Handbook of Nature Cure Volume One: Nature Cure vs. Medical Science

by John L. Fielder

Dr Fielder eschews the use of all forms of medication whether they be

so-called 'natural' or otherwise, including supplementation. He

believes solely in the self-reparative nature of the organism and its

ability to heal itself given the necessary care, attention and

environment. The only exception being in the case of major trauma where

reparative surgery is necessary.

Title Handbook of Nature Cure Volume One: Nature Cure vs. Medical

Science

Author John L. Fielder

Publisher Academy of Natural Living

Year 2001

Copyright John L. Fielder

ISBN 0 9586611 4 6

DISCLAIMER: The information in this book is not intended as medical

advice. The author does not recommend standard medical practices. The

authors, publishers and/or distributors will not assume responsibility

for any adverse consequences resulting from adopting the lifestyle

described herein.

Part I: Chapter 1

Chapter One: That Fallacious Germ Theory

by Harry Benjamin ...

The Unity of Disease

The reader will now be fully ready for acceptance of the cardinal

principle of Nature Cure, which is, that although, thanks to the

pedantry and misconceptions of the leaders of medical science, ...

Nature Cure and Medical Science

It is because they understand this fundamental oneness and unity of all

disease that practitioners of Nature Cure are enabled to secure such

seemingly miraculous results in the treatment of ...

Disease a Self-Healing Process

What the medical profession calls a cure is merely the suppression of

superficial symptoms, to cause further and more serious trouble later

on! What the medical profession never understands is ...

Two Completely Divergent Philosophies

All too often the great surgeon or physician, and even the general

practitioner, vainly imagines that he or she can cure disease by

suppressing symptoms and thwarting Natures work. The ...

The "Fruits" of the Old Philosophy of Disease

Every tree is known by his own fruit, said Christ to his disciples. Let

the men and women of today see for themselves the fruits of orthodox

medical philosophy! They are before our eyes! ...

Part II: Chapter 2

Chapter Two: What is Fever?

by Louis Kuhne ...

Fever Is Fermentation Going On In The System

We shall best comprehend the symptoms exhibited by fever by forming a

correct picture of the processes of fermentation, as they may

frequently be observed outside of the human body. For instance, ...

Part III: Chapter 3

Chapter Three: How Does Disease Arise?

by Louis Kuhne ...

Disease Is The Presence of Foreign Matter In The System

For the correctness of this definition there is an infallible test. If

after that which we have designated as morbid matter has in a suitable

manner been removed from the system, the disease ...

Part IV: Chapter 4

Chapter Four: Racial Memory

by James C. ...

Symbiosis

Now let us look at symbiosis. Probably most of you have heard that more

honey can be obtained in an area where there are many old maids? The

argument runs that unmarried ladies keep cats, and cats ...

Fallacy of "Cures"

Leaving the directly harmful effects of drugs aside for the moment, we

do not believe in the possibility of a cure in the ordinary acceptance

of the word. You can no more undergo a ...

Learn From Your Dog

To see how essentially unnatural is that teaching, watch your dog. When

he is sick he goes away by himself into a corner, and refuses to look

at food. Leave him to himself for some hours, or even ...

Safety Valves

Now let us look into a common statement made by mildly ailing people. I

am very well, except for my rheumatism, or My health is very good

except for my cough, or I am in splendid form except ...

How Chronic Disease is Initiated

According to our idea, if during an illness, the impurities stirred

into the circulation are not allowed free exit from the system, the

usual result is that they become deposited somewhere in the ...

And How To Clear Chronic Disease Up

So, if you are determined to build high level health so that you can go

through almost anything and still remain vigorous and alert, wholesome,

undamaged and healthy, you must learn to cooperate ...

Tilden’s Rule Number One

If, for example, you go weak at the knees from missing a cup of tea or

a meal, it means that you should omit several more cups of tea or

meals. It means that you have been overloading your ...

The Nature Cure "Crisis"

Health is not quite what people think it is. It is vastly more than a

mere absence of symptoms and discomforts. Like your garden, your body

calls for a degree of intelligent attention and ...

To Build Serious Disease

Now a few words more from Dr Tilden: Years ago when I gave salicylates

with the superstitious idea of curing rheumatism, I succeeded in

establishing a heart involvement in nearly every ...

Miracle Drugs

It is not by accident that all medicines are poisonous. Only that way

can they be made to work. But there is also the patients imagination.

During the war we were told that a marvellous new ...

Illness for All

People who equate everything in terms of cash should be satisfied with

health service. It is decidedly expensive. But money costs do not tell

everything. In this case not only the means but the ...

An Experiment

One of my good friends died just a few weeks ago as a result of what he

intended to be an amusing experiment. A month ago he sent for me to

visit him at an Edinburgh hospital, and he explained, ...

Arthritis

I have at the moment at least a dozen patients in Edinburgh with

arthritic rheumatism. In each case, before we saw them they had had

medical treatment over a long period of years, during which ...

Self Responsibility

For real health attainment you must take the responsibility upon

yourself. Practically any ailing person who is willing to do the right

thing can get well, but instead most patients ask, Can you ...

The Stupefied Invalid

How many of you have read or known about someone in a hospital who has

been burned with a hot water bottle? Could you imagine any healthy

child or grown up person lying still long enough for real ...

Somatic Sense

For example, here is an inadvertent experiment I am in the process of

completing. About two months ago I drove a spike of wood under my nail.

The splinter of wood went down under the nail to ...

Body Wholeness

Disease is never only local. Your body is either all healthy, or all

unhealthy. It mayindeed it usually doesexhibit its distress more in one

part than in another, but quite often ...

Your Daily Bread

Now let us see why such deposits arise even in people who have become

health-conscious and who are doing their utmost to live simply and

naturally. Take our staff of life. How many people make a ...

Bread and Convulsions

When dogs ate agenised bread they became dizzy, they staggered about,

and before they died they went into convulsions. Human bodies stand up

to a great deal more abuse than do the bodies of dogs. ...

Part V: Chapter 5

Chapter Five: Questions and Answers

by James C. ...

Can you cure rheumatism by diet alone, or must one also have treatment?

I can cure my rheumatism if I do the right things. The whole idea of

Nature Cure is self-help and wholesomeness. That contains the real

meaning of cure and it is a very good technique; but you ...

If Nature by itself, cures the body, why do you wear glasses?

I am not a perfect specimen. I make no such claim, but I am not the

weakling I was fifty years ago. Eyesight, to be perfect, would call for

Nature Cure living over about three generations, as the ...

Can a person cure himself of tuberculosis?

James Thomson referred to his own experience, having been discharged

from the Navy as a young man, with this complaint. He mentioned that

the doctor came to his bed in hospital and informed him ...

Do you disbelieve in all forms of inoculation, including the

vaccination infants which is compulsory in Northern Ireland?

Dont do it. Far fewer people are vaccinated today than are

unvaccinated. The unvaccinated are greatly the majority. Vaccination

was initiated by a man called Jenner who was a rogue and a ...

Do you think well of raw molasses?

I believe in honey and in some hundreds of other honest food stuffs,

but the question smacks of remedies, which we do not advocate. I

believe in wholeness of diet rather than in single items.<...

Is it possible to cure bowel obstruction without operation?

If it cannot be cured without operation, it cannot be cured. With few

exceptions bowel obstruction arises from hysteria, panic, intense

jitters. Certainly a diseased organ may be cut away, and a ...

Will you please give a cure for depression?

First thing, begin full deep breathing as soon as you awake. Most

civilised people are unhealthy in one way or another, and a high

proportion are suffering from a lack of fresh air. When you awake ...

Have you anything to say on the question of heart trouble?

The heart is the central organ of the body, and if it begins to

manifest distress, there is trouble for the whole body. A great deal of

what passes for heart trouble is actually mental distress. A ...

Is alcohol good or bad for a person?

Your body manufactures approximately 2gs of alcohol daily and it is not

wise to add to that quantity. ...

Is there a point at which hardened arteries cannot be cured?

Unquestionably, there is. Had I been forty years older, instead of

still in my teens when I developed tuberculosis so seriously, I do not

believe anything could have saved me. Similarly there ...

Diabetes is on the increase. Can anyone cure himself by taking insulin?

Diabetes, like all other degenerative diseasehigh blood pressure,

Brights disease, cancer, arthritis, disseminated sclerosis and the

restis on the increase throughout the ...

Part VI: Chapter 6

Chapter Six: Light And Air

by Adolf Just <...

Light-And-Air Huts and Cottages

One great benefit to health comes from sleeping in huts and cottages

situated entirely in the open, and which at all times offer free access

to light and air. We call them light-and-air ...

Part VII: Chapter 7

Chapter Seven: The Earth-Power

by Adolf Just <...

Chapter Seven: The Earth-Power: Part 2

Following the lead of Nature, man lived originally in perfect

sinlessness in the enjoyment of purest happiness, in a state of

unclouded bliss, such as the myths of paradise current among all ...

Part VIII: Chapter 8

Chapter Eight: Vital Economy

by K. Lakshmana ...

Chapter Eight: Vital Economy: Part 2

Now we come to the true principle, namely Vital Economy. That which

maintains health, and restores it when lost, is life. The fivefold

food-medicine furnishes only the needed repair ...

Part IX: Chapter 9

Chapter Nine: But Is It Nature Cure?

by C. Leslie ...

Forward

Many of our longer-established adherents will recognise this as an

augmented revisal of the statement first published eight years ago. The

need for its message has not diminished in that time. ...

Words Out of Place

Very few of those who resort to Nature Cure have any previous

understanding of the principles involved. It is therefore not

surprising that the average layman is unable to distinguish between ...

True Treatment Is Training

That reference to mere hard cash is not so smug as it may sound. We are

up against the essential deceit of the great majority of orthodox and

unorthodox treatmentsthat the patient can be ...

Carefully Hidden Help

Many of the more intelligent vendors do make some attempt to show the

patient a better way of living. It may be camouflaged as a condition

for producing the best effects of the remedy; ...

Different Standards

In this country today we find two groups of people, with different

motives, persuading the public that all unorthodox healers, their

philosophies and their practices, must sink or swim together. ...

How the Press Is Tied

The topical press does not assist the layman to distinguish between the

various unorthodox systems. Now and then some newspaper columnist,

knowing that most readers mildly question current medical ...

Homeopathy

Let us now consider, individually, a few of the therapies most commonly

confused with Nature Cure. The following is typical of many enquiries:

I should be much obliged if you would ...

Behind the Drug

The philosophy of homeopathy is probably its own worst enemy, so we

need waste no further time on that aspect. The important thing is that

people treated by homeopathy mostly fare better than they ...

Unorganised Minerals

Tissue Salts are in a way related to the homeopathic method. The

general idea is that the more finely a substance is divided the more

likely it is to affect or be of use to the cells of the body....

