We are very grateful to Dr John Fielder who has kindly written and submitted these three articles for the site. They are a comparative study of these school's origins and teachings, and will also hopefully serve the layperson to better grasp the main differences which set them apart. If you would like to find out more about Dr John Fielder, please visit his website:http: //www.iig.com.au/anl/ Copyright 2005
Nature Cure has its origins in the teachings of the Silesian peasant Vincent Priessnitz b:1799 – d:1852, who never had any formal teaching in the healing arts, having learnt from tending and treating the animals on his father’s and neighbours farms. Yet he became one of the most famous healers of the nineteenth century. It was he who set in motion the establishment of Hydrotherapy as a medical concept.
One aspect that made Priessnitz stand above his contemporaries was his insistence that each person was to be treated as an individual, along with the fact that the treatment was to be varied relative to the progress and/or condition of those under his care. In later years when Hydrotherapy was utilized by the medical establish ment it gradually fell into dis-repute due to the non-observance of these maxims, and the concept of considering that the colder the water, where cold water was being applied, the better.
Although Priessnitz is remembered primarily for his water treatments, he was also conscious of the need to control the dietary intake, and the necessity of adequate exercise and fresh air for the recovery of his clients.
Priessnitz’ methods were refined somewhat by JH Rausse 1805 – 1848, who spent some ten week at Grafenberg in 1837. Theodor Hahn,1824-1883, further added to the concepts of Nature Cure by prescribing a strict vegetarian diet for his patients.
Arnold Rikli, 1823 – 1906, none of whose many writings has been translated into English, further enhanced the practice of Nature Cure at his establishment in Veldes, now a part of Slovenia. His famous saying was “Water is good; air is better,but light is best of all” He became the founder of the Heliotherapy movement which was later embraced by the medical fraternity. He became known as the “sun doctor” and the father of the “atmospheric cure”
Although some would consider the Bavarian priest Sebastian Kneipp as having a place in these annals, in reality his was the practice of herbalism, coupled with hydrotherapy. It then becomes a medical modality and is not a part of Nature Cure.
Louis Kuhne 1835 – 1901, became the next historical figure in the development of Nature Cure. His book the “New Science of Healing” was extremely popular and was the handbook of Mahatma Gandhi, of India, Benedict Lust and Henry Lindlahr in the USA. Both Lust and Lindlahr going on to establish schools, with Lust becoming the father of Naturopathy, which as well as incorporating the teachings and practices of Nature Cure, became quite medically orientated by also embracing the use of herbs, homeopathic remedies, biochemical remedies, and at a later date, vitamins and many forms of supplements.
The Nature Cure movement was continued in its purest form in the USA by Dr Henry Lindlahr through his “College of Natural Therapeutics”, which he established in Chicago. Lindlahr himself having recovered from Diabetes under the care of Kneipp, after which he was greatly influenced by the teachings of Louis Kuhne. One of the principle Nature Curists of recent times in the UK was James C. Thomson, a graduate of Lindlahrs college, who returned to his native land, Scotland and established the Kingston Clinic, in Edinburgh. In due course he also established the Edinburgh School of Natural Therapeutics, a full time four year, and subsequently five year course. He, along with his son, C Leslie Thomson, wrote many books on all aspects of Nature Cure, and published a magazine called, Rude Health, many articles from which were subsequently re-published in Dr Shelton’s, Hygienic Review.
Contemporary with James Thomson in the UK was Stanley Lief a Latvian by birth, who also had been exposed to the teachings of Nature Cure at Lindlahr’s sanatorium in Chicago, after having graduated from Macfadden’s College. Lief subsequently established what became the largest Nature Cure establishment in the UK, and the world, Champneys, a magnificent home founded in 1307. He later established a publishing house, Health For All, publishing a magazine of that name, along with many books on Nature Cure, the best known of them being, Everybody’s Guide to Nature Cure, by Harry Benjamin.
