Principles of Natural Hygiene

Principles of Natural Hygiene

How to heal yourself online

By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton

Men and institutions are springing up here and there that are called Hygienic that do not deserve the name, because they are not faithful to the principles of Hygiene. They do not yield themselves gratefully and in full conformity to it. They do not believe in Hygiene strongly enough to live by it. We demonstrate our fealty to a principle by living by it, not by doing lip service to it. When we are controlled by a principle and do not try to warp it to suit our financial interests, we pursue a course of action that is the exact opposite of that pursued by these men. If we are possessed by a principle, we follow it to its ultimate end; we do not try to use it merely for our convenience.

I do not deny the right of these men and institutions to the designation Hygienic from any low, base, mean or sordid motive, while they believe in the curative powers of their drugs and treatment or administer them in their practice, but for the reason that I am bound to give my supreme loyalty to that great and fundamental truth that recovery of health corresponds and coincides with the law of creation or, if you prefer, the law of evolution. This means, simply, that the processes by which we recover health are the same processes by which we came into being; that the materials which may be legitimately employed in recovery of health are identical with those by which health is built and preserved in the first place. Only those materials and influences which are useful in the preservation of health are useful in the restoration of health. To this principle Hygienists make but one exception: namely, constructive surgery, as employed in wounds, broken bones, accidents, dislocations, etc. I cannot consent to demean so glorious a truth as that which underlies the Hygienic System by approving of those who connect its practice with the drugs of the physician or the various modalities of the drugless practitioners.

These practitioners unwittingly, perhaps, constitute a class of "go-betweens." They take for their motto the old Latin aphorism, "Medio tutissimus ibis." Translated into English, this means: "The safest road is the middle road." They take this road, when not impelled by baser motives, because they are afraid of "extremes." "Truth lies between extremes," they often repeat. This is a poor job, pitiful sophism. When it was first declared that the earth is round and revolves on its axis and goes around the sun, this new idea was contrary to the older idea that the earth is flat, stationary and the center of things, with the sun, moon and stars going around it. These were the two extremes: how could a middle ground "between these two extremes" have been found as a resting place for truth?

All revolutions, and Hygiene is a revolution, have been beset by this same conservatism, this same compromising spirit. They have been besieged from all four sides by those who would ostensibly preserve from ruin the new idea. These would-be friends of the revolution, these conservators and conservatives have always constituted, not the vanguard of the revolution, but advance-agents of the counter-revolution. Their influence has always been to retard and to even wipe out the gains made. Truth is always extreme; truth is never on the fence; it never faces both ways. It is in the heart of this conservative spirit that the egg is formed which hatches treason. Truth is not between two extremes, but is one extreme or the other. It is not between a flat earth or a round earth, but is one or the other.

Whether we can see it, feel it or know it, this is true: Truth is always an extremist. Instead of fearing it, from all considerations of caution, of self-respect, of self-preservation and of success, we must accept the truth in its entirety and reject all that falls outside that truth. Applied to Hygiene, we must be as radical as the principles that underlie it. Its practitioners, to entitle them to the name, should, both in their lives and practices, conform to its principles as earnestly and truthfully, as sincerely and unremittingly, as undoubtingly and uncompromisingly as do the devotees of any other established science and art. Just as one is not a Christian who mixes his Christianity with demonism, so one is not a Hygienist who mixes his Hygiene with the therapeutic modalities of the drugless schools or with the poisons of the drug schools.

The few Hygienists who are now in the vanguard of Hygienic work have sedulously labored to keep for the people, the great truths which belong to them, and to keep these vital truths above ground to the end that they may see them, and seeing them, can appreciate them. We have surrendered to principles of such magnitude, of such glory, of such strength and life, that they will revolutionize the lives of all who accept them and live by them and we shall not compromise these glorious principles by subordinating them to or mingling them with the fallacies and wrong practices of the schools of curing. For years we have followed the straight and narrow path of Hygiene. Where the truths of Hygiene have led, thither have we gone. Trustingly, confidently, humbly, have we folIowed and we have not been disappointed. Hygiene has never let us down.

