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With the ushering in of the “germ era” came about the decline of Hygiene. While the philosophy remains alive and still receives a good following, it has been in continual decline relative to our population. In recent years there has been growth in the ranks of those practicing Hygiene in their lives, but there are yet only a few thousand devoted Hygienists.
With the ushering in of the “germ era” came about the decline of Hygiene. While the philosophy remains alive and still receives a good following, it has been in continual decline relative to our population. In recent years there has been growth in the ranks of those practicing Hygiene in their lives, but there are yet only a few thousand devoted Hygienists.
The revival of Natural Hygiene in the 1920’s owed much of its impetus to the efforts of Bernarr McFadden and Dr. Herbert M. Shelton. Though there were some great Hygienists in the early part of this century, notably Hereward Carrington, Otto Carque, John H. Tilden, and Linda Burfield Hazzard, Dr. Shelton became the acknowledged voice of Hygiene with the publication of his immortal book, “Human Life, Its Philosophy And Laws”, in 1927. Though Dr. Shelton built upon the shoulders of his predecessors, he pro- duced such a wealth of literature with new findings and thoughts that he added more to the science and art of healthful living than any other person. He had the benefit of new findings, and his fertile mind generated a new body of knowledge based on them.
The revival of Natural Hygiene in the 1920’s owed much of its impetus to the efforts of Bernarr McFadden and Dr. Herbert M. Shelton. Though there were some great Hygienists in the early part of this century, notably Hereward Carrington, Otto Carque, John H. Tilden, and Linda Burfield Hazzard, Dr. Shelton became the acknowledged voice of Hygiene with the publication of his immortal book, “Human Life, Its Philosophy And Laws”, in 1927. Though Dr. Shelton built upon the shoulders of his predecessors, he produced such a wealth of literature with new findings and thoughts that he added more to the science and art of healthful living than any other person. He had the benefit of new findings, and his fertile mind generated a new body of knowledge based on them.
Today the Hygienic movement still survives though it cannot be said that it thrives. A few thousand Americans practice it conscientiously. A greater multitude pay lip ser- vice to it and practice healthier living because of it. But, by and large, Hygiene is almost completely out of the mainstream on the American health scene.
Today the Hygienic movement still survives though it cannot be said that it thrives. A few thousand Americans practice it conscientiously. A greater multitude pay lip ser- vice to it and practice healthier living because of it. But, by and large, Hygiene is almost completely out of the mainstream on the American health scene.
==== Questions & Answers ====
==== Questions & Answers ====
===== What do the words Natural, Unnatural, Normal, and Abnormal really mean? =====
Natural or normal is that to which we became accustomed while living in a pristine state of nature and that to which our bodies were adapted. That which is contrary to our adaptations, that is, to our biological heritage, is abnormal and unnatural.
===== What are biological adaptations? =====
Biological adaptations is a term to describe the faculties an organism has developed to meet its requirements in the environment in which its growth has occurred. What is natural to an organism depends on its environmental adaptations.
===== Would you say carnivores are biologically adapted to meat-eating because of the structure of their teeth and other body structures? =====
Yes, I’d say that. Animals that live primarily upon meat have developed the tools or faculties for securing their food supply and best digesting it for their physiological needs. Animals that have claws and fangs are usually carnivores.
===== Are we adapting to our present environment? =====
Probably, but not perceptibly. A social adaptation or accommodation is not physiological and anatomical adaptation. Biological adaptations are slow and often require hundreds of thousands of years to come about. For example, when humans started eating meat, they did not during all their meat-eating days over a period of several thousand years develop fangs, claws, or the concentrated hydrochloric acid solution that characterizes meat-eating animals. You need but look at Eskimos to see confirmation of this. Animals adapt very slowly to changed conditions. On the other hand if there is a failure to adapt or the change is too quick, the danger of extinction exists.
===== In nature there are checks and balances. Isn’t something like the black plague a natural check on the population? =====
No. In nature there are no such things as checks and balances in that context. In normal circumstances there are periods of famine and periods of feast. When there’s famine, death overtakes many of the organisms that are victims of the scarcity. When there’s a feast, a rapid multiplication occurs. Organisms in nature live in symbiosis with each other and a balance exists amongst them according to the food chain. For instance, if you study and witness insect hordes, you’ll learn that when they are thriving on abundant vegetation there is a corresponding increase in their predators, that is, birds and other animals that feed upon insects. When the insect population is practically wiped out the predators decline in numbers. These are the only kinds of checks and balances that exist in nature. Nothing can exceed its possibilities.
