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KARL ANDERSON PRESENTS NATURAL HYGIENE CLASSICS INHS member and long-time hygienist Karl Anderson presents this interesting collection of articles from "Dr. Shelton's Hygienic Review" and other publications. "I post these Shelton articles in the hope that those not familiar with his writing may become acquainted with him and thereby feel compelled to further research on their own. I personally consider HMS one of my 'final' authorities." The article collection is continued here. |
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Disease Is Remedial Activity - HM Shelton
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIV, July, 1978 No. 11 Disease Is Remedial Activity by Herbert M. Shelton "Polio has struck twice within six days in the family of.... " These words formed the first part of a statement in a news item published a few years ago, and bring up the question once again: "What is disease?" This language implies that disease is an entity, a thing that has an existence, per se, that is capable of striking. It struck one child and, not being satisfied with the havoc it wrought, it struck another child in the same family six days later. In this instance, the disease was the variety or species known as poliomyelitis. The ancient idea that the sick are possessed of devils lingered on in the minds of the people and in the practices "of the priests and physicians for ages after it should have passed into oblivion. All during the Middle Ages and even today in some sects of America and Europe, this doctrine of demonic possession was held to be abundantly proved by the Bible. Jesus is said to have cast out devils and during the Middle Ages it was held that to doubt demonical possession was to overthrow the entire structure of Christian doctrine. The doctrine of demonic possession was as well grounded in the Scriptures as was a belief in witches and witchcraft. This belief in demons that infest the air and take possession of the bodies of man and beast is far older than the Bible. Paracelsus, the vagabond quack of a little over four hundred years ago, whose star of popularity is again rising, held that the air was so full of devils that you could not get a hair between them. Paracelsus was a Cabalist and held to a lot of other ancient and mystical nonsense. He believed devils to be more plentiful than his modem medical successor believes microbes to be. During the long dark night of Christian ascendancy, it was held that the insane are possessed of devils and the only care these miserable beings received was intended to scare away or drive out the devils that had taken possession of them. They were chained in loathsome dungeons and tortured and beaten with a brutality that we do not understand today. Sometimes they were kept awake for a week or more in the effort to exorcize the demon. The demons were cursed in the most elaborate theological blasphemy ever devised, and the mentally sick were compelled to drink the most nauseating and disgusting compounds. Exorcizing devils was done by priests, cabalists, physicians and others. The Jesuits of Vienna, in 1583, boasted that they had cast out no less than 12, 652 devils. Devil-chasers were common in those benighted days and devil-chasing was as popular as microbe slaying is today. Historically and psychologically, the words possession and infection represent only different rationalizations of the same superstition; they stand for identical delusional mental processes and deluding etiological speculations. The medieval wizard who chased devils has evolved into the modem serologist who chases microbes. The belief in devils or demons is by no means dead. Millions pf people in Africa, China, India, Burma, Tibet, and other parts of the world believe in the existence of these "unseen powers and principalities of the air, " and the practice of devil-chasing is as popular among these people as it was two thousand years ago. But we do not have to go to the more backward sections of the earth to find a belief in devils and witchcraft still surviving. We have plenty of people in America who believe in witchery or "hexing, " in haunted houses, spirit communications, and in the existence of great numbers of demons that infest earth's atmosphere and seek to gain control of the bodies and minds of man. The founder of one of the newer sects, some years ago published a book on spiritism, in which he showed from the Scriptures, that spirit mediums do not talk with the spirits of the departed dead, but with demons or "fallen angels" that inhabit the atmosphere. In this book, he describes the procedures adopted by him to exorcize devils from the bodies of those who were possessed. This man was a well-educated ex-atheist, who lived and wrote in the early years of this century. He lived, not in far away superstition-ridden Tibet, but in enlightened America. I am assured by one of the members of this sect, which now numbers many thousands of adherents throughout the world, that its members still believe in demons and in demonical possession. This reminds me of the little Sunday-school boy's statement that, "Faith means believing what you know ain't true. " This very old idea that disease is an entity that attacks the body and wreaks as much havoc therein as possible has taken several forms through the ages and is incarnated in the germ theory that holds sway today. Hippocrates was the first to break away from the theory that disease is a divine punishment, but he was unable to fully emancipate himself from the belief that it is an attacking entity. His humoral pathology was a crude biochemistry and he sought for the cause of disease in an unbalanced chemistry of the body, but at the same time, he held that disease is a positive entity or substance which has to be expelled by hammer and tongs. According to Pliny, Acron was the first to apply philosophical reasoning to the problems of disease. He held that there is an "active cause" of disease possessed of a riotous disposition. Galen regarded disease as "additional forces, foreign and inimical to the animal, with a birth, prime, and decline, like those of a physiological nature. " He is supposed to have borrowed the idea from Plato, but, since the idea was ancient when Plato was born, this presumption seems unnecessary. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the idea still prevailed that disease is a positive and organized entity. Hufland said: "The intestinal canal is, in the great majority of cases, the battle-field where the issue of most disorders is decided. " Hufland declared: "We must introduce the only medicine of which we are thoroughly convinced that it possesses the power of efficiently striving with the enemy, who, by subtle means, has now effected an entrance within our stronghold. " Stille asserted that "the whole of life is a perpetual struggle with an enemy to whom we must at last succumb. " The present day physician would say: "The whole of life is a perpetual struggle with malignant microbes that will eventually destroy us. " A hundred years ago it was freely admitted that the nature and essence of disease was unknown. Many leaders of medical thought frankly expressed the opinion that its nature can never be understood. Prof. George B. Wood, of Jefferson Medical College said in Wood's Practice of Medicine: "Efforts have been made to reach the elements of disease; but not very successfully; because we have not learned the essential nature of the healthy actions, and cannot understand their derangements. " There is inherent in this statement the idea that disease is "disordered physiology. " It was so defined by certain medical authorities in Wood's time. The present views of the profession on the nature of disease are not easy to determine. The subject is never discussed in their text-books of pathology, nor in their works on the practice of medicine. By common consent they seem to have agreed to ignore the subject. Disease is now listed among the "seven modern mysteries. " Sir James McKenzie, one of the greatest clinicians of modem times, said a few years ago: "The knowledge of disease is so incomplete that we do not yet even know what steps should be taken to advance our knowledge. " In spite of this, medical men do have some idea of what disease is, as may be gained from their statements concerning it. It is said to attack us, to run its course, to be very malignant, or quite mild, to ravish the patient, to persistently resist all treatment, to yield readily to treatment, to be seated within us, to be self-limited, to supervene, to retreat, to set in, to travel from part to part, to stimulate each other, to change type, to sweep over the country like a fire, to travel from one place to another, to ride the air lanes, to be carried about, etc. They talk of banishing a disease, of wiping it out, of conquering it, or of destroying it. They meet its onslaught with active measures. All of these expressions and many more like them refer to disease as an entity or thing that exists per se. They are consistent with the ancient theory that disease is an organized substance or force existing outside the organic domain and that is at war with life. Even if, at present, they be regarded as metaphorical they indicate the kinds of operations sought to be carried out in treating the sick. Medical men are still at war with unseen principalities and powers of the air. The medical historian, Shyrock, tells us in his The Development of Modern Medicine, that a new etiology based on bacteriology "showed that the cause of tuberculosis-if not the malady itself-were indeed definite realities. It proved that there was, in the case of tuberculosis, some thing there that acted as if it were an entity. " He also points out that today a diphtheria epidemic in a community is interpreted by the board of health to indicate the presence of a definite intruder. Thus the old idea of disease as an entity is still with us, and the foregoing expressions about disease are not to be regarded as metaphors today, any more than they were when they were first used. They accurately express prevailing medical views of the nature and essence of disease. The medical profession never had a theory of the essential nature of disease that would bear criticism. It never had one that it could stand by. It never had a theory of disease that somebody did not explode. No sooner did some distinguished professor present them with a new theory, which had cost him the work of half a lifetime to evolve, than some ambitious rival would demolish it in a criticism that required but half an hour to write. The profession seems content today to "rock along" without any well-defined theory of the essential nature of disease, while continuing to treat the patient as though he is the victim of an attack by malignant entities. The nearest approach to an explanation of the nature of disease that has been offered by medical men within recent years is the one that a few years ago came out of Russia. Although it represents a step in the right direction, this one is very incomplete. The Russian experimenters have found that the disease is the body's own actions-they say "reaction. " But, having failed to discern the purposive or remedial character of these actions, they are working on the development of a mode of treatment that represents a return to the deadly narcotic practice of a hundred years ago. Instead of malignant spirits or malignant bacteria, they are fighting malignant reflexes. Mary Baker Eddy tussled with malignant animal magnetism. It is the law of life that the body resists and expels whatever it cannot use. Disease is vital resistance to non-usable, therefore, injurious substances. The living body grows and reproduces itself. It develops its parts and extends itself by selecting from its environment such materials as it has the capacity to incorporate into its own structures, and rejects and refuses all others, as both unnecessary and injurious. The power of refusal and rejection is a necessary condition of its vital integrity. Refusal and rejection are constant actions in both the plant and animal world. The organism equally serves its own interest by either act. A plate of strawberries and cream, when taken into the stomach, occasions the vital actions called digestion. Following digestion, the food is absorbed, circulated and assimilated. When used so that its elements are no longer useful, the waste is carried to the eliminating organs and eliminated. This is physiological or healthy action. A dose of lobelia, when swallowed, occasions the vital actions called vomiting. This is the means by which the body expels it. A dose of salts occasions the vital action called diarrhea. This is the means by which the body expels the salts. By diuresis, the body expels other substances. Now the acts of digestion and of vomiting are equally vital and they differ only as the objects to which they relate differ. One is conservative, the other remedial. One is physiology, the other pathology. One has as its object the expulsion of noxious substances. All the actions performed by the vital organs are vital actions. Vital actions are either normal or abnormal. The difference between health and disease is simply this: Health is the regular or normal performance of the functions of the body, it is normal action - physiology. Disease is irregular and abnormal action of the body in expelling injurious substances and repairing damages-pathology. Health expresses the aggregate of vital actions and processes that nourish and develop the body and all its organs and structures and provide for reproduction; in other words, health is the action of the vital powers in building up and replenishing the organic structures; or in still plainer words, the conversion of the elements of food into the elements of the body's tissues, and the elimination of waste. Disease is the aggregate of vital actions and processes by which poisons are expelled and damages repaired; it is the action of the same powers that are active in health, in defending the organism against injurious or abnormal agencies and conditions. The nature of disease is explained in the same way that the modus operandi of drugs is explained. The immediate effect of the introduction of a poison into the body is morbid vital action. This is disease. The action of the organism against any repugnant or poisonous substance is defensive - it is an effort to dispose of the offending material. Purging occasioned by a drug is a perfect illustration of diarrhea and dysentery. Vomiting from an emetic is carried on in the same way, and for the same purpose, that vomiting from any other cause is carried on. The excitement occasioned by alcohol is precisely similar to the excitement occasioned by danger, by the cry of fire at midnight, or the discovery of a burglar in the house. Symptoms are evidences of vitality - dead bodies do not produce symptoms. Deprive the living organism of its ability to manifest its repugnance to incompatible things, its power to reject and resist these, in the defensive manner that we call disease, and you deprive it of life itself. If the organism does not act abnormally under sufficiently powerful abnormal conditions, this will be proof positive that it has lost its vitality and is dead, or nearly so. Disease is a product of life. Vitality is as necessary an element of disease as water is of steam. Existing only where life exists, it does so subject to the great laws of life. It is not "disordered physiology" but re-directed vital activity. Its essential nature is not altered one bit by the fact that it often fails of its object. If a man fails in his object to acquire a million dollars, this does not alter the nature of his acquisitiveness. The word disease is a generic term and covers a multitude of phenomena, some of these being of opposite character to others. It is quite obvious that blindness, deafness, paralysis, emphysema, cancer and other degenerative diseases are not remedial activities. This does not invalidate our theory of the essential nature of disease but it does emphasize the need for a new terminology, one that more precisely classifies the different phenomena that are now confusingly jumbled together under the rubric disease. I have suggested the term, which I coined, biogony, for those elements of disease as now understood that are remedial in character. Biogony is a combination of two Greek roots-bios meaning life and agony meaning struggle. Although I coined this word and gave it to the world nearly forty years ago, it has not been accepted, perhaps because our theory of the essential nature of disease has not been accepted. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Hi Renee,
Here is a section of Vol.3 of the Hygienic System by Herbert M. Shelton, Fasting
and Sunbathing.