The schools of curing are all devoid of fixed principles. The intricacies and complexities of the systems are as unstable as quicksand and as changeable as the wind. The theory of today is supplanted by that of tomorrow; the practice of today gives way to a new one tomorrow. Practices that are greatly in vogue in one generation are strongly condemned by the succeeding. All is chaos; all is confusion; all is uncertainty; all is rapid change. Doubt envelops all their theories and distrust surrounds all their modalities. We cannot afford to mingle the eternal certainties of Hygiene with the evanescent fallacies of the schools of curing. We know that law and order rule in the biological realm and we base our practices on the unchanging principles of nature. These are our authorities and they are supreme.

The laws of nature are greater than the greatest men of all the schools of curing. We study the human organism from the point of view of natural law and (normal) need, and we have faith in the normal means of life. We stand in this matter, as it were, where we can summon the mighty forces of organic existence, to the aid of the sick and to the aid of the well, for whoever corresponds in his work and activity to the course of law, by so doing secures the force and strength of that law to himself.

If the practitioners of the schools of curing cannot comprehend the simple principles that underlie Hygiene, if they cannot know the superior effectiveness of the normal elements of healthy existence; if they continue to scout nature and adopt art, if they reject the glorious truths of Hygiene and continue to hug their therapeutic delusions, we cannot stop them, but we must keep the fair name of Hygiene free from contamination with any admixtures. If they take the "wisdom of man" as it has accumulated through the ages, and attempt to guide themselves by it; we take the principles of nature, as they were at the beginning, and conform to them.

They seem unable to understand that a true art of care, both of the well and the sick, must be marked by simplicity of means. They cannot comprehend the simple and fundamental fact that to the extent that the practitioner adjusts himself and his charge to the employment only of those means which are established in nature for the uses of the living organism, will his strength and usefulness increase. Men who do not have an unswerving confidence in the foundation-principles of Hygiene, a confidence that that knows no abatement, that deepens with time and experience, and that teaches them that healing is the prerogative of the living organism, such men are not fit to bear the name Hygienist. They may be good men, honest, truthful, sincere; they are not Hygienists.

Do I assert that Hygiene has reached maturity; that we are now in possession of all the knowledge of principles and of the application of means to ends that we shall ever have? By no means. Beyond our present knowledge lies an arcanum, the greatness of which will astound the sharpest and the dullest comprehension. What we know is but a sand-grain of the sum-total which is yet to be known upon this vast subject. But the fact that there is yet much to be learned does not justify us in abandoning what we do know for the fallacies and hurtful practices of the schools of curing. Our knowledge is to be extended and increased, not by a search in the fields of fallacy, but by a more intensive cultivation of the truths that now belong to us. Let us dig a little deeper, analyze a little more, separate the truth from the dross to an ever greater degree, but let us not soil pur hands and our work by digging in the muck of therapeutic fallacies.

Let us all be loyal to the principles and practices of Hygiene and seek to extend these. Let us honor our system and proclaim it from the housetops. Under no temptation let us swerve. Let those who have faith in poisons use them, but let us not consent to the addition of any part of the poisoning practice to Hygiene. Let those who trust in the curative virtues of electricity, water applications, baking and freezing, manipulations and adjustings, etc., have these to their heart's content, but let us not admit such practices and the false theories upon which they are predicated into Hygiene.

It is not needful that we should speak harshly, either of practitioners of these various curing systems or of their devotees, but we must keep before the people the fact that the Hygienist gives no drugs, employs no treatments and does no manipulating; that he has a much better way, a way that is found in the natural order and will not pass away with the passing of the present generation of disease-treaters. What a glorious work we have to do! If we can educate the people to the extent that they can realize the harmfulness of drugs and treatments and the helpfulness of the normal elements of health, we shall have worked the mightiest revolution that has ever taken place in human existence. We must demand more Hygiene, not less. Those practitioners who, posing as Hygienists, merely employ some Hygiene as a weak adjunct to their therapeutic modalities should be made to realize that they are damaging a system to which they render homage, and are retarding the progress of a revolution that will, when it is finished, sweep all such into oblivion.

Is Natural Hygiene a Faith Cure?

