Soc Hist Med. 2001 Aug; 14(2): 223-45.

Food and the purification of society: Dr. Paul Carton and vegetarianism in interwar France.

Ouedraogo AP.

INRA-CORELA, Seine, France. ouedraog@ivry.inra.fr

This article examines the life and work of Dr Paul Carton (1875-1947), a French physician who promoted 'naturist vegetarianism". His career and the evolution of his ideas were influenced by his own experience as a young man of treatment for tuberculosis, and by an anti-materialist philosophy. He developed a diet for his patients that became influential through his writings and through the activities of the French Naturist Society. Although by no means the only advocate of such ideas, Carton's influence has survived and can still be discerned in a close reading of the present-day French popular press.