New Zealand's Greatest Doctor:
Ulric Williams of Wanganui
A Surgeon who became a Naturopath
By Brenda Sampson
AN AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL ACCOUNT OF MY CONTACTS WITH ULRIC WILLIAMS
My own story
In 1940/41 I was a student at Wellington Teachers College, now called the College of Education. In 1942 after graduating, I taught Standard 2 at Kilbirnie Primary School near my home in Hataitai. They weren't happy years. As a child I had been shy and timid, useless at sports, but intelligent and capable in other ways. As a teacher I felt incapable. (For decades afterwards I had nightmares of finding myself in front of a class and not knowing what to say). There was no unemployment in the forties and in normal times I would have found more congenial work. But we were in the middle of the Second World War and the Manpower Regulations made it illegal to leave the teaching profession while the war lasted. One could leave to get married, or to join the forces. But no one asked me to marry, and I was a pacifist at heart. I remember crying myself to sleep because I felt trapped in a job I hated and didn't know how long the war would last.
While I was at Training College I visited a student friend and spent the evening in her tiny bed-sitting room, sitting on her low bed with a window behind me, in a cold draught from a southerly wind leaking through the window. When I came to stand up, I couldn't stand straight. The hollow in my back had disappeared; I was locked in a leaning forward position; in the small of my back were two muscles standing out like taut, inch thick ropes. There was acute lower back pain, and sciatica.
The first doctor I consulted said I had muscular adhesions, and recommended manipulation under general anaesthetic, to break down the adhesions. This I distrusted and refused. So he referred me to the physiotherapy department at the Wellington hospital. For months I attended there daily after 4 pm. They gave me deep heat treatment which felt heavenly, but it was followed by exercises of the touch-your-toes type, which made the pain worse than ever. I caught a tram home and bought a threepenny bar of Sante chocolate every day to cheer me up as I hobbled up the steep hill home.
In the summer of 1941/42 I caught measles; a light dose. With the fever, the pain left, except for a tiny twinge in the right hip that seemed to say, "You haven't finished with me yet; I'll be back next winter."
With such a negative expectation, it did come back as bad as ever. This time we consulted Dr Alexander Gillies, the orthopaedic specialist at the public hospital, later knighted. He had my back X-rayed and diagnosed arthritis in the sacro-iliac joint. My mother went with me to the appointment. She asked, "Could it be psychological? Brenda always has a lot of pain when she does the washing". (In 1942 we didn't have a washing machine; washing meant boiling the clothes in a copper, lifting the heavy wet clothes out with a copper stick, wringing them with a hand-ringer, and carrying the heavy load up steps to a clothes line.)
In reply to my mother's question, Dr Gillies picked up the X-ray plate by the corner and waved it in front of her face. He said, "Oh, no, Mrs Pownall; this is a genuine disease". She asked whether it could be cured. He replied in a gloomy, pontificating kind of voice, "Well, we'll see; she's young. We'll try gold injections".
But we didn't try them. I was learning singing at the time, and my teacher said, "Go to Ulric Williams; he cured my sister when she was dying". (Her sister was my age. She had very acute colitis. She lived on a diet of nothing but strained orange juice for ten months, and got better.)
By this time I was teaching at Kilbirnie School. It was August and I had two weeks holiday. Dr Williams lived at Wanganui. I rang and arranged to go there for a fortnight to stay in one of his convalescent homes. But I stayed two months.
The home was In Aramoho, on the banks of the Wanganui river, and was run by two sisters, Maisie and Bess Westwood. I arrived there about 5.30, after a gruelling trip in the train. It was a bitterly cold day with southerly wind and rain. The vibration of the train made my back ache. We stopped for 20 minutes at Palmerston North, where I sat in the waiting room beside a smoking coal fire that gave out no heat, and listened to two other women talking about a friend with arthritis who was now in a wheelchair.
When I arrived at the home, Sister Maisie welcomed me and showed me my room, where I dropped and broke a small mirror. It seemed a bad omen! Afterwards I waited in the sitting room for Dr Williams, who would see me at six o'clock. I sat beside another sulky fire feeling tired and depressed.
When the Doctor came, his first words were, "The world is a beautiful and wonderful place. If you don't see it that way, you are looking at it upside-down!". I was very surprised at such an unmedical remark, and hadn't the least idea what he meant.
