Dio Lewis (1823-1886) was born in Auburn, New York, and died in Yonkers, New York. He was a doctor, author, and physical education advocate. In the early 1840s, he studied at Harvard Medical School, but he did not complete his medical degree. After leaving Harvard, he began practicing medicine in New York. During the 1850s, he began lecturing on the benefits of good hygiene, temperance, and an active lifestyle. By 1860, he had developed his own system of exercise, which he taught at his school in Boston, the Normal Institute for Physical Education. In 1864, he founded a girls school in Lexington, Massachusetts, where Theodore Dwight Weld was one of the teachers. After his school closed in 1867, he devoted the rest of his life to the temperance movement, lecturing and writing on the topic. Toward the end of his life, he established two periodicals: Dio Lewis's Monthly (1883) and Dio Lewis's Nuggets (1885). There is no record of Lewis studying with Mary Baker Eddy or uniting with the Church of Christ (Scientist).

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