Health for the Millions.
Shelton, H. (1968). Health for the Millions. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association. 

Page 77/8

Man is subject to disease and premature death in the same ways that other organized beings are subject to them. Animals and plants may be crushed, drowned, frozen, may die of heat, thirst, want of food, or poison. They may be devoured by other animals and plants, may die of nutritive insufficiencies, inadequacies or redundancies. An animal may die of overwork. These are, in general, the causes of disease and premature death in man.

A sound organism, as an initial endowment, is essential to the highest health at all ages of life. Congenitally defective organisms are never capable of attaining the high degree of health that is possible to the congenitally sound organism. As Dr. Thomas Low Nichols expressed it: “Health is not the result of partial, but of integral development.” The vigor of any part of the organism is dependent upon normal exercise of the part, and a music of organic physiology arises where true harmony of parts exists in the collective whole.

I do not believe that there is any reason why this globe should be the home of a sickly, suffering race of man, with but occasionally a notable exception. It is my firm conviction that mankind has brought all of this suffering, misery and premature dying upon themselves.

 Pg 175

Water has given the earth its covering of soil and carpeted this soil with verdure. Deprived of water, plants droop and wither; without water, animals thirst and die. No wonder an early writer has left us the thought that at the dawn of creation the spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. There is no life without water.

The foregoing eulogy of water is paraphrased from Dr. Thomas Low Nichols. We need only add that, without water, no seed could germinate, no plant could grow. What wonder, then, that water has so often been worshiped as the source of life. The Egyptians worshiped the Nile, the river that made possible their yearly crops, their life and civilization. The Hindus worship the Ganges. Are these people doing other than paying tribute to one of the basic elements of living structures and functions?

Pg 183/84

Dr. Thomas Low Nichols said: “The conditions of health are found in simple conformity to nature. Through life we need the light of the sun, for light is the great element of life in plants and animals. Shut up a plant in darkness, and see what becomes of it. Only the fungi can so flourish. In partial darkness there may be a pale, weak growth, but no flowers or fruit emerge. Shut up the strongest man in a dark dungeon, and he becomes pale like a corpse, his blood loses its vitality, and he is liable to scrofulous disease. He loses the power of resisting disease influences . . .

Light is necessary for every living and growing thing. Not just warmth and light, but the total rays of the sun are essential to full nutrition, full development, full growth of both plants and animals. The sunshine of spring repairs the evils of winter and restores the buoyancy of being that surges in all life around us. Just as living nature expands with the return of the spring sun, and the earth yields her fertile bosom to man, so man, as he drinks in the re-creative rays of the sun, expands into newness of life.

Graham stressed the importance of sunshine in bone growth and development. Dr. Jackson emphasized its importance in muscular strength and nerve health. Both Doctors Nichols and Trall emphasized its overall importance in the process of nutrition and in the preservation of health. Trall stressed its value in rickets and scrofula (glandular tuberculosis) and anemia. Trall also stressed the importance of sunlight in the growth and development of children. But none of these men thought of sunshine as a cure.

Pg 185

It is not merely that sunshine is essential to the utilization of food taken daily, but it is equally essential to the best and most efficient utilization of food reserves made use of while the organism fasts or is sick and cannot utilize raw materials. The best proof of this, perhaps, is found in the facts recorded by Dr. Nichols and Dr. Trall, who noted that the greatest number of cases of cholera were found among inhabitants of the darkest lanes and courts and that there were great differences in mortality between the sunny and shady sides of the same streets.

Dr. Nichols recommended “a sunny exposure, plenty of large windows, and no blinds or curtains,” as important conditions of health. He thought that “early rising is healthful, chiefly because by that means we live more in the light. Night is the time for rest and sleep, because we can then best spare the invigorating influences of the day. The fashion that turns night into day diminishes health and shortens life.

It is not, of course, the artificial light of the late hours that diminishes health and shortens life, but the lack of rest and sleep and the other dissipations that commonly accompany night life. What we should gather from his statements, however, is that the resting individual, even if resting during the day, does not require so much sunshine as the active man or woman.

Pg 216

A medical man, writing in the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal (1850), endorsed the view of the editor of the Journal that once a week constituted adequate bathing. He advocated the use of soap in the operation. Discussing this article, Dr. Thomas Low Nichols stated that he thought that a man who bathes but once a week probably needs a strong soap, but he thought that by using a little more soap, one could bathe but once a month or once a year. He could see no use for soap if one bathed daily.

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The Natural Hygiene Handbook

Lennon, J., Taylor, S. (1996). The Natural Hygiene Handbook. National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.

Pg 22

Mary Gove (1810-1884) and Susanna Way Dodds, M.D., also founded colleges that taught Hygiene and admitted both men and women. Gove and her husband, Thomas Low Nichols, M.D., established the American Hydropathic Institute in New York City in 1851. Dr. Dodds, together with her sister-in-law, Mary Dodds, M.D., founded the Hygienic College of Physicians and Surgeons in St. Louis, Mo. in 1887. Harriot Austin, M.

