Nature Cure Scotland Downloads

A CLEAR HEAD

By C. LESLIE THOMSON.

Of all the seemingly minor ailments one may suffer -­‐ things scarcely painful or crippling enough to rate as “real diseases” -­‐ a feeling of being not quite clear-­‐headed is one of the worst. In different people, it takes varying forms: in some, it shows mainly as poor memory; in others a difficulty in finding the right word; still others may have occasional spells of feeling slightly “unreal ” or, and this is the most usual complaint, there may be a vague and generalised sensation of cotton-­‐woolliness which makes the head feel thick and the senses dulled.

BE KIND TO YOUR KIDNEYS
by C. Leslie Thomson

Often, a new patient will express mild surprise—perhaps even downright incredulity—when we suggest that disordered kidneys are an important factor in their condition. The patient may have come to us because ‘of a skin irritation, some form
of respiratory weakness or nagging headaches: perhaps the main symptom may be rheumatic or apparently cardiac distress. Even if none of these, we consider it an essential part of all preliminary consultations to assess the efficiency of the kidneys. Only rarely do we find these organs exempt from the overall bodily disease.

BREATHE HIGH, WIDE & HANDSOME

by C. Leslie Thomson

To perform its marvellously varied functions, the human body requires energy: so far as we can determine, this energy comes from combustion. That is by no means a rigid fact, but for all practical purposes we are kept going by the oxidation of fuel within our tissues, plus a variable contribution of direct radiation from the sun. There appears to be no reason to consider human energy as a mystic or super-­‐natural phenomenon. This being so, we may adopt a fairly objective and materialistic attitude to the problems associated with our energy, or lack of it.

Just as oil or solid fuel burns in a furnace, so do the body’s particular forms of fuel burn within its cells, releasing energy in a variety of forms. In a muscle-­‐cell, for example, the greater part of the energy appears, through a series of complex steps, as a contraction that may help to move a limb. In a different way, although still using the same basic fuel and still requiring oxygen to ‘burn’ it, a nerve cell produces impulses that may be roughly described as electrical. These impulses may serve a wide variety of purposes; sending information to the brain in the form of sight, sound, feeling, pain, taste, smell etc., or instructing a muscle to contract or a stomach to secrete digestive juices.

CATARRHAL TENDENCIES

by C. Leslie Thomson

Catarrh, in one form or another, is so widespread a condition that one need offer no apology for examining the subject more fully.

In one sense, it is the most important of all simple disease states, since the manner of its treatment may decisively influence the individual’s future. Properly understood and rationally handled, a catarrhal system is capable of rectifying itself in an almost astonishingly complete way: treated suppressively, the body may become so handicapped that there is no limit to the unpleasantness that may develop. In early stages, there may be tonsillitis, sinusitis, and earache: in more advanced cases the breakdown may be evident as asthma, hay fever and pneumonia: still worse, one may find mastoid inflammation, diphtheria and tubercular breakdown.

COLDS AND INFLUENZA

by C. Leslie Thomson

The fundamental difference between orthodox and Naturopathic attitudes to disease is probably most clearly obvious in the case of the common cold. Whereas the doctors, and their drug-­‐manufacturing associates, spend much time and money trying to discover ‘the cure’, since the time of Hippocrates the Naturopathically-­‐minded observer has had a contrary attitude. Instead of regarding a cold as an evil to be fought, the more perceptive student has recognised the eliminative and corrective function of the cold. A cold is not in need of ‘cure’; it is in need of understanding. A cold is not a ‘disease’ (except in the limited, literal sense of being uncomfortable and causing dis-­‐ease); it is in itself the body’s own cure for a pre-­‐existing state of disease and disorder.

To the reader who accepts Nature Cure principles, the foregoing will appear elementary and obvious; but it may seem nonsense to anyonewho has not previously been exposed to our ideas. The latter individual is the victim of a conditioning process, in which there are powerful vested interests in his continuing ignorance. The honest teacher does not make a fortune from his information; the enterprising merchant may easily do so when he is able to manipulate gullibility and fear.

