New Zealand's Greatest Doctor:
Ulric Williams of Wanganui
A Surgeon who became a Naturopath
By Brenda Sampson
A medical doctor has his eyes opened
I have often been asked what made me change from being just an orthodox medico. I had been born with a sentimental nature, sympathetic towards unhappiness and suffering. For two years I studied at Cambridge University, and in 1918 graduated from Edinburgh in medicine and surgery. For 14 years I practised what I had been taught.
Then in 1929 came the Great Slump. By 1932 the plight of those out of employment, and their families, had become desperate. Conditions were tough all right; children sleeping on the floor, with newspapers for covering. No firing. No light. Precious little to eat and, worst of all, no hope. Bankruptcies and suicides increasing.
I had been doing my best to alleviate some of these heart-rending miseries, and getting nowhere. I did not know what I was to discover later - that they had been deliberately inflicted by those who controlled world finance. They still do. We could, and should, control it ourselves.
Late in 1932 a meeting of intercession, sponsored by the local Ministers Association was held in Cook's Gardens in Wanganui. A friend and I went. Proceedings opened dramatically with 1200 unemployed men, in columns of four, marching onto the ground. Together with their dependants this represented perhaps five thousand people deprived of the necessities of life.
In his introductory address at the meeting, Archdeacon J K Young maintained that the ultimate root of this tribulation was individual, and therefore collective, defective regard for the Spirit of Life (or God), and His relevant conditions or laws. My missionary brother said the same. I agree.
"If anyone here would like to know more of God," said Mr Young in the course of his talk, "I suggest you do this when you get home. Go into a room by yourself, shut the door, kneel down, close your eyes, put out your hands, take your Saviour's hands in your own; and say to Him, 'From now on I am your man'."
I don't know what else Mr Young said, but he had certainly spoken to me. On the way home I thought to myself, "What a proposition! Suppose Jesus is real, and heard what you said. You don't know what you might be letting yourself in for. You could not fool Him, and there is no point in fooling yourself. You'd be definitely committed . . ."
Arrived home, I was still undecided. One part of me wanted to do as the minister advised, but the other side hung back. So I argued with myself, (or was it with Him?). "You are always protesting how sincere you are. What's wrong? Are you scared?" So on an impulse I did as Mr Young had suggested. I went to my consulting room, shut the door, knelt down by my big leather chair, closed my eyes, and put out my hands. Though my eyes were shut, I clearly saw, standing beside me, palms outward, a man, dressed in a long white robe. Taken by surprise I involuntarily drew back, and the vision (was it?) disappeared.
During the next few months I was becoming steadily more uneasy about my medical practice. Something was obviously terribly wrong, (it still is). How was I to know then, that what I had been taught at two of the world's great medical schools, by some of the most distinguished scientists of the day, was to the extent of 80, perhaps, 90 percent, nothing but human misinterpretation of distorted sense impressions? Why, I kept asking myself, all this disease?
At last I began writing down things I could see were causing disease - smoking, abuse of liquor, overeating, lack of exercise and fresh air. Then I wondered whether food might have something to do with it. Just imagine; I had always said to my patients (many doctors still do), "food has nothing to do with your trouble. Just eat plenty of good nourishing food." And then proceeded, myself, like my patients, to subsist on the refined, adulterated, dead, disease-and-death-dealing muck that most people still believe is "good nourishing food."
Where, I wondered, was I to find out about food? There was nothing about it in my medical books. Then I recalled a text, "If any man lack wisdom, let him ask of God." So, standing in my consulting room, I asked God, "Can you show me where I can find out about food?" He could. And did.
Strange that my wife had just been telling me about a woman recently back from England, who said that impurities in the blood had a lot to do with disease, and that these impurities were mostly due to ignorant or wilful, misuse of foods. "Well, well, does she indeed?" I exploded, "Just wait till I meet the fat old washerwoman. I'll show her where she gets off."
