History

This section of the Encyclopedia of Natural Healing describes some of the most well-known personalities who contributed greatly to the understanding and appreciation of healthy nutrition. All of these pioneers learned through experience that a whole foods, vegetarian diet restores the body's natural balance. Once this harmony is restored, the body's own healing and regenerative powers can take over. Quite a few of these pioneers experienced great success with healing so-called incurable diseases. It is also striking how many of these people describe a vegetarian diet as helping the body as well as the spirit and soul.

History Early Healers

Hippocrates (c. 460-377 BC)

The ancient Greek physician Hippocrates was the founding father of natural medicine. Hippocrates taught that the first and foremost principle of medicine must be to respect and support nature's healing force which inhabits each living organism and animates all of nature. Respect for a person's natural inner healing power is the basic principle that unites many different natural healing therapies and methods.

Hippocrates was born on the island of Kos around 460 BC. He was the first physician to believe that the body and the mind must be considered as a whole. Hippocrates considered the cause of disease to be undigested residues produced by an unsuitable diet. These residues emitted vapors which passed into the body and produced disease. Many natural health therapists today still benefit from this insight.

Hippocrates taught that nature itself is the first and only true physician. Nature heals; the physician is only the helper of nature. The doctor's job is to support the natural healing force where it has grown weak, making the physician's most difficult task a rather paradoxical one-the doctor must learn to do nothing. The doctor must learn to let an illness run its course and wait and see if intervention is necessary. Hippocrates taught that the physician, above all, must ensure that no harm comes to the patient.

The physician must strive to discover the root causes and the mechanisms of illness and health. To understand the true cause of a disease, the doctor must take into account the local symptoms and the state of the whole person, his or her constitution, age, profession, sex, as well as the climate and the time of year. If the underlying cause of an illness is found and corrected, the local symptoms will disappear.

The Hippocratic writings also insist that the patient must take responsibility for his or her own health. Hippocrates recognized that ill health is usually caused by unhealthy living practices which the patient has the power to change. He named listlessness, loss of appetite, irritability, insomnia, and pains as warning signs of imminent illness. A healthy diet, warm baths, sweating, laxatives, sleep, gymnastics and movement in the morning sun are some of the preventive measures Hippocrates suggested. If intervention was unavoidable, a physician could also recommend such treatments as more or less food and liquid, application of cold or warm water, work in alternation with rest, bleeding, oiling, rubbing, kneading, air baths, athletic activities and medicinal herbs.

The Hippocratic oath is still sworn by physicians today. The oath requires the physician to prescribe only beneficial treatments and to refrain from causing harm to patients. According to Hippocrates, not harming a patient meant allowing his or her own natural healing force to do its work. In this sense, many medical practitioners today are committing perjury.

It is misleading to call the natural health movement 'alternative medicine' as is often done. Natural medicine is considered the founder of contemporary Western medicine. What we now call modern medicine is actually an aberration, the result of social change at the dawn of industrialization in the eighteenth century. The detrimental effects of modern science and technology on medical practices provoked certain healers to protest and found the natural health movement. But natural health was not born with the natural health movement. It is as old as the teachings of Hippocrates.

Paracelsus (1493-1541)

At the close of the Middle Ages, Paracelsus dared to challenge the orthodox medicine of his day, which, like today, had abandoned the teachings of Hippocrates and become bogged down in superstitious, dogmatic practices. With the dramatic successes he achieved through observation and deduction to discover nature's latent healing powers, Paracelsus revolutionized medicine for centuries.

Born Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim in Switzerland, this courageous genius had the early opportunity to accompany his father, a physician, on his rounds. He learned the value of observation and became acquainted with herbs and medicinal plants. In his university years, Paracelsus appreciated the critical spirit which reigned in Ferrara, Italy, compared to the closed-mindedness in universities in other European cities. He was not content to limit himself to academic knowledge. He learned what he could practically from professionals and anyone else who had something to teach him about how to use the latent forces in nature. Due to his healing successes, notably in treating the plague, he began to gather a large following.

After returning to Basle, Switzerland, Paracelsus saved the leg of the rich printer Frobenius from amputation by applying his knowledge of nature's inner healing power. Paracelsus became Basle's official physician and was offered a professorship at the University of Basle. He soon ran into trouble with the authorities due to his blatant criticism of modern medicine. In a dramatic gesture, Paracelsus burned the books of the medical authorities. Within several months he was forced to flee the university and found himself wandering penniless. For the next eight years he lived with friends and worked on his manuscripts. The publication of Die Grosse Wundartzney in 1536 restored his reputation, and his fortune turned once more. Paracelsus became wealthy and was sought after by noblemen and royalty.

Paracelsus attacked the dogmatic belief of modern doctors that the human body is controlled exclusively by the stars and the planets. He insisted upon the right to discover latent powers of nature by daring to use his faculties of observation and imagination. He stressed the healing power of nature, and raged against modern methods, such as wound treatment that prevented natural drainage of bodily fluids.

One of Paracelsus's most important medical discoveries concerned the treatment of syphilis. He maintained that syphilis could be treated with carefully measured doses of poison mercury compounds taken internally. This contradicted all medical opinion of the day, but he was proven right. Paracelsus was the first to show that, if given in small doses, the cause of an illness also cures it. This discovery was an anticipation of the modern practice of homeopathy. In the summer of 1534, Paracelsus cured many people in the plague-infested town of Stertzing by applying the same principle.

Paracelsus was particularly interested in the role earth elements-metals and minerals-played in the human body. He was the first to connect goiter with lead in drinking water. He correctly maintained that miner's disease (silicosis) resulted from inhaling metal vapors. Doctors and clerics at the time maintained that miner's disease was a punishment for sins.

Paracelsus has gone down in history as the first physician to combine chemistry with medicine. He freed natural medicine from superstition. However, he never lost respect for nature's ways. His mission was to release nature's hidden powers. He believed there was a natural remedy for illnesses, and that it was humanity's responsibility to find it. Paracelsus's emphasis on science, rather than superstition, as the basis for medicine began an important ideological shift. Some people argue that this shift has now gone too far-modern drug companies use science to justify the development of profitable, but unnatural, pharmaceuticals.

History The Emergence of the Natural Health Movement

Two major developments in modern medicine provoked certain healers to rebel and to found the modern natural health movement. One was the medical authorities' focus on increasingly smaller parts of the body. The other was the discovery of drugs that affected the whole body.

Focusing on Smaller Body Parts

Over several centuries, medicine focused on ever smaller parts of the body in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. In the 1600s, the focus had shifted from the whole organism, the body, to individual organs. Two centuries later, the Berlin anatomist Virchow (1821-1902), the founder of cellular pathology, shifted the emphasis again from the organs to even smaller parts: the cells. Later, microscopic entities became the object of medicine when molecular pathology focused on the components of cells: molecules and ions.

Natural healing affirms the important contribution of knowledge gained by the study of cells and molecules. Its practitioners insist that the whole person is the object of treatment, not the localized symptom. If the whole person is strengthened, then the individual symptoms will disappear.

iscovering Drugs that Affect the Whole Body

The second revolutionary development which provoked the reaction of natural health healers was the discovery of drugs such as aspirin, penicillin and a variety of antibiotics. With the emphasis on cells and molecules, the way was open for a remedy that affected all cells in the body. This is what happened with the discovery of penicillin and antibiotics. These drugs affect every body cell, killing beneficial bacteria as well as harmful bacteria. The prevention of disease was virtually ignored.

Natural healing is more than a reaction against modern medical practice. It is mainly a reaction against modern illness. Industrialization brought changing personal habits and diet, which have resulted in an increase in diseases that used to be rare or non-existent. People used to eat according to their needs without requiring theoretical, formal teaching about diet. Modern society has distanced itself from this traditional, healthy way of life. The road back to health is a natural and simple one.

History Pioneers of the European Natural Health Movement

Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)

The German physician Samuel Hahnemann was the founder of homeopathy. In Latin, homeo means 'same,' and pathy means 'suffering.' He rediscovered the Hippocratic precept of 'treating like with like' and gave it new meaning.

During his medical studies in Leipzig and Vienna, Hahnemann was highly critical of established medical practices, finding them cruel and barbaric. He considered it improper to suppress symptoms of disease, believing that the body should be given a chance to heal itself.

After earning his doctorate at the University of Erlangen, Hahnemann tried to find ways in which the patient's internal powers of self-healing could be supported. While translating a book by the Scottish physician William Cullen in 1789, he stumbled upon the discovery that lead to the beginning of homeopathy. In this book, he found the description of a malaria remedy which he tested on himself known as cinchona, or Peruvian bark. He discovered that, when taken by a healthy person, this cure for malaria produced quasi-malarial symptoms. He began exploring this rediscovery of the ancient law of similars by experimenting on himself, his family and friends. Six years later he published his findings in Christoph Hufeland's respected medical journal.

Hahnemann's findings were not accepted by the medical establishment. Pharmacists did not comply readily with his directions for preparing the minute doses of medicines he prescribed. When he began dispensing his own medicines without an apothecary's license, he was arrested in 1820 and forced to leave Leipzig. He moved to Kothen, where the grand duke Ferdinand supported homeopathy and allowed Hahnemann to dispense his own medicines.

Despite the opposition from the ranks of orthodox medicine, homeopathy continued to grow in popularity. Hahnemann remained active to an advanced age. When he was eighty years old, he moved to Paris where he started a new and successful practice.

Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836)

In a time when medical science focused solely on the treatment of individual symptoms of disease, Hufeland was a forceful promoter of preventive medicine. He taught that the primary goal of medicine is not to treat illness, but to maximize life. His book Macrobiotics, The Art of Extending Human Life, published in 1796, became a best seller and was translated into many languages.