Solutions Are Finer

The manufacturer of tissue salts claims that the only difference

between inert minerals and organised salts is in the fineness of the

particles: that and nothing else. So he grinds up the material&...

Herbalism

Both homeopathy and tissue salts have the negative virtue of being

practically incapable of real harmalmost a positive virtue by

comparison with orthodox medication! But the same cannot ...

Patients Have Duties

The ethics of being a patient are rarely emphasised, but they are

almost as important as those of the practitioner. For example, a new

Nature Cure patient may be required to produce a medical ...

Extracts and Irritants

Health Foods appear to many people to be in the same category as herbs

but, although there are some borderline cases, in the main there is a

clear distinction. Herbs are plant tissues which have ...

For Beginners

Many so called health foods are, of course, simply attractive and

palatable concoctions of perfectly wholesome and natural foodstuffs.

There can be very little objection to these, so long as ...

A Warning

An extract or concentrate is always to be treated with suspicionit can

so easily upset the balance of an otherwise reasonable dietand it may

be a concentrate of the wrong part of the ...

Electronic Magic

Black Boxes are scarcely in the same category as the products discussed

so far, but they also are often wrongly attributed to Nature Cure. A Dr

Abrams of California started the ball rolling in ...

A Federal Inquiry

Within recent years there have been further attempts in the States to

make capital out of the popular respect for, and ignorance of,

electronic apparatus. The first of these was exposed by a ...

"Urine Therapy"… An Ancient Fallacy

Emotional perversions are strange. They seem to give the unfortunate

victim an uncanny power to influence others who may be hovering on the

brink, and drag them down into the pit. To any healthy ...

Pro Tem "Cures"

Again, such treatments brings results. It would take a very bovine

constitution not to react violently to such an affront. The symptoms of

the original disease may ...

Brutalising the Body

Glandular extracts, although a source of much excellent ammunition for

the opponents of vivisectional experiments, do not appear to the layman

as very dangerous substances. They are, after all, ...

Insulin

A very different sequence occurs if a glandular extractin this case,

insulinis administered. (Particularly if the orthodox dietetic changes

are made, since these increase enormously ...

False Promises

Insulin is only one of a large variety of glandular extracts, but the

effects are typical. They seem to produce wonderful results, but these

are only obtained by a sort of chemical hypnotism&...

How to Destroy Nature Cure

A final word about the risks, from the practitioners point of view, of

dabbling in near-medicine. This can probably best be exemplified by

what has happened in the USA, where true Nature ...

Nature Cure or Not Nature Cure?

Summarising this catalogue of disclaimers, it may be said that the true

Nature Cure Practitioner does not make use of any poisons to produce

physiological reactions: neither poisons which are ...

Vital Reserve

But what about the man so ill that all his confidence is lost? Surely

it is right to start him on the road to health by stimulant or other

reassuring means? If the means is genuine and ...

Dr J H Kellogg MD, Battle Creek Sanatorium:

There is healing power in obedience, just as there is destruction in

disobedience. When the evil-doer ceases to sin and enters upon a life

of obedience to the natural laws, the curative forces ...

Part X: Chapter 10

Chapter Ten: The Divine Science of Health

by K. Lakshmana ...

Chapter Ten: The Divine Science of Health: Part 2

One of the reasons for this state of things is that medicos as a rule

are not interested in our health, but only in our ill-health. The

average medical man, when driven into a corner in private ...

Chapter Ten: The Divine Science of Health: Part 3

One of the grievous shortcomings of medicine is the one to be mentioned

here. If a patient, suspecting that he has some disease, such as

gastric ulcer, goes to a doctor, the latter makes a ...

Part XI: Chapter 11

Chapter Eleven: What is the Cause of Disease?

by Kenneth S. ...

Chapter Eleven: What is the Cause of Disease? Part 2

All organs and consequently all functions are under the control of the

nervous system. The efficiency of our organs is dependent upon the

supply of nerve force, so it is essential that the nervous ...

Part XII: Chapter 12

Chapter Twelve: What is Nature Cure?

by Kenneth S. ...

Dietetics

This subject covers everything which is consumed by the mouth. Nothing

but food should ever pass the lips. There is never a time when a poison

or non-food has any value. Dietetics is the ...

Light

This subject covers sunlight, chromotherapy, infra-red, ultra-violet

and other forms of light radiation. It is very doubtful if any of these

methods, except sunbathing, has any value beyond what ...

Air

Air bathing, breathing, hot-air baths, ozone and oxygen therapy have

all been used. Air bathing is most beneficial in that it tones up the

muscles and develops efficient skin reaction. Breathing ...

Exercise

Under this heading we find physical culture, weight lifting, sports and

gymnastics. Running, Jogging, Swimming and all non-violent sports are

the ideal form of exercise. Violent movements should ...

Physical Therapies

Under this heading we can group all of the mechanical treatments, those

which study and treat the body as a mechanical contrivance. The

philosophy behind all of these treatments can be stated as ...

Massage

Under this heading we have manual rubbing, stroking, kneading and

vibration, as well as ultra-sonic, electrical vibration and concussion

of the spine. Massage and vibration can best be described ...

Electrotherapy

This includes Diathermy, Short-wave, Galvanic, Faradic and all other

methods of applying electricity to the body. Except for the slight

psychological help they may give some suggestible people, ...

Psychology

Under this heading we have many schools of thought. All claim to teach

the patient how to correct his mental faults and to give him the right

approach to the problems of life. The system which has ...

Hydrotherapy

This is the use of water. Many modern Naturopaths have now discarded

the use of water and so in recent years this cheap, efficient and safe

health aid has been neglected. Some people claim that ...

Semi-Medical Treatments

Herbal remedies, Biochemic tissue salts, Homoeopathic drugs, and the

thousands of remedies sold as natural remedies are all almost

valueless. They have no place in a natural system of healing. ...

Fasting

I have left the most important and least understand subject until the

last. Fasting can be described as Natures own method of healing. Not

that there is any healing power in the act of ...

Part XIII: Chapter 13

Chapter Thirteen: Everybody’s Guide to Nature Cure

by Harry

The Three Fundamental Principles

The philosophy and practice of Nature Cure is built upon three

fundamental principles. It must be fully understood that these

principles are not the outcome of mere theorising into the nature and

...

Part XIV: Chapter 14

Chapter Fourteen: Mental Therapeutics

by Henry

Positive Affirmations

The foregoing explains why affirmations of health are justified in the

face of disease. The health conditions must be first established in the

mind before they can be conveyed to and impressed ...

On Rules for Maintaining Health and Prolonging Life

by Luigi

Man May By Dint of Art Mend His Infirm Constitution and Live to Old Age

My treatise on a sober life has begun to answer my desire in being of

service to many persons born with a weak constitution, who, every time

they committed the least excess, found themselves ...

Man May, by Taking Thought of His Diet and Habits, Change His

Disposition and Better His Temper

For man, it is not to be doubted, may by art exempt himself in part

from the influence of the heavens, it being the common opinion that the

heavens give an inclination by do not impel us, for ...

Less Food Is Required As Man Grows Older

This retrenchment is necessary, nor can it be avoided, since it is

impossible for an to live foreve; and as he draws near this end, he is

reduced so low as to be no longer able to take any ...

Two Mistakes Many People Make When Assessing Longevity

Some allege that many, without leading such a life, have lived to be a

hundred, and that in constant health, and though they ate a great deal

and used indiscriminately every kind of viands and ...

Part XV: In Closing

The Two Rules For Maintaining Health and Prolonging Life

This sobriety is reduced to two things, quality and quantity. The

first, namely quality, consists in nothing but not eating food or

drinking wines prejudicial to the stomach. The second, which is ...

On Positive Affirmations

The foregoing explains why affirmations of health are justified in the

face of disease. The health conditions must be first established in the

mind before they can be conveyed to and impressed ...

Bibliography

Benjamin, Harry. 1967. Everybodys Guide to Nature Cure. 16th ...

Chapter One: That Fallacious Germ Theory

by Harry Benjamin†

By ignoring the part played by the individual himself in the setting up

of disease within his own body, and throwing all the emphasis on purely

erroneous factors, such as germs, our medical scientists have succeeded

in giving the word "germ" a significance and dread power, ludicrously

all out of proportion to the part these organisms actually play in the

life processes of the individual human being.

It is time the public realised what germs really are, and the part they

really do play, if any, in the setting up and development of disease.

One would imagine, from the way the medical professions speak, that one

tiny germ or bacillus (countless thousands of which would scarcely

cover the head of a pin) has only to enter the body of a "healthy"

individual for that individual to be stricken with some foul disease or

other. Perhaps typhoid! Perhaps tuberculosis! And modern man goes

around terrified out of his life because of the existence of these tiny

creatures which he believes are always threatening him, and which only

the most powerful microscope can reveal to his shuddering gaze.

What nonsense it all is! Our bodies are always full of germs: they play

a most important part in the working of the body, especially in the

destructive process—for constructive and destructive processes are

always going on within the body, night and day, sleep or awake, whether

we know it or not.

Where any living matter dies, it immediately begins to disintegrate

into the simple chemical elements of which it is composed. It is in

breaking down dead organic matter into its elemental constituents that

bacteria are always employed by Nature.

We all know that a dead animal left lying about unburied will soon

begin to rot. It is precisely in this rotting process—which is simply

the reduction of the once living organic matter back into the elements

of which it is composed—that germs are active. They are just as much a

part of natural phenomena as anything else in Nature, and are brought

into existence to do their allotted task by that omnipresent Power

which, forever invisible, rules the workings of the universe.

All living matter must die and be reduced to dust again, and bacteria

are the appointed agents! They are the agents of disintegration!

Now, the germs which help in the breakdown of dead organic matter—

whether it be of dead bodies or of cell waste and other effete matter

thrown off by the organism—are not very different in kind from the germ

hysterically supposed, by medical science, to be the cause of disease

in the human body. It is simply because they lamentably misunderstand

the work these tiny creatures do, that the medical world attaches so

much significance to germ action inside the body, when seeking for the

solution of the problem of disease.

Germs take part in all disease phenomena because these are processes

requiring the breaking down or disintegration of accumulated refuse and

toxic matter within the body, which the system is endeavouring to throw

off. But to assume, as our medical scientists do, that merely because

germs are present and active in all disease phenomena, they are

therefore the cause of the same diseases, is just as wrong as it would

be to assume that because germs are present and active in the

decomposition processes connected with all dead organic matter, they

are the cause of the death of the organic matter in question. The

analogy is absolutely just and fair! And equally ridiculous!

But no one would say that because the decaying body of a dead dog is

full of bacteria, the bacteria are the cause of the dog’s death. We

know they are there as a part of the natural disintegration process

taking place as a result of the death of the dog. And so it is with

germs and disease. Germs are a part of the results of disease, not its

cause.

Germs are present in disease not as causes, but as superficial helpers

brought there by Nature to rid the body of disease. They are the

"scavengers" employed by Mother Nature to break up and "bring to a

head" the accumulated internal filth of years of unhygienic and

unwholesome living, which are clogging the tissues of the body and

preventing proper functioning.

