Shelton was born on October 6, 1895 in Wylie, Texas to Thomas Mitchell Shelton and Mary Frances Gutherie Shelton, who were devoted Christians. As a child, Shelton took an interest in animals, especially their habits when sick as compared to when well. He was especially intrigued by their fasting when the farm animals became sick.
Career
Shelton attended Bernarr Macfadden's College of Physcultopathy in Chicago and interned at Crane's Sanatorium in Elmhurst, Illinois. He also attended Lindlahr College of Natural Therapeutics for post-graduate work and served at Lindlahr's and Sahler's Sanatoriums. Shelton later continued post-graduate work at Peerless College of Chiropractic in Illinois and served an internship at Crandall Health School in Pennsylvania. In 1921, he married Ida Pape, studied at the American School of Chiropractic, and graduated from the American School of Naturopathy with a Doctor of Naturopathic Medicine. Shelton claimed that cooking food denatures it, and that a healthy body has the ability to restore itself from illness without medical intervention. Although heavily criticized by his contemporaries for advocating fasting over medical treatment, Shelton's work served as an early influence for the raw food movement. In 1922, Shelton self-published his first book, Fundamentals of Nature Cure. Seeing importance in the Hygienic Movement, he changed the title of this first book to An Introduction to Natural Hygiene.
Legal history
A pacifist, Shelton was jailed in 1917 for making an anti-draft statement in public during the height of World War I. In 1927, Shelton was arrested, jailed, and fined three times for practicing medicine without a license. These arrests continued periodically through the next three decades. Shelton was jailed repeatedly for practicing medicine without a license. He was found guilty of violating the Medical Practice Act in 1932, and served 30 days on Rikers Island. In 1942, Shelton was charged with negligent homicide and "treating and offering to treat a human being without a state medical license" for starving a patient to death. The case was never tried and the charges were later dropped. In 1978, another patient died at one of his schools, this time of an apparent heart attack. After a two-year-long court battle, Shelton lost the lawsuit for negligence and was bankrupted by the judgment. His school was forced to close as a result.
Death
By 1972, at the age of 77, Shelton became bedridden from a degenerative neuro-muscular disease believed to be Parkinson's disease. He died thirteen years later, unable to improve his own health despite many attempts. His peers were shocked to see him unable to walk, speak normally, or write. Towards the end of his life, Shelton continued his involvement in Dr. Shelton's Health School. In the time that the school was in operation, over 40,000 people were treated for various ailments, with most recovering with the help of water fasting. The school operated for 53 years, closing in 1981. In 1989, four years after his death, a biography of Shelton called Yours for Health: The Life and Times of Herbert M. Shelton, was published by Jean A. Oswald.