Hufeland embraced the Hippocratic principle of a natural healing force. Each person is a
temple of nature, with the power of self-healing. This power is not special, but rather the force
of life itself. According to Hufeland, it is not
the physician but nature that heals an abscess or a broken bone. He warned of the danger of overinvolvement by the physician. The latter's goal should not be to suppress the symptoms of
an illness as quickly as possible, but rather
to stimulate the patient's life force by means of light, air, heat, water, herbal teas, injections
and enemas. He stressed the value of a sensible lifestyle, vegetarian diet and exercise, and paid special attention to the development of
healthy children.

Hufeland considered immoderation to be the cause of most illness. Intense mental activity must be complemented by physical exercise and fresh air, and no one should be forced to eat more than he or she desires. Hufeland was open to folk medicine, homeopathy and magnetic therapy, and he advocated the treatment of the whole person at a time when medicine focused only on the individual organs.

Vincent Priessnitz (1799-1851)

Austrian-born Vincent Priessnitz is the father of hydrotherapy-the treatment of disease by means of water. As a peasant boy tending cattle in the Austrian mountains, he was impressed by a crippled stag that healed its injured limb by holding it daily in the cold water of a mountain spring. When Priessnitz was run over by an ox cart at age sixteen, the local surgeon declared his broken ribs unhealable. Priessnitz used cold-water bandages and frequent drinks of spring water to heal himself successfully. He began to treat neighbors, and the news of his successful water therapies soon spread. Priessnitz was persecuted by the medical profession at the beginning of his career, but was eventually granted a medical license and left in charge of a large health facility.

Priessnitz developed dozens of new water treatments. His patients typically began the day early with a sweat bath, wrapped in blankets, after which they were plunged into a cold tub. During the day they took brisk walks alternated with cold baths, warm foot baths and drinks of water from mountain springs. His greatest successes were in treating the prevalent infectious diseases of his time-syphilis and smallpox.

Priessnitz understood that toxicity was the basis for disease. He was able to lead patients through the natural course of their disease and up to a sometimes severe crisis (including fever and rash), after which they were usually cured. Priessnitz was an important pioneer of the principles of naturopathic medicine. Priessnitz would agree with critics of his treatments that his patients often went through a difficult time, but it was worth it for the sake of their eventual good health.

Another well-known hydrotherapist during Preissnitz's time was Johann Schroth, who opened a spa/clinic, but used mainly warm water therapies and combined them with diet and strict guidelines for drinking.

Father Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897)

Father Sebastian Kneipp became world-famous in his lifetime for his water cure and herb treatments. His teaching is perhaps the single most influential natural therapy to this day, yet he never treated a patient outside his tiny parish, except for one trip to the Vatican to treat the Pope.

Kneipp was born a poor weaver's son, and he never forgot his humble beginnings. He was known to treat the rich and poor alike. A sponsor sent him to Munich University, making possible the fulfillment of his desire to become a priest. It was there that Kneipp contracted tuberculosis. Influenced by the book, Lectures on the Wonderful Healing Power of Fresh Water by Johann Siegmund Hahn, Kneipp applied the severe cold-water cures to himself and recovered within six months. This experience influenced the rest of his life's work.

With his water cures and herb remedies, Kneipp helped countless patients daily and brought popularity to the practices of the father and son, Siegmund Hahn and Johann Siegmund Hahn. The majority of patients Kneipp treated were simple folk with illnesses like serious circulatory disorders, strokes, rheumatism, lung disease, obesity and gout.

Kneipp changed the crude water treatments he found in Hahn's eighteenth-century book. Kneipp's treatments were distinguished by their gentleness-he shortened the duration of the application, but kept the cold water temperature the same. His main contribution to hydrotherapy was the discovery of the healing power of a cold gush of water for certain ailments. Kneipp's therapies were very successful.

To his water applications, Kneipp added the internal and external application of herbs. At first he had qualms about adding herbal remedies to his therapeutic program, thinking they could detract from the importance of his water cures. He collected, tested and catalogued hundreds of local herbs. One of his favorite prescriptions was stinging nettles for blood cleansing, to fight anemia and to rejuvenate. The prescription of bilberry for diarrhea was confirmed by other practitioners.

In addition to water therapy and herbal remedies, Kneipp added recommendations for a simple, nourishing diet, fresh air and exercise, and an emotional and spiritual order in life. Kneipp stressed the importance of training, and considered work to be a form of praying. He gave great importance to strengthening the body's power of resistance. Going barefoot was an important aspect of the regimen he advocated. Kneipp also recommended handmade, homespun clothes of loosely woven linen or vegetable fiber, and he believed in the connection of disease to emotional distress.

In 1886, Kneipp published My Water Cure, an instant best seller, which was immediately translated into fourteen languages. His next book, called Thus Shalt Thou Live!, was published in 1889. The Baby Kneipp Cure followed, then My Will in 1894, with the assistance of Dr. Alfred Baumgarten, and Codicil to My Will in 1896, with the assistance of Bonifaz Reile. His Plant Atlas was published in several languages. Kneipp had hoped his books would help people learn about and apply his cures at home, but thousands came to him for advice.

Kneipp had excellent relations with members of the medical profession, working with physicians who studied and verified his system. Besides being an excellent practitioner, Kneipp was an outstanding orator and gave daily public lectures. He was stern, had a sense of humor and treated all patients for free. His most famous patient was the Archduke Josef of Austria-Hungary, whom he cured of sciatica, an affliction of the sciatic nerve that causes pain to the hip. Kneipp also received recognition from the Pope. Kneipp established three charitable institutions-one for sick priests, another for poor patients, and an asylum for sick children and orphans.

The seventy-year-old Kneipp went on a highly successful lecture tour, speaking at the many local Kneipp Associations which had been founded in towns all over the country. When he died penniless in 1897 at the age of seventy-six, newspapers were printed with a dark edge and flags flew at half-mast.

Kneipp's work has survived largely due to the Kneipp Association founded in 1890 by former patients, and the International Society of Kneipp Physicians. In 1903, the association published The Great Kneipp Book. The magazine Kneipp-Blätter continues to have a large readership, and there are dozens of Kneipp health resorts and spas in Germany today. The most famous spa town is Bad W&oumlrishofen in Allgäu, where Kneipp practiced all his life, and includes seven Kneipp sanatoriums.

E. Leopold Emanuel Felke (1856-1926)

Pastor Erdmann Leopold Emanuel Felke was known as the Loam Pastor. Like Kneipp, he was a clergyman who reluctantly became a nature doctor. He shared Kneipp's sense of humor and sternness, but unlike Kneipp, it was Felke's success in treating his congregation in times of epidemic disease that set him on his career as a natural health practitioner. He never wrote about his therapy, and we know only of his methods through his students and followers.

Felke gained his first knowledge of natural therapy from his father, who treated his family with homeopathic remedies and herbal teas. The young Felke had an interest in plants and used to watch farmers treat injured domestic animals with loam poultices.

At the University of Berlin, Felke studied theology but preferred lectures in medicine and science. He became a caring pastor and an inspiring preacher. During a severe diphtheria epidemic, he gave the children a homeopathic remedy. All of the children recovered, in stark contrast to neighboring villages where the number of deaths were high. This was the beginning of his reputation as a healer. He helped all those who came to him, despite the authorities who took offense and urged him to stop. Felke began to study the methods of other nature healers and nutritionists. He became knowledgeable about diagnosing symptoms through examining facial and eye characteristics, and produced an exact topographical drawing of an eye.

Felke envisioned a setting close to nature where patients could enjoy the benefits of sunlight, air and healthy food. His parishioners warmed to the idea and sent a delegation to the Harz Mountains. They purchased sixty acres of land which included a forested area, and set up two large light and air parks, which were surrounded by high wooden fences and contained approximately fifty air huts. Patients took light, air and water baths, learned gymnastics, ate raw foods, and slept outdoors.

For outer skin lesions, bones and inner maladies, Felke applied clay poultices. When he introduced therapeutic baths in earthy loam in 1912, he became famous as the Loam Pastor. Felke believed that when a person came into contact with the earth, an interchange took place that would draw diseased matter from the body and put healthy matter in its place. Felke's patients would dig low trenches and fill them with loam, freshly dug and stirred into a mash with water. The loam bath was a half-bath-patients would spread the mash up to their lower ribs. Afterwards, they would wipe it off roughly, letting some of it dry on the skin during the ensuing gymnastics. The loam was later rubbed off in a self-massage which increased the blood supply to the skin.

As many as four hundred patients stayed in Felke's spa at once. The police closed it several times and the medical profession brought many lawsuits against him. Felke won every lawsuit; they only served to enhance his reputation. In 1912, Felke gave up his pastorship to devote himself entirely to his natural health practice. He built a larger treatment center with a resident physician.

Felke treated rich and poor alike throughout his life; he died poor on 16 August 1926. He was an open-minded eclectic who also treated his patients with magnetism, massage, hypnotism and homeopathy. He introduced homeopathic remedies (a famous one is called Felke Original Complex) that are still being offered today. His retreats continue to welcome thousands of patients each year.

Johann Künzle (1857-1945)

Johann Künzle lived and worked as a pastor in Switzerland. He used herbal remedies with his parishioners for their physical ailments, and pastoral counseling for their spiritual ailments. Born in the small town of Heiligenkreuz, Künzle gained his first knowledge of medicinal plants from his father who worked for a gardener and maintained his own farm. Later, as a student at the monastery school in Einsiedeln, Künzle was impressed with the knowledge of his botany teacher. Künzle became aware of the power of natural healing methods when his older brother helped cure him of a severe case of pneumonia with breathing and physical exercises.

The second experience which set Künzle on the course of natural healing occurred when he was a student at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Returning home for a holiday in the summer of 1887, he found his mother seriously ill with heart disease. He succeeded in curing her by preparing meals of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and giving her plenty of fresh air.

Künzle's practice as a healer came about slowly. During his first years as a priest, Künzle helped to bring some prosperity to some very poor mountain parishes in Switzerland and Germany. He also created and edited church newsletters. He purchased a herbal atlas at an auction, which contained exact descriptions and locations of all important healing herbs. Künzle studied this book with great care, and it became the foundation of his healing practice.

