SoilandHealth: What is Nature Cure?

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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.

 

These thoughts are not the mere dreams of a visionary. When we see

the wonderful changes wrought in a human being by a few months or

years of rational living and treatment, it seems not impossible or

improbable that these ideals may be realized within a few

generations.

 

Children thus born and reared in harmony with the law will be the

future masters of the earth. They will need neither gold nor

influence to win in the race of life—their innate powers of body and

soul will make them victors over every circumstance. The offspring

of alcoholism, drug poisoning and sexual perversity will cut but

sorry figures in comparison with the manhood and womanhood of a true

and noble aristocracy of health.