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.