A couple of weeks after my prayer, my wife and I were invited by people we hardly knew, to a river picnic. The launch tied up beside a wooden jetty. The first item on the programme was a swim. I loved swimming, so was soon in my togs. One of the party was a young lady, perhaps in her 30s, also in togs, and especially easy on the eye. Perhaps it was by accident that I found myself sitting beside her when it was time for lunch.
"What do you think of the picnic?" she asked. "Quite something," I replied, "but, confidentially, the grub is a bit crook." There was dark brown bread, wholemeal, I was told, but being a doctor I always ate white, masses of salad, (cow food I called it), wholemeal cake and cookies; and queer drinks, which she said were vegetable and fruit juices, ugh!
On the way home I found myself again (was it by chance?) sitting next to the charming lady. Presently the talk turned to food; and it was quickly apparent that she knew not just something, but a whole lot about it. I asked whether she might be good enough to tell me more. "Bring your wife round after tea," she suggested, "I'll be happy to." When we were thanking her hours later, "It might interest you to know, " I told her, "that a fortnight ago I was praying to be shown where I could find out about food." "Strange indeed," she smiled, "it might interest you to hear that a fortnight ago my friend and I were on our knees praying to be sent to a doctor we could talk to about it."
So I had met my "fat old washerwoman," but instead of "telling her where she could get off," I found myself sitting humbly at her feet while she generously gave me my first lesson in Nature Cure.
From the day in 1932, when I had first been turned back towards God, my wife and I began going to the church in which I had been born and brought up. We attended services regularly, including the communion services. We read our Bibles, even prayed a bit; but in religion as in medicine, I was still orthodox, and could not heal a soul of a thing. My missionary brother, we reckoned, must have partaken of communion some thousands of times; and he could not heal anyone of anything either.
At church I had vague aspirations towards 'spiritual healing' - laying my hands on the sick and praying, whereupon they would get up and stroll off cured. But that was not what happened at all. I was to undergo some four years of intensive instruction in the theory and practice of Nature Cure first; diet reform, fasting, chiropractic and osteopathic adjustments, massage, exercises and exercise. By the way, how can anyone expect to get, or keep FIT, if they won't TRAIN?
Beyond a hazy idea of the power of suggestion, I did not even know the mind was involved. Within the next couple of years I found that gratifying recoveries were often due far more to physical methods used. Not perhaps till six years had passed since my original 'conversion' did healings occur in which neither physical nor psychological methods were possible.
There was a vast amount to learn; for instance, something of both physical and spiritual relativity; of the seven stages of consciousness, with their times and seasons, of fluctuating positive and negative polarisation; of the significance and management of acute as well as chronic illnesses, both mental and physical; why some patients and not others may be expected to respond; why most recoveries are so disconcertingly gradual and often fluctuate; why disappointing relapses occur; why 'beautiful Christians' suffer so much and are so hard to help; why the apparently wilful blindness of orthodox religion and medicine; and why the public indifference to even the most spectacular recoveries.
Take just one of our thousands of dramatic 'Nature Cure' recoveries, any of which might have been expected to turn a hemisphere downside up. The Rev. Mr Porter was 68 when he came for help. He was crippled with rheumatism, blood pressure and thrombosis, and was in constant pain. Several doctors in his home town were agreed on the diagnosis, and all were satisfied that nothing could be done. Unconvinced, he tried again in one of the principal cities. After every possible examination and test the verdict was the same. "You probably won't see the year out," he was told, "and there is just nothing anyone can do." How many sufferers who might easily recover are still told that? "Why, you must expect to be like that at your age," one expert had indignantly protested.
When he came to see us, Mr Porter could hardly struggle, on two crutches, from a car at the door, to my room. When it was time to leave he had to be heaved to his feet, a crutch propped under one arm to steady him, then the other crutch, till he could painfully make his way to the door and the car.
