president
of the
French Federation for Fasting and Walking
(Fédération
Française
de Jeûne et Randonnée) - www.ffjr.com
I
am extremely delighted to have the honor to talk to you about
fasting
in France. Being of German origin and living in France for 35
years,
I knew the Buchinger system of fasting in Germany and imported
the
"Fasting and Walking" method for healthy people to France. Here
is
what I found out about the history of fasting in France:
The
hygienist
movement of the American Biologist SHELTON was introduced
in France since the end of World War II, represented by Albert
Mosseri and Désiré Mérien, more recently by
Jean-Claude Reygade. Here fasting is integrated in a dietetic
and
philosophical teaching of vital cleanliness. They propose
therapeutical fasting without being medical doctors.
The
naturopathic
schools of Marchesseau, Passebecq, Kieffer et Rousseau
teach and practice fasting on naturopathic bases. Doctor
Jean-Pierre
Willem includes fasting in his teachings for "Barefooted
medecins"
(Third-world-practitioners, acting by necessity without any
medical
structure.). He underlines the importance of fasting as an
active
prevention of cancer.
Doctor
Yves
Vivini practiced fasting in his clinic during the sixties and
seventies, first in France and later on the Balearic Islands,
having
problems with the French medical establishment. Jacques Lang,
later
Minister of Education, was one of his patients.
Yves
Vivini
died by sorrow in the early eighties at the age of 68, having
come back to France as a simple country doctor. His basic book
in
French is out of print, but I made it available on the internet
site www.ffjr.com (besides many other French texts on
fasting). At that time, his knowledge was on the same level as
the
Buchinger-clinics in neighbouring countries. He used many
alternative
medical methods besides fasting.
We
have
to go back more than a century to find the "French Connection"
of the Buchinger-Movement:
Otto
Buchinger
was a medical doctor of the German Naval Army, had to leave
the army because of a severe gastric illness. An officer of the
German Navy gave him the council to be treated by fasting in the
clinic of Doctor Siegfried Möller, pupil of the French doctor of
Italian origin Guillaume Guelpa, author of several books on
therapeutic fasting, like "La methode Guelpa" (1913), well known
all
over Western Europe at that time.
How Guelpa did develop his cure ?
Berthollet
tells
it this way:
"In
1889
already, the Doctor Dujardin-Beaumetz ordered the research by
his assistant, the Doctor Stackler, concerning weight-variation
of
typhus patients in his clinic of the Cochin-Hospital of Paris.
He
constructed a special recording balance supporting the bed of
the
patient which indicated smallest weight-variations of the
patient.
Comparing numerous weight-graphics, it was found that the
patients
who developed toward healing were the patients who lost weight
in a
regularly manner. Those who did not loose weight had a long
sickness
and, in most times, died. The weight-loss showed that the body
was
still able to burn his reserves, fight sickness and eliminate
waste.
For Guelpa, this was a sign that the body is charged with
quantities
of liquids, cells, old tissues and poisons he has to get rid of
before being able to restore health. That is why, as soon as we
can
clean the patient of those interior poisons as soon he will come
back
to health.
Ever
since
these memorable experiences I did no longer worry about the
weakness of my patients. Their fault sense of weakness is in
fact the
expression of the existence of a garbage of toxic products and
cellular waste of which they have to get rid of as soon as
possible."
This
led
the doctor Guelpa to propose repeated 7-days fasts on water with
everyday purging by mineral salts. Buchinger tells the story of
a
painter who fasted 80 days in five months with 75 purges - which
healed him of gutter. Buchinger asks why Guelpa did not go
further
than 7 days of fasting at a time ... Buchinger cites a Russian
author, von Seegesser, who knew about two dissertations about
Guelpa:
"La Cure Guelpa" - Lille (France) 1911, and "Tratamentul lui
Guelpa
in Diabet" Bucarest.
In
his
book, Otto Buchinger wonders why Guelpa, who was a subject of
discussion "à la mode" in the saloons of Paris before the
first war, had absolutely no follower in France after the second
war.
In
the
thirties, there was the Doctor P. Carton who wrote: "Fasting is
one of the most efficient therapies which exist. It is a big
error to
refuse this therapy. Fasting has remarkable clinical
applications. It
diminishes the violence of intoxication troubles, liberates
respiration and circulation. The energy of the decongestionated
patient, liberated of the digestion work, is entirely available
for
the accomplishment of toxic neutralization. Finally,
well-nourished
sedentary people, very often arthritic as the majority is today,
periodic fasting is a guarantee for good physical health and a
moral
equilibration, said otherwise: longevity and wisdom." (Cited by
Berthollet, p. 137-138)
There
is
no more fasting clinic in France since Yves Vivini finished his
career. Personally, I know two dozens of doctors who work with
fasting.