Dr. Shelton assisted well over 30,000 people with their fasts.
This includes Mahatma Gandhi who was instrumental in winning India's
independence from the British.
Gandhi did many fasts for which he was very famous.
If you care to read more about Herbert M. Shelton you will find many of his
books in Steve Solomon's wonderful "Soil and Health Library" at
http://www.soilandhealth.org/
I wish you the very best and hope INHS can be of help to you.
-karl Typhoid by Dr. Herbert Shelton Typhoid fever patients become comfortable in three to four days if the fast is instituted at the "onset" of the "disease," and in from seven to ten days are convalescing. The patient will have such a comfortable sickness and recover so speedily that friends and relatives will declare he was not sick. And, indeed, he will not be very sick. It requires feeding and drugging to convert those simple natural processes we call acute "diseases" into serious and complicated troubles. It is not possible to have a typical case of typhoid fever, as described in allopathic text-books, without typical text-book treatment. Unthwarted nature never builds such complications and such serious "diseases" as are described in allopathic works. All this mass of pathology is built by drugging, serum squirting and feeding. In a voluminous work on diet, contributed to by a number of medical authorities in dietetics and edited by G. A. Sutherland, M.D., F.R.C.E., and entitled A System of Diet and Dietetics (published by the Physicians and Surgeons Book Co., of New York City) I find a few interesting paragraphs in the chapter on Diet In Fever and Acute Infectious Disease, contributed by Claude E. Ker, M.D., F.R.C.P., Ed., which are worth quoting. He says, in discussing the "starvation treatment" in enteric fever (typhoid fever): "The same idea which underlies the empty bowel theory is no doubt responsible for the attempts made to treat enteric fever with either no food by the mouth at all, or at the most with very little quantities. Thus Queirolo has recommended that feeding should be entirely rectal, a lemonade made up with a little hydrochloric acid being the only drink allowed, provided that the bowel of a patient so treated was first emptied by a dose of calomel, or other suitable purgative. Such method of dieting should secure complete rest for the affected parts and absolutely exclude the possibility of fermenting masses of partially digested material lying in the gut. The nutritive value, however, of rectal feeding in a prolonged disease is so limited that this method may be fairly regarded as a treatment by starvation. "Similar in its objects and effects is the method suggested by Williams, who, believing that the exhausting diarrhea of the fever is due to improper feeding, endeavors to secure that the bowels shall, as far as possible, remain empty. Only water is allowed in severe cases, sometimes for days at a time, and he regards half a pint of milk in twenty-four hours as a liberal diet, seldom apparently exceeding this amount until the temperature is normal. The method seems drastic, but I have reason to know that the cases do remarkably well. I have often marvelled at the amount of starvation which a typhoid case can safely tolerate after a hemorrhage, and it is only rational to suppose that the patient would support starvation even better before such a depressing complication had occurred. Under such a regime Williams probably more nearly attains the ideal of the 'empty bowel' than any other observer. It seems almost incredible that patients so treated should occasionally gain weight and that they do not in any case waste more than patients more liberally fed; but it is, after all, obvious that, if food is not assimilated there is no benefit to be derived from it, and in many cases of enteric fever assimilation is undoubtedly extremely poor. "The theoretical objection to both these methods of treatment is that, if ulceration has once started such a remarkably low diet would apparently give the intestinal lesions only a poor chance of repair. On the other hand, it is possible that the absence of irritation would go far to counterbalance this defect, apparently as the patient seems to stand the starvation so well. If plenty of water was supplied this would be more easily understood, but some of Williams' patients were limited, for a time at least, to one pint of water per diem, which seems to be a most inadequate amount." Dr. Ker is unwilling to recommend what he mistakenly calls the "starvation treatment," but thinks there is much to be learned from such things and adds: "It encourages us to starve for two or three days, if necessary, severe cases with marked gastric and intestinal disturbances, probably very much to their advantage. It is, however, unnecessarily severe for the average patient, even while we admit that in enteric fever there is no certainty as to what may happen from day to day." Every one of these things, Hygienists have been pointing out for a hundred years. We have been denounced as "quacks" and "ignorant pretenders" for so doing and our methods have been rejected by the medical profession as a whole, and, even now, the authorities, in adopting our methods in part, and in reporting favorably upon them, neglect to give credit where credit is plainly due. Dr. Ker overlooks the important fact that where typhoid patients are not fed, ulceration is not likely to occur, and that hemorrhages are extremely rare, while he seems to be wholly unaware of the body's ability to heal wounds, broken bones, open sores, ulcers, etc., while fasting. The theoretical objection offered to fasting, in enteric fever, is based on ignorance. It completely ignores the preceding statement that "assimilation is undoubtedly extremely poor," and it appears to be made in utter ignorance of the body's own internal resources. The author does not seem to be cognizant of the fact that repair of tissues does go on during a fast. What is more, he overlooks the fact that if feeding is stopped at the "onset" of the "disease" there is not likely to be any ulceration or any hemorrhage. Besides this, the patient is more comfortable and the "disease" of shorter duration--providing no drugging is resorted to. It is encouraging to note that he does not offer, as an objection, the old notion that fasting lowers one's resistance to germs. The fault I find with the method of Queirolo is that he does not stop feeding at the outset instead of waiting until the "disease" becomes well developed and not that it is "too severe for the average patient." On the contrary, it is the easiest, safest and best plan. The feeding and drugging plan is the drastic plan; the plan than intensifies and prolongs the patient's suffering. It is no ordeal to do without food in acute illness. The ordeal consists in eating at such times. All we ask when acutely sick is to be let alone and to be free of worry of any kind. Herbert M. Shelton |
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We are not reformers Hygienic Review Herbert Shelton WE ARE NOT reformers; we are revolutionists. Medical reform -- the world has had quite enough of that. Reforming the drug system by substituting one set of drugs for another is a ridiculous farce. It may, to be sure, substitute a lesser for a greater evil, in many cases, but is like reforming big lies with little falsehoods. It is like reforming swearing with obscene language; or like reforming robbing with cheating. Reforming allopathy with homeopathy and both with physio-medicalism, and all these with eclecticism, is like promoting temperance by substituting cider and lager for rum, brandy, gin, wine, or flesh eating by substituting milk, butter, cheese, for animal food. |
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The Life of Primitives - HM Shelton Hygienic Review Vol. XXXI, October, 1969 No. 2 The Life of Primitives by Herbert M. Shelton The non-literate peoples whom we variously style savages, primitives, etc., are as modern in all respects save their culture as the most civilized person and they are as old as civilized man. They are referred to as primitive for no other reason than that their culture is rude and simple. Some of them are still in the Stone Age culturally, although we know from numerous examples that potentially they are the equivalent of the most highly civilized peoples. We have the habit of looking upon them as being in the same stages of culture as were our prehistoric ancestors or, in some cases, of our non-literate, but historic ancestors. Thus we think that in studying their ways of life, we are studying the life of primitive man. I have dealt with this assumption elsewhere in these pages and need only at this point state that, insofar as these people are human and tend to behave as such, they do not doubt, in many particulars, represent our ancestors. On the other hand, inasmuch as their culture, their traditions, their Customs, their tabus, etc., represent the accumulations of ages, many of the elements of these various cultures having been borrowed from others, they cannot possibly represent in a greater part of their culture, our primitive fore-bearers. However, insofar as they present living examples of the simpler forms of human behavior, they do have valuable lessons for us. As I intend to devote a separate article to the American Indians, in this article I shall briefly consider a few general characteristics of other rude peoples. We often think of the non-literate peoples as living principally by hunting and fishing, whereas, this is rarely true. Certain of the African natives, such as those of the Amban district, are not hunters, but support themselves by their crops, commonly raising more food than they can use. The maize, banana and yam plantations of Africa constitute but part of the foods they raise. Although in certain sections the Gorillas play havoc with the plantations of sugar cane and bananas, these people seem to have enough to eat. Game is difficult to find and harder to kill in the jungle and many of the tribes rarely have flesh to eat. Fred G. Merfield, in his book Gorillas Were My Neighbors, says that "African villagers go crazy for meat when they find a dead elephant or hippo. Opening up the carcass, they crawl right inside, indifferent to the blood and mess, in search of the choicest pieces. " Of one tribe among whom he hunted, he says, "their taste for food was revolting. Once they extracted the stomach of a hartebeast I had just shot and squeezed the liquid contents of it into their mouths, assuring me that it was a most nourishing and appetizing dish. The intestines were also eaten raw, after their contents had been squeezed out. " They drank a liquor made from fermented sap of the palm tree, which they call mimbo. Telling of the raid of one tribe by another he says that many of the attacked were killed; many were captured. Captured girls were sold; captured boys were kept as slaves. The men were killed, their stomaches and hearts being removed, as these were thought to be the best parts of an animal, including man. These were eaten. Some of the men were tied up and their throats cut so that the blood could be drained off and drunk. Everyone tried to get the sexual organs, which were regarded as the nicest parts, being full of fat. Among some tribes gorilla flesh is forbidden the women, the men eating it with gusto. Some of the Negroes eat beetle grubs; others eat a soup made of ground nuts, with plantains. They nurse their babies for two years. Merfield tells us of one tribe among whom he hunted that "they were sturdy, almost naked men who were reliable and hard workers. " The men of most of the tribes have great speed and vigor. One author describes the "magnificent physique: a broad hard-muscled back, narrow hips and long, brawny legs" of one of the contestants in a wrestling match. Wrestling tournaments seem to be very popular among them. Great feats of strength are exhibited in these wrestling matches. They are also fond of handstands. Africans are said to be able to keep up their frenzied dances hour after hour with no signs of fatigue. A dance of African natives is thus described: "The girls danced round in a circle, making undulating muscular movements of wonderful skill and grace... " All of these are but indications of the active life lived by these simple peoples, living largely outdoors and often entirely nude. African villages, we are informed, are usually clean and well kept; although their huts are often dirty and contain no furniture. African burden carriers welcome a bath while on the march. The boys of many of the tribes are circumcised while the clitorises of the girls are incised. Travelers in Africa say that the natives of the present are, on the whole, very clean. Commonly they bathe in rivers and lakes, but among some of the tribes the men have a hot bath each day at sunset. The Negroes also clean their teeth. Their huts are usually kept clean and tidy. Indeed travellers say that it is striking to see how clean and tidy the native huts are kept while the housing developments for the mixed groups (White-Negro crosses) are soon run down. Let us go to the opposite extreme, so far as location and climate are concerned. From the tropics, let us journey to the frigid regions and note the Eskimos and some of their ways of life. They have traditions of better times when their men were large and powerful; so powerful, indeed, that one of them could drag a walrus across the ice as easily as an Eskimo of today can drag a seal. These powerful ancestors they call Tunits. This may indicate that they have known better days, perhaps before their forced migration into the frigid north. If they migrated to the Arctic region, either because of population pressures or because they were driven from their homes by stronger tribes, they must have gone there from some region to the south, where they were surrounded by natural advantages of which they are now deprived. Their ancestors may have been larger and stronger men and women, and they may have been further