It is the elimination of this toxic accumulation of internal filth and

waste material which is required if the treatment of disease is to be

effective—not tinkering with germs. They will automatically disappear

when the body filth and refuse have been disposed of, upon exactly the

same analogy as that of flies and household filth, instead of bodily

filth. Nature Cure practice proves this beyond doubt every day!

(Treatment which is directed merely towards the end of killing germs is

treatment that can never be really effective, because it ignores the

real cause of disease.)

Thus, although germs are the very bugbear of orthodox medical science,

they are of little account to Nature Cure, because the Nature Curist

realises they are part of the effects of disease, and not its cause,

and that they will disappear when the real cause has been disposed of.

But that does not mean to say that disease may not be contracted

through germ contact.

Germs may be the apparent cause of disease in certain instances, and

people may "catch" diseases from each other, but only because they have

within their systems the soil for the propagation of these diseases—in

the shape of accumulated toxins and bodily refuse. No one who is clean

and healthy inside can be affected by germs, or become the victim of

germ infection.

When people understand this, they will be freed at last from the dread

germ-bogey which medical science has created for them out of its

imperfect and superficial knowledge of the real action and affect of

germs within the body! It is the outcome of medical inability to

distinguish between the real causes of disease and its superficial

effects and manifestations.

In the face of the question, "What proof have you actually that the

germ theory of disease is wrong?"—it may be said that even in the case

of acute infectious diseases (where the germ theory seems to explain

the facts most fully) it can be said that people in ordinary health

contain within their bodies the same germs that are said to be the

cause of the same infectious diseases in others. This proves quite

clearly that there must be some predisposing factor present in the body

before an attack of any acute disease is possible. Given this

predisposing factor, the germs become active; without them they are

harmless. This predisposing factor is in every case a lowered vitality

and a body clogged with waste materials and impurities.

Members of the medical profession have themselves refuted the theory

upon which practically the whole of present day medicine is based.

In an address on "The Falsity of the Germ Theory and Its Evil Results"

given by M Beddow-Bayly, MD, at the annual meeting of the Anti-

Vaccination League in 1928, Dr Beddow-Bayly said:

"I am prepared to maintain quite definitely that in no single instance

has it been proved that an organism or germ is the primal cause of a

disease. I would go further, and say that I have abundant evidence that

the use of sera has resulted in incalculable harm and even death in

man; that the discovery, manufacture, and testing of these sera are

responsible for untold suffering among our younger brethren, the

animals; and that the obsession of the minds of the medical fraternity

with the clumsy and illogical germ theory has greatly retarded the

progress of medical science by obscuring the real causes of disease."

During the course of the same address, Dr Beddow-Bayly quoted numerous

extracts from records of investigations made by medical investigators

and research workers, all showing the untenability of the germ theory,

of which the following is a fair example:

"Dr Hamer, the late Medical Officer of Health for the County of London,

in his report for 1915, dealing with the investigation of Dr Houston,

the Water Examiner to the Metropolitan Water Boards, finds that the

evidence supports the theory "that it is typhoid fever which leads to

the development of the bacillus", and not vice versa, and "that the

bacillus should be looked upon as the effect rather than the cause".

Perhaps the most striking illustration of all, given by Dr Beddow-Bayly

in support of his contentions as to the unsoundness of the germ theory,

is the following:

"The celebrated Professor Pettenkofer, to show his disbelief in the

then recently mooted germ theory, swallowed a test-tubeful of cholera

germs—supposed to be sufficient to kill a whole regiment of soldiers!—

before a class of gaping students. Nothing happened! As Pettenkofer

maintained, in support of his amazing act: "Germs are of no account in

cholera. The important thing is the disposition of the individual."

These quotations and illustrations from authoritative medical sources

themselves, regarding the instability of the germ theory, can be

multiplied ad lib if anyone has the mind to. But why go further? Surely

the reader has here sufficient proof of the inadequacies of that theory

of disease upon which the noble fabric of modern medication is built.

To seek for the cause of disease in merely extraneous factors, such as

germs and other outside agents, is to turn one’s mind, once and for

all, away from the possibility of an understanding of the true nature

and cause of disease. That is what the whole medical world is doing

today. With what result? The state of our hospitals and general health

of the nation are ample witness!

† Extracted from: Benjamin, Harry. 1967. Everybody’s Guide to Nature

Cure. 16th Impression. Croydon, UK: Health For All Publishing Co.

The Unity of Disease

The reader will now be fully ready for acceptance of the cardinal

principle of Nature Cure, which is, that although, thanks to the

pedantry and misconceptions of the leaders of medical science, the

names of diseases are legion, in reality their basic and fundamental

causes are the same in every case, viz, a body clogged with waste

materials and impurities; and that no matter what the particular

disease might be called, apart from shock, or direct injury, or medical

interference with the blood and nerve supply, its causes can always be

found in disturbance of function due to three main factors:

1. wrong feeding

2. improper care of the body

3. habits of living tending to set up enervation and nervous

exhaustion, such as worry, fear, overwork, excesses of all kinds,

sexual abuse, temperamental and environmental difficulties, etc.

It is these three main factors coupled with hereditary and predisposing

influences, such as physique, personal peculiarities, and the like

(aided by previous medical interference with drug and knife), which

decide exactly what form disease will take in any given individual—

whether it will be rheumatism or eczema, typhoid or pneumonia, cataract

or deafness. So, what one always has to remember is that no matter what

any disease may be described as in medical terminology, in essence:

"Disease is the same in every case, because the underlying causes which

determine the condition in the first place are identical, although the

superficial symptoms and manifestations appear in so many different

guises."

Nature Cure and Medical Science

It is because they understand this fundamental oneness and unity of all

disease that practitioners of Nature Cure are enabled to secure such

seemingly miraculous results in the treatment of disease. For instead

of being appalled by the intricacy, vastness, and hopeless complexity

of the spectacle of disease, opened up to the mind by the study of

pathology along orthodox medical lines, and spending time in vainly

endeavouring to grasp the significance of these merely superficial and

extraneous manifestations of disease, which through a total lack of

understanding of the matter, the medical profession calls disease—a

thousand different symptoms—the Nature Cure practitioner gets directly

to the root of the trouble (the fundamental causes of which are the

same in every case), and by rectifying these, is enabled to effect a

permanent cure. Whereas, medical confreres aimlessly flutter about the

surface of the matter, attempting to patch up or get rid of symptoms,

which are really the superficial effects of disease, and not the real

trouble at all!

The Nature Cure practitioner deals with fundamental, unchanging causes,

and pays very little heed to symptoms, except as they may guide him in

locating the actual seat of the trouble (which is always very deep

within the system). The medical practitioner deals merely with the

symptoms themselves, looks to externals for causes, and remains

blissfully unconscious as to the very existence of the real underlying

factors involved. The result is that under orthodox medical methods of

treatment, not only is such a thing as real cure impossible in any

given case, because of the neglect of the chief factors concerned, but

the underlying disease-condition is yet further intensified and

aggravated by this tampering with symptoms. For, not only does medical

science mistake symptoms for diseases, but these self-same superficial

symptoms and manifestations—which the Nature Cure practitioner uses

only as guides to locating disease, and which he leaves quietly alone

because he realises that they are not harmful in themselves, but really

Nature’s attempts at self-healing and self-cleansing—are suppressively

treated with drugs and surgery, and irreparable harm is thus done to

the system by this "thwarting" of the body’s natural attempt at healing

itself.

Disease a Self-Healing Process

What the medical profession calls a "cure" is merely the suppression of

superficial symptoms, to cause further and more serious trouble later

on! What the medical profession never understands is that in every case

disease itself, with all its varied multiplicity of expression, is

merely Nature’s attempt at self-healing, and must never be thwarted,

fought against, checked, or suppressed, but helped (as it were) out of

the system by an understanding of the real causes at work, and by

active or passive collaboration, as the case may be.

"The Nation’s Fighters Against Disease"—that is the proud title of the

medical profession, and in it is expressed all their failure to

understand the real essential nature of disease!

Disease is not inimical to the system, something to be fought against;

but it is a self-healing crisis brought about by factors, already

described, which the system finds a hindrance and impediment to proper

functioning!

Disease, in short, is the result of man’s own follies and mistakes,

which Nature is doing her best to rectify for him!

In effect, therefore—and if the reader can follow this clearly, he or

she would be forever emancipated from the universal besetting fear of

disease—disease is nothing more or less than Nature’s blind attempts at

cure. [Editor’ Note: As a whole, I do not believe that most Nature Cure

practitioners would agree with the author’s expression, "blind

attempts", but would consider them as manifestations of "right action"

on the part of the organism as it heals itself.] It is the system’s

attempt to deal as effectively as it can under given conditions which,

through man’s ignorance, folly, and self-indulgence, are causing

impediment of function!

Two Completely Divergent Philosophies

All too often the great surgeon or physician, and even the general

practitioner, vainly imagines that "he" or "she" can cure disease by

suppressing symptoms and thwarting Nature’s work. The practitioner of

natural methods of treatment, knowing full well their own feebleness

within the mighty, all-embracing powers and forces of Nature, bows

their head with humility, and says, "Not I, but Nature, cures. All I

can do is help Nature do her work by all means within my power." Herein

lies the failure of orthodox medicine and the triumph of natural

methods of treatment.

One is based on a philosophy which looks upon disease as something

which "happens" to man quite by ill luck, accident, or chance;

something which enters the body from without—germs or microbes—and has

to be fought against and defeated. The other is based upon a philosophy

which realises that all disease emanates from within the body, is self

-generated as a result of individual mistakes and errors of living, and

is Nature’s blind [?] attempt at self-healing. Two completely

antithetical and contradictory philosophies of disease!

The one exonerates man from all blame with regard to all the ills that

befall them, allowing them to pity themselves as much-injured martyrs,

always at the mercy of a wayward and malign Providence, never knowing

when they may be attacked by some awful microbe or prowling germ, and

by means of outside agents attempts to "cure" them; and the other

states definitely and conclusively that man’s ills are in every case

the outcome of their own mistakes and misdeeds—"as a man sows, so shall

he also reap"—and that only by rectifying these same mistakes will

their troubles be finally overcome and a definite cure effected.

The medical profession claims that it can cure disease by means of

drugs, surgery, inoculations, etc; Nature Cure says that man must cure

themselves of disease, but with the aid of help and advice from those

qualified by training and experience to give it!

The "Fruits" of the Old Philosophy of Disease

"Every tree is known by his own fruit," said Christ to his disciples.

Let the men and women of today see for themselves the fruits of

orthodox medical philosophy! They are before our eyes!

