VITAL CAPACITY
by C. Leslie Thomson
‘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.