Excerpts
Shelton, Herbert. (1931). The Hygienic Care of Children. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association.
Pg 14
“The hygienic principles and practices herein set forth have been developed during the past one hundred and fifty years and have been thoroughly tested in practice. Jennings, Trall, Graham, Taylor, Shew, Page, Dewey, Walter, Oswald, Densmore, and Tilden in America, Combe in England, Rikili, and Lahmann in Germany, Berg in Sweden, and Bircher-Benner in Switzerland are deserving of special mention in connection with the development of these principles and practices.”
“Mother’s Hygienic Hand-book, Trall 1874; How to Feed the Baby, Page, 1882; Natural Hygiene, Lahmann, 1898; Physical Education, Oswald, 1901; The Care of Children, Tilden, 1916; and Children, Their Health and Happiness, Tilden, 1928; are the best books that have appeared which deal with the care of children. All of these are now out of print.”
Pg 28
“Mothers should realize that preparation for motherhood should begin in infancy! Today our daughters are trained and equipped for everything else except this supreme accomplishment. Dr. Tilden observes: “It is pathetic to see a tuberculous mother struggling in a hopeless endeavor to make her baby strong after it has once got a bad start.” He adds: “Such mothers will so frequently say: ‘why cannot my baby be strong, like Mrs. so-and-so’s? She feeds her baby anything, and neglects it; yet it thrives.’ ” There is a wide gulf, physically or vitally, between the two children. The care, in spite of which the strong one will thrive, will speedily kill the weak one. Sick mothers should refrain from having children, yet I have known them not only to bear children, but to disregard every rule of hygiene during pregnancy. Then they suffer and the baby suffers until it dies, and these mothers will blame everything but themselves for their “misfortune.”
Pg 48
“Purging, wetting, nose-running and drooling attest to nature’s efforts to get rid of the excess, in food salivated infants. “If a child is awake and fretful, apparently demanding food every two hours or oftener,” says Dr. Tilden, “that child is sick, and should be dealt with accordingly.”
“It is the overfed infant whose inflamed stomach has a never-ceasing craving for food or something to appease the “gnawing” sensation in its stomach. It is such an infant that develops the morbid, dyspeptic appetite, which always demands more food.”
Pg 50-51
“Suppose from birth kittens, puppies, calves, colts and chickens were placed on their backs and never permitted to use their legs for anything more vigorous than merely waving or kicking them; would these animals ever walk? If young monkeys and apes were placed on their backs and not called upon to use their legs and arms, if they were not also forced to swing by their arms, what slow development we would logically expect! Why must we continue to hamper the development of our own young by placing them on their backs and keeping them there? Dr. Tilden, after years of employing this plan, wrote in his Care of Children (1916): “Place the baby on its belly (Dr. C. E. Page’s method), and allow it to stay on the belly rather than on the back. The Page method works out well. Children walk and run much earlier.”
Pg 51-52
BABY’S FIRST BATH
“If it was a difficult labor so that the mother was in labor from six to twenty-four hours, both she and the baby will be worn out and the baby should not be handled at once to bathe it and dress it. Rest is its greatest need. It should not be fed, but should be wrapped warmly and kept warm and permitted to rest and sleep for twenty-four hours. Under such circumstances, it was the practice of Dr. Tilden to anoint the baby with some bland oil, such as olive oil or cotton seed oil, wrap it in cotton and lay it away where it would be perfectly quiet and warm. I am unable to see the need for the oil.
After a twenty-four hour rest, the baby should be bathed in warm water, soft water if this is available. Soap will not be necessary unless the grease job has been done. If the baby has been oiled a mild castile soap, a mild toilet soap, or a shaving soap should be used to remove the oil.
Pg 60
“There is no need for a bandage around the baby. Dr. Tilden says that, if it will satisfy everyone better to have the bandage than not to have it he always acquiesces in this superstition—“in fact,” he adds, “I acquiesce in all superstitions that are innocent; slight variations without a difference that do not amount to anything to keep people from worry and anxiety.” I do not favor this catering to “innocent” superstitions and I do not regard the binder as innocent.”
Pg 64
“HANDLING
Overmuch handling is not good for children, and certainly is injurious to the sick child. Most babies are handled too much. The young of no other species can withstand so much handling and survive. Kittens, puppies, goslings, calves, birds, indeed all young animals, soon languish and die if handled very much. Man, including infant man, can live through more abuse, of all kinds, than any other animal on earth. Nevertheless millions of infants are injured in health and many of them killed by being subjected to too much handling. The following words of Dr. Trall are to the point: “Never mistake infants for toys or playthings. Never employ them to amuse yourself or entertain company. Never exhibit them for the purpose of reflecting inherited charm and qualities of which the parents are proud—perhaps justly.”
“It is not necessary to entertain babies. If they are let alone, they will learn to entertain themselves. Furnishing entertainment to babies and children causes them to grow up as very dependent adults. “Eternal attention builds an egotism that is ruinous,” sayd Tilden. Putting babies on exhibition is one of our greatest mistakes. Handling, bright lights in its face, loud talking, laughing, noise, disturbed sleep, etc., enervate the baby. These things should be avoided.”
Pg 66
“Diapers, or hip-pins, should be changed as soon as they are wet. The child should be sponged off and dried before another diaper is put on. The diaper should then be washed before using again. Skin irritations are often caused by using diapers after they have been wet and dried without being washed. Keep the skin clean and there will be no chafing, excoriations, scaling or skin irritation. These are caused by a lack of cleanliness—they are prevented and remedied by cleanliness.”
“I quote the following from Dr. Tilden: “It is not necessary for a child to have any malodors. Perfume is absurd; it neither covers the odor coming from lack of cleanliness, nor causes the child to be clean. There is no odor so splendid as the real sweetness of cleanliness. Perfume, like the doctor’s antiseptic, is made to hide, or antidote filth. Neither is needed when proper cleanliness is maintained; and both should be recognized as advertising lack of cleanliness.”
Pg 98
“Dr. Tilden says: “The great sensitiveness of the gums in teething children is caused by the general systemic derangement. When these little folks are properly cared for, they will not be sick, and if they are not sick they will surprise their mothers by showing them a tooth every little while, without the slightest suspicion of any kind.” Again, he says: “When a child is fed too much, too often, and fed varieties of food that should not be given to it until past two years of age, indigestion and irritation of the stomach result; it becomes irritable, nervous, and half-sick all the time; constipation becomes habitual. Children in this state suffer from teething; indeed, everything causes them to be unhappy, for they feel miserable.”
Pg 113
“However, well intentioned mothers and nurses may be, the almost universal custom of constantly feeding infants is extremely cruel, and we may be sure that were such mothers and nurses compelled to take food as often and in the same excessive quantities that it is forced upon the baby, night and day, the abuse would soon be ended. The cruelty of the practice would soon be apparent. Children thus punished sooner or later arrive at a condition where their digestive organs are unable to function efficiently. The constant overwork will impair and cripple them. Then it is that we see children literally starving to death on five, six and even more meals a day. As paradoxical as it may seem, many children starve because of being overfed, just as many adults do.”
“Dr. Tilden well says:—“If mothers could be made to see the fearful price they pay for keeping their babies fat they would hasten to learn a better plan of feeding. Children who are over-weight are more susceptible to disease influences than are smaller and lighter children. The fat, chubby baby, everything else being equal, is always the one to take the croup, tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever, and when a few years older, pneumonia, rheumatism, and other forms of common diseases.”
Pg 116
“That overfeeding tends to stunt growth is well proved. Why should we go on stuffing our children in an effort to fatten them or to force them to grow more rapidly than normal? Dr. Tilden says that:—“If a child (on the three meal) grows thin and really loses weight after the second week it will not be an indication that it is not fed often enough. My experience has been that the mother’s milk is deficient in some of the important elements, or that she does not give enough.”
Pg 121
“There are a few conditions which demand the weaning of the child. Dr. Tilden says: “Convulsions in nursing children, not traceable to objective causes, will usually be found to come from slight septic infections of the mothers, due to injuries incident to child birth; hence it is well to carefully investigate all unaccountable sickness occurring in young children soon after birth, with a view of locating the trouble in a blood derangement of the mother and discovering, if possible, whether it comes from septic poisoning.”
“Again he says: “Many, if not all, children born under conventional circumstances, are more or less encumbered with flesh; instead of weighing 5 or 6 pounds, they weigh from 10 to 12 pounds and because of this, overweight mothers have long, tedious, and painful labors, and too frequently are forced into instrumental deliveries. As a sequel these mothers suffer greatly from bruises, contusions and lacerations. It matters not how careful the physician who officiates at such confinements is to be scrupulously clean, these women usually have enough septic infection to cause their milk to be unwholesome and even if they escape having a slight septic infection the severe labor breaks down so much tissue that the blood is deranged and the secretions, including the milk, are impaired to such an extent that before the doctor and the nurse are suspicious that anything is wrong the baby is very sick. This necessitates taking the child from the “mother’s breast, which is equivalent to weaning it, for the mothers are usually as much encumbered with flesh as the children, and because of this encumbrance, plus the blood impairment described above they cannot be restored to health until long after they have lost their milk.”
“Many women who have prolonged and painful and even instrumental deliveries are able to nurse their children well, however. I know three vigorous, healthy and well developed children, all of whom were nursed by their mother, a tubercular woman, who finally died of tuberculosis, but as a rule, women with tuberculosis should not even try to nurse their children. Of course, such women have no business having children, in the first place.”
“Any acute or chronic disease which impairs the mother’s milk should cause her to wean the baby. Insanity and epilepsy are usually listed as reasons for not nursing one’s baby, but I think these are even better reasons for not having children. So-called syphilis is not a reason for weaning a child.”
“Babies with lip deformities and premature babies that are too weak to nurse are best fed their mother’s milk after this had been expressed from her breasts. The milk should be forced from the breast by the use of the hands. The breasts should not be massaged in this operation. The breast pump is not advisable. It injures the tissues and invariably causes the breasts to dry up prematurely. Dr. Tilden says of this: “I found that when the pump was used the breasts were more or less bruised and that the bruising caused inflammation and suppuration. In time I proved to myself that there were more abscesses following the use of the pump than when it was not used.”
Pg 123
“If we limit the following remarks of Page’s to the milk from a healthy well nourished mother, he is eternally right. He said: “Milk is the food for babies and contains all of the elements necessary to make teeth, and until they are made, it should continue to be the sole food. It is not enough that two or three or a half dozen teeth have come through, that they should be expected to do any part of a grown child’s work.”
Dr. Tilden was equally as strong for what he calls the no-starch-for-babies plan. He says: “It is a mistake to feed starchy foods too soon—before the end of the second year; for young children cannot take care of too much starch.”
“Children under two or three years of age have trouble in converting starch into sugar. They should get their sugar from fruits: fresh fruit in summer, and the dry, sweet fruits in the winter—raisins, dates and figs.”
Pg 150
“The feeding method in vogue is a hit and miss system. It is a case of “try this” and “try that” and then try something else. The mother, the nurse and the physician chase “from pillar to post” and tax themselves to the uttermost, in a vain effort to find a suitable food. Dr. Tilden says of his efforts with this kind of a system, with which, he says he was as successful as that of other physicians of the guessing schools, “when the guess hit it hit, and when it missed it missed, and I knew the reason for the one just as well as I knew the reason for the other.”
Pg 151
“Then there is a widespread superstition that if a mother allows the baby to “taste” some of each food she eats, her milk will not give baby the colic. We have seen many mothers begin feeding their babies in this way by the time they were a few weeks old and long before they were really capable of properly caring for such foods they were eating corn, oatmeal, beans, meat, eggs, etc. Such crimes against infants would be tolerated by no stock raiser towards his young animal. He knows only too well that the consequences to the animals would be disastrous.
Dr. Tilden says: “If we ever get on to a rational plan of eating, children up to two years of age will be fed on an exclusive milk diet, with orange or other fruit or vegetable juices.”
Pg 157
“Dr. Tilden says: “There are many brands of artificial foods on the market, and there are tons of these foods used in this country every year, but so far as being of tangible benefit is concerned, it is doubtful if they are beneficial when it comes to supplying a need that can’t be supplied by something of greater food value.
“I do not say this from lack of experience, for I have had years of experience. I once believed that most of the better brands were really of great use, but I discover after a thoughtful retrospection that I have gradually and unwittingly abandoned the use of all of these foods, and it has come about not because I love them less, but because I love natural food more, and, of course, secure better results with them.”
Pg 165
“On the foregoing basis, the following feeding schedule may be carried out, providing the mother does not insist on feeding the infant by the clock:
6 A.M.—Milk, breast or bottle.
10 A.M.—Orange juice, or other acid juice.
12 P.M.—Milk, breast or bottle.
3 P.M. to 4 P.M.—Grape juice or other fruit juice (in the south fresh fig juice may be used in season).
6 P.M.—Milk, breast or bottle.
“If the baby is given four milk feedings a day, and this will rarely be found necessary, the juices should be given not less than thirty minutes before the second milk feeding of the morning and afternoon. Dr. Tilden says: “I am compelled to compromise with most mothers, and permit four feeds a day, and then the majority will sneak in an extra feed at night, which, of course, the baby has to pay for with occasional sick spells.” Night feeding snaps the mother in supplying the abnormal quantity of milk and in depriving her of sleep. It overfeeds the child and causes trouble. Don’t do it.”
Pg 168-9
“Parents often feel sorry for their children when they see them deprived of certain foods, but they are wasting their sympathies. Such sympathies are tantamount to wishing for them a continuance of disease. “When parents are intelligent enough to know their duty to their children,” says Dr. Tilden, “they will not feel sorry for them because they are not eating in a way to make them sick.” Too many parents are ruled by their emotions and sentiments and not by knowledge and reason. Give your child those foods that are good for it and do not cultivate in him an appetite for harmful foods.
“The great secret of feeding children is well expressed by Tilden thus: “FIT CHILDREN TO THE FOOD AND NEVER ATTEMPT TO FIT THE FOOD TO THE CHILDREN.” How? Easy! Watch these few simple rules:
1. Feed the child natural, that is, uncooked, unprocessed, unsterilized, unadulterated, undrugged, foods.
2. Do not stuff the child. Feed it three moderate meals a day.
3. Feed simple meals. Do not feed foods that are mixed in such a way as to cause fermentation.
4. Do not feed between meals, nor at night.
5. If the child is upset or feels bad or is excited or tired, or over heated or chilled or in pain or distress or is sick, don’t feed it; if there is fever, give no food.
It is necessary to observe the same rules for combining foods, when feeding these to the child, as when feeding them to the adult.
Do not feed the child cooked fruit.
Do not feed acid fruits and starch foods or sweet foods together.
Do not feed acids with proteins.
Do not feed sweet fruits and acid (sour) fruits together.
Do not feed sugar or starch with protein foods.
Do not feed sweet fruits and acid (sour) fruits together.
Do not feed sugar or starch with protein foods.
Do not feed sweet foods with starch foods.
Feed only one protein at a time.
Feed no protein with milk.
Feed plenty of green vegetables with both starches and proteins.
Do not feed butter, oil or other fat with protein foods.
Do not feed between meals.
Give the child 3 meals a day, including his three nursings, which are simply supplemented with these foods.”
