I placed my greatest hope in the nature cure method. By following it with the greatest perseverance I wished to regain my health, the highest happiness.
But finally my confidence was undermined and shaken. The realization of my high hopes, my complete recovery, was still delayed. Besides, I saw so much quarreling and controversy among the individual champions of the nature cure method. One or another process was represented as false, or even injurious.
Were the opponents right or wrong? Could it be that the nature cure method was even harming me? Or were all my sacrifices again in vain? If I got no help from the nature cure, where then was I to place my faith? Was I simply to resign myself to my fate? The dissensions among the nature cure people were at least suspicious.
These trying doubts cost me much distress, and I know that many patients have suffered greatly from similar depressing and tormenting doubts.
At that time, in my wandering and despair, there suddenly appeared a bright star which I have steadily followed ever since, and which has brought the greatest and most significant change into my life. I greatly desire that before long it may become the guiding star also of all mankind, who would then no longer languish under the heavy burden of disease and invalidism.
Who tells the children of nature in distant countries, the animals of the woods how they are to bathe, what they are to eat, and how to avoid danger? The voices of nature alone: instinct and the organs of sense (the sense of hearing, smelling, tasting, etc.) are their guides.
We can therefore never expect to get any correct information from the men of to-day (not even from their writings) concerning our welfare and happiness.
Neither can we allow men to teach us the care of our health and the curing of our diseases.
