Prof. Arnold Ehret

 There is something true in the conception of "external invasion" of a disease, as well as in heredity; however, not in the sense that the invader is a spirit (demon) hostile to life, or a microscopic being (bacillus), but all diseases without exception, even the hereditary, are caused—disregarding a few other hygienic causes—by biologically wrong, "unnatural" food, and by each ounce of overnourishment, only and exclusively.

First of all, I maintain that in all diseases without exception there exists a tendency by the organism to secrete mucus, and in case of a more advanced stage—pus (decomposed blood). Of course, every healthy organism must also contain a certain mucus—lymph, a fatty substance of the bowels, etc., of a mucus nature. Every expert will admit this in all catarrhalic cases, from a harmless cold in the nose to inflammation of the lungs and consumption,  1   as well as in epilepsy (attacks showing froth at the mouth, mucus). Where this secretion of mucus does not show freely and openly, as in cases of ear, eye, skin or stomach trouble; heart diseases; rheumatism; gout; etc., even in all degrees of insanity, mucus is the main factor of the illness. The natural secretive organs unable to cope with it longer, the mucus enters the blood causing heat, inflammation, pain, and fever at the respective spot where the vessel-system is probably contracted owing to an overcooling fever (cold), heat, inflammation, pain, fever, etc.

We need only to give a patient of any kind nothing but "mucusless" food, for instance, fruit or even nothing but water or lemonade. We then find that the entire digestive energy, freed for the first time, throws itself upon the mucus-matters, accumulated since childhood and frequently hardened, as well as on the "pathologic beds" formed therefrom. And the result? With unconditional certainty, this mucus, which I mark as the common basic and main cause of all diseases, will appear in the urine and in the excrements. If the disease is already somewhat advanced so that in some spot, even in the innermost interior, there have appeared pathologic beds, i.e., decomposed cellular tissues, then pus is also being secreted. As soon as the introduction of mucus by means of "artificial food," fatty meat, bread, potatoes, farinaceous products, rice, milk, etc. ceases, the blood circulation attacks the mucus and the pus of the body themselves and secretes them through the urine; and in the case of heavily infected bodies, even through all the openings at their command, as well as through the mucus membranes.

If potatoes, grain-meal, rice, or the respective meat-materials are boiled long enough, we receive jelly-like slime (mucus) or paste used by bookbinders and carpenters. This mucus substance soon becomes sour, ferments, and forms a bed for fungi, molds, and bacilli. In the process of digestion, which is nothing else but a boiling—a combustion—this slime or paste is being secreted in the same manner, for the blood can use only the ex-digested sugar transformed from starch. The secreted matter, the superfluous product, i.e., this paste or slime, is being completely excreted in the beginning. It is, therefore, easy to understand that in the course of life the intestines and the stomach are gradually being pasted and slimed up to such an extent that this paste of floral and this slime of faunal origin turn into fermentation, clog up the blood vessels and finally decompose the stagnated blood. If figs, dates, or grapes are boiled down thick enough we also receive a pap which, however, does not turn to fermentation and never secretes slime, but which is called syrup. Fruit sugar, the most important thing for the blood, is also sticky, it is true, but is being completely used up by the body as the highest form of fuel, and leaves for excretion only traces of cellulose, which, not being sticky, is promptly excreted and does not ferment. Boiled-down sugar, owing to its resistance against fermentation, is even used for the preservation of food.

Each healthy or sick person deposits on the tongue a sticky mucus as soon as he or she fasts or reduces food. This occurs also on the mucus membrane of the stomach, of which the tongue is an exact copy. In the first stool after fasting, this mucus makes its appearance.

I recommend to my reader or to the physicians and searchers to test my claims by way of experiments, which alone are entitled to real scientific recognition. The experiment, the question put to nature, is the basis of a natural science and reveals the infallible truth, no matter whether it is stated by me or somebody else. Furthermore, I recommend the following experiments to those who are brave enough to test on their own bodies, which I undertook on mine. They will receive the same answer from nature, i.e., from their organism, provided that the latter be sound in my sense. "Exact" to a certain degree reacts only to the clean, sound, mucusless organism. After a 2-year strict fruit diet with intercalated fasting cures, I had attained a degree of health which is simply not imaginable nowadays and which allowed of my making the following experiments:

With a knife, I made an incision in my lower arm. There was no flow of blood as it thickened instantly, closing up the wound; no inflammation, no pain, no mucus and pus: healed up in 3 days, blood crust thrown off. Later, with vegetaric food, including mucus ferments (starch food) but without eggs and milk: the wound bled a little, caused some pain, and pussed slightly; a light inflammation; complete healing only after some time. After that, the same wounding with meat-food and some alcohol: longer bleeding, the blood of a light color, red and thin; inflammation; pain; pussing for several days; and healing only after a 2-day fast.

