the garden seed business, horticulture, and agronomy. When Isabelle
moved in with me she also brought most of Great Oak's extensive
library, including very hard to obtain copies of the works of the
early hygienic doctors. Naturally I studied her books intensely.

Isabelle also brought her medical practice into our house. At first
it was only a few loyal local clients who continued to consult with
her on an out-patient basis, but after a few years, the demands for
residential care from people who were seriously and sometimes
life-threateningly sick grew irresistibly, and I found myself
sharing our family house with a parade of really sick people. True,
I was not their doctor, but because her residential clients became
temporary parts of our family, I helped support and encourage our
residents through their fasting process. I'm a natural teacher (and
how-to-do-it writer), so I found myself explaining many aspects of
hygienic medicine to Isabelle's clients, while having a first-hand
opportunity to observe for myself the healing process at work. Thus
it was that I became the doctor's assistant and came to practice
second-hand hygienic medicine.

In 1994, when Isabelle had reached the age of 54, she began to think
about passing on her life's accumulation of healing wisdom by
writing a book. She had no experience at writing for the popular
market, her only major writing being a Ph.D. dissertation. I on the
other hand had published seven books about vegetable gardening. And
I grasped the essentials of her wisdom as well as any
non-practitioner could. So we took a summer off and rented a house
in rural Costa Rica, where I helped Isabelle put down her thoughts
on a cheap word-processing typewriter. When we returned to the
States, I fired-up my "big-mac" and composed this manuscript into a