Arnold Ehret

Arnold Ehret (1866–1922) is the author of several health and fitness books.

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Professor Arnold Ehret, revered as the original father of naturopathy, is considered to be the most important researcher and author regarding the health and preservation of the human body by his followers. These followers, called Ehretists, believe that no other scientist, doctor, dietitian, or author has surpassed Ehret’s work concerning the cause and cure of chronic disease and human illness. Ehret is claimed to have discovered that the human body is an “air-gas engine” that is powered exclusively by oxygen and that a diet consisting of starchless fruits and green-leafy vegetables is the only food fit for human consumption. Ehret produced a dietetic treatise entitled the Mucusless Diet Healing System.

Biography

Arnold Ehret was born July 25, 1866, near Freiburg, in Baden, Germany. His father was a farmer who crafted all of his own farming equipment. Like his father, Ehret would be endowed with a passion for studying the cause and effect of phenomena. His interests were physics, chemistry, drawing and painting. He also had an affinity for linguistics and could speak German, French, Italian, and English.

At the age of 21 he graduated as a professor of drawing and was drafted into the military only to be discharged because of heart trouble. At the age of 31 he was diagnosed with Bright's disease (inflammation of the kidneys), and pronounced incurable by 24 of Europe’s most respected doctors. He then explored natural healing and visited sanatoriums to learn holistic methods and philosophies. In a desperate attempt to quench his misery Ehret decided to stop eating. To his amazement he did not starve but gained in strength and vitality.^{[citation needed]}

In 1899 he traveled to Berlin to study vegetarianism, followed by a trip to Algiers in northern Africa where he experimented with fasting and fruit diet. Due to his new lifestyle, Ehret claimed to have cured himself of his diseases and to be able to perform feats of physiological strength, including an 800 mile bicycle trip from Algiers to Tunis. He claimed that pus and mucus forming foods are the cause for all human disease and that “fasting (simply eating less) is Nature’s omnipotent method of cleansing the body from the effects of wrong and too much eating.”(Hirsch 1994, 9)

In the early 1900’s Ehret opened a hugely popular sanitarium in Ascona, Switzerland where he treated thousands of patients considered incurable. During the latter part of the decade Ehret engaged in a series of fasts monitored by German and Swiss officials. Within a period of 14 months Ehret completed a fast of 21 days, one of 24 days, one of 32 days, and one of 49 days. He lecturered throughout Europe. In 1914 Ehret moved his sanitarium to California.

On October 9, 1922, at the age of 56, Arnold Ehret fell sustaining a fatal blow to his skull. According to Ehret’s disciple Fred Hirsch, he was walking briskly on a wet, oil-soaked street during foggy conditions when he slipped and fell backward onto his head. Hirsch did not actually witness the fall but found Ehret lying on the street. Another one of Ehret’s disciples, Benedict Lust, maintained that Ehret was wearing his first pair of new dress shoes and slipped as a result of his unfamiliarity with the footwear. (Lust 2002, page preceding i) To this day the true nature of Ehret’s death raises many suspicions among Ehretists. Ehret’s powerful healing successes along with his influential and revolutionary new lifestyle terribly threatened the medical, meat, and dairy industries. Due to these factors many believe that foul play was involved in Ehret’s untimely death.

Arnold Ehret was protagonist of the emerging back-to-nature renaissance in Germany and Switzerland during the latter part of the 19th century. (Kennedy 1998, 9-10) The influence of this renaissance spread to America and influenced many of the countercultural movements including the beat generation, the vegetarian driven “hippie” movement, veganism, fruitarianism, and breatharianism.

Mucusless Diet Healing System

The Mucusless Diet Healing System consists of all kinds of raw and cooked fruits, starchless vegetables, and cooked or raw, mostly green-leaf vegetables. It uses a combination of long and short-term fasts and menus that progressively change to non-mucus-forming foods, and colon irrigation. Ehret asserts that the body is an air-gas engine that is not designed to eat mucus and pus forming foods and offers the equation Vitality=Power-Obstruction (V=P-O) to demonstrate his assertion. He also claims that the lungs are the pump in the body while the heart acts as a valve.

Bibliography

• Ehret, Arnold. Prof. Arnold Ehret’s Mucusless Diet Healing System. Los Angeles, CA: Ehret Literature, 1924.
• Ehret, Arnold. Rational Fasting For Physical, Mental & Spiritual Rejuvenation. (ISBN 0-87904-005-X)
• Ehret, Arnold. Physial fitness through a superior diet.
• Ehret, Arnold. "Thus Speaketh the Stomach and the Tragedy of Man's Nutrition".
• Ehret, Arnold. The Story of my Life: As Told to Anita Bauer. New York: Benedict Lust Publishing, 1980.
• Ehret, Arnold. Mucusless Diet Healing System (ISBN 0-87904-004-1)
• Child, B. W. “Biographical Sketch of Prof. Arnold Ehret.” In Mucusless Diet Healing System, 22 ed. Professor Arnold Ehret, 13-22. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Ehret Literature, 1994.
• Hirsch, Fred. “Introduction.” In Mucusless Diet Healing System, 22 ed. Professor Arnold Ehret, 9-12. Dobbs Ferry, NY: Ehret Literature, 1994.
• Gordon Kennedy, ed. Children of the Sun: A Pictorial Anthology; From Germany to California 1883-1949. Ojai, CA: Nivaria Press, 1998.
• Benedict Lust. “Biographical Sketch of Arnold Ehret.” In Arnold Ehret’s Mucusless Diet Healing System. Arnold Ehret, unnumbered page preceding i-xix. New York: Benedict Lust Publishing, 2002.

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