End

Shelton, Herbert. Fasting for Renewal of Life

Pg 53

Affirming the Hygienic principle that the sick organism must be supplied with the conditions of health, Dr. Thomas Low Nichols stated the other half of this principle thus: “I mean, of course, such conditions as apply to a sick person; for in this as in all other things, there is one grand rule of practice; that we adapt our measures to the conditions of the patient.” Obviously then, if our period of physiological rest is adapted to the condition of the invalid, no arbitrary length of the fast, such as “three weeks,” can be set. Some invalids cannot fast three weeks. Many of them do not need a fast of this length. Many more need a much longer fast and are fully able to take it. Nor can we be guided solely by the disappearance of symptoms. Symptoms often disappear long before the fast should be broken and a prematurely broken fast often spells failure.

Nichols says properly, “What is well for the well man is not always well for the sick. It is well for the well man to eat, drink, take exercise, labor and partake of all enjoyments. But the best thing for the sick man may be to entirely stop eating, and to rest mind and body. The effort to digest food, to take exercise, and to ‘keep up,’ is a cause of exhaustion.

Pg 56

Thomas Low Nichols, M.D., wrote in the fourth decade of the last century, “In many diseases abstinence from food does much toward affecting a cure, but there are others which demand all the nutrition consistent with the strength of the patient.” In a footnote he adds: “A Water-Cure physician of some notoriety has made what is called the hunger-cure so much a hobby, that he neglects some of the most powerful and efficacious of the Water-Cure processes; but judgment and true science avoid the errors of such extremes.” One might ask whose judgment and which “true science” and which errors and which extremes? Unquestionably the physiological rest provided by a period of abstinence from food is a powerful force for good, but anything other than a short fast, requires great care such as only experience and sound observation can provide.

Pg 65

Dr. Thomas Low Nichols describes a plan of breaking a fast that will be of interest to us here. In reading the following quotation, please keep in mind that when he uses the word bread, he has reference to whole wheat or genuine Graham bread. He says: “When the patient begins to eat, it should be the smallest quantity of food, and of the simplest quality; say one ounce of coarse bread, and two ounces of fruit a day for the first week; then two ounces of bread and three of fruit for another week; then three ounces of bread and five of fruit for a month.” Such a prolonged period of abstemious eating after the fast, was necessitated by the premature breaking of the fast, and would not do as a program of feeding after a long fast; but he says of this period of light eating: “By this time the worst dyspeptic will have digestion for meals progressively larger, until he reaches the standard of health, and his whole system will have undergone the most remarkable changes.

Pg 71

In 1877 Dr. Thomas Low Nichols issued a small book under the title “Curative Diets” the special feature of which was the advocacy of taking reduced quantities of foods as a means of restoring and preserving health. In his Encyclopedia of Physical Culture, (1912) Bernarr Macfadden lists a whole catalogue of restricted diets of this character under the title of “Partial Fasting Regimens.” Of similar character are such diets as the grape diet, the lemon diet, the orange diet and various other fruit diets, the milk diet and the various juice diets now so popular.

A “partial fasting regimen,” to use Macfadden’s phrase, may often be very helpful in chronic illness (never in acute illness) but, even here, its use is often contraindicated. Dr. Thomas Low Nichols, writing of fasting in cases of chronic dyspepsia, said, “No food, not an atom of any kind should ever be taken until it is cured. Starve and drink water is all that is needed for the digestive apparatus.

Pg 109

The phrase “hunger cure,” came from Austria and seems to have been first applied to the dry diet (and occasional fast) that constituted the most prominent feature of the work of Johan Schroth. It was employed by Dr. Shew, who seems to have introduced the “Schroth cure” into America, and was occasionally employed by some of the early Hygienists, although neither Jennings, Graham, Alcott, Trall, Nichols nor Taylor used the phrase. They preferred the terms fasting and abstinence. In truth, the phrase “hunger cure” misrepresents the process, which is not a cure and is not a period of hunger.

END

Shelton, Herbert. (1934). The Science and Fine Art of Fasting. Hygienic System – Volume III. 

Pg 127/28

That fasting is a period of physiological rest was emphasized by all the early Hygienists—Jennings, Graham, Trall, etc. Nichols (1881) says: “In fevers and all inflammatory diseases fasting … is a matter of the first importance. As a rule, nature herself points out this remedy. When animals have any malady, they stop eating. Loss of appetite is a symptom of disease, and it points out That fasting is a period of physiological rest was emphasized by all the early Hygienists—Jennings, Graham, Trall, etc. Nichols (1881) says: “In fevers and all inflammatory diseases fasting … is a matter of the first importance. As a rule, nature herself points out this remedy. When animals have any malady, they stop eating. Loss of appetite is a symptom of disease, and it points

Pg 260

Great emaciation is not a bar to fasting. I have fasted numerous very thin people. One man, an asthmatic, who was veritably “skin and bones” when reaching my institution, fasted seventeen days and became practically free of asthma of nine years’ standing. A subsequent fast completed his restoration. This man actually grew stronger during the fast. Indeed, in some cases of wasting “disease,” no amount and kind of feeding produces any improvement until a fast, or a greatly reduced diet (a starvation diet), has first been employed. Page, Rabagliati, Kieth, Nichols and others record many such cases. Many deaths in tuberculosis are the result of starvation from overfeeding.

