Publications

Dr. Walter’s writings inspired the many who came to him to recover their health. This pioneer health reformer showed that much can be accomplished with faith and perseverance. Health recovery is ensured through right living—supplying the body with the elements of health and removing what is of low grade or no value. Vital power is needed to accomplish healing. Dr. Walter showed this can be done.

“When disease is produced it is so remotely connected with the real cause that the latter is lost sight of.”
Robert Walter
From Health Science, February 1979.

Walter, R. (1981). The nutritive cure: A statement of its principles and methods. Funk & Co., New York.
https://archive.org/details/101223451.nlm.nih.gov

• Robert Walter’s The Nutritive Cure: A Statement of Its Principles and Methods, published in 1881, presented an early Natural Hygiene approach to health centered on the idea that the body possessed an inherent capacity to heal and repair itself when supportive conditions were provided. Walter argued that restoring health should rely on the same natural influences that maintained health—such as nutritious food, pure air and water, rest, sleep, exercise, sunlight, and appropriate habits—rather than methods he believed weakened or merely stimulated the body.
• A central concept was what Walter called “vitality” or “vital force.” He maintained that recovery depended on conserving and strengthening this inherent power while removing habits and conditions believed to interfere with normal bodily function. His approach therefore emphasized identifying underlying causes, improving nutrition and circulation, avoiding excess and stimulants, and allowing the body’s restorative processes to operate.
• In essence, The Nutritive Cure proposed building up the organism rather than attacking disease, with the broader goal of teaching people how to maintain health after recovery. The book became part of the intellectual foundation of the Natural Hygiene movement, although concepts such as a literal “vital force” and several of Walter’s physiological explanations reflect nineteenth-century medical thought and are not accepted as established mechanisms in modern medicine.

Walter, Robert. (1899). Vital Science Based Upon Life’s Great Law: The Analogue of Gravitation. Philadelphia, PA, J.B. Lippincott Co. Historical Archive –

https://archive.org/details/60841790R.nlm.nih.gov

• The main point that Robert Walter makes is that there are three great forces in nature: vitality, chemical affinity, and gravitation, co-existent and analogous. The underlying thought of this work is that the living world is a fundamental part of natural existence and is, therefore, subject to a fundamental law. It is analogous to chemical affinity and gravity and applies to the science of human health. This makes the knowledge of vital processes in health and disease as certain as the knowledge of chemical and astronomical processes. He applies this to Life’s Great Law, the analog of the attraction of gravitation. 333 pages.

Walter, Robert. (1903). The Exact Science of Health Based Upon Life’s Great Law. New York: Edgar S. Werner Publishing. https://books.google.com/books?id=79tCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PA17&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=1#v=onepage&q&f=false

• In this lengthy publication, Dr. Walter begins with suggestions for an exact vital science and the condition of nature. He then dives into the causes and their relations, as well as transmutation fallacies. Next, he discusses vital science and its relations to philosophy, life: its nature and source, and, of course, Life’s Laws, social and scientific paradoxes, and health and disease and how it works. The book ends with good health, how to regain, maintain, and fill your vital reservoir and secure it.
• Robert Walter, MD, is credited with formulating the laws of life or vitality, as he called them, including the basis: life’s great law. It states that the overwriting goal is self-preservation/ survival. And that the successive life depends upon the amount of energy available. Lots of energy equals health, while a low point equals disease. Life’s great law: every living cell of the organized body is endowed with an instinct of self-preservation, sustained by an inherent force in the organisms (called vital force, life force, or nerve energy). The success of each organism, whether simple or complex, is directly proportional to the amount of its life and force and is inversely proportional to the degree of activity. 302 pages.

Walter, Robert. (1907). “Nutrition: What It Is and How Promoted.” Eternal Health Truths of a Century Ago. June, 1960, pp. 116-123. Out of Print. Edited by Christopher Gian-Cursio.

• This article was written by Robert Walter in 1907 for the American Institute of Homeopathy, Transactions of the Sixty-Third session. It was incorporated into the book Eternal Health Truths of a Century Ago in 1960. A copy was donated to the Historical Internet Archive. Check to see if it was scanned.
• Dr. Walter describes nutrition as the process of growth, how structure is produced, and the power involved. He shares that when a man eats, he should eat a good square meal and then allow his stomach and liver to rest entirely for long hours. Strength and vigor correspond to the vigor of man’s digestion rather than the amount of food he eats.

