Fact or Fiction -- Unusual Natural Healing

Natural healing methods have been in the forefront of my mind lately, bringing to mind various stories I've heard over the years of 'miraculous' cures.  We've all read these, but there are only two that I remember with any detail and I thought you might find them interesting as well.

The first came from my neighbor/landlord when I lived in St. Helena in the 1980s.  At the time, this man was probably in his 70s or 80s, as healthy and active as can be with a large veggie garden that he singlehandedly tended.  He was a crotchety individual, but for some reason took a liking to me and even gave me a little room in his veggie garden.  One day we were talking and he told me a story I've never forgotten, although the details are admittedly foggy. Lying and exaggeration would not have been part of this man's persona, and I believe what he told me.

He said that when he was a young man, maybe 20, he was diagnosed with some serious disease for which no cures existed at the time, which would have been in the early 1900s.  It was a death sentence.  Tuberculosis comes to mind, but I'm not sure that's what it was and it really doesn't matter.  At the time, he was living and working in Washington or Oregon and decided there was nothing for him to do but go home to his family in southern California and wait to die.   Because he had no money, he started walking south and for some reason I can't recall, ate garlic in large quantities for the time in took for him to walk the length of the Pacific Coast, which would have been several months.  When he arrived home and saw a doctor, all traces of the disease were gone and never returned.  He credited the garlic with his cure.  Since then, of course, garlic has been proven scientifically to have all kinds of healing properties, many of which are probably as yet undiscovered.

Another story I remember was something I read in the autobiography of the actress Gloria Swanson, who was probably as famous for her affair with Joseph Kennedy as for her screen work.  When diagnosed with cancer, which at that time had no known cures and was also a death sentence, she refused to accept the inevitable and did some research of her own.  Again, the details are fuzzy, but in essence she learned that protein was the basis of cell formation and since her goal was to stop the formation of cancer cells, she took protein out of her diet. Her cancer disappeared completely.  Fact or fiction? Who knows, but that was her story.

Our local rag has a weather station in downtown Brookings which recorded a high wind gust of 51mph on Monday night around 9pm, the highest in 4 years.  No wonder I felt like the house was going to blow away!  It's still blowing and raining out there, too, although the bluster has thankfully lessened. For now.