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Vegan Diet Dangers
The following excerpt from a booklet with 1962 and 1976 interviews with Dr. Gian-Cursio by Dr. Bass, "With Three Generations of Vegetarian Hygienists", illustrates the difficulties early Hygienists had of putting together a vegetarian/vegan diet that was optimal and sufficient in all nutrients, as well as being as raw as possible.
This text is still extremely important, since similar mistakes are still being made today, typically by aspiring vegans and vegan raw-foodists. Deficiencies that sometimes hardly are noticed in the first generation, will show in children and grand-children.
Free download of the complete text is now possible from the books-page.
Dr. Bass' later research concentrated on finding the ultimate vegetarian diet. The result can be found in "In Search of the Ultimate (Vegetarian) Diet", Volumes I and II ["Discovery of the Ultimate (Vegetarian) Diet"], download possible at booklist, and in articles at this website.
-- Note: Newer research (e.g. see these: 1, 2, 3, 4 articles) has made Dr. Bass now concentrate on a more comprehensive ultimate diet, which includes non-vegetarian and vegetarian foods - more will come later on this website... --
Also, read the follow-up article New Concepts in Nutrition (NEW!), where Dr. Bass explains the energy concepts in more detail - giving a summary of nutritional knowledge accumulated over a lifetime. webmaster
Excerpt from
With Three Generations of Vegetarian Hygienists
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Note: The following is taken from a recording which I made on October 10, 1976, of the dialogue between myself and Dr. Cursio for the purpose of supplying the information that Dr. Shelton requested of me regarding the "With Three Generations of Hygienists" article, as well as to present the changes which evolved in Dr. Cursio's dietetic views over the years from September 2, 1962, to the present time, October 10, 1976. Dr. Cursio called the Penepent family in Batavia, N.Y., and connected with Anthony Penepent.]
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Dr. Cursio: Anthony, twelve years ago Dr. Bass wrote an article about the Penepent family of three generations of Hygienists. He sent it to Dr. Shelton and Shelton liked it, but it was 12 years too late. He wants to update it. He wants to know how many members there are – and the general psychological qualities of the family. Are they calm? The schooling, how many in college, how many graduated, the business, and all that to give an idea of how they increased in productivity and social orientation? Here's Dr. Bass.
[Note: Anthony Penepent was 30 years old and of the third generation when I talked to him in 1976. I asked him about the family and he replied:]
Anthony: Dr. Cursio first took care of my mother and father in 1935. They were Hygienists before I was born. [This is an important point.] My brothers were all youngsters when they became Natural Hygienists under Dr. Cursio's care. My brother Phil, he was the oldest, and about ten years old then and 25 years older than me. He had a heart condition. There were eight girls in the family. As a rule you could say that they kept away from drugs and all that and they've lived pretty good. And they're usually pretty calm. They're not argumentative which they ascribe to our lifestyle. One of the members of the second generation, in his middle 20's, has a bachelor's degree and a doctorate, and he's halfway through his medical basic sciences and he intends to be a medical doctor, but to practice Natural Hygiene. He was born after his mother had been in Hygiene about 10 years. [Note: all his brothers now have offsprings from which these thirty people came]. One had a serious cardiac condition in the early teens, who is now still a vital, healthy human being.
Dr. Bass: Are the children being raised the same way?
Anthony: Yes, they all are. Dr. Cursio sees them every time he comes here. Now from the father who was very ill, one of the sons is finishing medical school. He's in Italy. One girl is graduating from college in education.
Dr. Bass: You don't have the names? It may be confusing.
[Note: At this point, Anthony suggested I get the names from Dr. Cursio. We said goodbye here, and I continued the conversation with Dr. Cursio, who was present during the phone conversation.]