Künzle also learned from the ways of animals, the simple people around him, and from other natural healers. He was successful in treating his parishioners. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, he treated ill people with herbal remedies. Only two people in his parish died, in contrast to the large death tolls in neighboring villages.

Unfortunately, this success attracted the criticism of the authorities, and Künzle was forbidden to practice healing. The bishop of Chur invited him to practice in another town, but he was sued by a physician and ordered to stop. Künzle obeyed, but the people of the parish protested with a petition of four thousand signatures. A referendum was held, and Künzle resumed his healing activities.

Künzle's fame spread and he received prestigious visitors from all over the world at his spa. He wrote the world-famous book Chrut und Uchrut (Herbs and Weeds), which contained a yearly calendar, an atlas of herbs, and a monthly paper. It sold a million copies. Künzle began producing his remedies industrially-his tea mixtures and herbal combinations have become a regular part of natural health therapies.

Otto Greither (1867-1930)

Otto Greither stands out as being one of the most multi-faceted pioneers in natural health. After completing a medical degree at the University of Munich in 1892, he worked as a general practitioner and health reformer. Towards the turn of the century, he went on to study neurology with several renowned medical scientists across Europe before he took up dentistry and went to veterinary school.

Having practised all over Europe, Greither traveled to the United States (US) to observe other doctors and to gain insight from new scientific research that was being done there. After returning to Europe, he began veterinary studies, and focused his interest on the relationship between the biological processes of animal feeding and fertilization. His understanding of bacteriology grew as he observed sick animals, and he applied his knowledge to human conditions. However, Greither's most lucrative work in terms of understanding health and disease in the human body came from one patient in particular-himself.

At the age of thirty, Greither found himself becoming increasingly nervous, weak and rheumatic. After a few years of being bedridden with these conditions, he worsened, developing pneumonia and eventually pleurisy. Greither underwent surgery; subsequent complications arose and when doctors gave him colonics in preparation for more surgery, his symptoms miraculously disappeared.

From studies based on himself and other patients with digestive disorders, in addition to his observations in veterinary medicine, Greither discovered that the secret of health lay in the colon and the intestines. He found that most diseases and digestive disorders could be cured with a holistic approach of good nutrition, exercise and inner cleansing to rid the bowels of toxins, '...it is not what we eat that is important, but what we digest.'

Although Greither's dream of opening his own sanatorium was never fulfilled, he did develop the 'Salus Treatment,' remedies based on all the research he conducted. He commissioned a factory to produce his remedies so that they could be accessible for others. This was the beginning of Salus-Haus, the premier German manufacturer of natural herbal products, known for its dedication to purity and quality.

In 1916, Otto Greither opened his first Nature and Health retail store. It was clear that people were eager for natural remedies because Nature and Health quickly grew to a chain of nine stores. Nature and Health was the forerunner of the reknowned neuform-movement retail organization, which today has over six thousand members.

In 1930, Otto Greither passed away, due to an illness brought on by overexposure to X-rays during his scientific experimentation. However, his family has carried on with the legacy he left them-the herbal teas, drops, tonics and tinctures he spent a lifetime accumulating.

M. O. Bircher-Benner (1867-1939)

Max Otto Bircher-Benner was a pioneer in natural nutrition, known worldwide for his wholegrain breakfast cereal recipe, Bircher-Benner muesli. (For the Bircher-Benner muesli recipe, see the recipes in Section 5, Optimal Nutrition for Optimal Health.) As a student at the Zurich University Medical School, Bircher-Benner was inspired by the possibilities of biology and physiology for medical treatment-ideas that were foreign to the medical thinking of the day. In 1897, he founded a private clinic in Zurich. For patients suffering from digestive diseases, he recommended raw fruits and vegetables, which he called 'living foods.' This was totally opposed to beliefs at the time, when meat was considered the basis of good nutrition.

Bircher-Benner's most important innovation in the science of nutrition was to introduce the idea of the sunlight value of foods, based on the insight that all living organisms store the power of the sun. While others were measuring the value of food by counting food calories, Bircher-Benner maintained that the value of individual foods depended on how much of the sun's energy was stored in them. From this point of view, fruits and green vegetables have high nutritional values. Raw foods are more valuable than cooked foods because the sun's energy is better preserved in raw foods. Animals partake of the sun's power only indirectly through the plants they eat, therefore meats are a less valuable food than plants.

Bircher-Benner advanced the notion of 'apparent health,' in which an apparently healthy person carries the germ of oncoming illness. Many people suffer from this condition, which is brought on by a diet lacking in vitamins and minerals and an excess of acid, protein, sugar and salt, and too many cooked, baked, preserved, bleached and refined foods.

While Bircher-Benner recommended a diet consisting exclusively of raw fruit and vegetables, nuts and salad for therapeutic purposes, he considered a combination of raw and cooked foods to be best in the longterm.

Bircher-Benner's influence on the health reform movement in Europe has lasted long past his death, and continues with his son, Dr. Ralph Bircher, who carries on the tradition, writing, teaching, and operating the famous Bircher-Benner clinics.

Ragnar Berg (1873-1956)

Swedish nutritionist and Nobel Prize winner Ragnar Berg conducted a number of experiments to determine nutrient loss during cooking. He became interested in this subject after observing certain illnesses which occurred in a Swedish sanatorium practicing 'pudding vegetarianism.' 'Pudding vegetarians' are people who eliminate meat from their diet, but otherwise indulge in mostly denatured cooked food.

Berg wrote about his comprehensive and well-controlled experiments, and the surprisingly great loss of nutrients during cooking. Vegetables lost one-third of their minerals and up to ninety-four percent of their important alkaline salts. This lack of nutritive salts, especially in a heavy meat diet, results in an excess of acid, which shows up in various forms of illness, especially rheumatism and gout.

We know that a healthy organism has to be more alkaline than acidic. Berg learned from his experiments that vegetables which are alkaline when they are raw turn acidic when they are cooked. Vegetables such as legumes, which are acidic to begin with, even increase in acidity after cooking. According to Berg, the value of vegetables lies in their alkaline content, their vitamins and their additional substances not yet known to society. These soluble matters are the first ones lost in the cooking process. Berg sounded a special warning against canned vegetables, which are cooked up to seven times at high heat to preserve them. Cooking also destroys up to four-fifths of carbohydrates and half of protein.

In his book Everyday Miracles, Berg describes the surprisingly quick healing of heavily festered wounds after patients were put on a course of raw vegetables, such as carrots, spinach, fresh lettuce and potatoes. These patients were particularly deficient in B vitamins, a deficiency which encourages the formation of extra white blood cells and pus. Berg was one of the world's top authorities on the acid-alkaline balance of foods and how this balance affects the body. His works on nutrition are still used as textbooks in many medical schools.

Are Waerland (1876-1955)

The Swedish biologist, lecturer and writer Are Waerland has influenced the healthy living habits of countless people through the gigantic health movement that carries his name. The single most important secret to good health advocated by the Waerland Healing System is simple and effective-a daily, early morning walk. According to Waerland, motion and oxygen are the things we need most to prepare the body for the day. An hour-long walk, brisk enough to cause slight perspiration, when combined with a good diet, will build strong health. Walking is also the best medicine to ensure a refreshing night's sleep, another essential prerequisite for good health.

Waerland's natural health teaching pays special attention to the vital role the skin plays in a person's health. The skin absorbs oxygen, excretes waste, and controls the body's temperature. Its vitality depends on the proper functioning of the small muscles regulating blood supply to the skin. To keep these muscles toned, in addition to the brisk morning walk, Waerland recommends taking a cold bath or shower each morning, grooming the skin with a dry brush or friction massage, dressing in light clothes, and taking a warm bath or sauna each week to eliminate worn-out skin and waste.

As a student at the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 1901, Waerland was prompted to leave his philosophical studies for the study of medicine by the onset of a severe abdominal disease which threatened to take his life. His search for the principles of health took him to Edinburgh University, University College in London, and the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked for many years in London with several nutritional scientists, conducting experiments in nutritional physiology and medicine. Waerland also wrote articles on nutrition for the Swedish magazine Frisksport. Like Bircher-Benner, Waerland developed his own breakfast muesli, Kruska.

Through the application of the principles of good health which he discovered, Waerland lived a long and productive life. His teaching placed great emphasis on the ability and duty of every individual to take responsibility for his or her own good health.

Max Gerson (1881-1959)

German physician, Max Gerson was one of the most eminent pioneers of natural healing. He started his medical practice in the mid-1920s, specializing in disorders of the nervous system.

In his youth, Gerson suffered from excruciating migraines. Told by medical experts that migraines were incurable, he experimented with different diets. All his efforts failed until he tried raw vegetarian food. He started with apples, and then carefully extended his diet to other fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The migraines disappeared, but returned when he deviated from eating natural food. Gerson subsequently became a vegetarian for life.

When Gerson started prescribing raw vegetarian food to his patients, they also experienced surprising cures. One patient who suffered from migraines and lupus, an inflammatory skin disease considered completely incurable, was cured after sticking to Gerson's diet. Laboratory reports and slides clearly documented the complete disappearance of her lupus, an unheard-of occurrence. Gerson subsequently treated other lupus patients who also recovered.

Since Gerson was a specialist in nervous disorders, the medical community tried to get his license revoked, claiming that he was not qualified to treat lupus. When the matter was brought to court, the judge asked the physicians who were suing Gerson whether they were curing lupus. They replied that lupus was incurable. The judge responded that if they were not curing lupus, they should let Gerson cure it, and dismissed the case. Gerson then went home and put up a new sign reading General Practitioner.

In 1928, Gerson cured Albert Schweitzer's wife from serious lung tuberculosis. At that point, Gerson realized that his natural diet was applicable to all diseases because raw vegetarian food renews the body's ability to heal itself. Years later, at the age of seventy-five, Albert Schweitzer recovered from diabetes under Gerson's care, and considered Max Gerson to be one of the most eminent geniuses in medical history.

