Vitality Supreme: (Original Version, Restored) (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781470071301)

From Biography.com - "Macfadden, often dubbed the 'father of physical culture, ' grew up in poverty in the eastern Ozark Mountains of Missouri. After his parents died young from ill health when he was 11, he spent his life fighting early death and overcoming physical challenges. Macfadden thrived on hard work and outdoor living. Inspired by the Police Gazette, he took up boxing, wrestling, and gymnastics to harden his body and rejected alcohol, tobacco, and meat to preserve his health. Always energetic, the irrepressible Macfadden often worked several jobs and frequently wrestled professionally in circuses. In 1897 Macfadden traveled to England where he collaborated with bicycle entrepreneur Hopton Hadley to market the wall-mounted muscle developer that he had created. With Hadley's support, Macfadden founded an early muscle magazine, Physical Development (1898), and later an even more successful American version, Physical Culture (1899). Macfadden also toured widely to promote his message of vigorous physical exercise and to preach about the dangers of alcohol, drugs, gluttony, corsets, prudishness, tea, coffee, and white bread. Shocking to Victorian sentiments was his advocacy of a diet consisting of carrots, beans, nuts, and raw eggs, sleeping on the floor, and nudity and his zeal for 'physical love.' To promote such 'love, ' he encouraged openness about sexual matters and invented a glass cylinder device attached to a vacuum pump to enlarge men's penises. To exemplify fitness, he walked five miles daily to his office in Manhattan in bare feet while carrying a 40-pound bag of sand. In 1903 Macfadden staged the first physique (bodybuilding) contest in America and in similar competitions in 1921 and 1922 fostered the emergence of physical culture's greatest icon, Charles Atlas.