What you call calamities cannot be in any sense referred to as natural. A plague or any sickness or disease is not natural. It happens because an organism has lived contrary to the laws or principles that apply to its life. When we contravene the laws of our existence, we will incur disease. Diseases or plagues are in no sense checks and balances. If humans live in pathogenic perversions they’ll develop diseases and die amidst plenteousness.
===== What is your opinion of holistic health? =====
Those who are striving for something better than the medical system with which they’ve become disillusioned must be admired for both their perspicacity and their courage in undertaking an independent course. We Hygienists may not agree with the course or courses they’ve chosen as an alternative, but we hold they have every right to pursue it as is their bent and persuasion.
The word “holistic” derives from the word “health” which, again, means “whole,” “complete,” or possessing fullness of function. The word “holy” also de- rives from the word whole or healthy, although we have lost sight of this.
What we call “holistic health” in current society is a catchall of all modalities. The term is a tautology. It’s like saying “healthy health.” But the holistic movement involves M.D.’s, homeopaths, chiropractors, osteopaths, naturopaths, herbologists, acupuncturists, polarity therapists, foot reflexologists, and just about anything else that attaches itself to the movement. The holistic health movement embraces any- one who wants to join it.
Hygienists who bring their philosophy with them are not accepted in the holistic movement. To be accepted into the movement you must be of a “curing” frame of mind, that is, basically medically oriented. This movement is therapy-oriented rather than health-oriented. However, some of the practitioners in the movement, notably the naturopaths, do recognize that we must remove the causes of disease in order to establish a basis for health. Even some chiropractors are enlightened in this regard. There are, in fact, practitioners in all schools that recognize the real needs of the human organism and advise their clients of these needs.
We call ourselves wholistic. To us this means that we embrace every facet or condition that touches upon human welfare. In the sense that we recognize that health is realized only by the length and breadth of the living regime, we’re wholis- tic. But we do not identify with the current movement that calls itself holistic.
===== I think you’re wrong about all healing being self-healing. I’ve personally seen a woman who had a leg ulcer for over a year. Topical application of comfrey poultices healed it in less than ten days. How can you deny that? =====
I do not deny that the leg ulcer healed, and I do not deny that the comfrey poul- tice was the agency that precipitated the healing process of the leg ulcer. But the body is probably worse, not better for the treatment.
What happens physiologically to cause the ulcer in the first place? Why do they sometimes persist only to heal later? What happens when the agency of toxic mate- rials such as in garlic, aloe, comfrey, or in pharmacological preparations are applied and the ulcer is healed?
The comfrey poultice neither caused nor healed the ulcer. The body created the ulcer in the first place just as it creates a boil, fever, pimple, or other so-called in- fection. The body creates these conditions as outlets for an extraordinary load of toxic materials. As long as the body is burdened with toxicity that it cannot elimi- nate through normal channels, it will utilize vicarious outlets, i.e., outlets other than normal. As long as the practices introduce into the body toxic materials and the sufferer’s habits are such as to cause the body to retain its own metabolic wastes, then the body will protect itself against a death-dealing situation by getting rid of its problems any way it can.
An ulcer is created in two ways. First, a lesion can be created by the body through self-autolyzation of its tissues. The body causes the self-digestion of a hole to the surface in the case of a boil or pimple. It is the body that forces toxic materi- als into the hole it has created to the surface. It is the body that creates the tremen- dous pressure necessary to keep the pus and debris near the surface in the form of a boil until drainage or expulsion occurs.
Just so it is the body that causes the ulcer in one way or another. Probably the leg ulcer was caused by the body’s collection and concentration of poisons in a given area until the cells and tissues of the area were totally destroyed. Then the body utilizes the open sore as a drainage outlet much as a teakettle will discharge its steam through a blown hole after the hole is blown. When aloe vera, comfrey, or certain pharmaceutical preparations are applied, they do not solve the body’s prob- lems. Herbs and drugs have not the intelligence or power to create cells and new tissue to bridge the chasm or gulf that constitutes the ulcer or lesion.
What happens is that the poultice or drug application applied to an open sore poses a new danger. Absorption of poisons from the outside causes the body to change strategy. Where it had been exuding poisons to keep them low, the body is now absorbing poisons there. To obviate this new threat the body closes up the dumping ground and seals it off from the outside by scarring it over.
