Originally published around 1950

March 28, 2004

http://www.bibleplus.com/health/rawfood.htm

THE RAW FOOD TREATMENT OF CANCER AND OTHER DISEASES

By Dr. KIRSTINE NOLFI (Denmark)

Originally published around 1950

BEFORE I realized the actual importance of raw vegetable food, my

attitude was exactly the same as that of other doctors -- to treat

the symptoms of the disease without thinking of preventing it. It

ought to be the duty of the medical profession in future to find

means of preventing to a much higher degree than now, instead of

having to cure later on.

That I, as a doctor, went in for exclusively raw vegetable food is

due to the fact that I became ill, even seriously ill, myself. I

developed cancer of the breast. The disease had, of course, been

preceded by wrong nourishment and wrong habits in the course of my

twelve years of hospital training, when I suffered from sluggish

digestion and catarrh of the stomach all the time, disorders which

are still of quite common occurrence among hospital staff members.

Since that time, no change of the hospital diet has taken place in

Denmark in this very important domain. On one occasion I was in a

dying condition because of a bleeding gastric ulcer. This made me

abandon meat and fish, and I became a vegetarian. Later, I took to

eating a good deal of raw vegetable food. In this manner my

digestion became regulated, and I felt better, though not completely

well. In the winter of 1940 to 1941, I was exceptionally tired and

dull, but I was unable to ascertain any specific disease. At that

time I did not understand what was wrong with me, but in the course

of the Spring I discovered a small node in my right breast.

Tired and dull as I was, I did not pay any attention to it until,

five weeks later, I discovered that the node was the size of a hen's

egg. It had grown into the skin, a thing only cancer does. As a

doctor, I had seen enough to be unwilling to submit to the treatment

of cancer generally employed. I consulted my good friend, Dr. M.

Hindhede, who dissuaded a trial microscopy. It would open up the

blood streams and the cancer would spread; so I gave it up. And then

I felt it as quite a natural thing that I would have to carry

through a one hundred per cent raw vegetable diet.

I went in search of nature and lived for a time on a small island in

the Kattegat, took sun-baths from four to five hours daily, slept in

a tent, bathed several times a day, and lived exclusively on a raw

vegetable diet. Later I introduced this habit of life at the

sanatorium " Humlegarden. "

But I was still tired and continued to be so for the first two

months, and during that period the node in the breast did not

diminish; it remained unchanged.

But then the improvement came. The node diminished, my strength

returned. Apparently I recovered and felt better than I had done for

many years. When I had experienced good health in this manner for

about a year, I tried by way of experiment (and urged to do so by

Dr. Hindhede) to revert to a vegetarian diet supplemented by fifty

per cent of raw vegetable food.

But it was no good. In three or four months I began to feel a

stinging pain in the breast, in the sore-like tissue which the

cancer had left where it had originally adhered to the skin. This

pain increased much during the weeks that followed, and I realized

that the cancer had begun to develop again.

Once more I reverted to a pure, raw food, which caused the pain to

subside rapidly and the fatigue to become less pronounced. But,

being a doctor, I realized that I would have to use the experience I

had gained to help my sick fellow creatures. So I set up my home so

that I could have four or five patients staying with me the next

summer. We took a hundred per cent raw vegetable diet and all went

well; but it was not satisfactory with so few patients. I understood

that this cause would have to be advocated under quite different and

larger conditions if any proofs were to be given. On my initiative,

a joint stock company was then formed which bought a

property, " Humlegarden, " well suited for the purpose; it was set up

as a sanatorium, where I became the chief physician. Here, we eat

only raw vegetable food, patients as well as employees, and the

establishment is now in its sixth year.

Now, what is the reason why a one hundred per cent raw vegetable

diet exerts such a beneficial effect on civilized individuals? First

and foremost, because the raw food is live food as it is handed to

us by nature. We all know that life on earth is completely dependent

on our sun. If we had no sun, the earth would be without any life,

dark and icy cold. Vital force is therefore identical with sun

energy!

According to Dr. Hesselink, it is, however, only the plant with its

widely unfolded thin green leaves, that is able to catch the

sunlight and to deposit it in the form of roots and tubers, fruit

and seeds. We human beings, and the animals, with massive bodies,

are not able to utilize it to a sufficiently high degree. Therefore,

both man and beast use plants as carriers between the sun and

themselves. A fresh, raw vegetable diet is sunlight nourishment!

Dr. Bircher-Benner, of Zurich, realized this long ago. Dr.

Hesselink, from Holland, believes that it is the atoms which are the

carriers of the solar energy.