New diseases, such as neurasthenia and pernicious anemia, arising every

few years, an appalling advancement in chronic diseases such as cancer,

rheumatism, diabetes, kidney disease, asthma, bronchitis, heart

disease, etc, every year; devastating plagues of "flu"; nervous

disorders triumphantly ascending; indigestion, constipation, colds,

coughs, catarrh, and such like "home" ailments more prevalent than ever

before—is it not time for the new to supersede the old?

Away with the effete and worn-out philosophy, which sees no connection

between man’s food follies and maltreatment of their bodies and bodily

functions and the disease they suffer from; which attempts to "fight"

disease yet cringes before it in fear and hopeless inconfidence! Let us

inaugurate a new era in world history—an era in which man will accept

the full responsibility for the diseases from which they suffer as

being the results of their own follies and mistakes (either knowing or

unknowing), and not inequities and tortures devised for and thrust upon

them by malign Providence.

Chapter Two: What is Fever?

by Louis Kuhne†

Warmth is always generated by fermentation; the more violent the

fermentation, the greater the increase in temperature. This warmth is

produced by the friction of the masses against each other and against

the body, and likewise by the process of fermentation itself, and the

changes in the fermentation accompanying it.

Under proper conditions, every process of fermentation can be caused to

retrogress upon its own course; and this applies to all the changes in

form caused by such fermentation. This is a fact which has hitherto

never been properly understood. But I need merely remind you how Nature

melts ice into water, how the latter is transformed by great warmth and

wind into vapour, and how this, vaporised and invisible, then again

condenses and appears to the eye as cloud, pouring down as rain, snow,

or hail to refill the rivers and streams, and by severe cold to be

again congealed to ice. And all this has been brought about by

differences in temperature. Constantly increasing warmth has brought

about the changes in the state of the water, and increasing cold has

caused a retrogression of the process. A similar thing takes place in

the development of foreign substances in the body, and similar

conditions produce a retrogressive metamorphosis and expel them from

the system.

What the exact nature of the little vegetable organisms, the ferments,

is, is of but secondary interest for us; but it is important to know

that they can develop only where there is suitable soil, that is, where

substances are present which are ready to pass into decomposition.

Where such are present, only the right kind of weather or some other

exciting cause is needed to give rise to fermentation. Such

fermentation is also set up in the human system at the first

instigation, as there is soon as sufficient foreign matter ready to

pass into decay or decompose. Such chance exciting cause is a change of

weather (hence what are popularly known as colds); the consumption of

food especially apt to ferment, which remains longer than it should in

the digestive canal; anger, fright, strong emotion, a shock, etc.

My observations show that fermentation always commences in the abdomen.

Often it only causes diarrhea and is got rid of; but frequently,

particularly where there is constipation, the system does not succeed

in its attempt at speedy self-help and fermentation continues,

especially in those parts where foreign matter has accumulated.

The case is like that of a bottle where the bottom admits of no outlet,

and the fermenting matter pushes its way upwards to the mouth. Thus we

feel the first effects in the upper part of the body—we get a headache.

The fermentation produces warmth and we are soon conscious of the rise

in the temperature of the blood. This is what we call fever. Fever can

therefore only occur where foreign matter is present and the natural

exits are stopped; that is (1) where there is no regular motion of the

bowels; (2) where the urination is deficient; (3) where the pores are

obstructed; (4) where the respiration is weak.

From this we get a very simple explanation of fever, which long years

of observation and experience prove to be true.

† Extracted from: Kuhne, Louis. 1899. The New Science of Healing.

Leipzig: Kuhne.

Fever Is Fermentation Going On In The System

We shall best comprehend the symptoms exhibited by fever by forming a

correct picture of the processes of fermentation, as they may

frequently be observed outside of the human body. For instance, if a

bottle of freshly brewed beer be allowed to stand a few days, an

alteration will be noticed in the fluid, which is generally designated

by the term fermentation. This much we know of the process of

fermentation: it is a decomposition, a sort of decay, during which, as

already mentioned, little vegetable organisms called bacilli not only,

as is often assumed, propagate themselves by reaching the fermenting

mass from without and then spreading further; they are also regenerated

by the transformation of the mass, thus being themselves only

transformed matter, or a product of fermentation. Through the process

of fermentation, or decomposition, the original mass is altered in

form. Thus living bodies are produced from food and drink, transformed

by the fermentative process of digestion. In this manner we naturally

arrive at the conclusion—that all life is only a continual change under

given conditions and that without the processes which I term

fermentation, it could not be imagined at all.

The outward manifestations of fermentation are the following: first,

the fermenting matter separating from the fluid is deposited on the

bottom of the bottle. Now if the bottle is shaken, or a change in the

temperature occurs, the deposit at the bottom begins to move and

exhibits a tendency to spread. In spreading it moves upwards, and

always in proportion to the amount of fermented matter deposited at the

bottom and the temperature.

Let us look more closely into the cause of fermentation. Everybody

knows that wine and beer are bottled and put in a cellar to prevent

fermentation as far as possible. The cellar temperature is pretty much

the same both in winter and in summer; no sudden changes of temperature

occur, so that the chief cause of a quick fermentation is wanting.

Likewise in the human organism fermentation takes place more quickly in

warm weather.

We perceive how in the south and the tropics various acute fevers are

always breaking out, whereas in our cooler climes we find chronic

diseases prevailing. This is particularly on account of the more rapid

and greater changes of temperature in the hotter climates, where by day

the thermometer stands at 100°F and at night at 40°F; whereas in our

northern countries the difference between the day and night

temperatures seldom exceeds 22°F and is often less. Fevers often occur

with us in spring, the reason being that then we find the greatest

differences in temperature. Some may find it strange that children

especially should be subject to acute illnesses, the familiar

children’s diseases, while later in life chronic forms of disease

mainly prevail. The above-mentioned change of temperature is here aided

by the greater vigour of the youthful organism, which is still so great

that it needs but little or no exciting cause to stimulate the organism

to make the vehement struggle for health, ie, by an acute disease to

rid itself of the foreign matter.

Now the same phenomena which take place in the bottle are observable in

the human body. Here, too, the fermenting matter accumulates in the

lower part of the trunk, and is then set in motion by some change in

the weather, external shock, or mental excitement. Here, too, the

movement is upwards; the fermenting substances have a tendency to

spread and press against the skin covering the body. As long as the

skin remains impervious, the pressure meets with resistance. Thus

friction arises and consequently heat is developed. This is the

explanation of the well-known fever-heat.

In the same way, it is easy to explain why a person in a feverish state

has a somewhat greater circumference of body than usual—for the skin,

being elastic, yields to the pressure of the fermenting matter, and the

greater the pressure, the greater the tension of the skin. When the

skin has reached its extreme tension, so that it can yield no further,

the fever is at its height and the danger the greatest. For as the

fermenting masses still have a tendency to expand and are unable to

escape to the outside, they make room for themselves inside. The body

may be said to inwardly burn and death is the unavoidable result—of

course, only if the skin remains impervious. If we succeed in opening

the outlets, the danger is removed, for then the fermenting matters

find an exit, leaving the body in the form of perspiration. The

interior of the body is now relieved and the heat and tension of the

skin immediately subside.

No words are needed to show that the comparison between the human body

encumbered with fermenting matter and a bottle filled with such, does

not accord in every point. In the bottle, fermentation has free vent,

the matter can expand in all directions without resistance, until it

reaches the surrounding sides. In the human body, it meets with

impediments everywhere. Every organ opposes its progress and hinders

its course. Then it presses, pushes, and rubs against the obstructive

organ, thus producing heat in it and even destroying it; if no outlet

be made, or its course diverted. According to the part principally

affected, the disease is said to be one of stomach, lungs, liver,

heart, etc. But the part affected in each individual case depends upon

the course taken by the fermenting matter, and this course again, upon

the place and manner of the deposits.

Before the heat begins, we always notice, for days, weeks, or even

months previously, a symptom, apparently the exact opposite of that

described—there is a feeling of chilliness. The explanation of this is

very simple. It arises as soon as the deposits have grown so

considerable, that the blood can no longer circulate properly in the

extremes of the body, but it, so to say, compressed all the more in the

inner parts, so that great heat arises there.

Matter continues to be deposited—the time varying according to the

particular patient—until one of the causes already mentioned occurs,

thus causing fermentation to set in. The deposited matter causes

disturbance in the circulation and alimentation. The blood vessels

become partially obstructed, especially in their minutest branches, so

that the blood can no longer reach the outer skin. This is the cause of

cold feet and hands and of a chilly feeling all over. Chilliness is

therefore a precursor of fever and we should make a grave mistake were

we to leave it unnoticed. If proper treatment be immediately applied

the fever cannot fully develop, but is, so to say, nipped in the bud.

When speaking before of the nature of fermentation, I remarked that in

all fermentation little vegetable organisms, called bacilli, develop

spontaneously. This is the case with fever, and thus the much debated

bacillus question finds a simple solution. Whenever the matter which

has settled in the abdomen begins to ferment, bacilli develop of

themselves in the system; they are the product of fermentation, and

likewise disappear of themselves when fermentation ceases and the

system is restored to health, ie, when the process of fermentation

retrogresses.

It is therefore idle to speak of infection through bacilli in some

mysterious manner without the presence of foreign matter in the system.

The question is how not to kill the bacilli, but rather how to remove

the cause of fermentation, the foreign matter. This done, these little

monsters which have caused terror to so many timid minds, vanish as a

matter of course.

A few simple examples will more clearly illustrate my statements.

Imagine a room left unswept and uncleaned for weeks, notwithstanding

the much dirt that collects daily. Very soon vermin of all descriptions

will take possession of the room and prove so troublesome to the

inmates that every means will be tried to extirpate them. Now, if we

attempt to destroy the vermin in the old-fashioned way by poison, we

shall doubtless kill a large number, but by no means affect an

alteration in the state of affairs; for the dirt itself is the actual

producer and promoter of the vermin and will continually breed fresh

swarms. But we shall attain quite a different result if we immediately

cleanse the room of all filth; and by continuing this process we shall

deprive the vermin of their proper elements and get rid of them for

good and all.

Another example: imagine the swampy edge of a forest in summer. You all

know what an annoyance the mosquitoes are in such a place. It will be

evident to you all that it would be no good using poison to destroy

them. True, hundreds of thousands would be killed, but millions upon

millions would constantly issue from the swamp. The swamp itself is the

breeding ground of the little ferments, consequently one must do away

with it before the mosquitoes can be annihilated. We know that on dry

heights hardly any mosquitoes exist. Were one to collect a great amount

of them and carry them up such a mountain, with the intention of

keeping them there, one would soon perceive these insects so

laboriously transported, flying back to their native swamps, the dry

mountain height being no suitable place for them.

