A CURE FOR ALL ILLS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 21987, 23 June 1933, Page 15

A CURE FOR ALL ILLS

A famous Swiss doctor, who .has a wonderful clinic at Zurich, where worldrenowned cures are effected, came to England recently and lectured on diet, says Hertha Chesshire in an exchange. You will be interested in what he had to say because during 35 years of intensive research and practical experiment Dr Bircher-Benner has learnt and proved that family diet is at the root of all disease. He has also discovered that almost all diseases will respond to correct diet. Instead of working in terms of vitamins, calories, “ balance,” or any of the more recognised methods of planning a diet, Dr Bircher-Benner bases his dietary prescriptions on the amount of light stored up in food. Just as we have recently learnt to value the sun’s rays externally, so this brilliant Swiss specialist recommends us to take sunshine foods internally, believing that the nutriment of foods is gained according to their value as light accumulators. Classified in this way, seekers after health, particularly the sick, should take the bulk of their nourishment from fresh plant organs and the products —e.g., nuts, oil, honey, milk from properly nourished mammals, and possibly fresh eggs from rightly-fed hens. Class two contains wholemeal cereals and bread. Conservatively cooked vegetable food, cooked milk, dairy produce, and cooked eggs. Class three contains all kinds of meat dishes, canned food, preserves, white flour products, refined sugar, etc. The cures which have been effected by putting sick persons on a properly constituted and scientifically arranged diet, culled solely from the first group, have been the talk of Europe to such an extent that a tiny shilling book, in which some of the prescribed recipes appear, has been translated into numerous European languages and adopted semi-ofiicially by the Governments of various lauds. ' You may complain that raw foods always give you flatulence. But, then, have you had them prepared in the Bir-cher-Benner way? In his little book the doctor describes the various methods of cleansing, scraping, pounding, grating, or pressing, which he advocates to get his sunlight food into a fit state for an unaccustomed alimentary jcanal. One side of Dr Bircher-Beuner’s teaching I would like to stress is his clear way of showing what a long incubation of ill-health precedes any breakdown. Seeds are sown which grow strong. In the end some sensitive part of the body becomes inflamed, or disturbed, and we call it such or such an illness. Slides were shown in the lecture of what our little blood vessels look like when in good health and what they look like when the health has broken down. It was demonstrated very cl.early that the body is a unit, for the capillaries of every part were distorted through the pain, discharge, or whatever the manifestation might be, though the disorder appeared to be quite a local one. It may help those whose little ones are sufferers, from gastric trouble, or colitis, to hear of one- little girl, given up as hopeless by hospitals, and sent to Zurich with the warning that anything raw would be as fatal as poison to the irritated digestive tract. This child, with her swollen, distended stomach, her weak little legs, and her doleful countenance, was put then and there on to a diet composed exclusively of raw food, with a result that we were allowed to see her, not long after, a girl of .whom any mother could be proud!_ If this brief account inspires some of you to include salads and fruit more liberally with your meals, it will not have been written in vain. A meal only of fruit or salad once in the day, with a little milk to drink, would rid many a child of enlarged tonsils, flatulence, acidity, bed-wetting, and so on. Just try it and see for yourself!