Christopher had only one tin of food, and his guides shared the beans it contained. His guides carried no food at all and very little water. By the time darkness came. Christopher's water supply was down to one litre.
The distance between simple herbal healing and modem medical practice is vast and ironic."
--John Raymond Christopher
Late in the fall of 1909, a child was born to a Swiss/French emigré couple travelling through Salt Lake City, Utah. For unexplained reasons, the young parents left the infant and his older sister at the local orphanage and moved on -- out of their lives. Happily, both children were adopted by a family named Christopher. The boy, John Raymond, grew up to be an eminent pioneer of 20th century herbal medicine, but in the meantime, he had some rocky rows to hoe.
As a toddler, Ray nearly died from croup. Born with rheumatoid arthritis, he used crutches and a wheelchair as a child, and was not expected to live past 30. As a consequence, he professed an early desire to become a doctor -- but one that healed "without cutting people up."
Ray attended business college, worked part time in his adopted father's lumber mill, and after graduation enrolled in law school. But before classes began a terrible car accident left him comatose at first -- then paralyzed. Pronounced a 'hopeless case' by doctors, he was taken by his parents (against his will) to a chiropractor. A few days later he was back working in his office.
However, Ray's injuries lingered, and recurrent episodes of amnesia prevented any law studies. After his mother's painful death from diabetic complications, he vowed to overcome his own health problems. He adopted vegetarianism, and his condition rapidly improved.
Christopher published a booklet about his new health philosophy, but found his ideas ridiculed by friends and strangers alike. His first marriage foundered after seven years and two children, due to friction over his dietary convictions. His remarriage in 1944 was a happy union which eventually produced five more children.
Drafted into the army at age 35, Christopher requested conscientious objector status and was assigned the permanent rank of private. However, he was posted in charge of a medical dispensary at Fort Lewis, Washington, with authority over sergeants and corporals. At first the chief medical officer prohibited him from using his natural healing methods. But after an 'incurable' case of impetigo was cured with a black walnut tincture, the officer relented, and placed a laboratory at Ray's disposal. Thus, Ray Christopher became the US Army's only practising herbalist!
Lab access allowed him to research and test his herbal theories, and helped him in developing his first proprietary herbal formula -- called BF & C. Ray also began treating his own atherosclerosis with a cayenne pepper based mixture he named B/P/. Many other formulas followed.
Declining the army's offer of a (conventional) medical education, Ray returned to his family after the war, and studied herbology at Dominion Herbal College in Vancouver, BC. After graduation, he began a herbal practice in Olympia, Washington. But with both patients and herbs in short supply initially, he took garden-weeding jobs, using certain medicinal 'weeds' he pulled in his practice. Dr. Christopher's professional trademarks were cheerfulness, willingness to make house calls, and calm confidence in tackling cases deemed incurable by orthodox medicine. He also practised reflexology.
Tiring of Olympia's damp, foggy weather, the Christopher family returned to Salt Lake in 1948. Ray completed a degree in naturopathy that year, and a herbal pharmacist degree in 1950. In 1953 he founded the School of Natural Healing in Springville, Utah. Subsequently, Christopher moved to Evanston, Wyoming, in hope that the precedent of being a licensed herbal naturopath in that state would eventually allow him to practise in Utah. It was not to be. After a Utah cancer patient he treated died, free of pain, several months later than her orthodox physicians had predicted, Ray was arrested and tried for murder, no less.
The case was dismissed, but it was just the beginning of many years' persecution and harassment by Utah's legal and medical establishment. Christopher was charged and tried five times, and won each case. But ultimately, Utah passed a law specifically prohibiting him from practising.
So he went on the lecture circuit, visiting 100 or more cities per year. This magazine's editor, Rhody Lake, met him in Vancouver in the '70s, and remembers him as "an old-time medicine man", with "flowing white hair and a gold watch chain across his vest." His message reached far more people in lectures than it would have in private practice.
Christopher was never reluctant to freely share his herbal knowledge, and he published several books in which he did just that.
Despite the many healing successes his treatment achieved -- some borderline miraculous -- he humbly declined to take credit -- attributing success to the herbs and the Lord who created them. He believed that God intended everyone to gain the personal knowledge to take responsibility for his or her own health.
His significance in American herbalism, filling the gap between Jethro Kloss' death in 1946 and the '60s and '70s "herbal revival", cannot be minimized. A cheerful and happy man despite the many difficulties he was obliged to overcome, he once said: "I kinda enjoy life, it's been great. Rather vicious, but great."
John Raymond Christopher died February 6, 1983, from injuries suffered when he slipped on some ice. He was 73. His monumental legacy includes the inspiration for the great herbal renaissance in North America, which would never have occurred if this visionary had not travelled the circuit around both Canada and the United States, teaching herbalism to the general public.
He was a consultant to the herbal industry when it was in its infancy, and his herbal formulas are now marketed under the labels Nature's Way and Nature's Herbs. These companies are widely recongnized in the health food movement. His School of Natural Healing and his books are distributed by his family who have followed him into the healing profession.