As it turned out, the home proved to be an extremely pleasant place. It was a big wooden house facing the river with a beautiful garden, and the two sisters who ran it were kind and friendly in every way. We were always welcome in the big old-fashioned kitchen which was warmed by a large glowing coal range. I remember a patient with bowel cancer who made carrot juice in the kitchen every day.
The routine at the home was simple and natural. The day began with a drink of hot water and lemon juice served at 7 am. Breakfast was served in one's room at 8 o'clock; a tray with two or three pieces of raw fruit, a glass of milk, and a tiny dish with a tablespoon of wheat germ moistened with milk and some nuts and dried fruit added.
Midday dinner was a cooked meal of vegetables and a protein dish; meat twice a week, other days a dish made from eggs, fish, legumes or nuts. Sister Maisie's nut roast was superb. The evening meal always included a raw vegetable salad and with it home-made biscuits or scones. These were made with wholemeal flour and without sugar. The scones were broken open and rebaked till the new tops were light brown, crusty and delicious.
Drinks, after the early morning lemon drink, were: mid morning, hot water flavoured with Vegemite, mid afternoon, a cup of weak tea for those who wanted it, but most were out walking; and evenings, hot water with lemon juice and a little honey, At other times water was available in the kitchen. Bedtime was at 9 o'clock.
A woman came at 10 am each day to give us physical exercises. There is a story attached to this physiotherapy that is told in the following article "Creating Health".
On weekdays, the Doctor came at 11 am and talked to the patients for an hour about healing. On sunny days we sat in the garden. A few times when it was cold, we gathered in the kitchen where I warmed my back against the coal range. In these talks the Doctor expressed his philosophy of healing. He said, "All disease comes from one of two places; either an unhealthy way of life, with poor diet, drinking and smoking, lack of exercise. Or else it comes from unhappiness in the mind and spirit. As I grow older, I have come to see that the second is more basic; because when people are unhappy they tend to live in an unhealthy way".
Because he thought that happiness is a basic essential for health, he tried to teach people how to live happily, by throwing out fear and expecting good. He taught us that belief is a very powerful force which tends to produce the thing believed. If we expect bad things to happen, we are afraid, and our fear tends to produce the thing feared. If we expect good things to happen, this is faith, and our faith helps to produce the good we expect. Jesus said, "It shall be to you according to your faith". Ulric Williams defined faith as "expecting good".
Another of his sayings, which proved important in my case was, "You cannot hope to be healed unless you throw out all fear and all resentment. These cause hormones to be secreted in the brain which are very potent, and very toxic in excess". Now over fifty years later, it is being realised that the brain, as well as being the seat of the mind and the organ of thought, is also the most important gland in the body.
Ulric Williams' way of throwing out fear was to believe in a loving heavenly Father who loves us and protects us in every situation, as long as we believe this enough to trust Him. The only thing that blocks us from receiving this protection is our own fear, He always emphasised that God is good, and wrote the word like this - GO (o) D. But one day he said, "I try not to use the word God. People have so many misconceptions about this word, that it is a barrier to communication. I try instead to use the words "Life" and "the Life Force". He said often, "Life will bring you everything good, as long as you trust it."
A good way of throwing out resentment is forgiveness. I once asked a group of six year olds what forgiveness means. A bright eyed little girl said, "Forgiveness means saying it doesn't matter". Ulric Williams said, "We have so much! How can we be resentful?"
Another day he said, "You must believe in healing and expect healing. Believe that God loves you and wants to heal you, and can heal you. He taught that there is natural healing power in the body, known to ancient doctors, who called it "vis mediatrix". Mediatrix means healing, vis means power.
Another very important saying was: "All disease comes from fear. A doctor's first duty is to allay fear". He wrote to the Wellington Hospital and asked them to send the X-ray plate of my back. When he examined it, he said to me, "There is only a little arthritis there. It can easily get better". This eased my mind and comforted me.
He didn't mention arthritis again, but one day he said, "Do you know why you have backache?" I said, "No". He said that if a person is very unhappy and can't find a way out of the unhappiness, the body will create a way out through illness. I thought, "The pain is worse than the school teaching. If that is the only way out, I would rather stay in". So when I was better, I went back to teaching quite happily until the war was over. I had never mentioned that I disliked teaching; it was a hunch on his part. But he did say that in his experience the two professions that cause the most illness are teaching and the Church. Maybe because they are the most stressful professions.
I knew about the stress of school teaching, though I must say that in the 1940's teaching was easier than it is today. Children were docile and teachable. They sat quietly at their desks from 9 am to 3 pm. In seven years I never met a hyperactive child, the word didn't exist then. Though I did hear of one such child, from another teacher who was astonished at his behaviour.