I have offered myself, of course in vain, to the Prussian Ministry of War for a repetition of this experiment. Why is it that the wounds of the Japanese healed much quicker and better in the Russo-Japanese War than those of the "meat-and-brandy Russians?" Has nobody for 2,000 years ever thought it over why the opening of the artery and even the poison cup could not kill Seneca, after he had despised meat and fasted in prison? It is said that even before that, Seneca fed on nothing but fruit and water.

All disease is finally nothing else but a clogging-up of the smallest blood vessels, the capillaries, by mucus. Nobody will want to clean the water conduit of a city, a pipe system, which is fed with soiled water by a pump, the filters of which are clogged up, without having the water supply shut off during the cleaning process. If the conduit supplies the entire city or a portion of it with unclean water, or if even the smallest branch-pipes are clogged up, there is no human in the world who would repair or improve that respective spot; everybody thinks at once of the central, of the tank, and the filters, and these together with the pumping machine can be cleaned only as long as the water supply is shut off.

"I am the Lord, thy physician"—English and modern: nature alone heals, cleans, "unmucuses" best and infallibly sure, but only if the supply, or at least the mucus supply, is stopped. Each "physiological machine," humans like animals, cleanse themselves immediately, dissolving the mucus in the clogged-up vessels, without stopping short as soon as the supply of compact food at least, is interrupted. Even in the case of the supposedly healthy person, this mucus, as already mentioned, then appears in the urine where it can be seen after cooling off in the proper glass tubes! Whoever denies, ignores, or fights this uniform fact, because perhaps it is not in accord with their teachings or is not sufficiently scientific, is jointly guilty of the impossibility of detection of the principal cause of all diseases.

Therewith, I also uncover the last secret of consumption. Or does anybody believe that this enormous quantity of mucus thrown off by a patient stricken with tuberculosis for years and years emanates only from the lung itself? Just because this patient is then almost forcibly fed on "mucus" (pap, milk, fat meats) the mucus can never cease until the lung itself decays and the "bacilli" make their appearance when death becomes inevitable. The mystery of the bacilli is solved simply thus: The gradual clogging-up of the blood vessels by mucus leads to decomposition, to fermentation of these mucus products and "boiled, dead-food" residues. These decay partially on the living body (pussy abscesses, cancer, tuberculosis, syphilis, lupus, etc.). Now everybody knows that meat, cheese, and all organic matter will again "germinate, put forth bacilli" during the process of decomposition. It is for this reason that these germs appear and are detectable only in the more advanced stage of the disease, when, however, they are not the cause but the product of the disease, and disease-furthering only in so far as the decomposition, for instance of the lung, is being hastened by them, because the excretions of the bacilli, their toxins, act poisoning. If it be correct that bacilli invade, "infect" from the exterior, then it is nothing but the mucus that makes possible their activity, and furnishes the proper soil, the "disposition."

As already stated, I have repeatedly (once for 2 years) lived mucusless, i.e., on fruit exclusively. I was no longer in need of a handkerchief, which product of civilization I hardly need even up to this date. Has anyone ever seen a healthy animal living in freedom expectorate or blow its nose? A chronic inflammation of the kidneys, considered deadly, which I was stricken with, was not only healed, but I am enjoying a degree of health and efficiency that by far surpasses even that of my healthiest youth. I want to see the person who, being sick unto death at 31, can run for 2 hours and a quarter without a stop or make an endurance march of 56 hours' duration—8 years later.

It is surely theoretically correct that humans were mere fruit eaters in times gone by, and biologically correct that they can be it even today. Or can the horse sense of humans not conceive without any direct proofs of the fact that humans, before becoming hunters, lived on fruits only? I even maintain that humans lived in absolute health, beauty, and strength without pain and grief, just the way the Bible says. Fruit only, the sole "mucusless" food, is natural. Everything prepared by humans, or supposedly improved by them, are evil. The arguments regarding fruit are scientifically exact; in the apple or banana, for instance, everything can be found contained what humans need. Humans are so perfect that they can live on one kind of fruit only, at least for quite some time. This has been conclusively proven by the mono-diet system of August Engelhardt who solved by his great philosophy and practice of natural life all problems of humankind. But a self-evident truth preached by nature must not be discarded just because no one has been able to apply it in actual practice on account of civilizational considerations. From the eating of fruit only, one gets first a crisis, i.e., cleansing. No human would have ever believed me that it is possible to live without food for 126 days, in which 49 were undertaken at a stretch, during a period covering 14 months. Now I have done it, and yet this truth is not being understood. Hitherto I state and will teach only this fact, that fruit is the most natural "healing remedy." Whether my calculation is correct will be proven by the next epidemic. I take, however, this opportunity to uncover the reasons why the self-evident is not believed in. When in the previous century someone talked about the possibility of phoning from London to Paris, everybody laughed because there had never been such a thing. Natural food is not being believed in anymore, because almost no one practices it and living in today's civilization, we cannot easily practice it. It must also be considered that contra-interests fear that the prices of other, artificial foodstuffs may drop, and others fear that the food physiology may receive a shock and physicians become unnecessary. But, it is just this fasting and fruit cure, which requires very strict observation and instruction—therefore, more doctors and less patients who, however, will gladly pay more if they get well. Thus, the social question regarding doctors is solved—an assertion already made by me publicly in Zurich several years ago.

