Timeline

1841: Robert Walter was born on February 14, 1841, in Acton, Canada. As a young man, he had a poor constitution and was continually ill.

1856: At fourteen, he left his home to clerk in a grocery store, where he remained for one year. He then returned to Acton and was employed as a bookkeeper in a tannery for two years. 

1864: Illness overtook him through heart disease, and he was diagnosed “hopeless” by his physicians. He was not expected to live. However, he moved to Dansville, N. Y., where he regained his health. He learned what could be done to get the maximum return to one’s health with the minimum expenditure of energy. 

1872: He married Eunice C. Lippincott in 1872, who graduated as a physician from the Hygeio-Therapeutic College of New York. They had five children (Maud, Robert L., Mabel, Stella, and Ernest). Maud, who graduated from the Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia, and Robert L., who graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College, became medical practitioners and worked alongside their parents.

1873: Robert graduated from the Hygeio-Therapeutic College of New York (founded and administered by Russell Thacker Trall). He went on to work as a homeopath and hydrotherapist over the next forty years.

1874: He moved to Wernersville, Pa ., where he became the proprietor of the Mountain Home.

1876: The Walter Sanitarium was established in Walter’s Park, Pennsylvania. 

1888: Robert graduated from the Hahnemann Medical College of Philadelphia in 1888. Developed by the German physician Samuel Hahnemann, homeopathy came to the United States in about 1835. Instead of bleeding, blistering, and purging, it prescribed a regimen of exercise, diet, and fresh air and offered its own experimental pharmacology derived from Hahnemann’s own rudimentary scientific experimentation. Based on Hahnemann’s two laws of homeopathy, “let likes be cured by likes,” and the smaller the dose, the more effective it is in stimulating a cure, homeopathic medicine claimed a theoretical legitimacy that orthodox medicine still lacked. 

1899: Dr. Walter wrote the book Vital Science Based Upon Life’s Great Law: The Analogue of Gravitation. He shares that there are three great forces in nature: vitality, chemical affinity, and gravitation, co-existent and analogous. The underlying thought of this work is that the living world is a fundamental part of natural existence and is, therefore, subject to a fundamental law. It is analogous to chemical affinity and gravity and applies to the science of human health. This makes the knowledge of vital processes in health and disease as specific as the knowledge of chemical and astronomical processes. He applies this to Life’s Great Law, the analog of attraction of gravitation. 333 pages.

1903: Dr. Walter authored the natural hygiene book The Exact Science of Health in 1903. The book espoused fasting, homeopathic medicine, and vitalism. Walter opposed conventional medicine and believed disease could be cured by avoiding food and flushing the bowel several times daily. He was an early advocate of colon cleansing. 

1921: Dr. Walter died on October 26th in Reading, Pennsylvania.