Lempa, author of Bildung der Triebe. Der deutsche Philanthropismus (1768-1788) (1993), turns his attention here to prescriptions and, to a lesser degree, practices for healthy living in Germany from about 1780 to 1840. He emphasizes the persistence of older conceptions of dietetics in a period more often portrayed as the beginnings of medicalization. Among the “six non-naturals” of traditional dietetics—air, food and drink, motion and rest, sleep and waking, evacuations, and passions—Lempa focuses primarily on the third.

The first section of the book, “Quest for Bodily Autonomy,” examines works by a number of medical authorities that provided guidance on a healthy lifestyle, including Christian Wilhelm Hufeland's On the Art of Extending Human Life (1796). In the context of the wars of the French Revolution, authors such as Franz Anton May could argue that “dietetics was a means of cultural and political restoration of the tribal conditions which the Germans had lost due to corrupting culture—and particularly through French influence” (p. 33). Lempa also discusses the multi-week cures at spas in this era in terms of daily schedules shaped by dietetics. Despite an “increasing medicalization of discourse” (p. 58) at spas, he finds a powerful persistence of more traditional notions of sociability.

The middle section, “Practices of Bodily Education,” contains chapters devoted to gymnastics, dance, and walking. Lempa contrasts the emerging gymnastics with the older aristocratic exercises of riding, fencing, and dancing. In the hand of Turnvater Jahn, of course, both democratic and nationalistic ideologies became associated with physical fitness, as did misogynist and anti-Semitic attitudes. Lempa points out that physicians generally “acknowledged the benefit of muscular strength and dexterity” (p. 70) without seeing such fitness as necessary for health. He also highlights the many critics of Jahn and his movement, such as those who associated Turnen with “dubious public entertainments such as gambling and legerdemain, which were allowed only outside the city gates” (p. 90).

In the wake of the Karlsbad Decrees of 1819, the gymnastics movement was suppressed and more traditional forms of exercise such as dancing and walking regained attention. Noting the surge in instructional manuals for dancing between 1820 and 1850, Lempa explores the transition from the tightly controlled minuet to the much freer waltz; but he also argues how social clubs in various cities established a new “control over the space in which dancing took place” (p. 122). Citing Goethe's Sufferings of Young Werther and other literary texts, Lempa points out how “walking as an end in itself is of urban origin” (p. 168). City walls often provided an ideal venue for such “constitutionals,” and the book devotes significant space to controversies over the removal of such walls in a number of cities.

The third section, “The Crises of the 1830s,” makes much clearer than do the first two what Lempa means by “bodily autonomy.” A chapter on the first cholera epidemics in western Europe examines expanded government regulations regarding quarantine and disinfection and their impact on individuals, especially of the middle classes. Dietetic physicians such as Hufeland, Karl Friedrich Burdach, and Karl Ignaz Lorinser “argued against the active policies of Prussian and Austrian authorities” (p. 205) and for the individual's ability to regulate his own health. Yet Lempa suggests that the relaxation of anti-cholera measures in Hamburg in 1831 reflected “the economic interests of the commercial bourgeoisie” (p. 203) more than it did an assertion of bodily autonomy.

If state regulation interfered with freedom in the case of cholera, the state-imposed curriculum in the secondary schools threatened the delicate balance of pupils' health. Lorinser again played a major role in this “overburdening” controversy, calling for fewer class hours, but not gymnastics, as the cure. Lempa notes the irony of the direct opposite being the result, as the controversy ultimately helped “Turnen regain its legitimacy, which indirectly challenged the dietetic tradition” (p. 226).

Written by an author using his second or third language, the book contains many awkward constructions; it is not an easy read. At times, the numerous long notes threaten to overwhelm the reader: eighty-one pages of them accompany just 152 pages of text. Obvious errors are few, but readers familiar with the overburdening debates of the 1880s and 1890s or the decades-long discussions about women's fitness for higher education will take exception to Lempa's claim that the 1830s marked “one of the last instances in the nineteenth century when German educators debated the relationship between the education of the mind and the body” (p. 217).

Lempa's portrayal of the advocates of dietetics appears to betray sympathy for their ideals. Yet, as Allan Mitchell has shown, such a concern with “bodily autonomy” led to 300,000 deaths from smallpox in France in the thirty years after Prussia had introduced mandatory vaccinations.