Future Of Natural Hygiene
By: Herbert M. Shelton
With a few bright passages of
sunshine, the picture of the past of
man has been a gloomy one. It is
darkened all over with horrors.
Poor, sick, ignorant, enslaved, crushed
with bigotries, maddened with
fanaticism--enduring a thousand forms of
untold misery--the condition of man has
been dark and damning.
In his best condition--under the lowest as well as the highest civilization--he
suffered multiplied miseries and far too often this bright world, gemmed all
over with beauty and magnificence, has been only a vale of tears.
From the past history and present condition of man, we turn with hope and joy
to the spectacle of a future destiny. It cannot be that the end of man's
existence as a race is a never-ending condition of degradation and suffering.
If the meager and ill-diffused intelligence that existed in the past and that now
exists has accomplished so much, what may we not expect from general
enlightenment?
He has not rightly studied the past who permits himself to despair of the
future. And to man's noble destiny many circumstances are contributing!
Man is step by step gaining an understanding of the powers of nature.
If any one thing distinguishes our times from all past times more decidedly
than anything else, it is that mind is advancing in all that can promise glory
and happiness.
With its many instruments of precision, it soars high into the realms of the
material universe and unfolds the many wonders that have been hidden from
peoples of the past.
It pierces deep into the dark recesses of our little world; it is discovering
matter and displaying the many marvelous properties of its component parts;
it is rapidly subduing the long-established tyranny of the old elements and
compelling them to yield their power subservient to the direction of man;
slowly, sometimes it seems rapidly, mind is unraveling the mysteries of nature,
supplying man with transcendent powers and slowly, painstakingly,
unraveling the laws of nature in many fields of existence.
Thousands of ancient errors have been dragged out into the light and shown
in their true colors. We expect this progress to continue.
We look for no miraculous revelations of omnipotence--no ushering in of a
millennium, with the pomp of angelic administration and sublime elemental
phenomena.
The sun will shine on in the heavens; the order and harmony of the universe
will not be disturbed. The means by which humanity is to advance to a high
condition of happiness are of a natural and simple character; we have only to
look back upon the past to judge the future.
Man is never satisfied with what he has. He is always striving to improve his
condition. Out of this striving, blind though it is, comes his progress.
But with all of this great advance in many departments of science, we are still
in the period of pre-history in our thinking about health, disease and healing.
That men, trained in the sciences of chemistry, physics, biology, physiology,
anatomy, etc., should resort to animistic thinking when they consider drugs
and doses, is the paradox of paradoxes.
We still have far to go in our thinking in this field before we can boast of our
progress and enlightenment. But there is ground for hope. A tree grows
slowly, little by little; but when it attains a certain size and development, you
view it some fine morning and behold: it is covered with blossoms.
A few more weeks pass and it is laden with luscious fruit. So it will be with the
development of the Hygienic movement.
In many respects the medical profession has every advantage. They have the
advantage of large government supported and endowed institutions in which
learned professors teach their principles and methods; they have the
advantage of long established public confidence; they have the advantage of
great age; they lay the foundation for another disease in treating one.
But the medical profession has the disadvantage of the weakness that inheres
in all systems that are basically false and that require a process of ceaseless
change, both of theories and practices, if they are to continue to exist.
Hygiene's advantages actually so far outweigh those possessed by medicine
that, in time, Hygiene will prevail. Our advantages are of four kinds:
Our principles are true, hence enduring.
Our means are compatible with the needs of life, hence constructive rather
than destructive.
Our principles are comprehensible to the common understanding, hence by
way of compensation, are certain to be accepted.
Another and great advantage of ours is that we control the habits of our
patrons--this, indeed, being an essential part of our plan of care--and this
assures us a success medical men do not even dream of.
The more rapidly our patients evolve into vigorous health and the more peace,
harmony and agreement there exists between us as professional brethren of
one great and truthful movement, the more will people flock to the ranks of
Hygiene.
One young woman restored, and taught how she may keep the roses
blooming in her cheeks and how to preserve the sparkling luster of her eyes
should be sufficient to reconcile the whole neighborhood to the new way of
life.
It cannot be over-emphasized that the Hygienic movement is an educational
movement. It is by education alone, and not by law or coercion, that
Hygienists can be made.
