Nature's Path.
America's Pioneer Nature Cure Magazine--Devoted to Gaining and Maintaining Superb Health and Power of Body and Mind / Health Through Rational Living.
Dr. Lust Speaking
1896--1964
Monthly
New York, NY.
Editor: Benedict Lust, MD, ND, DC, DO, editor and owner.
Succeeds: Amerikanische-Kneippblätter und Gesundheits-Rathgeber (1896-1901)-->The Kneipp Water Cure Monthly (1900-1901)-->The Liberator of Medical Thought (1902-1908)-->The Phrenopathological Journal (1908-1914)-->Naturopath (German and English editions, 1902-1915)-->Herald of Health and Naturopath (1916?-1937?)-->Official Naturopath and Herald of Health (1937?-?)
1/1, 1896-1964 (?)
40 pp., 10 cents a copy, $1.00 a year.

This, under a variety of titles, was (as the late Martin Gardner opined) "devoted to ways of healing without having to see a physician"--and to turn a nice dollar for the man who introduced Naturopathy to the United States and convinced Americans that, with careful attention to health, they could "Look Younger, Live Longer." "Strength and Beauty. Every moment of every day you can thrill and tingle and radiate with the unspeakable ecstasy of perfect Health. Conscious power over Pain and disease and death . . . ." Benedict Lust (1872-1945) was a German-born healer who came to America in 1892 to spread word of Sebastian Kneipp's water cure therapies (which he said had cured him of tuberculosis). Thereafter he mastered Naturopathy (nature+homeopathy, a term he bought the rights for from the German-American homeopath John Scheel), osteopathy, fruitarianism, eclectic medicine, phrenopathy, massage, Ayurvedic medicine, yoga, fasting, nudism, chiropractic, iridology, and positive thinking, etc., etc., and proceeded to start the American School of Naturopathy in New York City which awarded a "N.D." degree and which later became the American Naturopathic Association, various clinics and Kneipp Stores, and two sanitariums ("Yungborn" in Tangerine, Florida, and Butler, New Jersey). Lust was prosecuted repeatedly by the law for making various specious claims and for practicing medicine without a license. (He claimed that the "State of New York . . . was operating as an arm of the American Medical Association's (AMA's) ‘Medical Trust.'")

Lust and his ideas easily crossed with those of New Thought, both in its German and in its English forms. Lust, for example, republished Helen Willmans' "Mental Science" lessons in 1921, and The Kneipp Water Cure Monthly advertised in Weltmer's Magazine in 1901, etc., and Lust obviously thought his systems had sufficient kinship with the ideas of Theosophy to advertise his Der Naturopath und Gesundheitsratgeber in Theosophisches Leben (1907). The journal carried articles by Lust ("Dr. Lust Speaking"), and attracted contributions by a large number of American and international health practitioners, dietitians, gurus (like Paramahansa Yogananda and other Indian teachers), and others. It also featured advertisements for ads for Bernarr McFadden and the likes of W.E. Holder's "Ultra Short Wave H.F. Condensator" (that generated "fluid electricity with cellular massage), "Secrets of the Alphabet for Students of Graphology," "Vigor-Tex Branless Wheat Germ," "Life Lite Ultra Violet Rays," "Health Secrets" of the Esoteric Fraternity of Hiram Butler, and an endless variety of foods and devices, many sold under Lust's own brand. University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign; HathiTrust; University of Michigan; Yale University, etc.

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