Most farmers will, at least until they have tried my methods with their own cattle, regard herbalism as merely a good living for quacks, trading on silly women and men with unfounded worries about perfectly sound health; those who have seen its result in curing humans will believe its successes to be founded on faith healing. But there can be no possibility of faith healing with cattle, though they have a great deal more common sense about health and means of maintaining it than most human beings. If left to themselves they would hunt up the very herbs I give them and they will naturally avoid other food until they are well.

   Practically no labour is needed to provide the basic herbal requirements. Garlic is the most important and the only one needed in any quantity.

   Garlic is one of the easiest plants to cultivate on the farm. On many farms it grows wild as Ramsons (Allium Ursinum) and this wild garlic is the most valuable source of sulphur and other purifying agents. (The garden variety (Allium Sativum) will do, though it is not as potent as the wild garlic.) It has the ability to disperse catarrhal mucus, the basis of most diseases. So that if there is anything which might approach qualification for the title 'cure-all' it is garlic. It is as near a cure-all as we are ever likely to get. All livestock farms would therefore benefit from the planting of a supply. Wild garlic may be transplanted like shallots, or sown from seed. Or, in these days of the deplorable and overworked expression 'no time', as an alternative, at least, until garlic is growing on the farm I have arranged for herbalists to make up tablets of the whole wild garlic plant dried and compressed, so that supplies may be kept in a convenient form always ready for us. When adequate supplies are growing they may be lifted and stored as with onions or shallots. Garlic taints the milk only when taken in large quantities. A little occasionally, which is the way the cow would take it under natural conditions, will not taint the milk. The amount needed for treatment will not affect the milk.

   Raspberry leaves may be gathered from the garden or the canes planted in the hedgerows. Any variety will do, wild or domestic. Blackberry leaf, though not as good, has similar properties.

   All the other requirements I have advised are now available from veterinary herbalists. The cost is, in the long run, less than orthodox drugs or proprietary veterinary medicines, they may be kept in readiness for an indefinite period, and what makes them far better value for money than most orthodox drugs is that they work, if they are used as prescribed in this book, and they effect permanent cures not merely temporary suppression.

   The modern farmer is prepared to risk his valuable stock on the word of the manufacturing chemist, the veterinary surgeon, and the research station. I am not asking him to risk even the farm cat without supporting evidence. Every treatment in this book I have used for many years on my own beasts. Moreover I have bought in cattle, given up after orthodox treatment has failed, cured them, and got profitable production from them, instead of paying the vet. to tell me that they were hopeless cases.

   The following table lists some typical cases of disease treated entirely by herbal means, mainly of animals acquired for little or nothing as incurable. For obvious reasons it is only a brief selection covering the main diseases. There are now hundreds more on other farms as well as mine, which owe their survival to the herbal treatments described in this book.

   Similarly the letters which follow in Appendix I are but a selection from the many farmers who have themselves successfully tried my methods.

   'I have read with considerable interest, but more misgiving, your book, Fertility Farming,' [he writes], 'I am not qualified to comment on the chapters concerned directly with crop-growing, but feel myself morally obliged to criticize some of the more outrageous and blatant errors in the chapters on animal disease, where your lack of knowledge is only surpassed by your illogical deductions. I will therefore proceed to take a few of your statements—I have only time to take a few—and put forward my own arguments, which are, I hope, somewhat more reasonable.

   'Disease not caused by bacteria. A cow in sound health does not succumb to disease.''

   If disease is not caused by bacteria can you tell me why injection of a guinea-pig with a pure culture of the organism of bovine T.B. invariably produces typical disease followed by death?

   Injection of foot and mouth virus causes 100 per cent infection of the bovine animal.

   B. Anthracis injection into the blood stream of cattle will produce typical symptoms of anthrax.

   The only certain positive diagnosis of swine fever is to produce infection by injection of infected material from a suspected case in another pig.

   Swine fever and foot-and-mouth are virus diseases, not bacterial, but the principal cause of disease in these cases is the causal organism, not the condition of the animal. Hundreds of other examples could easily be found.

   'Bacteria arise as result of disease.'

   This remarkable statement presupposes spontaneous generation which has been disproved many times beginning with a certain M. Pasteur, of whom you have perhaps heard.