But we have in our ranks great numbers of impatient individuals who, while
conceding the vital importance of Hygienic education, despair of the people
ever becoming sufficiently enlightened to emancipate themselves from the
drug superstition.
These think that Hygienic education always proceeds at a slow and plodding
pace. That this is not so is crystal clear to everyone who is fully acquainted
with the rapid progress it made in the days of its origin.
We speak of its origin when, in reality, we should speak of its revival. Hygiene
is not a discovery, but a recovery.
There has, indeed, been a lengthy period during which Hygienic education has
reached only a few intent readers and careful students.
But there will come a time and I am convinced that we are now upon the
threshold of that time when, as a result of the failures of the schools of
so-called healing and particularly of the dominant school of medicine, the
people in general will manifest a serious desire to discover and understand
something that will prove to be successful.
Then the educational work of a century may be crowded into a decade. The
growing recognition of the failure of the "miracle drugs" and the inability of the
medical profession to find something with which to supplant them must serve
to awaken the intelligence of our somnolent people and start them in search of
truths that have long been denied them.
When this time arrives, we must have educators to do the educating work. We
must have men and women who know Hygiene; we must have lecturers,
writers and practitioners who thoroughly understand the principles and
practices of Natural Hygiene and who are capable of both caring for the sick
and educating the well.
Without such a trained and educated group of educators, the efforts of the
people to find the truth about life and living, about health, disease and healing,
can only prove abortive and end in a tragic explosion.
The brighter the light of Hygiene, the further it can be seen. The higher we
hold it, the greater the distance from which the lost can see its guiding beams.
We cannot look to the leaders and practitioners of the newer schools of
so-called healing to lead the people into truth and health--they do not know the
truth themselves.
They are opportunists, frauds, and fakers who seek to use every awakening
on the part of the people, not as an opportunity to present them with more
truth, but as an opportunity for more exploitation.
The self-professed liberals among us are not our friends. We must learn to
observe the rule that who is not for us is against us. The half-devil, half-angel
kind of mongrel is not a Hygienist.
Those who go in for Dianetics, hypnotism, chiropractic, herbalism and other
non-Hygienic methods and systems, however well meaning they may be, are
foes of truth.
The system of Natural Hygiene, as taught and practiced in all the Hygienic
institutions in America, is either founded in nature and is true or it is not.
If true, it ought to be adopted at once as such, to the exclusion of all opposing
theories and practices, with however much zeal these other systems are
propagated, because truth knows no compromise.
If Hygiene is not founded in nature and is not true, then it should be rejected as
promptly and no man should engage in it. There can be no middle ground.
Co-existence is sold to us as the very quiescence of progress. How absurdly
fantastic is the whole idea. Either Hygiene is true or it is false. If it is false, it
could not co-exist. If it is true, then the systems that oppose it and they are
based on principles that are necessarily false, should not co-exist.
The Hygienic System has its principles in the laws of nature themselves. It
repudiates all the teachings of all the medical schools in the world, so far as
principles and practices are concerned.
Indeed, if there were not a drug-medical school, nor a drug-physician nor an
apothecary shop in the world, and if there were not a cure-monger and
treatment peddler of the non-drug schools of medicine in the world, it would
be much easier to educate the people in a true science of life and health and it
could be done in much less time than now, with all these stumbling blocks in
the way.
Every system, every method that misleads and confuses the people stands in
the way of the advance of truth.
The future of Hygiene is assured because it rests upon a foundation of
bedrock truth. However slow or rapid may be its progress among the people,
its ultimate acceptance by them is as certain as the rising of tomorrow's sun.
Every new truth that is discovered, every new and valid principle that is
developed, will but add to its lustre and its strength and render its application
more effective.
Perhaps there is already in the world all the knowledge needed to perfect the
science and art of Hygiene, if it could be brought together and synthesized;
perhaps there yet remains much to be discovered.
The future progress of Hygiene must rest in increasing knowledge of the
normal elements of life. As we learn more of biology and physiology, of food
and sunshine, of exercise and rest, of the emotions and environmental
stresses, our work will become more precise and will be applied with greater
understanding.
The unity of nature means nothing if it does not also mean the unity of truth.
Every discovery of new truth helps us to a fuller and better understanding and
application of old truth.
The accumulation of truth helps us to a better interpretation and application of
it. For this reason, the discovery of new truths will result in the advance of
Hygiene.