Dry up, not Drink up!

Against the popular belief that we should drink at least three pints of water a day — even if we have to force it down, and this on top of the other liquids we take in as coffee, tea, fizzy drinks etc. How can I convince anyone that moderation in liquids is more healthy? As a third-­‐generation member of the school which has consistently warned against watery excess. I believe we have excellent reasons for advocating what is sometimes, rather dauntingly called dry feeding.

I believe there is a simple explanation for the medical faith in copious drinking. Doctors and nurses who urge high water intake are constantly confronted by patients who are predominantly on atrocious diets and strong medication. If unwholesome foodstuff can be flushed out, and drugs kept diluted such patient’s chances of survival may be improved.

by C. Leslie Thomson A round dozen years ago, while sorting through a cupboard full of James C. Thomson’s papers, I noticed a postcard pinned up inside the door. I […]

by C. Leslie Thomson In recent months, the topical press has reported a number of findings by medical investigators relating to tooth health . . . or the lack of it. […]

HIGH AND LOW BLOOD PRESSURE

Leslie Thomson
FOREWORD

A couple of years after writing his classic The Heart, James C. Thomson produced a companion work, High and Low Blood Pressure, which extended the principles to a wider field. The second book was regularly reprinted over about twentyZthree years, but the publishers decided against further issue after 1962. We still receive requests for the book, and what follows is an attempt to reZstate the essential points in a concise fashion.

CHAPTER”1 — CLARIFICATION

Many unfortunates have been told that they suffer from ‘blood pressure’ but few are given any explanation of what that signifies. Often it means little in itself, but may give rise to serious anxieties. Often the diagnosis is incorrect, because too little regard is given to the whole state of the patient. Even where diagnosis is technically accurate, the treatment based thereon may be inappropriate, because the physician has failed to recognise primary causes and directs his efforts at suppressing symptoms. These comments may themselves seem to lack positive value, but their significance should become clear as we proceed. Even the gravest abnormality of blood pressure is but a symptom of some irregularity of structure or function elsewhere, and it often calls for real patience to follow the links and so discover what adjustments are necessary; even more patience to persevere with the reforms which these entail.

It is now a full century since James C Thomson returned from America after training with Henry Lindlahr in his sanatorium in Illinois so I am writing this introduction as a fourth generation Nature Cure adherent. From Henry Lindlahr who taught my grandparents James C Thomson and Jessie R Thomson through my father C Leslie Thomson.

Reports that a medical group has recently been formed to study the “commonest cause of inability to work -­‐ back trouble” prompts me to express a few thoughts on the subject. Having been trained—like all graduates of the Edinburgh School of Natural Therapeutics -­‐ to recognise signs of derangement in lower-­‐back structure, and having fairly diligently applied that knowledge for forty years, I feel less-­‐than-­‐usually inhibited by modesty.

Human beings are not unlike the living cells that make up every individual’s body. Each has its own personality, but the behaviour of the group may be strikingly different from that of its components. We are probably all familiar with at least some aspects of this in real life, having seen peaceable and rational individuals become collectively menacing. Those responsible for public order know all about the effect, and recognise its dangers in certain situations. Where people congregate with nothing to do, but having a sense of grievance, a kind of bitter fermentation is liable to occur.

In this attempt to explain psychosomatic illness we may well begin by quoting an orthodox medical statement: “All illness moves toward resolution or death. The patient either gets better or he dies.”

Acute illness, usually regarded in Nature Cure circles as a healing crisis, or a spring clean, is vigorous -­‐ possibly even dramatic, in the sense of involving high temperatures and striking symptoms -­‐ and it can incur considerable pain or distress. But after reaching a climax of activity at any time within up to forty-­‐eight hours, it then proceeds to resolution.

“How can I relax?” has become one of the commonest questions we are asked.

The answer, as in so many other situations, in another question: “Why are you tense?” It need not be put into words, of course, but the second must be answered in one way or another before any really constructive advice can be offered for the first. To most people, excessive tension is in the same category as a headache, and the popular belief is that there can be a cure analogous to aspirins. The medical profession, too, seems to favour the drug approach, and sedatives and tranquillisers are prescribed wholesale to undo the destructive tensions.