Is Natural Hygiene a Faith Cure?

By Dr. Herbert M. Shelton

Is the Hygienic System a "faith cure"? We have been accused of having only a "faith cure" by many who have only noted what we reject and have not investigated what we stand for. One man objected that our faith in nature and nature cure is identical with Christian Science - is Christian Science, as a matter of fact, in a new dress. We never knew whether, by this statement, he wanted us to understand that he has no faith in nature, that he believes only in the unnatural and anti-natural.

What is nature? Let us define it as the existing cosmos. The universe is cosmic and not chaotic. There is an all-pervading orderliness, nor can we conceive of the universe existing except in an orderly state. What is wrong with faith in this system of order?
The bodies and properties of living things are also orderly, that is, cosmic, and not chaotic. There is an all-pervading orderliness in life and we cannot conceive of an organism existing for one moment in any other state.

For us, then, nature is the orderly universe with all of its relations and interdependencies. Science, as well as religion, directs men's minds to the eternal aspect of things and our faith in the unchangeable uniformities of nature is well founded.

Nature cure, which is not something that the Hygienist does with his hygienic agencies, but something nature does, is the result of the lawful and orderly operations of the forces and processes of life, working with the regular, normal elements of livingness.

Our faith in this nature and its work is no blind or dead faith. It is rather a faith that leads to work, a faith based on knowledge. These - knowledge and faith - lead to reform and intelligent cooperation with the forces of life. It is not a matter of folding our arms and sitting down and waiting for nature to do for us what we, as parts of nature, can only do for ourselves. We do not expect the laws of nature to be violated because we pray for them to be violated, nor do we expect them to cease to exist because we deny their existence.

However we have no objection to being called "faith curists" if we may be allowed to define our faith. Ours is a faith in the orderly, invariable laws of nature. All science is a study of the fixed laws of nature. So far as man's senses can reach, we always find nature orderly and as faith is "confidence, reliance, trust," and as we find no exceptions to the orderly sequences in the processes of nature, we can certainly have: faith in these. Faith in the uniformities of nature is not a mystical conviction that has never been verified, nor is it the power to say we believe things that are incredible.

We know that water always runs down hill; we know that a magnetized needle points to the magnetic pole; we know that when hydrogen and oxygen unite in certain proportions the product is always water; we know that two times two are four. We have faith in the compass; we have faith in the mathematical processes; we have faith in chemical processes; we have a whole science of hydrostatics built upon the invariable conduct of water under exact conditions.

Faith describes the confidence we feel that the sun will "rise" tomorrow, that it will "rise" in the East, for it always has done so. We do not doubt that iron will continue to rust if exposed to moisture, for this is what it has always done. We do not expect to see brick of certain sizes and density and composed of certain materials become lighter or heavier than brick of these sizes and materials have always been.

That unbroken and cosmic order has reigned throughout the universe throughout its duration is something we cannot prove. We cannot prove that there is a law that water must run down hill when we get out beyond the reach of our senses. But we accept it as a truth because of our faith in the universality of law and order.

Now, cure (healing) is the same yesterday, today and forever. Healing is the same today as that which has taken place from the beginning of time. It will take place in the same old way as long as time lasts.

Theories of cure may change, as they have in the past. The methods of "cure" may continue to change ceaselessly. But the real, orderly and lawful healing processes of nature are as changeless as are the laws of gravity, of chemistry, of hydrostatics, of mathematics.

We have the same faith in these lawful, orderly and invariable processes of cure - natural processes - as we do in the lawful, orderly and invariable processes of nature in all other parts of the cosmic order. The processes of life are not chaotic, capricious, changeable, unlawful, disorderly. They do not change from country to country, nor from age to age.

Faith in the orderly processes of life is not a makeshift to serve us where knowledge fails. Rather it is confidence in the facts and laws of which we have knowledge. We have no knowledge of a "natural law" except as an invariable and orderly sequence. The term "law" is a very unfortunate one. Our faith is in the fixed and orderly sequences of nature.

