Free The Whey Prescription by N.D. Christopher Vasey

1
    The History of Whey

    A patient in the city of Zurich, Switzerland, whom the medical treatments of the time were unable to cure and to whom the doctors were giving little time left to live, journeyed to the mountain village of Gais (in the canton of Appenzell Ausserrhoden) in 1749 and was healed of his disease by drinking whey on a daily basis.
    Was this patient aware of the past success of treatments based on drinking whey, the liquid known to the Greek doctors of antiquity as “healing water”? Or had he heard the peasants of this mountainous region talk about whey’s healing properties?
    We don’t know, but the news soon spread of this patient, who survived despite his doctor’s terrible diagnosis, and numerous people with illnesses flooded to Gais to benefit in turn from the miraculous healing properties of whey. A health spa was soon created in this tiny village. It was followed by the opening of more than 160 others in Switzerland, Austria, and Germany. These spas were most active in the middle of the eighteenth century and throughout the nineteenth century. The renowned benefits of the whey cure brought emperors, princes, and aristocrats from all of Europe to take the cure in these spas, to be healed of their ailments or simply to improve their general health.
    What is most amazing about whey is that its healing properties have been recognized since antiquity, and modern scientific research has only confirmed the knowledge of the ancients. The whey cure is used today just as it was twenty-four centuries ago. Few remedies or cures can boast of such a long history and such unanimous agreement about their virtues.
    Hippocrates (466–377 BCE ), the father of medicine, recommended whey to his patients. Following him, Galen (131–200 CE ), another founding father of medicine, advised his patients about the whey cure. For a time he even directed a treatment center, sponsored by the famous school of Salerno, at the foot of the “milk mountain” in Italy, between Sorrento and Naples.
    Whey cures were also recommended by other famous names from the history of medicine: the Islamic doctor and author of nearly two hundred works, Ibn Sn, known in the West as Avicenna (980–1037 CE ); Thomas Sydenham (1624–89), the “English Hippocrates,” who especially recommended whey for the treatment of gout; Hermann Boerhaave (1668–1738), the famous Dutch physician whose methods of clinical instruction were used throughout Europe; Victor Albrecht von Haller (1708–77), the Swiss biologist, considered the father of neurology, who discovered the function of bile; Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762–1836), the German physician who taught how to prolong life by adopting healthier ways of living; and Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728–97), of Switzerland, remembered for his studies on migraines, which laid the foundation for future research by generations of doctors.
    Contrary to what its French name,
petit-lait
, which means “little milk,” might suggest, whey is not a poor relative of milk.
While milk is universally esteemed for its nutritional value, whey is valued for its many healing properties
. These properties are enhanced by the fact that whey is easily digested and can be drunk in much larger quantities than milk. Whey’s therapeutic activity is beneficial to the major organs of the body: heart, liver, kidneys, and intestines. Its action is cleansing, detoxifying, and regenerative. It has been—and still is—used with success for liver diseases (hepatic insufficiency, hepatitis, gallstones); kidney disorders (infections, kidney stones, edema); intestinal disorders (fermentation, flatulence, constipation, chronic indigestion, bloating); joint diseases (rheumatism, arthritis, osteoarthritis, gout); and against the scourge of modern illnesses, the cardiovascular diseases (high cholesterol, high blood pressure, heart attacks). Whey is also very effective in the fight against excess weight (obesity) and skin disorders (acne,