advanced in the arts and sciences. The Eskimo represents, not a case of progressive evolution, but one of deterioration. When Arctic snows become the last refuge of the victims of population pressures and wars, we cannot expect the people thus thrust into such an inhospitable environment to maintain the dignity and greatness they possessed before being forced out of more favorable conditions. The Eskimos are a gentle, inoffensive, hospitable and truthful people, thus showing that there is no necessary connection between a backward state of knowledge of the useful arts and violent dispositions, ferocious and cruel habits. They are confined by the exigencies of their habitat to a largely flesh diet, thus showing that there is no necessary connection between flesh-eating and ferociousness. Short of stature and short lived, they manifest a great amount of strength and endurance. Their life, except during the winter season, when they all but hibernate, is very active and spent largely in the open. The Eskimos have always manifested a frank enthusiastic interest in gymnastics, performing on ropes made of seal skin. Writing of the Eskimos and their foods, an author says with surprising naiveness: "But when newtypes of food, clothing and shelter were introduced, the resulting deterioration among the Eskimos indicated that they had known better than the white man how to meet the stern chal-lange of their harsh environment. " They had met the challenge with the only means the environment afforded; the new foods, which were highly refined and processed, were not good for the white man under any environment, but our author never senses this fact. The deterioration of the white man escaped his attention. The fact that the South Sea Islands were populated, some of them thickly so, and that on some of them there existed rather advanced cultures, proves that man did reach these islands. How? Certainly he did not walk on the waters of the sea. He must have found another way to reach them. If we may think that more than one wave of migrations reached the islands, a thing that is indicated by the differences in the peoples and by their different customs, we may think that the way was open to many others who did not remain, but returned to the mainlands. The peoples of these islands were still living in the "Stone Age" when discovered by white explorers. When Easter Island was first visited by White men, the inhabitants were found to be stark naked. They were cheerful, peaceful and well-mannered. They were fishermen, according to our carnivorous anthropologists, but they were farmers as well. They cultivated bananas, sugar cane, sweet potatoes and many other plant foods. Fowls were the only animals they kept. Of the inhabitants of Pitcairn's Island we learn that they bathed their babies in cold water three times a day (in that latitude it could not have been real cold). They suckled their babies for an extended period. When the babies were weaned they were fed on ripe plantains and boiled taro root rubbed into a paste. The children were uniformly in good health. They were outdoors all their lives and enjoyed the sun and fresh air. as well as an active existence. Captain Cook tells us of the natives of Otaheite that "both the men and the women, constantly wash their whole bodies in running water three times every day; once as soon as they rise in the morning, once at noon, and again before they sleep at night, whether the sea or river be near or at a distance. They wash not only the mouth, but the hands at their meals, almost between every morsel; and their clothes as well as their persons, are kept without spot or stain. " An American physician who spent some time in New Zealand in 1839 gave Dr. Joel Shew the following account of the habits of the people of this island. The women generally follow some active outdoor employment much of the day. They are healthy and strong, and have their babies without assistance and with ease. The babies, upon being born, are never swathed, but for the first few days after birth are dressed in one light flaxen garment. The extremities are left free and, after a few days, are exposed to light and air. A few more days and they are left entirely naked, being allowed to roll about freely and exercise their limbs upon a mat of smooth texture. Babies are left much of the time in the open air in the shade. At other times, while the mothers are working, planting or hoeing, they are allowed, even when not more than a week old, to roll among the potatoes and corn. The babies are bathed frequently in the streams of pure water that abound on the island. Consequent upon an active outdoor life, the mothers are strong and there is great freedom from disease and deformity among them. Their food, especially in those regions where the finest specimens are found, consists wholly of vegetable products-corn, pumpkins, potatoes (common and sweet), peaches and various other fruits. These New Zealanders wear but a single garment of flax sometimes thrown loosely over the shoulders and sometimes only about the loins. A few significant generalizations may sum up the lessons learned from this all too brief consideration of the ways of life of so-called living primitives. Although living in different climates and necessarily forced to live upon different diets, there is much in common in their ways of life: 1. They all keep clean, bathing themselves and bathing their babies and children often. 2. They are actively engaged in outdoor occupations, whether farming, hunting or fishing. 3. Their lives are simple and free from the rush and anxiety of civilized life. 4. Where fruits and vegetables are abundant, these constitute the greater part of their diet. 5. Whether flesh eaters or plant-food eaters, their fare is simple, largely uncooked, unrefined and unprocessed. 6. They are largely nude so that they get the daily advantages of exposure to the sun. 7. They are cheerful and happy and are not cursed with the cares and tensions of civilized life. 8. Their babies are permitted freedom of action from the beginning and, what is of equal importance, they are not vaccinated or inoculated. 9. Babies are nursed for long periods of time, thus providing them with the best possible nutritional start in life. Among the Mano, when a child is weaned, the leaves of certain plants are added to its food, but we are assured that the mother has no particular thought about this. This is to say, these leaves are not those of a magic plant. Unfortunately, I have no information about these plants, that we may judge how much food value they possess. It may be taken for granted, that, like all green leaves, they possess vitamins and minerals and, from the fact that they are commonly given, we may assume that their use is not followed by any signs of distress-that they are not poisonous herbs. Indeed, everywhere on the earth, these primitives seem to do a good job feeding their young after they are weaned. Many tribes that we call native are exceedingly poor physical specimens. This is evidence of the inferiority of their diet. It is not to be thought that the diets eaten by primitives are always of equal value. The soil is poor in some portions of the world, the sources of food are not abundant, the labor of procuring it is often great. On the whole, these primitives seem to fare better than we do in civilized life. Civilized man, as he spreads over the earth, takes the lands away from the natives who have long occupied them. He has received from them many native foods that have long served the primitives, but which were formerly unknown in civilized countries. The potato, tomato and Indian Maize are examples of such foods that we derived from the American Indians. Before the discovery of America by Columbus, the Indians also cultivated such foods that are now popular among us as Lima and kidney beans, sweet potatoes, squash, peanuts, pineapple and the alligator pear. Okra or gumbo we received from the Africans. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Observations of Nature - HM Shelton
Hygienic Review Vol. V August, 1944 No. 12 Observations of Nature by Herbert M. Shelton Recently a very intelligent young lady spent a few weeks at the Health School. Born and reared in New York City she had completed High School and spent a few years in College in that city. At the time she was here, two girls were working here who had been born and reared on farms in Texas and neither of them had had much formal education. One of them, indeed, due to illness during most of her younger life, had been in school but little. The young college bred lady considered herself superior to the two corn-fed belles and openly deprecated their ignorance. It's an old story that "knowledge puffeth up. " Then, one day, while gazing out the window, she saw a hen fly up into a tree. She was afraid to believe her own eyes. She did not know that hens could fly. She asked the two "ignorant" girls about it and they assured her that hens can fly. Discovering her lack of knowledge of animal life, they told her that cows can also fly. She did not want to believe this, but she was afraid to doubt it. She later asked me about the matter. A few days thereafter she caught a glimpse of what she thought might be an udder on a mare. First she asked the girls and then she asked me if mares have udders and if they suckle their young like cows. This, too, she had discussed with the "ignorant" girls, but after their kidding about cows flying, she did not know whether or not to believe them. A few days later this young lady confessed to me that she envied the two girls - that though they had little formal education, they knew many things she did not know. Girls that are born and brought up in the country, she added, just naturally learn things without effort. "I sometimes feel ashamed of myself when I hear them talking about things of which I know nothing. " This young woman had studied biology in school. But some of the simplest facts of animal life were unknown to her. She was ignorant of facts about the life and habits of animals that even mere children of the country are well acquainted with. I recite this instance, not to discredit formal education, but to point out it's limitations and shortcomings. It was not the fault of the above mentioned young woman that the most commonplace facts of life in nature were unknown to her. She had been brought up out of contact with nature and her schooling had not given her much of the knowledge she would have "grown into" in a natural environment. In a recent article entitled This is my Faith, Louis Bromfield briefly mentions his early life close to nature and then remarks: " It was from the beginning just a part of my education and of my spirit. *** It was only as I became older that I became self-conscious about it and understood with objectivity the great value of the knowledge I had drunk in without thinking about it. I began to understand what Shake-spear meant when he wrote of 'sermons in sticks and stones. ' " Years spent in observation of Nature provides a wealth of knowledge and a form of education that is not obtained in any other manner. The child of nature may truly be said to drink in knowledge without thinking about it. Only later in life does he tend to integrate what he has absorbed. Only then does the value of a first-hand knowledge of living nature begin to be realized. The person who has not had first hand contact with nature is not conscious of his shortcomings until he gets out into contact with her and begins to learn how little he really knows. Life, itself, life in the raw, holds many valuable lessons for us. The great outdoors is a classroom. Living out in the fields and forests and coming in constant contact with untamed, unchanged, unperverted, uncontaminated and uninfluenced nature teaches those who observe and think a wisdom that cannot be surpassed by the teacher and the text-book in the class room. Let no one disparage the teacher and the text-book; but let all of us recognize their limitations. Let us go to nature; let us learn of her ways and be wise. Biologists have more or less unconsciously converted the "science of life" into necrology. I have a library of text-books and other books on biology. There is little life in them. In the schools there is much gathering, mounting and dissecting of butterflies, insects, rats, rabbits, cats, fish, frogs, etc. The student studies the corps-he learns the structure of the organism. He learns little of life. While Dr. Harry Clements, British Natural Therapist, was in this country I had much contact with him. On one occasion while we sat in my office in New York City he told me of being asked by two women (both of them mothers) who were graduates of Columbia University, both of them had had the course in biology, if cows suckle their young like mothers do-or, perhaps, it were more correct to say, as mothers once did. We discussed the inadequacies of the courses in biology given in the schools and colleges and we reached the conclusion that instead of the three years pre-medical work medical students are required to undergo, between High School and Medical College, they would be better equipped for caring for patients if they spent this time on a farm or a ranch instead of spending it in college. We thought and still think that two or three years spent in close contact with and in study and observation of living nature will supply the future physician, Naturopath, Natural Therapist, Osteopath, Chiropractor, Hygienist, etc, with better training for his work than three years spent in pouring over diagrammatic drawing of "typical" vertebrates, "typical" worms, "typical" insects, etc., and in dissecting corpses. Books are valuable. The school room has it's place. The laboratory supplies information that is not gained elsewhere. Dissection is of great value. The instructor is of tremendous importance. But all of these things combined cannot take the place of first-hand observation of living nature. A few years ago a bewhiskered and long haired ascetic in