ABSTRACT
In 1873, before an audience of the tenth annual American Association of Spiritualists, Victoria Woodhull told her listeners to prepare for the day when their daughters would be dating the dead. The lecture, "The Elixir of Life," brought together two of Woodhull's primary concerns-Spiritualism and the free love movement-in a metanarrative that is parallel to the thesis of her speech: heaven and earth are about to be literally combined, ushering in a curious and quixotic millennium. She argued that death is caused by disease and that disease is caused by bad sex; eliminating bad sex will eliminate disease, which in turn will eliminate death itself. With death vanquished, the spirits of the dead will return to earth, where all will enjoy eternity in a utopia free from the scourges of illness and all manner of social ills. Against the backdrop of American Spiritualism, Woodhull would tell an extraordinary story in which spiritual advancement healed the body and bodily freedom advanced the spirit.
