The Grape Cure: Findings From Long Ago
THE GRAPE CURE
In the late 1800’s and early 1900’s a movement of natural hygiene was spreading throughout parts of Europe including Austria, France, Switzerland, and mainly Germany. There were many sanitariums for healing using fasting, fruits, and raw foods to eliminate waste from the body and the diseases that come with it. Prior to Rockefeller monopolizing the American medical system, natural medicine was a common and accepted practice. A woman by the name of Johanna Brandt, born in South Africa in 1876, authored a book called “The Grape Cure” in 1928 after she healed herself from a nine-year battle with stomach cancer. She devoted her life to bringing this information to others in hopes it would make a difference throughout the health of the entire world.
She came to America, worked with many medical doctors to present them her findings, along with many others whom she assisted during their own miraculous recovery using grapes only. Much to her disappointment, she discovered just how tyrannical the medical system is. Brandt met many interested and supportive medical professionals, all who were interested in her findings. However, having any widespread acceptance was difficult given the overwhelming system that was in place then, and is still in place today. Because of the legalities in place, she used her own testimony, as well as the testimony of others that cured their own ailments and diseases, to print “The Grape Cure” and spread it far and wide. Since she is simply telling her story, she is not claiming anything other than what she observed, as well as what others have observed in their own healing. Many terminal cancer patients, some of whom had been through multiple surgeries, found complete and total healing.
Brandt’s family was afflicted by cancer, which included losing her own mother to the disease. She also explains cancer was plentiful in South Africa at the time. Watching too many around her suffer from the medical establishment’s treatment of cancer with surgeries and poisonous medicines, she refused all intervention upon her own development of cancer and sought fasting as a method of healing. She spent much time doing long term fasts and had some success.
However, she could never completely eliminate it. After her discovery of the Grape Cure in 1925, she later understood what she did wrong. Fasting and then going back to cooked foods kept the cancer alive, instead of later recognizing that organic matter was the answer to prevent cancer in the first place. During her discovery of fasting, she started helping others around her, starting a natural healing business, and watched countless people heal from fasting alone. However, she herself did not fully heal, until she accidentally stumbled upon the grape.
HOW GRAPES DETOXIFY
Grapes were supposedly introduced by the Phoenicians to Italy in France as far back as 600 BC. There are many written records dating back in the 1500’s about grapes in Europe and in particular Germany. According to Brandt, Germany’s own government had strict laws to preserve and protect the grapes from maladies and insects. There were annual harvests, celebrations, and festivals devoted to annual grape cleansing. The amount of historical evidence concerning natural remedies and the use of grapes is evident, and clearly was hidden from today’s society. The Rockefeller medical system has completely eradicated and in many cases demonized any of the common natural approaches to health throughout human history.
In “The Grape Cure” Brandt describes grapes as having three qualities that aid in healing the body. First, they dissolve hardened matter and chemical solvents, second, they eliminate these materials from the body, and lastly, they rebuild and regenerate the tissues. Often referred to as the “Queen of Fruits,” it is a true healing food within one simple fruit. She claimed the grapes must be eaten to see these impressive and encouraging results. Grape juice could also be used, but the most detoxifying occurred when eating the whole fruit by itself. Although there was not definitive scientific evidence, it was thought that grapes have a relationship to the protein base of protoplasm of the cell which allows for the repair and detoxification at the cellular level. Proteins are what build the body, which could be why the grape works so quickly to rebuild any degenerative tissue.
It is important to point out that grapes, as well as any other fruit, should always be eaten alone. Fruits begin to ferment very quickly. If eaten with other foods the fermentation in the gut can create excessive alcohol creating a self-poisoning event. Those that feast on table grapes while consuming many other foods are sending the stomach into a potential danger. For as curative as Brandt claims the grape can be, it can equally do damage if not consumed properly by itself. You could argue that eating too many different foods together at once is constantly creating a fermentation process. It is apparent the body is meant to handle some level of fermentation, however, eating wrong food combinations repeatedly creates too much alcohol and poisoning in the system.
METHODOLOGY
Brandt describes the methodology she used, as well as with other patients she worked with. Keep in mind, this is her own personal experience, discovery, and recommendation for true healing. She began with a two-to-three-day water fast before introducing the purely grape diet. She accompanied this with enemas to clear the system before she began introducing grapes. After this period, she ingested small amounts of grapes every two hours from 8am until 8pm. Brandt says the smaller the portion the easier it is to digest. She recommended keeping this up for as little as a week or two, or a month or two in more chronic debilitating conditions, and never exceeding a period of two months in total.
Brandt used a variety of grapes, as they all possess profound healing properties. Green, red, black, and white grapes can be used especially to help with the consumption of such a monotonous diet. She recommended a minimum of one pound be eaten per day and not to exceed four pounds per day. It was advisable to eat smaller portions first to see how the body responded, and gradually add more per serving over time. If the patient began to despise grapes, it was likely due to the presence of poisons in the system, and she recommended to fast again until grapes were desired and sounded appealing. Forcing grapes into someone with an abundance of poison could be detrimental. Allowing nature to clear the system first by fasting was found to be most advantageous, not only in her own curing of cancer, but others as well.