Treatment was neither possible nor required. But nature given a chance and the materials she needs, can often work seeming miracles. Specially if backed up by confidence, courage, cheerfulness, determination and perseverance. So Mr Porter was put on a strict Nature Cure diet, mainly vegetables and fruit, much of it raw. On such a regime, sooner or later a reaction in the shape of a sudden feverish upset, with flare-up of symptoms, is likely to occur. If it does, a fast is generally indicated. Acute illnesses are so frequently a vital part of Nature's provision for averting or healing chronic disease. Medical doctors know nothing of this. They are taught the acute illnesses are acute diseases, which they must 'cure', by poisons or violence. Unfortunately for the victims, the more effectually these natural 'Healing Crises' are suppressed, the more inevitably are the foundations likely to be laid for chronic and sooner or later, fatal disease.
Three weeks after Mr Porter's new regime began, the expected reaction occurred. He developed a sore throat, high fever, general malaise, and exaggeration of his usual symptoms. So a fast was advised. No food whatever; instead, orange juice and water every two hours or so, and a large enema every day. After three days I thought we had better discontinue the fast. Mr Porter was in a perilous plight; and if he died, it would be too bad for me. Orthodoxy can and does, with impunity, slay its victims in battalions and army corps. But if a naturopath's patient cannot make it, there is a hue and cry.
However, Mr Porter protested that he felt a bit better and would like to continue. So I agreed to another two days. Then another two days. Then two more. When he had fasted a month he was walking a mile every day, and had sent his crutches and sticks home. After six weeks on nothing but orange juice and water he was walking 4 miles a day. On the sixty-third day of his fast he walked ten miles; "and I could do ten more as easily now, "he assured me. So gradually I broke his fast.
During the nine weeks it had lasted he lost nearly fifty pounds weight of collected up poisonous waste and useless fat. We calculated that he must have got rid of a 4 gallon kerosine tin full of solid filth from his bowel alone. And all the other poison eliminators - lungs, liver, skin, kidneys, lymphatic system and oxygenation - had been in active operation as well.
Four years later, then aged 72, Mr Porter wrote from his new parish in the north. "There cannot be much wrong with Nature's methods; on Friday I walked 16 miles; 12 miles on Saturday; took three services on Sunday at widely scattered localities, and walked every yard of the way, and I am still getting fitter every day.
Yes 'they' know. But they know, too, that one well directed torpedo can send a crazy piratical junk to Davy Jones. So it is Action Stations; torpedo nets out; guns trained and manned. Never if anything 'they' can do will prevent it, is the public to be allowed to find out.
Can you bear to hear more examples of noteworthy recoveries? Mr Turner called, as a last resort, to see whether anything could possibly be done for his wife. She had recently returned home after six months in hospital. Paget's disease, he had been told. She would be completely bedridden for the rest of her life, which would not be long; and there was just nothing anyone could do.
When I first saw Mrs Turner, she was squatting on her bed looking like some enormous Buddha. X-rays had showed her bones de-mineralised, like chicken bones that had been steeped in acid. Her thigh bones were bent like bows, quite unable to support her colossal weight.
I explained to them that our bodies need minerals, not only for building strong bones, but also for the elimination of waste products. If the diet is deficient in minerals, the body would leech its essential supplies from teeth and bones. But make good the deficiency, and weakened tissues may be strengthened again.
"Do as I say", I promised Mrs Turner, "and one day you will walk to Castlecliff and back," a 12 mile hike!
I wrote out a diet of roughly three quarters vegetable and fruit, and one quarter meat, starchy foods, sugar and fat; plus seaweed tablets and vitamin capsules. Regular light exercises in bed to begin with.
For a few weeks I called every day or two, then twice a week. People so far down, need encouragement and advice. Soon, we helped the lady onto a chair. Then standing, with support. Presently, walking a step or two, with one hand on the table and the other on the back of a chair.
Very busy at the time, I left them with instructions to gradually increase her exercise. Some months later my bell rang one evening, and there stood Mr and Mrs Turner.
"Good heavens," I gasped, "how did you get here?"
"Walked," she replied with a grin. When I had got over my surprise, "When are you going to walk to Castlecliff and back?" I jokingly asked. "I have just done it," she answered.
