Herbert Sutcliffe

Herbert Sutcliffe (19 October 1886 – 27 October 1971) was an English psychologist, alternative health advocate and New Thought teacher. He founded a proto-New Age movement called the School of Radiant Living. Many of Sutcliffe's ideas about health were pseudoscientific.

Biography

Sutcliffe was born in Louth, Lincolnshire, England, in 1886. Sutcliffe edited the Australian Psychological Society's magazine and was its president (1925–1930). He obtained a PhD in psychology, in 1931. Other educational institutions, such as the Hohepa homes which assists children with learning difficulties, were also given endowments. Sutcliffe's most famous student was a young Edmund Hillary. Hillary's whole family were involved in the Auckland school and Hillary himself trained and qualified as a teacher and went on to assist Sutcliffe and worked at the school from 1938 to 1943. Sutcliffe established the first School of Radiant Living in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1931. During the next two decades Sutcliffe set up 36 schools in the United States, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia and New Zealand. He held a holistic view of nature and diet played an important role in his teachings. He developed a fad diet known as the "eliminating diet" combined with exercise and prayer. His diet based on food combining principles emphasised the consumption of fresh fruit, vegetables and what he termed "potassium broth". Sutcliffe was not a vegetarian, but meat was rarely eaten. Sutcliffe believed that vegetables should consist of 80% of the diet as they are "alkaline forming" and the remaining 20% should be proteins, carbohydrates and fats which are "acid forming".

Selected publications

How to Re-Make Your Life (1931) Radiant Living: Summary of Course of Instruction in Psycho-Cosmology (1951)