A third example will render another matter still clearer. You are all

well aware that the tropics, where by reason of the greater heat, there

is a far greater diversification and development to be found in the

animal kingdom than in the temperate and frigid zones, Nature gives

birth to the most important and largest number of carnivora and carrion

feeding animals. Whatever pains might be taken to exterminate them, new

generations will always arise to take the place of those killed. Thus

you see that these animals flourish only where, by reason of the

greater development of life, there is also more putrefaction. If no

relief were at hand, the dead animals would quickly poison the air with

their putrescence, and render it unfit for the living ones. It is now

plain why the principal animals which live upon flesh and carrion have

their home in the tropics and not the extreme north, where the reindeer

which live on grass and moss can hardly exist.

If therefore we should want to exterminate the carnivora and carrion

feeders of the tropics, we should succeed only by removing the

conditions of their existence, that is, the swarms of other animals

there present; the beasts of prey would then disappear of themselves.

All other means would be useless. But the smaller the animals are, the

more difficult is their extermination; and of this the bacilli off the

most striking example. In order to exterminate them it is of no avail

to employ medicaments to poison them; we can only attain their end by

removing the cause of their existence, that is, by expelling foreign

matter from the body.

In these examples I have shown how Nature acts on a large scale, for

all her laws are uniform. Nor does she admit exceptions in the case of

disease. Precisely as do the vermin, mosquitoes, carnivora, and carrion

feeders appear, live, and thrive only where they can find favourable

conditions, so can fever not exist without such conditions, that is it

cannot exist unless the system is encumbered with foreign matter. It is

only when such matter is present, as we have seen, that by some cause

fermentation can arise, which process we call fever.

But when we once know what fever is, it is not difficult to find a

remedy. The closed up pores of the skin, against which the fermenting

masses press, must be opened, and this can only be done by making the

body perspire.

The instant the sweat breaks out, the fermenting masses gain a vent,

and the tension of the skin and febrile heat both abate.

But with perspiration, the cause of the disease has not yet been

removed. For the fermentation in any given case affects only a part of

the matter deposited in the body; the rest remaining undisturbed is

continually being increased by new accumulations, and thus forms an

aver-present source of fever, which merely awaits a suitable occasion

to break out afresh. Our aim must therefore be to bring about the

expulsion of the matter still lying quiescent in the body. For this

purpose I have introduced the friction hip and sitz baths by the aid of

which the system is excited to expel the morbid matter from the body.

At the same time everything must be avoided which may disturb the body

in its work. The patient must have ample rest, eg, he must not be

excited by being read to or by conversation. Even the noise of the

traffic on the street is injurious, and the chamber should be kept

somewhat darkened; also at night, it should not be illuminated. There

must be free access of air, however.

Not until there has been sufficient expulsion of foreign matter is the

cause of the fever removed and thus the illness itself cured.

Let us now briefly review the foregoing, in order to deduce some

important final conclusions.

In the case of all sick persons, alterations in the shape of the body

are perceptible. These alterations are produced by foreign matter. The

presence of such foreign matter in the body is disease. This matter

consists of substances of which the body has no need, and which remain

in it because of defective digestion. The foreign matter is first

deposited in the neighbourhood of the secretory organs, but gradually

spreads, especially where fermentation sets in, over the whole body. As

long as the organs of secretion continue to expel a part of the foreign

matter, the physical condition is endurable, but whenever their

activity becomes lessened, the greater disturbances arise. The

accumulation of foreign matter is not painful, being, so to speak, a

latent or chronic process, which goes on unnoticed for a considerable

period.

We can best designate the forms of disease resulting from such

accumulation as painless and hidden; they are essentially the same as

those generally called chronic or lingering.

The foreign matter is liable to decomposition; it is the real cause of

fermentation and forms the soil on which bacilli can develop.

Fermentation begins in the abdomen, where most foreign matter lies, but

rapidly spreads upwards. The patient’s condition changes, pain is felt

and fever sets in. These forms of disease we may term painful

inflammatory diseases; they are otherwise termed as acute.

From the foregoing exposition we must now draw the momentous

conclusion: there is only one cause of disease, and there is only one

disease, which shows itself under different forms. We therefore ought

not, strictly speaking, to distinguish between different forms of

disease. It may be remarked in passing that different injuries, which

are not really diseases in the above sense, are not here included.

It is therefore the doctrine of the Unity of Disease which I teach and

defend, on the basis of the observations laid down in the foregoing.

I have now indicated the way in which I arrived at the conviction—a

bold one, as many may think—that there is only one disease.

Through observation and inference, we have thus arrived at a statement

which is of fundamental importance for the treatment of the sick. But I

am able to prove its correctness by facts.

In modern science there is one kind of proof which is preferred to all

others, and regarded as almost the only convincing one, and that is

experimental. In the case in question, the experiment could be carried

out only by the similar treatment of all kinds of diseases, when, if

our statement is correct, uniformly successful cures must be the

result. This proof I have given and continue to give. In the reports of

cures, contained in the Appendix to my book, The New Science of

Healing, you will find the results summarised.

Chapter Three: How Does Disease Arise?

by Louis Kuhne†

What is disease? How does it arise? How does it show itself?

The answers to the above questions are important not only from a

theoretical but even from a more practical point of view, for it is not

until we have gained a clear insight into the nature of disease that we

are in a position to arrive at once at the real method of cure, and so

obviate all empirical groping about in the dark.

The way which we pursue is that in which all natural laws are

discovered. We start from observations, draw our inferences from these,

and finally prove the correctness of our inferences by experiment.

First of all, our observations must be extended to all symptoms which

constantly re-appear and which occur in the case of every patient.

These symptoms are essential ones, and must be taken from a starting

point in our inquiry into the nature of disease.

In certain diseases striking alterations occur in the form of the body;

and it is these circumstances which caused me to observe further

whether such alterations did not occur in the case of all patients.

And this, as observation has proved again and again, is in fact the

case; the face and the neck are especially affected by such changes

which can therefore be most easily traced in these parts.

For years I have made it my study to find out whether with the

alteration of the outward form, the state of the health also changed in

every case; thus it has been invariably.

Thus I came to the firm conviction that there must be a particular

normal form for every body, which is always to be seen in health, and

that every change from this normal form is the result of disease. It

became clear to me from the changes of form in the neck and face a

trustworthy idea of the state of health of the individual could be

gained.

The alterations which we perceive in the neck and face take place in

the corresponding parts of the abdomen and rump in a still greater

degree, because as we shall see, they originate in the abdomen itself;

so that merely by examining the neck and face of the patient we gain an

exact idea of the condition of his bodily condition as a whole. These

external alterations in the neck and face are perceptible, firstly,

when the morbid matter has penetrated in between the muscular tissues,

whereby the body, which is as elastic as india-rubber, becomes

distended (this condition is the less dangerous); secondly, through

increased tension, caused by the induration of the separate tissues.

You will be most readily able to form an idea of this state if you

think of a sausage. Filled as it usually is, it can be bent in every

direction. If it be stuffed fuller and fuller, as long as the skin will

hold, the sausage will become so tense and hard that it can no longer

be bent at all, except by bursting the skin. Similarly, the body can

expand only up to a certain limit, when tension of the tissues takes

place. Such tension is very distinctly remarked when the patient turns

his head and neck. This stage is worse.

If now the room between the tissues no longer suffices to receive

deposits of foreign matter, the latter is deposited in lumps beside the

muscular tissues under the skin, being then distinctly visible on the

neck. Where we find such lumps on the head and neck we do err in

concluding from these indications that there is a far greater number of

such lumps in the corresponding parts of the trunk. On the abdominal

covering these lumps may in such cases be easily felt and seen in all

sizes. For the lumps in the neck are not formed until after lumps are

deposited in the abdomen.

On the other hand, we see in lean patients how the normal tissues of

the body are actually displaced by morbid matter, so that only the

remains of the former, shrivelled together as it were, are still to be

seen amongst the foreign matter.

The various discolourations of the skin also form a sure aid in the

recognition of diseases, and in certain illnesses are never wanting.

What do these alterations in the form of the body teach us in regard to

the nature of disease? In the first place, there is no doubt that

elevations and swellings result from the deposit of matter of one kind

or another. At first, one does not know if this is matter the system

can utilise, and which has simply been deposited in the wrong place; or

whether it is matter which does not belong in the body at all. Nor do

we know at first whether it is the matter that causes the disease, or

whether the latter is the cause of the deposit. Further observation,

however, brings us nearer the truth, for the deposits almost always

begin on one side of the body, and are much more abundant there than on

the other; and this is invariably the side on which we are accustomed

to sleep. We thus see that the morbid matter obeys the law of

gravitation, settling, as it were, on the bottom. But this side always

being the more diseased, it follows that the matter is the cause of the

sickness; otherwise the disease would assuredly sometimes begin on the

other side. Further on, more proof will be given in support of this.

We may also conclude from this that the said matter must be foreign

matter, that is, such as does not belong to the body, at all event not

in its present form. For we cannot assume that nutritive material

follows the law of gravitation in the body, otherwise deposits on one

side only would take place in the healthy body as well, if the person

were in the habit of sleeping regularly on the same side.

Besides, the system itself evidently endeavours to throw off the

matter. Ulcers or open sores are formed, or there is violent

perspiration, or eruptions break out, these being the means whereby the

system tries to rid itself of the morbid matter. Should it succeed, a

pleasant feeling of relief follows that of sickness, provided, of

course, that enough matter has been expelled.

† Extracted from: Kuhne, Louis. 1899. The New Science of Healing.

Leipzig: Kuhne.

Disease Is The Presence of Foreign Matter In The System

For the correctness of this definition there is an infallible test. If

after that which we have designated as morbid matter has in a suitable

manner been removed from the system, the disease itself disappears, and

the body at the same time regains its normal form, the truth of our

definition has been established.

But now let us approach the question as to what may be the nature of

this foreign matter, and how it gets into the system.

There are two passages through which matter can be introduced into the

body—by the nose into the lungs, and by the mouth into the stomach.

Each of these passages is guarded by sentinels, who are not, however,

thoroughly incorruptible, and sometimes they let things pass which do

not belong to the body. These sentinels are the nose and the tongue—the

one for air, and the other for food. As soon as we fail to promptly

obey the sense of smell and taste, they grow more lax in the fulfilment

of their duty, and gradually allow harmful matter to pass unchallenged

into the body. You are aware how one can become used to sitting in

dense clouds of tobacco smoke and inhaling it just as if it were

healthy fresh air. The tongue has been still further corrupted, and we

know that it can gradually be habituated to most unnatural food. Need I

remind you of the different dishes and beverages which we now think

indispensable, all of which were unknown some centuries ago? To these

the present generation has grown so accustomed that it would rather

renounce a natural diet than give them up.

Our lung-diet is, on the whole, not so degenerate as our stomach-diet,

as the former admits of no luxurious outlay. As a rule, the purest air,

even today, still suits us best, whereas a hearty dish of porridge, for

example, such as furnished our ancestors with blood and strength, is

really relished by very few.

