. George Barker Windship (1834–1876) was a well-known Harvard University graduate who created a weight-lifting system to increase size and strength.23 Windship was the epitome of the hundred-pound weakling who was taunted by his fellow classmates. At Harvard, weight lifting allowed him to gain the respect of other men. Windship's weight-lifting regimes were excessive, however, and contributed to his early death at the age of forty-two. David Butler adapted his training machines and recommended them for both men and women—even pregnant women;24 Butler believed that his weight-lifting regime would overcome weakness and improve childbirth. This system was still too extreme to pique interest among Bostonian women.
In addition to Windship's weight-lifting program and Beecher's calisthenics, Boston had an established gymnastic program based on the German Jahnist tradition. Friedrich Ludwig Jahn (1778–1852) was a patriotic German naturalist who sought social change through rugged outdoor activities and rigorous gymnastic training.25 His methods were introduced at Harvard University by a German professor, Charles Follen, in the 1820s and 1830s.26 Follen opened the first public gymnasium in Boston following the Jahnist tradition.27 The German traditions were full-bodied and rigorous but tended to be too regimented for American interest. Neither Windship's weight-lifting system nor the German Jahnist tradition seemed fully appropriate for both sexes, and neither offered a strong argument for female participation.
The movement to include females in physical education was spearheaded by physical educator and reformer Dioclesian (Dio) Lewis (1823–1886). Lewis established a coeducational gymnasium in Boston in 1860