Natural Cure
- Chapter I -
What
~Is~ Nature Cure?
It is vastly more than a
system of curing aches and pains; it is a
complete revolution in the art and science of
living. It is the
practical realization and application of all that is
good in natural science, philosophy and
religion. Like many another world-wide
revolution and reformation, it had its inception in
Germany, the land of thinkers and philosophers.
About seventy years ago this greatest and most
beneficent of reformation movements was inaugurated
by Priessnitz in Grafenberg, a small village in the
Silesian mountains. The originator of
Nature Cure
was a simple farmer, but he had a natural genius for
the art of healing.
His pharmacopeia consisted not in poisonous pills
and potions but in plenty of exercise, fresh
mountain air, water treatments in the cool,
sparkling brooks, and simple, wholesome country
fare, consisting largely of black bread, vegetables,
and milk fresh from cows fed on nutritious mountain
grasses.
The results accomplished by these simple means were
wonderful. Before he died, a large sanitarium,
filled with patients from all
over the world and from all stations of life, had
grown up around his forest home.
Among those who made the pilgrimage to Grafenberg to
become patients and students of this genial healer,
the simple-minded
farmer-physician, were wealthy merchants, princes
and doctors from all parts of the world.
Rapidly the idea of
drugless healing spread over Germany and over
the civilized world. In the Fatherland, Hahn the
apothecary, Kuhne the weaver, Rikli the
manufacturer, Father Kneipp the priest, Lahmann the
doctor, and Turnvater Jahn, the founder of physical
culture, became enthusiastic pupils and followers of
Priessnitz.
Each one of these men enlarged and enriched some
special field of the great realm of natural
healing. Some elaborated the water cure and
natural dietetics, others invented various systems
of manipulative treatment, earth, air and light
cures, magnetic
healing, mental therapeutics, curative gymnastics,
etc., etc. Von Peckzely added the Diagnosis from the
Eye, which reveals not only the innermost secrets of
the human organism, but also Nature's ways and means
of cure, and the changes for better or for worse
continually occurring in the body.
In
this country, Dr. Trall of New York, Dr. Jackson of
Danville, Dr. Kellogg of Battle Creek, and others
caught the infection and crossed the ocean to become
students of Priessnitz. The achievements of these
men in their respective fields of endeavor will
stand as enduring monuments to the eternal truths
revealed by the genius of
Nature Cure.
Quimby,
the itinerant spiritualist and healer, became successful
and renowned by the application of the natural methods
of cure. At first his favorite methods were water,
massage, magnetic and mental treatment. Gradually he
concentrated his efforts on metaphysical methods of cure,
and before he died, he evolved a complete system of
magnetic and mental therapeutics.
Quimby's
teachings and methods were adopted by Mrs. Eddy, his most
enthusiastic pupil, and by her elaborated into Christian
Science, the latest and most successful of modern
mental-healing cults.
Dr. Still
of Kirksville, Missouri, made a valuable addition to
natural methods of treatment by the invention of
Osteopathy, a system of scientific manipulation of the
bony structures, nerves and nerve centers, muscles and
ligaments. A later development of manipulative science is
Chiropractic, originated by Dr. Palmer of Davenport, Iowa.
Thus the simple pioneers of German Nature Cure,
every one of them gifted by Nature with the instinct and
genius of the true healer, who is born, not made, laid the
foundation for the worldwide modern healthculture
movement.
They were
not blinded or confused by the conflicting theories of
books and authorities, or by the action of a thousand
different drugs on a legion of different symptoms, but
applied common-sense reasoning to the solution of the
problems of health, disease
and cure.
They went
for inspiration to field and forest rather than to the
murky atmosphere of the dissecting and vivisection rooms.
They studied the whole and not only the parts, causes as
well as effects and symptoms. Realizing that man had lost
his natural instinct and strayed far from Nature's ways,
they studied and imitated the natural habits of the animal
creation rather than the confusing doctrines of the
schools.
Thus they
proclaimed the "return to Nature" and the "new
gospel of health," which are destined to free humanity
from the destructive influences of alcoholism, red meat
overeating, the dope and tobacco habit, and of drug
poisoning, vaccination, surgical mutilation, vivisection
and a thousand other abuses practiced in the name of
science.
When
parents learn how to create children in accord with
natural law, how to mold their bodies and their characters
into harmony and beauty before the new life sees the light
of day, when they learn to rear their offspring in health
of body and purity of mind in harmony with the laws of
their being, then we shall have true types of beautiful
manhood and womanhood, then children will no longer be a
curse and a burden to themselves and to those who bring
them into the world or to society at large.
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