Pg 355

Rest and fasting constitute the proper treatment of those suffering from overwork, overeating and sexual excesses.” It should be obvious that when energy is low and functions are inefficient, a period of physiological rest will be beneficial. When the digestive function is so badly impaired that every meal is followed with gas or with nausea or when undigested food remains in the stomach for prolonged periods, a rest of the digestive system is imperative. Mr. Carrington, who insists upon the necessity of resting in disease, places greatest stress upon rest of the digestive system.

After pointing out that loss of appetite, seen in all acute diseases and common in chronic disease, is “the voice of nature forbidding us to eat,” and lamenting the fact that physicians and nurses disregard this “voice of nature” and force food down the throats of “disgusted patients,” Dr. T. L. Nichols says, “rest for the stomach, liver, all the organs of the nutritive system, may be the one thing needful. It is the only rest we will not permit.—In certain states of disease, where the organs of digestion are weakened and disordered, the best beginning of a cure may be total abstinence for a time from all kinds of food. There is no cure like it. If the stomach cannot digest, the best way is to give it a rest. It is the only thing which it needs.” He also says, “for every disease of every organ of the body, the first condition is rest—rest for stomach, rest for brain. Broken bones and cut or torn muscles, must have rest, or there can be no cure. For the vital organs there must be, at least, diminished labor—intervals of rest—all the repose that is consistent with the necessary operations of life. In disease of the heart, we must diminish the amount of the circulating fluid, and remove all stimulants and excitements to action. It is chiefly through the stomach and nutritive system that we can act on the heart and brain, the more rest we can give to the stomach, the more chance.

Pg 371

Dr. T. L. Nichols, an outstanding Hygienist of the last century, laid great stress on the importance, in some cases, of what he called the “partial fast.” He says: “I have known a case of serious organic disease, which I feared might prove speedily fatal, to be entirely cured by a seven-months fast on one very moderate and very pure meal a day.” Following his lead, Dr. Rabagliati of England and Dr. Tilden of this country made frequent use of what Tilden often referred to as the “starvation diet.” Indeed, Tilden said that the patient should be fed barely enough to sustain life. Macfadden and his staff also made frequent use of various “partial fasting” regimens. It will be readily recognized that limited feeding of this type constitutes a marked degree of physiological rest for the sick and enervated organism and constitutes a near approach to a complete fast. The student of the matter also knows that the originators of the “partial fasts” or “eliminating diets” did not regard them as cures. They knew what they were doing and were not fooled by the ideas that there are curative foods. 

END

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The Science of the Fine Art of Natural Hygiene – Vol. I

Shelton, H. (1934). The Science and Fine Art of Natural Hygiene – The Hygeientic System: Volume I. National Health Association, Youngstown, OH.

Pg 311

It was not until the rise of osteopathy that any of the schools graduated its students with any degree other than that of “Doctor of Medicine.” The school founded by Nichols, that of Trall and, later the one founded by Dodds, all conferred the degree in medicine upon their graduates. In the writer’s opinion, this was a very unfortunate mistake. Hygienists should have differentiated themselves from all of the schools of so-called healing (medicine) in every possible manner. They should have repudiated the term physician and the phrase “Hygienic medication.” Even the title doctor, a reactionary term adopted by the schoolmen to set themselves apart from and above the “laity,” might well have been left behind. They should have called themselves simply, Hygienists. But if they wanted to retain the title doctor, they should have been Doctors of Hygiene.

Pg 319

When Graham lectured in Boston in 1832 a young medical student at Dartmouth attended his lectures and, after hearing them, gave up the study of medicine and became a newspaper man. After a period of travelling over the West and South as a newsman, he became editor of the New York Evening Herald. In 1840 Mary Gove, a remarkable woman who had been the first to answer the call for women to lecture to women on Grahamism, went to New York City to study the water cure under Dr. Joel Shew. She and Thomas Low Nichols, the editor who had given up the study of medicine after hearing Graham, were both active in the movement for Woman’s Rights and a few other movements of the time. They met and married. As women were not permitted, in those days to enter medical college and there were no other schools of “healing” to attend, Nichols decided to complete his studies of medicine, and get a license to practice so he could protect Mrs. Gove in her work. He studied medicine at the University of New York under the famous Valentine Mott and graduated with high honors. He would often laugh to himself over the thought of the revolutionary purposes to which he was going to put the reactionary knowledge they dispensed at the University.

Pg 320/21

Thomas Low Nichols

In 1850 they opened an establishment in New York City, where they dispensed more Hygiene, giving special attention to the emotional and love life of their patients, than they did of water cure. They beat Freud to an understanding of the importance of the sex life by many years. Mrs. Nichols used to call their work the “Love Cure.” Nichols and Gove each wrote books and he edited and published in this country the Nichols Journal and The Esoteric. When the north declared war on the seceded southern states, these two New England Yankees, who were opposed to the war and who thought the south had every right to secede, slipped out of New York and sailed to England where they opened an institution and carried on for many years. In England, Dr. Nichols founded and edited The Herald of Health, until he retired in the 1890’s when he went to France where he remained until his death at the age of 85 in 1901, Mrs. Nichols having died in England several years prior thereto.

