Arnold Ehret

“ If nourishment by mucus and over-eating is the true fundamental cause of all diseases without exception, which I can prove to anybody on his own body, then there can exist but one natural remedy, i.e., fasting and fruit-diet. That every animal fasts in case of even the slightest uneasiness, is a well-known fact and to culture and thanks to man feeding them, have lost their sharp instinct for the right kind of food and the natural hours of feeding—and therewith their proper state of health and acuteness of sense,—they will nevertheless, when sick, accept only the most necessary food ”

“ The modern cutting short of the masculine hair on the head, as well as the alarming expansion and earliness of baldness have accustomed even an artistical eye so much to this appearance that we no longer become conscious of the fact how seriously the aesthetic and harmonic figure of man is disturbed by this voluntary and unvoluntary “hair­decapitation.” Man, who is not only intellectual, but also as an aesthetic product of nature, “the crown of creation,” is being robbed of the splendid crown of his head—the hair. ”

“ If a man eats little and is healthy he can digest for quite a length of time the most absurd food, meat and starch (mucus) , i.e., he can again excrete it; naturally, he becomes and remains still more perfect and clean if he eats but little fruit, and of this he needs the least because it is the most perfect food. This eternal truth by natural law man of today will and cannot admit, and has a well-founded fear of it, because he is built up of dead-boiled food and his cells die off and are excreted as soon as he takes sun-baths, fasts or eats the living cells of fruit. ”

“ That is the reason why most of the vegetarians in spite of their lauded bill of fare, are not healthy just the same. I myself was such a much—and mucus-eater for several years. If a considerable number of the vegetarians does not soon advance towards the only natural food, the fruit diet, or at least returns to eating little, there will be great danger of the shallowing­down of vegetarianism; not because the principle of “no meat eating” is bad, but because the healthful effects of the existing vegetaric nourishment are so inferior. ”

“ The enormous poorness in mineral culture-food, especially of the meat as compared with fruit, is responsible for the coming of a toothless human race, as predicted even by physicians, and which is not merely a phantom of imagination. And instead of by fruit these stuffs, are being substituted by an organic preparation. The human organism does not assimilate one single atom mineral substance which has not transmigrated into a plant or fruit, i.e., which has not become organic. ”

“ And when springtime comes, and last season's fruits, especially apples, are on the decline, and the new vegetables not yet ready, does not Mother Nature help us out abundantly with oranges from the South? Will the aroma and wealth of these splendid products of nature not induce man to eventually become a fruit eater entirely? ”

“ Poets are rightfully comparing man with a flower and speak of the hair-fragrance of woman. I, therefore, recognize in the hair of the human head a very important organ which aside from protective and warmth-regulating purposes has a highly interesting and useful destination: to conduct away the exhalations, the odor of healthy and sick people, which reveals to experts and acute noses not only individual qualities, but even certain disclosures as regards the inner state of health or sickness of a man. ”

“ The fundamental evil of all non-vegetaric forms of diet consists always in the overeating of meat, as it is the origin of all the other evils, especially of the craving for alcohol. If fruit is eaten almost exclusively, the eagerness for cup or glass loses itself to chastise himself 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 almost nothing but meat, must therefore have wines, Mocha and Havana, in order to at least in some way counteract the heavy meat-poisoning. ”

“ If human ugliness as such, lost beauty and symptoms of growing old can be made accounted for by wrong nourishment, then the theory of beauty and rejuvenation leads to a dietetic cure and a respective improvement of nourishment. But inasmuch as beauty, especially human beauty, cannot be absolutely defined, because everybody has a different taste, I can limit myself only to the main standards of aesthetic demands.
The white corpse-color of the light and sunless man of culture cannot be called beautiful, and emanates mainly from the white corpse-color of the dead-boiled, wrong food. ”

“ Of course, this class of people cannot quite achieve in health and strength, keep-up of youth and perseverance, physical and mental efficiency, what can be achieved by the faster and fruit-eater. Once man is healthy in my sense of the word, by fasting and fruit-diet, i.e., free from mucus, slime and germ, and if he stays with the fruit-diet, he, of course, need not fast any longer and only then he will find a pleasure in eating which he never dreamt of before. ”

“ The death-struggle or agony can only be regarded as a last crisis, a last effort of the organism to excrete mucus; a last fight of the still living cells against the dead ones and their death-poisons. If the white, dead cells, the mucus in the blood, gain the upper hand, there takes place not only a mechanical clogging-up in the heart, but also a chemical reformation, a decline, a total-poisoning, a sudden decay of the entire blood-supply—and the machine stops short “It has pleased God Almighty;” ”

“ The distinction and beauty of the features, the pureness and healthy color of the complexion, the clearness and natural size of the eyes, the charm of the expression and the color of the lips age and become ugly to the extent of the expression and the color of the mucus in the bowels, which we have recognized above as the central depot from which all the symptoms of disease, and therefore those of age, are being fed. ”

“ The excessive appearance of the white blood-corpuscles, i.e., of the white dead mucus, as compared with the red sugar and iron substances, is becoming dangerous to life. Red colored and sweet is the visible token of life and love, white, pale, colorless, bitter, the token of disease and overwhelming by mucus, the slow dying away of the individual. ”