New York conceived the idea that sexual reproduction is the source of degeneracy. He put forth the idea that parthenogenetic reproduction (virgin birth) is possible and that through this means a race of supermen and super-women could be produced. To prove that sex is an evil and a source of evil he told audiences in the big city that cows refuse relations with bulls and that bulls rape the cows. He succeeded in inducing many people to believe this nonsense. Only a little firsthand observation of living nature would have revealed to all of his dupes that there was no truth in his assertion. Hunters in the north woods learned many things about bears. They noticed their eating habits, the winter hibernation and the fact that, though they sleep through four or five months of winter, they do not foul their dens with bowel movements. Enema advocates should take notice of this four and five months without bowel movement. The hunters noticed two other significant facts that have been fully confirmed by scientists. When they killed the bears in the spring, they always found a plug, which they called a "tappin" or a "dottle" in the rectum. They thought the bear prepared this stopper and placed it in the rectum before going to sleep for winter to prevent the escape of any of the food in the intestine. Biologists, studying the matter, found this "tappin" to be a hardened piece of feces. It occurs automatically and not by intent. I have seen the same thing more than once in fasting patients. Except in cases of hemorrhoids or incipient hemorrhoids, these plugs never give any trouble. The second feature noticed by the hunters is that when a bear just settled for the winter is shot and the bowel opened the stench is "overpowering", the flesh "nauseating, fishy and unfit for food. " Jan Welzl, a hunter, says, in his Thirty 'Years in the Golden North, "It is useless to shoot him (the bear) at the beginning of his winter sleep, because he is then very fat, and has a disgusting smell of fish oil. The meat smells just as bad. " But the picture is different at the end of the winter's sleep. Welzl says: "But at the end of the winter sleep he has used it (the fat) all up and then bear's meat is a delicious treat. " Canadian government biologists confirm this, saying, that by spring the bears flesh has undergone a complete and remarkable change. It has then become "the most sought after of all northern foods. " Very little residue is found in the alimentary tract. "The bowel was odorless" say the biologists, "and quite sterile. No cultures of any of the intestinal flora or bacilli could be obtained. " Enema advocates are especially requested to notice the contrast between the foulness of the intestines and the unsavoriness of the flesh at the beginning of winter when regular bowel movements have been experienced and the odorlessness and sterility of the intestines and savoriness of the flesh after four to five months without a bowel movement. I repeat: There is a wealth of valuable information to be gained by observing living nature. We cannot hope to learn about life by going always to the morgue. Dissecting frogs and cats and mounting butterflies is a poor introduction to the science of life. When I first read an article on fasting (back in 1911), I had been previously prepared to accept fasting by having seen many sick animals fast. I was not prepared to accept the supposed need for lots of water drinking in sickness and especially in acute illness. For, I had repeatedly observed that the acutely sick animal refuses water. I had actually attempted to force side cows to drink by taking them to the water and sticking their noses in it. Sometimes a sick animal will take a sip or two of water, but it does not drink much or often. I accepted the enema, especially as a measure to be employed during the fast, and employed it for the first five years of my practice. But I could not close my eyes to it's many evils and it's unpleasantness. Finally, I began to think the matter over. I recalled that fasting animals did not use enemas. If they do not need them, I asked, why do my fasting patients need them. I began a search of fasting literature. I discovered that Jennings, Graham, Trall, Dewey, Tanner and others had not employed it in caring for their fasting patients. I was told that their patients would have recovered sooner had they employed the enema. In view of the known and admitted enervating effect of enemas, this did not seem reasonable. I still employed the enema. When I wrote Fundamentals as Nature Cure (1922) I advised the enema during the fast. When Dr. Claunch reviewed this book in Health First, he questioned the use of the enema. It is not a natural method, he pointed out. This was obvious. I decided to try omitting the enema during the fast. I did so cautiously at first, and for only short periods. Gradually I lengthened the periods between the enemas. Then, at the end of 1924, I discontinued their use. Did I find that my patients required longer time in which to get well? Did I find that they developed symptoms of intestinal poisoning? No. I found they recovered in less time, that they are more comfortable without than with the enema, and that bowel function after the fast is much more efficient if enemas have not been used. If the fast has not been long, the first movement is often very foul. But this foulness never gets into the blood stream as is popularly believed. I once cared for a man who had used enemas so long they no longer induced bowel movements. He would take an enema one morning and expel the water the following morning. There was never any evidence that any of this water was absorbed. There were no symptoms of poisoning. There was no decrease in the sense of thirst. There was no increase in urination. The amount of water expelled the following morning was the same as that injected the morning before. If toxins are absorbed from the colon they would certainly be more readily and more abundantly absorbed when the feces are liquified, as in the above case, than when the feces are in semi-solid form. There is no more reason why the colon should (or does) absorb fecal matter held in it for some time than there is why the bladder should absorb urine held in it for hours before being voided. The facts revealed by the study of the bears show that the fasting body is capable of breaking up (digesting) all germs, viruses and parasites, visible and invisible and using them as food. It is fully capable of protecting itself. Observations of nature, both in the wild state, in the domestic state and in human beings are sufficient to show beyond doubt that the enema is not a necessary or a helpful expedient. Despite all the propaganda that has been employed to popularize the enema and all the claims that have been made for it, the enema is an evil. Herbert M. Shelton Also read Bowel Action During Fasting by Dr. Shelton and What is Normal Bowel Activity? by Dr. Shelton |
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How Far Is Too Far? - HM Shelton
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIII, January, 1972 No. 5 How Far Is Too Far? Herbert M. Shelton On the next and succeeding pages we are presenting an article from the last four chapters of Forty Years in the Wilderness of Pills and Powders, by Dr. William A Alcott, first published in 1859. In this will be found a brief biographical sketch of the life and activities of Dr. Isaac Jennings. The story as given therein, about Dr. Jennings' desertion of the drugging practice and his adoption of what he called the "no-medicine plan" of caring for the sick, is all too brief, but enough quotations from other medical men of the period and enough facts about the practices of many of them are recounted to demonstrate the fact that there was much skepticism among medical men of that time. That there was more skepticism of the value of drugs in treating the sick among the professionals than among the laity is quite evident from the manner in which Dr. Jennings' former patients treated him when he revealed the secret of his unparalleled success. It will be noted, however, that he did not receive understanding treatment from his medical brethren. Instead of eagerly grasping the truth he had unfolded to them and using these in caring for their patients, they appealed to the ignorance, prejudices, and fears of his patients in order to discredit him. A few physicians agreed with him in part but they were unwilling or unable to go all the way. They were willing to admit that too many drugs were often given, but unwilling to concede that no drugs at all was the ideal. Their most common complaint against Jennings was that he went "too far. " In the preface of his second book The Philosophy of Human Life (1852), Jennings briefly discusses this objection in the following words:
Dr. Trall repeated over and over again that "truth never lies between two extremes. It is always one extreme or the other. " In the foregoing quotation from Dr. Jenning's work he substantially agrees with Trall. At one extreme he places good, at the other extreme he places evil. At what point between these two extremes can one find a desirable place to stand? In like manner at one extreme he places heavy drugging, at the other extreme, no drugging. At what point between these two extremes can one find a point on which to rest a practice of moderate drugging? Either drugs are useful or they are not; they either heal or they don't; they either do mischief, or they do good. There is no middle ground. Continuing in his discussion, Jennings says: "It will be the object of the following pages, in a plain familiar way, under a variety of aspects, by deductions from the Science of Physiology and reference to facts and the laws and analogies of nature, to show the unity of human physical life; that its tendency is always upward towards the highest point of health, in the lowest as well as in the highest state of vital funds; that what is called disease is nothing more nor less than impaired health, feeble vitality; that recovery from this state is effected, when effected at all, by a restorative principle, identical with life itself, susceptible of aid only from proper attention to air, diet, motion, and rest, affections of the mind, regulation of the temperature, &c., with occasional aid from what may justly be denominated surgical operations and appliances; and that medicine has no adaptation nor tendency to 'help nature' in her restorative work." A proper recognition of the unity of organic life leads inevitably to the conclusion that what the body does not need and cannot use in health is equally unneeded and unusable in disease. For example, a drug that was as popular when Jennings wrote, as penicillin is today and was used in as wide a variety of diseases as the latter drug, is mercury. Mercury is not a constituent of any of the fluids and tissues of the body and is not usable in the performance of any of the body's functions. It is equally as unusable in a state of illness as in health. The recognition of the unity of life led equally inevitably to a recognition of the fact that only those things that are useful in health can be useful in disease. The proper care of the sick organism is, therefore, not a collection of treatments with adventitious and exotic substances, but the adjustment of the normal means of life to the needs and capacities of the sick. These needs and means are Hygienic, not therapeutic. Further continuing his explanation, Jennings says: "An assumption that disease is antagonistic to health, involving some quality or property that tends to the destruction of life, something that must be counteracted by nature or art, or both, or life will be the forfeit. On this foundation, the whole fabric of Medicine in all its multitudinous forms, has ever rested. As often as new systems have been erected on the ruins of old ones, they have been reared on this unstable foundation as their common basis. Indeed, the correctness of this assumption seems never to have been called in question, and the difficulties that have constantly obstructed the course, and frustrated the designs of physicians, in their endeavors to raise 'therapeutics' from 'its merest infancy,' or drag it from 'the domain of empiricism,' have been sought for in all other sources, while this, the true source of all their embarrassment, has remained unsuspected. " Herbert M. Shelton |
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Hygiene Consciousness Needed - HM Shelton