Also in seven years, I never met a dyslexic child, or one who couldn't read by the age of seven. And in seven years I only met one asthmatic child. Today 30% of children are asthmatic or wheezy. I was warned about Janet's asthma, but it was mild; she never had an attack at school in the year that I taught her.
I was surprised at the stress of being a clergyman, and so curious that subsequently, I asked one, "Are you a happy man?" He got very angry with me.
Shortly after I came to the Home, the Doctor put me on a special diet. I had two apples and two glasses of milk at each meal, three times a day, for nearly two months. No tea or grain foods, which were my addictions, and probably allergic. He told me to take a teaspoon of cascara before bed, and a teaspoon of Epsom salts in water every morning. I was so hungry that I enjoyed the apples and milk very much. Eaten together they tasted delicious.
No one in the Home stayed in bed. We were encouraged to walk in the afternoon, for as far as we were able. Sometimes I walked to Wanganui and back, or often along one of the ridges parallel to the river; sometimes with another patient, but often alone. I enjoyed these walks. Sometimes while walking I would have a clear insight which seemed to help healing. I felt they came from God, and was a bit conceited at being so honoured. Now, I think they also came from the good food I was eating which cleared my mind and made it work better.
At the convalescent home, I shared a room with another young woman, May Lee. In 1942, rubber and plastic mattresses had not been invented. Making a bed consisted of stripping it, turning over the mattress, and replacing the sheets and blankets. The mattress was heavy. Lifting it would set my back aching and it would ache all day.
One morning I lay in bed watching May make her bed. She flipped her mattress over lightly, so lightly! I thought enviously, "I would give anything to be able to turn my mattress so easily, without pain!" Another thought followed, "Perhaps if I make a mental picture of myself doing this, I will be able to?" So I did, and it was easy and painless. Then I thought, "I will never envy another person again. Envy means one has a mental picture of oneself lacking the thing desired. This belief in lack perpetuates the lack. If I picture myself having the good thing I desire, my belief will help it to happen!"
I learnt something else about belief at the Wanganui convalescent home. When I had arthritis, my bedtime practice for many months had been to fill a hot water bottle, take a painkiller and go to bed. About 2 am I would wake in pain, crawl out of bed to reheat the bottle, take another pill, and go back to bed, hoping to go to sleep again.
In the convalescent home, this continued; until the matron, Sister Maisie, gave me a small book to read. It was "Your word is your wand" by Florence Shinn. It claimed that anything you say with belief and conviction will come true. I decided to use it to cure the habit of waking in pain during the night. I said, "Tonight, I will go to sleep and wake at 7 am". This was so hard to believe that I seemed to feel my brain stretch physically when I did it. To prove my belief I put the pills in the rubbish bin outside, and left my slippers and dressing-gown in the wardrobe ten feet away across a wooden floor with no carpet. Then I went to bed. I had the worst night ever. I woke at 2 am as usual and refilled the hottie, but had no painkillers. I finally went to sleep at 6.30 am and woke on the tick of seven.
The book had said, "Sometimes the first result may be disappointing; but regard even the tiniest success as a leaf on the water, indicating that full success is near. I thought, "My faith worked. I said I would awake at 7 am, and I did. Only I said the wrong thing. I should have said that I would sleep all night and wake at seven". So the next night I said that, and I did it. I never awoke in pain at 2 am again.
In later years I interviewed some of Ulric Williams' ex-patients. They said, "He didn't only cure me; he changed my whole life!" He did this for me too. One day when I was out walking, I suddenly saw what was meant by his first words to me, "The world is a beautiful and wonderful place. If you don't see it that way you are looking at it upside down".
As a child I had no social skills and no school friends. My only playmate was a cousin who lived opposite. Ours was the only old shabby house in a fairly new suburb, and I avoided telling anyone where I lived.
With no skills at sports, reading was my chief pastime. But in the 1920's, the excellent children's libraries to be provided by the Labour Government, did not exist. I read comics and books like "The Bumper book of school stories for girls". I longed to be like one heroine, "the most popular girl in school", but I felt the least popular.
One day, walking along the ridge road. I began to think of the people who loved me, my mother and father and two brothers and two sisters. Our neighbour, Mrs Fielding, and my mother's cousin Aileen Stace thought the sun shone out of me; so did my mother's sister Lisa, and her daughter Jean Muir. Ten people loved me very much! It is said that for emotional health, people need to know that they are important to at least one person in the whole world. But many don't have even one person to love them! And I had ten! Suddenly I realised that I was lucky. I wasn't unpopular, I was very much beloved.