The Herald of Health edited by Dr. Nichols was avowedly a Hygienic publication, although Dr. Nichols never abandoned the cold water treatments of Preissnitz. There were other Hygienic institutions in England headed by other men and there was one magazine published under the title The Journal of Hygeio-Therapy. This Journal was edited by T. V. Gifford, M.D., who asserted that the founding of the College of Hygeio-Therapy in New York was the “great if not the greatest deed” of Trall’s life.

On September 15, 1851, Dr. Nichols and Mary Gove opened the American Hydropathic Institute in New York City. This was a “medical school … for the instruction of qualified persons of both sexes, in all branches of a thorough medical education, including the principles and practices of Water Cure, in acute or chronic disease, surgery and obstetrics.” This was the first such school in America, perhaps in the world. It was the world’s first drugless college. Although called a Hydropathic Institute, its teachings were Hygienic. Hydropathy was practiced by practically all Hygienists at that time, the only known exceptions being Jennings and Alcott. Even Graham was misled by the claims of the hydropathic school. Hydropathy was taught in Trall’s college also.

Hydropathy was an effort at medical reform rather than a medical revolution. It employed water in various forms from steam to ice, and at all intermediate temperatures, applied in a wide variety of ways, both locally and generally, internally and externally, to secure the same results that medical men sought to obtain with their poisonous drugs. Today it puzzles the Hygienist to account for Trall’s failure to see in the actions of the body, when subjected to hot and cold applications, the same forms of resistance that he saw when drugs were administered. That he grew gradually and slowly away from hydropathy is true, but our present thought is that, had he given more attention to Jennings he would have made a more rapid and a more complete escape from the fallacies of the Water Cure School.

Pg 322

It will be noted that the college opened by Dr. Nichols and Mary Gove, his wife, admitted both sexes to its courses. When Trall’s school was opened the following year, women were also admitted to its courses. At that time there was not a medical school in the world that admitted women to its courses and there was the strongest opposition in the medical profession to women becoming physicians. Here, again, the Hygienic school was far ahead of the other schools. Women found the strongest champions of “woman’s rights” among the Hygienists. Indeed, Hygienists, took a leading role in all of the reform movements of the time. They left a deeper mark on their age and, consequently, upon the present, than the average person is aware of. If ever a complete history of the nineteenth century is written, the part played by Hygienists in its progress will receive a prominent place.

Pg 329

The theories of the early Hygienists concerning the cause of disease were more or less chaotic. Gove regarded weakness as the cause; Jennings looked upon “deficiency of force” as disease; Trall and Graham declared disease to be due to impurities. These impurities were of two general kinds: (1) ingenerated poisons or effete matter, or what we call body waste, and (2) foreign matter (poisons) taken in with food and drink or as drugs, etc. They pointed out that the living body is a generator of poison; that the waste of the body is poisonous and that its formation is continuous. The retention of this waste consequent upon failure of elimination was regarded as one of the leading causes of disease. While, in a general way the office of lowered vitality or enervation in the production of disease was recognized by all of these men, the precise relationship of enervation and the accumulation of ingenerated poisons was not fully understood. Nichols came very close to expressing our present conception of this relationship, but he missed the mark by a hair’s breadth.

Pg 332

The writings of Graham and Trall had a wide circulation in England and certain of their works were translated into the German language and published in Germany. Trall lectured on his theories in England and aroused quite a storm of controversy. Nichols and Gove resided in England for many years and published, not only a magazine in that country, but several books and conducted an institution there for the care of the sick. At one time, Trall made an effort to get a college of Hygiene started in England. The repercussions of the Hygiene movement were felt around the world.

Pg 335

An extensive bibliography of Hygiene is given in the text of these volumes and it is not deemed necessary to reproduce it here. The most prolific Hygienic writers have been Graham, Alcott, Trall, Nichols, Walter, Tilden and, if I may be permitted to place my own name in this list, Shelton. Jennings, Page, Dodds, Oswald, Densmore, Carrington and Weger, have contributed valuable volumes to the literature of Hygiene. Of this list, Carrington and the present author are the only ones now living. Valuable contributions to Hygiene have been made by men and women who have never been associated with the Hygienic movement and have not been Hygienists. Among these are Dewey, Tanner, Hazzard and Moras of this country, Rabagliatti (England), Berg (Sweden), Lahmann (Germany), and Reinheimer (England). It must be added that Hygiene is confirmed by every genuine discovery in physiology and biology.

The Greatest Health Discovery
Graham, S., Trall. R., Shelton, H. (2009) The Greatest Health Discovery. Youngstown, OH. National Health Association. 

Pg 12

The development of the philosophy of Natural Hygiene was pioneered in the 19th century mostly by medical doctors, and includes such names as Sylvester Graham, Mary Gove, Isaac Jennings, Russell Thacker Trall, Robert Walter, Thomas Low Nichols, Susanna Way Dodds, James Caleb Jackson, Charles E. Page, and John Henry Tilden.