Walter, Robert. (1914). “The Power That Cures.” The New England Medical Gazette, vol. XLIX(49), no. Dec No 12, 1914, pp. 630-638, Accessed 21 Feb. 2024.

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044103098208&view=1up&seq=637.

• In this article, Dr. Walters discusses that all results in nature depend upon the power that produces the patient’s power of life and the conditions for its operation. The power from within is invisible and can be easily mistaken for the cause or power.
• Digestion and simulation of food induces work, and work expands and manifests power. Food is a material for building structures, not power.

Walter, Robert. (1954, December). The GREAT DELUSION from The Nutritive Care, 1880. Journal of Natural Hygiene, V1(N4), 9, 29, 30.
https://www.healthscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/Volume-1-N4-Natural-Hygiene.pdf

• Dr. Walter discusses how irritation, whether through external stimuli or substances like drugs, alcohol, and tobacco, leads to a dangerous delusion: that increased action or temporary vigor equates to improved health. These irritants cause a false sense of well-being by stimulating the nervous system and other organs, but they ultimately disrupt the body’s natural processes, leading to more serious health issues.
• Irritation triggers increased blood flow to certain body areas, which, if not properly managed, can cause congestion. This unbalanced circulation results in faulty nutrition, where parts of the body are deprived of necessary nutrients due to disrupted blood flow. The consequence is often obstruction and depletion, with acute diseases (such as fever, inflammation, and congestion) linked to the former, and chronic diseases (resulting from prolonged obstruction leading to exhaustion) associated with the latter.
• Dr. Walter critiques the standard medical practices that use irritants and poisons to “treat” illness, often worsening the condition and leading to chronic diseases. These chronic ailments are typically caused by prolonged misuse of violent treatments, such as drugs or harsh methods to subdue symptoms, which only deplete the body’s vital forces.
• Natural Hygiene, in contrast, offers a more balanced and effective approach to both acute and chronic diseases. The author emphasizes that Natural Hygiene is adaptable to both vigorous, acute conditions and more delicate, chronic illnesses. It is not only a solution for healing but also a method for maintaining overall health and vitality. This approach addresses the root causes of disease, promotes balanced circulation and nutrition, and helps restore and maintain physical vigor, which is often lacking in modern society.

Walter, Robert. (1979). “The Nutritive Cure.” Health Science – Official Journal of the American Natural Hygiene Society, Inc. Timeless Teachings, 1 Feb. 1979, pp. 16-23. Excerpted from Dr. Walter’s book The Nutritive Cure: A Statement of its Principles and Methods. New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1981. https://www.healthscience.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/V1-N11-Health-Science-feb.-1979.pdf

• The text outlines a philosophy for a new approach to medical science, critiquing traditional methods and offering a system based on restoring health through vitality rather than breaking down the body with drugs. The philosophy draws from the principles of Lord Bacon, emphasizing that facts are only the starting point for knowledge. To achieve true science, facts must be arranged and understood logically, leading to principles and comprehensive systems.
• Dr. Walter critiques existing medical systems for being a disjointed collection of facts with little coherent principle, and proposes a fundamentally different approach that restores health by building up the body rather than weakening it. The system is rooted in the belief that vitality, or the life force, is what heals. This vital force, which sustains life and enables growth, is the true healing power. Diseases are not entities but abnormal vital actions caused by unhealthful conditions. Healing should thus focus on removing these unhealthy conditions rather than trying to “kill” the disease.
• The text stresses that health is the natural state of the human body, and medical treatment should aim to restore the conditions that allow the body to maintain this state. It introduces a classification of disease causes: remote (lifestyle habits), exciting (external factors like contagions), and proximate (direct physiological causes). It asserts that improving health requires a focus on increasing vitality by addressing these causes and removing blockages in circulation.

“The power of a living organism to accommodate itself to existing circumstances is so great that bad habits, ill conditions, injurious tendencies may be operating upon it for nearly a lifetime.”

Robert Walter – From Health Science, February 1979.

The NHA wishes to remind the readers that nothing in this or other publications is intended to constitute medical treatment or advice. Readers should be aware that some previous publications do not reflect the NHA’s current health teachings or approach to health in several areas.

Our Mission

The mission of the National Health Association is to educate and empower individuals to understand that health results from healthy living. We recognize the integration of all aspects of health: personal, environmental, and social.

We communicate the benefits of a plant-based diet, exercise and rest, a healthy environment, psychological well-being, and when indicated, the use of fasting.