Thomas Low Nichols

Life & Legacy

Thomas Low Nichols (December 13, 1815 – July 8, 1901) was an American physician, journalist, writer, and social reformer. He wrote and campaigned on free love, hydrotherapy, food and health reform, vegetarianism, spiritualism, temperance, dress reform, and opposition to vivisection, vaccination, military conscription, and capital punishment.
Nichols was born in Orford, New Hampshire, studied medicine at Dartmouth College, and later became a journalist in Lowell and New York. In 1840, he published Journal in Jail, an account of a four-month prison sentence for libel. He married the medical reformer and women's rights campaigner Mary Gove in 1848 and completed his M.D. at New York University in 1850.
Nichols and his wife founded a school for water-cure therapists, published works on health and reform, and lived for a time at Josiah Warren's Modern Times community on Long Island. They later founded the Memnonia Institute in Yellow Springs, Ohio, converted to Roman Catholicism, and moved to London. In Britain, Nichols founded the Co-operative Sanitary Company, helped establish vegetarian restaurants, and continued writing until his later years.