Magic of grapes as nutrition
There is magic in the world — and there are miracles! Or so I believed after the remarkable cure which came to me about ten years ago — after nearly forty years of chronic illness. I was condemned to die for the want of a miracle — the only thing which could keep life in my miserable body whose throb was at its very lowest ebb.
My mind was frustrated and hope was the furthest thing within the reach of my despairing spirit. My one and only kidney harboured a nephritis — an infection which would not respond to the treatment of any of the modern wonder drugs.
Loneliness and worry added its fuel to an already desperate situation — for the body, it seemed, was on the verge of abdominal cancer — if it had not already developed that dreaded disease.
In desperation I decided to experiment on myself with a treatment I had only vaguely heard of — and about which I knew absolutely nothing. It was known as the Grape Cure. The outcome, after twenty-three days on the treatment, was so successful that it can be likened to an absolute miracle!
Although there was irreparable damage within my body — as a result of three major internal operations — which included the removal of my right kidney twenty-three years previously, I came through the grape treatment looking and feeling twenty years younger — and I was completely and permanently cured! An abscess in my only kidney had come away by its roots. My body had been freed of all toxins and subsequent pains, but far, far more important than this, at the age of fifty-three, I had recaptured the supreme joy of living. My body became charged with a new vitality. I felt radiant and whole. My mind was mellow and perfectly contented, and my spirit had become a vivid and living thing again.
The experience was a truly remarkable transformation of a sick and dying body into a fine and healthy balance again, and it proved to me, quite conclusively, that the vast majority of ailing people — whatever the nature of the illness — can be permanently cured through the medium of the ordinary table grape, with the aid, of course, of the mind and the spirit: the body itself being a self-healing organ. The chemicals in the grape are almost magical in their healing properties.
My first act before commencing the treatment was to weigh myself. Being just on six feet tall, I should have scaled about 165 lb., whereas 146 was registered on the dial. This included clothes and shoes. I then made a record of all my symptoms.
My eyes were very swollen and blurred. It was difficult to see clearly even with my glasses. Eyes always swell when the body is in a dangerously toxic condition. Neuritis was constant in my right arm. The kidney was very painful and reluctant to function normally. There was pain on the left side of the large intestines. My ears had an infection and were very itchy. The stub of the ureter on the right side — where the kidney had been removed nearly thirty years previously — was painful and under strain. I felt extremely nauseated — and I had been constipated for several days.
In the circumstances death was almost certain unless some kind of miracle was to happen. With the grape treatment I was strong in my conviction that I stood a very good chance of recovery, since it was a method of removing small quantities of poison from the body each day, without putting any more into it, as is the case with drugs!
I consumed four pounds of grapes during the first day. On the second, all symptoms were much the same as the first, with the headache and nausea still rather bad. There was a great deal of belching. In the
afternoon I went to a cinema to combat perhaps the only drawback in the whole treatment — boredom! A very small price to pay for such magnificent results!
On the third day I bought grapes from an old Greek gentleman and was richly rewarded with a strengthening of my faith and purpose in the treatment. Explaining my need for really ripe and sweet berries, he kindly permitted me to choose especially ripe bunches from his trays, Then, quite casually, he told me of a relation of his in Greece who was chair-ridden for forty years with chronic rheumatism and was completely cured by eating nothing but grapes and water-melon for a given period. What a tremendous fillip this heartening news gave me! On the third day there was a slight improvement in all symptoms, although my head ached rather badly — a clear sign I felt, of poisons being harassed and removed from the body, first through the bloodstream, causing irritation in the brain during normal circulation.
In the afternoon a feeling of moral strength mounted as I became conscious of a physical freshness for the first time in many years. On the fourth day I awakened at 5.30 a.m. All symptoms were greatly relieved but headache was still severe. After the usual routine I went to bed at 6.30 p.m., my usual time, feeling very tired but with no signs of actual weakness and certainly no desire for ordinary food....
(Basil Shackleton continued to take only 4 to 5 pounds of grapes for the next 20 days.)