According to Dr Herbert M Shelton, the first person to practice Hygienic care in the US was a Dr Isaac Jennings, whom, so he informs us, “discontinued all drugging in 1822 and relied thereafter on Hygienic care of the sick”. He goes on to say that Dr Jennings “worked out a theory of disease, diverse from any that had preceded him, which he called Orthopathy. Disease, in his theory, is a unit and in its various forms of fever ,inflammation, coughs etc., is entirely true to the laws of life, which cannot be aided by any system of medication, or any medication whatever; but, relying solely upon the healing powers of the body and placing his patients in the best possible conditions for the operation of the body’s own healing processes, by means of rest, fasting, diet, pure air and other Hygienic factors, he permitted his patients to get well.”
Jennings was followed by a non-physician, a minister of religion, Sylvester Graham. Dr Shelton again tells us, ”An editorial in the Herald of Health, January 1865, says of Sylvester Graham, who was not a physician, that he was ‘pre-eminently the father of the philosophy of physiology. In his masterly and celebrated work, the Science of Life, he has given the world more philosophy and more truth concerning the primary and fundamental laws which relate man to external objects and to other beings than any other author ever did – and all other authors ever have.”
In this same journal we find in January,1865, “R T Trall MD is the discoverer of the Philosophy of Medical Science and the father of the System of Hygienic Medication….Probably no man who has lived in modern times has been more persistant and consistent, more active and uncompromising, as an author and practitioner.’
These three men – Jennings, Graham and Trall – together with Alcott, Taylor and others in this country, and Combe and Lamb in England set the world to thinking on Hygiene. Although far from being alone in the creation of the modern system of Hygiene, these three men may justly be said to have contributed most to our understanding of this field of knowledge and art”
Hydropathy was introduced into the USA in 1844 by Dr Joel Shew and in the early days was practiced by most, if not all Hygienists, including Dr Trall, who traveled to Europe to study its application. Although one of his best known publications was entitled, the “Hydropathic Encyclopedia”, he was, at a later date, to distance himself from the harsh methods often used and advocated, by the followers of hydrotherapy. This was very much in line with that of modern day Nature Curists.
In Dr Trall’s Hydropathic Encyclopedia, published in 1851, is to be found the sub-title, A Complete System of Hydropathy and Hygiene. In an advertisement that was run for the book, the pictures of Sylvester Graham, Andrew Combe and Vincent Priessnitz appeared. Dr Shelton records that the magazine ,The Science of Health, published by Fowler and Wells and edited by Trall, “placed greater stress upon Hygiene, and less upon water. Hygienists did not totally abandon their use of water applications, but reduced them to a subordinate place”.
After the demise of Dr Trall’s Hygeiotherapeutic College, and Dr Trall’s death in 1876, along with the subsequent rise of medical science, through the backing of such people as the Rockefeller Foundation, Hygiene went into slow decline, being kept alive by Dr Jackson, Mrs Ellen G. White and the Seventh Day Adventists , who were influenced by Dr James Harvey Kellogg, a one time graduate of Dr Trall’s College, and who later embraced orthodox medicine, Dr Robert Walter, the originator of the Laws of Life, Dr Dodds, Bernarr McFadden, and Dr J H Tilden. It is well to note that whilst Dr Tilden is/was considered as a leading Hygienist, he was not, and did not advocate, vegetarianism, advising that the consumption of meat should not exceed the size of a dollar coin per day.
The birth of Dr Herbert M Shelton in 1895, presaged a new era for Hygiene upon the world stage. In short, Shelton grew up always interested in health matters due to his own experience and shortcomings in childhood,being born prematurely, and hardly expected to live. He attended the Macfadden College, and Lindlahr College of Natural Therapeutics. He self-published his first book,Fundamentals of Nature Cure, in 1922, which he described “as a naïve attempt to unearth the lost principles of ‘Nature Cure’, and to lead men and women back to ‘genuine nature cure’. It was judged by the “nature curists” as too radical . He then revised it and changed the title to, An Introduction to Natural Hygiene.