Fresh, raw vegetable food possesses the highest nutritive value, and

this cannot be increased or improved; anything else, such as

heating, drying, storing, fermentation or preservation, will tend to

reduce and destroy its value. Boiled vegetables taste of nothing, so

something must be done to make them palatable. We mix many different

things together; we add salt, sugar, spices and butter. We remove

the germ and the husk from the wheat to use the flour for baking. We

polish the rice, we refine the sugar; we remove the skin, seeds, and

cores of apples and pears, we peel the potatoes and scrape the

carrots. Meat, fish, eggs and cheese supply us with an enormous

surplus of animal protein. We make beverages of coffee and cocoa

beans, and tea, which contain stimulating poisons.

We use the grapes for wine and brandy -- intoxicating poisons --

which first stimulate the gray cortex of the brain, and later

paralyze it. We preserve food with chemicals, such as benzoic acid,

salicylic acid, nitrates, boric acid and sulphurous acid in order

that it may keep well, and look attractive. Further, we take

anodynes, hypnotics, sedatives, and aperients--all strong chemical

poisons -- or at any rate, substances that are foreign to the

organism. Among drugs which are misused to a great extent, tablets

for headache, hypnotics, and aperients are much too predominant. In

a small country like Denmark, the adviser on pharmacological matters

of the Public Health Authorities is able to give us the following

figures: consumption of drugs for headache 150 tons, aperients 15

tons, hypnotics 9 tons--annually.

Nicotine, too, is a ruinous stimulant, a still stronger poison than

spirits; it causes sclerosis of the heart and the cardiac

musculature to become undernourished. The heart becomes a flaccid

bag instead of a firm muscle. Many busy men who die about the age of

fifty years die of heart failure caused by chronic nicotine

poisoning. Here, too, I have experienced that patients on a pure,

raw vegetable diet gradually lose their taste for tobacco completely.

The ground, too, is wrongly cultivated when it is fertilized too

much and too uniformly with chemical manure. We may run the risk

that the ground becomes just as diseased as man -- over-acidified,

overnourished, and that it yields sick plants which are not fit for

human food.

Raw food is termed live food by me, in contrast with such food as

has been treated by heating, which I consider dead food. Care should

be taken that the food does not include substances which counteract

the chemistry of the organism, so that the waste products are not

retained too long and putrefy in the large intestine. The best food

is therefore completely natural food which has not been subjected to

denaturation of any kind. To this must be added that live food is

much easier to digest; it helps in the digestion itself just as the

living baby co-operates in its delivery. Raw vegetables have been

digested in the stomach and the intestines in an hour; boiled

vegetables require almost three hours and leave more waste products,

also offensive stools, impure blood, and poisoned and gradually

impaired organs, whereas the raw food -- live food -- the sunlight

nourishment, dissolves and excretes these poisons. Raw food is easy

to digest, it spares and strengthens the organism in every respect

because of its content of life, bases, and vitamins in their

natural, living combination and relationship to one another.

Everybody who can think, must be able to understand that our present

nutrition is highly destructive -- and is the most common and most

serious cause of physical and psychic diseases and constitutional

degeneration. We must seek more wholesome nourishment and more

wholesome habits of life if we are to live better now and in the

future. We cannot afford to compromise when life and health are

concerned. We must follow the only right way -- the one hundred per

cent raw vegetable diet.

Let us consider for a moment how it influences our many different

diseases. In the individual case it will always, on the one hand,

depend on how good a constitution the patient has and how old he is,

and on the other hand how poisoned, weakened and broken this

constitution has gradually become because of preceding wrong

nutrition and wrong habits. But it may be said, largely, that if, in

spite hereof, the organism is fairly fit for work and able to

utilize the exclusively raw diet, the latter will exert a curative

effect on almost all our diseases, both those we have acquired

during our span of life and those determined by hereditary

predispositions.

Even the baby unborn may be injured in various ways. The impaired

germ may determine both physical and psychic diseases. The baby may

be injured by the wrong nutrition of the mother, because it is

nourished through the impure blood of the mother. This may pave the

way for disease so that the baby is born ill. After its birth the

condition is aggravated, mostly because the mother's milk is not as

good, both qualitatively and quantitatively. Children all over the

civilized world are born weaklings in a mild or severer degree, and

who can estimate the future consequence thereof? Therefore, the

sooner we go in for exclusively raw vegetable food, the sooner and

better it will exert its effect. Children are assisted by nature,

older individuals are rather opposed by nature. When a mother goes

in for pure raw food, her milk secretion is immediately increased,

the child thrives in all respects, the vitality is increased, and

the mother can soon begin to give even young babies an addition of

finely chopped fruit and vegetables; never, however, fruit and

vegetables at the same time--always separately. It borders on the

incomprehensible that a change can be effected so rapidly, just by

giving the child wholesome mother's milk, as much as it requires,

and afterwards fruit and vegetables.