In 1929, Gerson started treating his first cancer patients. The diet he prescribed consisted of fresh fruits and vegetables, and freshly squeezed juices. After the patient had been on this diet for a while, buttermilk, quark, yogurt and raw egg yolks were added. The patients also took a mineral supplement and received enemas to clean out the digestive system. Gerson kept developing his cancer therapy in Germany and then in the US, when he emigrated there in the late 1930s. He added fresh green leaf juice, fresh raw calf's liver juice, coffee enemas and other treatments to his therapy which is described in his book, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases (1958). His book provides proof and medical documentation that a significant number of so-called terminal cancer patients completely recovered under Gerson's care. In the US, the medical profession again tried to sabotage him. Gerson kept submitting papers about his work to medical journals but they were invariably rejected. The medical profession also tried to get his license revoked for practicing 'unorthodox medicine.'

Gerson believed that the root of all disease lies in an imbalance of sodium and potassium. If the balance is restored through the consumption of potassium-rich foods, cell respiration is improved, the body is strengthened and purified, and cancer cells can be attacked and destroyed.

Gerson's theory of cell respiration has recently been confirmed. Scientists now recognize that a lack of cell oxygenation is typical for almost all chronic diseases. Cancer specialist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Otto Warburg, who is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology in Berlin, discovered that healthy cells use oxygen reactions as an energy source. Cancer cells respond quite differently, deriving their energy from glucose. Other researchers have confirmed Warburg's finding, agreeing that many diseases of modern civilization are caused by faulty cell oxygenation. If normal cell oxygenation is restored with raw vegetarian food, the whole organism, including the immune system, is also restored.

Gerson demanded that nutrition become the basis for any medical treatment, and that a physician's first act should be changing the patient's diet and metabolism. Gerson died in 1959, at the age of seventy-eight. His work is now carried on by his youngest daughter, who runs the Gerson Institute in Mexico.

James C. Thomson (1887-1960)

James Thomson helped transplant nature cure methods to the British Isles, and his dynamic personality ensured that these methods took root and thrived.

He believed the best therapeutic agent consisted of the patient's determination to get well. This precept determined Thomson's own road to nature cure. After eighteen months in the Royal Navy, Thomson contracted incurable tuberculosis. He retired to a cousin's farm, and followed the advice he found in books of natural healing. He recovered and went to the US, visiting and managing sanatoriums.

Thomson returned to Edinburgh, where he married and set up a residential practice. He published the magazine Rude Health, opened a clinic for needy children, and imported the first mercury vapor lamp for ultraviolet therapy. In 1939, he moved his practice to Kingston Estate in Scotland. There were various attempts to close it down, but Thomson represented himself successfully in court.

His beliefs led to many conflicts with people who had little faith in self-healing powers. Thomson maintained that illness was a periodic housecleaning of toxins by the body and should be welcomed. Thomson also deplored the sense of hopelessness which conventional diagnosis conferred on patients with terminal diseases.

The therapeutic mainstays of the 'Kingston system' were a healthy diet, hydrotherapy, and spinal manipulation to help correct nerve and circulatory imbalances. The diet consisted mostly of raw, vegetarian foods. Thomson railed against processed foods, especially those with artificial preservatives. He prescribed judicious, short-term fasts and a raw, cultured milk product, such as natural yogurt or kefir. Thomson's application of hydrotherapy consisted of external baths in the tradition of Priessnitz and Kneipp, but he did not promote internal hydrotherapy or excessive water drinking.

Thomson's treatments were known for their disarming simplicity, like the toe wiggling exercise he called 'T. K. Wriggle.' Wriggling the toes constantly can help ulcers and skin eruptions to fade away.

Thomson was a staunch believer in prevention. He opposed vaccination, pasteurization and pharmaceutical medicine. He maintained that chemical pesticides play a role in causing infectious diseases by intoxicating tissues and making them susceptible to viruses, and suggested that large chemical companies simultaneously sold the cause and marketed the cure of diseases. He repeatedly linked health and politics, condemning the war machine and the drug machine as co-conspirators in keeping the world sick. He also claimed there was a conspiracy between the news media and medical establishment, which kept naturopathic successes out of the press. Fighting the establishment cost Thomson a great deal of time and energy.

Besides maintaining his practice and writing books, Thomson was the principal of the Edinburgh School of Natural Therapeutics, which he founded in 1913. He also established the Society of Registered Naturopaths.

Stanley Lief (1892-1963)

Like Thomson, Lief played an instrumental part in establishing naturopathy in Britain. He was born to Jewish parents in Latvia, and lived with his family in South Africa as a boy. He was an obese child with a weak heart, and it was the desire to strengthen his weak body that led him to nature cure. He became aware of the power of natural healing by observing native South Africans recovering from disease by taking sun baths and limiting their diet.

Lief was impressed with the magazine Physical Culture, published in Chicago. Lief went to the US to study at MacFadden's International College of Drugless Physicians. Upon graduation he went to England, where he became the manager of MacFadden's spa. In World War I, Lief was wounded by shrapnel in the arm. Instead of having the arm amputated, he regained its use by following a vegetarian diet combined with fasting and exercise.

After the war he opened a small health home near London. A grateful patient, Mr.
C. M. Trelawney, helped Lief purchase an old estate called Champneys. Lief's treatments were spectacularly successful, and Champneys became a mecca for those who distrusted the medical profession. In 1927, Lief mortgaged the estate to found the magazine Health for All. Within three years it appeared monthly in runs of thirteen thousand copies. Within ten years it was distributed worldwide, with runs of fifty thousand copies.

Lief practiced pure nature cure, maintaining that disease is a state of toxicity caused by poor eating habits. According to Lief, disease is a friend in disguise, warning you of other problems. The way to prevent problems is to avoid toxins. He prescribed a five-point plan for treating colds: reduce eating, flush the bowels, take warm baths, get fresh air, rest in bed. Lief adopted the fasting treatments that Thomson had found wanting. Lief believed that fasting could help people overcome disease by giving the organs a rest, eliminating toxins and allowing normal hunger to develop. Although fasts were his favorite therapeutic tool, he also used hydrotherapy, massage, spinal manipulation and therapy with electricity.

Werner Kollath (1892-1970)

Werner Kollath, physician, hygienist and nutritional scientist, was an important and influential spokesperson for a natural, whole foods diet, and a severe critic of processed food manufacturers.

Kollath was born in Gallnow, Germany in 1892, and graduated from the University of Marburg in 1920. At the Hygiene Institute at the University of Breslau, he formulated twelve edicts of hygiene, in which a natural diet played an important role. His book Foundations, Methods and Goals of Hygiene is still being sold after fourteen editions.

In 1932, Kollath published a book on cell growth factors, cellular replacement and vitamins which led to a professorship in 1934 at the University of Rostock, where he did research on food and longevity. He postulated the existence of certain life-increasing factors in foods, and anticipated recent discoveries in the field of nutrition.

Kollath's nutritional advice was simple and direct-leave food as natural as possible. He proved scientifically that a person can eat enough to seem healthy and still be suffering from malnutrition. He showed that a poor diet can lead to the development of damage to the body.

To describe a food of optimum quality, Kollath introduced the concept of 'full value,' meaning that the nutrients typically contained by a specific food are fully preserved in their natural form. In Europe, this concept became synonymous with the principles of a healthy natural foods diet.

Based on the idea that the quality of food is important, Kollath set up a table of the health value of individual foods. It was the first chart that could easily be used by people without scientific nutritional and physiological training.

Kollath was severely critical of the food processing industry. He denounced the industrial food producers' practice of keeping secret the ingredients of their products. He spoke out for the value of organic farming, and became famous for his Kollath Breakfast, his recommendations for the quality of cereal to be used in morning muesli. Kollath highly recommended freshly ground cereals for breakfast consumption. He further stated that care should be taken to choose good quality grains with a sprouting potential of eighty percent or better.

Today, nutritional science acknowledges his contributions and recognizes that the processing of foods leads to products in which the essential nutrient value is reduced. Kollath argued for cooperation between natural and orthodox medicine in his book Towards Oneness in Medical Science, published in 1942 and reprinted as recently as 1988.

Gayelord Hauser (1895-1984)

As a young man in Switzerland, Gayelord Hauser was inflicted by a then-incurable disease, tuberculosis of the hip. His case was hopeless, and the doctor's verdict was to make him as comfortable as possible and to let him die in peace.

His sister took him to a well-known monk who taught health via herbs and 'living' foods. He was treated by the monk, and what began as a grasping hope to save his life turned out to be a complete cure for young Hauser.

He became obsessed with nutrition and studied it whenever possible. He visited and studied with eminent European professors to learn whatever he could. His aim in life was to help the world learn the importance of good nutrition.

After graduating from several schools, Hauser moved to the US and opened an office in Chicago where he began to teach nutrition. He gave lectures to large numbers of people in Chicago and other cities. He became very popular and created a nutritional revolution in the US after World War II.

Hauser worked hard, traveled far and wide, and gained acceptance for his ideas. His applied concepts of nutrition worked. As interest in good nutrition grew, health food stores began to change from small establishments to total natural nutrition centers, selling whole grains and a variety of fresh, organic fruits and vegetables.

During one of his many California lecture tours, he met William Randolph Hearst Sr. The newspaper publisher wanted Hauser to become a syndicated columnist. Hauser accepted and his column became very popular, circulating his ideas to even wider audience.

His books followed in tandem with his
newspaper column and lecture tours. Hauser made the health food concept acceptable and respected, not only in North America but also overseas. His books, Diet Does It and Eat and Grow Beautiful, were so successful that the English and the French bought the right to publish them in their countries.