Hygiene will be promoted and purified by every advance in physiological,
nutritional and bionomic science. Our grandchildren will have a better
knowledge of Hygiene and be better able to apply it than we of today.
We are justified in regretting our own ignorance; we should never fear the
advances that will provide for greater knowledge for the future.
What have we to fear from the findings of science? What have we to fear from
the discovery of truth?
These questions may seem like hollow mockery since the making of nuclear
bombs. We note that the findings of science may constitute a menace to the
future of the race.
Actually, everything science has ever discovered has been a potential menace
to the race, not, however, because truth is essentially a menace, but due to the
fact that the real menace is ever present, ready to pervert and misuse every
discovery that is made.
The predatory forces that rule, exploit and ruin human society, not the truths
that are uncovered by the searchings of scientists, constitute the real menace
to the future of mankind.
Altogether too many scientists, unfortunately, are in the employ of these
forces and are their willing tools. For this reason, scientists have many crimes
to answer for.
Of all the people in the world, Hygienists should desire and welcome the
discovery of new truths, in the firm faith that every new truth that is discovered
will support and render more meaningful the truths we already possess. We
have less to fear and more to hope for in the discovery of truth than any other
group.
Let us, then, have no fears of the bearings of any of the discoveries of science
upon Hygiene. Every step of progress into the arcana of nature will prove a
triumph for Hygiene.
There is not a shadow of reason to fear any other result. Hygiene is true,
whatever else is true, and we ought never to permit any doubts of its truth to
arise because of some new discovery or alleged discovery.
Scientists may disclose new truths galore, but they will not make anything
untrue that was true before. The discovery of a new truth does not destroy an
old truth. Whatever is true will forever remain true, whatever else may be
found to be true.
If there seems to arise a conflict between a new truth and an old one, it will be
found to be only in appearance, if they are both really true. New truths can
only throw more light on old truths--every truth fortifies every other truth.
The vital truths of Natural Hygiene will be accepted as certainly as was the
truth that the earth is round and not flat and that the earth turns on its axis and
that the sun does not go around the earth.
The principles of Hygiene are perhaps as representative of our modern era as
the theories of Copernicus and Galileo were of their own time. The blind
fumblings towards the solutions of problems that have challenged man
throughout the historic period and the many mistakes that were made and are
being made by the old systems are representative of mistakes in astronomy
that prevailed before Copernicus.
We need not be discouraged, although we may be excused our impatience
with the slowness of progress.
While all the many schools of healing and of prophylaxis have been operating
in modern society, disease and the drug industry have been increasing.
It is evident that we shall have to look to some other source for a remedy for
these evils. That source is Natural Hygiene. It proposes and makes its one
object the removal of disease and the disease trades from the earth.
The time has certainly come to tear away the veil of mystery with which the
so-called healing art has so long been shrouded.
It has been left to the advocates of the Hygienic System to teach the people a
genuine science of life, the genuine ways of health, the real causes of disease
and the genuine means of restoring health.
Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of Hygiene, its present mission is to
enlighten the world upon these most vital subjects, to popularize the science
of life and to spread everywhere a knowledge of the laws of life. It is a glorious
mission--let us labor earnestly for its full accomplishment.
Strong, naked, honest facts are what the public wants to satisfy them of the
virtues of Natural Hygiene. It is not enough to enunciate principles--we must
explain their practical operations and show the results of their applications.
We must not only show how the sick ought to get well, but how they do get
well. When the public mind has been duly enlightened on these matters, the
difficulties that we have to contend with today will no longer be present.
Disease will be understood as a restoring operation and will no longer be
regarded as a destroying process or even a destroying entity.
Not secretly, but almost unobserved because generally ignored, there lives all
over the world thousands of people who have accepted and act upon the
principles of Natural Hygiene and upon these must we depend to erect the
beautiful structure of a glorious future that will follow the inevitable collapse of
the present evil and man-destroying system.
But those who teach and those who practice, as well as those who support
them, must recollect that the strongholds of error, walled in by blind reverence
for ancient notions, consecrated by the first impressions of childhood and
strengthened through life by constant association and habit, are not easily
uprooted.
The forces of Hygiene must be expanded and better fitted for the task before
them. Whoever has truly immersed himself in the great truths of Hygiene and
has really learned to understand and appreciate them should put forth every
effort to extend its truth among the people around him. Well might we exclaim
with the inspired poet:
"How beauteous are their feet, who tread on Hygeia's hill."