I have often experienced how a large family of brothers and sisters

living exclusively on a raw vegetable diet became healthy, happy,

lively and nice children in the course of a few months, so good is

the effect of the exclusively raw vegetable diet in childhood, which

is still assisted by nature and has not yet been ruined. The effect

does not appear quite as soon in adults, but it is indisputable that

raw vegetable food exerts a good effect on adults too, even

psychically it brings about equanimity and harmony, kindness and

sympathy.

But what of the elderly sick or the very sick people who have gone

in for this diet too late? How about them?

Well, they have to be patient, energetic, and very interested, and

they must be able to rest much, at any rate to begin with. The first

few days may be troublesome until they have become accustomed to

this different food and habit of life. But they will soon do better;

the bowels open regularly -- two or three times daily -- and this is

a great encouragement to many. At the " Humlegarden " garlic has its

great share in this improvement. Just one clove with every fruit

meal is of effect, but it is, of course, better to eat a medium-

sized garlic (from five to ten cloves) with the fruit meals. A

number of works by various investigators have been published,

dealing with the bactericidal effect of garlic, which people of

former times guessed. According to investigations reported in the

Journal of the American Chemical Society, 1944, a substance known as

allicin, which exerts a great inhibitory effect on bacteria, has

been found in garlic. This substance has been compared with

penicillin in a number of experiments, and it appeared that allicin

exerts its effects on practically all bacteria in contrast with

penicillin, the effect of which is certainly stronger but much more

limited. The use of garlic is rendered difficult because of its

peculiar odor; therefore, people in Denmark often return to

the " Humlegarden " to undergo a course of treatment with garlic. In

the company of others who eat garlic themselves, the odor cannot be

smelt at all.

Raw vegetable food, and in particular raw potatoes, exert an

excellent effect on all forms of rheumatism and rheumatic arthritis

when these diseases have not progressed too far. A good effect is

also seen on the diseases related to those just mentioned and of the

same causation, namely, loading with uric acid; it applies to

psoriasis, hemicrania, stone-formation in the gallbladder, the renal

pelvis and the urinary bladder. Almost all diseases of the skin are

cured, in many cases even rapidly. Loss of hair, fat formation, and

dandruff cease. All infectious diseases are cured or improve.

The garlic we eat exerts an excellent effect on putrefaction in the

large intestine, and a clove of garlic in either side of the mouth,

placed between the cheek and the teeth, will greatly accelerate the

expurgation and cure of diseases in the upper respiratory tract,

first and foremost ordinary colds if dealt with in time. Diseases

such as catarrh of the nose, the throat and the larynx, bronchitis

and tuberculosis of the lungs, inflammation of the frontal sinus or

the maxillary sinus, chronic inflammation of tonsils and gums,

inflammation of the middle ear, and others, are cured completely in

most cases. Gastric catarrh, gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer, catarrh

of the large intestine, and hemorrhoids too.

Women who carry through the raw diet during pregnancy feel well --

delivery takes place readily and rapidly and almost without pain,

the slender, healthy, strong baby cooperates. The raw food produces

copious and good milk for the child during the first year if the

mother continues with this diet.

When a person is on an exclusively raw vegetable diet, it will, as a

rule, be easy to stop smoking and drinking. Liquor does not taste

well with raw vegetables. Smoking does not agree with garlic. On an

exclusively raw vegetable diet no stimulants of any kind will be

needed any more.

When cancer occurs, the organism is, as a rule, thoroughly

destroyed. Cancer is the terminal stage. Here a one hundred per cent

raw vegetable diet may prove helpful, alleviate the pain, prolong

the life to some extent, because it agrees well with the patient. In

the most favorable cases, when the cancer is dealt with in time, it

may perhaps also be checked even for many years in some cases. I am

an example of this myself, but then the seat of the cancer must not

be in vital organs, such as the lungs, liver or stomach. And the

treatment with raw food should be commenced as soon as the cancer is

discovered, and it is an absolutely necessary condition that it is

carried through one hundred per cent.

I want now to tell a little about my own case from 1942 to the

present year. Up to 1946 I was doing well on my exclusively raw

diet -- the cancer of the breast was completely quiescent, and my

general health was good.

