Nutrition and the Doctor; Your Health Manifesto
Contents in this issue:
- “Nutrition and the Doctor,”
- “Your Health Manifesto,” by Maurice Shefferman.
The following is a transcription of the May 1964 issue of Dr. Royal Lee’s Applied Trophology newsletter, originally published by Standard Process Laboratories.
Nutrition and the Doctor
By doctor we mean anyone who has a license to treat the ill. It should, for our purpose here, include the registered nurse, the licensed faith healer, or any other person who has any responsibility in restoring health to the ill patient.
We believe the following are self-evident principles and definitions:
- Health requires, among other possible factors, complete and balanced nutrition and cannot exist without it.
- The doctor, regardless of the type of healing philosophy he may have been trained in, cannot avoid morally the responsibility of watching for symptoms of nutritional unbalance or for symptoms of excess and deficiency of nutritional factors. (It may be interposed here that, mainly by reason of its lateness in appearing, nutritional science has not received the place it deserves among the various healing cults, of which the drug cult is possibly more culpable in its errors than others—defining drugs here as poisons, as per von Haller substances other than food, used to affect symptoms of disease without regard to the etiology of the symptoms.)
- The patient’s symptoms must be checked against a list of symptoms of known deficiencies and excesses. When a pattern of malnutrition appears possible, the correction of the nutritional pattern should be a matter of immediate and primary importance to diagnostically rule out the possibility that the patient’s condition is not being aggravated by such possible factors. This in addition to any other treatment known by the doctor to provide relief with all possible speed. Every doctor has measures at hand to provide some relief. But, to ignore the possibility of nutritional unbalance completely is not the reasonable attitude. We must realize, for example, the leading cause of death in this country is cardiovascular disease, which, according to Dr. Snapper in his book Chinese Lessons to Western Medicine (1942), has been practically unknown in China. Dr. Snapper felt this was by reason of the unsaturated fatty acids in the bean curd used so universally in China. This conclusion is now being found very well applicable to us, our rapidly increasing rate of death from heart disease closely paralleling the increased use of saturated (synthetic, hydrogenated) fat over the last fifty years.
- No nutritional factor or concentrate, whether natural, refined, crystalline, or synthetic, should be accepted as useful or effective until its consistent effect has been determined to the personal satisfaction of the doctor in his own experience. (No doctor worth his salt ever accepted any drug as useful in his practice until he has made these same personally conducted tests—and there is far more justification for testing one maker’s foods against another than potentially dangerous drugs. It is only by personal experience that the doctor builds up his skills in treating ill health or disease. A young doctor follows the book. Later he follows his experience. In evaluating the effect of any method of professional treatment, it is important that the response of the patient be a matter of instrumental determination, rather than one of accepting the word of the individual.
Where a high blood cholesterol is found, periodic checks will show what is happening.
If the reactions of the heart indicate possible malnutrition, the electrocardiograph, the phonocardiograph, or the sphygmograph provide incontestable evidence of a restoration to normal. So does the blood pressure and the pulse rate.
If nerve fibers are degenerating from certain deficiencies, an audiometer can confirm a restoration of nerve conductivity by an improvement in the sense of hearing from the use of the known factors involved.
Certainly, often the patient’s condition improves without treatment, and the doctor must use his judgment as to whether the hypothetical malnutrition really existed or not. That is of course always a matter of judgment, since it is not possible to legally run controlled tests on human subjects. The doctor is bound by his code of ethics to do his very best for every patient in his care (not every other one) to build up a statistically persuasive argument in a shorter time.
Therefore, the practice of the healing arts requires a very astute mind, and one that is not easily misled by false philosophies and plausible theories that fail when put to the acid test of experience.
It requires a mind that can keep its perspective despite the tremendous efforts to brainwash it by the powers of publicity, the advertising professionals who educate the layman to believe what they are desired to believe. Dr. Hadwen in his book The Difficulties of Dr. Daguerre in England, during World War I (1918), said this in his preface:
“No medical man during his student days is taught to think. He is expected to assimilate the thoughts of others and to bow to authority. Throughout the whole of his medical career, he must accept the current medical fashions of the day or suffer the loss of prestige and place. No public appointments, no coveted preferments are open to the medical man who declines to parrot the popular shibboleths of his profession. His qualifications may be beyond reproach; he may in himself possess qualities that command respect, but unless prepared to think and act within the narrow circle of accepted dogmas, he must be prepared for a more or less isolated path.
“The public press of today is largely governed by the orthodox rulers in the medical profession. The ubiquitous ‘medical correspondent,’ who draws his inspiration from the pages of current fashionable medical literature, is expected to supply only such copy as will gratify the tastes of the mysterious power that stands supreme behind the editorial chair. The views of the unorthodox are with rare exceptions refused. So rigid is the control which medical orthodoxy seeks to exercise over the public mind that not a work upon health matters, however important and interesting, is even allowed to be broadcast by wireless unless it is approved and sanctioned by the bureaucrats of the health ministry.