No mere reform program will suffice. As reformers ignore the basic causes of
evils and concentrate upon ameliorating some of the symptoms, they tangle
themselves in absurdities and contradictions.
One of the salient features of reform is that, however it expresses itself, it
becomes pinched in its own cleft stick. This is a consequence of predicating
its reasoning upon sentimentality rather than upon basic principles.
If we content ourselves with scratching the surface instead of looking for
causes, we are sure to become mere reformers. Reform is a mere palliative
which fosters the very evils it seeks to relieve and causes it to blossom into
some fresh evils.
The Hygienic movement cannot be all things to all men. It can be only one
thing and all mankind must accept it in its purity and integrity or suffer for its
lack of intelligent application of the only saving force in existence.
Only the Hygienic movement, guided by its unswerving adherence to the valid
principles of life and its deep sense of responsibility to the peoples of earth
gives to the struggle for health freedom the importance it deserves. Only the
Hygienic movement truly reveals the inner workings of the medical system.
Alcott gave it as his opinion that all systems of medicine were leading us "to
one grand issue." He said:
"Within a short time--it may be five hundred years, for that in history is a short
time, but it may be in 50--all sensible and truly learned medical men, as a
general rule, will give no medicine at all."
By medicine, in this instance, he meant drugs. But he was mistaken in
thinking that the drugging systems can lead mankind into true practices and
into a knowledge of the truth about life and living.
Although at present Hygienists represent a small minority group in our country
and in the world, we are the only group with a program that represents the
genuine welfare of the people.
Though our times are temporarily dark and troublesome, we can hear the
guardian genius, Hygiene, proclaiming as with a voice of thunder, "All will be
well."
Lo. I see strong virile races, When these drugging days are done, Running,
leaping with great vigor, Gleeful in the morning sun.
Excerpted From: Man's Pristine Way Of Life 1968
By: Herbert M. Shelton
Article: Future of Hygiene
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020125shelton.pristine/020125
ch56.htm
Complete Book Free Online: Man's Pristine Way Of Life
www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020125shelton.pristine/020125toc.htm
By: Herbert M. Shelton
With a few bright passages of
sunshine, the picture of the past of
man has been a gloomy one. It is
darkened all over with horrors.
Poor, sick, ignorant, enslaved, crushed
with bigotries, maddened with
fanaticism--enduring a thousand forms of
untold misery--the condition of man has
been dark and damning.
In his best condition--under the lowest as well as the highest civilization--he
suffered multiplied miseries and far too often this bright world, gemmed all
over with beauty and magnificence, has been only a vale of tears.
From the past history and present condition of man, we turn with hope and joy
to the spectacle of a future destiny. It cannot be that the end of man's
existence as a race is a never-ending condition of degradation and suffering.
If the meager and ill-diffused intelligence that existed in the past and that now
exists has accomplished so much, what may we not expect from general
enlightenment?
He has not rightly studied the past who permits himself to despair of the
future. And to man's noble destiny many circumstances are contributing!
Man is step by step gaining an understanding of the powers of nature.
If any one thing distinguishes our times from all past times more decidedly
than anything else, it is that mind is advancing in all that can promise glory
and happiness.
With its many instruments of precision, it soars high into the realms of the
material universe and unfolds the many wonders that have been hidden from
peoples of the past.
It pierces deep into the dark recesses of our little world; it is discovering
matter and displaying the many marvelous properties of its component parts;
it is rapidly subduing the long-established tyranny of the old elements and
compelling them to yield their power subservient to the direction of man;
slowly, sometimes it seems rapidly, mind is unraveling the mysteries of nature,
supplying man with transcendent powers and slowly, painstakingly,
unraveling the laws of nature in many fields of existence.
Thousands of ancient errors have been dragged out into the light and shown
in their true colors. We expect this progress to continue.
We look for no miraculous revelations of omnipotence--no ushering in of a
millennium, with the pomp of angelic administration and sublime elemental
phenomena.
The sun will shine on in the heavens; the order and harmony of the universe
will not be disturbed. The means by which humanity is to advance to a high
condition of happiness are of a natural and simple character; we have only to
look back upon the past to judge the future.
Man is never satisfied with what he has. He is always striving to improve his
condition. Out of this striving, blind though it is, comes his progress.
