Herbert M. Shelton > Quotes

“Natural laws admit of no exceptions.”
― Herbert M. Shelton

“The effort to cure disease has been, without doubt, the greatest curse that has ever been perpetrated upon the human race. The idea that disease is something that must be cured, the idea that it is something that can be cured, must be eradicated from the human mind before we can hope to arrive at a rational solution of our health problems.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws: An Exposition of the Principles and Practices of Orthopathy

“The Heteropathic babel of medicine, including its theories and practices, is stamped with the seal of delusion. Such uniformity of results seemingly proceeding from such diversity of means and methods is only explicable on the orthopathic principle. If the Heteropathic doctrine were correct the human race would long ago have perished. The present universally chaotic state of medicine, in connection with the irrationality and monstrous absurdity of its various theories of disease and the great, manifest incongruity of medical practice, its use of positively poisonous substances and damaging measures and violent disorganizing processes, used with a view to “help nature” all conspire to place a stamp of delusion upon therapeutics and corroborate the theory of Orthopathy.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws: An Exposition of the Principles and Practices of Orthopathy

“The intelligent person, viewing the great number of so-called diseases that arise out of this prostration of the functions of life, and realising that they have one and all grown out of the habitual violations of the laws of life, will recognise at once that the first step in the restoration of health needs must be to make amends at once by the unconditional return to the simplicity and perfect obedience to the laws that have been so perseveringly violated.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Food Combining Made Easy

“The power to assimilate crude inorganic matter as it is found in the soil, and convert it into living protoplasm and other organic substances, or to use such substances in performing physiological function, does not belong to the animal organism. It is the office of plant life or vegetation to convert the primary elements from their crude inorganic state into the organic state. This conversion cannot be accomplished by any synthetic process known to the laboratory.

After the plant has raised the crude inorganic matter of the soil into plant protoplasm, the animal may take these and raise them to a still higher plane—that of animal protoplasm. But the animal cannot do the work of the plant. He must get his food either directly or indirectly from the plant kingdom. That is, the animal must either eat the plant or its fruits, or he must eat the animal that has eaten the plant. Food must be in the organic form. Air and water form the only exceptions to this rule.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Food and Feeding

“The rock on which the Nature Cure system was wrecked and converted into a spurious system called Naturopathy, was or is, eclecticism—or, small I say, collectivism. Such is the power of education to bias the mind that few seem able to comprehend how it is possible for a disease to be removed without a little medicine or a little treatment of some kind. “It may be little, infinitesimal, the thirtieth dilution, or a ten-millionth part of a drop of the tincture of a shadow, or the weakest decoction of catnip or canary seed; still it must be something unnatural, or nature cannot be assisted!” And if medicine or treatment of any kind or strength is employed as an auxiliary, notwithstanding, Nature is regarded as the true curative power, the little charming, mysterious influence of the drug or treatment will gradually increase its hold upon the imagination and, in the end, expel the natural part of the practice as surely as weeds will crowd out the flowers from an uncultivated field.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws: An Exposition of the Principles and Practices of Orthopathy

“This miscalled science has been fully organized and elaborately equipped for several centuries. It has absorbed such an enormous share of the total wealth of the world that no believable estimate can be made of this. It has been more lavishly encouraged by governments, communities and philanthropic individuals, than any and all other arts and sciences. A greater number of the bright minds of earth have devoted themselves to its problems, and more time has been given to the solution of these problems, than to all the other problems with which scientists and artists contend. And, with what results? Only this—they succeeded for a time in deluding themselves and the race and in estranging man from nature until the universal dupe seemed to consider himself helpless and utterly at the mercy of the arrogant, intolerant and all-grasping schools and confederations of schools. But they have not succeeded in finding one real cure for a single form of disease, and all of them have been forced to admit their failure. At present the fact is beginning to dawn upon the minds of a few that nature is not to be coerced or cajoled by the administration of poisons or by the application of drugless methods, but that she does her own repairing in her own way and has provided simply and adequately for this.”
― Herbert M. Shelton, Human Life Its Philosophy and Laws: An Exposition of the Principles and Practices of Orthopathy

“Conventional eating habits violate all of the rules of food combining in the preceding chapters and, since the majority of people manage to live for at least a few years and to "enjoy" their aches and pains and their frequent "spells of sickness," few of them are willing to give any intelligent consideration to their eating habits. They usually declare, when the subject of food combining comes up, that they eat all of the condemned combinations regularly and it does not hurt them. Life and death, health and disease are mere matters of accident to them. Unfortunately they are encouraged in this view by medical advisers.”
― Herbert M. Shelton