Pg 174
“ANIMAL FOODS
The over emphasis on proteins that has lasted for over a hundred hears has led to an equal emphasis on animal foods—flesh, eggs, milk and milk products—until we could easily believe that we are feeding a species of carnivore. Everything indicates that the flesh of animals does not, on principle, belong in the diet of the child. It is definitely known that children thrive better on a well selected fleshless diet, grow at a normal rate and are less prone to the development of diseases of all kinds. Cooked flesh is poor food, even for carnivores. Raw flesh is often infested with parasites. In addition to this the child’s sense of taste refuses raw flesh. Much “education” is required to induce a child to relish raw flesh. It is the work of cookery, with its seasonings and saltings, to render flesh palatable. Raw meat and raw meat juice were prescribed by physicians for anemic children less than fifty years ago. This feeding plan was more harmful than beneficial. Meat broths have practically no value. They are stimulants rather than foods, and all such stimulation is decidedly injurious. Dr. Tilden, who was no vegetarian and recommended flesh foods, declared that these should never be fed to a child under six years of age. I would say: Never feed flesh foods at any age. It should be understood that this includes poultry, fish and all other flesh foods.”
Pg 174
“There are people who develop the sick habit readily. They would rather remain invalids and bask in the sympathies and attentions of those who must wait on them, than to recover and go out to a renewed battle against the outside world. They do not want to return to responsibilities and turmoil. They have no self-respect and sense of responsibility. They may be said to be of the parasitic diathesis. Children find a means of avoiding school and studies in this way. Love and kindness do not necessarily involve that form of cruelty that, while it pleases the child for the moment, produces disaster later. Coddling is weakening; fondling and loving do not mean pampering. We want to build sturdy bodies, self-reliance and sterling worth of character, not neurotic molly-coddles.”
“If as children,” wrote Tilden “we could be taught that our lives are to be a struggle between self-control and self-indulgence, that control leads to the only true success and happiness possible, and that indulgence leads to self-destruction and failure, and have it impressed upon our minds understandingly that it does not profit us to gain the whole world and lose our souls, we at least need not stumble along through life haphazardly. We could have an opportunity to establish autonomy, free from the slavery of disease building habits. As life is lived today we are led from birth, by precept and example, into the conventional habits which build disease, handicap efficiency, ahd shorten life.”—Review and Critique, Aug. 1936.
Pg 209-210
“CHOLERA INFANTUM is an inflammatory crisis of the alimentary canal of infants which prevails in the summer months. This disease was formerly much more prevalent than now and in some localities was the occasion for more dread and anxiety among parents than any of the diseases “peculiar to children.” The death rate in this disease in children between the ages of one and two years was once fearful. Today it is called infant diarrhea, is epidemic every summer and, due to murderous care, the death-rate is still high.
Symptoms: The trouble comes on apparently very suddenly, with great restlessness, fever ranging from 102 to 104 degrees Farenheit. There is much diarrhea, the bowel discharges are accompanied with “bearing down,” straining at stool, and considerable pain. Preceding the bowel movement the child will gag or retch. The sickness of the stomach and all of the other symptoms gradually increase until vomiting becomes frightfully severe. There is very rapid emaciation and parents and friends usually give up hope of saving the little one—not knowing that the rapid emaciation is one of nature’s most potent saving measures.
“The bowels are filled with gas, the abdomen is very sensitive and, where there is much gas accumulation there is a rapid pulse, rapid, oppressed breathing, and a rise in temperature. There is extreme thirst, which, alas! was and sometimes is yet, mistaken for hunger. The stools are yellow whitish-yellow, or they may be tinged with green at the outset, becoming grass-green, with white lumps of milk curd, as the condition grows.”
“Children may die in twenty-four hours in this condition or the symptoms may abate after the first twenty-four hours and convalescence set in. Dr. Tilden says: “Cholera infantum proper is of twenty-four hours duration; after that, if the child remains sick, the disease assumes one of the types given in the nomenclature”—gastro-intestinal catarrh, gastro-enteritis, summer complaint, summer diarrhea, gastritis, entero-colitis, ileo-colitis, diarrhea, dysentery. He also says: “After twenty-four hours, if the disease has spent its force and the child is still alive, the bowel movements continue in frequency and contain more mucus, and at times specks or very decliate streaks of blood, and the fever remains about the same. The thirst is consuming; the child puts anything into its mouth. The restlessness is marked by rolling of the head from side to side and throwing the arms and legs from one place to another.”
“Occasionally these cases start with convulsions and quickly sink into a stupor or comatose state, from which they gradually sink into death. Again, stupor may be light, the eyes partly closed, the child becomes more restless and cries at every bowel movement.”
“Many of these cases, particularly if badly treated, pass into gastro-enteritis. This is, or was, particularly true in the middle states where summers are hot. Cases where gastro-enteritis has followed a severe cholera infantum, are liable to relapses if they are not handled very carefully. Such children are sick and are liable to relapses every few days or every week or two. Dr. Tilden says: “The doctors of thirty years to forty years ago (now longer) did not pretend to cure these children; they congratulated themselves on being very successful if they could keep the little ones alive until the frost came in the Fall.”
Pg 212
“Care of The Patient: No doubt some of the worst of these cases will die under the best of care, but undoubtedly most deaths are due to the murderous methods used in treating the child. Food to sustain the patient, drugs to relieve pain, dope to make him “rest” and “sleep,” calomel and salines to increase the purging followed by opiates and other drugs to check or suppress the diarrhea, drugs to depress the nerves—how murderous!
Stop all food at the first sign of trouble. This is the remedy par excellence. Indeed, it often means the difference between life and death. The parent or physician who stops all food at once fights a winning fight from the start. Fasting is the great pain killer, sleep producer and life saver. There is no danger of starvation and no possibility of nourishing the child.”
“Isolation and quiet will secure rest. Drugs to force rest only depress the nervous system, weaken the body, lower resistance and assure chronic after-effects, where they do not resuit in death. Separate the child from the rest of the family and give it quiet.
Give it all the pure cool water it desires and it will demand much of this, but never give it food until all acute symptoms are gone and the bowel movements are normal or cease. Keep the child warm. Do not toast it, but keep it warm.”
“Never permit a physician to administer heart tonics (really atonics), for these only help to kill the child. Few people die who are not killed by the efforts to save them. Dr. Tilden says: “When the child is very sick, with blanched countenance and almost imperceptible breathing, slip the pillow out from under the head, elevate the feet (by raising the foot of the bed), if possible, without disturbance, place artificial heat around the body, secure plenty of air, and let the child alone. Further than this is malpractice.”
Pg 214
“The germ theory is a theory of chance and lawlessness. We are here by accident. How we managed to escape annihilation, during the ages of ignorance and stupidity that elapsed before Louis Pasteur came upon the scene, is inexplicable. Without bacteriologists and serologists we would all soon perish. The medical profession is satisfied to have every disease caused by a germ and in those diseases for which a germ has not been discovered, the profession assumes that germs cause them just the same and treats these conditions accordingly. Assuming the truth of this theory, there are several important questions that need answering. Dr. Tilden has well put them as follows: “What prevents sporadic cases of disease from kindling endemics? And why do not endemics create epidemics? And epidemics create pandemics? ” “Why is it that in families of children one or two may have diphtheria, scarlet fever, or typhoid fever, and no other member of the family takes the disease? The answer may be that as soon as the disease breaks out those who are not sick are rendered immune. But I must meet this statement with the very stubborn fact that this was true before the alleged discovery of immunization; and it is as true of scarlet fever today as in all past time. It must not be forgotten that the germ of scarlet fever has not yet been discovered; hence its cure and prevention are still in the maze of obscurity. But, in spite of this fact, scarlet fever has declined as rapidly; if not more rapidly; than diphtheria, which disease has been almost entirely wiped out by the great discoveries in the line of immunization.”
Pg 216
“CONSTIPATION is the result of tired, overworked bowels. It is an aftermath of diarrhea and purging and of enervating influences. It is the reaction from overaction. The greatest single cause of constipation in infants is overfeeding. The constant overfeeding of infants results in diarrhea and finally, an overworked colon, which is too tired and exhausted to function efficiently.”
“Passing Enervation and Toxemia which are basic causes and omnipresent where there is any departure from the normal health standard, overfeeding is first, last and all the time the cause of constipation in children,” says Tilden. Overfeeding is followed by imperfect digestion, flatulency, bowel discomfort, loose movements with curds in the stools. The amount of the curds increases as the stools may become hard, dry and even lumpy. Children that are properly cared for and properly fed never have constipation. Medical authors give as a cause of constipation, a “lack of food.” But it is obvious that in these cases there is no real constipation. The bowels in such cases do not move simply because they are empty or nearly so.”
Pg 223
“When animals, young and old, become sick they instinctively refrain from eating. Warmth, quiet and fasting, with a little water, are all they want. When they take nourishment, it is a sure sign that they are recovering. They eat but little at first and gradually eat more as they grow better. They never worry about calories or protein requirements, either. Infants need warmth, quiet and fasting, plus water. They will take nourishment, if they are not given water, because they are thirsty. But they are made sicker each time they take it.”
“The body never performs any of what Dr. Tilden calls “Hindu tricks” in this matter of taking nourishment. It does not digest and absorb food when digestion is suspended and the membranes of the stomach and intestines are exuding matter instead of absorbing it. It is exuding fluid to aid in expelling the mass of putrescence in the food tube and to protect the walls of the tube and any irritated surface from the irritation. Sometimes nature even rejects water, expelling it by vomiting, as often as it is forced down. How foolish, in such cases to continue to force food and drugs on the patient and water into his stomach. Nature is trying to protect herself by this vomiting. She even guards herself against water by creating a bad taste in the mouth that causes the patient to refuse water.
“In all sick stomachs,” says Tilden, “especially in typhoid or cholera infantum, there is an irritation due to the bad effect of decomposition, and the nausea and vomiting is a conservative measure, and, rightly interpreted mean . . . a suspension of absorption and a pouring out of the water of the blood and other secretions for the purpose of immunizing and flushing” the stomach and intestines. Wise parents will never feed their sick children. Be not afraid to let them fast. For, everyday that they fast lessens their illness and their danger. Feeding adds to their suffering and danger and prolongs their illness.”
Pg 224-5
“A baby presenting symptoms of indigestion should be put to bed and kept warm and quiet, but without food, until all symptoms have ended. Often within twenty-four hours the baby will be able to eat. If it wakes up smiling, in good humor and with a sweet breath, it is ready to be fed. If it wakes up crying and irritable, with pungent breath and white lines (lines of stomach irritation) around the mouth and nose, or complaining of discomfort, the fast should be prolonged for another twenty-four hours. Indeed, this program should be continued until the baby is normal, even if it takes several days. Mothers are commonly in a very great hurry to feed and tend to feed prematurely, thus prolonging the indigestion. Give the body an opportunity to get rid of the surplus food and toxemia and restore functioning power before resuming feeding.
“A child’s nerve energy,” says Tilden, “is used up by excitement. Anything that uses up nerve energy weakens digestion. Then either the food must be cut down or the cause of enervation must be discovered and corrected. The weather may be warm; yet the child’s feet may be cold. No patient, young or old, will thrive if cold feet and hands are habitual.” The baby must be kept warm while fasting and at other times.”
“In older children, indigestion should be cared for in the same way. Tilden advises: “Wherever there is the slightest indication of crowded digestion—such as crossness, irritability, broken sleep, thirst, undigested food in the excrement—miss one or more meals then give a little less food or less excitement.” Certainly sick children should not be fed. Stop all food so long as there are acute symptoms; keep the child warm and in bed. Fasting is not starving. After all symptoms have subsided, feed and care for the child as instructed in this book to avoid future trouble. If your child has indigestion you are responsible.
Never give your child bicarbonate of soda, castor oil, milk of magnesia, pepsin, hydrocholoric acid, pancreatin, bile salts or other drugs commonly used in cases of indigestion. Do not give them tonics (atonics), appetizers, antifermentatives, etc. These add to but do not remove the cause of the indigestion. They are, under any and all circumstances, both valueless and injurious.
Pg 227
“NERVOUSNESS is quite common in children today. Parents, teachers, nurses, physicians and everyone who deals with children know only too well how prevalent is this condition. Tilden says: “Children born of normal parents and reared in an atmosphere of mental poise and normal nerve control, are very fortunate. Neurotic, hysterical or emotional parents may occasionally produce children with normal nervous systems, but such parents are more likely to have nervous, easily irritated, and highly strung boys and girls instead. Children usually copy the nervous traits of their parents, and become of like kind. Children of neurotic parents are figuratively, battered about between excess of love and unreasonable anger, between fear and bravado, between over-solicitious attention and gross neglect. ”
“Even such natural functions as eating and sleeping, of play and rest, are given an unnatural amount of attention and the child is impressed with the terrible consequences following a lost meal, a coated tongue or a restless night. Life thus becomes very complex to those poor little ones, revolving around taboos, fears, don’ts, doubts, turmoil and indecision. Is it any wonder such a child develops some neurosis, or a nervous indigestion, when it grows up?”
Pg 229
“Sir Wm. Osler says: “There is no specific treatment for pneumonia. The young practitioner should bear in mind that patients are more often damanged than helped by the promiscuous drugging, which is still only too prevalent.” Yes indeed! But listen to this form this same Osler and this same Principles and Practice of Medicine: the pain at the “onset” of the disease “may be so severe as to require a hypodermic injection of morphine.” Then he offers bleeding, serums, veratrum viride, digitalis, digitalin, strychnine, camphor, caffein, musk, alcohol, saline infusions, the Paquetin cautery, hot and cold applications, Dover’s powders, (an opium mixture favoring the accumulation of the exudate in the lungs, because it suppresses the cough that clears the lungs, and “aids,” as Tilden says, “all severe cases in dying of asphyxiation”), hot poltices, icebags, and cold sponging. He says, “The stitch in the side at onset, which is sometimes so agonizing, is best relieved by hypodermic injection of a quarter of a grain of morphia.”
Pg 231
“The medical notion is that most of these cases are due to gonorrhea in the mother and that, as Dr. Cabot expresses it, “proper obstetrics and the putting into every new-born baby’s eyes a proper antiseptic, will stop the disease in every single case.” Practically, all of our states have a law requiring the use of an antiseptic in the eyes of every child at birth. How successful this is, is shown by the fact that over half of the cases of blindness are still attributed to Purulent Infantile Ophthalmia, as it was formerly called.”
“Dr. Tilden says of the practice: “In these days of much medical delusion we hear that children should have a weak solution of nitrate of silver dropped into their eyes as soon as they are born, to prevent ophthalmia neonatorum—a venereal inflammation of the eyes of newborn babies. Doctors who gain their experience from free clinics, hospitals, and slum practice become deluded with the idea that all mankind are tainted with veneral diseases. Their delusion should not be taken too seriously.
Pg 232
“Cleanliness of the child’s eyes is important. It is unfortunate that mothers and nurses do not know how to thoroughly and properly clean a child’s eyes. The poor job that most of them do is lamentable. Nurses are trained to sterilize and not to cleanse the eyes. Dr. Tilden declares that: “If the eyes are kept clean—not pretty nearly clean—there will be no excuse for carrying out the medical superstition of medicating the eyes of every newborn infant with argyrol, to prevent the possibility of ophthalmia neonatorum—gonorrheal inflammation of the eyes—developing; a sort of left-handed compliment that all mothers have gonorrhea. Gonorrhea is a disease of filth, and will end when the human family learns the art of keeping clean (not near clean).”