In order to illustrate still more plainly how the digestive organs are

slowly undernourished by the unnatural demands put upon them, I will

adduce the following example. A dray horse that can draw 50 cwt with

ease, may be made temporarily, with the aid of a whip, to drag a much

greater load, say 80 cwt. If his master, however, having seen that the

horse could draw the 80 cwt, were to give him this load daily, the

animal might be able to draw this increased load for a short time, but

the over-exertion would soon prove injurious. He would drag the load

with increasing difficulty, until finally he could no longer draw even

50 cwt. The animal has been overworked, which would outwardly be

apparent from his sprained legs and other symptoms. It is exactly the

same with the human organs of digestion. For a very long time they will

perform work far exceeding their natural functions, continually spurred

on by the stimulants of our times. But their natural powers are

gradually undermined and then they can only partially perform the work

allotted to them. The transition from health to disease goes on so

imperceptibly (often ten or twenty years or more) that the patient does

not notice the alteration for a long time.

It is very hard to say what amount of food forms the limit which may be

borne by a diseased stomach. Often for instance one apple will benefit

a weakly patient, whilst two would be injurious. One apple the

debilitated stomach can digest, two would be too much. All excess is

poison for the body. We must never forget that everything we put into

the stomach has to be digested. Even a healthy stomach can really

digest only a certain quantity of food. Anything beyond this is poison

for it, and if not excreted goes to form foreign matter in the body.

Moderation in eating and drinking is therefore the basis of lasting

health.

Now what becomes of such foreign matter? I call it foreign matter

because it is foreign to the system. The system attempts to expel it,

and this in the ways designed by Nature for the purpose. From the lungs

it is again expelled directly by exhalation into the surrounding air.

From the stomach, the bowels conduct it to the outside; or it first

enters the blood and is then secreted by perspiration, urine, and

expired air, that is through the skin, the kidneys, and the lungs.

Thus the system takes care in the most obliging manner that our sins

have no evil effect. Of course we must not require too much. If we

overburden the system with much secretory work, it becomes unable fully

to perform its functions and must find room for the foreign matter in

its own interior. But such matter is useless for renewing the waste of

the body, and is in fact positively harmful as it impedes the

circulation and hence digestion. The foreign matter is gradually

deposited in various places, especially in the neighbourhood of the

secretory organs, that being the direction it takes.

The beginning once made, the deposits accumulate rapidly, unless the

manner of living be at once changed.

Alterations in the form of the body now commence, but are at first

visible only to the practiced eye. The body in this state is already

diseased, though its disease is chronic, or latent, and unaccompanied

by pain. The disease develops so slowly that the person affected does

not notice it; only after a considerable period does he become

conscious of a disagreeable change in his condition. He no longer has

the same appetite, he is incapable of the same amount of physical

exertion, he cannot do so much continuous brain work, and so on. His

condition is still supportable, so long as the secretory organs

continue to perform their work, that is, so long as the bowels,

kidneys, and lungs are active and the skin exudes warm perspiration.

But whenever these functions relax, he at once feels sadly dissatisfied

with his physical condition.

The deposits themselves begin, as we have seen, near the organs of

secretion, but soon accumulate in remoter parts, especially in the

upper portions of the body. This is most distinctly perceptible in the

neck. There in the passageway, the alterations may at once be seen, and

at the same time the tension observed when the neck is turned from

which we can find out from which side the matter has forced its way up.

Before speaking further of the consequences of the accumulation of this

matter, I must remark that nowadays the entire evolution of disease can

but rarely be watched from the beginning, for most human beings enter

the world laden with morbid matter. This is the reason why hardly any

child enjoys immunity from so-called children’s diseases. These are, in

reality, a sort of cleansing process, this being the way in which the

system endeavours to rid itself of the foreign matter.

The foreign substances which at first are chiefly deposited in the

abdomen, finally spread through the whole body and hinder the normal

development of the organs.

Even should the organs respond sometimes by increasing in size, they

can nevertheless attain to no perfect development, for wherever foreign

matter is present, space is lost for nutritive material. Besides, as

the circulation also is impeded, the process of alimentation is

checked, and the organs become smaller, despite, or rather by reason

of, the foreign matter deposited in them.

This matter may for a long time remain perfectly quiescent or

chronically latent; but under favourable conditions can also suddenly

change in form. This foreign matter consists exclusively of substances

which are soluble and decomposable; substances which are subject to

disintegration, breaking up to yield new formations under the right

conditions; substances which are subject to fermentation.

Now fermentation often really occurs in the body and is of the highest

significance.

In all such fermentation microscopic fungi are active, and a striking

change takes place in the fermenting matter; it increases markedly in

bulk.

Chapter Four: Racial Memory

by James C. Thomson†

Racial memory touches upon a peculiarity of humankind. We continue to

be gravely upset by the frightening events which occurred repeatedly to

our numerous ancestors. These racial impressions are a powerful factor

in determining the behaviour and well-being of large groups of people.

Some individuals panic and become hysterical to the point of death at

the mere suggestion that smallpox is in their vicinity. Such

overpowering fear is dangerous in many ways. For one thing it makes

some otherwise sane people undergo operations or have inoculations, and

all other kinds of irrational treatments which are disturbing and

dangerous to their health. So, directly, or indirectly, these

unreasoning residual panics hurt or kill great numbers of people when

they become hysterical about natural activities, which, if more

carefully studied they should welcome as constructive efforts to

safeguard and improve health. Only when we oppose and thwart these

"house cleaning" efforts are we damaged, or even killed—not by the

house cleaning, but by the means used to oppose it.

For health attainment a simpler and greater trust in natural phenomena

is what matters. For example, consider Mahatma Gandhi, who went about

with a sheet around him, lived on the simplest of foods, and otherwise

lived in a biologically-honest, Nature Cure way. His simplicity and

singleness of purpose enabled him to do a magnificent job of work for

his people. But work of that nature and living in that way are no

longer easy under any circumstances, and for the modern town-dweller,

the simple life, if not impossible, is certainly not readily carried

out. Symbiosis breaks down in the circumstances of a large city.

† Extracted from: Thomson, James C. 1950. The Belfast Lecture.

Edinburgh: Thorson’s.

Symbiosis

Now let us look at symbiosis. Probably most of you have heard that more

honey can be obtained in an area where there are many old maids? The

argument runs that unmarried ladies keep cats, and cats keep down field

mice and birds. Field mice and birds kill bees. So if there are too

many field mice and birds you do not get much honey, and where there

are more cats, more honey bees survive and there is more honey. That is

a simple illustration of symbiosis, where one kind of animal helps

other kinds of animals. We are inclined to forget that every living

thing effects all other living things in its vicinity. That rule

applies to humans at least as much as to other animals.

If you care to analyse your own body you will find that it is made up

of what may be considered as billions of microscopic animals (cells)

all joined together and working together to bring the best possible

health for you. Not only is every organ of the body symbiotic with all

the other organs, but each of these organs is, in itself, a whole

universe of untold millions of single-purposed cooperative cells, each

doing its work in its own way. It is one-for-all and all working for

one end—your very good health, stable and sustained.

So, when your whole body decides upon a "spring cleaning", instead of

becoming emotional and afraid, you should be thankful to your body for

making such an excellent effort on your behalf, always a successful

effort if—and it is a big "if"—you would but leave it alone to do its

job in its own way.

Something very different occurs if—when a bodily house cleaning (any

"acute disease") begins to bring out into the open the held up debris

and acids of past months or years—you call in a doctor to have the

activity stopped.

Usually in the early simpler forms of this effort the doctor succeeds.

The activity dies down and, if you live, he claims (and you think) that

he "cured" you. We do not concede that credit. We consider that his

procedures gradually turn simple situations into unspeakably complex

ones; complicating the issue so that, whether you know it or not, you

are going to die much sooner for having had your body’s regenerative

efforts suppressed—"cured"—with poisons or mutilations.

Fallacy of "Cures"

Leaving the directly harmful effects of drugs aside for the moment, we

do not believe in the possibility of a "cure" in the ordinary

acceptance of the word.

You can no more undergo a cure that will keep you cured without

continued care, than you can take a bath that will keep you clean

without further effort for the rest of your life. Any cure to be

lasting must be kept up all the time if we are to remain healthy.

The plain fact of being alive means that all the time body cells are

breaking down and so manufacturing acids and other debris. Even so, the

body happily keeps itself wholesome and clean if honestly cared for—

cured, in the correct sense of the word, if you live reasonably.

Probably it is "The Angel at the Gate", that is why some people dislike

our philosophy. They hate the idea that in the end, they alone, with

their own daily habits of living, decide their good health, or lack of

it. But whether you like it or not, that, within limits, is the almost

universal fact. Exceptions do occur because of accidents, and to some

extent, your present health stems from how your father and mother lived

for years before you were born, and even from the habits of their

fathers and mother, back to the third and fourth generations.

If their and your own margins of safety allowed for a full disposal of

the body’s day-by-day production of acids and broken down cell debris,

then physically, you are set for the maintenance of good health into a

vigorous old age. But you cannot possibly remain healthy if you are

unable to eject your daily accumulations of debris quickly. It is that

difficulty which produces so many serious problems for the city

dweller. A body which does not succeed in keeping itself clean,

gradually builds up deposits of rubbish until it crowds the vital

machinery. That is why, and when, a "house cleaning" is called for.

What is referred to by Nature Cure as a "health crisis" means that this

rubbish, by an extraordinary effort, is being worked out of the body in

one or the other of many forms—boils, pimples, rashes, discharges,

scurf, colds, diarrhea, fluxes, and fevers. All these are useful house

cleaning efforts as we understand them—the natural way for the body to

throw off any excess impurities. But the medical doctor, instead of

seeing these efforts as something to be thankful for, something to

leave alone, convinces himself, and many of us, that the body’s actions

must be opposed.

Learn From Your Dog

To see how essentially unnatural is that teaching, watch your dog. When

he is sick he goes away by himself into a corner, and refuses to look

at food. Leave him to himself for some hours, or even two or three

days, and he will come bouncing back stronger and fitter that ever.

That is always presuming that you have not insisted upon feeding him

"health foods", taking him for walks, or giving him medicines.

If he lives in your home and eats the same kind of food as you do, he

will probably take on your kind of ailments, so keep your eyes open and

learn how to apply the correct treatment. Watch the splendid results he

obtains if you leave him alone. Note how frisky he is after his

illness—his "house cleaning".

Safety Valves

Now let us look into a common statement made by mildly ailing people.

"I am very well, except for my rheumatism", or "My health is very good

except for my cough", or "I am in splendid form except for this boil".

They are mistaken; their health may be satisfactory according to their

own standards, but if so, they are using the wrong words. Not "except

for", but "because of" their rheumatism, "because of" their boils,

"because of" their cough. Through these unusual efforts their bodily

forces are able to keep them well despite the unwholesomeness of their

day-by-day living.

