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About the Author
Dr Kristine Nolfi passed her medical examinations
in 1907 after which she spent twelve years at various hospitals in Denmark.
From 1919 to 1945 she was in private practice
in Copenhagen and was an acknowledged specialist in diseases of children.
From 1945 to 1958 she founded and was in charge
of the Humlegaarden Rawcoat Sanatorium in Denmark.
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Before I realised the actual importance of raw vegetable
food, my attitude was exactly the same as that of other doctors –
to treat the symptoms of the disease without thinking of preventing it.
It ought to be the duty of the medical profession in future to find means
of preventing to a much higher degree than now, instead of having to cure
later on.
That I, as a doctor, went in for exclusively raw vegetable food
is due to the fact that I became ill, even seriously ill, myself. I developed cancer of
the breast. The disease had, of course, been preceded by wrong nourishment and wrong
habits in the course of my twelve years of hospital training, when I suffered from
sluggish digestion and catarrh of the stomach all the time, disorders which are still of
quite common occurrence among hospital staff members. Since that time no change of the
hospital diet has taken place in Denmark in this very important domain. On one occasion I
was in a dying condition because of a bleeding gastric ulcer. This made me abandon meat
and fish, and I became a vegetarian. Later, I took to eating a good deal of raw vegetable
food. In this manner my digestion became regulated, and I felt better, though not
completely well.
In the winter of 1940 to 1941 I was exceptionally tired and dull,
but I was unable to ascertain any specific disease. At that time I did not understand what
was wrong with me, but in the course of the Spring I discovered a small node in my right
breast.
Tired and dull as I was, I did not pay any attention to it until,
five weeks later, I discovered that the node was the size of a hen's egg. It had grown
into the skin – a thing only cancer does. As a doctor I had seen enough to be
unwilling to submit to the treatment of cancer generally employed. I consulted my good
friend, Dr M Hindhede, who dissuaded a trial microscopy. It would open up the
blood-streams and the cancer could spread; so I gave it up. And then I felt it as quite a
natural thing that I would have to carry through a one hundred per cent raw vegetable
diet.
I went in search of nature, lived for some time on a small island
in the Kattegat, took sun-baths from four to five hours daily, slept in a tent, bathed
several times a day, and lived exclusively on a raw vegetable diet. Later I introduced
this habit of life at the sanatorium Humlegarden.
But I was still tired and continued to be so for the first two
months, and during that period the node in the breast did not diminish; it remained
unchanged.
But then the improvement came. The node diminished, my strength
returned, apparently I recovered and felt better than I had done for many years. When I
had experienced good health in this manner for about a year, I tried by way of experiment
(and urged to do so by Dr Hindhede) to revert to a vegetarian diet supplemented by fifty
per cent of raw vegetable food.
But it was no good. In three or four months I began to feel a
stinging pain in the breast, in the sore-like tissue which the cancer had left where it
had originally adhered to the skin. This pain increased much during the weeks that
followed, and I realized that the cancer had begun to develop again.
Once more I reverted to pure, raw food, which caused the pain to
subside rapidly and the fatigue to become less pronounced. But, being a doctor, I realized
that I would have to use the experience I had gained to help my sick fellow creatures. So
I set up my home so that I could have four or five patients staying with me the next
summer. We took a hundred per cent raw vegetable diet, and all went well; but it was not
satisfactory with so few patients. I understood that this cause would have to be advocated
under quite different and larger conditions if any proofs were to be given. On my
initiative a joint stock company was then formed which bought a property, Humlegarden,
well suited for the purpose; it was set up as a sanatorium, where I became the chief
physician. Here, we eat only raw vegetable food, patients as well as employees, and the
establishment is now in its sixth year.
Now, what is the reason why a one hundred per cent raw vegetable
diet exerts such a beneficial effect on civilised individuals? First and foremost, because
the raw food is live food as it is handed to us by nature. We all know that life on earth
is completely dependent on our sun. If we had no sun the earth would be without any life,
dark and icy cold. Vital force is therefore identical with sun energy!
According to Dr Hesselink, it is, however, only the plant with
its widely unfolded thin green leaves, that is able to catch the sun-light and to deposit
it in the form of roots and tubers, fruit and seeds. We human beings and the animals, with
massive bodies, are not able to utilise it to a sufficiently high degree. Therefore, both
man and beast use plant as carriers between the sun and themselves. A fresh raw vegetable
diet is sunlight nourishment!
Dr Bircher-Benner of Zurich realised this long ago. Dr Hesselink,
from Holland, believes that it is the atoms which are the carriers of the solar energy.
Fresh, raw vegetable food possesses the highest nutritive value,
and this cannot be increased or improved; anything else, such as heating, drying, storing,
fermentation or preservation, will tend to reduce and destroy its value. Boiled vegetables
taste of nothing, so something must be done to make them palatable. We mix many different
things together; we add salt, sugar, spices and butter. We remove the germ and the husk
from the wheat to use the flour for baking. We polish the rice, we refine the sugar; we
remove the skin, seeds and cores of apples and pears, we peel the potatoes and scrape the
carrots. Meat, fish, eggs and cheese supply us with enormous surplus of animal protein. We
make beverages of coffee and cocoa beans, and tea, which contain stimulating poisons.
