How I Got Into Natural Healing

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How I Got Into Natural Healing

 

How It All Started

It was either the shots or the blood.

 

Since the earliest I can remember, going to the doctor

meant getting a needle in the rear end. When I was a

preschooler, our family doctor seemed genuinely old.

He had been a general practitioner for thirty years or

so before I went to him. As soon as I could read, I

noticed that his ancient medical degree dated from the

1920's. His methods were not refined. He gave me

what he thought was a smile, had my parents forcibly

flip me upside down onto his worn, paper-covered black

leather examination table, and jab me in the keester.

I couldn't have been thinking too deeply at that age,

but evidently the impression those hypodermic needles

made on me were deep in more ways than one. Somewhere

in the back of my mind it seemed that there must be

more to medicine than silver-colored instruments and

pain.

 

While in high school, I looked, and occasionally

acted, like the type of kid who would someday be a

doctor. Combine skinniness, eyeglasses, honor

society, and graduating two or three years ahead of my

class, and you might just expect that. I was the kid

who could cut up anything in biology class and dissect

toads, bullheads and fetal pigs at home on Saturdays.

I turned my bedroom into a chemistry lab. I started a

science club at school and attended future physicians'

seminars. Once, at a meeting of the local medical

society, we watched a movie showing some surgical

operations. From the first foot-long incision, I knew

I had a problem. During small group discussions, I

lightly asked if anyone had ever become a doctor who

could not stand the sight of (human) blood. The

responding doctor said, politely smiling, that rather

few had done so.

 

During my second and third years in college I arranged

to observe surgery at various hospitals. This seemed

like a good way to overcome my aversion to slicing

into a live person. It took over two hours by bus to

get to see my first operation at the then small

hospital in Dansville, New York. I was the first

gowned-up non-nurse in the operating room when they

wheeled in the patient. She was old enough to be my

great-grandmother, and in for a breast biopsy. As she

turned towards me she could not have missed seeing

that I was as white as my mask. Perhaps she noticed

the cold sweat on my forehead.

 

She quietly said, " You're not the doctor, are

you? "

 

" No, ma'am, " I answered.

 

" Oh, good! " she said, and closed her eyes,

smiling.

 

I had brought comfort on my very first day.

 

When they gave her anesthetic, she was asked to count

backwards from one hundred. She never made it to 99.

I managed the opening incision, saw that fat was

bright orange, and the lump proved benign. Afterwards,

I was offered coffee by every single person in the

doctors' lounge. Maybe that was out of courtesy, but

I think word got around and they thought I needed the

caffeine.

 

I knew now that I could handle an inch-long incision

without passing out. From there, I watched more

extensive operations at larger hospitals. One

procedure is particularly memorable. Another elderly

woman was in for an adrenalectomy. I was told that

this was to help relieve her severe arthritis pain.

Having by now seen enough abdomens opened up, I

watched with well concealed surprise as the operating

team turned her over and made really generous cuts at

the level of the lowest rib. It then occurred to me

that, of course, this was the shortest route to the

kidneys on which the adrenal glands are perched. The

kidneys are each protected by ribs. I waited for the

rib-spreaders next. In a stainless-steel flash, the

chief surgeon instead produced the largest pair of tin

snips I have ever seen. By " tin snips " I mean those

massive metal-cutting scissors that would cut through

a Buick.

 

Oh, no, he's not really going to...

 

" CRUNCH! "

 

Yes, as a matter of fact he was.

 

" CRUNCH! " Those were the genuinely loud sounds of

human ribs being cut. The lady's body shook with each

cut. Oh well, I thought, they'll put them back when

they're done. They didn't. The ribs were removed,

casually placed in a pan, and that was the last of

them. The adrenals were easily removed after that.

 

You might think that right then and there I'd

immediately begin a passionate search for a painless,

natural cure for arthritis. No, for I could now

better stand the incisions and the blood, and I wanted

to be a doctor.

 

It was Professor John I. Mosher at the State

University of New York College at Brockport who first

asked me to reconsider what " being a doctor " actually

meant. Was it about being the M.D. in the white coat,

or was it about really helping people get well? It

was a good point, and I largely ignored it. After

all, I already assumed that it was essential to be a

medical doctor in order to do healing. Weren't

chiropractors, dentists, optometrists and other

professionals just helpers? I wanted to be one of the

guys at the TOP of the health heap!

 

Dr. Mosher told me to read a book, The Pattern of

Health (now out of print), by an English physician

named Aubrey T. Westlake, M.D. It changed everything.

Dr. Westlake wrote of his long experience as a

practitioner. He said that during his professional

life, he had mostly been engaged in " bailing out

leaking boats. " I followed Dr. Westlake's narrative

with increasing fascination as he described his search

for real healing. He ended up WAY outside of

conventional medicine. Herbology, homeopathy,

naturopathy... these approaches were utterly new to

me. Yet Dr. Westlake, a fully qualified doctor of

medicine, saw value in these unorthodox treatments. I

could not simply disregard them. This man just did not

seem to be a complete idiot.

 

I began to think that there was something to these

natural healing methods after all.