But with all of this great advance in many departments of science, we are still
in the period of pre-history in our thinking about health, disease and healing.
That men, trained in the sciences of chemistry, physics, biology, physiology,
anatomy, etc., should resort to animistic thinking when they consider drugs
and doses, is the paradox of paradoxes.
We still have far to go in our thinking in this field before we can boast of our
progress and enlightenment. But there is ground for hope. A tree grows
slowly, little by little; but when it attains a certain size and development, you
view it some fine morning and behold: it is covered with blossoms.
A few more weeks pass and it is laden with luscious fruit. So it will be with the
development of the Hygienic movement.
In many respects the medical profession has every advantage. They have the
advantage of large government supported and endowed institutions in which
learned professors teach their principles and methods; they have the
advantage of long established public confidence; they have the advantage of
great age; they lay the foundation for another disease in treating one.
But the medical profession has the disadvantage of the weakness that inheres
in all systems that are basically false and that require a process of ceaseless
change, both of theories and practices, if they are to continue to exist.
Hygiene's advantages actually so far outweigh those possessed by medicine
that, in time, Hygiene will prevail. Our advantages are of four kinds:
Our principles are true, hence enduring.
Our means are compatible with the needs of life, hence constructive rather
than destructive.
Our principles are comprehensible to the common understanding, hence by
way of compensation, are certain to be accepted.
Another and great advantage of ours is that we control the habits of our
patrons--this, indeed, being an essential part of our plan of care--and this
assures us a success medical men do not even dream of.
The more rapidly our patients evolve into vigorous health and the more peace,
harmony and agreement there exists between us as professional brethren of
one great and truthful movement, the more will people flock to the ranks of
Hygiene.
One young woman restored, and taught how she may keep the roses
blooming in her cheeks and how to preserve the sparkling luster of her eyes
should be sufficient to reconcile the whole neighborhood to the new way of
life.
It cannot be over-emphasized that the Hygienic movement is an educational
movement. It is by education alone, and not by law or coercion, that
Hygienists can be made.
But we have in our ranks great numbers of impatient individuals who, while
conceding the vital importance of Hygienic education, despair of the people
ever becoming sufficiently enlightened to emancipate themselves from the
drug superstition.
These think that Hygienic education always proceeds at a slow and plodding
pace. That this is not so is crystal clear to everyone who is fully acquainted
with the rapid progress it made in the days of its origin.
We speak of its origin when, in reality, we should speak of its revival. Hygiene
is not a discovery, but a recovery.
There has, indeed, been a lengthy period during which Hygienic education has
reached only a few intent readers and careful students.
But there will come a time and I am convinced that we are now upon the
threshold of that time when, as a result of the failures of the schools of
so-called healing and particularly of the dominant school of medicine, the
people in general will manifest a serious desire to discover and understand
something that will prove to be successful.
Then the educational work of a century may be crowded into a decade. The
growing recognition of the failure of the "miracle drugs" and the inability of the
medical profession to find something with which to supplant them must serve
to awaken the intelligence of our somnolent people and start them in search of
truths that have long been denied them.
When this time arrives, we must have educators to do the educating work. We
must have men and women who know Hygiene; we must have lecturers,
writers and practitioners who thoroughly understand the principles and
practices of Natural Hygiene and who are capable of both caring for the sick
and educating the well.
Without such a trained and educated group of educators, the efforts of the
people to find the truth about life and living, about health, disease and healing,
can only prove abortive and end in a tragic explosion.
The brighter the light of Hygiene, the further it can be seen. The higher we
hold it, the greater the distance from which the lost can see its guiding beams.
We cannot look to the leaders and practitioners of the newer schools of
so-called healing to lead the people into truth and health--they do not know the
truth themselves.
They are opportunists, frauds, and fakers who seek to use every awakening
on the part of the people, not as an opportunity to present them with more
truth, but as an opportunity for more exploitation.
The self-professed liberals among us are not our friends. We must learn to
observe the rule that who is not for us is against us. The half-devil, half-angel
kind of mongrel is not a Hygienist.
Those who go in for Dianetics, hypnotism, chiropractic, herbalism and other
non-Hygienic methods and systems, however well meaning they may be, are
foes of truth.
The system of Natural Hygiene, as taught and practiced in all the Hygienic
institutions in America, is either founded in nature and is true or it is not.
