The Mighty Work Ahead... A Statement from...
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Recorded in 1949 Edited Slightly by Victoria BidWell
We aim to be radically right, to teach exact truth, to expose and condemn everything that is false and erroneous, to teach The People how to GetWell and StayWell with The Superlative, Alternative Health Care System! Hence, our exclusivity from other so-called "schools of healing." Ours is "The Superlative Health Care System." All other schools are willing to compromise with ours. They are willing to take a part of our system if we will take a part of theirs. They are as available in the matter of compromise as are mere politicians. And when we are obliged to reject all their very kind and liberal offers to compromise and to join in their consensuses, they call us with disdain: "purists," "radicals," "revolutionaries," idealists," if not other, what I consider to be, complimentary "epithets."
Of all the alternative health care systems and the medical system itself, Natural Hygiene is the only true system. Its principles are true to "The Natural, Physiological Laws of Nature" and to the biological existence of the human organism. There are not two correct systems of body care. There cannot be two conflicting truths, not to speak of a score or a hundred alternatives! For this reason, Eclecticism is fundamentally false.
Shall Hygienists be Eclectics? "Eclecticism" is the term applied to the doctrine that we should "select the best from all systems." It is based on the assumption that: "There is good in all systems and also error in them all." It is a very old idea, a very plausible idea; and it may be truly said that most schools of so-called "healing" have been more or less "eclectic."
Eclecticism early found its way among Hygienists: it being urged upon us from many sides today. There are practitioners today, as in the past, who profess to be Hygienists, who do considerable mixing of the various systems. We are often told that if we were not so radical, if we did not condemn all drugging and all other forms of treatment, and would admit that there may be virtue in some of them, we would get along better, would have more cases, more people would accept our work, and we would be more successful. Some regret that we reject all drugging and think that by using a "little drugging," we could do more good by using a few of the "better" of these. They are sure we would have more patients. They advise us to select the "best" from the other systems and employ this "best."
And thus, The Devil of Eclecticism takes every Hy gienist up on the top of a high mountain and shows him the whole therapeutic world. All of this numbers, popularity, success, an easier road The Devil offers, if only the Hygienist will accept even a little of the other systems and worship at the altars of Eclecticism.
My reply is: "We are not trying to 'get along easy'! We are trying to teach the truth!" Dr. Trall well said that there was never a greater fallacy than the adage: "Truth is the middle ground between two extremes." Truth is always radical, always revolutionary. Truth is inevitably at one extreme or the other of any given, compromising proposition. For this reason, any compromise between two opposing and radically different systems is death to the truth.
If The Hygienic System is ever to reach the proportions and dignity of a Common Health Sense Revolution, sweeping into it men and women of all ranks, the rich and the poor, the ignorant as well as the educated, the old-fashioned medicine men and their old-fashioned and suffering victims, The Hygienic System must have well-defined "The Basic Tenets of Natural Hygiene" and clearly defined principles in literature, easily understood by all.