“The eyes should be carefully cleansed with warm water, using pledgets of absorbent cotton instead of the usual washcloth. Eyes, mouth, anus and genitalia should not be washed with a cloth, for the secretions and excretions from the eyes, nose and mouth of infants should be removed with absorbent cotton and not with the handkerchief. Parents should learn to cleanse the eyes of a child and not trust a careless or inefficient nurse.”
“There should never be any trouble with the eyes of infants except for the careless use of wash-cloths, by mothers and nurses. Dr. Tilden says: “Few if any mothers know how thoroughly to wash a child. When they learn how, there will be fewer blind, deaf, and catarrhal. Skin diseases will disappear if personal liberty ceases to be abrogated by manufacturers of vaccines and serums through their henchmen, the vaccinators, and such diseases as infantile paralysis, meningitis, epilepsy, and rheumatism will be heard of no more.” He also says: “Cleanliness is more far-reaching than prayer under such circumstances. The mother who will neglect her child in every way except prayer will probably send her child to heaven very early.”
Pg 234
“Thin pledgets of cotton are placed over the eyes (over the affected eye if only one is infected) and so arranged that no weight rests on the eye. Small pieces of ice are placed on the cotton and renewed when necessary. This should not be carried further than is essential to insure drainage and perfect cleanliness. Dr. Trall said: “the eyes should be bathed several times a day in moderately tepid water at first, and finally as cold as may be found consistent with comfortable sensations after the applications.”
Some drugless healers use lemon juice solutions in bathing the eyes, while others resort to the antiseptics. Dr. Tilden advises a salt water solution. If one is not fully free of fear of germs, argyrol is probably the least harmful of the antiseptics and is usually employed in a 10 percent solution, although this is probably too strong.”
Pg 236
“Mercurial Stomatitis, commonly called salivation, is inflammation of the mouth, tongue and salivary glands, due to calomel or other form of mercury taken internally through any channel. Its symptoms are fetid breath, swollen and spongy gums, sore and loosened teeth, a profuse, tenacious saliva, inflammation of the membranes of the mouth, a strong metallic taste in the mouth, headache, insomnia and emaciation. Severe cases go on to ulceration of the jaw bone and the falling out of the teeth. Gangrenous stomatitis is frequently due to mercury. Dr. Tilden says: “I began to practice my profession long enough ago to witness little children pick their own teeth out of their sloughing gums, made so by the use of calomel.”
“He tells us also that “fear of water drinking by sick people was developed in those days” and that “water was forbidden all fever patients because their systems were filled with mercury (calomel) and when mercury is in water must stay out; if not, salivation—mercurial poisoning—takes place.” All of this is the result of curing one disease by producing another, and of the principle that ”our strongest poisons are our best remedies.” The destructive effects of mercury are not confined to the mouth. After producing this disease with mercury, physicians treat it with antiseptic mouth-washes and the iodids. Beware of both of these. Better still, beware of all drugs, including mercury in all of its forms.”
Pg 256
WHOOPING COUGH
“Care of the Patient: As harrassing as this condition usually is and as notoriously unsatisfactory as the paregoric freely given, protective vaccines, “large quantities of good nourishing food” and “change of climate,” of medical methods, the condition can be made tolerable by giving the children proper care.
Dr. Tilden declares: “If it starts in children who already have deranged digestion, and they are then fed, not allowing them to miss a meal, complications are liable to occur, such as tremendous engorgement of the brain during the paroxysms. The blood-vessels will stand out like whip-cords on the forehead, and when the child is over the paroxysm it is completely exhausted. Unless such a case is fasted, the cough grows more severe, the stomach derangement increases, causing more and heavier coughing, until there is danger of bringing on a brain complication.”
Pg 260
DIPHTHERIA
“In his Mother’s Hygienic Handbook, 1874, Dr. Trall asserted “the pathological identity of croup and diphtheria. “Membraneous croup” is the worst form of diphtheria. These cases seldom appear to be very ill. For two or three days there is a rough, croupy cough which becomes a little more croupy each afternoon and evening, but wearing off somewhat in the forepart of the night and in the morning. The child’s breathing is not affected, he has an appetite and there is usually little uneasiness on the part of parents. Then, suddenly, the child almost suffocates. He tosses about on the bed, sits up and struggles in various ways in an effort to breathe. He becomes blue. In severe cases the child suffocates unless relieved by intubation or tracheotomy. In the milder cases the paroxysms are soon over, but they sometimes recur later. Dr. Tilden says of type: “I never knew a case to get well where this disease is located in the pharynx, and passes down only a very short distance into the trachea, sometimes the membrane is thrown off and the child recovers, but this is so rare that I have heard only of a few cases. Again he says: “I have never seen a case of bronchial diphtheria get well, and I never expect to.” The disease is best prevented.”
Pg 261
TYPHOID FEVER
“Symptoms: The disease is preceded by a few days or weeks of headache, backache, nosebleed, perhaps, and a period of not feeling very well. There is usually constipation and a coated tongue. The breath is foul and there is often a bad taste in the mouth. For days or weeks the patient is sick and gives no attention to his condition, except, perhaps to drug it. Had he cared for himself properly from the beginning of these symptoms he would be well before any typhoid developed. Dr. Tilden rightly observes: “Typhoid fever (more a disease of adult life) is evolved by feeding and medicating acute indigestion.”
Excerpt From
The Hygienic Care of Children
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Trop, Jack. (1961). You Don’t Have to Be Sick. New York: Julian Press.
Pg 25
Life Begins
“Nature intended that an infant should have nothing but liquid food until it has teeth with which to chew. That is the way with all other animals that can be compared with man. Their diet is liquid until they can bite. Then they go out on their own. Dr. Page, Dr. Tilden, and Dr. Shelton, amongst others, have outlined the nat“ural plan for feeding children. Shelton marvels at the stamina of the human system that can withstand the appalling diet of the first two years of life.”
Pg 57-59
“As you may know, Dr. Weger practiced for many years at Dr. J. H. Tilden’s Sanitarium in Denver. Tilden was a highly literate man. It is difficult to select limited quotes from his book Constipation as almost every word he says throws brilliant light on the subject. However, we will try to pick out a few gems. He wrote:”
“Constipation is a symptom, not a disease.
“Anything that adds to the sum of life, energy and general tone of the mind and body, increases organic functioning, not only overcomes constipation, but adds power to all organs; hence a cure for constipation means restoring health.
“Constipation is an affliction—it is not a disease; hence, whatever the cause is, it must be sought out and removed. To use anything—any one remedy or any hundred remedies—is equivalent to limiting cause, and that shows a fallacious understanding of what constipation is. No cure can come from a treatment based on a false conception of cause and cure.
“So much for Doctor Tilden. He makes it clear that the ingestion, digestion, and assimilation of food is only a small part of the activity that is going on constantly in our bodies. As Herbert Shelton says, “We meddle with bowel function too much.”
“Said he in his Orthobionomics,
“Bowel action is spontaneous and automatic. It does not require to be forced or artificially regulated any more than does any other function of the body. Your bowels do not require to be made to move any more than your heart needs to be made to beat or your lungs to breathe….
“A fact, unknown to physicians and laymen alike, is that all the functions of the body are performed with as much promptness, regularity, and efficiency as, under existing circumstances, is compatible with the safety and highest welfare of the body. In “disease,” that is so long as life lasts, every organ and tissue of the body is at its post, ready and disposed to perform its functions, to the full extent of its abilities.”
“Doctor (concluding): Yes, we do meddle with the functioning of our bowels too much. Weger, Tilden, and Shelton are in my opinion on the right track. Weger gave a good description when he said, “Constipation means tired bowels.” Instead of continuously driving our poor overworked stomach, we should allow it to rest. We are so used to treating different parts of our body as separate entities, we can’t be reminded too often that if your stomach is sick, your body as a whole is sick. It isn’t just one part of you that needs special attention. It is all of you from head to toe that is being abused. You wouldn’t whip a poor tired horse. Have the same consideration for your poor tired body.
Which means, when constipated:
1. Stop eating and rest as much as possible.
2. Take no drugs, nor laxatives, nor purges, nor enemas of any kind.
3. Resume eating only when real hunger occurs. Don’t mistake the griping in your stomach for hunger. Real hunger is an all-over feeling of well-being that activates a desire for nourishment.
4. Read over again and thoroughly digest what Tilden, Weger, and Shelton said.
5. Consult a good doctor who won’t simply try to palliate your symptoms but who will aid you in overcoming the cause of your trouble, your own bad habits.
Pg 83-4
“Discussing a better understanding of the meaning of disease, J.H. Tilden, M.D., in one of his numerous books, Food, published in 1916, said: “There are food fiends who are as hard to control as those with the drug habit. It is impossible to keep them from overeating. As a consequence they cannot be cured. So long as they are under watch, and being coached, they may be made better, but they have no self control.
Medical superstition—modern medical superstition—is standing in the way of educating people into right habits of thinking. So long as the priests of healing are self indulgent—users of tobacco, alcoholics, coffee and tea—and abuse their health standards until their perversions are as great as those of the ignorant laity, the people will not listen to rational advice. Why? Because the entire profession is opposed to the nonsensical idea that food can possibly have anything to do with building disease.”
“Nature intended that an infant should have nothing but liquid food until it has teeth with which to chew. That is the way with all other animals that can be compared with man. Their diet is liquid until they can bite. Then they go out on their own. Dr. Page, Dr. Tilden, and Dr. Shelton, amongst others, have outlined the natural plan for feeding children. Shelton marvels at the stamina of the human system that can withstand the appalling diet of the first two years of life.”
Pg 85
“The profession and the people generally will be better prepared for treating the sick, if they can be made to understand that there is no disease as such; that what is called disease is health laboring under a handicap; and that all the remedy needed, and all that can be used to advantage, is to understand the cause of the lowered health standard, and remove it.”
“As it was in Tilden’s day, so it is at the present time. We are constantly surrounded by conventional living habits that are inimical to us. Spasmodically, other voices or examples of a better way of life intrude on our awareness, and we try to emulate them. In a lecture, Woodland Kahler once said that “although we may fall out of the boat of natural hygiene a hundred times, we must climb in again.” The day will come when we will learn how to keep our balance and then we can sail serenely, high above the multitude, no longer falling an easy prey to the myriad Scylla-and-Charybdis temptations that constantly threaten to drag us down to the bottom of the sea.”
Excerpt From
You Don’t Have to Be Sick
Jack Dunn Trop
This material may be protected by copyright.
“Tilden, J. H., M.D., Food, Denver, J. H. Tilden, 1916. Constipation, Denver, J. H. Tilden, 1919”
Health for the Millions.
Shelton, Herbert. (1968). Health for the Millions. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association.
Pg 224
“The scare thrown into the community by the board of health, when there is an epidemic, causes many to fall ill who, except for the scare, would have remained well. Fear reduces nerve energy. Those who flee, unless their flight allays their fears, are likely to become ill. Why shall we continue to ignore the fact that great fear may produce speedy death? Was there ever a greater nerve-annihilator? “Poise,” said Tilden, “is to health what enervation is to disease.”
Excerpt From
Health for the Millions
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Fasting For Renewal of Life
Shelton, Herbert. (1974). Fasting For Renewal of Life. Youngstown. National Health Association
Pg 9
“Tilden very correctly observed: “Understanding is a vintage of ripe experience.” We should be slow in maturing our beliefs. Prof. Carlson may easily have been too hasty in labeling as enthusiasts, and thus discrediting, those who see in fasting a process that may be useful in many conditions of life. What is needed most today is understanding. Of knowledge we have more than we know what to do with. Without understanding, technical knowledge becomes a real bull-in-a-china-shop. Indeed, it is more like a blind elephant trying to extricate itself from a snare. The surgeon without an understanding of cause and effect is a vandal. Like the physician with his poisons, he seeks with his knife, to cure disease without removing cause.”
Pg 43
FASTING AND DRUGS
“A number of years ago, after years of conducting fasts without running into trouble, I had a rash of fasters who developed bleeding a day to a few days after they began their fasts. It was a new and unexpected development, and, at first, it was disquieting. Why should fasters suddenly develop bleeding? I questioned these individuals and found that in every case they had been taking anticoagulant drugs. The bleeding did not last long. There were no serious developments, but the experience was sufficient to emphasize the dangers associated with drug-taking.”
“I have long known what to expect when placing an alcoholic, a tobacco addict, a morphine addict, a victim of bromidism or some other more popular drug upon a fast, but new drugs always involve unforeseen and unpredictable complications. These are rarely of a dangerous character and are commonly of short duration. This is not true of a complication several recent developments of which I have witnessed. I refer to the development of hemorrhage, in two cases fatal, in subjects suffering with peptic ulcers. After more than forty-four years of conducting fasts, during which time I have supervised the fasting of numerous men and women suffering with peptic ulcers, with uniformly good results, I quite naturally did not expect to run into opposite results in a series of cases of peptic ulcer. In the past, I had but one case to develop hemorrhage. This case made a prompt recovery. Similar good results were seen by Dr. Tilden, Dr. Weger, and others and there seemed to be no reason to caution against such adverse developments.
Pg 45
NOT A CURE
“Critics of the Hygienic System accuse us of believing that fasting will “cure” everything. They and their kind seem determined not to understand our position in this matter. Correct them one day and the next they will be just where they were before, and the thing must be explained all over again. They are battling a man of straw set up by themselves. We do not believe that fasting will “cure” anything. In fact, we do not believe in cures and curing. Curing disease is a survival of voodooism.
Instead of considering the Hygienic System as a whole, which they seem to sense is invulnerable, they think that if they can pick out that part of the Hygienic System to which the average uninformed individual may be most likely to manifest opposition, and play this up to the exclusion of all else, they can make out a strong case against us.”
“Critics of the Hygienic System accuse us of believing that fasting will “cure” everything. They and their kind seem determined not to understand our position in this matter. Correct them one day and the next they will be just where they were before, and the thing must be explained all over again. They are battling a man of straw set up by themselves. We do not believe that fasting will “cure” anything. In fact, we do not believe in cures and curing. Curing disease is a survival of voodooism.
Instead of considering the Hygienic System as a whole, which they seem to sense is invulnerable, they think that if they can pick out that part of the Hygienic System to which the average uninformed individual may be most likely to manifest opposition, and play this up to the exclusion of all else, they can make out a strong case against us.”
“We object to the use of the phrase “hunger cure” in reference to fasting. Not only is the fasting individual not hungry, but the fast is not a cure. That fasting is not curing is a fact that must be repeatedly insisted upon, for the superstition of cure is so firmly embedded in the minds of the people that they seem unable to think of getting well in sickness except in terms of cure. Disease must be cured and whatever is used in caring for the sick must be designed to cure.”
Pg 51
“This view was shared by Dr. Henry Lindlahr (Chicago) of Nature Cure fame, who held that fasting should be employed only in acute disease and during the crises that arise in chronic disease. Many others have accepted this view of fasting, despite the fact that, even in those many thousands of cases of chronic disease that complain of a lack of desire for food, and that everything they eat causes suffering, there is present the power to digest some food. Dr. Daniels gave it as his opinion that in chronic disease “if the feeding is limited only to the foods which can be taken and only in amounts that can be utilized, chronic disease can be eliminated more rapidly and the nutrition built up faster than by fasting.”