The greatest obstacle to a clear understanding of health attainment is

a mental kink. It arises from what children are taught at their

mother’s knee, or when they go to school—and what school teachers have

to answer for! One way or another the child is led to believe that if

there is anything wrong anywhere in the body, the doctor alone can put

it right. But there are several things wrong with that teaching. I have

had excellent opportunities to test out this matter, and this is my

present belief.

It is no more possible for a human being to cure another human being

than it is for one person to breathe for another. Only the inherent

intelligence of your own tissues can cure you, and they do it

thoroughly and quickly if you foster them and leave them alone. Health

is not merchandise. It cannot be passed from one having it to one not

having it.

Take note next time you have a cold. Your food suddenly becomes

tasteless. A good cold with acid mouth and sore throat makes it

thoroughly unpleasant to swallow. But bravely you force yourself. You

say, "I must eat to keep up my strength, otherwise I may die". But that

is not a true estimate. On the contrary, you should recover much more

quickly and wake up next morning or the morning after that feeling

fitter than you have for years. So I suggest that next time you have a

cold, do what your cold is telling you to do—avoid food, curl up in bed

and keep warm, the chances are that within 24 hours you will begin to

sense an internal awareness of well-being that has been lost for at

least some months or years. If you have never given your body this kind

of opportunity to do a thorough house cleaning you have missed a

wonderful experience. As the crises passes you rediscover many

forgotten pleasures.

Try it. In practice it works. I give you my word for it. Over the past

forty years I have seen it happen many thousands of times, and it is

so.

How Chronic Disease is Initiated

According to our idea, if during an illness, the impurities stirred

into the circulation are not allowed free exit from the system, the

usual result is that they become deposited somewhere in the body. Some

part or organ is chosen where the dumped materials won’t kill the

person—but that means future trouble. The best way would be to spit

them out, cough them out, or otherwise get them quickly into the open

air. So, if some time in the future impurities begin seeking their way

out of your body, you should encourage their effort, not "do something"

or "take something" to prevent their elimination. Otherwise, some

months later, a joint or other part of the body is likely to manifest

stiffness or develop pain where the impurities have been stored away.

After that disability becomes established you become aware of an aching

back or a rash on the skin, or a stiff knee joint, but in every other

way you feel better.

That is what we mean when we say that people feel better because of

their rheumatism, or their coughs and their boils.

The next point to note is that no matter how small and insignificant

any lesion may be, always the whole body is involved; nothing is ever a

local condition only. As people lose their rheumatism, back come the

coughs, or the headaches they had previous to the rheumatism, but

always in a more intense form, if for a shorter time.

And How To Clear Chronic Disease Up

So, if you are determined to build high level health so that you can go

through almost anything and still remain vigorous and alert, wholesome,

undamaged and healthy, you must learn to cooperate with your body. Do

what it wants you to do. Give it a rest when it wants a rest. If you

have an acid irritation in your mouth and find all food distasteful, do

not say, "I must take something to neutralise the acid". Rather stop,

think about it for a moment, and say, "I have been doing too much of

this or that. I must stop it for a bit".

Real cure calls for honest care and intense curiosity as to causes.

With such interest and cooperation your body very surely catches up.

But for reasonably quick results do not start off with doubts. Do not

trouble to tell us "I get so weak if I go without my and

" (favourite vices). We know you do, and we know why.

Tilden’s Rule Number One

If, for example, you go weak at the knees from missing a cup of tea or

a meal, it means that you should omit several more cups of tea or

meals. It means that you have been overloading your nutrition. You have

been having too many cups of tea and too many meals. Here is a good

piece of advice from Tilden, the famous American doctor, the man who

has probably done more than any other single individual for genuine

Nature Cure: "If you felt uncomfortable between the last mealtime and

the next one, omit the next meal and carry on that line from mealtime

to mealtime".

Well, at first hearing, I wonder how many are now ready and willing to

follow that advice? Yet it is very sensible: while you fast your body

begins to use any small or large stores of rubbish as nutrient to keep

you alive. If you have a tumour for instance, a great lump somewhere in

your body, just stop eating and your body will feed on that tumour,

reducing it, during the fasting period. Temporarily you will be living

on stale meals, so you are unlikely to keep in a good temper. However,

the important point is that in the process you will use up the stale

meat, and soon the tumour will not be there any more. That is the only

genuine kind of cure. Not only does it make you feel better, you have a

better figure, you feel younger, and you will be a more completely

symbiotic animal. In other words you have begun to achieve a state of

high level health.

The Nature Cure "Crisis"

Health is not quite what people think it is. It is vastly more than a

mere absence of symptoms and discomforts. Like your garden, your body

calls for a degree of intelligent attention and understanding. The road

to high level health is a difficult one for any long-medicated patient,

but even more so for the practitioner who is trying to train such a

person to travel the right road. One of the most common statements I

hear from long-established invalids, who are in the process of getting

well, runs something like this: "I am told that I am looking better,

but I am really very much worse". We ask in what way they are worse,

and as a rule they admit quite freely that the pain or disability they

began with has diminished or even that it is quite gone, but now they

have developed a new trouble. More questioning discloses that the new

trouble is usually an old friend: "Oh, yes, I do remember now, I used

to have those headaches 20 years ago".

They came to us lame, sometimes not able to mover under their own

power, but now they are walking fairly freely. Yet they complain they

are worse, they have developed a backache. Within a week or two the

"new" backache disappears and then becomes neuritis around an eye. A

few days later an arm won’t move—yes, 25 years ago the arm would not

move. Over the next few months, or years they go over all their old

symptoms; a series of farewell visits as it were, and meanwhile between

the regenerative bouts they begin to feel fitter and fitter. So

gradually they clean out all the cobwebs from the neglected corners of

their bodies until they have achieved something that the average

civilised person knows nothing about: real, pulsating, radiant health.

And then, believe it or not, they begin to tell their neighbours how

they enjoyed every minute of their Nature Cure experience!

To Build Serious Disease

Now a few words more from Dr Tilden:

"Years ago when I gave salicylates with the superstitious idea of

curing rheumatism, I succeeded in establishing a heart involvement in

nearly every case. Since I gave up the use of drugs and injections, I

have seen heart diseases only in new patients who have come to me after

being medicated and improperly nursed".

These words explain where to look for the real beginnings of chronic,

degenerative disease.

Almost any acute condition can be reduced or stopped by taking some

poison that is more deadly than the systemic poisons that the body is

in the process of eliminating.

People living in Ireland will remember "the trouble" at the beginning

of the 1914-18 war. It was just on the point of breaking out. Suddenly,

Germany or Britain declared war and a much worse set of circumstances

than had previously existed faced the whole country, and just as

suddenly all internal trouble apparently faded away. But the key word

is "apparently". It seemed to stop only until the bigger trouble began

to diminish, and then what happened? Afterwards it was discovered that

the earlier trouble had been fermenting out of sight. It broke out

worse than ever and went on and on breaking out in different places

more and more.

Approximately, that is what happens when drugs are used to suppress a

symptom. The pain may stop but beneath the surface the real trouble

grows in seriousness and intensity until it becomes far more menacing

than it was before the drug.

In order to "cure" you with a drug, the poison which the doctor

introduces into your body must be so disturbing to your vital forces

that the trouble from your own systemic poisons becomes relatively

unimportant.

On that insecure foundation you claim you are "cured". But have you

considered how much trouble has been laid aside for future reference?

Your simple hopes of having it cleared up in a few days, weeks, months

or even years are in vain. Each time you drug yourself you have added

to your difficulties so that you are left with a worse set of

symptoms—if you remain alive.

Miracle Drugs

It is not by accident that all medicines are poisonous. Only that way

can they be made to work. But there is also the patient’s imagination.

During the war we were told that a marvellous new drug had come into

use costing ten thousand pounds per dose, and it was being given to our

wounded soldiers. Nearly everyone wants a drug like that. The rush was

unprecedented and it still goes on, but a change is on the way. It was

announced that penicillin was going to be made cheaper. As soon as it

becomes cheap it will be discovered that the whole idea was a complete

blunder. Then like many thousands of its predecessors, it will go into

the graveyard of past medical "cures"—useless, discarded, forgotten or

replaced.

Illness for All

People who equate everything in terms of cash should be satisfied with

health service. It is decidedly expensive. But money costs do not tell

everything. In this case not only the means but the end is wrong. The

essential short-sightedness of the scheme has been neatly caught by

Hermoine Gingold in these words: "The national health service has

brought illness within the reach of even the poorest people. It is a

service that makes disease easy while penalising the healthy. It speaks

much of drugs and disease, but gives no directives toward care and self

support for lasting health."

An Experiment

One of my good friends died just a few weeks ago as a result of what he

intended to be an amusing experiment. A month ago he sent for me to

visit him at an Edinburgh hospital, and he explained, "Look, Jim, don’t

think of my coming in here as a reflection on your theories. I believe

in Nature Cure as much as you do, but for eighteen months, I have been

paying into the insurance scheme for nothing. So when I got this

illness I said to myself, I’ll see what it’s like in one of their

hospitals before I go out to Kingston; I had to get something out of

it, even if it was only a good laugh. In two weeks, I’m coming to your

place".

But he was cremated before the two weeks had elapsed. In the meanwhile,

however, he had his good laugh. He had been greatly amused by one of

their procedures. He told me how they were actually waking him every

midnight to give him an injection. Like myself, he believed there is

nothing better for a sick man than normal healthy rest and sleep, but

this patient had to be given his financially and vitally expensive

"miracle drug" injections.

I do not believe such deaths are unavoidable or accidental. I believe

they are directly due to the fundamentally mistaken drug treatment

aimed at reducing symptoms in place of removing causes.

Sometimes we are asked, "If you do away with drugs, what can you put in

their place?" This implies that there is some benefit in drugs, instead

of that all drugs are poisonous or destructive. Surely if we get rid of

a bad thing it is unnecessary to put anything in its place. It is

always better to allow your own body to do its work in the way it

prefers, and is equipped to do, without interference from outside.

Arthritis

I have at the moment at least a dozen patients in Edinburgh with

arthritic rheumatism. In each case, before we saw them they had had

medical treatment over a long period of years, during which time their

condition became steadily worse. Nearly all of them have had tonsils

out, or their teeth out, or both—as well as the usual drugs, and any

number of gold injections along with some of the newer treatments. One

interesting aspect of these different "cures" is that nearly all these

patients had felt better during the first week or two of treatment;

then their rheumatism recurred and became steadily worse. Their painful

discovery was that after each spell of medicinal relief the pain became

more continuous and more intense.

Self Responsibility

For real health attainment you must take the responsibility upon

yourself. Practically any ailing person who is willing to do the right

thing can get well, but instead most patients ask, "Can you cure me?"

We are powerless to do that. The cells in each human body are organised

to work together for just that end. After all, they built the body, and

they should be able to keep it in good repair. The moment we accept

responsibility for our illness we can get well. Despite all extensive

publicity to the contrary, nobody else, and nothing else can do this

for you. No one person can cure another person.

