THE subject of dietetics is one which greatly affects all schools of healing, but especially the school of natural therapeutics. In the early enthusiasm of natural healing, men were exhorted to return to natural living, part of the natural living being the consuming of the fruits of the earth.
Our early pioneers of the fruit and nut eating group had the courage and the ability to go forth and live the life of natural simplicity. We may not choose to do so and our patients may not find it convenient to do so. We cannot expect to live in part that which we not live in whole.
It is certain that if we elected to become splendid animals, if we shed our cloths and lived in forests, those who survived would be a perfect race of fruit eaters, but we want the advantages of civilized life, we want to take part in the struggle for money, and we want to be in contact with people who are doing the same thing. Are we going to force ourselves and our patients on to a ” natural” diet without the salvation of a natural existence ? A fruit and nut diet demands the elimination produced by the through movement, but we have lost the habit of movement.
I do not believe that the man at his desk should imitate the diet of the ape who swings all day from tree to tree. Bring me the man who lives on nuts, and you will in most cases bring me a man whose skin has ceased to act. If you agree with me, then it remains for us to discover some workable system of scientific feeding which is applicable to civilized existence. We are artificial livers. We must therefore, to some extent, be artificial feeders.
I have come to the conclusion that we have not got very far in this matter of dietetics. In fact, I find it necessary to interfere less with a patients dietary from the standpoint of cleansing the blood and to treat him more and more from the psychological standpoint of pleasurable, seasonal feeding. Natural instinct restored in the process of healing well do the necessary work.
My fellow nature curers will, no doubt, proclaim me a heretic. I fear we nature curers are often more foolish then the medical men who say: “Eat what you like and I will send you some medicine”.
Our dietary for patients must be, just as our deeper diagnosis, in some degree intuitive until we can take into account the cumulative result of chemical responses, emotion, reaction, of the inter-working of glandular secretions, of the type of the individual, of the effect of climate and of soil, and even of the grower, upon the food. We need to get a little nearer to realm where mind and body meet, to that point where mind is translated into terms of the physical elements.
There is more behind a disease than lack of iron, of phosphates, of calcium and so on. There is lack of the co-ordination within which can internally produce these elements. The body is its own laboratory, not a machine to be oiled. We do not know sufficient of the intricacies of the internal chemistry, of that finer chemistry where even a thought is composed of actual substance.
We thought at one time food was explainable in terms of calories. We progressed to admit that it was a compound of organic and other elements. We have since discovered its value in vitamins, and we have yet to find that even less definable quality which makes food essential to existence. We must allow not only for Vitamins A, B, C, D, E, but also for food values in terms of taste, colour and smell.
The usual advice handed out by naturopaths relative to dietary–the fruit, salad and vegetable regime–is not a sufficient basis for a man who sets up as a natural healer. There are increasing numbers of emaciated people returning to practitioners outside the naturopathic profession, after having been reduced to a hopeless state of anaemia by naturopathy wrongly applied.
I speak, unfortunately, from wide experience in this matter. I think we ought most seriously to consider this and to realize that food for one man is not necessarily food for another, especially where the sick are concerned. While we know that there exists a principle of natural feeding, it is capable of variation and adaptation, as are all laws.
We must make a study of individual types and realize that the demands of various types are different, exactly as plants from one and the same soil will extract entirely different elements according to their particular food requirements, determined by the creative urge within the seed. We must also remember that we do not treat diseases according to their names, but according to their expression in the individual body.
Again, we must cater for the soul as well as for the body. The orthodox medical man has the art of doing this. He gives with the assurance of improvement. We mostly take. He says: “Take plenty of nourishment, Mrs. So-and-So”, and Mrs. So-and-So is cheered and glad. We say: “You must only take orange juice”, and Mrs. So-and- So is miserable. We may be entirely right, but we must find some more attractive way of prescribing.
A fast suddenly sprung upon an unsuspecting individual or a reduced diet given without due preparation, can act in the nature of a shock. I am not opposed to fasting and restricted dieting, but I am against our lack of insight and intuition, and our tomfoolery in giving oranges and enemas to people who are already starved of the needs of life in body and in soul.
It is a fatal mistake to take away that which is regarded as the source of strength without offering some return either in mental satisfaction or definite demonstration of bodily benefit.
I would like to remark on the objection to cereals found among many nature curers owing to the “starch” bugbear. In reality, cereals, whole cereals, are the most important and the most satisfying part of mans food, most suited to his work and to his temperament. Bread, the genuine thing of course, is undoubtedly the staff of life because the wheat from which it is made is a perfect food, containing all that we need in the way of albumen, phosphates, iron, magnesia, etc.
Oats again are a very fine and sustaining food, containing an abundance of potash, lime, etc. Oats, contrary to the usual belief, should be eaten with fruits, as they are powerful neutralizers of acids. By taking simple cereals and less forced and unripe fruit and less of over- cultivated vegetables, we should improve greatly in physique and stamina.
We intend following the rules of natural living and we live on tampered-with fruits, which have been fed by chemicals, and vegetables artificially artificially fertilized with chemicals and forced to a size they should never attain. We have cultivated our wild herbs and berries, increasing their bulk and lessening their value, and we imagine that by feeding on all these things we are living according to nature.
Tinned fruits are becoming recognized in many ways as more beneficial than half ripe or artificially ripened fruit. Stimulation of some sort is often essential, either by foods of the spicy and peppery kind,or by stimulating beverages. Stimulation is not erroneous, it is entirely according to nature.
It is only when there is not the due rhythm of stimulation and rest or when the stimulation is speeded to a condition not equivalent to the stamina of the individual that we are disobeying a law of nature. We must study individual dietetics and the mental state of patients if we wish to use feeding as a curative measure.