We use the grapes for wine and brandy – intoxicating poisons
– which first stimulate the grey cortex of the brain, and later paralyse it. We
preserve food with chemicals, such as benzoic acid, salicylic acid, nitre, boric acid and
sulphurous acid in order that it may keep well, and look attractive. Further, we take
anodynes, hypnotics, sedatives, and aperients – all strong chemical poisons – or
at any rate substances that are foreign to the organism.
Nicotine, too, is a ruinous stimulant, a still stronger poison
than spirits; it causes sclerosis of the heart and the cardiac musculature to become
undernourished. The heart becomes a flaccid bag instead of a firm muscle. Many busy men
who die about the age of fifty years die of heart failure caused by chronic nicotine
poisoning. Here, too, I have experienced that patients on a pure, raw vegetable diet
gradually lose their taste for tobacco completely.
The ground, too, is wrongly cultivated when it is fertilised too
much and too uniformly with chemical manure. We may run the risk that the ground becomes
just as diseased as man – over acidified, over-nourished, and that it yields sick
plants which are not fit for human food.
Raw food is termed live food by me, in contrast with such food as
has been treated by heating, which I consider dead food. Care should be taken that the
food does not include substances which counteract the chemistry of the organism, so that
the waste products are not retained too long and putrefy in the large intestine. The best
food is therefore completely natural food which has not been subjected to denaturation of
any kind. To this must be added that live food is much easier to digest; it helps in the
digestion itself just as the living baby co-operates in its delivery. Raw vegetables have
been digested in the stomach and the intestines in an hour; boiled vegetables require
almost three hours and leave more waste products, also offensive stools, impure blood, and
poisoned and gradually impaired organs, whereas the raw food – live food – the
sunlight nourishment, dissolves and excretes these poisons. Raw food is easy to digest, it
spares and strengthens the organism in every respect because of its content of life, bases
and vitamins in their natural, living combination and relationship to one another.
Everybody who can think must be able to understand that our present nutrition is highly
destructive – and is the most common and most serious cause of physical and psychic
diseases and constitutional degeneration. We should seek more wholesome nourishment and
more wholesome habits of life if we are to live better now and in the future. We cannot
afford to compromise when life and health are concerned. We should follow the only right
way – the one hundred per cent raw vegetable diet.
But what of the elderly sick or the very sick people who have
gone in for this diet too late? How about them?
Well, they must be patient, energetic, and very interested, and
they must be able to rest much, at any rate to begin with. The first few days may be
troublesome until they have become accustomed to this different food and habit of life.
But they will soon do better; the bowels open regularly – two or three times daily
– and this is a great encouragement to many. At the Humlegarden garlic has its great
share in this improvement. Just one clove with every fruit meal is of effect, but it is,
of course, better to eat a medium-sized garlic (from five to ten cloves) with the fruit
meals. A number of works by various investigators have been published, dealing with the
bactericidal effect of garlic, which people of former times guessed. According to
investigations reported in the Journal of the American Medical Society, 1944, a substance
known as allicin, which exerts a great inhibitory effect on bacteria, has been found in
garlic. This substance has been compared with penicillin, in a number of experiments, and
it appeared that allicin exerts its effects on practically all bacteria, in contrast with
penicillin, the effect of which is certainly stronger but much more limited. The use of
garlic is rendered difficult because of its peculiar odour; therefore, people in Denmark
often return to the Humlegarden to undergo a course of treatment with garlic. In the
company of others who eat garlic themselves the odour cannot be smelt at all.
Raw vegetable food, and in particular raw potatoes, exert an
excellent effect on all forms of rheumatism and rheumatic arthritis when these diseases
have not progressed too far. A good effect is also seen on the diseases related to those
just mentioned and of the same causation, namely, loading with uric acid; it applies to
psoriasis, hemicrania, stone-formation in the gall bladder, the renal pelvis and the
urinary bladder.
The garlic we eat exerts an excellent effect on putrefaction in
the large intestine, and a clove of garlic in either side of the mouth, placed between the
cheek and the teeth, will greatly accelerate the expurgation and cure of diseases in the
upper respiratory tract, first and foremost ordinary colds if dealt with in time. Diseases
such as catarrh of the nose, the throat and the larynx, bronchitis and tuberculosis of the
lungs, inflammation of the frontal sinus or the maxillary sinus, chronic inflammation of
tonsils and gums, inflammation of the middle ear, and others, are cured completely in many
cases. Gastric catarrh, gastric ulcer, duodenal ulcer, catarrh of the large intestine, and
haemorrhoids, too.
When a person is on an exclusively raw vegetable diet it will, as
a rule, be easy to stop smoking and drinking. Liquor does not taste well with raw
vegetables. Smoking does not agree with garlic. On an exclusively raw vegetable diet no
stimulants of any kind will be needed any more.
