Title page of “The Wilderness Cure.”
At the end of the nineteenth century, concerns were common over the enfeeblement of the human form — often the male human form — particularly of those who lived in cities or worked in factories or offices, those “new” and “unnatural” environments.
In 1881, Marc Cook, an office-worker in New York City, wrote The Wilderness Camp, his own personal tale of health revitalized through retreat from the city and return to the country. Cook was a newspaper reporter with “an inconsequential cough” (8) that developed into a debilitating condition that included weight loss and regular lung hemorrhages. Cook seemed at death’s door when he chose to retreat from the city to rural New York and rediscovered his health over the course of six months.
Cook originally wrote about his salvation via retreat to the “healthy” country in Harper’s Magazine, but the pieces proved popular enough to convince him that a book version of the same material would sell.
Cook is specific about what an “invalid’s camp” should be like, specifying that the patient hoping to regain health in the wilderness should get a good guide, choose a camping spot well, and be careful in purchasing a tent, among other things.
Cook’s narrative provides an interesting window into the personal experience of health in the late nineteenth century. He is unsatisfied with the medical advice he has received and chooses to take matters into his own hands; having found his method satisfactory, he is now in the position of medical expert, giving his particular brand of medical advice.
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