Hygienic Review Vol. XXXIV, June, 1973 No. 10 Hygiene Consciousness Needed by Herbert M. Shelton A number of years ago Simon Gould went to Florida (from New York) and underwent a fast of about twenty days. I believe he fasted at Dr. Esser's Hygienic Health Ranch in Lake Worth, Florida. Several days after the fast was broken and, while the experience was still fresh in his mind, he wrote me urging me to proclaim in the Review that fasting is Hygiene and that all else is merely an adjunct. I had run into this idea many times before; I have encountered it many times since. The idea that some one factor of Hygiene is Hygiene does not always cluster around the fast. Sometimes the thought is expressed that diet is Hygiene, at other times the opinion is voiced that happiness is Hygiene, or that physical exercise is Hygiene. A recent example of the idea that fasting is Hygiene was carried in the Hygienews, March, 1973 under the heading "Some of the Instructors Teaching at the Convention," where we were told the names of the following speakers and informed that they conducted fasts: "Dr. Keki R. Sidhwa of England, Director of his own fasting institution; Dr. William L. Esser, practitioner of Lake Worth, Florida, who has been conducting fasting for over 35 years; Dr. D. J. Scott, practitioner of Cleveland, Ohio, with over twenty-five years of experience in the science of fasting people for the recovery of innumerable ailments; . . . Dr. J. M. Brosious, St. Petersburg, Florida, who has supervised fasting for the recovery of health since 1942 . . . . The informed Hygienist will know that people do not fast for the "recovery of illness." Who wants to recover illness, anyhow? I doubt very much that the writer of the foregoing item about the convention speakers intended to convey to the readers of Hygienews the idea that fasting and Hygiene are synonymous terms, but this is precisely the idea that is conveyed by the language used. Each of the men named wants to be known as a Hygienist and wants his institution known as a Hygienic institution, not as a mere fasting place. By putting all the emphasis on fasting and excluding all mention of Hygiene and the other Hygienic factors, readers cannot but get the idea that fasting is Hygiene—diet, exercise, and other Hygienic factors are mere adjuncts. The fast is an essential factor element in a total plan of life that, in its wholeness constitutes the only valid means of restoring, as it is the only valid means of preserving health. The whole plan of life constitutes Hygiene. What we have just said of the fast may be said, and indeed we do say it, of every other Hygienic factor. For example, we may say that exercise is an essenial factor element in a total plan of life, that in its wholeness constitutes the only valid means of restoring, as it is the only valid means of preserving health. It may be understandable that food is the element of Natural Hygiene that has the strongest appeal to the neophyte in Hygiene and that he is inclined to think primarily of this subject when he thinks of Hygiene. Unless he or she is young and athletically inclined the importance of exercise is likely to be overlooked, as is also sunshine, if there is a strong inclination towards prudishnss. Rest and sleep are factors that may not receive due consideration, especially by the young. A realization of individual responsibility is also difficult in people who have been taught, from infancy up, to depend on the physician and his bag of tricks. They are likely to want somebody to do for them what they can do for themselves and no one else can. An urgent heed among Hygienists is that of developing Hygiene consciousness. We need to learn to think of Hygiene as an integrated whole, each factor of which is correlated with every other factor and cease to think of Hygiene in terms of particular fragments. When a Hygienic practitioner or Hygienic establishment is mentioned we need to be able to think of Hygiene in its wholeness and not think of the institution as a fasting place or the practitioner as one who conducts fasts. Not everyone who goes to a Hygienic institution is given a fast, but everyone eats, rests, exercises and seeks to acquire emotional poise. Fasting is conducted in many places that are not Hygienic. A place is not Hygienic merely because fasts are conducted therein. To label Hygienic institutions as fasting places will inevitably lead to the confused idea that fasting places- are Hygienic institutions. Hygienists, of all people, should avoid this mistake. We should begin today to develop a deeper and broader understanding of the Hygienic System; we (should learn to think of Hygiene as bionomy and not as a mere program of fasting. Each factor element in nature's grand system of Hygiene should be given its proper place in the integrated whole and thought of as of equal importance with every other factor, not merely as something that is an adjunct to the fast but as an essential integer within a vital synthesis. It is also important that we learn to think of Hygiene as a means of keeping well and not merely as a means of getting well. It is in its role as a preserver of health that it assumes highest importance. It performs no function in the work of restoration that is different from the work it performs in the work of preserving health. Herbert M. Shelton |
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To INHS Discussion Board: I read the book years ago "Is Menstruation Necessary" and my
girlfriend wants to know if hygienists still feel the same way
today. In the book it says that ovulation is not the same as
menstruation and that menstruation is a disease. Also, does anyone
know the truth about animals menstruating? I heard that they do but
that book says that they don't. My girlfriend would really
appreciate a response to this. Thanks. Iain Should Women Menstruate? - Herbert M. Shelton Hygienic Review Vol. IV May, 1943 No. 9 Should Women Menstruate? by Herbert M. Shelton What is called by the editor of She "a challenge to science" appears in the January issue of that magazine in the form of an article by Tora Selander Nelson, under the title: "Is Woman's Cycle Necessary?" She's editor assures us that "There is positive evidence to warrant the hope that the menses can be eventually eliminated". In a box the editor says: "The author spent many months of intensive study in exploring this subject and is well qualified to offer her fascinating hypothesis. .Information and advice was obtained from the Museum of Natural. History, the New York City Medical Center and the Academy of Medicine, but the views expressed are the author's own." Let us first answer the question that forms the title of her article before turning to the article itself, which does not even discuss the question in its title. "Is Woman's Cycle Necessary?" To answer this question, it is first necessary that we understand what is meant by woman's cycle. This is the term applied to a whole complex series of phenomena included in the changes in the ovaries and womb during the maturation of an ovum, its expulsion from the ovary and, finally, if impregnation does not occur, its expulsion from the womb. This cycle has two possible endings: (1) It may end in pregnancy, birth and lactation; or (2) it may end in the expulsion of the unimpregnated ovum and the casting off of the temporary "lining" of the womb. Obviously the first of these cycles may be interrupted by abortion (spontaneous or induced) or by miscarriage. Mrs. Nelson does not discuss the necessity for this cycle of events in her article. The question is hardly discussible. It would be like discussing the necessity of the peach tree to put forth blossoms before it can produce peaches. The cycle is essential and can be avoided only by greatly impairing or completely wrecking the female reproductive system. What, then, does Mrs. Nelson discuss? The reader will find the answer to this in the editor's statement that "there is positive evidence to warrant the hope that the menses can eventually be eliminated". She discusses the necessity for the customary loss of blood, or hemorrhage, that marks the end of a cycle that does not end in pregnancy. Woman's complete ovulation cycle covers a period of twenty-eight days (there are cases that run longer and some that run less time than this) and, if pregnancy does not intervene, ends with the sloughing off of the temporary lining of the uterus and, commonly, with more or less loss of blood. What Mrs. Nelson wants to know, is this: is the loss of blood necessary. She presumes to speak for her sex when she says: "all of us (women) have resented this ignominious interruption of our normal lives as a beastly injustice." "Nature", she says, "is cruel and stupid". For this nature has laid upon woman the entire "burden" of pregnancy and childbirth and has so arranged matters that "for some thirty years of our lives, all the goals we set for ourselves" are "divided". She resents the fact that "nature" ignores woman's petty social, political, artistic and commercial schemes. These trivial artificialities loom larger in her mind than the fundamental processes of life and she resents the fact that child-bearing interferes with cock-tail hour and theatre-going. This attitude toward the phenomena of life makes it impossible to understand these phenomena or to find a true solution for the problems presented by abnormal phenomena. For years we have been saying in our lectures and writings that menstruation (Mrs. Nelson calls it, after the medical fashion, a "periodic function", though questioning its normally) is an abnormal phenomenon, that it belongs in the category of disease and can be remedied in all, or nearly all, cases. Mrs. Nelson discovers, in her questioning of Science, that ovulation and menstruation are two separate processes and that while ovulation is essential to reproduction, menstruation is not. She says: "There are women who never menstruate, and yet bear children. Besides, the overwhelming majority of lower mammals, with reproductive organs astonishingly like our own, do not". But when she asks "science" what is the reason for this "function" of menstruation, she learns to her astonishment that, "strangely enough, science today does not profess to know". Briefly reviewing the ripening and release of an ovum and the uterine changes necessary to the beginning of a possible pregnancy she says: "So far, then, the animal and the human processes, are entirely alike, but here the similarity ends. In the lower animals as soon as the climax of the cycle is over, the enlarged blood vessels slowly shrink to their normal size and the accumulated blood, not being needed by any lodging embryo, is redistributed in the general blood stream. In the human, to the contrary, the overfilled capillaries break under the strain and the blood drains into the womb, to appear, eventually, as the menstrual flow." "Why this general mess, discomfort and often severe pain?" she asks. "What is accomplished through this regular and repeated wounding?" "Why, after Nature has perfected the mammalian reproductive system for hundreds of millions of years, with everything running smoothly up a constantly refined scale of evolution, does she start to complicate matters?" She turns to her "authorities". Metchnikoff and Francis Marshall suggest that there is "something amiss," but they do not seem to know what. "Research scientists", when asked why women hemorrhage each month, "merely say that their knowledge is incomplete". She feels that the "scientists" who are practically all men (the remainder are all masculinoids) do not consider the matter of pressing importance because "they are never, in the midst of some exciting experiment, doubled up with an agonizing ache". The question comes to us: If these men are not interested in women's problems, why don't women solve their own problems? Did Mrs. Nelson go to the men and does she resent their apparent lack of interest because she feels that women are incapable of solving their own problems? Shame upon these imitators of men! If they can drink like men, and smoke like men, and philander like men', and become welders and riveters like men, why ask men to solve their problems for them? Mrs. Nelson makes another startling discovery. She says: "Take, for instance, the nature of the hemorrhage. With the one exception of childbirth, all kinds of bleeding, be it nasal, pulmonary or intestinal, are considered a symptom of disease". Why is the bleeding accompanying childbirth not also considered abnormal? Why does even Mrs. Nelson assume that this bleeding is normal? Does she find it in the lower mammals at birth? She adds: "If to any such bleeding you add a rising temperature, an irregular pulse-beat, changes in blood pressure, pain, and a general lowering of-muscular tone, you certainly would have any patient worried. As for any physician calling the whole a 'natural' process, the chances are remote. "Nor do these recognized features of menstruation stand alone. There are physical changes as well. No woman needs to be told about the extra effort needed to remain up to par in her work at such times, or about her feelings of depression or elation. Her temperament, for a few days, becomes undeniably mercurial". To these physical and nervous symptoms let us add the frequent headaches, pains in the back and legs, pimples on the face, constipation or diarrhea and peculiar body odor. She tells us that investigations of crime records in many countries show "the percentage of feminine crime is incomparably higher during the menstrual period; and as far as suicide is concerned, the evidence of serious mental disturbance is simply terrifying". We ourselves have noted, in dealing with insane patients, that all their symptoms of insanity are much worse during menstruation. Mrs. Nelson makes out a good case for the idea that menstruation is an evidence of disease, but she does not draw the necessary inference there from. She is simply not willing to face the facts in the case and point to its true causes. She finds instead, that menstruation is simply the outgrowth of an evolutionary short-coming. We will come to this later. In our book, "Menstruation - Its Cause and Cure (out of print) first published over ten years ago, parts of it published much earlier, we say: Ovulation is a normal process and is not necessarily accompanied with any sanguineous flow -bloody flux- or "show of blood". It is quite true that there is usually a loss of blood during part of the period of ovulation, but it is also equally true that with almost all women in civilized society, the period is marked by other morbid symptoms. We have no more right to consider the loss of blood to be an essential part of the process of ovulation than we have to regard the accompanying pain to be so.