But
there
is a movement of preventive fasting, imported from Germany,
which is gaining interest among health-conscious people in
France:
Fasting and walking, destined to improve health enhancement.
History of Fasting and Walking
Gandhi
was
the one of the firsts faster who walked during his fasts, or who
fasted during his campaign for independence, consuming only
water
with citrons and honey.
Later,
in
1954, ten Swedish doctors marched from Goeteborg to Stockholm -
520 km in ten days on water only. This march was organized to
prove
to the Swedish Medical Association that fasting was without
danger
for the health and that it could be used for therapeutic
reasons. The
press talked about this event, discretely in the beginning, but
the
popular interest grew, and at the arrival at Stockholm there
were
more people in the street than at the Annual Ceremony of the
King of
Sweden (as reported "Dagens Nyheter"). In spite of this success,
only
one clinic worked in Sweden at that time (Waerland). In 1964,
they
repeated the same march with 20 volunteers, this time on the
Buchinger diet. The marchers were followed by clinical and
laboratory
examinations. The result was astonishing: all marchers were in
better
health at the end of this experience.
The
medical
and paramedical press related this event and a German
teacher, Christoph Michl, engaged in ecological and third-world
activities, heard about it. Several times he organized
"hunger-marches" to protest against environmental and
third-world
issues. A television health program showed 15 marchers on an
eight
day march of 350 km and the public reacted in a very positive
way. So
Christoph Michl started in 1984 to propose "Fasting and Walking"
in
Germany and other countries. Today, there are more than hundred
organizations in the German speaking countries, and hundreds of
health centre propose this program several times a year. Right
now,
every year about two million German people undergo a one week
experience of preventive fasting, most of them in "Fasting and
Walking". In 1990, in order to celebrate the reunification of
Germany, 24 marchers walked 1050 km from the Baltic Sea to the
Lake
of Constance in 21 days of Buchinger-diet. "The second week was
easier than the first one, and the third one was easier than the
second one. One day was really hard; it was the day when we
walked 73
kilometers", one participant told me ...
Having
introduced
this method in France in 1990, today there are twelve
organizers in France and maybe three thousand people who make
the
experience every year. Having published a French book on fasting
in
2000, reedited in 2004 with a chapter on "Fasting in Russia",
thanks
to K.L.Godigna and the "Baikal Readings", media give more and
more
interest to preventive fasting. Radio, television and
specialized
press treat this subject in an open way.
But
up
to now, therapeutic fasting is banned from scientific research,
medical publications and therapeutic practice. The only form of
fasting admitted in certain clinics is "protein-fasting" against
obesity: fasting with daily isolated proteins to loose weight
"without danger": 5 kg per month. The cures can last up to one
year
...
Why therapeutic fasting is not tolerated
in France ?
Therapeutic
fasting
is just tolerated in Germany, and several clinics (Buchinger
type) treat between five thousand and ten thousand patients per
year.
In
France,
therapeutic fasting is not taught, researched, tolerated. The
reason is simple: medical education, research and publication is
controlled by the pharmaceutical industry. A method like fasting
which does not consume much pharmaceutical products is not
financed,
is not taught, is not even published. To give you just one
personal
example: my French book, which is not a scientific publication
(I am
journalist, M.A. of Literature, Linguistics and Philosophy) was
presented to a German medical scientific editor for an eventual
German edition. His answer: "There would be a place for your
book in
our popular line, but the answer is not simple: all our
publications
are sponsored for by the Pharmaceutical or Alimentary Industry
which
finances the printing, byes a great part of the copies for its
own
purposes and only a smaller part arrives on the free market. Do
You
have ideas in this direction ?" Said otherwise: We can publish
your
book on Fasting in Germany if you find a sponsor for it in the
Alimentary Industry ...
Having
discovered
Your activity via the Baikal Readings, I got the
impression that the "Iron Curtain" (which cut my home-country
into
two parts) protected Your part of the world from the omnipresent
influence of the Pharmaceutical Industry. This influence begins
in
school-books, continues in medical teaching, research and
publicity:
a medical doctor receives publicity every day in his post-box to
remind him about the latest products. And it ends in the
Official
Medical Association which radiates doctors using "scientifically
unproved methods" like fasting.
That
is
why Your scientific research could be of great help for
hundreds
of doctors in Western Europe who utilize fasting in a discrete
manner, that is why, in my book, I announce the necessity to
publish
a book on "Fasting in Russia", (My editor agrees with this
project),
that is why I would like to come to Russia to learn more about
Your
work WHICH IS IMPORTANT FOR ALL OF HUMANITY.
Gisbert
Bölling,
Léoux 26510 VILLEPERDRIX, FRANCE gbolling@orange.fr
Telephone: 0033-475 27 41 58
RETOUR