Pg 16

“THOMAS LOW NICHOLS, M.D.(1815-1901)

What is well for the well man is not always well for the sick. It is well for the well man to eat, drink, take 

exercise, labor, and partake of all enjoyments. But the best thing for the sick man may be to entirely stop eating and to rest mind and body. The effort to digest food, to take exercise, and to ‘keep up’ is a cause of exhaustion. Fasting, or absolute rest to the stomach, is one of the simplest means of cure, in both acute and dyspeptic diseases. No food, not one atom of any kind should ever be taken in any case of acute disease, until it is cured. Fast and drink water is all that is needed for the digestive apparatus. And in all chronic diseases, which are dependent upon or complicated with dyspepsia, the. whole digestive system needs rest, absolute, rest, more than anything else. Let such a patient eat nothing and drink water for three weeks and it will go farther to secure a cure than months in the most active treatment.”

Pg 56/57

Thomas Low Nichols, M.D.And Mary Gove

After hearing Graham lecture in Boston in 1832, Thomas Low Nichols, a young medical student at Dartmouth, gave up the study of medicine and became a newspaper man. After a period of travelling over the west and south as a newsman, he became editor of the New York Evening Herald. He was active in several movements, including women’s rights, and while in this work he met Mary Gove, who had been the first to answer the call for women to lecture to women on Grahamism. The two were married.

As women were not permitted in those days to enter medical college and there were no other schools of “healing” to attend, Nichols decided to complete his studies of medicine and get a license to practice so he could protect his wife in her work. He studied medicine at the University of New York under the famous Valentine Mott and graduated with high honors.

On September 15, 1851, Dr. Nichols and his wife opened The American Hydropathic Institute in New York City, a “medical school for the instruction of qualified persons of both sexes in all branches of a thorough medical education, including the principles and practices of Water Cure, in acute or chronic disease, surgery and obstetrics”. This was the first such school in America and the world’s first drugless college. Although called a hydropathic institute, its teachings were Hygienic.

Dr. Nichols edited and published The Nichols Journal and both he and Mary Gove wrote books. When the Civil War broke out, the two left New York and sailed to England because they were opposed to the war. There they opened an institution and carried on their work for many years. Dr. Nichols was engaged in publishing health knowledge until he retired in the 1890’s and then went to live in France where he died in 1901 at the age of 85. Mrs. Nichols had passed on several years prior to that time.

Pg. 63

In 1850, Thomas Low Nichols, M.D. wrote: “Sixteen years ago, while attending medical lectures at Dartmouth College, when Dr. Muzzy, the eminent surgeon, was a professor in that institution, my attention was directed to the influence of diet and regimen, and I adopted, as an experiment, what has been commonly, but very improperly, called the Graham system of diet; for if the system is to be named after any man, it might with much greater propriety be called the Pythagorean, or even the Adamic. A system practiced by the primeval races of mankind, by many of the sages of antiquity, by the wisest and purest men of every age, and by a majority of the human race in all ages, surely ought not to receive the name of a modern lecturer, who, whatever his claim to zeal and science, can have none to orginality.”

However, this attitude notwithstanding, young Nichols, after listening to the lectures of Graham, abandoned the study of medicine and became a newspaper reporter.

The force of Nichols’ argument is patent to all, but it should not be overlooked that it was largely due to the zeal and original thinking of Graham that this plan of eating was revived in America and even in Europe. What is even more to the point is the fact that the Graham System was, and is, wastly more than a system of diet and that he may justly have laid claim to much originality of thought. It is to his credit, also, that he based his dietary plan on physiology and comparative anatomy and not, as did Pythagoras, upon a belief in reincarnation.

Pg 71

Dr. Nichols said: “In chronic disease, the patient makes such steady progress, and gets so thorough an understanding in his case, as to soon get beyond the necessity of advice.” Better even than this, he said, is that when the patient gets well, he gets with his recovery the knowledge necessary to maintain his health forever after. Thus, he said, “a patient cured is a patient lost,” and if the patient is the head of a family, “don’t count on that family’s practice to meet your current expenses.”

To employ Alcott’s explanation, Hygiene seeks “to lead the patient into a course of life, by which he can gain physical capital.

Pg 72

Women In The Hygienic Movement

The practice of medicine was a male monopoly. Medical colleges would not admit female students. Practicing physicians rejected all applications from females who wished to serve an apprenticeship in medicine. Examining and licensing boards would not examine and license females. Not until a woman’s medical college was established were women admitted to the study of medicine. These facts were true of the allopathic, homeopathic, physio-medical and eclectic schools of medicine in the United States.

The newer school, represented by that established by Nichols and the one established by Trall, admitted female students to their first classes and did not hesitate to graduate women with the degree Doctor of Medicine. What is more, these women doctors were eagerly received by the people and they made an excellent name for themselves. You will not find them listed among the early medical practitioners and, although a number of them graduated with the degree Doctor of Medicine, before the first woman graduated from the first women’s medical college, no medical historian has yet included them among the first female doctors.

It will be remembered that when Graham began his lectures, So great was the public opposition to lectures by a man on subjects of anatomy and physiology, either to mixed audiences or to female audiences, that a call was issued for women lecturers to do this work. Among those who responded to the call was Mary Gove, who not only championed the work of Graham, but was in the forefront of the battle for women’s rights, for dress reform and other reforms of her time. In common with all those who opposed established institutions and proposed new and improved ones, she underwent persecution at the hands of the defenders of the old order.

