Dr. F. X. Mayr

It was the great achievement of Dr. Mayr to recognise and emphasise the importance of the digestive system for healthy nutrition. As a scientist, Dr. Mayr committed himself throughout his life to identify the criteria of a healthy digestive system by means of diagnostics.

Dr. Franz Xaver Mayr was an Austrian physician with very special capabilities, acute observation and great acumen in identifying important relationships as well as clarity in expressing his findings. This is why it all also began quite simply.

F.X. Mayr was born in Gröbming on 28 November 1975. He grew up in the rural environment of the Ennstal in Styria in the Austrian heartland. Due to fortunate circumstances, he was able to first visit the Gymnasium in the regional capital Graz and later study medicine there. During this time, he already developed an interest in the digestive system and its role in good health and disease. He sought to determine the signs of a healthy digestive apparatus, asking:
Finding that these questions were not adequately answered by his teachers at university and that the literature then available could also not satisfy him, F.X. Mayr devoted himself to meeting this medical challenge.

Dr. Mayr practiced medicine in Karlsbad and Marienbad in what is now Slovakia. He had his patients fast to find out how this “rest cure of the digestive system” affected their illness. To his initial astonishment, he discovered that even complaints he did not see as caused by the digestive system improved. Rheumatic complaints were reduced, headaches vanished and even cardiovascular disorders disappeared like snow in the sun.

But what distinguished Dr. Mayr from other doctors were his very detailed observations and their documentation. He ultimately noted that his therapy resulted in complete restoration of the health of patients and described exactly where and how that result was achieved. This enabled him to state very simply what defines optimal health in an organ like the digestive tract, including its form, size, location and performance characteristics. He described these details not only for the intestine and liver, but for all organs and tissues and hence for the entire human being.

Like the pieces in a mosaic, Dr. Mayr gradually accumulated a comprehensive picture of a perfectly healthy person. He was therefore the first physician to describe Salutogenesis in all its intricate details and convert it into a comprehensible and systematic diagnostic method. Mayr diagnostics is health diagnostics. What Dr. Mayr created was therefore entirely new in medicine and is still absolutely pertinent today.

As doctors trained in this diagnostic method, we compare the actual with the desired state of health of each individual. Every divergence from the optimal state of health can be detected at an early stage – usually long before our modern machine medicine can recognise common illnesses.

Dr. Mayr’s achievements for medical diagnostics remain unsurpassed to this day. They are indispensable as simple diagnostic tools to gain insight into the state of health of an individual. Mayr diagnostics is health diagnostics.

After World War II, Dr. Mayr practiced in Vienna. Here, he developed the therapy that ultimately made him famous worldwide.
Since strict fasting was not suitable in out-patient treatment of patients who worked, he developed his own cure diet – the milk-and-roll cure. Dr. Mayr also regarded eating culture as vital to optimal digestion. Thorough chewing and salivation and taking milk in small spoonfuls were basic principles of this therapy – and have remained so to this day.

Dr. Mayr went on many research and lecture trips, with the result that many famous personalities became his patients. In addition, he wrote a number of books, some of which are still available today.

At the age of 80, F.X. Mayr returned to his native town of Gröbning with his wife. Here, he spent the final year of his life and died on 21 September 1965.

Some of F.X. Mayr’s publications:
Die Darmträgheit, 1912, 7th edition, Verlag Neues Leben, Alberschwende 1986
Schönheit und Verdauung, 1920, 7th edition, Verlag Neues Leben, Alberschwende 1991
Fundamente zur Diagnostik der Verdauungskrankheiten, 1921, reprint 1998, Turm Verlag Bietigheim
Wann ist unser Verdauungsapparat in Ordnung, die verhängnisvollste Frage, 1949, currently out of print.