The Nature of Health

The Peckham Experiment was a study into the nature of health and by the time of its closure, Dr Scott Williamson and Dr Innes Pearse had come to perhaps the greatest understanding of it the Western world has seen. Two close collaborators have summarised the basic concepts and processes:

Basic Concepts and Processes derived from the work of Dr George Scott Williamson and Dr Innes Pearse

1. Health is a positive process and not merely the absence of disease.
2. Health has action patterns and behaviour of its own, and its own laws.
3. The basic unity is the parents and their children.
4. Health is to be seen in the excellent of structure and function - in their individual actions and behaviour of this unity, and in their relationship to each other and the environment.
5. This excellence is established mainly during certain key phases of growth and development, from birth (or before) through infancy, childhood, puberty, adolescence, courtship, mating, parenthood.
6. Each phase has its own developments characteristic of that phase which are integrated into the whole person and the quality and direction of all future action.
7. The potential for this growth and development is inherent in the family and its individual members, and is entirely self-announcing and self-directing.
8. It announces itself in each phase through feelings, appetite, and interest in things pertinent to that particular development, and is characterised by the spontaneous nature of the behaviour.
9. It directs itself through the dedication of the individual or individuals in all the appetitive phases, e.g., in physical achievement or in courtship and marriage.
10. Its completion is accompanied by feelings of satisfaction and fulfilment.
11. The successful completion of such cycles is not only necessary for the acquisition of important skills/capabilities, but also provides a foundation of emotional health and contributes to such qualities as contentment, judgment and courage.
12. Throughout each phase there is a high degree of energy - vitality and drive manifested within the dedication.
13. The emerging skill can only grow and develop if the environment contains the appropriate opportunity/stimulus for exercise and practice.
14. The environment must contain sufficient families to cover the whole spectrum of interests, actions and growth and development, so that each family and its members may find opportunities for its own specific action and development.
15. This population must be one in action, through the full range of phases and interests, and visible and accessible to each member in continuity.
16. This population will develop and exhibit community integration, purpose and achievement in its major and minor actions. What is being manifested is the growth and development of the whole. It is a biological entity in its own right, as well as being the nurtural environment for each individual and family.
17. The growth and development of each family in mutuality with the social whole constitutes biological order.
18. Such a community is cultivable, and is self-sustaining. As was demonstrated by the Peckham Experiment, this is achieved by cultivation of the environment and not by direct cultivation of the individual and family.
(Compiled by Douglas Trotter and Allan Pepper, November 1986)

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