EVIL IS NOT AN ACCIDENT, NOT AN ARBITRARY PUNISHMENT, NOT ALWAYS AN "ERROR OF MORTAL MIND." IT IS THE NATURAL AND INEVITABLE RESULT OF VIOLATIONS OF NATURE'S LAWS. IT IS INSTRUCTIVE AND CORRECTIVE IN PURPOSE, AND WILL REMAIN WITH US ONLY AS LONG AS WE NEED ITS SALUTARY LESSONS.
Chapter I
What ~Is~ Nature Cure?
It is vastly more than a system of curing aches and pains; it is a complete revolution in the art and science of living. It is the practical realization and application of all that is good in natural science, philosophy and religion. Like many another world-wide revolution and reformation, it had its inception in Germany, the land of thinkers and philosophers.
About seventy years ago this greatest and most beneficent of reformation movements was inaugurated by Priessnitz in Grafenberg, a small village in the Silesian mountains. The originator of Nature Cure was a simple farmer, but he had a natural genius for the art of healing.
His pharmacopeia consisted not in poisonous pills and potions but in plenty of exercise, fresh mountain air, water treatments in the cool, sparkling brooks, and simple, wholesome country fare, consisting largely of black bread, vegetables, and milk fresh from cows fed on nutritious mountain grasses.
The results accomplished by these simple means were wonderful. Before he died, a large sanitarium, filled with patients from all over the world and from all stations of life, had grown up around his forest home.
Among those who made the pilgrimage to Grafenberg to become patients and students of this genial healer, the simple-minded farmer-physician, were wealthy merchants, princes and doctors from all parts of the world.
Rapidly the idea of drugless healing spread over Germany and over the civilized world. In the Fatherland, Hahn the apothecary, Kuhne the weaver, Rikli the manufacturer, Father Kneipp the priest, Lahmann the doctor, and Turnvater Jahn, the founder of physical culture, became enthusiastic pupils and followers of Priessnitz.
Each one of these men enlarged and enriched some special field of the great realm of natural healing. Some elaborated the water cure and natural dietetics, others invented various systems of manipulative treatment, earth, air and light cures, magnetic healing, mental therapeutics, curative gymnastics, etc., etc. Von Peckzely added the Diagnosis from the Eye, which reveals not only the innermost secrets of the human organism, but also Nature's ways and means of cure, and the changes for better or for worse continually occurring in the body.