In the April 1853 issue of Nichols Journal, Mary Gove says: “I acknowledge I have been mobbed on account of my dress. Fourteen years ago several persons determined to tar and feather me if I dared to lecture in a certain small city. I thought I was needed there and I went, with solemn conviction, and God gave me favor with the people. I outlived all this ignorance. Still it is true that prejudice was bitter and cruel in those days. . . . Years have greatly mended the manner of the mobs, but more than one scamp has felt the weight of my husband’s cane in this city.

Mary Gove further stated: “Women have so long acted, and almost existed by leave granted by the majority, that they have little idea of independent action. The public puts its mold upon us, and we come out as nearly alike as peas. Our wrists and feet just so small and delicate, our minds just so dull and stupid, our bodies bagged, and our whole lives belittled into feminine propriety. Mind, health, beauty and happiness are all sacrificed to the processes of mold; but, then, woman has the comfort of keeping in her sphere, till her brief and terrible misery is over and she dies out of it.

She continued: “My remedy for all this slavery of women is for her to begin to judge and act for herself. God made her for herself, as much as man was made for himself. She is not to be the victim of man, or false public opinion.”

Pg 75

The college opened by Dr. Nichols and his wife, Mary Gove, admitted both sexes to its courses. At that time, there was not a medical school in the world that admitted women as students and there was the strongest opposition in the medical profession to women becoming physicians.

Pg 76

It was not until the rise of osteopathy that any of the schools graduated its students with any degree other than that of Doctor of Medicine.

The schools founded by Nichols, that of Trall and Dodds, all conferred the degree of medicine upon their graduates. This was a very unfortunate mistake. Hygienists should have differentiated themselves from all of the schools of so-called healing (medicine) in every possible manner. They should have repudiated the term physician and the phrase Hygienic Medication.

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Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life

Shelton, H. (1968). Health for the Millions. Natural Hygiene: The Pristine Way of Life Youngstown, OH. National Health Association. 

Pg 30

As evidence of the influence exerted by the American movement upon European thought and practice, American Hygienic journals and books had a wide distribution in England. Trall, Nichols and Gove lectured in England, while Nichols and Gove published in England a magazine entitled, the Herald of Health. An abridged edition of Graham’s Science of Human Life was also published in that country. Theobald Grieben of Berlin published in the German language the following translations of books by American Hygienists: Tea and Coffee, by Alcott; Chastity, Science of Human Life and Fruits and Vegetables, by Graham; Science of Love, by Fowler; Diseases of the Sexual Organs, by Jackson; and Sexual Abuses, by Trall. A German translation of The Curse Removed by Nichols (a book on painless childbirth) was translated by a German physician and published in Germany. The physician played fast and loose with the translation and made Nichols recommend drugs in the German edition.

Pg 35

The movement initiated by Graham and Alcott and measurably contributed to by Mary Gove, and which was early joined by Dr. Jennings, represents the beginning of the Hygienic movement. The American Physiological Society numbered among its members in the various cities several medical men, but it would carry us too far afield to list the names of these and it is not known how many of them actually abandoned the drugging practice and confined themselves in the care of the sick to Hygiene. This was only the beginning and many subsequent men, especially Trall, Taylor, Nichols and Jackson, added their weight and thought and their experience to the evolution of the new but old way of life.

Pg 36/37

Writing in 1850, Thomas Low Nichols, M.D., said: “Sixteen years ago, while attending medical lectures at Dartmouth College, when Dr. Muzzy, the eminent surgeon, was a professor in that institution, my attention was directed to the influence of diet and regimen, and I adopted, as an experiment, what has been commonly, but very improperly, called the Graham system of diet; for if the system is to be named after any man, it might with much greater propriety be called the Pythagorean, or even the Adamic. A system practiced by the primeval races of mankind, by many of the sages of antiquity, by the wisest and purest men of every age, and by a majority of the human race in all ages, surely ought not to receive the name of a modern lecturer, who, whatever his claim to zeal and science, can have none to originality.

This does not tell the whole story. As a result of listening to the lectures of Graham, young Nichols abandoned the study of medicine and became a newspaper reporter. Several years were to pass before he resumed the study of medicine, this time in New York City, which he was never to practice. After graduation, he established himself in what was called a hydropathic practice; but it was in reality a combination of Hygiene and hydropathy. This practice he was to continue for the remainder of his life, until his retirement at an advanced age.

The force of Nichols’ argument is patent to all, but it should not be overlooked that it was largely due to the zeal and original thinking of Graham that this plan of eating was revived in America and even in Europe. What is even more to the point is the fact that the Graham System was and is vastly more than a system of diet and that he may justly have laid claim to much originality of thought. It is to his credit, also, that he based his dietary plan on physiology and comparative anatomy and not, as did Pythagoras, upon a belief in reincarnation. Graham did not believe that animals housed the souls of men and women who had died and that, for this reason, to kill an animal is murder.

Graham was not unaware of the water-cure movement and of the association of physiological reform with the movement, and was a regular reader of the Water-Cure Journal. In a letter published in a Northampton, Massachusettes, paper, where Graham lived, Graham endorsed the Journal as “one of the most valuable publications in our country.” This letter was reproduced in the Journal of March 1851. It is not to be accepted as an endorsement of hydropathy. At a previous date Dr. Jennings had endorsed the Journal, but Jennings was very outspoken in his opposition to hydropathy. The fact is that the Journal carried more information about Hygiene than it did about hydropathy.