 

That, of course, was only the beginning. The really

subversive thing about reading books is that each good

one leads to many others. So it was with me. If

there wasn't yet a medical blacklist or " Index "

listing all health heresy in print, I think I came

reasonably close to creating one during college and

graduate school. I read Medical Nemesis, by Dr. Ivan

Illich, Who is Your Doctor and Why, by Alonzo J.

Shadman, M.D., and dozens of research papers reprinted

by the former Lee Foundation for Nutritional Research.

Works of Dr. Linus Pauling, Dr. Abram Hoffer, Drs.

Wilfred and Evan Shute, Dr. Paavo Airola, Dr. Ewan

Cameron, Dr. Richard Passwater, Dr. Robert

Mendelssohn, Dr. Roger J. Williams, Dr. Edward Bach

and many other respected scientists eventually

persuaded me that natural healing was not only valid

but was generally superior to conventional

drug-and-surgery medicine.

 

As an undergraduate, I spent a year studying at the

Australian National University. While there, a friend

and I calculated that a person would have to eat

something in the neighborhood of 7,000 oranges a day

to get the amount of vitamin C recommended by Dr.

Linus Pauling. Seemed like a lot to me, but I soon

began to take a daily vitamin C supplement. While

doing graduate work as a bachelor, I began

vegetarianism. To tell you the truth, I did this

mostly to have fewer dishes to wash. It also seemed

to me that vegetarian meals were cheaper and took less

time to prepare. I avoided a lot of greasy pots and

pans and, as a side benefit, began to feel better as

well.

 

Around this time I tried fasting. Not on myself, of

course, but on my dog. It happened that the dog

developed quite a fever and curled up in a corner of

the dining room all day and night. I checked with the

vet, and he said that it was not dangerous to leave

the dog to itself, so I did. That dog stayed curled

up in that corner for three days. It moved only for

water and to go outside for bathroom purposes. The

dog ate nothing at all during those three days. It

slept, and I watched. On the fourth day, the dog got

up and was its own doggy self again. The fever was

gone, and it was generally as if nothing was ever

wrong.

 

This got me thinking.

 

Not long afterwards I got sick. Real sick. Sick

enough that neighbors stopped by to check on me. I

began to fast, basically duplicating what my dog had

done with the exception that I did not sleep in the

corner. (I also did not use the outdoors for

excretory purposes). To my dull-headed surprise, I

was comfortable eating nothing. All I wanted were

liquids and sleep. The illness was over quickly,

without any medicines. The result was good, but it

was the PROCESS by which I'd gotten better that really

intrigued me. This sounds odd, but while fasting I'd

felt the best I had ever felt while feeling bad.

Certainly I had been very ill, yet this simple cure

was completely satisfactory. Hmm.

 

I continued with my informal postgraduate study in

naturopathy. This kept me reading more and more books

on natural healing written by experienced doctors.

These physicians treated extremely serious diseases

with fasting, diet, herbs, homeopathy, minerals and

vitamins. I finally began taking a natural multiple

vitamin every day, and continued to live alone, work

and further my education.

 

From reading we can soak up many facts but it is

having children that really tests our knowledge.

Exams and theses on one hand, babies on the other.

Raising a family provides plenty of opportunity to see

whether an idea is any good or not. Marriage and kids

showed me that nature-cure works. It is simple, safe,

economical, and effective. Of course, we've all been

told that anything easy, cheap and harmless cannot

possibly be any good.

 

That's what I had thought, too. Ever since those

first injections in the rump.

 

It turns out that the natural therapeutics are as good

or better than allopathic (drug-based) medicine.

During my bouts with pneumonia, experience showed me

that Erythromycin will not cure it as fast as

high-dose vitamin C therapy will. My father once had

angina and an irregular heartbeat. He now has none of

those symptoms, because he takes quite a lot of

vitamin E each day. He found that the vitamin works

better than the prescriptions he'd been taking, and

doesn't have the side effects, either.

 

Outside my family, I have seen " hopeless " cases turn

around with natural therapy: impending blindness

reversed, multiple sclerosis improved, mental illness

ended, hips rebuilt without surgery, malignancies

shrunken, immune systems restored, severe arthritis

eliminated, all these and many more; all cured without

drugs.

 

After you see this happen again and again it begins to

reach you: these truly ARE simple, safe, economical,

and effective natural treatments. And, they work on

the REAL diseases.

 

Does health have to hurt and cost a fortune? Are

blood and drugs prerequisites for healing? Is a

hospital really the best place for getting better?

Have medical doctors cornered the market on healing

knowledge? Is nature-cure a lot of hooey?

 

Don't you believe it. Instead, see for yourself.

Read a few of those books at the health food store.

Change your diet. Next time you are sick, try a

natural alternative instead. Find out for yourself.

That's what I did, and it has worked.

 

And that is how I got into natural healing.

 

Copyright C 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul.

From the books QUACK DOCTOR and PAPERBACK CLINIC,

available from Dr. Andrew Saul, Number 8 Van Buren

Street, Holley, New York 14470.