Pioneers of the European Natural Health Movement

Samuel Hahnemann (1755-1843)

The German physician Samuel Hahnemann was the founder of homeopathy. In Latin, homeo means "same," and pathy means "suffering." He rediscovered the Hippocratic precept of "treating like with like" and gave it new meaning.

During his medical studies in Leipzig and Vienna, Hahnemann was highly critical of established medical practices, finding them cruel and barbaric. He considered it improper to suppress symptoms of disease, believing that the body should be given a chance to heal itself.

After earning his doctorate at the University of Erlangen, Hahnemann tried to find ways in which the patient's internal powers of self-healing could be supported. While translating a book by the Scottish physician William Cullen in 1789, he stumbled upon the discovery that lead to the beginning of homeopathy. In this book, he found the description of a malaria remedy which he tested on himself known as cinchona, or Peruvian bark. He discovered that, when taken by a healthy person, this cure for malaria produced quasi-malarial symptoms. He began exploring this rediscovery of the ancient law of similars by experimenting on himself, his family and friends. Six years later he published his findings in Christoph Hufeland's respected medical journal.

Hahnemann's findings were not accepted by the medical establishment. Pharmacists did not comply readily with his directions for preparing the minute doses of medicines he prescribed. When he began dispensing his own medicines without an apothecary's license, he was arrested in 1820 and forced to leave Leipzig. He moved to Kothen, where the grand duke Ferdinand supported homeopathy and allowed Hahnemann to dispense his own medicines.

Despite the opposition from the ranks of orthodox medicine, homeopathy continued to grow in popularity. Hahnemann remained active to an advanced age. When he was eighty years old, he moved to Paris where he started a new and successful practice.

Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836)

In a time when medical science focused solely on the treatment of individual symptoms of disease, Hufeland was a forceful promoter of preventive medicine. He taught that the primary goal of medicine is not to treat illness, but to maximize life. His book Macrobiotics, The Art of Extending Human Life, published in 1796, became a best seller and was translated into many languages.

Hufeland embraced the Hippocratic principle of a natural healing force. Each person is a temple of nature, with the power of self-healing. This power is not special, but rather the force of life itself. According to Hufeland, it is not the physician but nature that heals an abscess or a broken bone. He warned of the danger of overinvolvement by the physician. The latter's goal should not be to suppress the symptoms of an illness as quickly as possible, but rather to stimulate the patient's life force by means of light, air, heat, water, herbal teas, injections and enemas. He stressed the value of a sensible lifestyle, vegetarian diet and exercise, and paid special attention to the development of healthy children.

Hufeland considered immoderation to be the cause of most illness. Intense mental activity must be complemented by physical exercise and fresh air, and no one should be forced to eat more than he or she desires. Hufeland was open to folk medicine, homeopathy and magnetic therapy, and he advocated the treatment of the whole person at a time when medicine focused only on the individual organs.

Vincent Priessnitz (1799-1851)

Austrian-born Vincent Priessnitz is the father of hydrotherapy-the treatment of disease by means of water. As a peasant boy tending cattle in the Austrian mountains, he was impressed by a crippled stag that healed its injured limb by holding it daily in the cold water of a mountain spring. When Priessnitz was run over by an ox cart at age sixteen, the local surgeon declared his broken ribs unhealable. Priessnitz used cold-water bandages and frequent drinks of spring water to heal himself successfully. He began to treat neighbors, and the news of his successful water therapies soon spread. Priessnitz was persecuted by the medical profession at the beginning of his career, but was eventually granted a medical license and left in charge of a large health facility.

Priessnitz developed dozens of new water treatments. His patients typically began the day early with a sweat bath, wrapped in blankets, after which they were plunged into a cold tub. During the day they took brisk walks alternated with cold baths, warm foot baths and drinks of water from mountain springs. His greatest successes were in treating the prevalent infectious diseases of his time syphilis and smallpox.

Priessnitz understood that toxicity was the basis for disease. He was able to lead patients through the natural course of their disease and up to a sometimes severe crisis (including fever and rash), after which they were usually cured. Priessnitz was an important pioneer of the principles of naturopathic medicine. Priessnitz would agree with critics of his treatments that his patients often went through a difficult time, but it was worth it for the sake of their eventual good health.