In 1950, Look Younger, Live Longer was published, making Gayelord Hauser a legend. He introduced, among other revolutionary ideas, his five wonder foods: wheat germ, brewer's yeast, powdered skim milk, yogurt and blackstrap molasses. (Today, molasses must be organically grown to prevent chemical sprays and fertilizers from concentrating in the plants.) The book was the success story of the decade, and was translated into twenty-seven languages.

One of the pillars of Hauser's nutritional philosophy was the importance of a normal elimination. He brought from Switzerland a fantastic herbal laxative formula called Swiss Kriss, a combination of sun-dried leaves, herbs and flowers. Hauser stressed the importance of using a natural laxative that would offer freedom from constipation problems without the harsh side-effects common to synthetic laxatives.

Many businesses began to see in Hauser an ideal vehicle through which they could promote different products, but Hauser stood by his principles and turned down many lucrative offers. This earned him the nickname of the 'incorruptible one' from the business establishment. Hauser's teachings were gaining momentum, and his many followers knew what he stood for and respected him for it.

Big business kept an eye on him, and was not happy with what this pioneer had done to them. Sales of white flour, sugar and refined foods began to fall. Shopping in health food stores was becoming almost as popular as going to the local grocer. People were beginning to eat better foods. The big sugar, white flour and junk foods manufacturers went to Washington to stop Hauser. His wonder foods were claimed to be worthless or harmful.

Hauser fought the corporate food industry in court, and the money he earned with his books went to pay lawyers' fees. He wanted to protect his own reputation and the reputation of the entire natural foods industry. Honesty, integrity and truth prevailed, and Hauser won his case, which gave his cause even more impetus.

Hauser's nutritional centers emerged in all parts of the world with a common goal-to teach people how to eat better, look younger, live longer, and be happier and healthier. After Look Younger, Live Longer, Hauser wrote several more best sellers. His philosophy of nutrition was widely accepted, practised and discussed around the world.

Hauser will always be known for triggering health food movement's explosive growth after World War II. He brought health foods to Hollywood and involved movie stars in the movement. It was important to him that foods be wholesome and full of natural goodness, with no artificial flavors, colors or chemical preservatives, and sealed tightly to preserve freshness.

One of his greatest accomplishments was bringing yogurt to North America. He converted milk powder, a very cheap by-product of the ice-cream industry, into nutritious, lactic acid-rich yogurt. Hauser also taught consumers to enrich their nutrition with brewer's yeast, which is a good source of vitamins and minerals.

Hauser spent the last forty years of his life writing and lecturing, telling the world how to live better through good nutritional habits. He created a selection of seasonings, each one with a specific purpose for a healthy diet. Newspapers and magazines officially recognized him as a man who, through his teachings, founded the natural foods movement, and thus improved the lives of millions. The London Sunday Times named him one of the makers of the twentieth century.

Alfred Brauchle (1898-1964)

Alfred Brauchle was an outstanding natural therapist, teacher and writer, and was the first historian of the nature cure movement. In 1937, he published Nature Cure in Biographies, which became the standard work on the subject and was later reissued in abbreviated editions under different titles.

Brauchle was born in Schopfheim, Germany in 1898. During his medical internship in Berlin, he was introduced to nature cure. He studied with Emile Coue in France, who taught him methods of psychological self-suggestion, through which he cured himself of stomach and intestinal disturbances. Later, at the University Clinic for Hydrotherapy in Berlin, he practiced mass suggestions on groups. He considered nature cure to be incomplete without psychological guidance.

Brauchle became director of the Priessnitz-Hospital in Mahlow from 1929 to 1934, where he prescribed raw foods diets, cold-water treatments, heat treatments, air and sun baths, fasting, massage and gymnastics. In 1933, he wrote Handbook of Nature Cure on a Scientific Basis, one of the first nature cure textbooks for physicians. The Great Book of Nature Cure, which contained extensive chapters on the history and theory of nature cures, followed several years later.

From 1934 to 1943, Brauchle was head of the Department for Nature Cure Methods at a twelve-hundred-bed hospital in Dresden. Louis R. Grote, director of the Department of Internal Medicine, was his counterpart representing orthodox medicine. At a conference in Wiesbaden in 1936, Grote acknowledged in public the success of nature cure methods for treating pneumonia, bronchial asthma, heart disease, gastric ulcers, cirrhosis of the liver and rheumatism. He demonstrated these successes to his audience of traditional doctors with the help of charts and precise technical data.

In 1943, Brauchle returned to his native Black Forest, Germany and worked at various sanatoriums. When the Central Association of Physicians for Nature Cure Methods was formed in 1951, Brauchle became its first president.

Alfred Vogel (1902-1996)

The Nature Doctor, written by Swiss herbalist Alfred Vogel, has become the bible of herbal medicine for over a million readers. Vogel was born in 1902 near Basle, Switzerland, where he spent his childhood exploring the nearby fields, meadows and woods. His love of nature later led him on travels around the globe, learning herbal wisdom from people in Africa, Asia, Australia and the US. He was particularly impressed with the knowledge of the Sioux Indians, who taught him about the healing powers of echinacea, the purple coneflower. Vogel brought echinacea to Europe, cultivated it, and developed an extract from the flowers, leaves and roots, which is now widely accepted as one of the best immune-system stimulants available.

On his travels, Vogel also learned from the nutritional habits of healthy primitive peoples. He concluded that people in developed countries eat too much protein, and that diseases such as cancer are often protein-storage diseases.

Vogel established a clinic of natural healing where patients are treated with medicinal plants gathered at the foot of the Swiss Alps. He discovered that tinctures prepared from fresh plants are much more effective than remedies made from dried plants. In response to the worldwide demand for natural remedies, Vogel established the Bioforce Company in 1963. This company manufactures natural remedies, health foods and body care products developed without animal testing.

Vogel communicated his knowledge by giving lectures around the world. In 1929, he began publishing a monthly periodical of health news. Besides The Nature Doctor, he wrote several other acclaimed books on natural healing, including a guide to healthy living in southern tropical and desert climates.

Walther Schoenenberger (1907-1982)

Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Walther Schoenenberger moved to Stuttgart, Germany, with his family at an early age. He worked in the school herb garden of the Herrnhuter Mission, and one day was visited by Kaiser Wilhelm II. Impressed with Schoenenberger's efforts, Kaiser Wilhelm gave him a bar of chocolate as a token of appreciation.

World War I intruded on Schoenenberger's plans to study medicine, so he pursued pharmacy instead. As a student doing his practicum in Nuremberg, he studied and researched the medicinal virtues of freshly pressed juices from herbs and plants. He believed that fresh plants had superior medicinal value to either dried herbs
or tinctures of alcoholic herbal extracts. Schoenenberger conducted countless experiments and analyses to confirm his theory.

He knew that there were benefits to be derived from dried herbs and plants, but after studying old herbals, he saw that many of the medicinal ingredients were lost in the dehydration process. Pressing plants instead of drying them would yield maximum healing benefits because the fresh plant captures the whole synergistic complex of healing ingredients. Schoenenberger devised a method of making and bottling fresh plant juices that would ensure preservation of their medicinal qualities and etheric oils. Fresh juices could now be used year-round.

Therapies are not named after their founder very often; that honor is only bestowed when their contribution is significant. Father Kneipp was the originator of Kneipp hydrotherapy, Dr. Heimlich developed the Heimlich manoeuver and Walther
Schoenenberger created the now-famous Schoenenberger herbal juice therapy.

His contribution to public health also earned him the highest recognition of the German government. The prestigious Bundesverdienstkreutz (Order of the Federal Republic) was given to him a few years before his death in 1982.

Maria Treben (1907-1991)

Nature, says Maria Treben, has provided a healing herb for every disease. Maria Treben grew up in rural surroundings in the former Sudetan, Germany, now part of Poland. With her family, she tended the garden, preserved fruit and vegetables, baked bread, and gathered and dried wild herbs. From early childhood, she felt most comfortable when she could be in the forests and meadows. This woman of simple origin, with a deeply rooted trust in nature, was guided in her mission as a herbalist by an almost instinctive insight. It was not until she was in her sixties, however, that Treben began to pursue her calling to herbology.

When the death of her mother in the late 1960s led to her own emotional breakdown, Treben began to concern herself with the healing power of wild-crafted herbs, reading what she could and listening to the experiences of others. She began to write short descriptions of herbs for her Catholic Community Journal. Soon, a small Austrian publishing house released a booklet she had written on herbs. This was followed by the book that quickly became a worldwide best seller, Health Through God's Pharmacy. It has sold over five million copies in her native German language alone, perhaps due to Maria Treben's simple way of describing plants and their uses, mixed with her inspiring success stories. The book shocked the medical community, but brought new hope to hundreds of thousands of sufferers.

When she lectured, Treben's personal charisma sometimes made her appear like a preacher, bringing the good news of natural healing. She was often surrounded by thousands of eager listeners, but she probably received the most acclaim as the result of her rediscovery of the wonderful elixir, Swedish bitters. Thanks to Treben, this herbal mixture has become a household remedy for health-conscious people the world over.

Treben's success soon brought opposition from the medical profession, and practitioners who had been promoting synthetic drugs for decades accused her of generalizing and misleading people with false hope. This started a long, tiring, time-consuming and unpleasant dispute, but the medical profession began to pay attention to the public interest in herbs. Pharmacists, pharmacologists, medical doctors and scientists were all confronted with a radical change in public opinion. Instead of drugs, people asked for natural remedies, and both science and progressive pharmaceutical companies followed the trend. They began to discover herbs and to study their healing properties. Today, some sixty percent of Western Europeans prefer natural remedies, and Maria Treben and her book have contributed significantly to this change.

Johanna Budwig (1909-1996)

Johanna Budwig is a pioneering German scientist in the field of health and nutrition. By 1910, researchers had discovered the importance of sulfur-based proteins in the body. But it was not until the 1940s and 1950s that Budwig furthered the research to isolate fatty substances in the blood. She is well known and respected for her knowledge of the vital role essential fatty acids play in the body in combination with sulfur-based proteins, and for introducing them as a flax seed oil/protein diet in the treatment of cancer and other degenerative diseases. She was nominated for a Nobel prize as a result of her work at that time.