   'Summer mastitis, a natural cleansing process.'

   Here you even write about one condition when you mean another. 'Summer mastitis' is an acute abscess of the udder occurring mainly on dry cows and heifers, resulting almost in variably in the loss of the affected quarter(s).

   'Cold water stimulates quick exchange of blood.'

   Cold water causes a physiological reflex contraction of peripheral blood vessels, thereby inhibiting a quick exchange of blood!

   'Penicillin treatment suppresses catarrhal discharge.'

   How an antibiotic agent acting only as a bacteriostatic is capable of suppressing discharge I am unable to explain, but extensive tests, scientifically carried out on hundreds of thousands of cattle, not a few score as on your farm, have proved beyond doubt that penicillin is a sure and permanent cure for the commoner forms of mastitis, not forgetting the possibility of infection at a future date.

   Tuberculosis treatment—you mention only one case of a reactor becoming a non-reactor. This is by no means an uncommon occurrence, independent of any so-called treatment, and has a quite logical explanation. The lesion becomes inactive, a wall of connective tissue being framed around it, and antibodies are no longer found in the blood stream, hence no reaction can occur. It must not be forgotten that live bacilli are still present in this lesion, and any strain on the animal's system, calving, a chill, etc., may provoke a break-down of the original lesion, liberation of the organism into the blood stream, rapidly followed by emaciation and death, with the grave possibility of infecting other members of the herd.

   I can only conclude that any 'results' you have obtained, based on so many scientifically incorrect surmises, must be ignored. You cry very loudly against modern drug treatment but I feel sure that if one of your own family was attacked by meningitis, or osteomyelitis—two diseases quite independent of bodily health, you would be the first to agree to penicillin treatment, and would not be content to fast them and treat them with garlic tablets. How strange that there is any disease at all in the garlic-eating countries in the world!

   I look forward with keen enjoyment to receiving your reply.

   My reply was as follows:

   You instance the injection of 'pure cultures' resulting in disease as an argument in favour of the old germ theory. The injection of any foreign matter into the system, especially directly into the blood stream, is likely to cause illness and possibly death. Ordinary human vaccination is a case in point. In the sixteen years ended December 1948, 2 children (under 5) died of smallpox but 72 died of vaccination (see replies to questions by Minister of Health between July 1938 and April 1949). In any case most humans and animals are in a condition which calls for the cleansing action of bacteria and if this pre-condition of the ultimate symptom (which you call disease) is exaggerated by a continuation of the feeding and living which caused it, the bacteria are unequal to the task. The only reasonable way to allow the bacteria to complete satisfactorily the task of healing, with which nature has charged them, is to stop all additions to the system in the form of food—especially unnatural food, which only adds to the toxic accumulations.

   I was not aware that Pasteur proved anything except there is a lot of money to be made by chemical and drug manufacturers out of the almost criminal, and certainly blasphemous, theory that nature provided bacteria as a curse and not a blessing to human and animal kind. I prefer to agree with Pasteur's contemporary, Béchamp.

   As I have cured many cases of summer mastitis and accepted the challenge of a Ministry vet. to treat an early case under Ministry supervision (not yet taken up—perhaps you would like to do something practical about this instead of theoretical argument) I can only disagree emphatically with your remarks about this disease.

   My statement about cold water does not deny your own explanation of the action of cold water on the blood vessels. You will find if you observe your own reactions, when you take your cold bath in the morning, that the cold water drives the blood from the surface of the skin (peripheral blood vessels if you like), creating a kind of vacuum which must quickly result in a return rush of fresh, pure blood, giving the well-known (though I fear now rarely experienced by most people) feeling of tingling warmth and well-being, and pink blush of colour which the quick exchange of blood has caused.

   Penicillin suppresses catarrhal discharge by halting a natural process of bacterial combustion and dispersal. The use of penicillin is like treating a nuisance at the old town garbage dump by killing the garbage man who is collecting and dumping it there.