Almost all fasting attempts fail through ignorance of the fact that with the beginning of the mucusless diet, the old mucus is being excreted so much more forcibly until that person is absolutely clean and healthy. THUS, THE SEEMINGLY HEALTHIEST PERSON HAS FIRST TO PASS THROUGH A CONDITION OF SICKNESS (CLEANSING) or go through an intermediate stage of illness to a higher level of health.

This is the "great-cliff" around which so few vegetarians have failed to go—discarding the basic truth just like the mass of people are doing. I have proven this fact in the "Vegetarische Warte," completely on the basis of experiments and facts; and refuting their greatest objection, that of undernourishment, by an actual fasting experiment of 49 days with a preceding fruit diet. My state of health was greatly improved through this radical excretion of mucus, disregarding a few unhygienic circumstances during the test. I received numerous letters of appreciation, especially from the educated classes. The mass of adherents of vegetarianism "mucuses" gaily ahead. Contrasting herewith, it can only be said that the poisons (so-called by them)—meat, alcohol, coffee, and tobacco—are in the long run comparatively harmless, AS LONG AS THEY ARE USED MODERATELY.

In order to avoid misunderstanding on the part of teetotalers and vegetarians, I must insert here a few explanations. Meat is not a foodstuff but only a stimulant that ferments, decays in the stomach. The process of decay, however, does not begin in the stomach, but at once after the slaughtering. This has already been proven on living persons by Prof. Dr. S. Graham, and I complete this fact by saying that meat acts as a stimulant just by means of these poisons of decay, and therefore is being erroneously regarded as a strengthening foodstuff. Or is there anyone who can show me chemico-physiologically that the albumen molecule going through the process of decay is being newly reformed in the stomach and celebrates its resurrection in some muscle of the human body? Like alcohol, the meat produces in the beginning stimulating strength and energy until the entire organism is penetrated by it and the breakdown inevitable. All the other stimulants act likewise. This, therefore, is a false delusion.

The fundamental evil of all non-vegetaric forms of diet consist always in the overeating of meat, as it is the origin of all the other evils, especially in the craving for alcohol. If fruit is eaten almost exclusively, the eagerness for cup or glass loses itself to chastise against it, simply because meat produces the demon thirst. Alcohol is a proven kind of antidote for meat, and the gourmand of the big city, who eats practically nothing but meat, must therefore have wines, mocha, and Havana in order to at least in some way counteract the heavy meat poisoning. It is a well-known fact that, after an opulent dinner, one feels decidedly fresher, physically and mentally, if the stimulants, poisonous in themselves, are taken moderately rather than to stuff one's self full with the "good-eating" to the very fatigue.

I ABSOLUTELY DECLARE WAR ON MEAT AND ALCOHOL; through fruit and moderate eating, these great evils are radically diminished. But whoever finds it impossible to entirely give up meat and alcohol is, if he or she takes them moderately, still far ahead of the vegetaric "over or excess eater." The American, Fletcher, proved this most evidently by his tremendous success, and his secret is explained by my experiments, which show that a person becomes most efficient and develops best in health if he or she eats as little as possible! Are not the oldest people as a rule the poorest? Have not the greatest discoverers and inventors sprung from poverty, i.e., been "little eaters"? Were not the greatest of humankind—the prophets, founders of religions, etc.—ascetics? Is that culture to dine excellently thrice a day, and is it social progress that each working man and woman eats five times a day and then pumps themselves full with beer or wine at night? If the sick organism can regenerate by eating nothing, I think the logical consequence is that a healthy organism needs but little food in order to remain healthy, strong, and persevering.

Prof. Arnold Ehret's

RATIONAL FASTING

For Physical, Mental, and Spiritual Rejuvenation