Though the body healed the ulcer, it is now worse off than before. It is retaining the toxic material previously expelled through the open sore or ulcer. Either it must now create a new extraordinary outlet or suffer the retention of the toxic materials it previously expelled through the ulcer.
Had the ulcer sufferer fasted, the ulcer would have healed more quickly than with the application of a poultice. Moreover, the body would, under the fasting condition, be free of the input of toxic materials and toxigenesis due to enervating habits. Under this condition it can accelerate expulsion of toxic materials through regular channels. Once the level of toxicity has been reduced below a certain tol- erance level, the body will promptly proceed to heal the ulcer. Healing takes place much more quickly under the fasting condition than any other. While fasting, the body can concentrate its energies and its material resources to the healing process, thus affecting healing much more speedily.
So, the comfrey poultice did not do anything other than become a source of ir- ritation. The body “closed up shop,” so to speak, at the ulcer site and did business
elsewhere. Keep in mind that all healing is a body process and never that of drugs. And let us not mistake the drug nature of comfrey. It contains pyrrholizidine and allantoin, two quite toxic alkaloids or glycosides.
===== Are you telling us we’d get along better without doctors and healers? Does not nature furnish natural remedies for our problems? =====
I just furnished an example of the physiological modus operandi of the body under the influence of toxic materials. I had hoped that would suffice to dispel any ideas that healing can be effected by extraneous agencies.
Yes, we would be better off without physicians, miscalled doctors, and so-called healers. We do need teachers to help people see their errors concerning health. We need teachers to get them on the right biological track so they can lead healthy and happy lives. Nature never developed humans or other animals so that remedies are needed in the first place, and it never created remedies in the second place. These interpretations errant humans have ascribed to disease and healing phenomena are based on illusory appearances. The only remedy for any ailment is the capacity of the body to right itself once the assault upon it has been discontinued.
===== Aren’t diseases caused by germs and viruses? Surely you can’t mean that milli- ons of physicians the world over are wrong about this? =====
We’ll get into the depths of these matters in subsequent lessons. But the answer is no: germs do not cause disease. They can, at worst, complicate them secondarily. Bacteria are our symbiotic partners in life. Partners accommodate each other for mutual benefit. Viruses as an entitative existence are a medical myth. If diseases are caused by un-eliminated metabolic debris, which is what so-called viruses are, then the medics have a point. But we Hygienists call that metabolic debris retained wastes, not viruses. “Viruses” are nothing more than the proteinacious debris of spent cells. Their accumulation can precipitate a healing crisis in the body. When this occurs, the body is likely to transport bacteria to the scene to aid it in cleaning up the mess, but the bacteria did not cause the problem. The habits and practices of the sufferer must be looked to as the real culprits. Once these deleterious habits and practices are discontinued, there will be no further toxic accumulations and thus the need for disease or healing crises will cease to exist. Sickness-free health will exist thereafter.
===== You say that disease is abnormal. Everyone has been sick at some time or other. Haven’t you ever been sick? If everyone gets sick, wouldn’t you say getting sick is a rather normal thing? =====
Yes, it is undeniable that disease and sickness are normal in our society. That is one reason there’s a great need for enlightened Life Scientists to be on the scene. We can put an end to this misery.
Let us not, however, confuse what is normal in nature and what is normal in a vitiated society.
Disease is a normal body response to an abnormal toxic condition. But the toxic condition is, let us recognize, abnormal.
===== You talk about Life Science as a cure-all. Aspirin will cure a headache, at least for a while. Can Life Science cure a headache? =====
Those practices which, aggregately, we term Life Science, are, indeed, a panacea, a cure-all. Correct diet and health practices build health, not disease. Aspirin does not “cure a headache.” The problems remain as before plus the toxic presence of the aspirin itself. Aspirin merely causes our body to paralyze or incapacitate the nervous system. Just because you remove thermometers does not alter the temperature. The fact that the body finally expels the aspirin from its domain and reinstitutes the processes that give rise to another headache is ample indication that drugs solve no problems.
Under the Life Science regime all causes of headaches are removed. Causes of health are instituted. This is the ultimate solution to the problem of disease and suffering. When there are no causes there can be no disease. When only the causes of health are indulged, only health can result.
==== The Return To Perfection by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton ====
==== The Return To Perfection by Dr. Herbert M. Shelton ====
==== What Is Health? ====
==== What Is Health? ====