„Meat Should Be Prescribed in Very Small Doses, Arsenic-like”. How Josephine Joteyko and Varia Kipiani Pioneered Medical Research to Improve Vegetarianism in 1906

• Authors: Josephine Joteyko , Varia Kipiani , Ewa Nowak , Ilana Löwy
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This compilation is based on the original report on a clinical survey conducted in Brussels (1905-1906) by Josephine Joteyko and Varia Kipiani with 43 vegetarians. Having advanced expertise in physiology and experimentalism, Joteyko (with Lithuanian and Polish origins) and Kipiani (with Georgian origins) discussed their findings at the Congress of the Belgian Society for Vegetarianism in 1906. For both children and adults, females and males, regardless of age, the findings demonstrated vegetarian dietary habits to be beneficiary for human development, the subjects’ physical and mental health, welfare, and physical and intellectual efficiency. Surprisingly, Joteyko and Kipiani confirmed C. Darwin’s observation across various nutritional cultures that vegetarian food would increase the energetic balance of the human body. Additionally, their focus on the moteur humain shows affinities with Taylorism, the modernist utopias of labor, the enhancement of human faculties, the protection of workers and their rights from automation, and applied social science represented by Joteyko and Kipiani as multidisciplinary investigators. The compilation was made on: J. Joteyko & V. Kipiani, Enquête scientifique sur les Végétariens de Bruxelles, Conférence donnée à la Société végétarienne de Belgique, le 4 décembre 1906, pp. 1–77, with no further correction.

Keywords

EN

Josephine Joteyko; Varia Kipiani; physiology of vegetarianism; experimental questionnaire with 43 vegetarians; pioneering medical research on vegetarian diet; meat on prescription to be consumed arsenic-like; Brussels 1906; history of medicine; the modernist utopias of labor and efficiency

• Publisher: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu
• Journal: Ethics in Progress
• Year: 2020
• Volume: 11
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 80-87

Dates

published

2020-12-30

Contributors

author

Josephine Joteyko

author

Varia Kipiani

author

Ewa Nowak

• Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznań

author

Ilana Löwy

• CERMES

References

• Lipkowski O. 1996. Józefa Joteyko.Życie i praca. Warszawa: PAN.
• Löwy I. 2005. “Measures, Instruments, Methods, and Results: Jozefa Joteyko on Social Reforms and Physiological Measures,” in G. Jorland, Opinel A., & Weisz G. (Eds.), Body Counts (pp. 145–172). Montreal/Québéc – Kingstone/Ontario: McGill–Queen’s University Press.
• Rabinbach A. 1992. The Human Motor: Energy, Fatigue and the Origins of Modernity. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Identifiers

DOI

10.14746/eip.2020.2.8