Rheumatism is no more incurable than the person who has it. Consider well this report:

“Although on looking back I can see that my health was deteriorating in my late teens, it was not until the age of 26 that rheumatoid arthritis developed in earnest. Several things had probably led up to this, both physical and mental.

During my late teens I had long stretches of night duty during air raids and became very tired, having a series of minor illnesses that were treated in the usual (I would now realise, wrong) way. I also remember being ravenous, and filling up on white bread and tea -­‐ certainly the food was very poor by Kingston

An understanding of the meaning and purpose of the healing crisis is so vital in Nature Cure that no apology is offered for re-­‐examining it in these pages. It is a phenomenon that has intrigued almost every new patient, and has -­‐ unhappily

-­‐ frightened a few. The name itself is unfortunate, having shared the same fate

as the term “Nature Cure” in being so often used in careless and inaccurate fashion. “Crisis” should mean nothing more than a turning point and, in conjunction with “healing”, ought to convey none of the gloomy foreboding with which so many politicians have invested the word.

THE HEALTHY HUMAN GUT

by C. Leslie Thomson

Early in 1943, James C. Thomson saw the publication of what was probably his most ambitious piece of writing. Based on over thirty years of professional experience, and a vast collection of information from all manner of sources, he succeeded in putting together what he called ‘a sixty-­‐piece jigsaw puzzle’. The pieces represented
a seemingly ill-­‐assorted set of facts and findings in the fields of human health, animal behaviour, sociology,

psychology, medical belief, folklore, political expediency and salesmanship. The one feature common to all was the function of the gut -­‐ normal and disordered -­‐ and the work was originally entitled Constipation and Our Civilisation. It was quickly recognised by many of his contemporaries as a fundamental contribution. Sir Albert Howard, for example, called it ‘a remarkable book that must be read’. Because of some regulation on advertising at the time, subsequent editions of the book were retitled Two Health Problems, with ‘Constipation and Our Civilisation’ as the subsidiary name. In this form it ran through several reprintings until James C. Thomson’s death in 1960. It had, by then, been due for a major revision and the publishers invited me to carry out a re-­‐casting of the material. The outcome was a slimmer volume, a new name -­‐ Intestinal Fitness -­‐ and the omission of much contemporary comment of 1943 which, by 1961, lacked relevance. (Also, as several aspects of the argument in the original work had been developed more fully in other writings, a somewhat simpler sequence became possible.) Because of a combination of circumstances, by 1976 the publishers allowed the book to go out of print. However, there is a continuing demand for the work, and what follows is an attempt to present the essence of James C. Thomson’s message. Here and there this has been made easier by the wider acceptance of ideas considered heretical a third of a century ago, or by the availability of related writings, as noted above. As far as possible the sequence and character of J.C.T.’s argument have been preserved.

Most people are aware of the importance of their skin to their appearance -­‐ showing them to be either glowing with health or pale and pasty -­‐ but fewer realise how much their health actually depends upon the skin’s activity. It is no accident that when we check the state of the blood cleansing organs of a new patient, the skin comes first on our list. Not only does its superficial position make it easy to examine; its condition reflects that of the body as a whole, while any disorder in its functions affects the entire system.

That word ‘approach’ reflects an essential feature of Naturopathy -­‐ its philosophical attitude to the problems of life. It is no mere collection of empirical techniques, although like any practical system it had its beginnings in many fields of observation and in trial and error. Its theories are co-­‐ordinated with facts in a consistent fashion which justifies its being called a method.

* President of the Incorporated Society of Registered Naturopaths, and Co-­‐Director of the Kingston Clinic, Edinburgh

What this implies may be clarified by considering a person who has headache, and who consults a variety of individuals about his problem. The first might prescribe an analgesic, perhaps combined with an anti-­‐depressant. Another could offer to sell him extracts from vegetable tissues, but essentially intended to have the same effects as the ethical prescription. Still other advisers would propose to make the sufferer unaware of his distress, by some form of mental exercise, suggestion or counter-­‐irritant.

