What is Neo Natural Hygiene?
To understand Neo Natural Hygiene, it is important to understand Natural Hygiene first, as Neo Natural Hygiene is simply the next stage of development of Natural Hygiene. It is the expansion and adaptation to the modern age of everything that Natural Hygiene represents.
It may be said to be a system of purification, vivification and rejuvenation, by the use of agents and conditions that are normal to the body, the system is cleansed, invigorated and restored to healthy action. A rational Neo natural hygienist will study and understand exactly and precisely the nature and influences of air, water, food, light, exercise, rest, sleep, temperature, clothing, housing, noise, the emotions, etc and apply the knowledge daily, hourly, constantly acting everyone is always improper relations to the laws of life, to the preservation and restoration of health.
What is needed is a complete system of hygiene, not an exaggerated attention given to, but one hygienic factor. Not exercise alone, nor diet alone, no sunshine alone, not emotional poise alone, not any one factor alone, but a well-rounded, correlated and integrated system which includes all the conditions and materials of healthy life. The body is a holistic system, therefore health must be built and maintained as a unit and must rest upon the total mode of natural living.
Here another definition of Natural Hygiene method of healing provided by Robert Walter, MD, 1894 that very much matches all that has been said so far:
Our health and disease are simply the result of our obedience and disobedience to the laws of nature. If you break these laws evil consequences must follow, there will be a penalty to pay. The amount which will have to be paid will then depend on the mode by which the laws of life have been violated. The more blatant the transgression, the higher the fine…
Thus natural hygiene brings home to us constantly and forcibly the inexorable facts of natural law and the necessity of compliance with the law. Herein lies its great educational value. To the individual and to the race, the man who has learned to master his habits and his appetites so as to conform to nature's laws on the physical plane, and who has thereby regained his bodily health, realizes that personal effort and self-control are the masters…The naturist who has regained health and strength through obedience to the laws of his being, enjoys a measure of self content, gladness of soul and enthusiasm which cannot be explained by mere possession of physical health. These highest and purest attainments of the human soul are not the results of mere physical well-being, but of the peace and harmony which come only from obedience to the law. Such is the peace which passeth understanding.
Natural hygiene is a true preventive method, but the same method can be applied to the recovery of health if it was lost. But what is really a preventive method of healing? The current term “preventive method“ as promoted by modern Medical Science means discovery of a disease early in its development. Is that really preventive? Once a disease is established, we cannot talk about prevention anymore. A true sign of disease prevention or of health building can rest upon correct principles only and these were discovered by natural hygienists. What do these discoveries imply in practice? What principle did they establish in the healing art?
Simply obedience to the laws of life. We cannot depart from them without incurring sickness. We cannot live in disobedience thereon without perpetuating disease. Is there anything so strange, so astonishing, in the proposition that the sick, in order to regain health, should obey the laws of life just as much? As should the well to preserve it and yet almost the whole world behaves in accordance with the ridiculous and incomprehensible model of medical men that offer health in a bottle or by means of scalpel. Such things can never achieve what they promise, for they have not been designed by nature.
There are great errors in our habits of life, as evidenced by the great amount of faulty development, sickness and premature dying among us. But we cannot wipe these errors out with drugs, vaccines, serums, gland extracts and the surgeon's knife, nor can we ignore the errors of life. To teach that drugs are better than obedience and that the pathological products of animal sacrifices are better than conformity with the laws of life is to completely demoralize all who accept and believe such doctrines. It is folly to think that consequences can be dosed or vaccinated away. Nature has made no provision to nullify nor destroy her own laws. The only real cure is a return to obedience. Nature does not bribe us to sin by promising us absolution. She does not hold out to us any hope that we may escape the consequences or effects of our unphysiological conduct by resorting to any immunizing agent. There is no basis in all nature for the doctrine of immunization. Immunity, were it real, it would mean the suspension of law of cause and effect.
Dr. Shelton spoke about all the treatments as promoted by modern Medical Science and their futility in the face of nature. In our next episode, we shall take a closer look at the difference between the Neo Natural Hygiene approach to health and modern Medical Science.