With this realisation came the corollary, that happiness depends on what we look at. If I look at and notice all the people who don't know or care whether I exist or not, I feel lonely and neglected. If I notice my warm hearted family, and others who care very much for me, I feel loved and happy.
Years later I had a dream so vivid that I remember it today. I was sitting in a little grassy park in Roseneath, overlooking Wellington harbour. It was a dazzlingly beautiful night, the harbour still and smooth as glass, and the city lights reflected in it, as in a mirror.
A young woman drove up and came towards me saying, "I am desperate. Is there anyone I can ring up or talk to, who can help me?" There was such a contrast between her despair, and the beauty of the night, spread out unnoticed before her unseeing eyes, that in my dream, I remembered Ulric Williams' words, "The world is a beautiful and wonderful place. If you don't see it that way, you are looking at it upside down!" I wanted to say, "It's your eyes! Change your eyes! Change your way of looking!" But instead I woke up.
People used to write whole books on "The art of happiness". It seems to me that the whole art lies in this: choose what you will look at and pay attention to.
The world is full of things both good and bad, beautiful and ugly. If we look at the good things that make us happy, we will be happy. If we look at the bad things that make us unhappy, we will be unhappy. The choice is ours; we are free to be happy or unhappy whichever we choose.
There a number of clear advantages in choosing to see good and be happy:
-Unhappiness weakens the immune system and the whole body, whereas happiness heals both oneself and the people about one.
-Thoughts are a creative force. What we pay attention to grows and develops. If we pay attention to good, we are creating good. If we pay attention to bad, we are increasing it.
-There was an old lady in her eighties, her son-in-law admired and respected her wisdom so much that he spent an hour a day talking to her, so that he could record her conversation in a book. I don't remember her name or the title of the book, but I remember one remark from it: "To see good is the attitude of love".
When I had been on the apples and milk diet for about six weeks, I came home from a walk and looked in the mirror to comb my hair. My cheeks were pink, my eyes, hair and teeth were all shining. I looked a picture of health, I thought with surprise, "I'm beautiful!" When I went in to tea, the men looked at me as if they were surprised too.
But I was still in pain, sometimes severe pain. A few days afterwards, the Doctor, passing me in a car, saw me hobbling along, clutching the bridge rail. The next time he spoke to me, he said, "You'll have to pull up your socks". I had been there nearly two months; I suppose he thought I should be improving. I thought, "I keep pulling them up, but every time the pain is bad, I get frightened and they fall down again. What I need is a suspender."
The Doctor was still trying to help me throw out the idea of backache. He said, "It's only a mental habit. All chronic disease is only a mental habit - a disgusting mental habit!" I said, I'll try".
He said, "I don't want you to try! You are going down hill. I want you to turn around and go up hill and you say "I'll try". I don't want you to try, I want you to do it!"
It was obvious that I was a slow learner. In his first morning talks he had told the group that we must do two things. We must believe in healing; we must believe that God loves us, that he wants to heal us, and that he can heal us. The only thing that can block this is our own fear.
I had gone to Wanganui without any belief, one way or the other; merely in a spirit of enquiry to see if I would get better. I suddenly saw that curiosity is not the same thing as belief. Why, that very day I had been wondering if I should go back to Wellington and have gold injections.
The second requirement was to throw out all fear and resentment. I had thrown out resentment (see Creative Health, page 18). But fear? No! I was very afraid of the backache, afraid of the pain, afraid of it growing worse with age, afraid of finishing up in a wheelchair. What was I going to do about fear?
The answer came a few mornings later in the toilet. In spite of aperients, the morning evacuation was acutely painful. Here was my opportunity to prove my faith. I thought, "I believe that God loves me. I believe that He wants to heal me. I believe that he can heal me. So what is there to worry about? Every time I am in pain, I will say, 'All is well'. That will be my suspender."
I only had to say it twice. The same day the pain was much less. I walked on air. I didn't even crave the nut roast; I didn't even ask if I could scrape the baking dish as I had done previously. I said, "All is well" again the next day, and at 10 am the taut ropes in the small of my back had vanished, and the pain had totally disappeared. I was better, and I went home. When I said goodbye, I thanked the Doctor for curing me. He said, "I didn't cure you; only God can heal. Actually what I did was to teach you how to cure yourself; and that will be useful to you all your life". And so it has been. For the next fourteen years, I had no pain anywhere in my body, and no other illness at all.
