Thus the "lay doctors," the "Nature Cure physicians," were and are at present constantly exposed to the strictest critical supervision by the "regulars," and if the latter can prove that a patient has died because the natural methods were inefficient or harmful, the lay practitioner can be prosecuted for and convicted of malpractice or man-slaughter.
But in point of fact, while a number of these lay physicians were brought before the courts, in no instance could the actual harmfulness of the methods employed by them be proven. The natural methods of treatment became so popular that, as a matter of self-preservation, the younger generation of physicians in Germany had to fall in line with the Nature Cure idea in their practice.
Since Dr. E. so strongly questions the efficacy of our methods, I may be permitted to say something about my own professional experience.
Nature Cure in America
During the last ten years, I have treated and cured all kinds of serious acute diseases without resorting to allopathic drugs. In a very extensive practice, I have not in all these years lost a single case of appendicitis (and not one of them was operated upon), of typhoid fever, diphtheria, smallpox, scarlet fever, etc., and only one case of cerebro-spinal meningitis and of lobar pneumonia. These facts may be verified from the records of the Health Department of the City of Chicago.
After the foregoing statements, I leave it to my readers to judge whether the Nature Cure philosophy is inspired by blind fanaticism and based upon ignorance and inexperience, or whether it is justified in the light of scientific facts advanced by the Regular School of Medicine itself and demonstrated by the wonderful success of the Nature Cure movement in Germany, which in its different forms has attained world-wide recognition and adoption.
There is a popular saying: "The proof of the pudding is in the eating." The following letter will explain itself:
January 20, 1913.
Dear Dr. Lindlahr:—
You may remember that last winter, Mrs. White and I attended your Sunday afternoon lectures in the Schiller Building. Those lectures were an education—I might better say a revelation and an inspiration.