Another well-known hydrotherapist during Preissnitz's time was Johann Schroth, who opened a spa/clinic, but used mainly warm water therapies and combined them with diet and strict guidelines for drinking.

Father Sebastian Kneipp (1821-1897)

Father Sebastian Kneipp became world-famous in his lifetime for his water cure and herb treatments. His teaching is perhaps the single most influential natural therapy to this day, yet he never treated a patient outside his tiny parish, except for one trip to the Vatican to treat the Pope.

Kneipp was born a poor weaver's son, and he never forgot his humble beginnings. He was known to treat the rich and poor alike. A sponsor sent him to Munich University, making possible the fulfillment of his desire to become a priest. It was there that Kneipp contracted tuberculosis. Influenced by the book, Lectures on the Wonderful Healing Power of Fresh Water by Johann Siegmund Hahn, Kneipp applied the severe cold-water cures to himself and recovered within six months. This experience influenced the rest of his life's work.

With his water cures and herb remedies, Kneipp helped countless patients daily and brought popularity to the practices of the father and son, Siegmund Hahn and Johann Siegmund Hahn. The majority of patients Kneipp treated were simple folk with illnesses like serious circulatory disorders, strokes, rheumatism, lung disease, obesity and gout.

Kneipp changed the crude water treatments he found in Hahn's eighteenth-century book. Kneipp's treatments were distinguished by their gentleness he shortened the duration of the application, but kept the cold water temperature the same. His main contribution to hydrotherapy was the discovery of the healing power of a cold gush of water for certain ailments. Kneipp's therapies were very successful.

To his water applications, Kneipp added the internal and external application of herbs. At first he had qualms about adding herbal remedies to his therapeutic program, thinking they could detract from the importance of his water cures. He collected, tested and catalogued hundreds of local herbs. One of his favorite prescriptions was stinging nettles for blood cleansing, to fight anemia and to rejuvenate. The prescription of bilberry for diarrhea was confirmed by other practitioners.

In addition to water therapy and herbal remedies, Kneipp added recommendations for a simple, nourishing diet, fresh air and exercise, and an emotional and spiritual order in life. Kneipp stressed the importance of training, and considered work to be a form of praying. He gave great importance to strengthening the body's power of resistance. Going barefoot was an important aspect of the regimen he advocated. Kneipp also recommended handmade, homespun clothes of loosely woven linen or vegetable fiber, and he believed in the connection of disease to emotional distress.

In 1886, Kneipp published My Water Cure, an instant best seller, which was immediately translated into fourteen languages. His next book, called Thus Shalt Thou Live!, was published in 1889. The Baby Kneipp Cure followed, then My Will in 1894, with the assistance of Dr. Alfred Baumgarten, and Codicil to My Will in 1896, with the assistance of Bonifaz Reile. His Plant Atlas was published in several languages. Kneipp had hoped his books would help people learn about and apply his cures at home, but thousands came to him for advice.

Kneipp had excellent relations with members of the medical profession, working with physicians who studied and verified his system. Besides being an excellent practitioner, Kneipp was an outstanding orator and gave daily public lectures. He was stern, had a sense of humor and treated all patients for free. His most famous patient was the Archduke Josef of Austria-Hungary, whom he cured of sciatica, an affliction of the sciatic nerve that causes pain to the hip. Kneipp also received recognition from the Pope. Kneipp established three charitable institutions one for sick priests, another for poor patients, and an asylum for sick children and orphans.

The seventy-year-old Kneipp went on a highly successful lecture tour, speaking at the many local Kneipp Associations which had been founded in towns all over the country. When he died penniless in 1897 at the age of seventy-six, newspapers were printed with a dark edge and flags flew at half-mast.

Kneipp's work has survived largely due to the Kneipp Association founded in 1890 by former patients, and the International Society of Kneipp Physicians. In 1903, the association published The Great Kneipp Book. The magazine Kneipp-Blatter continues to have a large readership, and there are dozens of Kneipp health resorts and spas in Germany today. The most famous spa town is Bad Worishofen in Allgau, where Kneipp practiced all his life, and includes seven Kneipp sanatoriums.

E. Leopold Emanuel Felke (1856-1926)

Pastor Erdmann Leopold Emanuel Felke was known as the Loam Pastor. Like Kneipp, he was a clergyman who reluctantly became a nature doctor. He shared Kneipp's sense of humor and sternness, but unlike Kneipp, it was Felke's success in treating his congregation in times of epidemic disease that set him on his career as a natural health practitioner. He never wrote about his therapy, and we know only of his methods through his students and followers.