During the cleansing and detoxification process, she and others became very thin and extremely weak. It is routinely thought that this is evidence that the person is malnourished or suffering from starvation. When in fact, Brandt’s observations were the opposite. She and other patients were suffering from the release of poisons from the system. When the poison was cleared, the body would then begin to put on weight and rebuild itself, all while continuing the ingestions of grapes.
Even though grapes are an amazing healing modality, Brandt is not suggesting you only eat grapes forever. It is simply to clean the body of poison. After this cleansing and healing, reintroducing food into the diet was as followed. After the first stage, Brandt began with fruits, tomatoes, and sour milk, beginning each morning with a serving of grapes. The third stage moved into a raw food diet, and the final stage slowly transitioned into more cooked foods, making sure to separate eating raw foods from cooked to always avoid severe fermentation.
BRANDT’S THEORY ON CANCER
“Cancer is the death and disintegration of a given part in a living body.
This is due to the presence of corrosive substances with which nature is unable to cope.”
Brandt, J. (2001). The Grape Cure, p.118
Johanna Brandt came to see cancer as the formulation of inorganic matter, which is not assimilated, utilized, or eliminated from the body. Inorganic matter is simply dead matter. Table salt, baking powder, and all other mineral drugs concocted in a lab. None of these substances are living matter, making it foreign and detrimental to the body. Any of these substances in the body will be stored out of the way until eventually a cancer is formed in that particular area of the body. The areas these unwanted materials land in is a general source of weakness already established in the body. This will vary in each individual as we all carry our own areas of genetic weaknesses and areas we have harmed or injured.
To the contrary, organic matter is living matter, such as food in its raw state. Whole raw foods have not been altered in any way, therefore making them living matter. Throughout Brandt’s discoveries, she recognized the vital essence that raw foods played in the overall healing of the body. In her own fasting, before she found the grape cure, she would alternate between fasting and cooked foods. Cooked foods are considered inorganic because when they are cooked the chemistry changes and the food becomes dead, especially the more it is cooked. This is why steaming vegetables is recommended to keep the food closer to a living state, or as organic matter. The body can assimilate, utilize, and eliminate food in its living organic state. Therefore, Brandt came to the conclusion that cancer was simply the ingestions of inorganic matter forming cancer anywhere throughout the body.
In another interesting comparison, Brandt points out the very important difference between acute disease versus chronic disease. Acute diseases are healing processes. It is the immediate and sudden release of toxicity from the body. Acute disease is a clear attempt by the body to eliminate poison and toxicity. For example, if you contract a sudden bout of pneumonia, and you are not accustomed to this, from a natural perspective it is seen as a simple way the body eliminates what it doesn’t need.
However, chronic illness is another story entirely. Brandt explains, chronic diseases are considered destructive processes. Chronic degenerative illness is the deterioration of tissues, organs, glands, and areas of the body that are suffering from repeated damage. This damage is causing pain, inflammation, pus, tumors, tissue deterioration, and all types of cancers. When the body is presented with chronic symptoms it is screaming for help. There is a desperate need for expelling unwanted chemical deposits.
IS IT FAITH HEALING?
Brandt was specifically asked if her experience with grapes was based on faith. Although she was a very faith-based woman, she replied with an assertive NO. She claimed no amount of praying could ever cure her cancer. She suffered greatly for nine long years until finally she discovered grapes. No amount of praying or believing in a magical cure would heal from the evils of toxicity and poison in the body. She firmly understood that the laws of nature heal, and prayer will not save anyone who continues wrong habits.
She also understood that the stresses of life were not the cause of illness, but rather defying the laws of nature was man’s main source of affliction. Nature is nature and has nothing to do with faith. Brandt used the example that if faith and prayer healed than the faithful would most certainly be well. Except that is not the case. Those that are faithful and those that are not equally fall out of line with nature.
Finally, she explained Nature’s Cure or Naturopathy’s Principle of Harmony as the notion of not putting inorganic substances, or poisons, into the body that is striving to eliminate poison. Why make matters worse? That’s like pouring gasoline on a raging fire, it makes no sense. While the body is desperately trying to rid itself of harmful substances, most of medicine today is adding more harm into a body working to free itself from harm. And the most contradictory thing of all, is many toxic medicines are deemed fit for eliminating diseases such as cancer. The idea that adding more toxicity to a body trying to save itself from these materials, defies the laws of nature. Johanna Brandt’s The Grape Cure is a true testament to the power of nature, in particular the Queen of Fruits, the GRAPE.
Reference: Brandt, J. (2001) The Grape Cure. New York: Benedict Lust Publications.