“ In the right way of living the exchange of matter takes place to a much lesser degree, likewise the stress on the inner organs, especially the heart and the stomach. In the performance of greatest efforts the mucusless organism has not nearly the pulse-frequency of a much-eater. Merely through this saving of energy it is possible to mathematically figure out and prove an advantage as regards longevity. But can we perhaps even solve by this all-explaining mucus-constipation the last of all mysteries—death? ”

“ The Common Fundamental Cause in the Nature of Diseases All the phases of the process of development of the medical science, including those of the earliest periods of civilization, have in their way of understanding the causal nature of diseases that one thing in common that the diseases, owing to external causes, enter into the human body and thus, by force of a necessary or at least unavoidable law, disturb it in its existence, cause it pain and at last destroy it. ”

“ It now seems to me certain, not only theoretically, but also on the basis of my interesting experiments on my own body, that the principal cause of baldness can only be an internal one. If through these odor-tubes or so to speak “gas chimneys of the head” there must be constantly discharged stinking, corroding gases, very probably impregnated with sulphur-dioxyde, instead of natural, fragrant odors, we must not be surprised if the hair together with its root becomes deathly pale, dies off and falls out. ”

“ Thus all symptoms of ageing are latent disease, accumulation of mucus and clogging-up by mucus. Everybody subjecting himself to a thorough restoring-cure in case of any disease, by parting with the dead cells through mucus-less diet and eventually fasting, rejuvenates himself simultaneously, and whoever submits to a rejuvenating cure, deprives each and every disease of its foundation. ”

“ Whoever cannot miss bread entirely, must eat black or white bread only toasted; by toasting the bread loses much of its harmfulness, as the mucus substances are being partly destroyed. The eating of toasted bread has the further advantage that not much can be eaten of it; it cannot be devoured as wild beasts do, and the necessary chewing will fatigue even the most greedy gums. Whoever cannot bite the toasted bread, on account of bad teeth, may suck on it until it dissolves—a splendid way to restore declined strength. Whoever cannot miss potatoes should eat them only baked. ”

“ We cannot imagine with what beauty and faculties the paradoic “godlike” man was gifted, what wonderful strong, clear voice he had! The beautification and strengthening of the voice, yes, the winning back of the lost voice is an amazing symptom in my cure, and an especially eloquent proof for the really grandiose effect of my system for the entire organism of the patient. ”

“ I eat only when I have appetite and then so little that it does not cause any harmful effect, if, on account of an experiment, I am obliged to eat something which in itself is not entirely free from objection. ”

“ Disease is a fermentation and decay-process of body-substance or of surplus and unnatural food-material, which in course of time has accumulated, especially in the digestive organs, and which makes its appearance in the shape of mucus-excretion.
That is, it means in the last instance nothing but the chemical decomposition, the decay of cellular albumen. As is well known, this process is accompanied by stench, while nature combines the originating of new life with fragrance (the building of plants.) Properly man in perfect health should exhale fragrance, particularly so with his hair. ”

“ The air is not only the highest and most perfect operating material of the human body, but simultaneously the first element for the erection, repair, substitute, and very likely, the animal organism derives nitrogen also from the air. ”

“ If the doctors have not by far recognized digestive disturbances with the microscopes and test-glasses, there have yet been certain quacks who have been able to state by simple hair-diagnosis the stench-producing inner process of decay—the disease. Why, there are numberless people to-day, still youthful and radiating health with a breath like that of a sewer and who are wondering why their hair is falling out. ”

“ Weight, shape and especially circumference of body are too great. Every accumulation of fat is pathologic and in this measure unaesthetic. No animal living in freedom is upholstered with fat, like so many men. The reason is only too much food and too much fluid; relaxation and clogging up of the entire system of vessels are the natural consequences. Grape-sugar of the fruits and their nutritive salts are the right sources for a firm muscle-substance, by which a body disfattened and dismucused by fasting can be quickly rebuilt. ”

“ All so-called miracles of the saints have their only origin in ascetics, and are to-day impossible but for the reason that, although much praying is done, no fasting is adhered to. This is the only solution of this quarrel. We have no more miracles because we have no more saints, i.e., sanctified and healed by ascetics and fastings. ”

“ If according to paradisic primary laws the lungs and skin would be given nothing but pure air and sun-electricity, and the stomach and bowels nothing but sun-food, i.e., fruits, which are being digested almost without rest, secreting only mucus, paste and germless cellullose, there seems to be no reason why the tube-system of the human body should become defect, weaken, age and finally break down entirely. ”

“ Following the previous general arguments to the effect that mucus is the main cause of disease and ageing, there is only left to show in particular and on the various organs in how far the mucus of culture-food acts beauty-hindering in the construction of the human body, and produces symptoms of ugliness and age. ”

“ Doubters in my points of view, and bad nature-observers may here be reminded of the law of exception from the rule, and as regards man—of the fact, that neither hygienically nor aesthetically have we any imagination left of the ideal beauty and health of man living under perfectly natural conditions. If the pleasure in the beautiful is a sentence in the favorable sense, then the displeasure felt by an aesthetic eye in looking up the disharmony of shape and color must include to a certain degree the recognition of the pathologic. ”

“ 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, and which nobody calls 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. ”