Breuss – a pioneer in his time

Born on 24 June 1899, Rudolf Breuss grew up in Blu­denz in the Vo­ral­berg re­gion of Aus­tria, the el­dest of three sib­lings. At the age of just 17, he was drafted into the First World War by the army and sent to the front. He was se­ri­ously in­jured in ac­tion and was left in a frag­ile state of health. In­stead of just re­sign­ing him­self to this con­di­tion, he be­gan search­ing for al­ter­na­tive heal­ing meth­ods. Breuss fi­nally found what he was look­ing for in natur­opa­thy. He de­voured count­less books, delv­ing par­tic­u­larly deeply into the teach­ings of Pas­tor Kneipp, founder of the world-renowned Kneipp Cure.

Breuss was thrilled with how he was able to im­prove his own health us­ing natur­o­pathic med­i­cine. He de­voted spe­cial at­ten­tion to fast­ing and re­alised early on that fast­ing for sev­eral days brought ex­ten­sive re­lief for the en­tire body, both for mi­nor ail­ments and chronic dis­eases. Breuss thus dis­cov­ered in the early 1960s, com­pletely on his own, the ben­e­fits of what is fash­ion­ably known to­day as detox­ing. He tried out var­i­ous meth­ods and kept mak­ing ad­just­ments while read­ing more and more books. Fi­nally, af­ter count­less tri­als with him­self as sub­ject, he came up with his fa­mous veg­etable juice blend, which he named the “Breuss Cure”.

At the time, Breuss saw his mix­ture as an al­ter­na­tive rem­edy against dis­ease, but for him it was re­ally about find­ing the op­ti­mal com­bi­na­tion of five highly nu­tri­tious sorts of veg­eta­bles which could sup­ply the body with all the im­por­tant nu­tri­ents it needed, with­out plac­ing a bur­den on the or­gan­ism. On the con­trary, in his view the se­lected veg­eta­bles would sup­port the detox­i­fi­ca­tion or­gans (kid­ney, liver, etc.) in their work and thus pro­mote pu­rifi­ca­tion processes.

Rudolf Breuss doc­u­mented his ex­pe­ri­ences with the Breuss Cure and his knowl­edge of natur­opa­thy in sev­eral books that are still avail­able to­day in var­i­ous lan­guages. Through­out his life he him­self ad­hered to a bal­anced, plant-based diet with plenty of veg­eta­bles and fruit, and fasted reg­u­larly un­til old age. Rudolf Breuss died on 17 May 1990 shortly be­fore his 91st birth­day.