Budwig studied pharmacy, chemistry and medicine and received a doctorate in physics. Fueled by an interest in the research on oils and proteins that had been carried out years earlier, Budwig embarked on a monumental research project. She compared the blood samples of thousands of healthy people with those suffering from degenerative diseases including cancer, diabetes and liver disease. Through years of meticulous study, she developed new lab techniques to detect fatty substances in the blood. The results of the comparison showed that the sick patients lacked the essential fatty acid, linoleic acid, as well as phosphatides and lipoproteins.

Lipoproteins, made up of linoleic acid and sulfur-based protein, are essential in building hemoglobin, the oxygen carrier in the blood. Low hemoglobin levels in sick patients lead to the anemia and fatigue typical in cancer, and also deprive the cells of oxygen needed for normal cell activity, all of which contribute to the decline of the patient and the growth of cancer in the body. In addition, sulfur-based proteins and essential fatty acids are necessary to build each cell wall. While tumor cells can multiply by sharing walls, healthy cells cannot. Phosphatides in the body are needed for normal cell division. The lack of phosphatides, essential fatty acids and sulfur-based proteins create an environment favorable for disease.

To produce energy, increase the supply of oxygen and provide the building blocks for healthy cells, Budwig used a combination of high quality, unrefined flax seed oil and sulfur-based proteins from milk and quark, a milk product similar to cottage cheese, to treat patients. The results were excellent, with notable improvements in vitality, stamina and weight gain within days, and reduction in tumor size over a period of months. Some patients were even cured of their tumors after strictly adhering to Budwig's diet for several years. While the diet focused on flax oil and milk protein, it also included organic fresh vegetables and fruits, juices, nuts and seeds and herbal teas. Buckwheat and rainbow trout were also important staples. She preferred nutritional therapy to radiation, drugs and surgery in cancer therapy, and did not believe in using natural and drug therapies in combination.

Budwig was well aware that not all fats and oils were good sources of essential fatty acids. She was totally against the hydrogenation process of oils used to make margarines, and believed this to be a cause of tumor development. As a strong-minded, outspoken individual, Budwig's beliefs pitted her against her colleagues in the medical establishment. She was studying medicine and held a position as pharmaceutical expert when her research efforts were thwarted and she was withheld from publishing in medical journals. Nevertheless, she published numerous books, several of which have been translated into
English. She also opened her own clinic. Besides cancer, Budwig treated a wide variety of illnesses with her diet, most notably arteriosclerosis, arthritis and liver disease. She lectured regularly on the vital importance of good nutrition and her flax seed oil/protein diet, and is still widely acclaimed in Europe.

History Pioneers of the North American Natural Health Movement

Samuel Thomson (1769-1843)

Samuel Thomson was one of the most important figures in the history of medical herbalism. He gained his knowledge about herbs from neighbors and through his own observations in his native New Hampshire. He developed a system of medicine which, in the first third of the nineteenth century, rivaled modern medicine in popularity in North America. The two main pillars of his system were the vomit-inducing herb lobelia, which he employed as a counter-poison, and heat as a method for curing disease. This led detractors to call his system the 'steam-and-puke method.' Thomson was a marketing genius who patented his system, and sold it for twenty dollars per family. It is estimated that over three million Americans were following his health methods by 1839.

Thomson spent much time and energy in legal battles, and was the first person to publicly attack modern medicine in the US. He was the most politically powerful herbalist in history, successfully pressing legislatures to drop license requirements for medical practice. His Formula No. 6, capsicum myrrh tincture, made it to the United States Pharmacopoeia, and is still used by herbalists today.

Sylvester Graham (1794-1851)

Sylvester Graham shocked the Victorian society of his day by preaching a vegetarian lifestyle. In lectures and in his Treatise on Bread and Breadmaking (1837), Graham extolled the virtues of bulk matter in food, over a hundred years before the importance of dietary fiber became widely recognized. At first, Graham recommended a diet of raw fruits and vegetables only. Later, he included boiled rice, lukewarm potatoes, and a special wholewheat bread in his diet. This Graham Bread is the main legacy of Graham in a time when white flour was more popular than it is today. It was made primarily from wholewheat and molasses (made from pumpkins or beets), preferably without yeast and always without eggs. It was best eaten fresh, so he advised his followers to make it at home.

Graham was a minister who considered the Bible to be his nutritional almanac. In his parish, he preached an unorthodox interpretation of passages like 'Every herb bearing seed upon the face of the earth and every tree in which is the fruit yielding seed, to you it shall be for meat' (Genesis 1:29). It should be noted that Grahamism, as his doctrine came to be called, was not limited to diet. He also extolled the value of cold baths and outdoor exercise, and drank only water. Graham taught his followers how to make their own bread at home, and as a result, the commercial bakers viewed this as a threat to their own livelihood.

In 1847, bakers and butchers stormed the hall in Boston where Graham was speaking. This incident led to Graham's retirement. He never spoke in public again, and lived in Northampton, Massachusetts, until his death at age fifty-seven.

Russell Thacker Trall (1812-1877)

Russell Thacker Trall, medical practitioner, educator and writer, was a dynamic pioneer of hydrotherapy and natural hygiene. Born the son of a Connecticut farmer, he completed a medical degree and opened a water-cure house in New York City in 1844, where he demonstrated his alternative to modern medicine's drug treatments. His institute was a cross between an urban health farm and a boarding house, offering plain vegetarian meals, hydrotherapy treatments, a gymnasium, public rooms and, starting in the 1860s, a health food shop selling whole grains, cereals, Graham bread (Trall was a friend of Graham), and his books on food reform, hygiene, sex and physiology.

When Trall discontinued his New York operation, he founded the Eastern Hygiene Home on the east bank of the Delaware River, overlooking the fruit and garden lands of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. It was the grandest of American water-cure houses, a large four-storey building accommodating three hundred people, with a beautiful grove, riverfront promenade, billiards, horses, carriages, rowing, sailing, swimming and a platform for dancing gymnastics.

In 1853, Trall established the New York Hydropathic School. Here he taught that mainstream medicine required a revolution-a vision of health as an active state to be positively achieved by methods learned from nature. His students learned water treatment and nutrition, the virtues of self-discipline and emotional, sexual and physical moderation, as well as procedures like mesmerism and magnetism. Trall was one of the strongest proponents of water cure, but in time he became critical of the excesses which sometimes marked hydropathic treatments. Significantly, the school was renamed the New York Hygieo-Therapeutic College when it was chartered in 1957. The word 'hygienic' came to replace 'hydropathic' in Trall's characterization of his alternative medicine. He wrote a definitive description of the philosophy and methods of his school in a small book called The Hygienic System.

Trall wrote over forty books, the most ambitious being The Encyclopedia of Hydropathy. He edited several reviews including the Water Cure Journal, later called the Herald of Health, to which he was by far the most prolific contributor.

John H. Tilden (1851-1940)

With his theory of toxemia, or infectious bacteria, John Tilden recognized the role of stress in causing disease long before this became an accepted idea. Tilden practised medicine for years before losing faith in drugs and searching for a new understanding of disease. He observed that health is impaired when a person's nervous energy becomes dissipated and the body is no longer able to properly eliminate the toxic by-products of metabolism. The resulting state of self-intoxication, or toxemia, was regarded by Tilden as the single underlying cause of impaired health. He considered individual diseases to be nature's cleansing efforts, or crises of toxemia. According to Tilden, nervous energy could become toxic by eating the wrong foods, by overeating, by taking too many stimulants such as coffee and alcohol, and by other sources of stress such as emotional and mental strains.

Tilden opened a school in Denver, Colorado, next to a sanatorium that attracted patients from all over the world. Treatment began with a fast. Tilden gave his patients diets tailored to their individual needs. He was a strict disciplinarian who wasted no time on those who would not relinquish degenerative habits.

Tilden also wrote between three and seven o'clock almost every morning. He published a monthly magazine called Philosophy of Health, which was later renamed Health Review and Critique, and he refused all advertising in his magazine. Tilden was an important influence on Henry Bieler, author of the highly popular book Food Is Your Best Medicine.

John Harvey Kellogg (1855-1946)

John Harvey Kellogg was an important promoter of vegetarianism and founder of a natural-health center. He is the author of the most comprehensive American textbook on hydrotherapy, Rational Hydrotherapy. Kellogg was a leading member of the American Medical Association, but he cured tuberculosis patients with a natural foods vegetarian diet, water, fresh air and sunshine, enraging the association. His patients were called 'visitors,' and they were encouraged to walk, swim, play tennis and listen to music. Their diet consisted mainly of yogurt, honey, buttermilk, salads, fruits, cheese, nuts and wholewheat bread. His famous visitors included Henry Ford, John Rockefeller and Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Kellogg's brother, Will, developed shredded wheat, cornflakes, granola biscuits and other health foods for those who had been visitors at his brother's health center. He also invented peanut butter, which was first sold exclusively to Seventh Day Adventists. Through these ventures, Will Kellogg became one of the richest men in the US.

Henry Lindlahr (1862-1924)

Henry Lindlahr, one of the most successful early American nature doctors, was a rich, corpulent Montana business tycoon in his mid-thirties when he was diagnosed with incurable diabetes and advised by physicians to prepare for his death. Instead, inspired by The New Science of Healing by Louis Kuhne and a visit to a Kneipp clinic in his native Germany, Lindlahr began to apply natural healing methods to himself. Ten years later, completely cured, he had earned a degree in medicine and opened his own sanatorium in Chicago, dedicated to curing chronic disease by natural methods. Lindlahr believed that chronic disease was caused by the accumulation of waste matter and poisons in the body, and that acute disease was nature's way of cleansing the body. Chronic disease, according to Lindlahr, was often the result of the repression of acute disease.