I get tears in my eyes when I recall it even now. At Christmas, Mrs Turner went to stay with a married daughter who lived about a mile from the sea. Every morning before breakfast, she took the kids to the beach for a dip., Again after breakfast and again in the afternoon. Miles a day there and back, and more miles in the sea and on the sand.
When Mrs Turner came home, more tears in our eyes. With her snappy figure and sparkling eyes, down five stone in weight and with a zest for living she had never dreamed of, anyone could have been excused for mistaking her for a teenage girl.
Ann was a widow. Her husband, a fighter pilot in the last world war, had been shot down over the English Channel and lost. Ann came to New Zealand, because she thought that prospects would be better for her and her two small daughters, aged 5 and 6. But she had not been in New Zealand long, in a most uncongenial job, before her health began to fail. Eventually double cystic kidneys were diagnosed. Now she was in a fix! Not only was there no hope for her, but whatever would happen to her two little girls?
Ann weighed over 14 stone when someone sent her to me; and altogether she was in a bad way. Her kidneys reached down to her navel - and were covered with knobs, easily felt, even through the thick overlay of fat.
Ann's most pressing need was for a glimmer of hope. Then confidence, a much more meaningful word than 'faith'. It was not hard to feel compassionate towards a poor girl in such a plight. But there was something besides compassion to inspire faith. She was given a strict Nature Cure diet; and deprived of tobacco and tea. Every interview involved a journey for her of 100 miles each way. But it was as thrilling to me as to her to note her steady improvement. Not only was pound after pound of disfiguring 'upholstery' melting away, but she knew she was getting well.
The last time I saw Ann she weighed just under ten stone; had a smashing figure, with masses of burnished gold for hair, and not a kidney to be felt. I had assured her too - God does not heal sick bodies and leave minds or circumstances in Queer Street. And so it proved, because a well-to-do young farmer became interested, fell in love, and presently married our regenerated and rejuvenated Ann.
Nine years later, the two girls, now 15 and 16 years old, called in. I have never seen two more beautiful youngsters. Dressed in the pleated skirts and knitted pullovers of the day, they were bubbling over with the excitement of living, full of stories of the farm, and of the wonderful father they had. And when they left, first one and then the other, just as their mother had nine years before, put their arms around my neck, looked me straight in the eye, and gave me a kiss that surely came straight from heaven.
Remarkable? That so many such wonderful recoveries took place, yet for all the effect on public thinking, they might as well not have occurred? But look back 1900 years! How was that possible? There were only a couple of million people in Palestine, and He healed them by the thousand. Three and a half years later, a brief moment of triumph as He entered Jerusalem, then the frenzied mob screaming for His murder. How could it happen? Final defeat of "the man born to be king?"
Remember General McArthur's inspired promise? In 1941, when he was driven from Corregidor by the Japanese avalanche, he said, "I shall return." Just what Our Lord said. And what a return McArthur accomplished!
But what when the Lord returns? Almost any day? Till 1939 this gospel of healing and health was sweeping New Zealand. The biggest halls were packed to the doors. Sometimes hundreds were turned away. Then the war came. Almost at once interest fell off by half. It has been going down ever since. But the day of His return is close at hand; accompanied by a thousand legions of angels, and armed with "all power in heaven and earth."
(Another event about 1939 was the invention of the first antibiotic. When I visited the doctor in 1942, he said that as a result, the bottom fell out of his work. He said "Who would change his way of life, if he thought that his illness could be cured by taking a pill?").
The earliest example, to my knowledge, of orthodox medical 'reaction' was, long ago, when an Austrian physician named Semmelweiss lowered the death rate in a Vienna lying-in hospital from a fantastic figure to under two percent, by insisting on simple cleanliness. Germs had not been heard of then. As a reward for his novel methods he was sacked, persecuted and finally driven out of his mind.