But in the spring of 1946 we got some dried fruit from Sweden

(raisins, dates, prunes, and figs). I thought then that it would be

all right to eat it; but it was not. These are fruits which have

been treated with chemical poisons in order to preserve them and to

make them look attractive. Having taken them for three or four

months, I suddenly developed violent pains in the scar-like tissue

in the breast, and on closer examination; I found a small node in

the right breast, in the same place as before. Once more I reverted

to the fresh raw food, and the node disappeared.

The last and most dangerous thing for me was, however, the trial

microscopy against which I had been dissuaded by Dr. M. Hindhede. I

had to let it be done because so many -- doctors in particular --

maintained that I had never been suffering from cancer. It was made

at the Radium Center in Copenhagen, in January, 1948. This trial

microscopy was positive; there were cancer cells in the scar-like

tissue in the skin of the right breast, but it was a benign form

called scirrhus. My originally malignant, rapidly growing form of

cancer had thus, under the influence of raw food, been converted

into a benign form of cancer, which remains quiescent. But still

this interference was just on the point of stirring up the cancer so

much as to frighten me seriously. For the first time I developed

metastases (two small nodules) in the armpit; and about six months

on the exclusively raw diet were required to make them subside

again. But it went well this time. Since then I have been in

excellent health -- all through last summer I was up at sunrise, and

in my garden where I have been working hard several hours daily.

This was far more wholesome than sitting indoors working as a

doctor. Not only had I the patients at the " Humlegarden, " but also a

large practice and correspondence out of town; this was more than I

could manage.

On January 1st, 1949, I stopped practicing and took up gardening

again, which had always been my great interest. For this purpose I

had acquired about half a hectare (about one-and-a-quarter acres) of

land near the " Humlegarden, " and here I learned how right it was to

grow both fruit and vegetables biologically, that is, according to

the laws of life. For manure I use only compost, seaweed, straw or

hay; no chemical manure, no dung.

In conclusion, just a few words about the practical conditions and

the everyday use of raw vegetable food. I am glad to be able to

refer to my book Live Food,* which has just been brought out by a

Dutch publishing house and which gives a detailed picture of the

procedure to be followed when changing to a pure raw vegetable diet.

(* not available in English)

It would be of great consequence if the medical profession would

acquire greater knowledge in this field to a higher degree than is

actually the case. Doctors from Denmark and from foreign countries

have visited the " Humlegarden " for shorter or longer periods and

have utilized their experience in their practice. The " Humlegarden "

is visited by about one thousand patients annually. Here the

patients, as well as the members of the staff, live exclusively on

food that has not been treated by heating, and our experience is

that a transition diet is quite superfluous. The raw vegetable diet

can only be varied according to the seasons, and consists of three

meals daily. We get a fruit meal in the morning and in the evening,

and a vegetable meal in the middle of the day. Fruit and vegetables

are never mixed. If the condition of the teeth permits it, the raw

food is taken whole, otherwise it must be grated and reduced to

small particles immediately before the meal. Once the raw food has

been grated or chopped, it will not keep because it loses its

content of vitamins. The raw food should be carefully chewed,

preferably so well that it passes down all by itself, and even the

grated raw food should at any rate be mixed well with saliva. We

drink raw whole milk with all our meals, from half a liter to one

liter daily (one liter equals one-and-three quarter pints approx.).

Germinating corn, or dried corn, crushed or ground immediately

before the meal is taken with the fruit. Garlic is medicine and is

eaten with fruit and milk, cut into small pieces in varying

quantities. All kinds of nuts provide a good supplement. The

vegetable meal consists of green leaves, roots and tubers, with an

admixture of a spoonful of honey. Potatoes are eaten with the peel

because of the presence of an element, fluorine, which preserves the

enamel of the teeth. Similarly, all fruit is eaten with the peel. In

the cases of diseases such as gastric catarrh, gastric ulcer and the

like, care should, however, be taken during the initial stages.

If the exclusively raw food with its associated sound habits of life

prevails, a variety of things will improve. Diseases will gradually

be obviated. Obesity, the most dangerous of all diseases, will

become a rarity.

The housewife's work will be reduced to half the time--and the

leisure hours thus gained will be an invaluable advantage and joy

for husband, children and home. The slender build, the erect

carriage, the supple gait, the fresh complexion, the white, sound

teeth and the vigorous hair will dominate the picture. When the body

is healthy, the result will invariably be a sound mind. Our negative

thoughts will be changed into positive ones, and develop the great

cultural progress which the world is waiting for. Only then will

life be worth living.

Amazing Health Truths Index | BiblePlus Home page

March 29, 2004

not sure if the was posted because of my question earlier. . . .

either way. . . thanks for posting this very interesting article. i

also checked out " humlegarden " (humlegården) and i will share that info

with my brother.

-birte

jetpostman [jetpostman]