Businessman, author, and traveler who advocated a dietary regimen that stressed careful and prolonged mastication and reduced food intake. Born and raised in Massachusetts, at age 15 Fletcher embarked upon a life of travel and adventure that included whaling, extensive tours of the Orient, and even some time on a pirate ship. Later he received some formal education at Dartmouth, but in most subjects he was self-taught. In his 30s he married and settled in San Francisco, where he made a fortune as an ink manufacturer and importer of Japanese goods. He would later live in New Orleans, Venice, and Belgium and continue to lecture and travel around the globe until his death in Copenhagen at the age of 70.
Fletcher’s career as a popular writer began in the 1890s when, upon reaching middle age, he became concerned about his excessive weight and deteriorating health. An excellent athlete in his youth, Fletcher resolved to regain the vigor that had propelled him through his demanding early life. Drawing liberally from the New Thought tradition and his own experiences, Fletcher produced a series of books advocating what he called “menticulture,” a positive-thinking variation that claimed that personal obstacles could be overcome by purging the mind of such negative emotions as anger and worry. Concurrently, Fletcher made a quick study of various works on physiology and began to formulate the theories of nutrition that would make him famous.