“Every now and then some new medical ‘discovery’ is proclaimed with clamorous voice. The public eye is arrested by commanding headlines in the leading organs of the public press. The simultaneousness of their appearance and the similarity of the announcements leave no doubt as to how the whole scheme has been engineered. It may be a new cancer germ discovery; a new serum, vaccine or chemical inoculation; a new theory concerning some old-fashioned disease or an old-fashioned disease dressed up in a new garb; a new outcry against flies, fleas, lice, cockroaches, dogs, cats, parrots, rats, or goats; but, upon reflection, it will always be found that these notorious ‘discoveries’ are entirely devoid of originality.
“It is safe to say that, among all these naming pronouncements, no real discovery has been made during the last half century, at least no original medical idea has been promulgated; no permanent contribution to medical science has been furnished; no advancement in medicine achieved. The public press has been utilized for the propagation of little else than medical sensationalism, proved to be such in time, by clinical and statistical experience. While it is not to be denied that these sensational reports make interesting journalism, the time cannot be far distant when all who have not very short memories will read them with skepticism.”
This was written in 1918. There is little actual change up to today. The sulfa drugs, so highly publicized, have been found toxic and are now known to be effective simply by their effect of mobilization of vitamin C into the blood from the tissue reserves. Few victims of sulfa poisoning escape serious kidney damage. The use of the real agent, vitamin C complex, is still too simple and natural a proposition to accept. Even penicillin is now suspected because it sensitizes the patient and a new shot may be causative of anaphylactic shock. Too, the germs may soon become immune to it.
Streptomycin no sooner was announced with great fanfare as a new answer to the problem than it was found to destroy the innervation to the semilunar balancing mechanism of the inner ear, rendering the victim as badly symptomatic of syphilis in the tertiary stage as any victim of this disease was ever able to demonstrate. Cortisone, the newest wonder drug, intended to supply synthetically an adrenal hormone to substitute for the loss of function of the patient’s own glands that may have been starved out of commission by poor nutrition or devitalized foods, has already reported to have caused kidney stones, mental derangements, and diabetes if used for any length of time.
Medical “science,” censored as it is, keeps these facts pretty well hidden from the public eye. A continual array of new and phony remedies is paraded before the public, each announced with all the new releases so characteristic. After the public has bought and poisoned itself with millions of dollars’ worth, it is found wanting, and soon is relegated to the limbo of forgotten things. Viosterol, one great phony promotion, poisoned uncounted numbers of children (See J.A.M.A., “Vitamin D Intoxication with Metastatic Calcification,” Bauer & Freyburg, 130:1208, April 27, 1946) before it blew up in a cloud of litigation dust.
Are we probably here witnessing the crumbling of our civilization by reason of the compromise with principle that is being made by the guilty parties in government and business who have so thoroughly sold the public health down the river? “Just a little poison in the flour…Nitrates in meat never hurt anybody…Aluminum toxic? Are you crazy?”
This is one simple concrete example of how it works. We could cite innumerable others.
The foolish and the dead alone never change their opinions.
—Lowell
Your Health Manifesto
Maurice Shefferman
I resolve to fulfill my first responsibility to myself—to do everything in my power to keep as well as possible. I will therefore follow the everyday commonsense rules of healthful, balanced living.
I resolve to keep informed on what is best for me and my family; to avail myself of all the information I can get on the subject of nutrition. For I realize that proper nutrition is the determining factor in maintaining health.
I resolve to eat for health! This means more than merely stuffing my system with food. First, I must know the “how” and “why” of choosing only those foods that make a definite contribution to building sound health. I believe that by so doing I can eat both wisely and well!
I resolve not to be shortchanged on health! By using foods that are rich in natural, vital, nutritional elements I get full value for my money. Refined, chemically bolstered, acid-forming concentrated foods not only deplete my purse but rob my body of the very elements I need to keep well. Devitalized foods are a menace to my well-being.
I resolve to use only whole grains and whole grain products. I know that in the ordinary milling process the essential minerals are partly removed and the vitamin values diminished. What is left is definitely inferior in nutritional value. Gone is the lifegiving germ of wheat; the bran, the germ, the gluten layer in polished rice; the still undiscovered nutrients that nature puts into whole, wholesome, nourishing foods.
I resolve to avoid carbonated beverages, pastries, and confections made with refined white sugar. The overconsumption of these products is not only a factor in tooth decay but one of the causes of our inadequate intake of vitamins. Natural sweeteners—honey, blackstrap molasses, brown and raw sugars—these are for me and my family.
I resolve to banish all chemically “embalmed” foods, despoiled of their natural values to ensure long shelf life. There is no need for artificial colorings and preservatives when sundried fruits and natural-packed vegetables and fruits are readily available.
I resolve to keep my vitality high—not with drugs or stimulants but with foods rich in the nutritional factors essential lo my health. To the best of my ability, I will omit all nonvitamin foods from my daily meals. When my dietary needs indicate the need for vitamin or mineral supplements, I will choose natural (organic) supplements.
I resolve not to neglect the other basic requirements for positive good health that are as essential as proper nutrition—internal hygiene, sleep, fresh air and sunshine, exercise, rest and recreation. I must have all these to maintain physical vitality and to enjoy mental serenity.
I resolve to “accentuate the positive” in health—to strive for the highest degree of efficiency—not to be satisfied with merely feeling “all right” but to delight in the great joy of living a healthful, vital life!
—Reprinted from Here’s Health, No. 91, Vol. 8, March 1964
