Ernest Bonnejoy
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| Born | 1833 (1833) |
| Died | 1896 (aged 62–63) |
| Occupation(s) | Physician and vegetarianism activist |
Ernest Bonnejoy (1833 – 1896) was a French physician and vegetarianism activist.
Bonnejoy was born in Val-d'Oise. He was educated at the College of Pontoise and studied medicine in Paris. In 1862, he completed his doctoral thesis on the application of electricity to therapy.[1] He was a hydrotherapist at Forges and moved to Chars in 1870. He was a member of the Société d'Hydrologie (Hydrological Society).[2]
Bonnejoy aimed to rationalize vegetarianism.[3] He favoured health over moral arguments. He argued meat was harmful for health and that vegetarianism could reverse the degeneration of the French population.[3][4] Bonnejoy considered himself the only serious vegetarian activist in France during the 1880s and was scornful of rival vegetarian authors such as Edmond Pivion and Emile Tanneguy de Wogan.[4] Historians have described Bonnejoy as the most influential French vegetarian in the 1880s and 1890s.[3][4][5]
His book Vegetarianism and the Rational Vegetarian Regime (1891) was influenced by the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and the then new germ theory of disease.[6] Bonnejoy promoted "muscular vegetarianism" to boost the immune system and improve public health.[6]
Bonnejoy was a member of the Sociéte Végétarienne de France (Vegetarian Society of France). He contributed to the Society's journal, La Reforme Alimentaire.[4]
Bonnejoy in his book Le Végétarisme et le Régime Végétarien Rationnel (1891) developed his own version of scientific végétarisme (vegetarianism) in opposition to ordinary vegetarianism and vegetalism (veganism).[7] In the book he argued that meat eating causes degeneration, disease and immorality whilst vegetarianism is favourable to moral development and health.[8]
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