Although frequently employing and advising the fast in conditions in which there is considerable digestive power, Tilden often expressed views that harmonized with the view of Daniels and Lindlahr. For example, he once wrote that, except under certain circumstances (circumstances that are relatively rare) he did not believe in long fasts. “Then he added: “It is better to adopt a rational and suitable diet and take from one to two and three years to assume the normal.” His very language implies that a normal state may be attained earlier by the use of the fast, although he thinks that the slower method is preferable.
[After being in Dr. Tilden’s institution in Denver, where I saw patients with a variety of ailments, and hearing him more than twice urge me to stop eating before I was “knocked down,” it is difficult to reconcile the statement that Dr. Tilden often agreed with Drs. Daniel and Lindlahr, except, perhaps, on long fasts.
(At such times, however, that Dr. Tilden would voice his displeasure at my folly, he would irritate my hurt pride by saying exultantly: “I have learned to repent before I sin, and don’t have to suffer remorse.”)——Ed.]”
Pg 53
“Writing well over a hundred years ago E. A. Kittredge, M. D., said that he advised a fasting woman to continue her fast until her tongue became clean and her mouth had its natural tastes (a sweet taste we say today) and he advises continuing the fast until “the tongue cleans and the appetite becomes normal” or, as we say today, until the return of hunger. Tilden advised fasting until the secretions are normal. In the mouth this would give one a sweet taste with no mucus; in the kidneys, there would no longer be the dark urine, but the light amber color that is regarded as normal; in cases where there had been diarrhea or dysentery, the stools would no longer be loose, watery, or foul; discharges from the ears, eyes, or other parts of the body would cease, etc.”
Pg 71
“Dr. Tilden said of the use of fruit juices instead of the fast, “It is a proved fact that taking anything into the system during the period of fasting will interfere with the elimination and the proper functioning of the excretive organs,” (Review and Critique, Sept., 1927). Excretion is increased as the food intake is reduced and it is increased most when no food at all is taken. I agree with Tilden when he says in the Review and Critique, April, 1927, p. 189: “I do not believe in giving fruit juices, or any other kind of food, every two hours. Why stuff fruit juices any more than any other food?” Food cures are as false as drug cures. Reaffirming this shortly before his death, writing of the care of the sick, Tilden wrote: “No! No lemon juice or fruit juice! Water only!” (Review and Critique, Jan., 1940, p. 12).”
Pg 81
“In the Water-Cure Journal, Sept. 1857, S. M. Landis, M. D. says: “In acute and inflammatory diseases, no food should be used.” In acute diseases, such as diphtheria, recovery will occur in almost all cases if not inhibited by obstructive treatment. The serums are more “successful” in the self-limited diseases. For flu Tilden says: “Have fresh air coming into the room day and night. Positively no food at all—no, not even orange juice. Seven or eight days will wind up such a case, if the patient is not killed with food and drugs.” Dr. Weger’s experience with the fast in scarlet fever parallels that of mine. He says of this disease that it has “invariably responded in the same even and consistent manner.”
Pg 84
“Prostatic enlargement and its crippling influence upon environing organs was thought by Tilden to be responsible for more than half the discomforts and aging of men past fifty. He thought that ignorance of the office of prostatic hypertrophy in giving rise to discomforts was inexcusable. Ignorance of proper care is equally inexcusable, he thought. He said that thousands of men are being treated for many “kinds of disease,” to no avail because their so-called diseases are but reflexes of prostatic disease.”
Pg 109
RHEUMATIC FEVER
“Viewed through the smoked goggles of “medical science” rheumatic fever is an obstreperous pathological chameleon. “Acute inflammatory rheumatism,” says Tilden “is a boisterous pain-monger when it starts racing in its chariot of fire through the muscles, tendons, ligaments, cartilages, and articulations of an erstwhile boastful athlete—one of those super-healthy young men or women who are never sick and who never expect to be.” He says of these overindulgent athletes: “Up to the unceremonious ushering in of fever, swollen joints, excruciating pain, and a most unhappy helplessness, our boastful cocksure, health-to-sell young man or young woman defies all health laws, eating, drinking, and merry-making, and stressing the refrain: ‘Living in the sunlight, loving in the moonlight, having a wonderful time.’ ”
Pg 111
“Next to proper rest, which usually includes physiological rest, a proper diet is equally as important. Most practitioners of all schools of so-called healing today are agreed that diet is important in arthritis, but the diets prescribed would be jokes were their results not so uniformly tragic.
An authority on arthritis may prescribe rest and diet and then add that “other treatments called for by a general study of the patient’s condition” should be administered. As Tilden would have remarked: “Anyone could get lost in that jungle.” What are the “treatments called for?” What are the treatments that can help?
It is rare that arthritis is a hopeless condition. Even after years of suffering most arthritics can evolve a high degree of health where no ankylosis has developed. Most joints may be restored to a healthy state. When the joint structures are destroyed in chronic inflammation of the joint, the joint surface loses its synovial membrane (lubricating surface) leaving the ends of the bones rough, and the bones grow together (fused) into a solid bone. There is no longer a movable joint and the change is irreversible.”
Pg 114
CYSTITIS
“It is all right to say that the bladder becomes irritable from a slight retention of urine; that, as the retention increases, the bladder becomes more irritable and the passing of urine more difficult, disagreeable and frequent, but we must learn why there is a retention of urine. Tilden says that when the bladder does not empty itself completely the urine becomes foul. He adds: “The more foul the bladder becomes, the more frequent the patient is compelled to pass urine.” Finally, he says: “The irritation caused by retained urine in time causes cystitis, or inflammation and ulceration of the bladder.” That is good as far as it goes, but it does not go far enough. It fails to account for the retention of urine. If the retention is due to an enlarged prostate, it does not account for the prostatic enlargement. It must also be added that this picture of the development of cystitis is seen largely if not wholly in the older age groups. Acute cystitis in the young flows from a different set of antecedents. Prostatic enlargement will hardly account for cystitis in females.”
Pg 118
“Discussing the wide range of applicability of the fast in his Genesis and Control of Disease, George S. Weger, M. D., lists glaucoma among the many serious chronic afflictions in which he had found fasting to be genuinely serviceable, or as he expresses it, “actually to witness complete recovery.” He says that his conclusions concerning these so-called diseases, including glaucoma, are “based upon actual group results and can be verified by the best proof in the world—the enthusiastic endorsement of the patients themselves.”
Dr. Tilden also recounts his experience with the fast in glaucoma and states that his results have been gratifying. The results of the usual procedures are certainly unsatisfactory. Astringent drugs dropped into the eye and operations to drain the eye certainly remove no causes, and the frequent result of this neglect of cause, coupled with mere symptom-shooting, is blindness, even, at times, amputation of the eye.”
“Tilden has emphasized the importance of preventing “the destruction of an eye with glaucoma when the disease starts.” He says that when eye discomfort first develops or “when glaucoma starts” one should “stop eating, correct the blood pressure, overcome toxin poisoning, and the gastrointestinal infection; and … glaumcoma will give down before the eye is destroyed.” He advised that the person with glaucoma should “stay in bed, give a hot eye-bath every three hours, and fast until pain and soreness are gone.”
At the first sign of glaucoma, one should at once discontinue all eating. It should hardly be necessary to add that all tea, coffee, chocolate, cocoa, alcohol, and other drinks should be completely abstained from.”
Excerpt From
Fasting For Renewal of Life
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Shelton, Herbert. (1934). The Science and Fine Art Fasting – The Hygienic System: Volume III National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.
Pg 22
“Although Prof. Morgulis has a wide acquaintance with the so-called scientific literature dealing with the subject of fasting or inanition, he voluntarily cuts himself off from all of the literature of so-called therapeutic fasting, and applies such terms as “enthusiasts,” “amateurs” and “faddists” to those whose years of experience with fasting enable them to apply it to the care of human beings in the various states of impaired health. In an extended bibliography he mentions, from the many works on fasting by its exponents, only that of Hereward Carrington. Mr. Carrington’s book is one of the best books on the subject which has yet appeared, but it is by no means complete or even up-to-date, having been published in 1908. Morgulis ignores the works of Jennings, Graham, Trall, Densmore, Walter, Dewey, Tanner, Haskell, Macfadden, Sinclair, Hazzard, Tilden, Eales, Rabagliati, Keith and others who have had widest experience with fasting and who have written extensively upon the subject.”
Pg 94
“Bernarr Macfadden says: “My experience of fasting has shown me beyond all possible doubt that a foreign growth of any kind can be absorbed into the circulation by simply compelling the body to use every unnecessary element contained within it for food. When a foreign growth has become hardened, sometimes one long fast will not accomplish the result, but where they are soft, the fast will usually cause them to be absorbed.”
“A small tumorous growth which had existed for more than twenty years was absorbed during Mr. Pearson’s longest fast and did not return thereafter. Dr. Hazzard records the recovery, during a fifty-five day’s fast, of a case diagnosed by physicians as cancer of the stomach. Tilden, Weger, Rabagliati and many others record many such cases.”
Pg 111
“Laboratory investigators have reported an increase in the red cells of healthy fasters with a decrease in white cells. In anemia, fasting often results in an increase in the number of red blood corpuscles to more than twice their former number, with a concomitant decrease in the number of white blood cells. In a talk in Chicago a few years ago, Dr. Tilden said: “Cases of pernicious anemia taken off their food will double their blood count in one week.” Dr. Weger reports a case of anemia in which a 12 days’ fast resulted in an increase of the number of red cells from 1,500,000, to 3,000,000; hemoglobin increased fifty percent, and white cells were reduced from 37,000 to 14,000.”
Pg 128
“Dewey referred to fasting as the “rest cure,” and said that rest “is not to do any of the curing (healing) any more than it heals the broken bone or the wound; it is only going to furnish the condition for cure.” Here he was speaking of physiological rest or fasting. Mr. Carrington also insists upon the necessity of physiological rest in disease, but he stresses particularly rest of the digestive system, even prescribing forcing measures that prevent rest of other systems of the body. Both Tilden and Weger emphasized the fact that fasting is a period of physiological rest. Perhaps Walter stressed this fact more than anyone else.”
Pg 159
“The stomach, intestines and colon are given a complete rest by the fast and are enabled to repair damaged structures. Piles, proctitis, colitis, appendicitis, enteritis, enteric fever (typhoid), gastritis, etc., speedily recover under the fast. The alimentary tract becomes practically free of bacteria during a fast. The small intestines become sterile. But a week of fasting is required to result in a complete disappearance of all germs from the stomach. The quickest means of remedying bacterial decomposition in the digestive tract is fasting. Dr. Tilden says: “The fact that the hibernating bear loses its colon bacilli is not acted upon, and a fast recommended when disease results from overeating, bacterial decomposition and toxin poisoning.”
Pg 163
“Dr. Tilden, a frequent and regular user of the enema, admitted that it was enervating. But why should we employ methods of care that further enervate our patients? It is our duty, in caring for our patients, to conserve the energy of each patient in every way possible and not to needlessly dissipate the precious energies of life.”
Pg 177
“Gain and Loss of Strength While Fasting”
“Most men can understand eating to get strong,” says Dr. Tilden, “but it takes a long time to educate them to stop eating to get strong.” As paradoxical as it may seem to those who have had no experience with fasting, there is a frequent, and perhaps always a gain in strength while fasting. Let me begin with a quotation from a thoroughly “orthodox” and “scientific” source. Benedict (1915) details a number of experiments upon the strength of Prof. Levanzin during his experimental fast. Referring to similar tests made by others, he says:”
“The tests made by Luciani on Succi, in which a dynamometer was used to measure the strength of the right and left hands, showed results seemingly at variance with the popular impression. Thus, on the 21st day of the fast, Succi was able to register on the dynamometer a stronger grip than when the fast began. From the 20th to the 30th day of the fast, however, his strength decreased, being less at the end than at the beginning of the fast. In discussing these results, Luciani pointed out the fact that Succi believed that he gained in strength as the fast progressed and hence probably did not exert the greatest power at the beginning of the experiment. Considering the question of the influence of inanition on the onset of fatigue, Luciani states that the fatigue curve obtained from Succi on the 29th fast day was similar to that obtained with an individual under normal conditions” (1907, p. 327).”
Pg 191
“Fasting Does Not Induce Deficiency “Disease”
“Deficiency diseases—scurvy, rickets, multiple neuritis (beriberi), pellagra, certain anemias, and similar symptom-complexes—that are due, in great measure to vitamin, mineral and protein deficiencies in the diet or failure to utilize these elements, even though present in the diet, do not result from fasting, even the most prolonged fasts, keeping in mind the definition of fasting employed in this book. So far as I know, I was the first to call attention to the remarkably significant fact that fasting, unlike deficient diets, does not cause deficiency diseases. This I did more than thirty years ago.
Tilden, Weger, Rabagliati, Hay and others have repeatedly shown the value of fasting in anemia; McCollum showed it to be beneficial in rickets; I have employed it with benefit in early pellagra. I am of the opinion that it will prove helpful in multiple neuritis and other deficiency diseases.”
Pg 200
“Death during a fast cannot occur,” says Dr. Hazzard, “unless there is organic disease, and not then unless the organ or organs affected are in such degenerated state as not to permit of repair; and it is conclusively demonstrated that in a scientifically directed fast, although death in the condition cited cannot be averted, yet because of organic labor lessened, life is prolonged for days or weeks, and distress and pain, if present, are much alleviated.”
“Tilden says: “It is safe to say that when anyone dies while going without food it is due to the fact that he died from the disease before the fast could be extended long enough for it to be thrown off, or from fright, or from lack of proper nursing, being allowed to freeze to death. It is a mistake to associate in mind the two terms ‘fasting’ and ‘starving’ as one and the same. It requires great skill to fast a patient properly. Any fool can starve a patient to death.” There are conditions in the bodies of many patients which lead to death inevitably. If one so afflicted dies while fasting, everyone is only too willing to place the blame for death upon the fast. Dr. Hazzard says that in her experience “death during a fast never has occurred when merely functional disorder was present, nor did it ever result for the sole reason that food was withheld.”
Pg 236
“One school teaches its students that “Generally speaking, the use of several fasts of four to seven days each is just as effective as one fast for several weeks.” While there are cases where we are compelled to employ a series of short fasts in this way, it has not been my experience that a series of short fasts is as effective as one long fast. I do not know of any one who has had long experience with fasting who claims that such has been his or her experience. Dr. Hazzard does not favor this view. Neither does Carrington. The works of Macfadden are full of contrary expressions, as are the works of Tilden.”
Pg 248
“For over a hundred years Shew, Graham, Trall, Page, Dewey, Oswald, Haskell, Macfadden, Carrington, Eales, Tilden, Weger, Claunch, Shelton and hundreds of others, who have had extensive experience with fasting, have been calling attention to the fact that hunger is a mouth and throat sensaton rather than a stomach sensaton, but the professional physiologists have persisted in ignoring their work and their testimony and have accepted popular superstitions about the sensation of hunger and have “confirmed” these by limited experiments on sick men and women. Cannon, Pavlov, Carlson, etc., have all based their conclusions on inadequate data and on experiments that are too short to be conclusive.”
