ABSTRACT
Bernard Christoph Faust was a German obstetrician and writer, who produced a range of texts designed at improving health amongst the general public. His ‘Health Catechism’ was aimed at children and used a popular question and answer form, which was designed to help people – especially youth – memorise the information. Faust’s writing reflects a trend amongst some medical professionals of the early nineteenth century to conflate health and spiritual concerns, where attending to the body became part of moral practice. In his catechism children are taught to interpret care for their bodies as a moral duty, reinforcing his claims with bible verses on similar topics. Notably, and reflecting the growth in utilitarian ideas that saw pleasure and pain as drivers of human behaviour, the healthy body is a happy body, and pain and unpleasant emotions signs of physical and moral disorder.