Felke gained his first knowledge of natural therapy from his father, who treated his family with homeopathic remedies and herbal teas. The young Felke had an interest in plants and used to watch farmers treat injured domestic animals with loam poultices.

At the University of Berlin, Felke studied theology but preferred lectures in medicine and science. He became a caring pastor and an inspiring preacher. During a severe diphtheria epidemic, he gave the children a homeopathic remedy. All of the children recovered, in stark contrast to neighboring villages where the number of deaths were high. This was the beginning of his reputation as a healer. He helped all those who came to him, despite the authorities who took offense and urged him to stop. Felke began to study the methods of other nature healers and nutritionists. He became knowledgeable about diagnosing symptoms through examining facial and eye characteristics, and produced an exact topographical drawing of an eye.

Felke envisioned a setting close to nature where patients could enjoy the benefits of sunlight, air and healthy food. His parishioners warmed to the idea and sent a delegation to the Harz Mountains. They purchased sixty acres of land which included a forested area, and set up two large light and air parks, which were surrounded by high wooden fences and contained approximately fifty air huts. Patients took light, air and water baths, learned gymnastics, ate raw foods, and slept outdoors.

For outer skin lesions, bones and inner maladies, Felke applied clay poultices. When he introduced therapeutic baths in earthy loam in 1912, he became famous as the Loam Pastor. Felke believed that when a person came into contact with the earth, an interchange took place that would draw diseased matter from the body and put healthy matter in its place. Felke's patients would dig low trenches and fill them with loam, freshly dug and stirred into a mash with water. The loam bath was a half-bath patients would spread the mash up to their lower ribs. Afterwards, they would wipe it off roughly, letting some of it dry on the skin during the ensuing gymnastics. The loam was later rubbed off in a self-massage which increased the blood supply to the skin.

As many as four hundred patients stayed in Felke's spa at once. The police closed it several times and the medical profession brought many lawsuits against him. Felke won every lawsuit; they only served to enhance his reputation. In 1912, Felke gave up his pastorship to devote himself entirely to his natural health practice. He built a larger treatment center with a resident physician.

Felke treated rich and poor alike throughout his life; he died poor on 16 August 1926. He was an open-minded eclectic who also treated his patients with magnetism, massage, hypnotism and homeopathy. He introduced homeopathic remedies (a famous one is called Felke Original Complex) that are still being offered today. His retreats continue to welcome thousands of patients each year.

Johann Kunzle (1857-1945)

Johann Kunzle lived and worked as a pastor in Switzerland. He used herbal remedies with his parishioners for their physical ailments, and pastoral counseling for their spiritual ailments. Born in the small town of Heiligenkreuz, Kunzle gained his first knowledge of medicinal plants from his father who worked for a gardener and maintained his own farm. Later, as a student at the monastery school in Einsiedeln, Kunzle was impressed with the knowledge of his botany teacher. Kunzle became aware of the power of natural healing methods when his older brother helped cure him of a severe case of pneumonia with breathing and physical exercises.

The second experience which set Kunzle on the course of natural healing occurred when he was a student at the University of Louvain, Belgium. Returning home for a holiday in the summer of 1887, he found his mother seriously ill with heart disease. He succeeded in curing her by preparing meals of whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and giving her plenty of fresh air.

Kunzle's practice as a healer came about slowly. During his first years as a priest, Kunzle helped to bring some prosperity to some very poor mountain parishes in Switzerland and Germany. He also created and edited church newsletters. He purchased a herbal atlas at an auction, which contained exact descriptions and locations of all important healing herbs. Kunzle studied this book with great care, and it became the foundation of his healing practice.

Kunzle also learned from the ways of animals, the simple people around him, and from other natural healers. He was successful in treating his parishioners. During the influenza epidemic of 1918, he treated ill people with herbal remedies. Only two people in his parish died, in contrast to the large death tolls in neighboring villages.

Unfortunately, this success attracted the criticism of the authorities, and Kunzle was forbidden to practice healing. The bishop of Chur invited him to practice in another town, but he was sued by a physician and ordered to stop. Kunzle obeyed, but the people of the parish protested with a petition of four thousand signatures. A referendum was held, and Kunzle resumed his healing activities.

