Eli Peck Miller

Eli Peck Miller, best known as E. P. Miller, was an American physician, hydrotherapist, vegetarian and natural hygiene advocate, who lived from 1828 to December 1912. He graduated from the New York Hygeio-Therapeutic College in 1862 and from Bellevue Hospital Medical College in 1864, and combined hydrotherapy with diet as complementary treatments while opposing alcohol and tobacco. He first worked with the hydrotherapist Russell Trall, later ran the New York Hygienic Institute with Dr A. L. Wood, added Victorian Turkish baths there in 1865, and opened the Bath Hotel with its Turkish, Roman and electric baths on West 26th Street in 1871. From 1865 he edited The Herald of Health, later renamed the Journal of Hygiene and Herald of Health. He became a vegetarian in 1850, practised phrenology and embraced spiritualism, and he died of pneumonia at the age of 84.