Category Archives: Historical Archives

Historical Archives

Health of the American People

By Congressman David S. King

Summary: In this powerful 1959 speech before the U.S. House of Representatives, Utah Congressman David King warns our government that “the progressive deterioration of the condition of our health has been confirmed,” blaming the negative trend on the country’s chemically-laden and overly processed food supply. “There are many approaches to the prevention and treatment of…complex diseases,” King says, “but there appears to be one common denominator as the basic cause of degenerative diseases. That one factor is malnutrition.” Representative King calls for the creation of a congressional commission to officially investigate the adulteration of America’s foods as well as the fluoridation of public water supplies. Unfortunately—and predictably—the congressman’s calls went ignored. From the Congressional Record of the 86th U.S. Congress, 1959. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 111.

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Historical Archives

Health Food Store Advertisement for Lee Foundation Books

Author unknown

Summary: A snippet of nutrition history that bespeaks the leadership of Dr. Royal Lee in the natural-food movement. In this 1953 newspaper ad, Vic’s Health Food & Book Store in Alberta, Canada, advertises in the local paper that it carries “Books, magazines, and pamphlets by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research and other well known authorities on health foods.” From the Lethbridge Herald, 1953.

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Historical Archives

He Enriches Soil for Crops That Go into Vitamin Pills

By John T. Alexander

Summary: A bittersweet newspaper account of a man who remineralizes soil using special organic composts, developed with the help of nutritional and agricultural scientists, to grow crops for concentration into whole-food supplements. On the one hand, the story is exciting and inspirational, revealing the difference that well-mineralized, well-bacterialized soil makes in the nutritional quality of foods grown in it. On the other hand, this is a sad reminder of the path industrial agriculture in this country did not take, opting instead for producing nutrient-deficient plants from sapped soil propped up with artificial fertilizers. Includes the famous quote by Dr. C.W. Cavanaugh of Cornell University: “The fact is there is only one major disease—and that is malnutrition.” From The Kansas City Star, 1952. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 55.

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Historical Archives

Have We Forgotten the Lesson of Scurvy?

By W.J. McCormick, MD

Summary: A Canadian medical doctor recounts the history of scurvy and its prevention, including a fascinating report by British medical officer James Lind, who describes his famous experiment of 1747 in which he cured sailors of the disease by feeding them fresh oranges and lemons. While full-blown scurvy had been virtually eliminated in twentieth-century America thanks to the widespread availability of citrus fruits, Dr. McCormick makes the case that subclinical vitamin C deficiency was a causative factor in many modern disorders, including rheumatoid arthritis, heart attack, cancer, pneumonia, and even stretch marks in birthing mothers. Failure to recognize the tissue dysfunction in these disorders to be the result of vitamin C deficiency has led medicine to devise countless unsuccessful approaches to what appear to be largely matters of starvation. From Journal of Applied Nutrition, 1962. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 5H.

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Historical Archives

Guideposts to Mental Health

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Lee addresses some possible nutritional causes of mental distress. People who eat too many acidifying foods, such as whole grains, may become overly acidic, marked by symptoms of irritability, introversion, and the feeling of not getting enough air. People who eat too many alkalizing foods, such as green vegetables, on the other hand, may feel aches in their joints or a nervous stomach. Dr. Lee also quotes Dr. Benjamin Sandler‘s description of people who suffer from drastic swings in blood sugar: “Dizziness, faintness, nervousness, tremors, sweating, pallor, flushing, palpitation, tachycardia (rapid heart), abdominal pain, and psychoneurotic manifestations may occur,” Sandler says. To combat such sugar swings, Lee recommends—in words that speak to any nutrition practitioner today—to “avoid refined sugars as found in doughnuts, pies, cakes, ice cream, candy and other forms of sweets.” From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.

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Historical Archives

Guanidine, Cider Vinegar, and Health

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Dr. Royal Lee lauds Vermont physician Dr. D.C. Jarvis, author of the classic book on holistic health Folk Medicine. In particular, Lee praises Jarvis’s recommendation of apple cider vinegar as a natural remedy for a host of disorders, from guanidine toxicity as a result of the overconsumption of meat to a dysbiotic gut to constipation to low thyroid to overweight. (Two teaspoons of cider vinegar in a glass of water at each meal dependably effected gradual weight loss, Dr. Jarvis observed.) Dr. Lee discussing Dr. Jarvis is a must for any fan of nutrition, history, or both. From Let’s Live magazine, 1958.

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Historical Archives

Germs: Cause of Disease?

By William Miller

Summary: In this 1955 article from Health Culture magazine, Miller revives the Pasteur–Bechamp debate, or, as he calls it, “one of the greatest though little known controversies in the history of science.” In the late 1800s, Louis Pasteur proposed that specific “bad” microbes, or germs, cause infectious disease. His colleague biochemist Pierre Bechamp thought “infection” had more to do with the environment within the host organism than with specific microorganisms. Miller says that Bechamp might have been right after all, citing observations made using Royal Rife’s famous Universal Microscope, which appeared to show species of microbes  morphing into other species depending on the chemical nature of their environment. (For more on Rife and his work, see “The Rife Microscope, or ‘Facts and Their Fate’.”) From Health Culture, 1955. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 77.