Dr. Cursio: He's raised four children Hygienically: Phil Jr., the oldest; Mike, a college graduate; and David and Mary Ann. That's in this one family now where the father, Phil Sr., was seriously ill with heart trouble, rheumatic heart at age 12. Now, I noticed in the beginning of the third generation, some of them that were born–this is where I noticed the nearsightedness, the hydroceles, and the abnormalities. Then I made my shift into more green stuff, blended salads early, cut out the orange juice – like I'd give the child the milk and I'd use the vegetable juice. Then I saw the difference.
The children were better – were more sturdy. Instead of pigeon-chested or chicken-chested, they were fine-chested.
Dr. Bass: In other words, you kept the blended salads going?
Dr. Cursio: Oh yeah! That was the change. I don't think there's a dental carie in the whole group.
Dr. Bass: That's a permanent change then, increased salads and blended salads?
Dr. Cursio: Yeah! They subsist 90%, I'd say 95%, on unfired food–and the other percentage they'd have some steamed vegetables like rice or potato or legumes. Basically, it's unfired. That's it! You've got it all. They are representative. This family is representative of many families in the area and elsewhere, where they've been raised this way. But this is like a sample, a sampling.
[The following represents the changes which have evolved in Dr. Cursio's dietetic views over the years leading up to the present time, ie. 1976].
Dr. Cursio: I observed many cases of pregnant women who had difficulties, women who were physically inadequate to have children and hence after pregnancy they accepted Natural Hygiene in order to have children that were healthy and also to make it possible for them to survive. In other words, sick women came to me. They were pregnant. They were having all they could to survive on their own, without pregnancy.
Dr. Bass: Talking about you [and your patients]?
Dr. Cursio: Yeah. I'm speaking now of the women who came to me. I'm speaking now how these changes took place – especially in the care of children–so that we have here problems that came up in the children when I followed the strict fruit program with nuts, and minimal amounts, compared to what I use now, of green stuff (salads). These children, the skeletal development wasn't right, the dental arches were not well-formed, teeth came in crowded because of it. I noticed a great deal of boys that were born who were herniated – who had what we call hydroceles. So, with the noticing of these conditions and other miscellaneous...
Dr. Bass: Can you state specifically what diet they were on?
Dr. Cursio: Their diet would be predominantly fruit, nut proteins, and a relatively small amount of salad compared to what they get now – they used to get one salad a day. They'd have a fruit meal in the morning, a fruit meal at noon, and a salad at night. In the morning, they'd have just fruit; at noon they'd have the fruit and nuts, and at night they'd have the salad, sometimes with nuts and sometimes with vegetables – but on this kind of a setup, I've been noticing the inadequacies in these children. Then I made the drastic changes! First I noticed the hydroceles, nearsightedness, the skeletal development. And the musculature was not developed in these children. But, at any rate, I started to think. In line with this of course were other things that I noticed with other individuals – people who had been living this way and living, I know, 100%. One of them – I don't think he's [Dr. Shelton] going to publish this – with Miss Natural Hygiene. There were two Miss Natural Hygienes. One of them came to me with multiple sclerosis. And gum recessions, dental caries I noticed. But a great deal of gum recession and marginal erosion of the gum line of the teeth. Now, at first I ascribed this to the citrus fruit, so I cut it down. I cut down on the amount of fruit, without making any relative increase in the green stuff (salads). Then, I finally found that though there were slight improvements, they were not sufficient. So then I figured there's got to be an additional factor here. There's got to be, what, I had talked to Weston Price about it – he was one of the men I spoke to. And, I said this is an X-factor that's missing – I don't know what it was. Later on, you know this work done on B 12 , I came to the conclusion that this perhaps was one of the factors that could lead to this kind of pathology.
Dr. Bass: Deficiency in B 12?
