Henry G. Bieler

Henry G. Bieler (April 2, 1893 – October 11, 1975) was an American physician and germ theory denialist, best known for his book Food is Your Best Medicine, which advocated the treatment of disease with foods. He is widely recognized as a pioneer in alternative medicine who used non-pharmaceutical, diet-based therapies to treat his patients. Bieler opposed the use of any drugs, including aspirin.

Bieler argued there was only one disease called "toxemia" which he blamed for all human ills.

Biography

Henry Bieler was born in 1893 in Milford, Ohio. In about 1905 his family moved to Cincinnati. He studied medicine at the Ohio-Miami Medical College and graduating with his MD in 1916. He started his medical practice in West Virginia's coal region, moving to Twin Falls, Idaho in about 1922. In 1926 he moved west to Pasadena, California before settling permanently in Capistrano Beach, California in 1954. He died in his home in 1975.

Bieler did not believe that germs cause disease but are "merely a concomitant of disease." According to Bieler, "Discarding the germ theory of disease opened the way for me to explore new methods of eliminating the stagnating waste products from the body. Briefly stated, my position is: improper foods cause disease; proper foods cure disease." Swanson who suffered from stomach pains visited Bieler for a charge of three dollars.

Books

In 1965, Bieler wrote the book Food is Your Best Medicine, published by Random House, a compilation of over fifty years of work treating disease by diet. This book, which became a best seller, is still in print (Ballantine Books division of Random House), and has been translated into many other languages. The book was highly controversial at the time. Bieler refused to include any "diets" or recipes in the text because he believed that every person has different body chemistry and, therefore, different needs. In 1972 he wrote a second book, The Natural Way to Sexual Health, with co-author Sarah Nichols, which did have recipes added by his editor/agent between the time he submitted the manuscript and when the book was published.

Doris M. Breitzer in a review of Food is Your Best Medicine stated that "the hazards of a book of this type, obviously addressed to the non-professional public, are the hazards inherent in any possible invitation to self-treatment."

At the time of his death in 1975 he was working on a book called The Incurables, dedicated to the memory of Martin F. Fischer one of his professors from medical school whom he greatly respected. The book dealt with specific diseases like cancer, lupus, diabetes, asthma, epilepsy, gout, and even the common cold. In it, he wrote what he felt caused the disease and how chemistry could be reversed for control or cure. This book was completed by an associate, Reigh Parker-Burch, in 2013 and is titled "Conquering the Incurables".

Selected publications