* * * My studies and experiences have led me inevitably to the conclusion that the loss of blood is pathological and that it is in no sense a natural (normal) or necessary part of the physiological process of ovulation. The fact was pointed out by Dr. Trail over seventy-five years ago that in practically all cases the loss of blood "is in almost exact inverse ratio to the constitutional tone and vigor." In Menstruation Its Cause and Cure, we say: * * * in what are termed1" civilized countries, women oscillate between great extremes. In some there is no menstrual flux, in others it is very scanty and lasts but a few hours, or for a day or two, while in others it lasts seven or eight days, accompanied with much pain and discomfort, and the flow is so profuse as to be almost hemorrhagic. These marked variations in menstruation correspond in exact ratio with the varying degrees of health of different women, or In the same woman at different times. There does not exist a greater difference between the human female and the female among the lower animals in this matter, than exists between some women and other women. Turning to the other side of the picture she says: "Those of us who go in for sports, exploration and other physically demanding activities, know, that the length of the period usually stands in direct proportion to our physical condition. If the latter is top-notch, as it is apt (likely) to be after systematic training, the menstrual time is shortened and the loss of blood reduced to a minimum. Every so often, under such conditions, the menses disappear altogether, and this disappearance invariably corresponds with our highest peak of health." Here, Mrs. Nelson finds the key to the solution of her problems, but she rejects it. Ten years ago, we pointed out these facts, plus the further fact, that, as physical vigor increases the pain and other symptoms accompanying menstruation also lessen and finally disappear. After briefly discussing a lot of hokum about thyroid deficiency increasing menstruation and thyroid sufficiency decreasing the flow (she fails to see these two conditions as part of the general health or lack of it) she comes to her hypothesis of the cause of menstruation. She starts with the hypothesis that man is descended from an ape, and that the ape is descended from a quadruped. Instead of walking on all four of our feet, we stand and walk on our hind legs. While we have been in this unnatural position a long time, evolution has failed to adjust our internal organs to the upright position; they are still adjusted to the horizontal position of quadrupeds. This allows our organs to crowd down into the -pelvis and the small "extra" pressure thus put upon the blood vessels of the pelvis results in menstruation. This is a hopeless picture. If menstruation is a disease we may hope to remedy it. If improved health lessens or abolishes it, we may even hope to interest a few women in improved health. But if it is due to an evolutionary mal-adjustment, the trouble can never be remedied. According to the apostles of transformism (miscalled evolution) man has been man and has undergone no change in his biological equipment for at least five-hundred thousand years, probably much longer. If evolutionary adjustments are so slow Mrs. Nelson will never live long enough to see her problem solved. She approaches the true solution, but she runs away from it. In Menstruation-Its Cause and Cure we also considered the circulatory interference caused by sagging abdominal organs, which we estimated exist in well over ninety per cent of women, over fourteen years old. We say: When we consider that in the average woman, due to lack of their normal support, the abdominal organs gravitate toward and rest upon the pelvic organs, and thus interfere with the return circulation from the pelvis, we easily understand why the hyperemia (excess of blood) becomes great enough to result in a leakage of blood and blood serum through the lax tissues of the uterus. We did not attribute this sagging of organs to evolutional short-comings, but to a failure of the normal supports. We pointed out that only where there is unantagonized gravitation does ptosis occur and that the healthy organism effectually opposes gravitation. We attributed pelvic laxness and loss of tone to the same causes that produce 'laxness and loss of tone throughout the body to which are added, "weight from above-weight of a clogged colon in constipation, pressure from gas distention of the intestines, sagging of the abdominal organs due to faulty posture, muscular weakness and lack of exercise, pressure of belts, corsets, tight and heavy clothing, etc." Here are causes that may be understood and removed and here are conditions that we can remedy. Ptosis may be both prevented and remedied. One cannot hope to prevent or remedy u normal condition that has resulted from the hypothetical slow evolution of man from a quadruped, no matter how faulty it may be. Suffice it to say that our experiences have convinced us that the periodic blood-loss sustained by woman is due solely to a loss of integrity in her tissues (the local loss of integrity is merely part of the general loss of integrity) and not to any failure of adjustment. We deplore the too frequent use of the hypothesis of transformism to account for defects that are more easily accounted for by facts close at home. Evolutional failings (lack of adjustments) are remediable only by more ages of slow evolutionary process; failings due to factors over which we have control are remediable now. She sees a way out. Or, did some manufacturer of endocrine products see it for her? She wants some of our endocrinologists to find a glandular product - "be it thyroid or pituitary- which, if given in an individually adjusted dose, would cause woman's menstrual process to stop short just before the breaking-point of her uterine capillaries." This is a commercial program that ignores the harm that may result from the procedure. It is a voodoo program that seeks to control the forces of nature but does not seek to remove the cause of the abnormality. Mrs. Nelson spent too much time with the museum of "Natural" history, the New York City Medical Center and the Academy of Medicine. She wants a substitute for health. She will be satisfied with a crutch rather than a correction. She does not desire improved health and increased vigor in women, She does not want a means of normalizing female function. She is a pitiable victim of current medical and commercial thinking. We do not share her view that some substitute for good health and the things upon which this depends should be devised to suppress menstruation. Our modern trend is to seek substitutes for normal functions rather than for normalization of function. We prefer arch supports to normal arches, eye-glasses to normalization of visual function, dental plates to good teeth, abdominal supports to normal abdominal muscles, vaccines and serums to natural resistance, artificial vitamins to natural foods, insulin to a good pancreas, cathartics to normal bowel function, "twilight sleep and Caeserean section to the pleasures of normal childbirth. Our love of ersatz physiology and anatomy (substitutes for normal function and structure) grows out of our ready acceptance of and satisfaction with a low standard of health and our lazy compliance with low conditions. This is a threefold source of mischief-first, there is the neglect of those positive natural conditions upon which normal function depends; second, there is the disregard of the impairing influences that are primarily responsible for deterioration of function and structures; and third, there are the harmful effects of the substitutes, themselves. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Hygienic Position Verified
Hygienic Review Vol. XXVII May, 1966 No. 9 Hygienic Position Verified Herbert M. Shelton Many times during the past several years I have told my readers that all drugs are poisonous and that it was folly to expend time and money investigating each drug when it is possible to discard them all in one blanket condemnation. I am happy to be able to present some confirmation of the view from authoritative medical sources. I am going to quote from an article entitled, "Toxicology and the Biomedical Sciences" which appeared in the June, 1965, issue of Science, the official organ of the American Association For The Advancement of Science. This article was jointly authored by Bernard B. Brodie, M. D., chief of Laboratory of Chemical Pharmacology in the National Heart Institute; George J. Cosmides, M. D., program director, Pharmacology-Toxicology Program, National Institutes of Health; and David P. Rall, M. D., associate scientific director for Experimental Therapeutics, National Cancer Institute. The high standing of each of these men assures us the last word on the subject. To begin with they say, "The number and variety of chemicals that affect man has increased at an alarming rate and created a public health problem of major proportions. We are confronted with a profusion of chemicals in the form of industrial and municipal wastes, air and water pollutants, herbicides, pesticides, cosmetics, food additives, as well as drugs administered over extended periods of time, and yet we do not know what these substances do to biological systems. In effect, we are thrust into global experiments for which we are not prepared. "For some of these hazards, such as automobile exhaust fumes or cigarette smoke, we are unlikely to find more compelling evidence of their deleterious effects. It remains for industrial and governmental bodies to utilize in the public interest all the information now available, and for the scientific community to continue experimentation on the basic mechanisms of their effects and to find ways of preventing or attenuating their hazard. "There remains, however, a major problem with the vast number of chemical compounds whose possible poisonous effects are not known or cannot be predicted. It is this area which is the subject of our article. " Then it is that these authors confirm my position that it is futile to test chemical substances, one by one, when it is known that all of them are toxic. Concerning this they say: "It seems futile to record one by one the biological effects of millions of chemical entities without the development of unifying and simplifying generalizations. It is evident that new means must be sought to accelerate the acquisition of new knowledge on the effects of chemicals on living materials, and to develop a system for the rapid dissemination of such information, In this article we outline some of the problems in toxicology and offer recommendations as to how these problems should be approached. " While it is fully acknowledged by the authors that our modern chemical environment is a mass of toxins, that new toxic substances are being added to our environment daily, they do not offer anything so simple as the discontinuance of air pollution, water pollution, food pollution, and country-side pollution with insecticides, but have taken for granted that the increasing poisoning of our environment is to continue and that the so-called researchers are to continue testing the various toxins to determine the effects of each. In their article, they practically ignore environmental pollution after the initial admission that it exists and constitutes a serious problem and largely confine their attention to drugs. Of drugs they say: "Investigations of drugs are frequently complicated by the difficulties of eliciting their subtle, often unusual deleterious effects, and of evaluating these effects against the beneficial actions. Even members of a single species can vary in their response to a particular substance, yet large numbers of people may be exposed to a drug on the basis of toxicity in relatively few animals. " A recent example of the manner in which human beings are subjected to drug dangers after relatively slight animal testing is that of a new birth control drug, NK-665, manufactured by the Merck Company. While the drug was still being tested on animals, large numbers of women were used in so-called clinical tests on the same drug. When it was found that it produced cancer in the test animals, testing on women was immediately discontinued. Whatever else we may say about drug and drug testing, it does seem that all animal testing should be completed before a new drug is tested on human beings. In saying this I do not mean to be understood as having anything against the animals. I pity these poor victims of "science" the same as I do the poor human guinea-pigs who are submitted to drugging, whether for test purposes or for therapeutic purposes. I do not put any value in the medical stupidity that drugs that have usual or unusual deleterious effects may also have "beneficial actions. " Drugs are simply poisonous, and the only effects they can have are harmful ones. These authors say: "At present, a potential therapeutic agent is first screened for biological activity in laboratory mammals. If the substance shows potentially useful pharmacological or therapeutic activity, then the toxic effects are determined in experimental animals before the substance is tested in man. Thus the pharmacological and toxic effects exerted by a drug must he predicted from the effects in laboratory animals. Our modern system of drug development, therefore, depends on the assumption of a high degree of correlation between effects in animals and man. That such predictions are often unreliable raises serious questions regarding these tests. " Concerning this same difference between effects following drugs when given to animals and when given to man, they say: "In the past, variations among species in the response to a drug were attributed to differences in the sensitivity of receptor sites, and the prospects of obtaining data from animals that would be applicable to man were bleak. However, variation in drug metabolism within and between species is now known to be the rule rather than the exception... " Here again we have these men stupidly referring to the biological activity of chemical substances and to drug metabolism. It is becoming quite common for pharmacologists and physicians to discuss the metabolism of drugs, when they should know that there is no such thing as drug metabolism not any more than there is such a thing as biological activity of chemical components. Loose language of this type indicates loose thinking, or else it indicates a deliberate misuse of terms in an effort to deceive, to create confusion, and in an effort to deceive readers. Another frequent expression of these men of so-called science is "drug receptors. " They regard the various organs and tissues of the body as receivers of drugs when in reality they reject