Kunzle's fame spread and he received prestigious visitors from all over the world at his spa. He wrote the world-famous book Chrut und Uchrut (Herbs and Weeds), which contained a yearly calendar, an atlas of herbs, and a monthly paper. It sold a million copies. Kunzle began producing his remedies industrially his tea mixtures and herbal combinations have become a regular part of natural health therapies.

Otto Greither (1867-1930)

Otto Greither stands out as being one of the most multi-faceted pioneers in natural health. After completing a medical degree at the University of Munich in 1892, he worked as a general practitioner and health reformer. Towards the turn of the century, he went on to study neurology with several renowned medical scientists across Europe before he took up dentistry and went to veterinary school.

Having practised all over Europe, Greither traveled to the United States (US) to observe other doctors and to gain insight from new scientific research that was being done there. After returning to Europe, he began veterinary studies, and focused his interest on the relationship between the biological processes of animal feeding and fertilization. His understanding of bacteriology grew as he observed sick animals, and he applied his knowledge to human conditions. However, Greither's most lucrative work in terms of understanding health and disease in the human body came from one patient in particular--himself.

At the age of thirty, Greither found himself becoming increasingly nervous, weak and rheumatic. After a few years of being bedridden with these conditions, he worsened, developing pneumonia and eventually pleurisy. Greither underwent surgery; subsequent complications arose and when doctors gave him colonics in preparation for more surgery, his symptoms miraculously disappeared.

From studies based on himself and other patients with digestive disorders, in addition to his observations in veterinary medicine, Greither discovered that the secret of health lay in the colon and the intestines. He found that most diseases and digestive disorders could be cured with a holistic approach of good nutrition, exercise and inner cleansing to rid the bowels of toxins, "...it is not what we eat that is important, but what we digest."

Although Greither's dream of opening his own sanatorium was never fulfilled, he did develop the "Salus Treatment," remedies based on all the research he conducted. He commissioned a factory to produce his remedies so that they could be accessible for others. This was the beginning of Salus-Haus, the premier German manufacturer of natural herbal products, known for its dedication to purity and quality.

In 1916, Otto Greither opened his first Nature and Health retail store. It was clear that people were eager for natural remedies because Nature and Health quickly grew to a chain of nine stores. Nature and Health was the forerunner of the reknowned neuform-movement retail organization, which today has over six thousand members.

In 1930, Otto Greither passed away, due to an illness brought on by overexposure to X-rays during his scientific experimentation. However, his family has carried on with the legacy he left them-the herbal teas, drops, tonics and tinctures he spent a lifetime accumulating.

M. O. Bircher-Benner (1867-1939)

Max Otto Bircher-Benner was a pioneer in natural nutrition, known worldwide for his wholegrain breakfast cereal recipe, Bircher-Benner muesli. As a student at the Zurich University Medical School, Bircher-Benner was inspired by the possibilities of biology and physiology for medical treatment ideas that were foreign to the medical thinking of the day. In 1897, he founded a private clinic in Zurich. For patients suffering from digestive diseases, he recommended raw fruits and vegetables, which he called "living foods." This was totally opposed to beliefs at the time, when meat was considered the basis of good nutrition.

Bircher-Benner's most important innovation in the science of nutrition was to introduce the idea of the sunlight value of foods, based on the insight that all living organisms store the power of the sun. While others were measuring the value of food by counting food calories, Bircher-Benner maintained that the value of individual foods depended on how much of the sun's energy was stored in them. From this point of view, fruits and green vegetables have high nutritional values. Raw foods are more valuable than cooked foods because the sun's energy is better preserved in raw foods. Animals partake of the sun's power only indirectly through the plants they eat, therefore meats are a less valuable food than plants.

Bircher-Benner advanced the notion of "apparent health," in which an apparently healthy person carries the germ of oncoming illness. Many people suffer from this condition, which is brought on by a diet lacking in vitamins and minerals and an excess of acid, protein, sugar and salt, and too many cooked, baked, preserved, bleached and refined foods.

While Bircher-Benner recommended a diet consisting exclusively of raw fruit and vegetables, nuts and salad for therapeutic purposes, he considered a combination of raw and cooked foods to be best in the longterm.

