Top tips on grooming and exercise from great American poet Mr Walt Whitman.

Back in 1858, the famed American poet Mr Walt Whitman penned a series of newspaper columns – pithily entitled “Manly Health And Training, With Off-Hand Hints Towards Their Conditions” – for the rather obscure publication The New York Atlas under the pseudonym Mr Mose Velsor. No-one knew who the real author of this 47,000-word series was for more than 150 years. Upon discovery, an illustrated compilation of the best of Mr Whitman’s wit and wisdom on the subjects of diet, exercise, grooming, alcohol, dancing and sport has been assembled into an eminently giftable book.

Mr Whitman’s rather better-known collection of poetry, Leaves Of Grass, is required reading for many American students (and its pop culture relevance was greatly enhanced by its extended cameo in recent cult TV series Breaking Bad). But read through the health- and fitness-obsessed lens of 2017, Walt Whitman’s Guide To Manly Health And Training makes for an enlightening and surprisingly relevant manifesto for the modern man. (He was way ahead of the curve on such matters as beards, high-protein diets and recovery, for example.) To wit, here is a selection of his 19th-century motivational lyricism – summarised by us to make it ring just as true today.

“In robust training for this life… the aim should be to form that solid and adamantine fiber which will endure long and serious attacks upon it and come out unharmed from them, rather than the ability to perform sudden and brilliant feats, which often exhaust the powers in show without doing any substantial good.”

“Places of training, and for all gymnastic exercises, should be in the open air – upon the turf or in the sand is best. Cellars and low-roofed attics are to be condemned, especially the former.”

“A great deal may be done by gymnastic exercises to increase the flexibility and power of the legs… The simple exercise of standing on one foot and lowering so as to touch the bent knee of the other leg to the ground, and then rising again on the first foot, is a good one.”

“The tonic and sanitary effects of cold water are too precious to be foregone in some of their forms.”

“The beard is great sanitary protection to the throat – for purposes of health it should always be worn, just as much as the hair of the head should be.”

“Let the main part of the diet be meat, to the exclusion of all else.”

“From a money-making point of view… health is an investment that pays better than any other.”

“Always go with the head erect and breast expanded – always throwing open the play of the great vital organs, inhaling the good air into the throat, lungs and stomach, and giving tone to the whole system thereby.”

“The observance of the laws of manly training, duly followed, can utterly rout and do away with the curse of a depressed mind, melancholy, ‘ennui’ which now, in more than half the men of America blights a large portion of the days of their existence.”

Walt Whitman’s Guide to Manly Health And Training (Ten Speed Press) is released on 4 April