The Years Since Then
I was so happy to be relieved of pain, and so grateful to the Doctor, that I vowed I would live to be a hundred, and when the Evening Post reporter asked me to what I owed my longevity, I would say I owed it to Ulric Williams. He was not a dangerous crank, as the medical profession called him. What he taught was true. In 1942, I was 25, a long way from 100. I am now 80. What of the intervening years?
There is a story of a mentally handicapped man who worked for a fisherman, and ate a lot of fish. A visitor said to him, "I thought fish was good for the brain!" He replied, "Look what I might have been like, if I'd never had no fish!"
My life has been varied. I have made serious mistakes, but I think, "Look what I might have been like if I had never known Dr Williams!" Looking back, I believe that having arthritis in 1942 was the most fortunate thing that ever happened to me, because without it I would never have met him. After my recovery, I went back to teaching till the end of 1945, and then applied for a job in the Wellington public library, where I worked happily till I retired in 1972.
In 1956 I had a return of back pain, due I think to emotional problems. I didn't go back to the Doctor, because of his words, "I have taught you how to cure yourself". I felt I had failed and was ashamed. By this time, slipped discs had been invented. I went to a physiotherapist who gave me heat treatment and spinal traction. In about three weeks the pain was gone. I found that remembering to "walk tall" was as good as traction.
A few years later, in the 1960's, I had another brief bout of back pain. This time my mother came to my rescue. She was reading a book entitled "Your mind can heal you" by Frederick Bailes. His advice was "Whenever you feel a pain anywhere in your body, say to yourself 'God is right in the middle of the pain healing it' and it will be better in three days".
I was so angry with myself for having the pain, that I said scornfully "What good would that do?". But the pain was so bad that I thought it was worth trying, and it worked! In this I was lucky. It gave me confidence. Ever since, if in pain, I have said these words and I have never been troubled by extended pain since.
However I did visit Ulric Williams once again. In January 1957, the Health Department was hoping to wipe out TB with antibiotic drugs. They had a mobile X-ray unit in Wellington and asked employers to let all staff have chest X-rays. The library staff had them and I was the only one found to have a scar on the lung, dating from 1924 when I had pleurisy as a child. I had to see the doctor in charge of the X-ray unit. As I came into her room, she looked up from her desk and said, "Well, I can see you haven't got TB". Then questions; "Do you cough? Do you spit?" Answer "No".
But there had been no X-rays since 1924, and she could not tell from the recent one whether the scar was still active. So she told me to have another one in six months time. I thought, "That will be in July, the coldest month of the year. What if I catch a cold? If I go back coughing and spitting, she will think I have got TB". So what happened? "I feared a fear, and it came upon me".
This is what happened. During Easter, I decided to repaint our shabby old bathroom. I hired an electric sander to remove the old white paint, not knowing that old white paint is made of lead and very poisonous. It was a windless day and the two tiny windows did not provide any ventilation. Soon the air was thick with paint dust and I worked in this all day long. The next and subsequent days, I felt very ill, as if I had an acute bout of flu. This feeling of unwellness continued through the winter.
In July my sister went to the Trentham races on a day of pelting rain. She came home soaked, and developed a cold, which I caught. So I didn't go for another X-ray, thinking I could wait till the cold was better. In August while staying at our bach in Paekakariki, I thought I might be able to sweat out my problems with exercise, so I spent the day pulling out lupins and lupin roots. Far from helping, this made me worse than ever. I didn't have enough strength to stand for ten minutes washing dishes. Feeling desperate, I rang Dr Williams, and went back to see him.
He was very kind, and said I didn't need to feel ashamed of being sick again. "Anyone can fall down in the mud; the main thing is not to lie there." He arranged for a chest X-ray, and said my lungs were so full of fluid that they could not see anything else. He could not accept me in a home because by now regulations required TB patients to be treated in isolation hospitals. He advised me to go home and admit myself to Wellington Hospital, which I did.
Within a day or two, they stuck a needle in my back and drew off a lot of fluid, after which I felt wonderful. I was kept there for six months with monthly X-rays and antibiotic drugs for the suspected TB, and had a pleasant holiday. My friend, Margaret Ferguson, visited me every week and brought me interesting books to read. After six months I went home with instructions to attend the chest clinic for an X-ray every month, and to continue to take the antibiotic medication. I took these pills for about four months, till one day I had a stomach haemorrhage and vomited a large amount of blood. After that I stopped taking the pills.
