Definitions
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Natural Hygiene is a philosophy and a set of principles and practices based on science, that leads to an extraordinary level of personal health and happiness. ...
Natural Hygiene is for people who are looking for the good life, and not just a pretty good life, a very good life. It offers you the opportunity to live the healthiest, happiest life possible.(Health Science)
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Hygiene is not an empirical system, nor is it experimental. It is a logical system derived from fundamental biological premises. Nevertheless, it is confirmed and supported by empiricism and experimentalism. (Alec Burton D.O. D.C. 1995)
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The wise doctor realizes that he or she may need to take an active role and the patient a more passive role in the early stages of health restoration, but does everything possible to put the power of self care into the patients hands as soon as possible ...
... Above all is conservation of energy and identification of ways in which energy that needs to be directed towards healing is being lost. (Dr. Paul Goldberg, 99)
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Although the Hygienic philosophy that "health is the result of healthful living", was considered radical in its day, the world is awakening to it now. In the 1990's we seem to be on the verge of another health revolution. .. The fundamental problem we face is not that medical costs are skyrocketing. The problem is that most medical care is not health care at all; it is disease care. (R. Cridland, M.D., 1994)
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- The underlying basis of Natural Hygiene is that the body is self-cleansing, self-healing and self-maintaining. Natural Hygiene is based on the idea that all the healing power of the universe is within the human body; that nature is always correct and can not be improved upon. We experience problems of health (i.e. excess weight, pain, stress) only when we break the natural laws of life. (H. Diamond, 1985)
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- It is interesting that the field of Natural Hygiene has existed in this country and been utilized by thousands of people for over a century and a half, and yet very few people have even heard of it.
During my seminars I always ask the audience, how many have heard of Natural Hygiene. Less than 1 % ever raise their hands. (Diamond: Fit for Life 1985)
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NATURAL HYGIENE holds that health is the normal state of all living organisms and that health is maintained through natural, self-initiating, self-healing process.
NATURAL HYGIENE maintains that health is the personal responsibility of each individual, and that vibrant health is achieved only by the conscientious application of healthful living practices in all areas of one's life. (Victoria Bidwell 1991)
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 Hygeia
Greek goddess
Hygeia noun, Greek mythology The goddess
of health.
hygiene noun,The science that deals with the
preservation & promotion of health.
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The goddess of health is clothed head-to-toe in a loose-fitting, traditional gown.
She has a snake, the usual attribute of Hygeia, the personification of healing. The egg in her hand is a symbol of her father Asklepios, the god of medicine.
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Why does hygiene also mean "cleanliness"?
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In the 19th century, this was the situation:
- Cleanliness was utterly disregarded. Physicians not only frowned upon, but opposed bathing. Surgeons performed operations without washing their hands, and operating rooms of hospitals were veritable pig sties. Physicians would go from the post mortem room directly to the delivery room and assist in the birth of a child without washing their hands. Child-bed fever was a very common disease and the death rate from it was very high.
- Since patients were also being dosed heroically, having their veins and arteries emptied of blood, denied water to drink and fresh air to breathe, it is no wonder that otherwise simple diseases were regarded as very malignant and the death rate high.
- Out of the contradictions, confusions, chaos and delusions called the science of medicine, grew a need for new thoughts. In America the crusade for health reform was launched in 1830 by Sylvester Graham through lectures and writings. Actual health care based on "physiology" or "hygiene" had started already in 1822 with Isaac Jennings.
- Colleges in "Hygienic care" opened, the first one in 1852 in New York: the Hygeio-Therapeutic College. Many hygienic practitioners were created during the century, thousands of lectures given, lots of books and magazines spread. People learned to bathe, to eat more fruit and vegetables, to ventilate their homes, to get exercise and sunshine. Hygiene became so popular, that traditional medicine finally had to adopt parts of Hygiene, after having fiercely opposed it until the beginning of the 20th century. This new "hygiene" was incorporated with the drug-usage of Medicine (remember that "Hygiene" was opposed to drugs), and the word hygiene got the meaning it has today.
- When Herbert Shelton and others in the 20th century revived the knowledge of "Hygiene" and modernized it, the word "Natural" was added. Shelton's How-to-Live magazine was started in 1928, his Hygienic Review in 1939, and the American Natural Hygiene Society was founded in 1948. (partly from The Greatest Health Discovery)
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Illness does not develop without cause; there are laws which regulate human life as well as any other system or constitution, and the man who violates any of the laws of his being, ought to know, when he suffers mental and physical distress, that this is a consequence of the transgression. (Herbert Shelton 1968)
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Few people realize today that "graham bread" - so popular at one time - and graham crackers were named after Dr. Sylvester Graham, one of the earliest of the 19th century health reformers. His teachings exerted an enormous influence.