When cancer occurs, the organism is, as a rule, thoroughly
destroyed. Cancer is the terminal stage. Here a one hundred per cent raw vegetable diet
may prove helpful, alleviate the pain, prolong the life to some extent, because it agrees
well with the patient. In the most favourable cases, when the cancer is dealt with in
time, it may perhaps also be checked, even for many years in some cases. I am an example
of this myself, but then the seat of the cancer must not be in vital organs, such as the
lungs, liver or stomach. And the treatment with raw food should be commenced as soon as
the cancer is discovered, and it is an absolute necessary condition that it is carried
through one hundred per cent.
I want now to tell a little about my own case from 1942 to the
present year. Up to 1946 I was doing well on my exclusively raw diet – the cancer of
the breast was completely quiescent, and my general health was good.
But in the spring of 1946 we got some dried fruit from Sweden
(raisins, dates, prunes and figs). I thought then that it would be all right to eat; but
it was not. These are fruits which have been treated with chemical poisons in order to
preserve them and to make them look attractive. Having taken them for three or four months
I suddenly developed violent pains in the scar-like tissue in the breast, and, on closer
examination, I found a small node in the right breast, in the same place as before. Once
more I reverted to the fresh raw food, and the node disappeared.
The last and most dangerous thing for me was, however, the trial
microscopy against which I had been dissuaded by Dr M Hindhede. I had to let it be done
because so many – doctors in particular – maintained that I had never been
suffering from cancer. It was made at the Radium Centre in Copenhagen, in January, 1948.
This trial microscopy was positive; there were cancer cells in
the scar-like tissue in the skin of the right breast, but it was a benign form called
scirrhus. My original malignant, rapidly growing form of cancer had thus, under the
influence of raw food, been converted into a benign form of cancer, which remains
quiescent. But still this interference was just on the point of stirring up the cancer so
much as to frighten me seriously. For the first time I developed metastases (two small
modules) in the armpit; and about six months – on the exclusively raw diet –
were required to make them subside again. But it went well this time. Since then I have
been in excellent health – all through last summer I was up at sunrise, and in my
garden where I have been working hard several hours daily. This was far more wholesome
than sitting indoors working as a doctor. Not only had I the patients at the Humlegarden,
but also a large practice and correspondence out of town; this was more than I could
manage.
On January 1st, 1949, I stopped practising and took up gardening
again, which has always been my great interest. For this purpose I had acquired about half
a hectare (about one and a quarter acres) of land near the Humlegarden, and here I learned
how right it was to grow both fruit and vegetables biologically, that is, according to the
laws of life. For manure I use only compost, seaweed, straw or hay; no chemical manure, no
dung.
In conclusion, just a few words about the practical conditions
and the everyday use of raw vegetable food. I am glad to be able to refer to my book Live
Food (not available in English) which has just been brought out by a Dutch publishing
house and which gives a detailed picture of the procedure to be followed when changing to
a pure raw vegetable diet. It would be of great consequence if the medical profession
would acquire greater knowledge in this field to a higher degree than is actually the
case. Doctors from Denmark and from foreign countries have visited the Humlegarden for
shorter or longer periods and have utilised their experience in their practice. The
Humlegarden is visited by about one thousand patients annually. Here the patients, as well
as the members of the staff, live exclusively on food that has not been treated, and our
experience is that a transition diet is quite superfluous. The raw vegetable diet can only
be varied according to the seasons, and consists of three meals daily. We get a fruit meal
in the morning and in the evening and a vegetable meal in the middle of the day. Fruit and
vegetables are never mixed. If the condition of the teeth permits it, the raw food is
taken whole, otherwise it must be grated and reduced to small particles immediately before
the meal. Once the raw food has been grated or chopped, it will not keep because it loses
its content of vitamins. The raw food should be carefully chewed, preferably so well that
it passes down all by itself, and even the grated raw food should at any rate be mixed
well with saliva.
We drink raw whole milk with all our meals, from half to one
litre daily. Germinating corn, or dried corn, crushed or ground immediately before the
meal, is taken with the fruit. Garlic is medicine and is eaten with fruit and milk, cut
into small pieces in varying quantities. All kinds of nuts provide a good supplement. The
vegetable meal consists of green leaves, roots and tubers, with an admixture of a spoonful
of honey. Potatoes are eaten with the peel because of the presence of an element –
fluorine – which preserves the enamel of the teeth. Similarly, all fruit is eaten
with the peel. In the cases of diseases such as gastric catarrh, gastric ulcer and the
like, care should, however, be taken during the initial stages.
If the exclusively raw food with its associated sound habits of
life prevails, a variety of things will improve. Diseases will gradually be obviated.
Obesity, the most dangerous of all diseases, will become a rarity.
Further information
This extract is almost the entire
text from the book Raw Food Treatment of Cancer by Dr Kristine
Nolfi. It was published by the Vegetarian Society in 1951 (this edition
in 1966). It was first published in Positive Health magazine
in Feb 1995. Humlegaarden is one of Scandinavia's most well-known private
cancer clinics, and for many years we have specialized in so-called alternative
or unconventional methods. For more information, visit their website at
www.humlegaarden.dk
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