But relief in arthritic conditions is a slow and trying business. It is

never quick, nor is it easy. For the patient it is painful because the

crystalline formations in the tissues tear the tissues apart and cause

even more intense pain as they work out. Another awkward side is that

as you become healthier you notice things more. This means that you

tend to feel more pain from the same amount of cause.

The essential difference between a healthy and an unhealthy person is

the degree of awareness. Because of more immediate knowledge the

healthy person’s defences promptly take action against anything that

goes wrong.

The unhealthy person has a slower and less intense awareness and

response. These slow-reacting people are "accident prone"; they keep on

having accidents of all kinds. It is a most unhealthy condition wherein

the person waits until it is too late, and with him it becomes routine

for accidents to occur. The insurance companies are beginning to

realise that there are such people; they are reluctant to accept them

as risks.

The Stupefied Invalid

How many of you have read or known about someone in a hospital who has

been burned with a hot water bottle? Could you imagine any healthy

child or grown up person lying still long enough for real damage to be

done from contact with an hot water bottle? Within a fraction of a

second the healthy person would have become fully cognisant of the

situation and would have taken the appropriate action. But a person who

is drugged is not a healthy person. His fire and burglar alarms have

been put out of action, and he remains unaware of the damage. That is

why his motor mechanisms do not make the necessary immediate

adjustments to meet the danger.

After all, that is the basis of our charge against medicating. Proper

response occurs only if the body is fully alert to what is wrong. Drugs

of the sedative group induce a nervous and mental sluggishness and

numbness, so that all reactions are slowed down and the best result

that can be hoped for is comparative unawareness of anything wrong—what

we call low-grade health. Health in the ordinary acceptance represents

merely this numbness along with a fair degree of stability. In other

words the medicated person is so stupefied that he puts up with almost

anything without resentment. In good health his bodily forces would

take brilliantly correct and instantaneous actions to meet any and

every kind of emergency.

Somatic Sense

For example, here is an inadvertent experiment I am in the process of

completing. About two months ago I drove a spike of wood under my nail.

The splinter of wood went down under the nail to within one fifth of an

inch of the matrix. It had broken off well under the nail and I could

think of no way of getting it out. But my somatic sense did all that

was necessary, without my help. I had thought it over and after a week

or ten days, and decided to cut it out through the front of the nail.

But before I had dug down very far I realised that the splinter was

already on its way out. It had become attached to the nail, so I left

it alone and, slowly but surely as the nail has grown, the spike has

been carried with it.

But my intellect did not solve the problem. My thinking apparatus was

not clever enough to do it. The humbling fact that the conscious part

of my mind must acknowledge is that my bodily sense is more clever than

my intellect, not only in one or two things, but in everything to do

with the emergencies of life and health.

The same situation exists between you and your body. In emergencies it

does precisely the right thing; much better than you can do it. When it

comes to any of the body’s health activities—classified as acute

diseases—my advice is, "Trust and leave it alone".

Indeed the point must be emphasised. Without question, under the

direction of what is called somatic sense, the body solves with a

remarkable degree of smoothness and efficiency all its health problems.

But on this aspect of our lives, intellectually we are almost

completely at sea. When any health emergency arises we follow false

gods and are readily misled by large and confusing words. We stop using

our heads when professional men "explain" with such a phrase as,

"antibiotics defeat the staphylococci and the streptococci along with

their secondaries the pyogenic staphylostreptococci".

Apart from their ability to get away with it, that bad language is no

proof of any special gifts. Commonly such words become current among

those who are more or less conscious of their lack of real

understanding. There are those, of course, the stealthy ones, who

consider it clever by this means to silence the non-technical critics.

Body Wholeness

Disease is never only local. Your body is either all healthy, or all

unhealthy. It may—indeed it usually does—exhibit its distress more in

one part than in another, but quite often that one part is putting in

overtime to help some overworked or weaker organ. If you have a boil on

your neck it is not due to the work of the wicked germs with big names

nor is it your neck that is at fault. Ordinarily the body cells in and

around the lesion are busy with a cleansing effort for the good of the

whole body.

Inadvertently, one amusing point about boils is that the sufferer

always remarks, "If it had just been somewhere else!" But so far as its

effect upon the health of the body is concerned, its position is

unimportant. Almost always, wherever it occurs, a boil arises directly

from its owner’s day-by-day habits placing too much strain upon his

depurative organs. Boils are painful, but they are a most efficient way

of releasing dangerous accumulations of poisonous matter. The Swedes

are aware of their usefulness: they call them "health buds".

It is similar with a running sore or discharge. These too are "release

valves" which save the body from complete breakdown. With boils and

running sores it is advisable to discontinue all unsuitable foods and

drinks until the organs discharge their overload of stale refuse.

Above all don’t worry about the harmless little germs with the big

names. Their lot is worse than yours. At least you are getting rid of

the filthy matter—they have to live in the horrid mess. Altogether they

have been maliciously slandered; they too, if not attacked, are happily

symbiotic with your own cells.

Your Daily Bread

Now let us see why such deposits arise even in people who have become

health-conscious and who are doing their utmost to live simply and

naturally. Take our staff of life. How many people make a habit of

eating wholesome, clean, fresh bread? May I give you an estimate? Very

few indeed. Genuine bread is expensive because the government does not

pay the substantial subsidy for bread unless it has been adulterated.

This is the situation as it is at the moment (1950). The ministry of

food insists that 14 lbs of chalk be added to each bag (280 lbs) of

flour. If their subsidy is to be collected that chalk must go in. When

a member asked a question about this requirement last year, he was told

that it was not chalk, it was creta preparata. Having said that the

(then) Minister of Health sat down and everybody seemed satisfied. But

creta preparata simply means prepared chalk.

Chalk in flour makes the dough absorb a great deal more water. As one

baker put it, it makes water stand up on end. In that way you are

induced to buy water and chalk and you believe you are buying bread.

But that is not all.

Agene has been discontinued, but in its place millers are permitted to

employ the adage process—chlorine dioxide. [Editor’s note: the baking

industry now in 1996 generally legally includes a number of new

unhealthful artificial ingredients.] According to the manufacturers,

this preparation is approximately three times more powerful than agene.

It is recommended especially for bleaching the colouring matter of

bran, "which makes it particularly valuable for bleaching very low

grade flours".

Bread and Convulsions

When dogs ate agenised bread they became dizzy, they staggered about,

and before they died they went into convulsions. Human bodies stand up

to a great deal more abuse than do the bodies of dogs. I have seen

horses and dogs die from snake bites, and I have seen humans who have

been bitten by the same kind of snakes, and they did not die. In

general terms, humans are far more resistant to poisons than are dogs

and horses.

When agene was still being used, I read that an illness deprived three

Doncaster people of their physical sense of balance. One newspaper

reported, "They could not stand or walk properly, and they could not

keep on their feet without staggering. After six weeks treatment the

local doctors said it was difficult to determine the cause of the

staggering".

Perhaps so, but I find a certain similarity between what was happening

to the humans, and what happens to agenised dogs.

How did that happen in Doncaster? About three years ago the question

was asked in Parliament. It ran something like this. "Was it true that

several tons of bad fish paste has been mixed with good fish paste and

sold to the general public?" The answer was, "Yes", and it was

explained that by mixing it in a certain way the poisonous content had

been brought below the level that was considered unsafe and it was put

in the shops and sold. A little later I had as a patient an analytical

chemist who had been working for the Ministry of Food. To him I

remarked about this strange idea and asked, "Does mixing bad stuff with

good make the whole good?"

He looked a little self-conscious and said: "You know, until I read

your comments in a recent article, it never struck me as being in any

way wrong. The problem as set to me was "How could this consignment be

treated to reduce its toxicity to a level that would make it fit for

consumption and release to the public?" After working it out I decided

that if it was mixed with five times its weight of sound stuff it would

be all right. We work by trial and error. We send a trial amount to a

restricted area and our scouts are sent to report if there has been any

illness among the customers. Only if there are no complaints is it

given general release".

Such a scientist takes into consideration only the one particular

problem set for his solution at that moment. He figures his answer out

to so many decimal points. But if he omits some vital factor, his

findings are liable to have an adverse effect upon you and your

neighbours.

Unfortunately, there is big money in keeping the public bemused on

health matters. The following statement I take from an American

publication:

"One of the firms manufacturing ‘miracle drugs’ in a single year made

over forty two million dollars out of an investment on plant and

machinery of only seven million dollars, their income for one year some

six times their capital investment".

In this country (England) much larger firms are training our farmers to

use chemicals on the soil, so that they are ruining their land instead

of farming it. When it was claimed that composted soil grew altogether

better-quality crops than soil treated with artificial manures, one

firm of large manufacturing chemists admitted that this was so, but

reported that the crops would not be so large without chemicals.

I suggest that honest reliable foods are more important than mere bulk.

Chemists are dangerous mentors to accept as guides toward normal

health. All their twisted ways from sprays on fruit, to chemicalised

bread, are directly opposed to everything we stand for, and understand

by high level health. For that we must return to symbiosis and

simplicity.

As we have seen, the real advance in general health in this country,

over the past century or so has been due to improved sanitation,

housing, and an understanding of dietetics. Although medicine often

claims credit for the improved life expectancy, in plain fact the

medical men have often opposed genuine enlightenment. They have also

often retarded improved health in the most direct way by introducing

poisonous drugs and deadly injections into their patients.

The only way to become healthy and remains so, is to make our lives fit

for the natural scheme of things. We must play fair with other living

things, be they plant or animal, and regard our bodies as intelligent

mechanisms capable of self-repair and self-cleansing.

Most of the really crippling diseases are the result of attempting to

obstruct or suppress the body’s self-healing process—each of which the

medically-minded person sees as a "disease". The self-cleansing

processes are sometimes uncomfortable, but they have a positively

constructive function. They are the only means whereby the body can be

truly "cured". No human being can "heal" another; healing is an

intrinsic power of each of us. Very often the most helpful treatment we

can apply during an active phase of self-healing is non-interference;

simply keeping the body warm and desisting from embarrassing it with

food.

Miracle drugs always turn out to be misfires; it may take a few years

for this discovery to be made, but it always occurs. It cannot be

otherwise, because drugs function by poisoning or disrupting the body’s

working. Stopping a symptom is relatively easy; the real task is to

improve the entire state of the living body, and as a rule that calls

for patience, understanding, and a determined effort.

At all times the health seeker must be on the alert to avoid damaging

factors such as the adulterants added to many every day foodstuffs. The

fact that food manipulation takes place with the full sanction of

government departments is no safeguard to the consumer. The follower of

Nature Cure must be prepared to accept responsibility for his own

course of action, and if necessary steer contrary to orthodox

influences when these conflict with his own reasoning.

There are many groups interested in persuading the individual to abuse

their system and to load it with damaging preparations. The real

safeguard is an intelligent understanding and a realisation that no one

has a greater interest in ones well being than ones self.