Ernest Bonnejoy

Ernest Bonnejoy was a French physician and vegetarianism activist who lived from 1833 to 1896. Born in the Val-d Oise, he was educated at the College of Pontoise and studied medicine in Paris, completing a doctoral thesis in 1862 on the application of electricity to therapy. He worked as a hydrotherapist at Forges, moved to Chars in 1870 and belonged to the Societe d Hydrologie. He aimed to rationalise vegetarianism on grounds of health rather than morals, arguing that meat was harmful and that a vegetarian diet could reverse the degeneration of the French population. His 1891 book Le Vegetarisme et le Regime Vegetarien Rationnel drew on the discoveries of Louis Pasteur and the new germ theory, and historians describe him as the most influential French vegetarian of the 1880s and 1890s.