The dissertation, "Riotous Flesh: Gender, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice, 1830-1860," traces the dissemination of a profound sexual ideology and analyzes its impact on the history of gender, race, and sexuality in the United States. The most famous spokesperson identified with this ideology, Sylvester Graham (1794-1851), became an antebellum cultural icon by advocating "total abstinence" first from alcohol, then from coffee, tea, spices, and meat. He argued that stimulation produced pathology: it caused disease and incited sexual sins, the worst of which was masturbation. According to Graham and his followers, "the solitary vice" caused impotence, insanity, consumption, and death. Rather than revisit Graham's published texts, the dissertation analyzes the grassroots movement that adopted, transformed, and spread the discourse of solitary vice. With special attention to female advocates of Grahamite physiological reform, it interprets the often violent gendered and racialized conflicts that sex reform elicited.