Introduction

Alec Milne graduated as a naturopath in 1951, and became a Director of the Kingston Clinic in 1955. He is an ex-­‐President of the Incorporated Society of Registered Naturopaths, and since Kingston’s closure has moved into out-­‐ patient practice in Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Born 14.4.21, influenced by boyhood asthma and its return during war service as a pilot, he came as a student to Kingston and the Edinburgh School of Natural Therapeutics in 1946. The Kingston Clinic at the time was an established residential clinic set in 8 acres of its own grounds and run by the Thomson Family in the emerging Nature Cure tradition.

The founder, James C. Thomson had started his practice in 1912 in the family home in Albany Street, Edinburgh. Following this, he established a prestigious centre in Drumsheugh Gardens that was then, centre of orthodox medical practice and Nursing Homes complex. In 1938 he acquired what became the Kingston Clinic to cope with his expanding, but still virtually unknown Nature Cure practice. He was an inveterate proselytiser, producing a monthly magazine, giving lectures and was supported in this by C. Leslie Thomson his son, who produced a series of monograms that are still remarkably relevant today.

‘Why should a man who has lived a Nature Cure life for fifty years develop a degenerative disease?’ It seems a simple question, and its implications are challenging, but there is no general answer that will be adequate in particular cases. (If time can be spared and trouble taken one can usually find plenty of reasons.) Quite apart from the uncertainty of the description ‘Nature Cure life’, the question carries a false implication. There is the suggestion that we promise our patients or expect for ourselves -­‐ a total freedom from serious disorder and a life far longer than that of ‘ordinary’ people.

Although certain enthusiasts in the fast-­‐fading past may have allowed themselves such vanities as ‘l expect to live to one hundred and fifty’ or ‘my son is the healthiest man in the world‘, most Naturopaths and their patients rightly regarded such claims with friendly and amused reserve. Who could blame a man for a little bit of exaggeration, when he had himself experienced the near-­‐miracle of recovery from a condition ordinarily regarded as rapidly fatal? Such exuberance is understandably human; but if taken seriously it betrays a lack of human understanding.

Naturopathic practice has a long and complex history, and among its origins

‘The Water Cure’ must be credited with a major contribution. This is not to say that we accept many of the teachings and beliefs of early ‘water curers ’, but it was among them that some of the essential principles of natural healing were

first recognised. The idea of ‘ a cure ’ is anathema to those who practise what we call ‘ Straight Nature Cure ’ (which also has affinities with what others call ‘ Hygienism ’ or ‘ Natural Hygiene ’), and in the early days -­‐ just as in the present

-­‐ many regarded water applications as a substitute for medication. Because the medicines of the times were violent and disagreeable, water applications were inclined in the same direction -­‐ the motto of the day was ‘kill or cure ’.

One age-old teaching of the Nature Cure School is that no man can be well physically if he is upset emotionally. The mentally disturbed individual who is unhappy, worried, fearful, resentful or probably worst of all in a destructively hating attitude of mind, will inevitably find these emotions being expressed through a sick body. Conversely, of course, if one is in a state of physical turmoil and pain, controls are ineffective, nerves are on edge, depression sets in and the outlook is macabre. Either way we are not normal, nor are our reactions normal.

Two of the most vital therapeutic necessities are proper emotional balance and correct mental adjustment. Even amid today’s psychological glibness there is little understanding of their far reaching significance. My professional experience almost convinces me that they are the most important factors in the realm of health. Most people, if they are in earnest, will observe a strict dietary regimen, will carry out regular and energetic exercises, will take cold baths even on wintry mornings and all for their health’s sake submit to every kind of disagreeable treatment. Few, however, will face the fact that the sick body has become ill for one of two reasons: either because the mentality which dominates the scene is secretly determined to make it ill, or because the body is in such a state of emotional agitation that it does not respond normally to situations, and is therefore unable to protect and maintain itself in a reasonable state of healt