Pg 288
“Hygiene of the Fast”
“When one undertakes to fast, one reasonably desires to obtain the greatest possible good in the shortest possible time. To accomplish this requires that the fast be conducted in strict accordance with a few simple and easily understood principles. These few principles must be known and observed in abstaining from food, by either the well or the sick. Tilden says: “Fasting as a remedy requires great knowledge and experience, and should not be assumed by laymen, nor by professional men who have given the subject no thought from a fundamental point of view.” Fasting must be fully understood, rightly applied, it must be conducted with skilled hands, if full results are to be expected. There are many factors that must be considered while the patient is abstaining from food. If the sick person’s condition represents years of abuse by bad habits and treatment, great skill is required to take him through a fast to perfect health. Many of the evils ascribed to fasting have resulted from the attempts of unskilled and inexperienced men to conduct fasts.
Pg 295
“Fasters must be kept warm. It requires nerve force to warm the body, and the patient should not be permitted to waste his nervous energy in keeping warm, but should be kept warm by artificial heat. The fasting patient who throws off the covers and kicks his feet and legs out, declaring he is too hot, yet who has cold extremities, as revealed by feeling his feet, must be carefully warmed and kept warm. Such patients are actually in danger. Tilden says of such: “unless that patient is carefully warmed and kept warm, death will ensue within twenty-four to forty-eight hours. And if the case has advanced very far before receiving this attention, death will certainly take place.” Again: “After fasting has gone beyond a certain point—after the patient has reached a point where the rectal temperature goes one or two degrees below normal—there will be great difficulty in resuscitation.” Where such a condition as he here describes has been permitted to develop, and it should be known that its development is due to ignorance or carelessness, artificial heat and much of it must be applied to the faster. “ Food will have to be given in very small quantities and at frequent intervals. Rest and quiet are very important in such a condition.”
Pg 303
FEEDING INTERVALS
“Tilden says: “A fast must not be continued when the patient is suffering greatly, it matters not in what way. ***
“Some patients will start without food and within a week they are very sick—sick because of great enervation. They have been over-stimulated so long that when the stimulating food is removed they soon evolve a severe prostration. Most intelligent people know how much the inebriate suffers when he is compelled to go “through delirium tremens. Delirium tremens is the acme of prostration. People who are tremendously prostrated or enervated, from years of over-stimulation from food, do not suffer just the same as the inebriate but they suffer, many of them, just as greatly. A good many will become very sick at the stomach and vomit almost unceasingly. This must be avoided. When such a patient starts on a fast, the physician must recognize the coming symptoms, and break the fast by giving a small amount of fruit.” “As soon as the symptoms of irritation have subsided, the fast will be resumed, until other symptoms indicate that the system is suffering too greatly from the effect of going without food, when a little fruit may be given for two or three days, and sometimes a week. The fast can then be resumed; but, as soon as the patient begins to show the appearance of suffering, and the haggard state begins to develop, feeding must be resumed.”
Pg 304-305
“He says that “little by little, such cases can be piloted into perfect health.” I give Dr. Tilden’s plan for what it is worth. It is my own plan not to break a fast while there is vomiting. I have broken fasts when there is great prostration and resumed the fast after strength has been recovered. The remedy for delirium tremens is not more whiskey. Just so the remedy for the great prostration caused by long-continued food drunkenness is not more food. If we would not give a dose of morphine to the morphine addict who suffers when deprived of his morphine, or the coffee addict a cup of coffee to “relieve” her headache, why should we give the food drunkard more food to relieve his suffering? With all due respect to Dr. Tilden, whose experience with fasting was very great, I do not find this plan essential or helpful, except in a very few cases.”
“Tilden also urges daily enemas and lavages. He says: “the bowels should be looked after from the day the fast is started until it is ended. A retention of excretions will poison and make the patient very sick, and there is a possibility of his becoming so prostrated from the effect of the poison absorbed that he will die. Nausea and vomiting following fasting are a very good indication that there is too much absorption taking place. Then the bowels must be moved by enemas, or whatever is proper to do, until they are thoroughly cleaned out.” My experience does not bear this out. I have seen more vomiting and nausea in cases that received daily enemas than in those who have received no enemas at all. “Nor have I seen prostration and death as a result of absorption of retained excretions. Indeed, it seems clear to me that absorption does not occur. Tilden also says: “But fasting must not be continued if the patient begins to present a haggard appearance or if nausea and efforts at vomiting develop. When a patient under a fast begins to show a depressed state and haggard look and the tissues begin to droop down, and a decided discomfort begins to manifest, feeding must be resumed and the patient must be brought back to a reasonable state of comfort. Then fasting can be resumed; or if it is not thought best to go without food entirely, then the patient may be put on a small amount of “fruit for a week or more. It requires a great deal of skill to assist nature back to a normal state when the health has been outraged almost to the point of dissolution. Fasting is not a remedy that should be trusted in the hands of laymen, nor in the hands of ignorant professional men. Putting such a remedy as fasting into the hands of laymen, to be applied to sick people, is equivalent to putting an insane man to work in a barber shop, especially if the barber’s hallucinations are on the order of homicidal mania. We are not convinced that laymen cannot make excellent use of fasting in minor troubles and the less advanced pathologies; but we are sure that Tilden’s warning should be heeded by those who suffer with advanced stages of pathology.”
Pg 309
“THE GASTRIC LAVAGE DURING THE FAST
Certain advocates of fasting employ the lavage as a routine practice. Dr. Tilden formerly employed it as a daily measure. This proved to be too great a tax upon his patients so he reduced its use to three times a week. From my own experience with the measure, I consider even this too great a tax upon the energies of the patient. Others employ the lavage only when there is actual nausea and gastric distress. They wash out the stomach to relieve the faster of discomfort. This measure often brings considerable relief, but at a big price. The insertion of the stomach tube is a severe enough tax on most patients. Pouring a gallon or more of water, with or without soda or other drug, into the stomach, also taxes them. The retching and vomiting occasioned by this procedure leaves the patient weak and nervous for hours. The relief afforded by the lavage is short-lived and the cost in nerve force is too great to justify it.”
“Tilden says: “A fast must not be continued when the patient is suffering greatly, it matters not in what way. ***
“Some patients will start without food and within a week they are very sick—sick because of great enervation. They have been over-stimulated so long that when the stimulating food is removed they soon evolve a severe prostration. Most intelligent people know how much the inebriate suffers when he is compelled to go “through delirium tremens. Delirium tremens is the acme of prostration. People who are tremendously prostrated or enervated, from years of over-stimulation from food, do not suffer just the same as the inebriate but they suffer, many of them, just as greatly. A good many will become very sick at the stomach and vomit almost unceasingly. This must be avoided. When such a patient starts on a fast, the physician must recognize the coming symptoms, and break the fast by giving a small amount of fruit.” “As soon as the symptoms of irritation have subsided, the fast will be resumed, until other symptoms indicate that the system is suffering too greatly from the effect of going without food, when a little fruit may be given for two or three days, and sometimes a week. The fast can then be resumed; but, as soon as the patient begins to show the appearance of suffering, and the haggard state begins to develop, feeding must be resumed.”
Pg 324
“Living After the Fast”
“The fast is in vain,” says Tilden, “if the patient returns to his old habits. This is true of convalescing in general.” The results of the fast will be more or less temporary unless one lives properly thereafter. Fasting will not make one “disease” proof. Orthobionomic living is essential thereafter if one desires to remain in good health.”
Pg 336
“The body never performs any of what Dr. Tilden calls “Hindu tricks,” in this matter of taking nourishment. It does not digest and absorb food when digestion is suspended and the membranes of the stomach and intestine are exuding matter instead of absorbing it. It is exuding fluid to aid in expelling the mass of putrescence in the food tube, and to protect the walls of the tube and any irritated surface. Sometimes nature even rejects water, expelling it by vomiting as often as it is forced down. How foolish in such cases to continue to force food and drugs on the patient and water into his stomach. Nature is trying to protect herself by this vomiting. She even guards against water by creating a bad taste in the mouth that causes the patient to refuse water. Dr. Lindlahr likened the process to a sponge. During health, the sponge (intestine) is busy absorbing, during a fast or in acute “disease“ the sponge is being squeezed.”
Pg 341
PREVENTION
“Tilden says: “All acute disease could be prevented if anticipated by a fast of sufficient duration to lower the accumulated toxins below the toleration point. An anticipatory fast establishes a dependable immunization to any so-called disease. If started too late, it will eliminate or render very mild the worst types of epidemics. If this were generally known and acted upon by towns and cities in ordering the people to fast for a few days, and to follow the fast by light eating, epidemics would be shorn of their virulence, and in time rendered impotent or prevented entirely. Only the vulnerable—those pronouncedly toxemic—are attacked (?) by epidemics.”
Pg 358
“Tilden says: “Something more is necessary, however, than simply fasting to overcome and bring about absorption of a fibroid tumor. The proper local treatments for correcting uterine derangement and establishing proper nutrition are absolutely necessary in all cases, if dependable health is to be hoped for.” This has not been our experience and we do not approve of the scarification and other local treatment employed by him. The wen is a cyst. Graham mentions seeing wens remedied by fasting. I have no desire to dispute this observation, for I have myself seen a very few such pathologies remedied by fasting. What I do want to point out, however, is that this is a rare occurrence. Commonly wens and other cysts are not much affected by the fast. Tilden was of this same opinion, saying that there is but one treatment for wens and this is surgical removal. Dr. Weger’s observations led him to the same conclusion.”
Pg 370
“Fasting Versus Eliminating Diets”
“Tilden (1931) says: “The foregoing may lead to the belief that I am in the habit of advising patients through long periods of fasting. This is not true. I do not believe in the need of long fasts. In years gone by I required of my patients more fasting than I do now. Since having had the opportunity of watching patients individually from the beginning to the end of one or more months’ stay with me, I have proved to my entire satisfaction that long fasts are neither necessary nor beneficial, but often do harm” (pp. 646-647). He adds that “very light eating, instead of fasting over a long period of time, brings much better results—with proper nursing, it should be understood” (p. 647).”
“A statement of this nature, coming from a man of the vast experience of Tilden, is not to be lightly brushed aside. It should reveal to my readers the importance of competent supervision of a fast and the folly of attempting long fasts out of enthusiasm and half-information. That a long fast may prove harmful in some cases is certain and to undertake such a fast without supervision is unwise. I have cared for numerous cases that a long fast was the only thing that brought any genuine improvement; I have seen many more where a long fast would “have been dangerous. I have had two patients to die and another to sustain considerable temporary injury because they refused to break their fasts when I advised and persisted in fasting for days after I wanted it broken. A patient who takes the bit in his teeth and runs away with the apple cart in this manner is also almost certain to run into trouble. The practitioner supervising a fast is justified in refusing further responsibility in a case when the patient refuses to follow instructions.”
Pg 371
“Dr. T. L. Nichols, an outstanding Hygienist of the last century, laid great stress on the importance, in some cases, of what he called the “partial fast.” He says: “I have known a case of serious organic disease, which I feared might prove speedily fatal, to be entirely cured by a seven-months fast on one very moderate and very pure meal a day.” Following his lead, Dr. Rabagliati of England and Dr. Tilden of this country made frequent use of what Tilden often referred to as the “starvation diet.” Indeed, Tilden said that the patient should be fed barely enough to sustain life. “Macfadden and his staff also made frequent use of various “partial fasting” regimens. It will be readily recognized that limited feeding of this type constitutes a marked degree of physiological rest for the sick and enervated organism and constitutes a near approach to a complete fast. The student of the matter also knows that the originators of the “partial fasts” or “eliminating diets” did not regard them as cures. They knew what they were doing and were not fooled by the ideas that there are curative foods. I offer the following reasons why the eliminating diet is preferable to the fast in certain cases:”
“1. A few patients who know nothing of fasting, or who have been poisoned against it by someone else who knows nothing of fasting, are afraid of the fast. The eliminating diet should be employed in such cases. It frequently happens that after watching others fast and witnessing the results, these fearful ones ask to be permitted to fast but at the outset they refuse to fast.
2. Some patients are so greatly depleted in body that a fast of more than three or four days, or at most a few days, is inadvisable. Such a fast may profitably be followed by an eliminating diet. In such cases an eliminating diet may even include small quantities of proteins, carbohydrates and fats.
3. In mild, acute and in chronic “disease,” in children who demand food and cannot be made to understand the reason for fasting and cannot be induced to cooperate with parent and doctor, the eliminating diet is usually very satisfactory.”
Pg 376
“The principle here expressed, that the diet gives better results as it approaches a fast, agrees perfectly with my experience in the matter. Not only is it true that the less “value” the food possesses, the more good the patient derives from its use, but it is also true that the less the patient takes of the food and the more nearly he fasts, the more rapidly he recovers. Tilden fed diluted fruit juices for an extended period and came to the same conclusion.”
“Fruit diets, vegetable diets, juice diets, mono-diets, etc., are valuable in the degree to which they reduce the amount of food daily ingested. Their value increases as the total amount of food eaten daily diminishes. The nearer one approaches a complete fast the more good one derives from his “curative” diet. In an article written a short time before his death and published posthumously, Dr. Tilden says: “How do fruits prevent clogging of the liver, kidney, and skin? “By not causing clogging of these organs. Certainly not through eliminating properties—medicinal qualities. No! Nature eliminates, when given an opportunity. Clogging comes from ringing the changes on bread, meat, potatoes puddings, pies, and coffee, until the body is burdened with waste. A fruit diet … allows nature to work in an unobstructed manner. Every particle of fruit taken when the body is replete hinders elimination. This being true (and I have proved it daily for years in actual practice), then fruit does not assist elimination, except by its absence. When used, it has less influence “han the other foods in preventing elimination” (p. 556). Consuming large quantities of juice water-logs the tissues and overworks the kidneys. The less juice ingested, the more rapidly the sick person improves.”
“Tilden, John H. Fasting fanaticism. Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique, (December) 1931, 6 (12) 640–649.
Tilden, John H. Is fruit a food? Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique, (October) 1940, 15 (10) 555–556.”
Excerpt From
The Science and Fine Art of Fasting
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Shelton, Herbert. (1935). The Science and Fine Art of Food and Nutrition – The Hygienic System: Volume II. National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.
Pg 81
“A few teaspoonfuls of olive oil a day should suffice to supply a man with all the food (heat units) he requires, but everyone nowadays knows that man cannot live on such a diet. The great value of lettuce is now everywhere recognized. Fruits and vegetables, formerly almost valueless, except in the estimation of a few cranks like Graham, Trall, Densmore, Page and Tilden, are coming to be more and more recognized for what they are – man’s best food. It is even asserted on experimental evidence that green foods are absolutely necessary.”
Pg 98
“Physical chemistry reveals that a mineral may be divided into the smallest possible particle – individual ions – by simply dissolving it in water. Eperience with these salts proves that they are not remedial. Dr. Tilden’s testimony is to the point. He says he gave them a thorough trial at one time in his career and found them to be worthless.”
Pg 115
“Apples contain calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, iron and magnesia. Their phosphoric acid is in the most soluble form, while the iron in the apple is more easily taken into the blood than iron from any other source. Dr. Tilden especially recommends apples for rachitic children, and for building good bones and teeth. Dr. Claunch stated that cavities in his teeth healed while he was on an apple diet. There are many varieties of apples, all of them a delight to the sense of taste, and they are obtainable throughout the year.”