If life were not as orderly and lawful as the non-living world about us, we could expect to gather figs from thistles or to sow to the wind and reap not the whirl-wind, but a gentle zephyr. If there were no fixed order in life we might plant a peach seed and have a pecan tree spring therefrom. We insist upon the "reign of law" in the organic (the living) world; we insist that order is supreme and that chaos and "old night" are figments of primitive man's minds. What is wrong with a faith cure that depends, not upon faith to cure, but "upon the orderly processes of nature?

That person who takes a drug has faith that it will cure him but his faith is not based upon any demonstrable orderly, sequence an unfailing curative process set up by the drug. The physician who administers the drug may have faith in the curative powers of his drugs, but his so-called faith is a mere superstition - a hangover from primitive times. It is not a faith based-on a knowledge of the orderly processes of life. True, he claims a knowledge of the drug; but what he knows about the drug from a study of its chemistry and toxicology is the exact opposite of what he believes about it under what has been dignified with the name pharmacology. His faith and his knowledge are in conflict.

He knows that poisoning does not heal, that it does not produce health. He believes that it does. He received his knowledge as a result of modern scientific study; his faith from his ancient forebears.

The physician that expects to restore health with agents that always destroy health and attempts to save life with the foes of life, may have full confidence in his agents; but his faith is in a reversal of the laws of nature. It is a faith in disorder, in chaos, He believes he can reverse, or annul, or suspend, or change the laws of nature. As well attempt to make two and two equal three or five, or expect to destroy any other realm of fixed law.

The body always rejects drugs. It has its choice of several methods of rejecting them, but it never appropriates them. This is a universal experience to which there is no known exception. The physician who puts his trust in drugs has a faith that flies in the face of law and order and beats its brains out against the unyielding solid rock of immutable "law." He is exceedingly superstitious.

The man who takes a sweat bath may have faith in it. But such faith is not based upon knowledge. The man who gives the bath may explain that sweating eliminates toxins from the body. This, too, is a blind faith. If the man knows physiology, he knows that sweating is not an eliminating process and that the sweat bath does not eliminate toxins. Faith in the sweat bath is merely a lingering superstition we derived from those who used it originally to sweat out evil spirits.

Faith of some degree may be said to enter into everything we do. But faith, per-se, is not the thing that does. Faith does not cure; though it may enable us to rely upon the forces and processes that do heal. Nor can faith cause a thing to heal that does not otherwise heal; although it is often affirmed that it does so.

Nature has always built flesh out of food and we are convinced that she will always do so. She has never built flesh out of drugs and we do not believe she will ever do so. Exercise and not drugs has always been essential to the development of the body and we don't believe that we can ever use drugs for this purpose and dispense with exercise. In plain English, we place our faith in the ancient and invariable order of nature.

Rest, and not stimulation, has always been essential to the reinvigoration of tired, fatigued or exhausted organs or organisms. Stimulation has always lashed them into impotency. This has always been the order of nature - it has not changed. We impose our faith in this fixed order and not in theories and practices that are "at variance with this invariable order."

The Hygienic System uses the same agents and forces that nature now uses and always has used to build up and maintain the whole of both the vegetable and animal kingdoms. It rejects those forces and agents that have never been used in this process. It rejects those things that have no vital relation to life - things that are anti-vital - that have no normal part in life's plan.

Using the term cure (Latin cura, care) in its original and proper sense and not as a synonym for the word healing, there is only one proper cure for any abnormal condition of the living body; namely, remove the cause. When the cause of the "disease" is removed, health returns by virtue of the normal, orderly, lawful operations of the processes and functions of life. This is nature cure. This is a cure such as has taken place since the beginning of time.

Nature, the great restorer, the only healer, helps those who help themselves. This is not a "faith cure" as commonly understood. The so-called "faith cures" around us ignore causes. They seek to heal by faith without removing causes. This kind of faith is a slap in the face of law and order. It is not a faith that "worketh repentance," nor is it known by its works. It is a faith that only talks.

The Hygienic System is nature's system understood and applied carefully and intelligently both in health and in sickness. It is simply an enlightened compliance with the laws or uniformities of life, as these have been revealed by study and experience. For, we have no knowledge of what a natural law is, beyond the fact of universal and undisputed experience.