Ann Wigmore (March 4, 1909 – February 16, 1994) was a Lithuanian–American holistic health practitioner, naturopath and raw food advocate.
Influenced by the 'back to nature' theories of Maximilian Bircher-Benner, she maintained that plants concentrated more solar energy ('Vital Force') than animals, and that wheatgrass could detoxify the body. She also deplored food additives. Although the Ann Wigmore Foundation received accreditation as a non-profit, many of her claims were denounced as quackery, and her qualifications were never confirmed to be genuine.
Historical context
Wigmore was inspired in part by the ideas of Maximilian Bircher-Benner (1867–1939), who was influenced as a young man by the German Lebensreform movement, which saw civilization as corrupt and which sought to go "back to nature"; it embraced holistic medicine, nudism, various forms of spirituality, free love, exercise and other outdoors activity, and foods that it judged were more "natural". Bircher-Benner eventually adopted a vegetarian diet, but took that further and decided that raw food was what humans were really meant to eat. He was influenced by Charles Darwin's ideas that humans were just another kind of animal, noting that other animals do not cook their food.
In 1904 Bircher-Benner opened a sanatorium in the mountains outside of Zurich called "Lebendinge Kraft" or "Vital Force," a technical term in the Lebensreform movement that referred especially to sunlight; he and others believed that this energy was more "concentrated" in plants than in meat, and was diminished by cooking. Patients in the clinic were fed raw foods, including muesli which was created there. While these ideas were dismissed by scientists and the medical profession of his day as quackery, they gained a following in some quarters.
Career
Wigmore was one of the first to popularize these ideas about raw food in the US.
She also was inspired in part by the biblical story of King Nebuchadnezzar, recounted in Daniel 4:33, in which "he was driven from men, and did eat grass as oxen, and his body was wet with the dew of heaven, till his hairs were grown like eagles' feathers, and his nails like birds' claws", and by the examples of dogs eating grass when they were unwell. She also said that she learned about herbs and natural remedies as a child in Lithuania, watching her grandmother.
In the 1940s Wigmore started promoting the benefits of wheatgrass and other raw foods in order to "detox", removing what she considered to be poisons of "unnatural" cooked foods and food additives added by industrial society; she believed this diet allowed and helped the body to heal itself. She believed that fresh wheatgrass juice and fresh vegetables - and especially chlorophyll - retained more of their original energy and potency (a form of vitalism) if they were uncooked and eaten as soon as possible after harvesting them.
According to the National Council against Healthcare Fraud: "Wigmore claimed to have a Doctor of Divinity (DD) from the College of Divine Metaphysics in Indianapolis. She also listed a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) and a Doctor of Naturopathy (ND) degree at different times. None of her credentials appear to have been from accredited schools."
During the mid-1960s, Wigmore, as "Reverend Ann Wigmore", and Rising Sun Christianity, Inc., which she controlled, bought property at 25 Exeter Street in Boston's Back Bay, where she lived and where Rising Sun had offices, as carved into its glass and door. She also founded The Ann Wigmore Foundation Inc., which received accreditation as a nonprofit from the IRS in 1970. In 1974, Rising Sun Christianity applied to the city to convert the building into a church, a holistic school, and apartments, which was granted for five years, and was extended in 1980.
In 1982 the Rising Sun Church acquired the building next door, and changed its name to the Hippocrates Health Institute, Inc. She was sued in 1982 by the attorney general of Massachusetts for promoting a cure for diabetes and for claiming that she could make it unnecessary for children to be vaccinated; she stopped making those claims after losing in court.
Brian Clement obtained control over the Hippocrates Health Institute and moved it from Boston to West Palm Beach, Florida, in 1987.
Wigmore founded the Ann Wigmore Natural Health Institute Inc in Puerto Rico, where people could go for alternative medicine or to be trained in her methods.
The Foundation moved to New Mexico after Wigmore's death; it lost IRS accreditation as a nonprofit in 2012.