Pg 156
“I have never been able to find any sound reason why we should deliberately drink a certain number of glasses of water a day just because somebody has arbitrarily decided that we require that much water. I know of no sound reason why we should take water in the absence of real physiological need for water, as expressed in genuine thirst. I am fully convinced from my own observations and experiments that there are many people who are injuring themselves by drinking too much water.”
“Dr. Trall severely condemned the “indiscriminate practice of large water-drinking” and said, “I have seen not a little mischief result from it.” Drs. Shew, Cully, Johnson, Wilson and Rausse, of the hydropathic school, severely and justly repudiated the extravagant recommendation of large water-drinking contained in many works on water-cure. Dr. Tilden, though, like the author, once an advocate of much water-drinking, has for several years past condemned the practice. The late Dr. Lindhar did not favor the practice.”
Pg 254
“The Earl of Sandwich is credited with having invented the sandwich – a modern dietetic abomination. The hamburger, a similar abomination, is also a modern dietetic innovation. Egg sandwiches, cheese sandwiches, ham sandwiches and similar protein-starch combinations are of recent origin. Dr. Tilden used to say that Nature never produced a sandwich. How true are his words!”
Pg 257
“Tilden, who was once a professor of physiology in a medical college, remarked: “Educated (scientific) M. D.’s, have known all about the chemistry of digestion, because their bosom companions, the Ph. D.’s, have overworked their laboratories, and particularly their glass stomachs (the immortal test-tubes), to serve their doctor friends.” It is unfortunate that the physiologists have been so anxious to justify conventional eating practices and so unwilling to make any practical applications of the factors of digestive chemistry in eating. Had the physiologists not been derelict of their duty, our eating practices of today might be far different.”
Pg 258
“It is true that the natural combinations offer but little difficulty in digestion, but neither the food factories nor the cooks have been able to produce protein-starch combinations capable of digestive completion. What nature has combined, nature can digest. What man may combine, she often finds indigestible. Dr. Tilden was eternally right when he repeated on more than one occasion that nature never produced a sandwich.”
“Apples contain calcium, phosphorus, sulphur, iron and magnesia. Their phosphoric acid is in the most soluble form, while the iron in the apple is more easily taken into the blood than iron from any other source. Dr. Tilden especially recommends apples for rachitic children, and for building good bones and teeth. Dr. Claunch stated that cavities in his teeth healed while he was on an apple diet. There are many varieties of apples, all of them a delight to the sense of taste, and they are obtainable throughout the year.”
Pg 304
“HOW TO EAT SALADS
When Dr. Tilden initiated the daily salad habit (this was back in the 1890’s) the practice was vigorously condemned by the medical profession. Today many physicians and most nutritionists are advising the daily salad without giving credit where it is due. My own view is that two salads a day should be eaten – one with the starch meal the other with the protein meal.”
Pg 443
“There are a few conditions which demand the weaning of the child. Dr. Tilden says: “Convulsions in nursing children, not traceable to objective causes, will usually be found to come from slight septic infections of the mother, due to injuries incident to child birth; hence it is well to carefully investigate all unaccountable sickness occurring in young children soon after birth, with a view of locating the trouble in a blood derangement of the mother and discovering, if possible, whether it comes from septic poisoning.”
Pg 444
“The breast pump is not advisable. It injures the tissues and invariably causes the breasts to dry up prematurely. Dr. Tilden says of this: “I found that when the pump was used the breasts were more or less bruised and that the bruising caused inflammation and suppuration. In time I proved to myself that there were more abscesses following the use of the pump than when it was not used.”
Pg 445
“Dr. Tilden is equally as strong for what he calls the no-starch-for-babies plan. He says: “It is a mistake to feed starchy food too soon – before the end of the second year; for young children cannot take care of too much starch.” “Children under two or three years of age have trouble in converting starch into sugar. They should get their sugar from fruits; fresh fruits in summer, and the dry sweet fruits in the winter – raisins, dates and figs.”
Pg 448
“Dr. Tilden well says: “If mothers could be made to see the fearful price they pay for keeping their babies fat they would hasten to learn a better plan of feeding. Children who are overweight are more susceptible to disease influences than smaller and lighter children. The fat, chubby baby, everything else being equal, is always the one to take the croup, tonsilitis, diphtheria, scarlet fever and, when a few years older, pneumonia, rheumatism and other forms of common diseases.”
Pg 451
“That overfeeding tends to stunt growth is well proven. Why should we go on stuffing our children in an effort to fatten them or to force them to grow more rapidly than normal?
Dr. Tilden says that: “If a child (on the three meal plan) grows thin and really loses weight after the second week it will not be an indication that it is not fed often enough. My experience has been that the mother’s milk is deficient is some of the important elements, or that she does not give enough.”
“In discussing the three meal plan he says: “If an infant is properly cared for from birth it will not be awake oftener than two or three times – we will say three times – in twenty-four hours. This, then, I assume is as often as nursing children should be fed, and I have succeeded in influencing a few mothers to feed their babies according to this plan, and the results have been gratifying, indeed.”
“The children are smaller (not fat) and very active, and much stronger and brighter than children fed in the ordinary way.”
He also says: “Children fed three times a day will not be troubled with constipation and will not have white curds in the discharges from the bowels.”
Pg 453
“Dr. Tilden says: “I am compelled to compromise with most mothers, and permit four feeds a day, and then the majority will sneak in an extra feed at night, which, of course, the baby has to pay for with occasional sick spells.”
Pg 460
“FRUIT JUICES
Dr. Tilden says: “If we ever get on to a rational plan of eating, children up to two years of age will be fed on an exclusive milk diet, with orange or other fruit or vegetable juices.”
Fruit juices supply minerals, vitamins and sugar. Grape juice, for example, rich in grape sugar, also supplies, in addition to other minerals iron that is so deficient in diluted milk.”
Pg 453
“Dr. Tilden says: “There are many brands of artificial foods on the market, and there are tons of these foods used in this country every year, but so far as being of real benefit is concerned, it is doubtful if they are beneficial when it comes to supplying a need that can’t be supplied by something of greater food value.”
Pg 464
“What is the great secret of success in feeding babies? Dr. Tilden well expresses it thus: “Fit children to the food and never attempt to fit the food to the children.” How? Easy! Watch these few simple rules:
1. Feed the child natural, that is, uncooked, unprocessed, unsterilized, unadulterated, undrugged, foods.
2. Do not stuff the child. Feed it three moderate meals a day.
3. Feed simple meals. Do not feed foods that are mixed in such a way as to cause fermentation.
4. Do not feed between meals, nor at night.
5. If the child is upset, or feels bad, or is excited or tired, or over heated, or chilled, or in pain or distress, or is sick, don’t feed it. If there is fever, give no food.”
Pg 465
“Parents often feel sorry for their children when they see them deprived of certain foods, but they are wasting their sympathies. Such sympathies are tantamount to wishing for them a continuance of disease. “When parents are intelligent enough to know their duty to their children,” says Dr. Tilden, “they will not feel sorry for them because they are not eating in a way to make them sick.” Too many parents are ruled by their emotions and sentiments and not by knowledge and reason. Give children those foods that are good for them and do not cultivate in them an appetite for harmful foods.”
Excerpt From
The Science and Fine Art of Food and Nutrition
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Shelton, Herbert. (1934). The Science and Fine Art of Natural Hygiene – The Hygienic System: Volume I. National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.
Pg 20
“Graham pointed out that the “vital instincts” behaved as though directed by intelligence. Tilden held that physiology is “organized psychology.” If this has any meaning at all, it means that life is more than a physio-chemical episode. Prof. Eddington holds that mind is the first and most direct thing in our experience, all else being remote inference. Shall we say then, that, “an integrated organism functions by virtue of wisdom incarnated in its tissues?” If we answer this question in the affirmative, we must then ask: What is the origin, if it has an origin, of this wisdom and what is it connected with? What, in the other words, is it that is incarnated?”
Pg 47
“Some who have been ailing through more or less of the period of childhood are carried by the force of development, which in a cyclonic fashion sweeps everything before it into health–and that, too, often in spite of wrong life, and a medical treatment that might prove fatal if administered at any other time in life.
“These health storms, typhoons, revolutions, often sweep invalids into health, starting up with no apparent cause, and carrying many victims of ill-health into physical states approximating good health.”–Impaired Health, Vol. 1, p. 153, J. H. Tilden, M.D.”
Pg 170
“Diapers: or hip-pins, should be changed as soon as they are wet. The child should be sponged off and dried before another diaper is put on. Diapers should be light and loose. They should be washed before using and should never be merely dried, without washing, and then used. Don’t pin the diaper so snugly about the baby that all circulation of air about the parts is cut off. This will make the baby hot and uncomfortable. The diaper should then be washed before using again. Skin derangements are often caused by using diapers after they have been wet and dried without being washed. Keep the skin clean and there will be no chaffing, excoriation, scaling or skin irritations. These are caused by a lack of cleanliness–they are prevented and remedied by cleanliness.
I quote the following from Dr. Tilden: “It is not necessary for a child to have any malodors. Perfume is absurd; it neither covers the odor coming from lack of cleanliness, nor causes the child to be clean. There is no odor so splendid as the real sweetness of cleanliness. Perfume, like the doctor’s antiseptic, is made to hide, or antidote, filth. “Neither is needed when proper cleanliness is maintained; and both should be recognized as advertising lack of cleanliness.”
Pg 188
“This young man, Robert Walter by name, later became one of the most outstanding leaders in the Hygienic movement. He was born February 14, 1841, and died October 26, 1921. Like Graham, Trall, Tilden and many others, who have turned to Hygiene, he was forced to study the matter himself, because physicians are interested in “disease,” not in health. His degree in medicine was obtained at the Hygieo-Therapeutic College founded and administered by Trall. To Trall, Jackson and Jennings he gives most credit for his own work.”
“His Hygienic institution at Wernersville, Pa., was a large institution and was famed throughout the world for the excellence of results obtained there in the care of all forms of impaired health including the so-called incurable conditions. He was a man of brilliant mind; a keen thinker and careful logician. Someday he, along with Jennings, Graham, Trall, Taylor, and Tilden will take their justly deserved places in America’s Hall of Geniuses.”
Pg 191 -192
“Obviously the solution to this muddle was a reference to primary principles. Is electricity useful and needful in a state of health? If not, it is not useful or needful in a state of ill health. It was, at that time, at least, thought to be useful and needful in health and nature was thought to have her ways of supplying the living organism with the needed electricity. I am not sure that this matter has yet been settled. I, myself, do not think that electricity is a necessity of health. I am sure that those Hygienists were right who declared that, if it is an essential of life, nature has her own way of supplying man’s needs without resort to artificial modes of electrical treatment. So far as I know, and I think I know the views of all of the living Hygienists, this is the view of all practicing Hygienists. Dr. Tilden did use diathermy on occasions to “soften up” the neck of the uterus. I think that, perhaps, Dr. Weger did the same.”
“The man who brought order out of this chaos, who not only established the relationship between “deficiency of force” and the accumulation of body waste and also the precise relationship between the many habits of living that are violations of the laws of life and the “deficiency of force” that constitutes the first deviation from normal, was John H. Tilden, M.D., of Denver, Colo. All of the elements of the enervation-toxemia theory of Tilden are present in the early Hygienic theories about etiology, but they were not systematized and organized. Tilden’s work in this field is of paramount importance.
Born in 1851 in Van Burensburg, Ill., where he was reared, he tells us that from his earliest childhood, he had dreamed of being a doctor; a very natural dream, as his father, John Goodrich Tilden was a physician. Early in life he began to play at being a doctor, using cats, dogs, calves, pigs, birds as patients; later caring for human patients, so that he acquired the name the “boy doctor.” “He tells us that it was at the cook-stove that he learned how a sick kitten clings to heat; that in caring for animals, he first learned that the sick animal will not eat. These two lessons were later to bear fruit in his practice.
Although his father, a “regular of the regulars” among physicians, did not look with favor upon the “irregulars” of his time, in 1870 young John entered the Eclectic Medical College, of Cincinnati, Ohio, where he graduated May 11, 1872. In 1874 the dean of Bellevue Medical College refused him graduation because he had received a prior degree in medicine from an “irregular” medical college. Austin Flint, Jr. M.D., of Bellevue, told Tilden: “You may attend as many terms of lectures as you wish by paying the regular fee, but under no circumstances will we issue a diploma to anyone who has accepted a degree from an irregular medical school.” Thus the animus of the allopaths against the other drug schools prevented the young eclectic physician from graduating as an allopath also. The allopaths, who arrogantly called themselves “regulars” referred to the homeopaths, eclectics and physio-medicalists as “irregulars.”
“With so much animosity existing between the four drug schools then represented in the United States, the reader may well imagine the animus these schools had toward the Hygienic school that decried all drugging and was rapidly undermining the whole drugging system.
Dr. Tilden spent the first seven years of his practice in Nokomio, Ill., then two years in St. Louis; taught anatomy and physiology in the American Medical College, now defunct; then moved to Litchfield, Ill., later to Wichita, Kan., and finally to Denver, Colo., where he remained until his death in 1940. He served on the Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners the first year and a half, resigned, was reappointed but declined to serve.
“He practiced medicine and surgery for twenty-five years during which period he took the practice of medicine seriously and says that he thought that “unless I was after the enemy–disease–with a good-sized arsenal I was certainly derelict.” Personal experiences, however, ever, led him gradually to lose all faith in drugs and, like Jennings, he began to use sugar tablets–“blank cartridges,” he called them–which he continued to give, to use his own words, “until I was mentally evolved to the truth that even sugar pills were injurious, in that the make believe medication educated my patients into believing that their improvement was due to the supposed drug they were taking. This is the harm in doing for sick people anything labeled curative.”
“It seems that few, if any medical men ever get away from the drugging practice without going through the bread-pill and colored water stage. Jennings and Page both traversed this road, Trall going by way of the “water cure.” It is unfortunate that most medical men remain in this stage and never learn that all forms of make-believe medication receive credit for recoveries and that this prevents the patient and family from really learning the truth about disease and the many “curing” systems.”
“Tilden finally gave up the placebo practice and learned to rely upon Hygiene. Although he most often refers to his work as the “toxemia philosophy,” and the “toxemia system,” he does, more than once, refer to it as Hygienic. He was a student of Trall and of Page with whom he was on the friendliest of terms. An interesting sidelight on the animus that still exists towards those who step out of the ancient medical pattern is contained in the fact that when Who’s Who was first published, it contained Tilden’s pedigree, but thereafter dropped him from the list of worthwhile citizens. To compensate for this, however, Morris Fishbein, while still the official mouthpiece of the American Medical Association (allopathic), included him in his Blue Book of quacks and quackeries. Fishbein also influenced public libraries so that they refused to put Tilden’s books on their lending lists. Fishbein was a petty mountebank who was engaged by the allopathic profession to hunt medical heretics. He was a modern Torquemada.”
“Dr. Tilden gathered around him a small group of medical men and a few osteopaths who had abandoned their faith in drugs and the “find it, fix it, and let it alone,” philosophy of Dr. Still, and trained them in his work. Perhaps the most outstanding of these men were George E. Weger, M.D., and Arthur Vos, M.D. One man, Percy L. Clark, M.D., made a loud noise after leaving Tilden, but proved to be a disappointment. R. L. Alsaker, M.D., departed somewhat from the paths of Hygienic rectitude after dissociating himself from Tilden.”