Bircher-Benner's influence on the health reform movement in Europe has lasted long past his death, and continues with his son, Dr. Ralph Bircher, who carries on the tradition, writing, teaching, and operating the famous Bircher-Benner clinics.

Ragnar Berg (1873-1956)

Swedish nutritionist and Nobel Prize winner Ragnar Berg conducted a number of experiments to determine nutrient loss during cooking. He became interested in this subject after observing certain illnesses which occurred in a Swedish sanatorium practicing "pudding vegetarianism." "Pudding vegetarians" are people who eliminate meat from their diet, but otherwise indulge in mostly denatured cooked food.

Berg wrote about his comprehensive and well-controlled experiments, and the surprisingly great loss of nutrients during cooking. Vegetables lost one-third of their minerals and up to ninety-four percent of their important alkaline salts. This lack of nutritive salts, especially in a heavy meat diet, results in an excess of acid, which shows up in various forms of illness, especially rheumatism and gout.

We know that a healthy organism has to be more alkaline than acidic. Berg learned from his experiments that vegetables which are alkaline when they are raw turn acidic when they are cooked. Vegetables such as legumes, which are acidic to begin with, even increase in acidity after cooking. According to Berg, the value of vegetables lies in their alkaline content, their vitamins and their additional substances not yet known to society. These soluble matters are the first ones lost in the cooking process. Berg sounded a special warning against canned vegetables, which are cooked up to seven times at high heat to preserve them. Cooking also destroys up to four-fifths of carbohydrates and half of protein.

In his book Everyday Miracles, Berg describes the surprisingly quick healing of heavily festered wounds after patients were put on a course of raw vegetables, such as carrots, spinach, fresh lettuce and potatoes. These patients were particularly deficient in B vitamins, a deficiency which encourages the formation of extra white blood cells and pus. Berg was one of the world's top authorities on the acid-alkaline balance of foods and how this balance affects the body. His works on nutrition are still used as textbooks in many medical schools.

Are Waerland (1876-1955)

The Swedish biologist, lecturer and writer Are Waerland has influenced the healthy living habits of countless people through the gigantic health movement that carries his name. The single most important secret to good health advocated by the Waerland Healing System is simple and effective a daily, early morning walk. According to Waerland, motion and oxygen are the things we need most to prepare the body for the day. An hour-long walk, brisk enough to cause slight perspiration, when combined with a good diet, will build strong health. Walking is also the best medicine to ensure a refreshing night's sleep, another essential prerequisite for good health.

Waerland's natural health teaching pays special attention to the vital role the skin plays in a person's health. The skin absorbs oxygen, excretes waste, and controls the body's temperature. Its vitality depends on the proper functioning of the small muscles regulating blood supply to the skin. To keep these muscles toned, in addition to the brisk morning walk, Waerland recommends taking a cold bath or shower each morning, grooming the skin with a dry brush or friction massage, dressing in light clothes, and taking a warm bath or sauna each week to eliminate worn-out skin and waste.

As a student at the University of Uppsala, Sweden in 1901, Waerland was prompted to leave his philosophical studies for the study of medicine by the onset of a severe abdominal disease which threatened to take his life. His search for the principles of health took him to Edinburgh University, University College in London, and the Sorbonne in Paris. He worked for many years in London with several nutritional scientists, conducting experiments in nutritional physiology and medicine. Waerland also wrote articles on nutrition for the Swedish magazine Frisksport. Like Bircher-Benner, Waerland developed his own breakfast muesli, Kruska.

Through the application of the principles of good health which he discovered, Waerland lived a long and productive life. His teaching placed great emphasis on the ability and duty of every individual to take responsibility for his or her own good health.

Max Gerson (1881--1959)

German physician, Max Gerson was one of the most eminent pioneers of natural healing. He started his medical practice in the mid-1920s, specializing in disorders of the nervous system.

In his youth, Gerson suffered from excruciating migraines. Told by medical experts that migraines were incurable, he experimented with different diets. All his efforts failed until he tried raw vegetarian food. He started with apples, and then carefully extended his diet to other fruits, vegetables and whole grains. The migraines disappeared, but returned when he deviated from eating natural food. Gerson subsequently became a vegetarian for life.