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Historical Archives

Fundamentals of Nutrition for Physicians and Dentists

By N. Philip Norman, MD

Summary: Weston Price. Harold Hawkins. Percy Howe. Melvin Page. Royal Lee. What do these giants of early nutrition science have in common? They were all dentists—firsthand witnesses to the explosion of modernity’s most common disease, tooth decay. In their search for the cause of the epidemic confounding their profession, these practitioners discovered a startling fact: those patients with the worst oral health tended to have the worst overall health as well. Digging deeper, each researcher discovered that the reason for both tooth decay and the other degenerative diseases afflicting their patients was the same—malnutrition, brought on by a diet of industrially processed and adulterated foods. In this rousing 1947 article, New York City Hospital physician and nutritionist N. Philip Norman lauds the maverick dentists for their groundbreaking work while lambasting both mainstream dentistry and medicine for virtually ignoring the connection between diet and disease and allowing deranged foods to destroy the health of America. “The medical and dental professions failed to oppose the wholesale adulteration of our food supply, thereby allowing the insidious extension into our food culture of processed foods whose nutritional value was never questioned until after the damage was done.” From the American Journal of Orthodontics and Oral Surgery, 1947. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 33. 

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Historical Archives

For Heart Disease: Vitamin E

By J.D. Ratcliff

Summary: In this rare excerpt from the October 1948 issue of Coronet magazine, author J.D. Ratcliff discusses the function of  vitamin E (known originally as “the fertility vitamin” because of its critical role in animal reproduction) in the area of heart health. In particular, Ratcliff discusses the clinical work of the famous Shute brothers of Canada, medical doctors and researchers who gained international notoriety by successfully treating heart disease with vitamin E instead of pharmaceutical drugs. Ratcliff also addresses the wholesale destruction of naturally occurring vitamins in the modern diet. From Coronet, 1948. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 40.

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Historical Archives

Fluoridation of Water Supplies

By A.J. Cahill

Summary: An Australian physician writes to a medical journal warning of the dangers of fluoridating water supplies, giving examples from his own practice and from other doctors’ practices of “the evil effects on human health” as a result of sodium fluoride being added to public water. He ends by offering advice about dental health that is just as astute today as it was then. “Sound nutrition is the only sure and safe way to provide our children with sound teeth and sound health for the rest of their lives. All mothers must now learn to feed their families on a well-balanced, vitamin-rich diet in order to achieve the best results. They must stop buying devitalized white bread and over-refined white sugar—those two curses of our modern civilization—and replace them with nourishing whole-meal bread and delicious health-giving honey.” From the Medical Journal of Australia, 1962. Reprinted by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. 

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Historical Archives

The Fight over Vitamin E

By Eric Hutton

Summary: The story of the famous Shute brothers, Canadian medical doctors who gained international renown for treating heart disease with vitamin E. In spite of countless patients testifying to the success of the therapy, the medical professions in the United States and Canada tried every measure to silence and discredit the Shutes, much of it playing out in the popular press. The author of the article explains how the Shutes believed vitamin E helps alleve heart disorders: “The Shutes’ theory about vitamin E is this: It is not specifically a heart medication; that is, vitamin E has no affinity for the heart as insulin has for the pancreas or iodine for the thyroid gland. The chief effect of vitamin E is to reduce the amount of oxygen which the cells and tissues of the body and its organs require for efficient, healthy functioning. Heart diseases happens to be the most dramatic example of the result of oxygen deprivation, and vitamin E’s effect, simply stated, is to condition the tissues involved so that they are able to function normally, or at any rate to survive, on the greatly reduced amount of oxygen available to them when a coronary clot cuts down the oxygen-bearing blood supply reaching them.” Includes a commentary on the Shutes’ theory by the Canadian Medical Association. From Maclean’s Magazine, 1953. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research special reprint 4-54.

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Historical Archives

Fats in the Diet

By Wendell H. Griffith, PhD

Summary: A report from 1957 on the health effects of different dietary fats by Dr. Wendell Griffith, the chairman of the Department of Physiological Chemistry at the University of California Medical Center. Griffith describes the differences between natural fats and those created by hydrogenating vegetable and seed oils, explaining disturbingly that because of the many foreign chemicals created during hydrogenation, “it is virtually impossible to describe chemically some of the commercial hydrogenated plant oils.” The fact that the trans fats created during hydrogenation have since been strongly linked to heart disease would hardly have surprised Dr. Griffith. From the Journal of the American Medical Association, 1957. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 93.

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Historical Archives

Facts About Sauerkraut and How to Make It

By Dr. Royal Lee

Summary: Once an important “probiotic” condiment, raw sauerkraut—a lacto-fermented food—vanished with the high-heat methods of modern food processing. Unfortunately, cooked cabbage of any kind is of little nutritional value, Dr. Lee says, and it is intolerable to people with senstive gastrointestinal tracts. Lee not only explains the value of this nutritious, raw food but provides a fantastically simple method for preparing it. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 38C, 1955. Original source unknown. 