The next concerned Sir Angus Forbes, I have forgotten his real name. Sir Angus was a leading surgeon at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, and one of the original seven of the British Empire Cancer Campaign. Becoming dissatisfied with contemporary methods of treating cancer, he cast about for improvements, and becoming seized with the significance of diet, he experimented with what we know as Nature Cure. He had twelve cases of proven cancer, all of which had been subjected to conventional treatment, and all finally given up as hopeless. When they were demonstrably and incontestably restored to full health, he laid his findings and facts before the B.E.C.C. Result: he was sacked from the B.E.C.C. and died, two years later, from a broken heart. I have read his book. (His real name was Sir William Arbothnot Lane. He was the King's Physician in the early 20th century. His book was "New Health for Everyman".)
Very early in my experience, and with as yet very limited knowledge of them. I began publicly to advocate similar ideas. Promptly a meeting was called of the local division of the B.M.A., fully attended for the first time. Twenty-two doctors were present, and each in turn had something derogatory to say about me personally. No mention of the offending ideas. When my objectionable conduct still continued, on urgent instructions from headquarters in Wellington, another meeting was summoned, with imperative instructions to contain me.
When these, too, failed I was summoned to Wellington to appear before the New Zealand Council of the B.M.A. At the meeting I reminded my aggressors that little David when confronted by the Philistine giant, laid him low with one smooth pebble from the brook of truth, and cut off the giant's head with his own sword. This did not prevent my being shot out of the B.M.A.
Soon after this I was rung by two Wellington businessmen, independently, warning me that I was to be 'framed' by the B.M.A. A good way of discrediting inconvenient teachings is to discredit the teacher. Presently, a charge was preferred against me of 'infamous conduct in a professional respect'. A patient I had been attending a while before, had died. I had to appear before a court of medical men in Wellington, all members of the B.M.A. - judge, prosecuting council, jury and executioner, all bitterly hostile. Inevitably, I was convicted and sentenced to be struck off the rolls. This would prevent my practising as a medical man. The only fly in their ointment was that before their sentence became law, it had to have the signature of the Attorney General, who at this time was Mr Mason. The Labour Party was in power. Members of the cabinet knew me. I had been invited to give evidence before both their Parliamentary Committees appointed to cast the pending Social Security legislation. Cabinet Ministers were readily accessible, sympathetic and friendly. So in spite of extreme pressure by my opponents, the required signature was not forthcoming.
The day my wife and I set sail for the 'trial' in Wellington, I called at the post office for my mail. The only item was a cardboard cylinder from America. In it was a parchment scroll, set out in old style lettering and embellished in gold, conferring on me 'in honour of my services to drugless healing', honorary membership of the American Naturopathic Association. Half an hour later, on the way, I turned on the car radio, and this is the first thing that came through "The Lord loves the man who is prepared to suffer for Him and not count the cost."
A week or two earlier, invited to take a 'promise' on leaving one of our Nature Cure Homes. I accidentally secured three. Each one stressed the efficacy of trust. The third stated simply, "Because thou hast trusted me, I have delivered thee."
One of our early successes concerned a railway employee, on his way home to die, after six months in hospital. He had once weighed sixteen stone, but was now down to nine. Stooped nearly double with huge cancerous growth in the middle of his back, he was a picture of misery. You could have put a fist in the gaping hole in the growth, which was running with pus. He had been given three months to live.
I could only assure him and his unhappy little wife, who had brought him, that if you give nature a chance and the materials she needs, she can sometimes work miracles. I wrote out a strict Nature Cure diet, with seaweed tablets and vitamin capsules. For dressings, layers of plain surgical gauze squeezed out of cold tap water, and covered with a thin piece of cotton wool - to be changed when soiled or getting dry. And a daily large enema.
A month later he returned. As soon as I saw him. "Why", I exclaimed, "you look a different man." "Thank you". he grinned, "I am a different man." When I looked at the ugly growth it was half healed, and there was almost no discharge.