When Gerson started prescribing raw vegetarian food to his patients, they also experienced surprising cures. One patient who suffered from migraines and lupus, an inflammatory skin disease considered completely incurable, was cured after sticking to Gerson's diet. Laboratory reports and slides clearly documented the complete disappearance of her lupus, an unheard-of occurrence. Gerson subsequently treated other lupus patients who also recovered.

Since Gerson was a specialist in nervous disorders, the medical community tried to get his license revoked, claiming that he was not qualified to treat lupus. When the matter was brought to court, the judge asked the physicians who were suing Gerson whether they were curing lupus. They replied that lupus was incurable. The judge responded that if they were not curing lupus, they should let Gerson cure it, and dismissed the case. Gerson then went home and put up a new sign reading General Practitioner.

In 1928, Gerson cured Albert Schweitzer's wife from serious lung tuberculosis. At that point, Gerson realized that his natural diet was applicable to all diseases because raw vegetarian food renews the body's ability to heal itself. Years later, at the age of seventy-five, Albert Schweitzer recovered from diabetes under Gerson's care, and considered Max Gerson to be one of the most eminent geniuses in medical history.

In 1929, Gerson started treating his first cancer patients. The diet he prescribed consisted of fresh fruits and vegetables, and freshly squeezed juices. After the patient had been on this diet for a while, buttermilk, quark, yogurt and raw egg yolks were added. The patients also took a mineral supplement and received enemas to clean out the digestive system. Gerson kept developing his cancer therapy in Germany and then in the US, when he emigrated there in the late 1930s. He added fresh green leaf juice, fresh raw calf's liver juice, coffee enemas and other treatments to his therapy which is described in his book, A Cancer Therapy: Results of Fifty Cases (1958). His book provides proof and medical documentation that a significant number of so-called terminal cancer patients completely recovered under Gerson's care. In the US, the medical profession again tried to sabotage him. Gerson kept submitting papers about his work to medical journals but they were invariably rejected. The medical profession also tried to get his license revoked for practicing "unorthodox medicine."
Gerson believed that the root of all disease lies in an imbalance of sodium and potassium. If the balance is restored through the consumption of potassium-rich foods, cell respiration is improved, the body is strengthened and purified, and cancer cells can be attacked and destroyed.

Gerson's theory of cell respiration has recently been confirmed. Scientists now recognize that a lack of cell oxygenation is typical for almost all chronic diseases. Cancer specialist and Nobel Prize winner Dr. Otto Warburg, who is the director of the Max Planck Institute for Cell Physiology in Berlin, discovered that healthy cells use oxygen reactions as an energy source. Cancer cells respond quite differently, deriving their energy from glucose. Other researchers have confirmed Warburg's finding, agreeing that many diseases of modern civilization are caused by faulty cell oxygenation. If normal cell oxygenation is restored with raw vegetarian food, the whole organism, including the immune system, is also restored.

Gerson demanded that nutrition become the basis for any medical treatment, and that a physician's first act should be changing the patient's diet and metabolism. Gerson died in 1959, at the age of seventy-eight. His work is now carried on by his youngest daughter, who runs the Gerson Institute in Mexico.

James C. Thomson (1887-1960)

James Thomson helped transplant nature cure methods to the British Isles, and his dynamic personality ensured that these methods took root and thrived.

He believed the best therapeutic agent consisted of the patient's determination to get well. This precept determined Thomson's own road to nature cure. After eighteen months in the Royal Navy, Thomson contracted incurable tuberculosis. He retired to a cousin's farm, and followed the advice he found in books of natural healing. He recovered and went to the US, visiting and managing sanatoriums.

Thomson returned to Edinburgh, where he married and set up a residential practice. He published the magazine Rude Health, opened a clinic for needy children, and imported the first mercury vapor lamp for ultraviolet therapy. In 1939, he moved his practice to Kingston Estate in Scotland. There were various attempts to close it down, but Thomson represented himself successfully in court.

His beliefs led to many conflicts with people who had little faith in self-healing powers. Thomson maintained that illness was a periodic housecleaning of toxins by the body and should be welcomed. Thomson also deplored the sense of hopelessness which conventional diagnosis conferred on patients with terminal diseases.

The therapeutic mainstays of the "Kingston system" were a healthy diet, hydrotherapy, and spinal manipulation to help correct nerve and circulatory imbalances. The diet consisted mostly of raw, vegetarian foods. Thomson railed against proc