Natural Hygiene is usually associated with food, fasting, rest and the body’s capacity for self-regulation.
But Herbert M. Shelton’s system went considerably further.
In 1937 he published Volume V of The Hygienic System under an unusual title: Orthogenetics.
The volume dealt with relationships, love, reproduction, birth, children, parenthood, sex and sexual function. In other words, Shelton attempted to apply the principles of Natural Hygiene not merely to the health of an individual, but to the creation, development and care of human life itself.
What is Orthogenetics?
Within Shelton’s Hygienic System, Orthogenetics was the branch concerned with reproduction and the biological conditions surrounding healthy human development.
The term sits alongside several other specialist words in his system:
- Orthobionomics — the wider relationship between life and its environment.
- Orthotrophy — food and correct feeding.
- Orthokinesiology — movement and exercise.
- Orthogenetics — reproduction, parenthood and development.
Together, these terms reveal something important about Shelton’s thinking: Natural Hygiene was intended as a system covering the whole of human life rather than simply a dietary philosophy.
Health begins before illness
One of the most interesting aspects of Orthogenetics is the point at which it begins.
Modern health discussion often starts after something has gone wrong. A symptom appears, a diagnosis is made, and attention turns towards what should be done about it.
Shelton’s wider Hygienic philosophy asked an earlier question: What conditions support normal human life in the first place?
Orthogenetics extended that question into reproduction, pregnancy, infancy, childhood and family life. Rather than seeing health as something to recover only after disease develops, the focus was on establishing favourable conditions from the beginning.
The parents are part of the child’s environment
A child does not develop independently of its surroundings.
From conception onwards, development occurs within an environment. During pregnancy that environment includes the mother’s body. After birth it expands to include feeding, sleep, movement, emotional security, sunlight, fresh air, family relationships and the wider physical environment.
This fits directly with Bionomy and Orthobionomics: living organisms develop in continual relationship with the conditions around them.
Modern developmental biology likewise recognises that development reflects interactions between inherited biology and environmental influences. Shelton’s historical framework was different in language and detail, but his insistence that human development cannot be separated from the conditions of life is one reason Orthogenetics remains interesting to examine.
Natural Hygiene was never just about diet
This forgotten volume helps correct a common misunderstanding about Natural Hygiene.
If we reduce Natural Hygiene to fruit, fasting or food combining, we lose much of its original scope.
Shelton was trying to describe the requirements of living organisms across an entire lifetime. Food mattered, but so did sleep, rest, exercise, relationships, environment, reproduction, childhood and the expenditure of human energy.
That is why the terminology he used was so broad. Each word described another part of a larger biological picture.
Parenthood as a biological responsibility
Orthogenetics also reflects Shelton’s belief that parenthood carries responsibilities extending beyond simply producing a child.
The health, habits and environment of parents influence the conditions into which a child arrives. Once the child is born, the adults around them largely determine their food, sleep schedule, opportunities for movement, exposure to nature and many of their early habits.
From a Natural Hygiene perspective, this makes health education particularly important for parents. Children initially have very little control over the conditions under which they live.
Children and the laws of life
A central Natural Hygiene principle is that the fundamental requirements of life do not suddenly begin in adulthood.
A child requires sleep, appropriate nourishment, movement, fresh air, sunlight, emotional security and adequate periods of rest just as an adult does.
But childhood also illustrates something especially clearly: the body is continuously constructing itself.
Growth is not something performed on the child from outside. Food supplies raw materials, but the living organism directs growth, develops tissues, remodels bone, coordinates hormones and nervous activity, and adapts continuously as the child matures.
This is the same distinction explored in our article on Orthotrophy: food provides material, while the living body performs the biological work.
Sexual function as part of whole-body physiology
Shelton also included sex and sexual function within Orthogenetics.
That placement is significant. Reproductive function was not treated as something isolated from the rest of physiology. It belonged to the same organism and was therefore influenced by the same overall conditions of life.
Modern physiology similarly understands reproductive function as interconnected with energy availability, endocrine signalling, stress, sleep, development and general health. The terminology has changed enormously since Shelton’s era, but the body remains an integrated whole.
Where historical ideas need context
Orthogenetics was written in the 1930s. Some social assumptions, terminology and ideas about heredity from that period do not map neatly onto modern genetics or contemporary society.
That does not make the work historically unimportant. It means it should be read for what it is: an attempt by an influential Natural Hygiene writer to extend his biological philosophy into reproduction, family life and human development.
Separating the enduring questions from the assumptions of the period allows us to understand the history without pretending that every proposition made nearly ninety years ago represents modern scientific knowledge.
The bigger idea behind Orthogenetics
The most useful idea behind Orthogenetics may be much simpler than the unfamiliar name suggests:
Health is influenced by the conditions under which life develops, not merely by what we do after illness appears.
That principle connects pregnancy to childhood, childhood to adulthood, and one generation to the next.
It also fits the central Natural Body Intelligence perspective: the human organism is not a collection of disconnected parts. It is a coordinated living whole, continually responding to its environment and using the resources available to it.
The forgotten language of Natural Hygiene
Orthogenetics is another part of the remarkable vocabulary surrounding early Natural Hygiene. These terms are rarely discussed today, yet together they reveal the extraordinary breadth of the original system.
- Biogony — Shelton’s term for active physiological responses associated with the body’s struggle to restore normal conditions.
- Bionomy — the laws and functions of living organisms.
- Orthobionomics — the correct relationship between life and its environment.
- Orthotrophy — correct feeding and nourishment.
- Orthokinesiology — exercise and correct movement.
Historical source
Herbert M. Shelton published The Hygienic System, Volume V: Orthogenetics in 1937. The National Health Association’s archive describes the volume as focusing on relationships, love, birth, children, parenthood, sex and sexual function.
Recovering works such as Orthogenetics helps show that Natural Hygiene was conceived as far more than a way of eating. It was an attempt to understand human life as a biological whole — from the conditions surrounding its beginning to the habits and environment that shape it throughout life.