Mucusless Diet Healing System: Scientific Method of Eating Your Way to Health

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

of

PROF. ARNOLD EHRET

Author of Rational Fasting and Originator of the

Mucusless-Diet Healing System

Teacher of Dietetics, Faster and Lecturer

By PROF. B. W. CHILD

I knew Professor Ehret first as an author, later as a sanitarium proprietor and lecturer, and now esteem him highly as a friend and the pioneer of the most complete, natural and scientific system or cult for the Cure and Prevention of Disease known. I have no hesitancy in stating that he has evolved and developed what now seems to be the last word in regard to health and longevity.

He was born July 29, 1866, near Freiburg, in Baden, Germany, and lived to be 56 years of age, and was endowed by his father with a natural bent or extraordinary desire for delving into the causes and reasons for occurrences and results.

Ehret’s education was obtained at a college where the long walk added to the other work on the farm, on an ordinary diet, brought on a severe attack of bronchial catarrh. In spite of this handicap he graduated with honors. His greatest interest being for physics, chemistry, drawing and painting, he took a special academic course and graduated as professor of drawing for high schools and colleges, at 21 years of age. He taught at a college until drafted for military service, but was released after nine months’ service because of neurasthenic heart trouble, resuming his vocation as a teacher. At 31 years of age he was quite fleshy and looked well, as others said, but was suffering from kidney trouble, Bright’s disease, with consumptive tendency.

In his own words: Five times I took vacations to recuperate, but finally was pronounced incurable and resigned. Then for five years I suffered much from many physicians (24 in all) and part of this suffering was to pay the bills of about $6,000, but with the result pronounced incurable." Physically and nearly mentally bankrupt, I thought of suicide, but accidentally heard of naturopathy and was treated at a Kneipp sanitarium three different times, getting some relief and a desire to live, but not cured. Was treated at five or six other Nature Cure sanitariums and tried all other methods known in Europe, expending more thousands, with the result that while not down sick, neither was I healthy. I learned something from the experiences, though; the main symptoms were mucus or pus and albumin in the urine and pain in the kidneys. The doctors, on the presumption that a clear urine indicated health, tried to stop these eliminations with drugs and to replace the albumin by a meat, egg, and milk diet, but it only increased the disastrous results. I reasoned out from these methods what seemed like a great light on the subject; that the right diet should be free from mucus and albumin. My naturopathic treatment drew out some of the mucus by baths, exercise, etc., but fed it back by wrong diet.

I resolved to face what seemed a tragedy for me (and does now to most chronically sick persons after getting no relief from doctors), and try for myself that which I had learned from past experience: that wrong eating was the cause and right eating might be the cure. There was vegetarianism, fruit and nut diet, numerous food cures and a few hints that fasting would help. I went to Berlin to study vegetarianism, as there were over twenty vegetarian restaurants there at that time. My first observation was that vegetarians were not much more healthy than meat eaters, for many looked sickly and pale. With the starchy food and milk I grew slowly worse, but started a course of study at the University of medicine, physiology, and chemistry. I visited a school of naturopathy, learned something of mental healing, Christian Science, magnetic healing, etc., etc., all to try to find out the real and fundamental truths of perfect health. Was more or less disappointed and went to Nice, in southern France, and tried a radical fruit diet with the exception of a pint a milk a day, thinking then that I needed the albumin. I made no special application of the fruit diet to my condition, as most others did not, and received but little benefit. Some days I felt well and on others felt very bad, so I soon went back home, returning to the so-called good eating, as lived and suggested by well-meaning friends, relatives and physicians. I had learned something about fasting, but it was opposed by all friends and relatives; even my former naturopathic doctor told my sister that to a person with Bright’s disease a few days’ fast would prove fatal.

The next winter I went to Algiers, in northern Africa. The mild climate and the wonderful fruits improved my condition and gave me more faith in Nature’s methods and an understanding of them, and I gained courage to try short fasts to assist the cleansing properties of fruit and climate, with such results that one morning of a well feeling day I chanced to notice in my mirror that my face had taken on an entirely new look; that of a younger and healthy looking person. But on the next bad feeling day the old and sickly looking face returned, yet it did not last long and these alternating changes in my face impressed me as a revelation from Nature that I had found out her methods in part and was on the right track, and I resolved to study them more and live them closer in my future life.

An indescribable feeling never known before of better health, more vital energy, better efficiency, and more endurance and strength came to me and gave me great joy and happiness just to be alive. This was not only of the physical, but there was a great change in my mental ability to perceive, to remember, greater courage and hope, and above all an insight into the spiritual which became like a sunrise, throwing light upon all higher and spiritual problems. All my faculties were improved, far surpassing their best during my healthiest and best youth. My physicial efficiency and endurance became wonderfully increased. I took a bicycle trip of about 800 miles, from Algiers to Tunis, accompanied by a trained bicyclist who lived on ordinary diet. I was never behind him but often ahead towards night when endurance became the test. Keep in mind that I was formerly a candidate for death, so declared by the doctors, but now jubilant that I could surpass the most efficient, and a constant joy of exhilaration having escaped the slaughter house of mankind, called Scientific Medical Clinics.

Arriving home again, I demonstrated my ability and endurance to perform the hardest farm labor and in tests of strength superior to those in good training on the ordinary diet, but being surrounded by friends and relatives who were living in the ordinary way and coming in contact with professional men who were excited by fear that my discoveries were of true principles and would eventually succeed and surpass those they were practicing, I gradually took up the ordinary diet. Fasting was then very unpopular and living in the family of my sister who threatened to prevent it should I attempt one, I could not take up again what I firmly believed and had proven by actual experience, that fasting (simply eating less) was Nature’s Omnipotent method of cleansing the body from the effects of wrong and too much eating. I had also found it the Master Key to mental and spiritual unfoldment and evolution. I had not neglected the study of the scientific reasons why fruit and mucusless foods were so efficient, and had found that they developed during the process of digestion what was known as Grape Sugar, and from what was termed carbohydrates by analysis. My experience, tests, and experiments as well as cures, all showed that grape sugar of fruits was the essential material of human food, giving the highest efficiency and endurance, and at the same time was the best eliminator of debris and the most efficient healing agent known for the human