Lindlahr employed various methods in his sanatorium with vigor, but insisted that treatments must above all be reasonable. Lindlahr offered his patients a natural diet and lifestyle. He proclaimed that his head cook was his chief pharmacist, and was attentive to the food sensitivities of individual patients.

He also stressed the importance of rest and relaxation, hot and cold water, air baths and sunbathing. Herbs and homeopathic remedies were used to a lesser degree. Lindlahr sought to interest his patients in an active hobby which they could continue after their treatment had ended. He often applied his knowledge of the psychoanalytical techniques of Jung and Adler, since some of his patients were mentally disturbed. He believed in the power of the mind and considered fear to be the greatest enemy of health.

Lindlahr's sanatorium was outstanding in its emphasis on scientific diagnosis. Lindlahr treated fifty thousand patients in twenty years. His results were very good with acute illnesses, but less spectacular with chronic disease, mainly because patients with chronic disease usually entered the sanatorium when their illness was already in the most advanced stages.

In response, Lindlahr turned more and more to the prevention of disease. In 1923, he decided to liquidate his practice to devote himself full time to teaching prevention. Sadly, his first lecture tour ended prematurely when he contracted blood poisoning after a foot injury, and he died as a result of complications from the amputation of his leg.

Besides the sanatorium in Chicago, Lindlahr ran a second treatment center in a homestead on eight acres of parkland in Elmhurst, Illinois. He established his own college of medicine in Chicago next to his sanatorium, and published and edited the Nature Cure Magazine. His book Nature Cure, a clear and concise account of naturopathic philosophy and methods, was in its twentieth edition by 1922.

Arnold Ehret (1866-1922)

Born in Germany near Freiburg, Arnold Ehret moved to California and became an influential lecturer on the Mucusless Diet Health System.

It was a personal regaining of health that set him on his course of natural healing. As a young man, he suffered from Bright's disease, the principal symptoms being mucus and albumin in the urine. In his search for a cure, Ehret traveled through Europe and Africa studying vegetarianism, naturopathy, medicine, and physiology. While in North Africa, eating primarily fruits, and fasting, he regained his vitality. Back in Europe, he began lecturing and writing on his successes treating himself and others, and opened a health center in Switzerland before moving to Los Angeles. There, Benedict Lust applied Ehret's diet to his own work, and published his books, including The Mucusless Diet Health System and The Story of My Life.

Ehret believed that disease is caused mainly by constipation. The goal of his therapy is to get rid of wastes by eating foods that do not cause obstruction and by fasting occasionally. The mucus-free foods he advocated were fruits (raw and cooked), nuts, and green leafy vegetables. Ehret believed in the value of undereating. His belief in the therapeutic value of occasional fasting led him to maintain that breakfast should be postponed as far into the day as possible.

William Howard Hay (1866-1940)

The American medical doctor Howard Hay turned to natural medicine when he became very ill with Bright's disease and cured himself by changing his diet. He ate food only in its natural form and only as much as necessary. He also found it important to respect what he called the immutable laws of chemistry, combining foods that had compatible digestive chemistry-no starch with protein, but rather starch with fruits and vegetables at one meal, and protein with fruits and vegetables at another meal. He argued that starch needs an alkaline digestive environment, whereas protein needs an acid environment for its digestion. He cured himself completely, and was healthy until he died at age seventy-four in a traffic accident.

Diet became the basis of Hay's therapy. He wrote A New Health Era and How To Be Always Well. He taught that an organ needs healthy cells to function, and that healthy cells can only be built up through proper nutrition. Hay thought the correct acid-alkaline balance in the body was particularly important. Our bodies are usually in a state of unbalance due to too many acid-forming foods, such as proteins and carbohydrates. He recommended eating fewer proteins and starches, and more fruits and vegetables.

Benedict Lust (1872-1945)

Benedict Lust was born in 1872 in Germany, and became the father of naturopathy in the United States. He was very influential in determining which European nature cure methods were to be included under the title 'naturopathy.'

Like so many other nature healers, Lust started on his path because of an important personal experience. In his twenties, Lust went to New York City to seek his fortune and contracted serious tuberculosis. An American physician filled out his death certificate in his presence, and Lust returned to his native Germany to die. There, he managed to visit Father Sebastian Kneipp, and after submitting to Kneipp's hydrotherapy, Lust was cured in eight months. In 1896, he obtained from Kneipp the authorization to carry his methods to the US, where he subsequently founded a clinic, a school, a Kneipp store, and a naturopathic health retreat in the Ramapo mountains near Butler, New Jersey. One of its most prominent visitors included the Chinese Imperial Ambassador to Washington, Wu Ting Fang. Later, Lust opened a successful sanatorium in Florida.

Although Lust carried the authority to promote Kneipp's cures, he was not a Kneipp purist. He Americanized the Kneipp method by complementing it with therapies like a natural diet, sun and air baths, massage, electrotherapy, physical culture and suggestive therapeutics.

Lust was a true eclectic, proclaiming Pathological Monism and Therapeutic Universalism; by this he meant that all disease arises from one cause, the violation of nature's laws, and that all of nature's various agents can and should be applied to correct it. The eclecticism of Lust's practice had a determining influence on what Americans understand by naturopathy. There was also the danger that the public would find it difficult to identify with naturopathic methods, since homeopaths, acupuncturists, herbalists and nutritionists can all practice under the title ND, or naturopathic doctor.

Lust's major contribution was his public promotion of nature cure. Although Lust sought to diffuse some of the hostility of mainstream doctors by studying medicine, he was brought to court countless times. He was hounded by the New York County Medical Association, and was arrested sixteen times by the New York authorities, and three times by federal authorities. Lust invested tens of thousands of dollars in fines and spent many hours in court and in jail, but he was not bitter, maintaining that prosecution and persecution are part of the life of a naturopath.

It was in this context of persecution that the term 'naturopathy' was adopted to designate the science of natural healing in the United States. The term was originally coined in 1892 by New York doctors when they combined the terms 'nature cure' and 'homeopathy' to describe their joint practice. The word naturopath was the only safe term by which they could designate themselves as associated with natural health. Lust realized that the only hope for American nature cure was to have it legitimized. He fought on two fronts: against the attacks of the authorities and against charlatans in the ranks of natural healing. He was the chief spokesperson for natural healing and sometimes injected a religious dimension into his teaching.

Lust's American School of Naturopathy was founded in 1901 and eventually granted the degree of Doctor of Naturopathy. Lust also opened the New York School of Massage and the Training School for Physiotherapy. His tireless effort to promote nature cure through his own practice, schools and writing, and the organization of the American Naturopathic Association allowed nature cure to become firmly entrenched in the United States. His battle for public support continues to the present day through his followers.

Norman Walker (1876-1985)

Norman Walker popularized fresh vegetable and fruit juices in the US and Canada. The English-born businessman discovered the value of vegetable juices while recovering from a breakdown in a peasant house in the French countryside. Watching the woman in the kitchen peel carrots, he noticed their moistness under the peel. He decided to try grinding them, and had his first cup of carrot juice. When he recovered, Walker moved to Long Beach, California. With a medical doctor, he opened a juice bar and offered home delivery service. From 1910 to 1930, they devised dozens of fresh juice formulas for specific conditions. Walker believed colon cleansing with fresh juices was the key to good health.

Walker designed his own juicer in two parts-a grinder to grind the vegetables and a press to extract the juice. When the San Francisco health department banned unpasteurized vegetable juices, Walker began manufacturing his juice machine in Anaheim, California. He kept the plant going in spite of the steel shortage during World War II. In the late 1940s, he moved to Utah where he found an old cotton mill, ideal for his juice plant, but he was again hampered by health department regulations. He sold the factory to his two sons, and started publication of his own health magazine, The New Health Movement Review. For several years, Walker ran a health ranch in Arizona. Eventually he gave up the ranch to devote himself to writing. He lived to be over a hundred years old, and gave his fresh juices credit for his long, healthy life.

Linus Pauling (1902-1994)

Linus Pauling was one of this century's great scientists, the only person ever to win two unshared Nobel prizes. He received his first Nobel Prize in 1954 for his work on the nature of the chemical bond. His second Nobel Prize, in 1962, was for laying the groundwork for the first Test-Ban Treaty among the US, Britain, and the Soviet Union. Pauling was a vocal opponent of the use of nuclear weapons, and in 1958 he wrote the book No More War. He and his wife mobilized scientists into a movement against nuclear weapons.

Pauling is also famous for his work with proteins. He identified sickle-cell anemia as an inherited disorder of protein structure. Pauling would have been the first one to identify the double helix structure of DNA but the McCarthy government had halted him from leaving the US. The microscope he needed to confirm the work he had already completed was in Europe and as a result, two other scientists got credit for the discovery of sickle-cell anemia.

In the late 1960s, Pauling became interested in nutrition and the role of vitamins. He began using vitamin C in 1966, and in 1970 he published his findings on the healing powers of vitamin C, in Vitamin C and the Common Cold. It was immediately accepted by lay readers, but scorned or ignored by the medical community. In 1986, he published How to Live Longer and Feel Better, a scathing indictment of the health care establishment which he dubbed 'the sickness industry.'

Pauling's nutritional recommendations are relatively simple: take larger than RDA doses of the vitamins C, E, B-complex and A each day, along with mineral supplements; cut down on refined sugar; drink lots of water; do not smoke; exercise moderately; eat and drink in moderation; and adopt a non-stressful, happy lifestyle.

Pauling's special focus was on the effects of vitamin C in the treatment of the common cold. He believed that vitamin C supplementation, plus a quarantine for travelers, could eliminate the cold virus. He also called for a change in public attitude-people should retreat when sick and refrain from passing their cold on to others.

