Hay recounted that after sixteen years of largely surgical practice he 'broke down', developing Bright's disease, high blood pressure, and finally a dilated heart, and that he restored his own health by reasoning out and adopting his dietary system.
The origin story of the Hay System is a self-experiment testimonial. In the Introduction to A New Health Era (1935), told in the third person, Hay recounts that after sixteen years of busy practice “devoted largely to general surgery” he broke down, that “Bright’s disease developed, with high blood pressure, and finally dilated heart, a condition for which there is no relief in medicine”, and that he recovered by working out and applying his own regimen; the same self-cure account anchors his earlier Health via Food (1929). It is classified testimonial (a single uncontrolled self-report) and untested: no independent record verifies the diagnoses or the claimed reversal, and a single practitioner’s account of curing himself is the archetypal surrogate for evidence that this archive documents across cases. The claim is reported here as Hay’s own account, not as an established fact.
Appears in
Sources
- A New Health Era — Hay WH. *A New Health Era*. London: George G. Harrap & Co., 1935. 212 pp. (first published March 1935; reprinted April 1936; printed in U.S.A.). Wellcome Collection, work hhun4w83 / digitized item b29807487.
- Health via Food — Hay WH. *Health via Food*. New York, 1929. 299 pp., 1 leaf of plates (portrait). Wellcome Collection, work kshmkvsf.