Dr. Cursio: Yes! It was only after adding green stuff that I started to see in the pregnancies that followed, and also in the children that were grown, that came from these pregnancies, the difference. Round heads instead of pear-shaped heads, better-formed teeth. And all the aberrations I had noticed – the near-sightedness, the hernias, the hydroceles, and the musculature that was weak – that all disappeared. There was never another case after this. I was also able to witness an increase, for example, in the blood chemistries, the improvements in the mothers and in the adults, who were put on this kind of a setup. Hemoglobin – where they had microcytic anemia or macrocytic anemia, the nutritional anemias – they cleared up. Now, this was with the addition of the salads, but even so, I was not satisfied. In trying to evaluate the absolute amount of every nutrient, I found it was inadequate. They couldn't eat that amount, and they didn't have the time to eat that amount.
Dr. Bass: The salad?
Dr. Cursio: Hence the blended salad. To insure the proper impact, the proper intake in sufficient amounts with minimal expenditure of energy, especially in the ill, so that we had the assimilation, and we had the utilization with the minimal usage of vital power, and leaving sufficient energy, you know, for reparative and healing and restorative purposes.
Dr. Bass: What about the oxidation factor which occurs during blending?
Dr. Cursio: Well, sure, there's a minimal amount, but that was overcome and balanced up by the increased utilization. Now, because there was increased utilization, you had to be very selective in the kind of foods you used. So you didn't want an imbalance of nutrients. You didn't want to have an imbalance of the chloride ratios, you know, like an overload of potassium over sodium. There have been some studies made which indicate that potassium in excess could prove carcinogenic, you know, could create an ionization, I mean. There was some work done with the Japanese. And I was in correspondence with one of the men who had done this work, so that I was very cautious that I used only certain raw things that I felt had this proper ratio.
Dr. Bass: Can you mention any names of these people?
Dr. Cursio: This Japanese fellow, I'd have to get the letter. Marvin has this letter. He has a copy of it. I can't find the original. But he wrote to me. As a matter of fact, I was going to have his article published in a magazine, but we just didn't go to press anymore.
[Referring to Journal of Health, edited by Christopher Gian-Cursio. Winter 1964 was the last issue.]
Dr. Bass: In sending this material to Dr. Shelton, shall I quote you?
Dr. Cursio: Quote me – also your observations too. These were studies that were made on hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people. What we call clinical studies and observations, in which there was a morphology, a clinical observation based on, you know, recovery, rates of recoveries. And also in post-fasting nutrition, when this kind of setup was used, that they rebuilt and were able to get back to a normal musculature. There were individuals who came to me, for example, who'd never been able to go beyond the skeletal stage. After they fasted they just seemed to stay thin – and no matter what you tried. And after you gave them blended salad for awhile, they started to fill up again.
Dr. Bass: And they wouldn't do it on the whole salad?
Dr. Cursio: But the one thing that forced my attention to the defects, that was the recession of gums and the marginal erosion of the gum line of the teeth, nails that wouldn't grow, nails that were deformed, toenails, fingernails, all of this. Also warts tend to form on these cases. They tend to get moles or proliferation of moles. And there were all things of this nature that started to make me suspicious. Why, in a so-called ideal diet, was this happening? I didn't want to go back to meat. I didn't want to go back to fish, as some Hygienists did in the past, like Walter did.
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Continued in the booklet "With Three Generations of Vegetarian Hygienists", that you can download for free - click here.
Also read: Dr. Cursio's Natural Hygiene Diet and Food plan - for an example of his improved vegetarian diet. With recipes of raw juice and blended salad. Explains how the body starts purifying and detoxifying on this diet.
"You generally start your meal with a freshly prepared vegetable juice. Then you follow with a blended or tossed salad - foods that are rapidly handled by the body."
Also read the follow-up article: New Concepts in Nutrition, Health and Rapid Healing of Illness --- for more about Dr. Gian-Cursio, the principles of Natural Hygiene, the search for an optimal diet, and the energy principle in healing:
"there must be maximal utilization with minimal expenditure of power - so that there be enough energy left over for healing purposes."
Also see: Sequential Eating - for advanced food combining concepts - and digestion times of different foods. And blended salads.
Read medical doctor Anthony Penepent's description of his family and Dr. Cursio at Dr. AJ Penepent's website
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