A writer in Chicago’s publishing network
Gould’s publishing work is more securely documented than his early life. Google Books identifies the A. Gould on The Science of Sex Regeneration as Arthur Gould. Contemporary issues of Advanced Thought and Occult Digest name Arthur Gould as managing editor in Chicago, with William Walker Atkinson among the contributors. His exact birth and death dates have not been securely established.
Gould and his wife Ollie worked in the related businesses of the Yogi Publication Society and Advanced Thought Publishing Company. Magazine work connected practical self-improvement with occult and religious subjects. His own 1921 editorial on staying young joins mental attitude, bodily habits and the rejection of conventional ideas about old age.
In 1919 Gould appeared before the United States Post Office Department during an inquiry into the publishers’ mail-order claims. He identified himself as the writer of Regeneration and said he had no medical training. Officials pressed for the withdrawal of certain products and changes to misleading advertising. The surviving transcript extract records negotiations over those changes; it does not supply a final decision on whether a fraud order would be issued.
Regeneration and its historical claims
The held Science of Sex Regeneration carries a 1911 copyright and identifies itself as the tenth edition. Its retained preface to the ninth edition says that Franklin L. Dubois supplied material for additional chapters. That statement offers a more specific account of the collaboration than the two names alone: Gould’s book grew through contributions attributed to Dubois.