   The hundreds of thousands of tests you mention are invalidated by the fact that they all worked on the assumption that the symptom was the disease, and in every case a cure was recorded as soon as superficial symptoms of the disease were no longer evident. I have followed some of the thousands of penicillin 'cured' mastitis cases, to cure effectively and permanently, without drugs, the trouble which has resulted, when the cow owner in question has lost patience with repeated failures of penicillin to bring a lasting cure. Not all veterinary surgeons are as dogmatic as you about the ability of penicillin to effect 'sure and permanent cure' for the commoner forms of mastitis. Have you not heard of the 'penicillin resistance' which is now the explanation of many penicillin failures?

   What I am claiming is a 'sure and permanent cure' for all forms of mastitis, and one which is within the ability of every farmer to achieve himself without chemical drugs. I challenge you or anyone else to disprove my claim under whatever supervision you care to arrange. Have the courage of your criticisms and allow me to treat a case of mastitis, strep, staph., summer, or whatever variety you care to take, provided treatment can be started within forty-eight hours of clinical evidence of abnormality. Alternatively, arrange official tests of my treatments under my supervision. [See also following letters on Foot and Mouth Disease.]

   It is wrong that simple cures should be dismissed without investigation, while untold damage is done to the cattle and food supply of this country through the failure of one wonder drug after another.

   I have made no claims to cure tuberculosis, though I know that early cases can be cured. To 'cure' a reactor can no more constitute a cure of tuberculosis than the official tuberculosis test constitutes a diagnosis of tuberculosis. Not until the official test is an infallible means of diagnosing tuberculosis shall we be able to say that the 'cure' of a reactor constitutes a cure of tuberculosis.

   In the meantime old Top Sergente (and other ex-reactors) show no signs of impending emaciation—though he is in his eleventh year and has apparently been harbouring those lesions full of live bacteria for nearly seven years. Only stork-headed fear of the impending end to the quackery of the drug racket can make you say that my results must be ignored because they are based on scientifically incorrect surmises. The fact is my treatments work, which is all that interests the farmer, and livestock breeder. The farmer is becoming increasingly suspicious of the 'results' which are tied to the sale of drugs or chemical fertilizers. He is beginning to tire of the endless procession of wonder drugs chasing the lengthening lines of new diseases.

   Your premiss that meningitis and osteomyelitis are both independent of bodily health is so ridiculously wrong that I hardly need answer it. But in the very unlikely event of a properly fed and healthy child of mine getting either, I should certainly not allow the injection of drugs, which would only add to the task of natural healing of which the system is itself capable if not unduly burdened.

   Why it should be strange that there should be disease in the garlic-eating countries I can't imagine. I have never heard it suggested that garlic is proof against all the commercial food partialisers and adulterators, let alone the array of chemical and drug injectors, almost as vast and wealthy in the garlic-eating countries as anywhere else.

   I certainly would never suggest that eating garlic is an antidote to agenized, emasculated bread and macaroni, polished rice and white sugar, Coco-cola and tobacco, vaccination and the whole bag of tricks in the chemist's shop. But it will help a lot and in treatment, used to the exclusion of all these killers of commercialized human and animal 'welfare', it will cure a lot.

   I had not intended dealing at such length with your comments, for as you may imagine my correspondence is beyond human ability to satisfy 100 per cent, and many letters have to be ignored. I had left yours in the hope of arranging a personal meeting to discuss your obviously searching questions for it is the only effective way. I still hope, should you continue to dispute my work, that we may talk rather than write and that you will remain sufficiently open-minded to try some of my treatments as willingly as you buy the ready-made treatments of the druggists.

   I sense from your letter, and the fact that you have taken the trouble to write to me, that you are not so hidebound as to close your eyes to results which I will show you, and not so dull as to imagine that nature would fail without the manufacturing chemist.

   In addition to the previous correspondence, I have urged in any personal contacts with our local Ministry veterinary officer, a proper investigation of my claims for natural immunity and the simple cures which I have developed for the common cattle diseases.

   Several letters to the press on a similar topic failed to achieve publication. A letter to the secretary of the Animal Health Trust (which is raising huge sums of money, mainly from farmers, for research into animal diseases) enclosing my book, Cure Your Own Cattle, and offering to demonstrate under proper controls the effectiveness and simplicity of my treatments, and the means and value of building natural immunity, was ignored.