“Tilden’s books and magazines have had a world-wide circulation and have helped to keep alive the message of Natural Hygiene. His health school in Denver was frequented by patients from all parts of the world. When Dr. Vos took over this Health School although backed by the manufacturers of Jergens Lotion, he was unable to successfully carry it on, so strong was the Tilden tradition and so insistent were the followers of Tilden upon receiving his services. This is not to the discredit of Dr. Vos, whose abilities and integrity are undoubted, but does indicate the hold that a strong personality has upon people. Hygienists have had to be men of outstanding personality and of heroic mold to survive in the world of today.
Pg 194
“About the close of the century, Albert Turner, a friend of Trall, started Health Culture magazine, which, for years was a Hygienic publication. About this time, also, Bernarr Macfadden started Physical Culture, which, at first, was largely Hygienic and was regularly contributed to by several of Trall’s graduates, by Dr. Chas. E. Page and Dr. Felix Oswald. At this time also, Dr. Tilden started his Stuffed Club the name of which was later changed to Philosophy of Health. Selling this magazine to Dr. Arthur
“Vos about 1923, he later started Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique, which he continued to issue monthly until his death. Mrs. Tilden completed the 1940 vol. of this magazine with material Dr. Tilden had left behind, and suspended its publication at the end of the year 1940. At the present time the only Hygienic magazine published in America is Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review, which has been published monthly since its first issue in September 1939. The movement has not been without a publication since the founding of the Graham Journal, during the more than a hundred and twenty years since it was launched. Although there was an extended period of near inactivity, there was never a time, from its origin to the present, when there was not activity in the ranks of Hygiene.”
“An extensive bibliography of Hygiene is given in the text of these volumes and it is not deemed necessary to reproduce it here. The most prolific Hygienic writers have been Graham, Alcott, Trall, Nichols, Walter, Tilden and, if I may be permitted to place my own name in this list, Shelton. Jennings, Page, Dodds, Oswald, Densmore, Carrington and Weger, have contributed valuable volumes to the literature of Hygiene. Of this list, Carrington and the present author are the only ones now living. Valuable contributions to Hygiene have been made by men and women who have never been associated with the Hygienic movement and have not been Hygienists. Among these are Dewey, Tanner, Hazzard and Moras of this country, Rabagliatti (England), Berg (Sweden), Lahmann (Germany), and Reinheimer (England). It must be added that Hygiene is confirmed by every genuine discovery in physiology and biology.”
Excerpt From
The Science and Fine Art of Natural Hygiene
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Shelton, Herbert. (1964). Fasting Can Save Your Life. Youngstown. National Health Association.
Pg 10
“Dr. Shelton’s ideas about fasting and Natural Hygiene found their roots in the writings of a group of progressive, nineteenth century medical doctors, including Isaac Jennings, M.D., Harriot Austin, M.D., Susanna Way Dodds, M.D., Russell Thacker Trail, M.D., and John Tilden, M.D. These men and women were among the first to recognize that health results from healthful living. They understood that a healthy life depends upon a clean environment—fresh air, pure water and sunshine; a natural vegetarian diet—primarily fruits, vegetables, nuts, seeds and whole grains; productive activity—sufficient exercise and rest; and emotional poise and self esteem. These ideas came initially from common sense observations of “Nature’s Laws,” but they have been rediscovered and scientifically validated by an ever increasing number of modern health reformers in the fields of nutrition, ecology, physiology, and psychology.”
Pg 15
“Progress has been made inch by inch—spoonful by spoonful—in the business of developing proper eating and living habits. Yet fasting goes back over the centuries—not only in matters of health, but also in religious ritual.
In recent years investigators who have contributed greatly are Dr. Henry S. Tanner, Sylvester Graham, Dr. Robert Walter, Dr. John H. Tilden and Dr. George S. Weger.”
Pg 36
“Four Reasons for Fasting”
“The fourth reason is the all important matter of elimination. J.H. Tilden, M.D., who was founder of the famous Dr. Tilden’s Health School in Denver, Colorado, and edited and published two magazines and wrote several books, said: “After fifty-five years of sojourning in the wilderness of medical therapeutics. I am forced to declare, without fear of successful contradiction, that fasting is the only reliable, specific, therapeutic eliminant known to man.”
Felix L. Oswald. M.D. agrees with him, saying: “Fasting is the great system renovator. Three fast-days a year will purify the blood and eradicate the poison-diathesis more effectively than a hundred bottles of expurgative bitters.”
Pg 45
“Dr. Weger did not believe that fasting is a cure for disease: indeed, along with Dr. Tilden, he did not believe in cures. I account for his use of the term in this instance only by assuming that a man brought up in the belief in cures having had it instilled into his mentality throughout his term in medical college and through years of medical practice, here falls into the habit of using the term in a generalized sense rather than in the precise meaning it has taken on in modern thinking.”
“The view of Hygienists, and both Dr. Tilden and Dr. Weger had abandoned the practice of regular medicine for a Hygienic practice, is that fasting is not a cure in the modern meaning of this much abused term. Fasting does not cure anything. A fast is a period of physiological rest. It does not do anything at all. It is, rather, a cessation of doing. The rest provides an opportunity for the body to do for itself what it cannot do under conditions of surfeit and full activity.”
Pg 90
“What the body can do for itself in the way of restoring normal function and full vigor when the toxic load is lifted has to be seen to be fully appreciated.
Speaking of pernicious anemia, Tilden says: “A fast of two weeks, without anything at all except water, will improve anemia condition by increasing the blood-corpuscles sometimes by five hundred thousand in that length of time.” There is poisoning from the digestive tract in all of these cases and it seems most likely that this befoulment of the blood with sepsis from this source is the cause of the failure of the blood-making organs.”
Pg 92
“It has been said that the cold is common, not because it is simple, but because it is so complex. This may have reference to the confusion in which the etiology of the cold has been enshrouded. Dr. Tilden said that a cold is the proximal symptom of a complex whose distal symptom is cancer or tuberculosis or some other fatal degenerative disease.
Between the first cold of infancy and death from cancer in middle life, there are intermediate complexes and symptoms galore—colds, coughs, sore throats, constipation, diarrhea, headaches, fatigue, grouchiness, apprehension, restlessness, sleeplessness, bad breath, coated tongue, and many other symptoms and so-called acute diseases, all of which are but crises in toxemia. The non-toxemic individual cannot be made to develop symptoms of a cold.”
Pg 110
“Falsely called an “executive’s disease,” peptic ulcer is said to kill 11,000 persons a year in this country, through hemorrhage and complications. Thirteen million Americans are said to have peptic ulcer. It may be open to serious doubt that there are that many executives in the nation. Abuses in eating, drinking, smoking, sex, the emotions, and in other facets of living are the most likely causes. Tilden says that “the sexually enervated are slow to reproduce tissue. Ulcers refuse to heal; infections slowly, but surely, take place; chronic diseases are uncontrollable.” In the sexually abused there is laid the groundwork for the evolution of many diseases.”
Excerpt From
Fasting Can Save Your Life
Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Graham, S., Trall. R., Shelton, H. (2009) The Greatest Health Discovery. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association.
Pg 12
“The development of the philosophy of Natural Hygiene was pioneered in the 19th century mostly by medical doctors, and includes such names as Sylvester Graham, Mary Gove, Isaac Jennings, Russell Thacker Trall, Robert Walter, Thomas Low Nichols, Susanna Way Dodds, James Caleb Jackson, Charles E. Page, and John Henry Tilden.
This book is about those pioneers, about their work in the evolution of Natural Hygiene, about the Hygienic Movement they founded to bring this great health discovery before the people, about the 20th century Hygienic movement, and ends with a look into the future and the glorious health potential that awaits mankind through Natural Hygiene.”
Pg 18 – Quotes
“Health represents a body and mind adjusted to, and in unison with, the laws of nature. And disease represents any departure from this ideal state.
The medical world has been looking for a remedy to cure disease; notwithstanding the obvious fact that nature needs no remedy—she only needs an opportunity to exercise her own prerogative of self-healing.
There are no ‘cures’ for disease. Health and how to build it and keep it, is the knowledge needed.
What advantage has the toxemia theory (of disease) over the plan recognized and accepted by the (medical) profession—namely, the germ theory? The advantage of certainty. It has the advantage that the physician preaching the toxin theory need not live in a constant state of uncertainty about what will become of his patient.”
Pg 46
“Like Graham, Trall, Tilden and many others, who have turned to Hygiene, Walter was forced to study the matter himself because physicians were interested in disease and not in health.”
Excerpt From
The Greatest Health Discovery
Sylvester Graham, Russell T. Trall, and Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Pg 47
“John H. Tilden, M.D. is credited with being the man who established the relationship between deficiency of force and the accumulation of body waste, and also the precise relationship between the many habits of living that are violations of the laws of life and the deficiency of force that constitutes the first deviation from normal.
All of the elements of the enervation-toxemia theory of Tilden are present in the early Hygienic theories about etiology, but they were not systematized and organized. Tilden’s work in this field is of paramount importance.
Born in 1851 at Van Burensburg, Illinois, where he was reared, he relates that from his earliest childhood, he had dreamed of being a doctor—a very natural dream—as his father, John Goodrich Tilden, was a physician. Early in life he began to play at being a doctor, using cats, dogs, calves, pigs, and birds as patients, (later caring for human patients), so that he acquired the name of boy doctor.”
“Dr. Tilden tells us that it was at the cook-stove that he learned how a sick kitten clings to heat; that in caring for animals, he first learned that the sick creature will not eat. These two lessons were later to bear fruit in his practice.
Although his father, a regular of the regulars among physicians, did not look with favor upon the irregulars of his time, young John, in 1870, entered the Eclectic Medical College of Cincinnati, Ohio from which he later graduated. In 1874, the dean of Bellevue Medical College refused him graduation because he had received a prior degree in medicine from an irregular medical college. Austin Flint, Jr., of Bellevue, told Tilden, “You may attend as many terms of lectures as you wish by paying the regular fee, but under no circumstance will we issue a diploma to anyone who has accepted a degree from an irregular medical school.”
“Thus the animus of the allopaths against the other drug schools prevented the young eclectic physician from graduating as an allopath, also. The allopaths who called themselves regulars referred to the homeopaths, eclectics and physio-medicalists as irregulars.
With so much animosity existing between the four living schools then represented in the United States, it may well be imagined the animus these schools had toward the Hygienic school that decried all drugging and was rapidly undermining the whole drugging system.”
“Dr. Tilden spent the first seven years of his practice in Nokomis, Illinois, then two years in S. Louis; he taught anatomy and physiology in the American Medical College, then moved to Litchfield, Illinois. Later he went to Wichita, Kansas and finally to Denver, Colorado, where he established an institution to care for the sick along natural hygiene lines. There he remained until his death in 1940.”
“Dr. Tilden served on the Colorado State Board of Medical Examiners for a year and a half, resigned, was reappointed, but declined to serve. He practiced medicine and surgery for twenty five years, during which time he took it seriously and says that he thought that “unless I was after the enemy— disease—with a good-sized arsenal I was certainly derelict”. Personal experience, however, led him gradually to lose all faith in drugs, and like Jennings, he began to use sugar tablets—blank cartridges, he called them—which he continued to give (to use his own words), “until I was mentally evolved to the truth that even sugar pills were injurious, in that the make believe medication educated my patients into believing that their improvement was due to the supposed drug they were taking. This is the harm in doing for sick people anything labeled curative.”
“Dr. Tilden finally gave up the placebo practice and learned to rely upon Hygiene. Although he most often refers to his work as the toxemia philosophy, he does, more than once, refer to it as Hygienic.
According to the Tilden philosophy, all so called disease, is the result of toxemia.
Pg 49
“Many of Dr. Tilden’s books and, writings are devoted to specific ailments. He often shows the interrelationship of these conditions and how seemingly different and distinct afflictions are basically one and the same, with only different organs and symptoms being involved. The same cause is always there and the same methods of care will suffice in every one of them.
Speaking of one of the commonest of all disorders, Dr. Tilden said: “The real cause of arthritis is toxemia, brought about by faulty diet and enervating habits of living, and it is the correction of these that makes the relief of the condition possible in almost every case. With toxemia removed, no case is too far gone for improvement to be made and maintained. The results obtained by the fast or corrective eliminative diet, are often spectacular. Pain usually diminishes rapidly and mobility of affected joints increases as toxemia is overcome. The progressively destructive effects of the condition are arrested and joints, muscles and nerves lose their irritation and tension, and the way is paved for the restorative measures of correct diet and other elements of health.”
“Dr. Tilden led an intensely active life and spread his ideas through various channels, beginning with his little magazine The Stuffed Club. This later developed into the Philosophy of Health, and then into the Health Review and Critique. He carried on an enormous practice at his institution in Denver, both in person and by mail.
Among the best known of Dr. Tilden’s many books are:Diseases of Women and Easy Childbirth; Toxemia Explained; Tilden Cook Book; Children: Their Health and Happiness; Constipation; Cholera Infantum; Criticisms of the Practice of Medicine (2 vols.); Impaired Health (2 vols.); Appendicitis; The Pocket Dietician: Food (2 vols.); Typhoid Fever; Venereal Disease. Dr. Tilden was of the opinion that babies are usually fed too often and too much, thus laying the foundation for a later chronic toxemia. In this he agreed with Dr. Charles Page.
“Dr. Tilden gathered around him a small group of medical men and a few osteopaths who had abandoned their faith in drugs and trained them in his work. Perhaps the most outstanding of these men were George E. Weger, M.D. and Arthur Vos, M.D.
Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique was issued monthly until his death; Mrs. Tilden completed the 1940 voume of this magazine with material he had left behind, and suspended its publication at the end of 1940.
Pg 51
“Dr. Walter entitled his magazine The Laws of Health; later the title was changed to Health. Dr. Dodds published a magazine under the name of The Sanitarian. Albert Turner, who was for years with the Fowler and Wells Publishing Company and associated with Trall on the staff of The Science of Health, founded and published Health Culture Magazine, which during the first thirty years of its existence, at least, was a Hygienic publication. As previously mentioned, Dr. Tilden had a Hygienic publication under the various names of The “Stuffed Club, Philosophy of Health, and Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique.
Everywhere the trend was away from hydropathy and the emphasis was placed upon Hygiene and health.”
Pg 57
“Conservation of the energy and resources of the patient was the secret of the successes of Jennings, Walter, Tilden, Weger and others who have been so outstandingly successful in their care of the sick. None of these men sought to cure disease; rather, each of them recognized that over feeding, over bathing, over sunning, over exercising and aggravating patients in any way, overtaxed them and retarded or prevented recovery.”
Pg 64
“It was fortunate that before Dr. Tilden’s death in 1940, which brought to an end his Health Review and Critique, that Dr. Shelton’s Hygienic Review made its debut (Sept. 1939), and thus left unbroken the continuity of magazines devoted to the Hygienic ideal which have been published since the Movement came into being in 1832. (These magazines are mentioned in the previous chapter.)”
Pg 67
“Quoting from Dr. Tilden, Shelton states: “How many physicians have watched a case of syphilis from its beginning to its end without giving a dose of drugs? Not one. Then what are their opinions worth? The first day a drug is given in any disease, that day the disease is masked—it ceases to be a natural disease—and no physician is wise enough to tell what symptoms are from drugs, what from food and what symptoms belong to the disease proper. Since giving up (dispensing) drugs, I have learned that all formidable symptoms known as constitutional syphilis are compounds of fear, wrong life and drugs, and are very easy to overcome when I can have the patients’ help—to give up bad habits and learn to live normally and naturally.”