If true, it ought to be adopted at once as such, to the exclusion of all opposing
theories and practices, with however much zeal these other systems are
propagated, because truth knows no compromise.
If Hygiene is not founded in nature and is not true, then it should be rejected as
promptly and no man should engage in it. There can be no middle ground.
Co-existence is sold to us as the very quiescence of progress. How absurdly
fantastic is the whole idea. Either Hygiene is true or it is false. If it is false, it
could not co-exist. If it is true, then the systems that oppose it and they are
based on principles that are necessarily false, should not co-exist.
The Hygienic System has its principles in the laws of nature themselves. It
repudiates all the teachings of all the medical schools in the world, so far as
principles and practices are concerned.
Indeed, if there were not a drug-medical school, nor a drug-physician nor an
apothecary shop in the world, and if there were not a cure-monger and
treatment peddler of the non-drug schools of medicine in the world, it would
be much easier to educate the people in a true science of life and health and it
could be done in much less time than now, with all these stumbling blocks in
the way.
Every system, every method that misleads and confuses the people stands in
the way of the advance of truth.
The future of Hygiene is assured because it rests upon a foundation of
bedrock truth. However slow or rapid may be its progress among the people,
its ultimate acceptance by them is as certain as the rising of tomorrow's sun.
Every new truth that is discovered, every new and valid principle that is
developed, will but add to its lustre and its strength and render its application
more effective.
Perhaps there is already in the world all the knowledge needed to perfect the
science and art of Hygiene, if it could be brought together and synthesized;
perhaps there yet remains much to be discovered.
The future progress of Hygiene must rest in increasing knowledge of the
normal elements of life. As we learn more of biology and physiology, of food
and sunshine, of exercise and rest, of the emotions and environmental
stresses, our work will become more precise and will be applied with greater
understanding.
The unity of nature means nothing if it does not also mean the unity of truth.
Every discovery of new truth helps us to a fuller and better understanding and
application of old truth.
The accumulation of truth helps us to a better interpretation and application of
it. For this reason, the discovery of new truths will result in the advance of
Hygiene.
Hygiene will be promoted and purified by every advance in physiological,
nutritional and bionomic science. Our grandchildren will have a better
knowledge of Hygiene and be better able to apply it than we of today.
We are justified in regretting our own ignorance; we should never fear the
advances that will provide for greater knowledge for the future.
What have we to fear from the findings of science? What have we to fear from
the discovery of truth?
These questions may seem like hollow mockery since the making of nuclear
bombs. We note that the findings of science may constitute a menace to the
future of the race.
Actually, everything science has ever discovered has been a potential menace
to the race, not, however, because truth is essentially a menace, but due to the
fact that the real menace is ever present, ready to pervert and misuse every
discovery that is made.
The predatory forces that rule, exploit and ruin human society, not the truths
that are uncovered by the searchings of scientists, constitute the real menace
to the future of mankind.
Altogether too many scientists, unfortunately, are in the employ of these
forces and are their willing tools. For this reason, scientists have many crimes
to answer for.
Of all the people in the world, Hygienists should desire and welcome the
discovery of new truths, in the firm faith that every new truth that is discovered
will support and render more meaningful the truths we already possess. We
have less to fear and more to hope for in the discovery of truth than any other
group.
Let us, then, have no fears of the bearings of any of the discoveries of science
upon Hygiene. Every step of progress into the arcana of nature will prove a
triumph for Hygiene.
There is not a shadow of reason to fear any other result. Hygiene is true,
whatever else is true, and we ought never to permit any doubts of its truth to
arise because of some new discovery or alleged discovery.
Scientists may disclose new truths galore, but they will not make anything
untrue that was true before. The discovery of a new truth does not destroy an
old truth. Whatever is true will forever remain true, whatever else may be
found to be true.
If there seems to arise a conflict between a new truth and an old one, it will be
found to be only in appearance, if they are both really true. New truths can
only throw more light on old truths--every truth fortifies every other truth.
The vital truths of Natural Hygiene will be accepted as certainly as was the
truth that the earth is round and not flat and that the earth turns on its axis and
that the sun does not go around the earth.
The principles of Hygiene are perhaps as representative of our modern era as
the theories of Copernicus and Galileo were of their own time. The blind
fumblings towards the solutions of problems that have challenged man
throughout the historic period and the many mistakes that were made and are
being made by the old systems are representative of mistakes in astronomy
that prevailed before Copernicus.
