"There is healing power in obedience, just as there is destruction in disobedience. When the evil-doer ceases to sin and enters upon a life of obedience to the natural laws, the curative forces within this body rebuild and thus renew his tissues, healing them and obliterating the consequences of transgression."

"The idea that blood may be purified by medicine of any sort, is a very great error and one which is productive of a vast deal of mischief. There are no herbs or drugs of any sort the taking of which will purify the blood. The blood will not be purified by putting something into it, but requires that something be removed from it. Water is the universal cleansing agent, and its free use is essential to blood purification ."

"To undertake to purify the blood by means of pills is about as unreasonable as to undertake to launder a dirty shirt or any other soiled garment by the same means."

The fundamental principles of Nature Cure philosophy as stated by Henry Lindlahr M.D. are as follows:

1. Every acute disease is the result of a purifying, healing effort of Nature.

2. The inflammatory process back of all acute and sub-acute diseases are identical in nature and purpose in the way they run their course, through the five stages of inflammation.

3. The bacteria found associated with acute, sub-acute and chronic disease are not the primary causes and instigators of these abnormal processes but rather the product of pathogenic conditions and the agents through which Nature breaks down complex, disease producing (pathogenic) substances into simpler compounds suitable for neutralisation by alkaline elements and for elimination through the organs of depuration.

4. The primary cause of germ activity is the morbid soil in which bacteria breed and multiply. Basing our practice on these fundamental principles we do not endeavour to "kill the germs" with poisonous drugs or vaccines, serums and antitoxins, but instead we endeavour through natural ways of living and natural methods of treatment to purify the organism of the systemic waste, morbid encumbrances and disease taints which furnish the soil for the development and multiplication of disease.

The French scientist Professor Antoine Bechamp said as early as 1864 in his lectures at the University of Montpelier and at the Sorbonne, the ancient seat of learning in Paris, that cells and germs are not the smallest living organisms as taught by Pasteur and his followers, but that they in turn are made up on infinitely more minute living beings which he named microzyma. The term "microzyma" translated means "minute ferment bodies".

Bechamp teaches that cells and germs are associations of microzyma. The physical characteristics and vital activities of cells and germs depend upon the soil in which their microzyma feed, grow and multiply. Thus microzyma growing in the soil of procreative germ plasma, develop into the normal permanent, specialised cells of the living vegetable, animal or human organism. The same microzyma feeding on morbid materials and systemic poisons in these living bodies develop into bacteria and parasites.

One of the many experiments that Professor Bechamp made to prove the correctness of his deductions was that of beer yeast. Beer yeast becomes active and multiplies normally only in a sugar solution. While feeding on sugar and digesting it, it decomposes the sugar into alcohol, carbonic acid and small amounts of acetic acid. When antiseptic substances were added to the fermenting fluid the normal activity of the yeast germs gradually subsided. They deteriorated and decomposed their detritus gradually changing into bacteria.

The bacteria in their turn when they had consumed the decaying materials on which they had subsisted, disintegrated until there was nothing left but the original microzyma thus proving that microzyma are at the beginning and end of all organised beings. He found the chalk of Sins and other calcareous rocks alive with microzyma which started processes of fermentation in blood, milk and other fermentable substances. When we consider that these geological microzyma are the remains of fossil organisms which lived in remote prehistoric ages, we must come to the conclusion that these primal architects of life are practically indestructible and must be endowed with life in its most primitive form.

The discovery of microzyma confirms the Nature Cure philosophy according to which bacteria and parasites cannot cause and instigate inflammatory and other disease processes unless they find their own peculiar morbid soil in which to feed, grow and multiply.

The translator of Professor Bechamp’s last book entitled The Blood, comments as follows:

"The experimental facts learnedly elaborated by Professor Bechamp and his collaborators make patent the absurdity of all pretended prophylactics against disease save one, and casts all rational minds back to the one sure and only protection—sound hygiene.

We are mocked by quarantines, vaccines, inoculations and other devices for conveying the products of labour into the pockets of official doctors. We are gulled by them to the fullest extent of our willingness to be gulled. The opponents of a truly rational medicine are many and powerful, as evidenced by the suppression of Bechamp’s admirable discoveries beneath a "conspiracy of silence" and these opponents of the art of healing are entrenched in nearly all medical schools, in richly endowed research institutes, in expensive manufacturers of animal poisons for poisoning men and animals (under the ignorant belief that they are benefiting us), and in all medical officialdom."

Dr Thomas Powell’s (of Los Angeles) discovery of the true nature of the so-called leucocytes together with our knowledge of the activity of the microzyma, furnishes us with a rational and consistent explanation of the process of inflammation. Inflammation always starts with obstruction in the capillary circulation caused by white blood corpuscles and other colloid or pathogenic matter. The obstruction causes the white blood corpuscles in the blood-stream to be forced into the neighbouring tissues (emigration of the leucocytes). Stagnation causes them to disorganise and putrefy. This morbid soil develops the microzyma of the normal cells into various kinds of "disease germs" or bacteria.

"Disease is born of us and in us", wrote Bechamp, "and that is as it should be because the life of man and of every other creature is no more delivered over to chance that the course of the stars. Life would be delivered over to chance if it depended upon primitive microbic germs created for destructive purposes."

The "Patent Medicine" firms which advertise in that national dailies are the same, now "ethical", which advertise massively in the medical journals. Only the names are altered. (See Homeopathy Biochemics and Nature Cure, by Bertram T Fraser, M.A., B.Sc.)

A wartime survey of the health of girls in the WAAF, published in the British Medical Journal, mentions, amongst other things, that the hemoglobin levels of girls in this service are higher than those of civilians. The survey does not reach a definite decision as to the reason for the improvement, but states that it is probably due to the high iron intake of women in the Service, and adds that much of it "comes from the iron cooking vessels which are rarely used in domestic cookery." (My italics.)

That should make any regular reader of Rude Health curl his lips contemptuously. But then it must be remembered that the staffs of such bodies as the Medical Research Council—which issues most of the "information" appearing in official publications—are composed almost entirely of specialist scientists (chemists, physicists and the like) who have no clinical experience whatever. They have neither a clear picture of the behaviour and appearance of a healthy person, nor do they have any understanding of human disease processes. The nearest they come to that is in observing and recording the behaviour of batches of unfortunate rats and guinea-pigs. They function in such a mechanical and unimaginative world that they even think in terms of elements, potentials and units, instead of foods, intelligence and people.