In a conversation with his wife Ida, he is reported to have said at this time, ”I will bring clarity out of chaos, I will resuscitate a dying movement. I will rebuild and synthesize the system of Hygiene.” Dr Shelton was true to his word and went on to build Hygiene into what it is today with its emphasis upon wholeness, in all things, whole raw foods, to be eaten in their whole raw state. The use of sunlight, exercise, rest, fresh air, and poise along with fasting (physiological rest) when appropriate . During his lifetime he was the author of more than fourty books on the subject, and although the use of the term Natural Hygiene was first used by a Nature Curist, Heinrich Lahmann in 1901 in the title of his book,Natural Hygiene or Healthy Blood, laid claim to being the first to do so. The principles of Biogenic Living, or as it originally was known, Cosmotherapy, were formulated by Professor Dr Edmond Bordeaux Szekely, a Transylvanian, whose mother was a French Catholic, and father a Transylvanian Unitarian. Dr Szekely earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Paris, and other degrees from the Universities of Vienna and Liepzig. A well known philologist in Sanskrit, Aramaic, Greek and Latin, Dr Szekely was fluent in ten modern languages.
During his studies at the Vatican in Rome he was introduced to the writings of the Essenes, an early Gnostic sect, best known as the authors of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Dr Szekely’s most important translations in addition to selected texts from the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Essene Gospel of Peace, are selected texts from the Zend Avesta and from pre-Columbian codices of ancient Mexico. He is the author of some 75 books on philosophy and ancient cultures.
Dr Szekely published two major works on health in the 1930’s, the first of which was: Cosmos, Man and Society, 1936, which ran to some 800 pages, covering the theoretical basis of Cosmotherapy. And the second: Medicine Tomorrow, 1938, of 400 pages outlining the practical application of Cosmotherapy.
Through his studies of the ancient texts, Dr Szekely had become convinced that modern medicine had taken a wrong turn, eventually launching the International Cosmotherapeutic Expedition,1930 – 1940 to Tahiti where he demonstrated the practical application of the principles of Cosmotherapy on, amongst others, the inmates of the leper colony at Orofara.
Eventually Dr Szekely arrived in Mexico where he established his school on the Rancho La Puerta, at Tecate.
Although Dr Szekely used as his basic principles the teachings of Nature Cure and Natural Hygiene, mentioning as his sources in the bibliography the works of Thomson, Kuhne, Lief, and Shelton, he did not break entirely with his medical back-ground, and on occasion advocated the use of some remedies, such as herbs.
In his ground breaking work: Medicine Tomorrow, Dr Szekely wrote,”Naturopathic Medicine before Cosmotherapy was simply a chaotic collection of innumerable systems, incomplete, dogmatic, and diametrically opposed to one another…..In ninety percent of the cases the instructions given by practitioners…..are vague and qualitative…..But mode, quantity, time, duration, and change etc., are totally unknown conceptions.”
“At the opposite pole the instructions given by the practitioners of official medicine are almost one hundred percent quantitative, but unfortunately dogmatic and petrified, as they work schematically with chemicals and drugs, neglecting a natural diet, water baths and sun baths, exercises, fasting etc.”
“Thus Naturopathic medicine represents anarchy, while official allopathic medicine represents fanatical tyranny.”
Due to his uncompromising attitude, and use of certain remedial agents, Dr Szekely found himself alienated from both the Natural Hygiene, and the Nature Cure schools of thought.
This presented a most unfortunate situation, as much of what he said and wrote was of extreme value to both groups. It is to be hoped that future generations will come to value the essence of what Dr Szekely had to say. To look at the similarities, and not be beguiled by the differences.
Nature Cure – Natural Hygiene – Biogenic Living - Naturopathy
|