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Disease is the result of any impairment of the normal functions. It hinders development, mars beauty, impairs vigor and destroys happiness. It is characterized by indolence, weakness, pain and misery, and brings a wretched life to a premature and painful end.

As every organ of the body is essential to wholeness and integrity of structure and vigor of function, no organ can be spared. Not merely must the nutritive and drainage systems be perfectly adapted to the requirements of the brain and body, but the smallest and apparently least important parts of the body must be fully and harmoniously developed. As Dr. Nichols so well expressed it: “The smallest instrument out of tune brings discord into the harmony of life.”

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“The Hygienic System is simply the intelligent and lawful application of all the life requirements brought to bear upon the living organism in due proportion and according to need. These means maintain the body in health, when properly used; they are adequate to the needs, and nothing else is, of the body in sickness. So simple are the conditions that wild nature lays down for human care that every man may look after himself once the people have been educated out of ages-old fallacies and have returned to the simple truths of nature that man knew in his prime. Every man and woman should understand the demands of nature and should be able to apply his or her knowledge to his or her own body and mind.

A tree that has its roots in soil adapted to its wants and has all other conditions indispensable to its growth and development will grow into a beautiful tree. So also with man. The first condition of his true and healthy development is found in the normal supply of all the conditions of a healthy life. “Who so would build individual or social life without health,” said Dr. Nichols, “is like the man who would raise trees without roots, build houses without foundations, or attempt any other stupid and useless enterprise.”

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Air is the source of oxygen. A constant supply of oxygen is essential to life. Deprived of air, man dies in a few minutes. Yet, at the time that Graham, Jennings, Alcott, Trall, Gove, Nichols, Taylor and their co-workers labored, they had to fight, not only the ignorance and superstitions of the people, but that of the medical profession as well to secure recognition of the need for fresh air. Through the furnace-heated, carpeted and curtained rooms, whose walls were lined with pictures and on whose floors were arranged fine furniture, there seldom stirred a breath of fresh air. People lived in unventilated homes, slept in unventilated bedrooms, while the sick were denied fresh air upon the order of their physician. Fear of night air, cold air, damp air and draughts was practically universal. Birds, beasts and savages might live in the open air, but civilized man required the staleness of unventilated households and workshops if he was to maintain health.

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There was considerable confusion among early Hygienists about how disease is caused. In his masterly work on Human Physiology, the Basis of Sanitary and Social Science, Dr. T. L. Nichols well defines the confusion and differences of views as to the cause of disease that existed among the Hygienists. He points out that there were those who regarded disease as the result of a diminution of the nervous power or vital force (Jennings and Gove), while another group held that the blood is life and the impurity in the blood is the cause of all disease action (Trall). Nichols himself, anticipating Tilden by several years, adds: “But good blood cannot be formed without sufficient vital or nervous power; and good blood is necessary to the healthy action of the brain and nervous system. Here is reciprocal action, each depending upon the other … Waste matter, retained in the human system is a materies morbis, and there are many kinds of blood poisoning.”

The results or effects of repeated violations of the laws of life are accumulative–the body’s functioning energy is wasted, the organs of excretion overtaxed, the blood becomes saturated with accumulated waste (our predecessors called them “ingenerated poisons”), nutrition or metabolism is impaired–and a condition of the body is reached which necessitates the development of remedial action (a crisis) to throw off the accumulated toxic material. Violations of the laws of being are the last or ultimate analysis of all the causes and are, therefore, fundamental.

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Thomas Low Nichols, M.D., said that the Hygienic practitioner is in a different position from the practitioners of medicine–“If he has a case of fever, he would be ashamed to take more than a week in curing it.” Kittredge said that as a common thing, he scarcely had to visit a child suffering with the common diseases of childhood more than two or three times before the patient was sufficiently recovered that the family could take charge and complete the work. He said that medical men know “very well that even a very large practice would soon run out if they should stop drugging it,” and that “they have only to give one dose of medicine (drug) to ensure at least the necessity for a dozen more.

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When we consider the facts that fasting, especially in acute disease, was stressed by Graham, Jennings, Trall, Jackson, Kittredge, Taylor, Nichols and other leading Hygienists of the time, and the further fact that in their writings and public lectures the graduates of the Hygeo-Therapeutic College stressed the importance of fasting in acute disease, it becomes obvious that the subject was taught in the college. But warnings were issued against using fasting to the exclusion of other essential Hygienic means. Fasting, they said, may be said to be in the strictest sense only an adjuvant, and properly employed is a most useful auxiliary, and in almost all cases is much to be desired; but it is possible to lay altogether too much stress upon it to the neglect of the more important elements of Hygiene.

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Nichols said that: “In chronic disease, the patient makes such steady progress, and gets so thorough an understanding of his case, as to soon get beyond the necessity of advice.” Better even than this, he said, is that when the patient gets well, he gets with his recovery the knowledge necessary to maintain his health for ever after. Thus, he said, “a patient cured is a patient lost,” and if the patient is the head of a family, “don’t count on that family’s practice to meet your current expenses.” So-called local treatment is a mere treatment of symptoms. Hygiene is constitutional in its influence, rather than local. To employ Alcott’s explanation, Hygiene seeks “to lead the patient into a course of life, by which he can gain physical capital.