them. Returning, however, to the difficulties of extrapolating the effects occasioned by a drug in one animal to another animal, let me quote further from these authors. They say: "In tests of subacute and chronic toxicity, differences between animals and man in rates of drug metabolism are particularly important. Despite a large variability in metabolism, the acute lethal toxicity of many barbiturates (administered intravenously) is almost identical in various mammalian species because of the short time lapse between administration of drug and death, On the other hand, the lethal toxicity of a drug will vary considerably if time elapses between drug administration and death. A substance metabolized in rats 50 times more rapidly than in man may have the same acute toxicity in both species, but the chronic toxicity may be vastly different because of drug cumulation. Phenyl-hutazone, an antirheumatic agent metabolized much more rapidly in the rat than in man, causes the retention of sodium. Rats given a single dose of drug do not show this effect. To maintain the drug at a plasma concentration that produces sodium retention in man (about 150 ug/ml), the rat must be given a total daily dosage of 400 milligrams per kilogram of body weight compared with the 5 to 10 milligrams per kilogram required in man. "Much of the research on the teratogenic effects of thalidomide in animals is difficult to interpret. The drug is said to produce a long-lasting sedation in man and the horse but only a fleeting effect in most other species. We know of no studies that relate the plasma concentration to the teratogenic effects. From the short-lived sedative action in the rat, one would suspect that this animal might inactivate the drug much more rapidly than does man. "Thus, in toxicity studies it is important to compare in the various species the plasma or tissue concentration at which a drug elicits an adverse effect. Until this has been done with a variety of agents we cannot know to what extent species variability in toxicity depends on differences in rate of' drug metabolism or differences in inherent toxicity. " By drug metabolism and inactivating the drug they mean the same thing. They have in mind only the means employed by the body in defending itself against the "inherent toxicity" of chemical substances that are foolishly introduced into the body. After all the testing on men and animals has been done, there still remains the variability between men and women. For example, these authors say: "A common cause of toxic reactions arises from 'overdosage' because of person-to-person variability in rates of drug metabolism; the same daily dose of a drug may cure, cause severe toxicity, or have no effects whatsoever... Each person seems to have his own pattern of metabolism for these drugs. (They have previously mentioned certain drugs) The consequences of individual differences in drug metabolism are exaggerated in long-term therapy... " It may be well to consider a few more statements of theirs concerning the harmfulness of drugs. They say: "Drugs used medicinally may produce adverse effects by causing biochemical lesions and cellular damage, rather than by exaggerating the actions of physiological control systems. " "Some drugs will invariably produce cellular damage if the concentration in the plasma is high enough. For example, isoniazid at almost the same plasma concentration in animals and man reacts with pyridoxal to produce adverse effects on the nervous system. In fact, isoniazid produces a neuropathy in patients who, by genetic predisposition, (a mere suppositionauthor) metabolize the drug excessively slowly and therefore receive the maximum antituberculous effects of the drug. " They tell us that certain drugs cause delayed toxic reactions and that cancer production is among the important aspects of chemical toxicity. While certain drugs which are classed as cyto-toxic agents (cellular poisons) cause necrosis of the liver, others produce irreversible but fatal lesions in the kidneys, and certain others produce cataracts. They point out that tissue damage is related to drug accumulation and say that small amounts of some drugs may be retained in the body for months and even years. Thus, if they are prescribed for regular use, they tend to accumulate in amounts that cause great damage and death. To the intelligent individual it would seem that men, viewing all of these dangers produced by drugs, would warn against their use. But these men issue no such warning. They are medical men engaged in prescribing drugs and in promoting the use of drugs. Their interest is not in discrediting drug usage but in increasing the drugging practice. Were it suggested to either of these three men that it might be more advantageous to the sick to provide them with helpful things, rather than ply them with destructive chemicals, they would indignantly characterize the one making the suggestion as a member of the "lunatic fringe. " They would be on the alert to protect their racket and would be among the first to denounce as an ignoramus and quack any man who should dare to challenge the validity of a system that seeks to restore the sick to health by poisoning them. Yet there is no more sense in poisoning the sick than there is in poisoning the well. Why should we pollute the human blood stream any more than we should pollute our water supply or our atmosphere? Why should we pollute our cellular structures any more than we should pollute our foods? The growing problem confronting mankind, consequent upon the effort of chemists to take over human life and deal with it as though it could be handled in a test tube, cannot be solved by any amount of drug research. Human life will be safe only when the last physician has been strangled with the guts of the last chemist. Herbert M. Shelton |
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Man's Dietetic Character
As a preface to this masterful treatise on Man's Dietetic Character by Herbert Shelton let me say that I believe herein lies the truth of meat eating for man. Meat eating is a bio-immoral habit and a de-evolutionary practice. Only an addict with a pernicious habit to defend can deny the facts. One of the crowning tenets of Natural Hygiene is the marvelous economy of the body. This same type of intelligent economy when applied to things outside the body can and does have positive effect. However there is no economy in meat eating, if we are to propound a philosophy of health to all of mankind that includes this backward habit, there would not be enough meat to go around. Meat is not economical. The purpose of Hygiene is to evolve into always greater spheres of Health and Intelligence, to harken back to an un-enlightened time and adopt the destructive habits then in vogue is to betray the glorious destiny of Mankind. Of course man may survive eating meat, may even appear to thrive on it, but this certainly does not make the practice mans most intelligent choice. The intelligent choice is to see the writing on the wall and recognize meat eating for what it is, a temporary aberration in the development of man. If we control our habits then we can control our biological adaptability as well, so let us use our intelligence and voluntarily forgo the negative for a truly economical state of health. - karl (Note that this is Karl's opinion and not INHS'. And, this is an early 1944 view by Dr. Shelton. Also read his later view in The Life of Primitives - 1969, webmaster.) Click here for INHS view on veganism. Click here for an article by Dr. Virginia Vetrano about B12 Hygienic Review Vol. V January, 1944 No. 5 Man's Dietetic Character Herbert M. Shelton The correlation between food habits and the structure of the digestive system is very apparent in the vertebrate animals — those having a back bone. For convenience these may be divided, with reference to their dietetic habits, into frugivorous, herbivorous, omnivorous and carnivorous types. For our present purposes, we need consider only the higher vertebrates or mammals for, while man is often referred to a "poor fish", we can learn little about his dietetic status by studying fish. Comparative anatomists tell us that "there is an excellent, although not perfect correlation between the food habits of the animal and the length and shape of the intestine." It is my opinion that where this correlation is not perfect, it is due to the fact that the "adaptation" is not completed. I shall refer to this again towards the end of this article. The herbivores possess a complex stomach, a long intestine, usually a large caecum and a large intestine that is not continuous with the small intestine. In these animals the small intestine enters the large intestine at approximately right angles some distance from its anterior or blind end. This blind end, or blind pouch, the caecum, is large in herbivores and is a functional part of the intestine. The digestive tract of the carnivores is much simpler in structure and decidedly shorter than that of the herbivores. The stomach is simple, the esophagus is relatively larger and the intestine much shorter. The order of bats shows the correlation of the digestive tract with the dietary habits. These run all the way from pure frugivores at one end to parasites at the other. The fruit eating bats have longer intestines than the carnivorous ones, while the shortest intestine known among mammals is seen in the blood eating (parasitic) bats. Comparing the relative lengths of the digestive tracts of the various dietetic classes, it is found that in carnivores it is three times the length of the body (there are a few exceptions); in the herbivores, as in the sheep, it is thirty times the length of the body; in the omnivores ten times; in the frugivores ten to twelve times. Let us pause a minute and view the human digestive tract and compare it with the above. Comparative anatomists tell us that "the human mouth cavity and esophagus are typically mammalian. The stomach is a simple sac slightly divided into two regions. "Man possesses a simple pouch-like stomach." hence cannot be classed with the herbivores which have a complex stomach, the cud chewing herbivores having a stomach divided into four distinct regions. His (man's) digestive tract is twelve times the length of his body, the same as is found in the frugivores. In man, the higher apes and the herbivores the colon is sacculated, while in the carnivores the colon is smooth. Man does not therefore, fall properly into the class carnivora. It is commonly thought by vegetarians and fruitarians that the diet of an animal is determined by the internal adaptations of the animal — that an animal eats what he does because he is what he is. The lion, for instance, eats flesh because he is constructed and constituted for such a diet, his claws, his teeth, his digestive tract, his instincts fit him for this bill-of-fare. That this is true today seems evident enough; but has this always been so? Was the lion always a flesh-eater, a killer, and was he always adapted to the flesh diet? We do not think so. We think that internal and external adaptations are largely determined by feeding habits. We think that a change of feeding habits results in a change in adaptations, so that, in the end, feeding habits determine not only the anatomy and physiology of the organism, but even its status and its survival. Specializations that are based on bio-immoral conduct tend towards death. They are negative compensations and belong more properly in the field of pathology rather than in that of physiology. We said that man's digestive tract is twelve times the length of his body. This is not always so for, the same correlation of structure with habit is seen in the human species as is found in the order of bats. The Eskimos have a shorter digestive tract, the difference being found chiefly in a shorter intestine, than the white races. Are the Eskimos carnivorous because they possess a shorter digestive tract, or do they possess a shorter digestive tract because they practice carnivorism? Which comes first, habit or adaptation? Were the primitive ancestors of the Eskimos carnivorous, or were they frugivorous or omnivorous? Have the Eskimos acquired a shorter digestive tract since they were driven into the far North and forced to live largely on flesh food, or did their ancestors from the South bequeath to them their shorter digestive tracts? It is my view that the shortening of the digestive tract resulted from the adoption of a flesh diet: that it is a negative compensation for violation of the fundamental symbiotic requirements of life. I believe, also, that all carnivores are descended from once noble ancestors who lived without stealth and murder. They have undergone modifications of structure and function (chiefly losses) to adapt themselves to their changed way of life and anti-symbiotic diet. To return to bats, which have been previously mentioned, I think we can get a better picture of the correlation of food and food-getting with structure than the various tribes of man can supply. There are a great number of kinds of bats in the world and they are of various sizes. In their dietetic habits they range all the way from strict frugivores to rank carnivores and cannibals. One variety of bat has actually become a blood sucker — a vampire. Some of them have not completely abandoned their fruit diet, but eat both fruit and flesh. Some are insectivorous, others are known to catch fish. It is interesting to note that the intestines of the vampire bat is shorter in proportion than that of any other beast, while its stomach is prolonged into a long tubular pouch. Its teeth are unlike that of any other bat - in bats generally the incisors are small and the "canines" are large, but in the blood-sucker the upper incisors and "canines" are both large and very sharp edged, while its grinders, not being required by its blood-diet, have degenerated into small and unimportant vestiges. The fruit eating bats are larger than their meat eating relatives. It may not be amiss