We need not be discouraged, although we may be excused our impatience
with the slowness of progress.
While all the many schools of healing and of prophylaxis have been operating
in modern society, disease and the drug industry have been increasing.
It is evident that we shall have to look to some other source for a remedy for
these evils. That source is Natural Hygiene. It proposes and makes its one
object the removal of disease and the disease trades from the earth.
The time has certainly come to tear away the veil of mystery with which the
so-called healing art has so long been shrouded.
It has been left to the advocates of the Hygienic System to teach the people a
genuine science of life, the genuine ways of health, the real causes of disease
and the genuine means of restoring health.
Whatever may be the ultimate destiny of Hygiene, its present mission is to
enlighten the world upon these most vital subjects, to popularize the science
of life and to spread everywhere a knowledge of the laws of life. It is a glorious
mission--let us labor earnestly for its full accomplishment.
Strong, naked, honest facts are what the public wants to satisfy them of the
virtues of Natural Hygiene. It is not enough to enunciate principles--we must
explain their practical operations and show the results of their applications.
We must not only show how the sick ought to get well, but how they do get
well. When the public mind has been duly enlightened on these matters, the
difficulties that we have to contend with today will no longer be present.
Disease will be understood as a restoring operation and will no longer be
regarded as a destroying process or even a destroying entity.
Not secretly, but almost unobserved because generally ignored, there lives all
over the world thousands of people who have accepted and act upon the
principles of Natural Hygiene and upon these must we depend to erect the
beautiful structure of a glorious future that will follow the inevitable collapse of
the present evil and man-destroying system.
But those who teach and those who practice, as well as those who support
them, must recollect that the strongholds of error, walled in by blind reverence
for ancient notions, consecrated by the first impressions of childhood and
strengthened through life by constant association and habit, are not easily
uprooted.
The forces of Hygiene must be expanded and better fitted for the task before
them. Whoever has truly immersed himself in the great truths of Hygiene and
has really learned to understand and appreciate them should put forth every
effort to extend its truth among the people around him. Well might we exclaim
with the inspired poet:
"How beauteous are their feet, who tread on Hygeia's hill."
No mere reform program will suffice. As reformers ignore the basic causes of
evils and concentrate upon ameliorating some of the symptoms, they tangle
themselves in absurdities and contradictions.
One of the salient features of reform is that, however it expresses itself, it
becomes pinched in its own cleft stick. This is a consequence of predicating
its reasoning upon sentimentality rather than upon basic principles.
If we content ourselves with scratching the surface instead of looking for
causes, we are sure to become mere reformers. Reform is a mere palliative
which fosters the very evils it seeks to relieve and causes it to blossom into
some fresh evils.
The Hygienic movement cannot be all things to all men. It can be only one
thing and all mankind must accept it in its purity and integrity or suffer for its
lack of intelligent application of the only saving force in existence.
Only the Hygienic movement, guided by its unswerving adherence to the valid
principles of life and its deep sense of responsibility to the peoples of earth
gives to the struggle for health freedom the importance it deserves. Only the
Hygienic movement truly reveals the inner workings of the medical system.
Alcott gave it as his opinion that all systems of medicine were leading us "to
one grand issue." He said:
"Within a short time--it may be five hundred years, for that in history is a short
time, but it may be in 50--all sensible and truly learned medical men, as a
general rule, will give no medicine at all."
By medicine, in this instance, he meant drugs. But he was mistaken in
thinking that the drugging systems can lead mankind into true practices and
into a knowledge of the truth about life and living.
Although at present Hygienists represent a small minority group in our country
and in the world, we are the only group with a program that represents the
genuine welfare of the people.
Though our times are temporarily dark and troublesome, we can hear the
guardian genius, Hygiene, proclaiming as with a voice of thunder, "All will be
well."
Lo. I see strong virile races, When these drugging days are done, Running,
leaping with great vigor, Gleeful in the morning sun.
Excerpted From: Man's Pristine Way Of Life 1968
By: Herbert M. Shelton
Article: Future of Hygiene
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020125shelton.pristine/020125
ch56.htm
Complete Book Free Online: Man's Pristine Way Of Life
www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020125shelton.pristine/020125toc.htm
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