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Medicine is a system of treating disease, largely a system of spectacular palliation; Hygiene is a way of life. The results of the two systems are as different as are their theories and practices. Writing in 1853, Dr. Thomas Low Nichols said that if a Hygienic practitioner “had a case of fever, he would be ashamed to be more than a week in curing it. In a chronic disease, the patient makes such steady progress and gets so thorough an understanding of his case as to get beyond the necessity of advice.” This is not all, as he pointed out. The best part of the matter is that when a man gets well under Hygiene, he gets with his recovery the knowledge necessary to maintain his health forever after. “A patient cured, is a patient lost; and if that patient is the head of a family, don’t count on that family practice to meet your current expenses.

He further said: “In common medical practice, when a physician gets a few families to take him as their regular physician, his fortune is made. He deals out his medicines and the diseases come as seed-time and harvest. The more business he has, the more he may have. The more he tinkers, the more the constitutions of his patients want mending, until the doctor and his drugs become the necessities of life.”Hygienic practitioners find all this changed and the more thorough and conservative they are with their patients, the less they will have to do with them. We must rely upon continually making new converts. We must use every means to spread a knowledge of Hygiene or our very successes will destroy us. But true men can never fear the progress of intelligence, nor regret the happiness of mankind and when the medical core is finally disbanded, it will be because we have triumphed over suffering and there is no enemy to conquer.

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College

CHAPTER LI

At the first convention of the American Hygienic and Hydropathic Association, held in 1850, the majority of the members present thought it wise that all future members of the society should have received the degree, M.D., or a legal license before being admitted to membership. There were those who held that conformity to medical usages would give the society the stamp of respectability, and others who held that they should not stand upon the musty precedent of the past, or practice the exclusiveness of the other schools by adopting a rule which would exclude from the society the founders of Hygiene and hydropathy and many of their more eminent disciples, much less that a body of Hygienists and hydropathists should make a diploma from an allopathic school, or a license from an allopathic board of examiners, the test of membership.

On the one side, the speakers contended that the old conservative ground was the highest, or at all events, more expedient. On the other hand, those dissenting held that the more liberal course of the society, being its own judge of the qualifications of its members, was the more noble, self-reliant and respectable. Dr. Thomas Low Nichols, who was secretary of the association, makes the following comment on this in his report of the transactions: “In performing my duty as Secretary of the convention and of the Society, in reporting the above proceedings, I take the opportunity of personally entering my earnest protest against the principle embodied in the second section. I view it as falling behind the spirit of the age, truckling to the low forms of the schools of medicine we are exterminating and utterly opposed to the liberal and enlightened public sentiment upon which all the success of our system of practice depends.

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Eclecticism is a hodge-podge. We take the position, so well stated by Dr. Nichols, that “the only eclecticism an honest man can practice is to choose the good and reject the bad.” It is too easy to take the “easy way.” The fact that a man took the “easy way” at the outset of his career is a sure guarantee that he will continue to take the “easy way.” When he discovers that the “easy way” is to drug and dose his victims and to cut and slash them in the time-honored way, and that it will be difficult for him to care for his patients Hygienically, he will abandon Hygiene and stick with the “respectable” elements of society. He may even become a worse foe of Hygiene than the medical man who never made any pretense of being a Hygienist. In the same way, the pseudo-Hygienist who tries to enter Hygiene through a knot hole in the back door will have to prove his loyalty to the “respectable” profession of medicine by the strenuousness of his opposition to all medical heresy.

Of the many schools of so-called healing now in existence, it must be recognized that they have their origin outside the camps of Hygiene and that each was captained and crewed by opportunists and reformers who sought, so they declared, to save the new and vitally important truths from wreck and ruin by the radicals. We must offer increasing resistance to the reformist and Hygienic-faker elements that seek to get into the movement and who attempt to sway it in non-Hygienic ways.

Trall noted that all the schools of healing were willing to compromise with Hygiene. They were willing to accept some Hygiene if the Hygienists would accept some of their theories and practices. They were as ready and willing to make compromises as are politicians, but the real Hygienists took the position well expressed by Dr. Nichols, when he said: “Truth is always the loser, and fallacy always the gainer by compromises.

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New fangled notions were few and just emerging, but they attained great popularity in a short time. Many Hygienists became converts to spiritualism. Among those who adopted spiritualism, magnetism and hypnotism were Mary Gove and Dr. Thomas Low Nichols. The most difficult obstacle Hygiene had to hurtle then, as now, is its simple naturalness. Few people are content with nature or with simplicity. They prefer the mysterious, the incomprehensible, the complex and the artificial.

Religion still had a strong hold upon the imagination of the people and we should not be surprised to learn that many Hygienists, including Dr. Jackson, who was a minister, Dr. Nichols and Mary Gove, believed also in divine healing. These, with others, resorted to prayer in their care of the sick. The correct Hygienic attitude in this matter is that all things are rightly related to all things else and it is sheer folly to think that good can come from violating these relations or that God will, upon appeal from us, violate the eternal relations of nature. The intelligent man would expect an intelligent God to permit the lawful processess of nature to pursue uninterruptedly their lawful courses.