Pg 76
“Natural Hygiene has always advocated that everyone should have a sound understanding of his body and its functions. The early Hygienists such as Graham, Trail, Jennings, Shew, Jackson, and later, Tilden and Shelton produced many fine works and publications for the education of the layman, so that he could care for himself in health and disease, with particular emphasis on brushing away the cobwebs of ignorance and prejudice. The sexual function was treated with the same respect and reverence that was held for the entire body. Habits which served the body required discipline and the restraint helped to make it beautiful.”
Pg 106
“There is no question that the future of the Hygienic Movement will depend on its educational work, and 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. Dr. Tilden once stated that “all positive knowledge must take root in nature”, and the truth of what he said is evident by the fact that the world is teemnig with men and women who are highly educated in knowledge that is not made to blend and unite man with nature.
The Natural Hygiene teaching program must show that we have need to study living nature—life. We must understand the conditions of its existence, the laws of its operations, the requirements of its different modes of activity, the effects of different environments upon the living organism, the relation of avocation to health, the relation of occupation to self expression, the good or evil to which it is subjected and how it meets these, using the good and resisting the bad.”
Pg 107
“It is to the great credit of mankind that despite this destructive environment, there have always been a few who possessed the vision and courage to speak out and offer solutions. The early Hygienists were outstanding examples. These giants practiced and preached the sanity of Natural Hygiene living in a world of sickness and disease. The rules of the game of business required that these pioneers be expert business men as well as teachers (many of them published their own magazines). It is amazing when one studies the magnitude of the institutions developed and operated by Graham, Trail, Walter and Tilden, to mention but a few. At the present time, Dr. Shelton is an outstanding example of builder, teacher and publisher all rolled into one.”
Excerpt From
The Greatest Health Discovery
Sylvester Graham, Russell T. Trall, and Herbert M. Shelton
This material may be protected by copyright.
Shelton, Herbert. (1968). Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life Youngstown, OH. National Health Association.
Pg 36
“In 1872 The Health Reformer, of Battle Creek, Michigan, published a small work by Trall under the title, The Hygienic System, in which he defined the Hygienic System as “the treatment of disease by Hygienic agencies.” Although a small work, it briefly outlines the theory and practice of Hygiene and I should record that it was among the favorite books treasured by Dr. Tilden.”
Pg 43
“Frequently we read the assertion in medical literature that the living organism is self-healing and that most of its ailments are self-limited. Hippocrates is credited with asserting the existence of the vis medicatrix naturae–healing power of nature–although he certainly did not phrase it in its traditional Latin form. It is not certain what he meant by nature. Sir William Osler declared that: “What nature cannot cure must remain uncured.” We could fill a book with statements of this kind from leading thinkers in the various schools of so-called healing, but there is a curious and puzzling paradox associated with these declarations. Although the fact that the organism heals itself is fully established, the great majority of practitioners of all schools of so-called healing and the people in general continue to behave as though they have no understanding of it. “They administer their drugs and prescribe their remedies and when normal function has been restored, they are in a hurry to give full credit to their alleged remedies for the recovery and wholly ignore the vital part taken by the body in healing itself. It should be obvious to everyone that if the body is self-healing, no matter what kind of so-called remedy is employed, credit for recovery should go to the biological processes and not to the drug or treatment. As Dr. Tilden so well expressed it: “All cures ride to glory on the backs of self-limiting and self-healing crises.
“Unless we understand the biological processes by which living organisms heal themselves and assure their survival, we are sure to deceive ourselves when we attempt to evaluate the various cures and treatments offered by the curing professions. We tend to believe that the healing process is not exclusively inherent in the living system, but may also exist in extraneous agents, so that we speak of such agents as being possessed of the power to heal. Once having accepted this view of healing, there seems to be no end to the number of arguments which we can bring forward in support of the healing power of our pet remedies.”
Pg 50
“Other evidences of the emphasis upon Hygiene and the trek away from hydropathy are found in the titles as well as the subject matter of other Hygienic magazines of the time. Dr. Jackson called his magazine The Laws of Life. Mrs. White, leader of the Seventh Day Adventists, who embraced Hygiene and propogated it among her religious followers, entitled her magazine Health Reform. Dr. Walter entitled his magazine The Laws of Health; later the title was changed to Health. Dr. Dodds published a magazine under the title of The Sanitarian. Mr. Albert Turner, who was for years with the Fowler and Wells Publishing Company and associated with Trall on the staff of The Science of Health, founded and published Health Culture Magazine, which, during the first 30 years of its existence, at least, was a Hygienic publication. Tilden’s magazine, at first known as The Stuffed Club, then changed to Philosophy of Health and later to Dr. Tilden’s Health Review and Critique, was published as a Hygienic magazine. Everywhere the trend was away from hydropathy and the emphasis was placed upon Hygiene and health.”
Pg 102
“There was considerable confusion among early Hygienists about how disease is caused. In his masterly work on Human Physiology, the Basis of Sanitary and Social Science, Dr. T. L. Nichols well defines the confusion and differences of views as to the cause of disease that existed among the Hygienists. He points out that there were those who regarded disease as the result of a diminution of the nervous power or vital force (Jennings and Gove), while another group held that the blood is life and the impurity in the blood is the cause of all disease action (Trall). Nichols himself, anticipating Tilden by several years, adds: “But good blood cannot be formed without sufficient vital or nervous power; and good blood is necessary to the healthy action of the brain and nervous system. Here is reciprocal action, each depending upon the other … Waste matter, retained in the human system is a materies morbis, and there are many kinds of blood poisoning.”
Pg 106
“A cold, said Tilden, “is the proximal symptom of a complex whose distal symptom is cancer, when not tuberculosis or some other fatal degenerating malady. The intermediate symptoms are the so-called acute diseases. Few people can withstand the ravages of the severe types of the interpolated so-called diseases, which are nothing more than crises of toxemia …” He pointed out that these crises in toxemia, which medical science has metamorphosed into special entitative and distinct individual diseases, are but the self-cleansing efforts of the body.
Pg 107
“The first deviation from health is a gradually developing enervation resulting from enervating mental and physical habits. So long as enervation and checked secretion and excretion persist, there is a general inability of the organs of the body to function normally. The toxemic state slowly devitalizes the tissues over a period of years, resulting in delayed healing and degeneration of injured or devitalized parts. The varying symptom-complexes, starting with enervation and progressing to toxemia and impaired nutrition, with a gradual deterioration of the entire sysem, and ending finally in ulceration, enduration and fungation (cancer) is a long, drawn-out pathological evolution with a continuous degeneration of tissue. “The sum of the symptoms,” wrote Tilden, “of all so-called diseases make up the symptomatology of toxemia.” Instead of these crises being the cause of the succeeding pathological states, they are constituents of the total pathology. One pathology is no more the cause of another pathology than speaking and answering cause conversation. They are parts of the course of pathology, not its cause.”
Pg 114
“Tilden tells us that he practiced medicine and surgery for 25 years, “experimenting, after the first ten years, more or less, with all the systems and cults, and being more and more surprised with the results following little or no medication (drugging).” Then followed a longer period of practice, one that continued to within a few months of his death, when he retired from active practice, which, to quote his own words, consisted of the “simple conservative prescriptions of physical, physiological and mental rest, diet, nursing and psychology.” He says of this practice, which was one largely of educating patients out of disease-producing modes of life, that it was “not only satisfying to myself,” but to all his patients who could be taught to practice self-control.”
“He tells us that when his patients recovered under his drugging practices, they and their families and friends would say that he cured them, but that he was aware that he had done nothing of the kind. He did not even know how or why they had recovered. When a patient would die under his care, he says that his conscience would not permit him to tell the family that “all was done for the patient that science could do.” He says: “For I knew that I did not cure those who got well and I did not like to acknowledge, even to myself, that I had killed those who died. To be consistent, I soothed my troubled mind by acknowledging to myself and my father, who was a doctor, that those who got well did so in spite of my best endeavors, and those who died might have been helped to die by my strenuous endeavors to save them.”
“An attitude of mind such as this either drives a man out of practice, as it has thousands of young physicians and a few older ones, or causes him to try to find out what is true and what is not true in the practice of medicine. Tilden says that “to learn, if possible, just how much I had to do with the getting well and dying of my patients, I discarded drugs and other methods of cure, and gave sugar tablets and careful nursing. I felt like a criminal in withholding cures–it was a strenuous ordeal. My success was marvelous. Even my father, an old-time practitioner, marveled at the results, and cautioned me not to go too far.”
Pg 142
Convalescence
“Conservation of the energy and resources of the patient was the secret of the successes of Jennings, Walter, Tilden, Weger and others who have been so outstandingly successful in their care of the sick. None of these men sought to cure disease; rather, each of them recognized that over feeding, over bathing, over sunning, over exercising and aggravating patients in any way overtaxed them and retarded or prevented recovery.”
Pg 147
“Thus it seemed to the Hygienist to be only relatively, and in a sense fulfilled by acute disease, that crises could be regarded as advantageous. They represent merely the best the organism can do under the impairing circumstances that have been imposed upon it and these conditions are never to be tolerated when we are aware of their existence and much less are they to be sought by artificial means. Under compulsion, the ordinary faculty inherent in the system becomes conservative and develops such unusual action as will tend to restore the lost physiological balance. The occasion of such tumultuous action is to be avoided and the action not to be sought. Though the two may end in harmony, we cannot regard it but as the result of an evil to be guarded against, and its occurrence is generally attributable to some unwitting mistake or accident that ought to have been avoided. Why, then, should we endeavor to produce a state of acute disease in trying to remedy chronic disease that at other times we ought to avoid. Dr. Taylor, discussing this very subject, said: “I have yet to find a case where it was really necessary to become sick in this manner in order to get well.” He added: “Health, which is balance, can never hang upon such contingencies. The chronic invalid still lingers on through all the trials of his constitution, a martar to the conjoint folly of himself and his prescriber.” He gave it as his opinion, without implying the existence of sinister motives on the part of others, that the stay of invalids in many institutions is often unnecessarily and tediously prolonged because of the pursuit of crises. He said that the credulous and unfortunate patient, frequently disappointed to find that the crisis, the sign of his deliverance, is but the seal of a new extension of his enthralment.”
“It was the conception of many Hygienists that the idea that serves as the true basis of the program of restoring health is radically different from that which seeks deliberately to produce crises. The sensibilities and powers of the living organism do not require to be wrought upon in certain cases, nor in any case by causes of extraordinary power, differing totally from the fixed conditions upon which vital activities depend. In health, the congeries of vital parts of which the organism is composed act in harmony; this harmony is not to be restored by violence when lost. In the light of Hygiene, the restoration of the adjusting powers are not promoted by disturbing causes, derived from whatever source. The chief object of “remedial care should be rather to restore the disturbed harmony of consensual parts. The conditions of this harmony or health are founded in nature and are not subject to the fitful variations that our ignorance or perversity respecting these matters would seem to imply. Hygiene, theoretically at least, interdicts disturbing causes, derived from whatever source. The resources of the prescriber are limited to just those principles and conditions as together evolve life and not sickness, only in some needful variations of their proportions. It fritters away none of the precious vital capacities for insignificant or inappropriate or useless purposes. It merely affords the proper scope and just direction while the obstacles that would circumvent the desired object are removed and health is silently and unostentatiously restored.”
Jennings and Graham did not discuss crises and must have thought very little of them. Alcott, also, ignores their supposed need. I once asked Dr. Tilden what he thought of this assumed need for crises and he replied that, under rational care, they are of rare development. Trall discussed, but did not stress them. Walter and Page never stressed them. In general, I think it correct to say that Hygienists were not enamored by the doctrine that critical actions are always essential to recovery from chronic disease.”
Pg 151
“The reader may think that Landis was somewhat dictatorial in insisting upon proper eating by his patients. This is especially likely to be so among the undisciplined, who resent restrictions that are placed upon their living habits and among the incorrigible, who refuse to go even a little way in correcting their ways of life. “Who made you God?” is a question that we are frequently asked when we insist upon instructions being carried out. Yet it is true, as Dr. Tilden so often stressed, that the limitations that we place upon these unruly ones are only such as nature herself dictates. They are not for our benefit.
We do not advise rest, for example, for our own profit, but because there is a distinct need for and a natural call for rest. What good does it do the Hygienic practitioner for a man to give up coffee or tobacco? The patient derives all the good out of abandoning these practices. But, in insisting that these poison habits be discontinued, have we done anything more than to demand that the normal rules of life be carried out? Nature herself is the tyrant; she is the dictator. “She is the one who does the penalizing when her rules are flouted.”
Pg 170
“Heredity gets the blame for anything that is not understood. If the individual is sick and the physician cannot ascribe a cause to the sickness, he can always blame it on heredity. In the April 1930 issue of the Review and Critique, Tilden tells of a little three-year-old girl who was brought to him from a great distance. He says that indigestion caused by scientific feeding had produced great acidity of the stomach and bowels. The mucous membrane of the child’s vagina was excoriated from an acid leucorrhea, causing behavior that was distressing to both the parents and the physicians. “The severe itching was driving the child mad.” He tells us that she “was continually trying to relieve herself by rubbing and scratching.” Her physicians decided that the child was a “natural-born sex-pervert” and that she was “a very vicious abnormal child.” Even the parents were accused of sex perversion, otherwise they could not have produced a child “cursed” as this one was.”
“The parents had carried out the advice to punish the child severely, but the punishment did not seem to do any good. How could it have relieved the intolerable itching and burning? What wonder that Dr. Tilden says he was filled with disgust when he heard the story of the “child’s viciousness” and its inheritance from the parents. He says that he had seen other cases of this type, but he had never seen one that had been abused as this child had been.”
“With proper fasting, feeding and cleanliness, he says, within ten days the little patient had lost all of its diabolism–its proclivities for masturbation. Besides the fasting and simple feeding, he instructed the nurse to give vaginal douches of hot water, as hot as could be borne without doing injury, to cleanse the excoriated mucous surfaces. The child “soon became the idol of all who had the pleasure of knowing it.” This was “after it was made happy by having its health restored.” This simply means that as soon as the vaginal inflammation ended and the acid state of the digestive system was corrected, the child ceased to be a “sex-pervert.” It is strange, says Tilden, “how satisfying unscientific treatment is. Remove cause and nature does the rest.” Let the psychoanalyists take note.”
“After his graduation from the Cincinnatti Eclectic Institute, a college of eclectic medicine, Dr. Tilden sought to enter an allopathic college in New York City. He was advised by Dr. Austin Flint, its head, that by paying the regular fee he could attend as many lectures as he might desire at the college, but that no man who had taken the degree from any school of medicine save the allopathic could graduate from the college. In those days it was not enough to be a pill roller; you had to be trained in rolling your pills in the fashion approved by “my school.” This allopathic school, which keeps the uninformed public believing that it originated with Hippocrates, is actually but one of dozens of medical schools that have arisen from the days of the Father of Physic. It is but a little more than a hundred years old. But early in its career it developed a high and mighty attitude towards all the other schools of drugging.”
Excerpt From
Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life
Herbert M. Shelton
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