The chief librarian asked for a certificate that I was not contagious. The certificate said, "Miss Pownall is not contagious, and never has been. She has never had a positive sputum". When I went back to work, I found that my memory, previously good, had become erratic and unreliable. I wondered if the months on a heavy dose of toxic medication, had damaged my brain in some way.
In 1968 I married a New Plymouth man who liked to go back to visit his family each year. When we drove through Wanganui, I would ring Dr Williams, just to keep in touch with him. About this time he and his wife sold their house and moved into Hikurangi old people's home, where his wife died. After this he sounded more and more lonely and unhappy.
In the library I had seen a book called a "Festschrift" (celebration writing). A famous man had turned eighty and his friends compiled a book in his honour, as a birthday present, each writing a chapter. I thought it would cheer up the Doctor if I could produce a Festschrift for his eightieth birthday. I could write a chapter about what he did for me, and ask other ex-patients to do the same. I knew his age because he was born the same year as my mother.
My younger brother, then aged five, commented one day, "I've got two minds". "What do you mean?" "Coming home from school today, I saw two big boys teasing a little boy. They pulled off his cap and threw it over a hedge. He was crying. One of my minds wanted to go and help him. The other mind wanted to have fun laughing with the big boys."
"What did you do?" "I just came home".
In the same way, I was double-minded about the Festschrift. I didn't know how to make a book. (This was before computers.) Finally I plucked up courage to ask the Evening Post to put an ad. in the public notices requesting ex-patients of Ulric Williams to contact me. The assistant said in a shocked voice, "We can't accept this! It would be advertising a doctor! That's illegal!" My first mind was disappointed; my timid mind relieved. I dropped the project. In December 1971, Dr Williams died. The next year I retired from the library. About the same time, I met Sister Hannah. I think she may have been Jewish; maybe a refugee from Hitler's Germany. She had been a students' health nurse in Christchurch, but now lived alone in Wellington. Her only relative was a daughter in England. She was lonely and unhappy, and in pain with arthritis. I tried to tell her some of the things Ulric Williams had taught me, but she scoffed, "Jesus and vegetable juice! That's not my line!" So she continued to suffer from arthritis. One day she said to me, "You've got a crush on Ulric Williams. Why don't you write his biography?"
I thought maybe I could now, with time on my hands. This time I rang the editor of the New Zealand Listener. He said, "Just write us a letter. We will publish it and people will contact you." About twenty did. I bought a tape recorder and set out to interview them, going as far as New Plymouth and Gisborne. I collected so much information that I was baffled by the quantity that had to be transcribed, sorted, collated.
In the next few years, life became busier. First the Wellington toy library asked me to be their librarian. I accepted, thinking it would help my Down's Syndrome sister, Alison. Then the IHC Society asked me to take over their library. This was a bigger and more difficult task. All the work was by mail. People would write from all over New Zealand asking for help to rear and educate their handicapped children. At that time these children were not admitted to any school or kindergarten for normal children, and there were only a few special schools for them.
One of the first letters described a seven year old child, severely brain injured at birth. She was almost totally blind and deaf, and hyperactive. The hyperactivity was the worst. Could I help? In 1976 I could not find anything helpful. But in 1977 I heard of a hyperactivity association formed in Sydney. They were using the Feingold Diet, and found it amazingly helpful. Feingold was an American allergist who thought that toxic food additives, especially artificial colours, flavours and preservatives, contributed to hyperactivity. In 1978, the Sydney association invited him to come to Australia on a lecture tour. I invited him to visit New Zealand too, and advertised for people who would like to hear him. Those who answered formed the Wellington Hyperactivity Association. I have worked for the association for twenty years. Once I kept an account of the work involved, it totalled 43 hours in a week. In 1981 I resigned from the IHC library to give full time to the Hyperactivity Association.
This year I have taken advantage of a month's holiday in January to finish Ulric Williams' book. It follows the original plan, just a collection of memories from people who were grateful to him. It is not a biography, as I did not have enough biographical information. He is not mentioned in NZ Who's Who, or our Dictionary of National Biography. The medical profession of the day dismissed him as a dangerous crank. This wiped out his memory except amongst those who knew him. I have written this book so that people today may have some knowledge and understanding of true healing.
Note: A new edition of the New Zealand Dictionary of National Biography was published in October 1998. It contains a page about Ulric Williams.
