A Statement from...
Dr. Herbert M. Shelton
Recorded in 1949 Edited Slightly by Victoria BidWell
It is impossible to combine Natural Hygiene with systems based on antiquated principles. It is impossible to reconcile drugging and cutting practices with Hygienic principles. It is equally impossible to find room for Hygienic practices within the framework of medical practices. One is either an Hygienist, or one is not. An "Hygienic Eclectic" is a contradiction in terms. There is no middle ground. One cannot be "part Hygienist" and "part something else" which is based on a false paradigm. Such mongrelization can only produce an inferior level of health! It certainly cannot produce that prized "Superlative Health!"
A system may appear beautiful to the superficial Health Seeker, when and if all its parts are in harmony with each other, even if founded in error. Hence, it is that the pernicious system of allopathy (conventional medicine with its drugging and surgery and enervating therapies) has reared such a lofty and magnificent superstructure its principles are a shoddy bundle, glossed over with a polish of science; but its principles are rotten to the core; and its practices conforming to this rot are destructive! Health Seekers, I say to you that it is impossible to combine the destructive practices of conventional medicine with the constructive practices of Natural Hygiene!
The Hygienic System not only introduced a Materia Hygienica and a new practice, but also a new theory and philosophy in biological science that is at variance with and in opposition to all the fundamental doctrines and dogmas on which all medical systems, past and present, have been founded. It claims to have ignored the false principles of the old school of conventional medicine and of the new schools of holistic health and to have based its philosophy and its practices upon the unerring and demonstrable Laws of Nature. On the essential nature of disease and the modus operendi of "medicines," we differ radically and revolutionarily from all the so-called "schools of healing." Unfortunately, most of the drugless schools of holistic care have, more or less, accepted the allopathic theory of disease and most of their theory of the cause of disease. If The Hygienic System is right, they are one and all wrong!
In calling attention to the fact that it is the body itself, and not the drug or therapy or treatment that acts and initiates healing, we are forecasting a change in thought as great as that produced by the recognition that the Sun and not the Earth itself is the center of the Solar System! Twelve hundred years passed before the fact was accepted that the Earth revolves on its axis and also revolves around the Sun. We can only hope that it will not require so much time to bring about the acceptance of the vital fact that the living and vital force and not the lifeless drug or the enervating treatment is the real actor and the healer itself of the human body!
If Hygiene is to be sustained, it must be upheld in its purity. No muddy waters should be invited to gush forth into our pure rivers. If The Hygienic System is based on The Laws of Nature and I contend that it is every mixing of Hygiene with other systems not so based is a violation of these natural laws and a muddying of Hygiene's pure rivers. We must not sell Hygiene down the proverbial river as if it were some inferior product to be mixed with other inferior products and then thrust upon unsuspecting people for profits.
In vain do we say: "The practitioners of the other schools know nothing of TheHygienic System and its proper application to the well and to the sick!" Natural Hygiene is a system unique and complete in itself, a new idea, an innovation, yes, a revolution, in the matter of Hygienic science, founded and developed upon principles entirely different from those which underlie the respective systems of treating disease with their principles of poisoning the sick and treating them all with every manner of physical method imaginable. The Hygienic School was the first, and thus far has been, the only school in history which makes The Natural, Physiological Laws of Life and Removing The Cause of Disease and Providing The Conditions of Health the 3 leading features of its teachings and practices!
Nothing can be more certain than that Hygiene and the various systems so heavily influenced by The Medical Mentality have no affinity for each other! They work by different means. They operate to opposite ends. They are based on different and opposite principles. And no man nor woman alive can find a common denominator for them.
Men of the "drugless" schools read Hygienic literature and attempt "Eclecticism" the practice of "combining all good in all systems." They do not fully grasp The Hygienic System and its Basic Tenets. For this reason , their various and eclectic mixtures result in building of less-than Superlative Health. The Energy Enhancing practices of Hygiene simply will not mix with the poisoning and otherwise Energy Robbing practices of the various schools!
We must refuse to sell Hygiene down the river and to muddy the pure waters that run so deep. It has become a matter of stern and uncompromising duty, therefore, to thus draw the line between The Hygienic System and all other systems.