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Historical Archives

Excerpts from “The Science of Eating”

By Alfred McCann, MD

Summary: In these selections from Dr. Alfred McCann’s seminal 1918 book The Science of Eating, the author first outlines an animal-feeding experiment for schoolchildren to conduct in order to observe firsthand the effects of nutrient-deficient foods on the health and resistance to disease of animals (and, by implication, of humans). Then, in the section titled “Famine Due to Artificial Sugar,” McCann, who saw clearly that modern methods of food production were leading to the destruction of the nation’s health, precociously asserts that many of what were formerly thought of as infectious diseases were actually the result of vitamin deficiency. In presenting a nutrition-based hypothesis explaining the cause of infantile paralysis (polio), he also offers some keen insight into the origins of the disease. “These briefly stated scientific facts lead me to believe,” he concludes, “that close scrutiny of the food of the children afflicted may lead to the discovery of a dietetic cause of infantile paralysis.” From The Science of Eating, 1918. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 108A. 

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Historical Archives

Excerpts from “Nutrition in Everyday Practice”

By E.C. Robertson and F.F. Tisdall and by Dr. E.V. McCollum

Summary: Excerpts from two chapters of a 1939 compilation by the Canadian Medical Association, which admits that “the practical application of facts concerning nutrition has not kept pace with our increasing knowledge” and warns Canadian physicians that they “must increase their interest in this problem of normal nutrition, otherwise the public will seek information on this subject elsewhere.” (Advice that was, tragically, almost wholly ignored.) In the chapter “Nutrition and Resistance to Disease,” Roberston and Tisdall explain that while clinical evidence regarding nutrient deficiencies in humans can be difficult to obtain because of experimental limitations, this is not the case for animal studies, which show quite clearly the effects of even “comparatively slight” shortages in vitamins. The authors present studies showing drastic differences in resistance to disease in animals fed a diet sufficient in nutrients and those fed diets deficient in, respectively, vitamins A, B, and D; minerals; and animal protein. “These studies furnish clear-cut evidence that improper nutrition lowers the resistance of the animal to infection,” the authors state, “and also that the nutritional deficiency does not have to be so severe as to produce outstanding evidence of disease.” In the second chapter, “Better Nutrition as a Health Measure,” Dr. McCollum discusses the specific roles of vitamins A, C, and D in the body and in dental health in particular. From Nutrition in Everyday Practice, 1939. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 115.

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Historical Archives

The Drama of Fluorine: Archenemy of Mankind

By Leo Spria, MD

Summary: The complete book, published in its entirety by the Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research. The title says it all. The fluoridation of public water supplies was a heated debate in the early 1950s in America, and Dr. Spria weighed in with this extremely well researched book, which, he explains in the preface, is mainly “a condensed summary of 34 papers which I published in various medical journals in this country, in Great Britain, and on the continent of Europe.” Today’s reader will learn much about the lies, scientific fraud, and official cover-ups in the long and sordid history of the fluoridation of public water supplies. An excellent bibliography adds to value of this historically important book. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research, 1953.

View PDF: The Drama of Fluorine: Archenemy of Mankind

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Historical Archives

The Effects of Vitamin Deficient Diets on Rats, with Special Reference to the Motor Functions of the Intestinal Tract In Vivo and In Vitro

By Louis Gross

Summary: Historically significant British study from 1924 on the pathological lesions appearing in the nervous system and digestive tract of rats fed vitamin deficient diets. This article demonstrates the seriousness and excellence of early vitamin research. From The Journal of Pathology and Bacteriology, 1924. Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research reprint 24.

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Historical Archives

Dr. Wiley’s Question Box: Starches and Sugar Are the Principal Sources of Body Fat

By Harvey W. Wiley, MD

Summary: In 1912 Dr. Harvey Wiley left his post as head of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Bureau of Chemistry (the forerunner of the federal Food and Drug Administration) because of the collusion he witnessed between food manufacturers and agents within the federal government. Unable to effectively enforce the country’s first food purity law (passed in 1906), he left the government and joined the private Good Housekeeping Institute in Washington, D.C. There Dr. Wiley helped develop the famous Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval while also writing for the institute’s magazine. In “Dr. Wiley’s Question Box,” he would answer specific questions from readers about food safety and nutrition. In the excerpt here, Dr. Wiley explains a fact that metabologists have known for nearly a century but which conventional nutritionists and doctors have failed to comprehend from then until now: the principal source of fat stored in the body is not dietary fat but sugars and starches (i.e., carbohydrates). While nutrition schools today continue to teach the erroneous notion that glucose from carbohydrates is “the preferred fuel of the body,” Dr. Wiley points out what people who study metabolism for a living all know: up to 80 percent of the carbohydrates a person eats are converted to fat by the liver and stored in the body’s fat tissue. Fat tissue, in turn, releases fatty acids, which form the majority of fuel calories used by the body’s cells. Dr. Wiley also addresses other queries from readers, including the age-old question of whether overeating “acid-producing” foods is harmful and whether eating sand is good for the digestive system. From Good Housekeeping, 1926.

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