Re: The natural hygiene approach to healing - Nature heals

Hi mo123,
that is quite an "encyclopedic posting" and quite a lot to absorb in one sitting, so after re-reading it several times these are my own comments on your post and my own experiences with Natural Hygiene.

As you may be aware, I am a protagonist of the Natural Hygiene approach to health maintenance and health recovery, and where as you have stated NH in Sheltons day was considered to be the be-all and end-all of healthcare/recovery.

This dogma was borne out of experience with its use, which was (and still is) extremely successful in the recovery from disease and attaining wellness, and where we should bear in mind that this is Natures very own method. The body is after all a physiological/biological entity which responds in kind to the laws laid down in physiology and biology, without which we wouldn't exist.

Your post gives quite an accurate description of NH and its history, and where the human body is most definitely a self-healing, self-repairing and self-maintaining organism.

However, Natural Hygiene has evolved since the time and era of Shelton/Jennings/Graham, and where the many Doctors within Natural Hygiene today vehemently disagree amongst themselves with certain aspects of its practice: to quote one example, the recommended consumption of organic meat by Hygienists today, which in Sheltons day was strongly disapproved of as unhealthful.
The opinion on the use of herbs and other practices of healthcare/treatment also show a marked degree of disagreement within NH today.

However, the comment made that 200 years ago the body adapted to "man-made assaultive factors" at that time, and could "count on their evolutionary built-in resistance to overcome anything, given just proper food, rest etc..." is as true today as it was then.
An example would be in the use tobacco, where the body "adapts" to its prolonged use of over 500 chemicals/toxins with no seemingly apparent harm in the relative short-term, but in the long-term, the body will succumb to its harmful influence in the causation of disease: this was a natural law of the body referred to by Shelton as "The Law of Accommodation".
Now if the body can adapt to this harmful influence over a period of many years, then this adaptation is similarly used by the body today with the new environmental toxins/poisons to which it is also subjected; all the more reason therefore to adopt a Hygienic way of life in maintaining a clean metabolic environment within the body by the regular use of the fast coupled with wholesome living practices as endorsed by Hygiene generally.

It is very true to say that over the last 100 to 150 years food quality has suffered at the hands of intensive farming practices and soil-depletion, and where in this modern day and age most Hygienists would agree (I think) that supplementation has become a necessity to counteract these shortcomings and deficiencies..........as I do myself.
One only has to adapt to current and modern circumstances.

"Animals in the wild succumb to sickness and man-made poisons"? Where is the proof of this statement?

I believe it was a mistake that Shelton disregarded the use of Herbs and any other nutritionally beneficial substance such as that used in Orthomolecular Medicine but he was renowned for his dogmatic approach and believed that these substances (including drugs) only acted by the body reacting to its introduction in their expulsion: he was absolutely right with drug effects but woefully wrong on the nutritional aspect.
Shelton was of the opinion that in a chronically ill state, digestion and absorption of nutrients was largely suspended.......for example most cancer patients have little to no appetite and therefore the body has little use for outside nutrition.

Shelton wasn't perfect.........I know of only one person who was..........and he lived just over 2000 years ago.

The mistake within this article is that Natural Hygiene is portrayed as all-encompassing to the exclusion of every other healthcare modality; this is no longer true today, but its strengths lie as a prophylactic or preventative measure in avoiding ill-health and disease in the first instance: but, if people choose to disobey the laws of their being resulting in disease and ill health it is a powerful first choice modality.

As a Hygienist myself I am not adverse to resorting to effective disease fighting measures, as in the case of Oleander and Orthomolecular Medicinal treatments.

Two of the greatest protagonists of Natural Hygiene T.C.Fry & Herbert M Shelton died prematurely, and where this is often quoted as "proof" that NH did not work for them, but the truth of the matter is that they both died of "overwork" for their cause...........

T.C.FRY.......................
http://www.livingnutrition.com/articles/tcfry.html


SHELTON.......................
By 1972 Dr. Shelton is bedridden for the rest of his life. The symptoms of what the medical world term "Parkinson's disease" have claimed the strong motor skills of Dr. Shelton's once muscular and vibrant body. The workaholism of his lifetime finally takes its toll. The myelin sheath that surrounds and protects the nerves of the body can wear out. The subjective experience is lack of motor control. Muscles atrophy, waste away. Strength is lost. Movement is difficult. Uncontrollable shakes appear, especially in the hands. Dr. Shelton's drive to help The People with every ounce of Nerve Energy he had, his love for Hygiene and his contempt for The Disease Industrialists combined, worked for you and me and The People and against him. What must he have been thinking? Surely, he knew where all that lack of "Energy Enhancers #4: Rest & Sleep" over the decades was going to take him! Why would he drive himself like that when he knew, better than all The Health Seekers in the world, where it would take him?!?!? Only if you have a compulsive/addictive personality yourself, can you begin to understand a drive like this! Like T.C. Fry, Dr. Shelton certainly was not practicing "Proverbial Wisdom." Sweet sleep, in big doses, could have saved Dr. Shelton from riding out his life from his bed another 13 years. Back in his 30s and 40s and 50s and 60s, Dr. Shelton would have had to take another 4 to 6 hours a day for rest and sleep. How many books would not have been written? How many lectures not given? How many phone calls not made? How many Hygienic Reviews not published? How many patients not supervised? The tangled web he weaved for himself when he deceived himself all those years ended up making him a deathbed cocoon from which he could not rise. Dr. Shelton was left with legs that could not walk, left with hands that could not write, and left with vocal cords that could not speak. All for the sake of The Cause. Where, pray tell, was the wisdom in that"?

In conclusion:
Todays version of Natural Hygiene is not as dogmatic as were its founders, but the truth of its ideals still hold true today as it did yesterday.
People & ideas change, but the laws of physiology remain constant.

Regards

Chrisb1.










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