to point out that the repellent features and odor of insectivorous, carnivorous, cannibalistic and vampire bats are lacking in the fruit eating bats. Indeed, one naturalist says of the fruit eating bats that "with their keen, intelligent-looking, doe-like heads." they "inspire nothing but friendly interest when seen at close hand, and might quite probably be popular as pets if they were better known." The hammer-head bat of the Gabu district of French Equatorial Africa, a fruit eater with a great partiality for figs, is an exception to the better-looking qualities of the frugivorae. He is described as hideous, though in his photograph he is not as hideous as the carnivore. Monstrosity is everywhere the outgrowth of illegitimate food and food-getting. The bats show us an unbroken descent from strict frugivorae to frugo-carnivorae. to carni-vorae, to cannibals, to near parasites with a corresponding degeneration of form and loss of status with each step of their dietary degradation. They suffer negative compensations — losses and modifications of structures and functions—which are entailed by their illegitimate food supplies and methods of food-getting. The vampire bat has actually undergone some of the modifications seen in parasites. It would be possible to extend our study of comparative anatomy to cover many other parts of the body, but space limitations do not permit. It must suffice for the present that we say that among the higher apes there are several species of them whose alimentary organs in all respects very nearly resemble those of man and in that species which approaches closest to man in general organization and appearance, the alimentary organs, in almost every particular, so closely resemble those of man, that they are easily mistaken for them. Sylvester Graham used the alimentary organs of the orang-outang as "the true type with which we are to compare those of the human body, in order to ascertain the natural dietetic character of man. He pointed out that "in all that the organs of the orang differ from those of man, they bring the orang between man and carnivorous animals; and thus, as it were, push man still further from a carnivorous character." Graham wrote several years before Darwin derived man from an "ape-like arboreal ancestor." It has always seemed unaccountable to the present writer that transformationists (they have stolen the term evolution, and miscall themselves evolutionists), while insisting that man and the apes are brothers (or cousins) and are descended from a common ancestor and that man (or his ancestor) formerly lived in the trees (frugivorous) also at the same time, insist that primitive man was carnivorous, even cannibalistic. For, while his organization places him at the apex of creation and shows him to be the arch-type of the frugivorae, they have pictured him as more beastly than any beast." In his Outline of History, H. G. Wells, following the "scientific" pattern (or line) describes our early ancestor, just after he had emerged from the ape-stage, and says: "When he found dead animals, semi-putrid, he would relish them nonetheless. He would eat his unworthy children. He would seek larger animals in a weak and dying state. Failing to find them, dead and half-rotten examples would be made to suffice." This is the crowning achievement of our carnivorous biology. This "early man" who has been created by biological speculation, should have descended from a jackal or a hyena, not from an ape. His dietary habits as "described" by Wells, relate him to saprophytes (scavengers) and carnivorae and not to the frugivorae from which, according to the hypothesis, he sprung. It is our contention that, instead of early man being the degraded beast that Wells and most Darwinians picture him, the carnivores and saprophytes of the present and past have "fallen" from their once high estate to their present state of degradation. Herbert M. Shelton Note: INHS does NOT endorse veganism, click here for more info. |
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What is Normal Bowel Activity? Herbert M. Shelton Hygienic Review Few, if any, organs of man's body are subjected to as much abuse as his colon. For ages it has been the object of attack by all schools of so-called healing and by all manners of means. The colon has been accused of being lazy; it has been claimed to be superfluous and its removal advocated; it has been blamed as the source of almost all the so-called diseases with which man suffers. As a consequence of this, it has been goaded and pricked with laxatives, cathartics, and purges, cut with knives, filled by injection, with plain water, soapsuds, molasses, oils,and other substances to force it to act. It has been filled from above withstand, wheat bran, rough, bulky vegetables, psyllium seed, agar-agar, mineral oil, olive oil, etc. All of these and many more agents have been employed to force the colon to empty itself. They have been employed by those who cannot trust the functions of life to the laws and forces of life, but who feel that they must constantly interfere with the functions of life if life is to continue. They either irritate the bowels and cause them to act vigorously to eject the source of irritation, or fill them so full of bulk that they are forced to "move" to make room for the succeeding load of bulk. This plan works on the same principle as that of the hay bailer. One bail of hay is forced out by the one that comes after. It is a plan of remedying sluggish bowels by giving them more work to perform. All that the various "cures" for constipation ever succeed in doing is to increase the constipation, weaken the walls of the colon and produce visceroptosis and other troubles. Not one of them even remotely touches the original cause of constipation. The enema and colonic irrigation produce as much trouble as other palliatives of constipation and leave the cause of constipation untouched. The colon functions automatically. Its activities are sub-consciously controlled. Only the final act of expelling the feces is partially subject to conscious control. Conscious meddling with the body's sub-conscious activities is always injurious. There is no more reason for regularly meddling with the function of the colon than there is for habitually intervening in the activities of the heart. Indeed, we can trust the colon to faithfully perform its function just as much as we can trust the heart to faithfully perform its work. People who regularly take heart stimulants or heart depressants pay for their meddlesome interference with the function of this organ with increasing heart trouble. In like manner, people who habitually force or retard bowel action pay for their folly by increasing bowel impairment. Bowel action, being spontaneous and automatic, does not require to be consciously regulated any more than does any other of the body's subconscious or automatic functions. There are thousands who live constantly with their minds in their colons.They are never satisfied with the function of their colons. Their movements are never complete enough, or never frequent enough, or they are never the proper color, or thy do not occur soon enough after their eating. These people are obsessed with their colons and live for their daily passage or passages. They seem to think that man's chief function in life is to be constantly filling up and emptying out again. Their very worry and apprehension over their bowel function tends to produce the very trouble they fear or to perpetuate and intensify the troubles they have. If these people can only learn that the normal bowel supplies its own lubricant and 'acts' normally when there is a need for action and the abnormal bowel is injured by artificial lubricants and by all forcing measures, they maybe taught to follow the sage advice of Dr. Charles E. Page, who says, instead of badgering the bowels into unusual activity: "A good rule for many who suffer tortures of mind because of constipation would be: mind your own business and let your bowels mind theirs. Try not to have movements, but rather to deserve them. That is, attend to the general health by living hygienically, and the bowels, if given regular opportunity, move when there is anything to move for." The principle that normal bowel function depends upon good general health is the very antithesis of that generally held; namely, that good health depends on regular (if not normal) bowel action. Also, the principle that normal bowel action rests upon right living is the very opposite of the one generally followed; namely, that normal bowel action depends upon special attention to the bowels. There are so-called dietitians whose main object in feeding seems to be to prepare food mixtures to increase peristalsis. They feed, not to nourish the body, but to make the bowels move. They feed laxatives, not nutrients. Their"dietetics" is a simulacrum of the drug system. The impaired colon needs less work, not more; rest, not stimulation; more nerve energy, not increased enervation; nourishment, not bulk. Instead of giving the colon more material to move, give them more energy to move with. A normal bowel action is never forced. It comes as a response to a spontaneous urge to go to stool. It is never difficult and does not require straining and grunting. It is free of effort. The normal movement is so easy and is so quickly over that one hardly realizes he has had a movement. The movement requires from five to ten seconds to completely empty the rectum and is accompanied by a distinctly pleasurable sensation. The normal stool is free of all odor. If movement is forced when there is no urge; if it is accomplished only by much training; if it is painful; if the stools are foul; the movement is not normal. If the stools are very large and hard; if they are thin, ribbon-like strands; if they are composed of little balls: if they are loose and watery; they are not normal. Much has been written about the proper position to assume at stool. There is little doubt that primitive man assumed the squatting position, a position that renders the use of toilet paper superfluous if the movement is normal; but it has been my observation that the normal bowel will move easily and freely in any position; whereas, the abnormal one may not move easily in any position. I cared for a child that could have a bowel movement in a standing position only. Of more importance than position is nerve energy. If nerve energy is low, no position will compensate for its lack. Few people ever have a normal stool, for the reason that most people habitually over eat to such an extent that their stools are made up largely of undigested food and this is almost always in an advanced state of decomposition.Such people are usually constipated from overworking their colons. Even though they have regular movements, the egesta is often one to three days behind the time it normally should have been expelled. Most animals have a bowel movement immediately upon arising. Most men and women tend to do the same. This would seem to be one of the established rhythms of the body. There is also a tendency for a movement to follow immediately upon the ingestion of a meal. However, this is by no means invariable and depends upon the amount and character of food previously eaten and the time that has elapsed since taking the prior meals. There is no doubt that a small quantity of bulk in the food eaten offers the bowels a better opportunity to move the feces along, but it must be recognized that truly normal bowels will move efficiently on a bulk less diet of bananas and water. Too much bulk is commonly prescribed and used. If your bowels move regularly only because you eat lots of bulk, you are constipated. It is good health that insures normal bowel movements and not daily movements that insure good health. Normal bowel action is, therefore, based on healthful living. Herbert M. Shelton Also read Bowel Action During Fasting by Dr. Shelton |
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Is Your Boon My Bane? Hygienic Review Vol. V December, 1943 No. 4 Is Your Boon My Bane? Herbert M. Shelton The old fallacy that "what is one man's meat (food) is another man's poison" has served and misled people so long and is, today, so often repeated even by men who should know better, that I deem it wise to say a few words in combating it. I am frequently "reminded" by some wise patient, one of those fellows who has the little knowledge that is dangerous, that "you cannot feed all patients alike, for 'what is one man's meat is another man's poison.'" I once saw a man to whom water was a poison. He drank a glass of coca-cola about every thirty minutes during the day to satisfy his thirst. The caffeine in this slop did not hurt him. In fact, he explained to me, that by his athletic activities he "burned up" the caffeine. But he was afraid of plain water. I have never yet met a person to whom air is a poison, but have met several who were "poisoned" by fresh air. Fresh air gave them colds, or headaches, or other trouble; foul air agreed with them perfectly. For the most part, however, the claim that what is food for one is poison for another is applied to those articles of food that are derived directly or indirectly from the soil. Even here, it is not claimed that calcium is food for one and poison for another, or that carbohydrates are food for one and poison for another. I have never seen it stated that vitamin C nourishes one man and poisons a second. The claim is not made against the food factors or food elements as such, but against the food products that contain these elements. And yet, such foods never enter the body of any one. Cabbage does not circulate in the blood stream. Potatoes are not rolled through the arteries and veins like marbles. Imagine a fish-eater having little fish swimming around in his blood stream! Foods are broken down in the processes of digestion into a few uniform and acceptable substances and these alone enter the blood stream. "But we are not all constituted alike" protests our |