In 1973, Pauling founded the Linus Pauling Institute of Science and Medicine in Menlo Park, California. In 1989, Pauling began research with Mathias Rath, on the reasons for vitamin C's effectiveness in preventing atherosclerosis
(hardening of the arteries). They found that
daily supplements of vitamin C help the body produce proteins which keep the arteries strong. These results were published in 1991, in the Journal of Orthomolecular Medicine. Pauling was the honorary president of the American Orthomolecular Medical Association, whose members promote the use of conventional medical therapies in conjunction with vitamin supplements and nutritional therapy.

Paul Bragg (1881-1976)

Paul Bragg was an energetic promoter of natural health and nutrition through health crusades, books, tapes, radio, TV and personal appearances. He was perhaps best known for his popularization of the beneficial effects of apple cider vinegar.

Crippled by tuberculosis as a teenager, Bragg developed an eating, breathing, and exercise program of running, swimming, biking and weight training to rebuild his body. He made an early pledge to spend the rest of his life showing others the road to health in return for his recovery. His promotion of healthy living habits has since been marked by a religious zeal.

Bragg opened the first health food store in the US, and inspired followers to do the same. He pioneered the nationwide availability of herb teas, health beverages, seven-grain cereals and crackers, health cosmetics, health candies, vitamins and minerals. He was the personal advisor on diet and fitness to top Olympic athletes, Hollywood stars and giants of American business. He broadcasted radio health programs from Hollywood and a TV show called 'Health and Happiness.' With his daughter Patricia Bragg, he ran the Longer Life, Health and Happiness Club in Hawaii.

Herbert M. Shelton (1895-1985)

Herbert M. Shelton was the first president of the American Natural Hygienic Society (ANHS), which today publishes a bi-monthly magazine called Health Science and has chapters all over the world, the largest located in Toronto, Ontario. Shelton believed people possess their own healing powers, and devoted his life to teaching others how to live healthfully. He wrote more than forty books, published a monthly magazine called Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review, and founded health schools in San Antonio, Texas. The road to his success was rough-during the Great Depression, his schools lacked money and, although he never claimed to be a physician, he and his followers suffered several arrests.

Shelton promoted all aspects of healthy living-exercise, rest, clean water, fresh air, sunshine, emotional and mental poise, and a low-fat, low-protein vegetarian diet emphasizing raw fruits, nuts, and vegetables in proper combination and amounts. He occasionally recommended a limited period of water fasting for some of his patients. Shelton helped many sufferers of alcoholism, appendicitis, asthma, colitis, indigestion, kidney stones and pneumonia, whom modern medicine was unable to treat successfully.

Adelle Davis (1904-1974)

With her impressive résumé of degrees from Berkeley, Columbia, UCLA and the University of South Carolina Medical School, Adelle Davis managed to develop and maintain an objectively independent-minded vision of health amid the orthodoxy of modern medicine.

During her more than forty years as a consulting nutritionist and author of the best selling Let's... series of books on diet and health, Davis was a vociferous and relentless critic of North American eating habits. She also alleged a conspiracy among food processors, chemical and drug companies, and the government which promoted nutritional impoverishment. Like so many other pioneers, Adelle Davis was something of a prophet and a seer, or perhaps simply a keen and perceptive observer. Her assertion that thousands of people have never eaten genuinely wholesome food drew ridicule from the 'conspirators' and from physicians and professional dietitians. Davis stuck to her guns however and insisted that rampant malnutrition among all classes of North American society was completely true.

Davis's mission in life was to convince people, especially parents, of their responsibility in making dietary choices, which would have lifelong repercussions on their own health and that of their children. She denied that sickness is a matter of chance. The sickness expectancy and the life expectancy of a family can be predicted with fair accuracy, she believed, by observing their cooking methods. But her message was upbeat and positive: everyone financially able to obtain a completely adequate diet can achieve perfect health, provided irreparable harm has not already been done.

She freely acknowledged that obtaining such a diet in twentieth-century North America was no easy task, and believed our society's general health decline began with the Industrial Revolution, then accelerated sharply with the introduction of separation grain milling in 1862. Widespread post-World War II technological innovations in agriculture, food processing, and chemical use in the food supply further deteriorated health. She castigated the medical profession for its disregard of the symbiotic relationship between nutrition and human health, and for cooperating with the pill-pushing, profit-seeking, pharmaceutical industry. Ahead of her time again, she advised against giving antibiotics to children (or anyone) for routine, non-life-threatening illnesses. Davis also chided professional dieticians for asserting that white flour is just as nutritious as whole grain, and cited government data which showed that between fifty and one hundred percent of essential nutrients are lost in the milling process, while very little is returned in so-called enrichment.

Dieticians and home-economics teachers, Davis added, have been brainwashed by the propaganda that all essential nutrients are contained in overrefined foods. The gullible North American public believes that they are the best-fed society in history, when in truth they are starving amid plenty. She pointed out that even when refined and junk foods are shunned, our soils have been so depleted by modern technological agriculture that it is difficult to get all the nutrients we need.

Davis took vitamin pills herself, but lamented that if wholesome foods were more widely available, supplements would rarely be needed except for vitamin D. Davis affirmed a holistic vision of nutrition and health. She believed that applied nutrition is a means to health in all its aspects: mental, emotional, moral, spiritual and physical.

John Raymond Christopher (1909-1983)

John Christopher spread his knowledge and enthusiasm for herbal remedies through his extensive lecture tours in the US and Canada, during the great herbal renaissance in North America in the sixties and seventies. Like so many natural healers, Christopher's interest in natural health was initiated by personal health difficulties that marked his childhood and youth. As an orphaned infant in Salt Lake City, Utah, he suffered from arthritis. When he was a young adult, a severe car accident left him with amnesia, which dashed his plans for studying law. He vowed to overcome his health problems and, adopting a vegetarian diet, his condition improved.

During World War II, Christopher became the US Army's only practicing herbalist. As a conscientious objector, he was placed in charge of a medical dispensary at Fort Lewis. After he cured a case of 'incurable' impetigo with a black-walnut tincture, he was allowed access to the medical laboratory. He developed his first herbal formulas in this laboratory.

After the war, Christopher studied herbology at the Dominion Herbal College in Vancouver, British Columbia, and began a herbal practice in Olympia, Washington before moving back to Salt Lake City. In Olympia, he completed degrees in naturopathy and herbal pharmacy, and founded the School of Natural Healing in 1953. When he encountered resistance from the medical profession and was refused the right to practise in Utah, he began to go on lecture circuits.

Christopher was a cheerful man and an excellent teacher who was happy to share his herbal knowledge, believing that God intended everyone to gain the means to take responsibility for his or her own health. He published several books, including School of Natural Healing and a herbal encyclopedia. Christopher was a consultant to the emerging North American herbal industry, and his herbal formulas are now marketed under the widely recognized labels Nature's Way and Nature's Herbs.

Ann Wigmore (1909-1994)

Ann Wigmore is best known for her promotion of the health value of wheatgrass. Born in Lithuania in 1909, she was raised by her grandmother, who introduced her to herbal cures. After she joined her parents in the US, Wigmore surmounted two personal crises which showed her that natural healing was to be her mission. First, she managed to cure a patient's crushed leg which was to be amputated by applying her knowledge of the healing power of grasses, chlorophyll-rich weeds and flowers. Then, at age fifty, she cured herself of colon cancer using the same methods.

Wigmore studied homeopathy and naturopathy at the Anglo-American Insti-tute of Drugless Therapy in London, England. In 1963, she opened the US's first holistic health center, the Hippocrates Health Institute in Boston, later renamed the Ann Wigmore Foundation. In Puerto Rico she opened a second non-profit center for research, teaching and healing. She fought and won several court battles in Boston against the medical establishment, and wrote thirty-five books.

According to Wigmore, the way to health is to cleanse the body of accumulated poisons. Living foods detoxify the body, and can delay the aging process. Wigmore defined living foods as those provided by nature in their original, uncooked form. The pillars of her diet are grains, nuts, seeds, fruits, and vegetables, organically grown if possible. Her patients begin regaining health by cleansing their cells of accumulated poisons. People who have not responded to modern medical treatment have responded immediately to Wigmore's living foods program.

Wigmore pioneered the North American success of the superfood wheatgrass, which she used extensively in her therapeutic program. Rich in vitamins, minerals, amino acids, and enzymes, wheatgrass provides pure blood, mental clarity, enhanced digestion, and healthier blood cells. Wigmore was especially aware of the health-building importance of enzymes available in raw foods, and that is why cooked foods are absent from her program.

Paavo Airola (1918-1983)

Paavo Airola's important contribution to nature cure is the insight that the primary cause of disease is not an invading armada of bacteria, but rather weakened resistance to germs that are always present. According to Airola, if humanity's harmony with the life-giving biological and spiritual universe could be re-established, there would be no more disease.

Born in Finland, Paavo Airola was an artist until a serious injury during World War II caused him to become intensely interested in the relationship between life and health. He studied biochemistry, nutrition, natural healing methods, and native cultures of the world. After the war, he emigrated to Canada and then to the US, settling in Arizona.

Airola's health philosophy was to live in harmony with natural life. He stressed the importance of the body's own curative force. The biological therapies he recommended aim to eliminate the causes of disease and to strengthen the body, stimulating its healing activity. Airola believed that disease should be seen as a friend, signaling imbalances in our lives. You can help conquer disease by restoring physical, emotional and nutritional balance.

According to Airola, nutrition is the single most important factor affecting health and disease. His influential books include The Airola Diet and Cookbook, How to Get Well, Everywoman's Book and Are You Confused? He was a sought-after lecturer at universities and medical schools.

The central piece of Airola's works is the Optimum Diet, based on scientific research and knowledge of the traditions of native peoples. He divided food into three groups in descending order of importance: grains, legumes, seeds and nuts; vegetables; and fruits. Airola's nutritional recommendations follow two common-sense principles: people should eat the same kinds of foods as their ancestors, and it should be grown locally. This ensures that food is compatible with the body's biological make-up.