Then came the twenty-third day — and the miracle! I awakened at 6.30 a.m. I was fresh, and everything appeared to be normal. The kidney felt sound and painless. The arm was free from trouble. There was no headache. Bowel movement was excellent and free from unpleasant odour. The urine, however, for the first time, was very cloudy and the flakes had increased. The previous day I had ceased drinking water. The volume of the urine had increased. At 8 a.m. I had my usual warm to-hot bath. Just before this there was a strong burning sensation at the end of the penis during urination, with only a few drops appearing. This was most unusual! Then small pieces of discoloured skin — a quarter of an inch long — brown in colour and not unlike a transparent pea-pod with black spots appeared in the urine.
At 10 A.M. I had a very severe attack of renal colic — similar to
those experienced at the very beginning of my illness many years before, when small stones were moving out of the kidney into the ureter and down to the bladder.
Only those who have been the victims of renal colic — and of course the doctors — know what hell and frustration a patient has to contend with during these attacks — when searing pain from the interior of the kidney — running right through the ureter as far as the testicles, is constant for several hours. There was nothing I could do! Understandably my mind edged towards the precipice of panic, but I took a grip of myself and kept my faith — and before I had time to think again, the miracle happened
Earlier on I had taken several draughts of hot water to dilute the acid condition which caused the burning in the penis, and now I wanted to urinate again. It was like passing pure acid! The burning was severe. Then followed a flow of slime, blood, coarse dark sediment, and many flakes of what appeared to be blood-stained skin-substance.
This sparked off another tendency to panic. I was alone and in desperate pain. I knew that I dare not take a sedative, and wondered if some internal damage had been done. Should I send for a doctor? How was I to endure this unbearable agony? Then, in a flash, the truth was revealed to me. It was now obvious that an abscess had come away by its very roots from the kidney — and that all my problems were over!
Within one week — still on the diet without any complications — I was hundred percent fit. I looked and felt twenty years younger, and I was literally radiant with health. All forms of irritability and frustration —from which I had suffered for so many years — had completely disappeared. It was quite impossible for me, it seemed, to get angry!
All negative symptoms recorded before the treatment had completely vanished. I was able to read a newspaper without glasses. So charged was I with bubbling energy that I had to play golf twice a week. Moreover, I had no desire whatsoever either to smoke or drink alcohol, and this state has not changed since.
Just what is the secret of the grape as a cure to practically all, if not every known disease? The answer is very simple indeed! The body automatically rejects all toxins through the natural process of elimination, so that the blood may become and remain pure, in which state it is able to resist all disease. If the blood and the mind remained pure there could never again be illness, but, being what we are, and living in
conditions of stress and strain in unnatural surroundings, we become creatures of imbalance through weak and undesirable habits in every facet of living, more particularly with our food, drink and nervous tensions. This brings about imbalance once again in the bloodstream, permitting disease to enter, breed and thrive in the body.
The great healing secret of the chemicals in the grape is that they are in themselves perfectly balanced (that is, of course, in a ripe grape), very strong indeed and able to dissolve and destroy all foreign matter in the, body without harming a single healthy tissue. Added to this magic is the indisputable fact that, at the same time, the body is asserting its own process of elimination of all toxins because it is not absorbing food with toxins, or toxins on their own such as liquor and nicotine. The two processes make the perfect cure.
So pure and balanced are the chemicals in the grape, that it is impossible for the fruit to go bad. This chemical reaction just cannot take place. Instead the grape dehydrates and becomes a raisin which preserves itself for unlimited periods. This happens even if a bunch of grapes is put into the refrigerator without any protection whatsoever. In three to six months the grapes will have become raisins! Many people have seen what they have thought to be a bad grape, but on examination it will be discovered that the skin of the grape has been punctured and that either mildew or fermentation has set in. / repeat, a whole grape, in perfect condition, cannot deteriorate or go bad.
From Basil Shackleton,
The Grape Cure, A Personal Statement,
Thorsons Publishing Group,
U.K.,1987