On this day in vegan history · August 22, 1867
The Raw Apples That Started a Diet Revolution
A doctor born in Aarau would later treat his own jaundice with nothing but raw apples, then spend his career trying to convince medicine that food alone could heal.
The facts
- Born
- August 22, 1867, in Aarau, Switzerland
- Parents
- Heinrich Bircher and Berta Krüsi
- Education
- Studied medicine at the University of Zurich
- Sanatorium
- Lebendige Kraft ("Living Force"), on the Zürichberg in Zurich
Maximilian Oskar Bircher-Benner was born on August 22, 1867, in Aarau, Switzerland, to Heinrich Bircher and Berta Krüsi. He studied medicine at the University of Zurich and then opened his own general clinic. During the clinic's first year he came down with jaundice, and he said it was raw apples that brought him back. That recovery pushed him toward an idea most of his peers found cranky: treating patients with raw fruit, oats, and nuts instead of drugs. He later ran a sanatorium on Zurich's Zürichberg called Lebendige Kraft, or Living Force, where the apple-oat dish he built around his own recovery would eventually travel the world as muesli.
In their words
The day in the words of the people who were there. Every quote is verbatim, and every source links out so you can check it.
-
he claimed he recovered by eating raw apples
Wikipedia, describing Bircher-Benner's own account of his recovery from jaundice
Source: Wikipedia -
hygienic penitentiary
Hermann Hesse, describing Bircher-Benner's sanatorium Lebendige Kraft
Source: SWI swissinfo.ch
Why it still matters
Raw-food vegetarianism and the modern health-food movement both trace back to one doctor's stubborn bet that an apple could do more for him than the medicine of his day.
Sources
This history is still being written.
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