Two months later, he came again. The growth had disappeared and healing was complete. So I gave him a certificate of fitness to return to work. This was laughed at by his employers. "Get a certificate from the cancer clinic," they said, "and you can begin." This he did, and four months after they had sent him home with three months to live, the same clinic gave him a certificate of "fit to return to work." That was shortly before my 'trial'. Eventually this patient died at the age of 84.
Not long after that case a council employee wrote an urgent appeal. His face had been burnt with boiling tar, and refused to heal. He had nineteen treatments, including excision, skin grafts and radiation. Finally he had been sent home. He wrote to me, not for treatment - he knew none was possible - but to seek relief from pain. The large ulcer was eating away his face - and though he had three kinds of drugs, he got no relief day or night, and he might linger on for months.
I sent him the same instructions and diet that had been so successful in Dellow's case. At the same time, I wrote to an ex-hospital matron, who I knew was sympathetic, asking her to supervise. In two days all pain had ceased. In a week signs of healing appeared. In a few months, healing was complete. Such a stir did his recovery make, that the editor of a city newspaper sent a reporter to investigate. As a result, the editor organised a committee, and bought a large house, (setting up my ex-matron in charge) for the treatment of hopeless cancer cases, along these lines.
Her first patient was an elderly man dying of cancer of the prostate. He was suffering severely. So the first evening nurse rang a doctor for help. Rather abruptly, he said he could not come. She tried another doctor. He could not come either. She tried one more. Same result.
Next morning a representative of the B.M.A. called, who informed her that in no circumstances would any of their members attend any of her patients. Furthermore, should any of her patients die, she would face a charge of manslaughter. I am sorry to say that nurse got such a terrible shock that she left the home and fled the country.
In 1938 my wife and I crossed to Australia to help the Nature Cure people defend themselves from an all out attack by the B.M.A. To begin with, we gave three lectures in the Lady Margaret Hall. At the first there were 1400 present. At the second 1800. At the third the hall was full - 2300 attended and numbers were turned away. Our hosts decided to risk a final venture in the Sydney Town Hall. The only available date was a Friday, Sydney's bad day. And there was no time for advertising. There was not a vacant seat.
Just then I heard that the Speaker of the House of Representatives had had a brush with the B.M.A. So I rang him up. Graciously he invited me to call next morning at his office. Tall and distinguished looking, he reminded me of pictures of Gladstone. Claiming, he said, to be something of an idealist, he had always felt an urge to do something to promote the people's health. That was why when the Stevens party came to power, Mr Weaver was assigned the portfolio of health. He had hardly taken office, he told me, when he saw abuses of a number and magnitude that appalled him. He began by instituting one or two very minor reforms. Whereupon he received a call from Sir Joseph Lyons, (I have forgotten his real name), president of the B.M.A. "What is all this?" enquired Sir Joseph. Mr Weaver replied, "You should know, Sir Joseph." "Perhaps I do," said Sir Joseph, "but I have just come to warn you - either you will behave or you will be disciplined."
Under the misapprehension that a minister of the crown had some sort of authority, and incensed at the noble knight's attitude, he ordered Sir Joseph from the office. "Oh well," observed Sir Joseph, "if that is your decision, it's OK by me." Next day there was a meeting of the cabinet to which Mr Weaver was not invited, and the following day, Mr Weaver found himself without a portfolio.
Stunned, I could hardly believe my ears. "Can I repeat that story in New Zealand?" I asked, "You can do as you like," said Mr Weaver, " I have already published it in Smith's Weekly", (the popular Australian journal).
Years after this I was on a week's campaign in Auckland when the Rotary Club's representative rang to ask whether I would be prepared to give the talk to their members at the following Monday lunch. I jumped at the chance. But on Monday morning, another ring, a brief one, "Sorry, the talk is off. Doctors you know." Recently, I asked a friend who arranges the local Rotary talks. "Not the remotest chance," he told me, "I know." I said, "don't tell me - two doctor members." "Worse." he chuckled, "three." Oh well - 'Service before Self.'
True minds open to truth attract it. Minds not open, snap shut at its remotest approach, like giant clams.