   It was The Times, and shortly after Everybody's Weekly, which eventually had the courage to make public my challenge to the Ministry and veterinary profession to investigate my claims.

   The following letters appeared:

The Times, 24th December 1951

   The review of foot and mouth disease by Dr. Wooldridge ignores the possibility of the development of natural immunity in our cattle. This is surely the only intelligent approach to all disease. There are already the classic examples of the complete immunity, when placed in physical contact with animals suffering from foot-and-mouth disease, of animals which have been reared and fed naturally on food from organically manured soil, reported by Sir Albert Howard and the Marquis Stanga. More recently I have demonstrated that animals reared and fed exclusively on organically grown food can be given permanent immunity to Johne's disease and other so-called virus transmitted diseases; also that animals suffering from sterility and mastitis may quickly and cheaply be cured by simple herbal adjustments and a regime of organically grown food.

   The official slaughter policy denies the opportunity of similar experiments with foot-and-mouth disease, but I am prepared to demonstrate under proper controls and supervision that foot and mouth disease as well as the other more common diseases of cattle are not transmittable in normal circumstances to animals which are naturally reared on organically manured soils.

   Disease is becoming such a serious menace to our food supplies that it would be nothing less than criminal for the Ministry of Agriculture and the Animal Health Trust to continue to ignore such facts.

Everybody's Weekly, 1st March 1952.

   Should we slaughter the Minister of Agriculture and his staff when they get influenza, which is the equivalent in humans of foot-and-mouth disease? The article by your Farming Correspondent in December says nothing about the development of natural immunity, shown by Sir Albert Howard and the Marquis Stanga to be completely effective with animals reared naturally and fed on food grown in fertile organically manured soil.

   The commonsense approach, if only the powerful vested interests in disease can be overcome, is to rear and manage cattle so that they don't get it. Animals naturally bred and reared, and organically fed, do not get disease; and I have cured other farmers' 'incurable' rejects of the two common scourges, sterility and mastitis, by simple herbal adjustments and an adequate natural diet.

   The slaughter policy of the Ministry of Agriculture does not allow me to demonstrate the effectiveness of such methods with foot-and-mouth disease. But I am prepared to demonstrate under official supervision that animals so managed do not get foot-and-mouth disease, even when living with animals suffering from the disease.

   In reply to my letter, Dr. W. R. Wooldridge wrote the following letter which was published in The Times on 31st December 1951.

   Mr. Newman Turner again advances the claims of a natural immunity alleged to follow the feeding and rearing of animals on foodstuffs from organically manured soil. Many scientists, including some within the Ministry of Agriculture and in the Animal Health Trust, are working upon the inter-relationship of food and resistance to disease, and it may be that rigid scientific evidence may one day support in part claims made by Mr. Newman Turner and his colleagues. At present, however, their claims are not substantiated. The outbreaks of foot-and-mouth disease do not show any marked discrimination in favour of either poorly fed livestock or those nurtured on farms where the largest quanties of artificial fertilizers are used. Furthermore, one might mention that disease was rampant among animals long before artificial fertilizers were widely used, as may be instanced by the outbreak of cattle plague in Great Britain in 1865, when 233,699 cattle died.

   Yours faithfully,
        W. R. WOOLDRIDGE,
             Chairman of Council and Scientific
             Director, Animal Health Trust,
             232-5 Abbey House, Victoria Street,
             London, S.W.I. 28th December.

   It is encouraging to know from Dr. Wooldridge that work is at last being done on lines at least approaching those I have tried to pioneer on the farm. So far, my own practical experience has not been called on. But there is no secret about my methods of disease prevention and treatment. Every successful treatment has been published and is available in my writings for any farmer to try himself on his own farm, and for official investigators to investigate.

   The immense losses from animal disease on the farm, and the colossal expenditure of taxpayers' money on research into costly orthodox drug therapy demand that my simple treatments should be given an official test. I am ready for the sake of animal health and the pockets of my fellow farmers to demonstrate the ease, and infinitesimal cost at which our common cattle diseases can be cured, and in the future prevented. In the next chapter I have tried to make the case for an experiment into natural immunity to Foot and Mouth Disease and offered some of my own cattle for the purpose. 


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