The daily morning journal and courier., 1907-10-21
TIE HYGIENIC
 COLONY IN ITALY The Naturists and EremiteS of Monte Verita
 Not Wildmen. THEIR SIMPLE LIFE. Fresh Air, Vegetarian Diet, Moderate Work and Reasonable Clothes.
THEIR SIMPLE LIFE.

The French and German newspapers have been reporting the career of a colony of "naturists" in the neighbor- hood of Locarno, on the borders of Lake Maggiore "a "sort of religious sect, whose adherents prowl about the mountains unclothed, come in weird habilipents to the village markets to buy vegetarian food, and live so oddly at all points that the police are much disturbed"
 Desiring to know what truth there was in these yarns, I set out from Looarno at one morning, and reached Monte verita at 8. There, in a midst of a veritable desert, but upon really splendid site, rise the various buildings erected by these modern eremites.
 Let us hasten to demolish the legend 60 innocent1y swallowed by the cour- try people around Monte Verita. They are not at all to be described as wild men" who have drawn their inspira- tions from the theories of Tolstoi and Pousseau. No, they are artists, manu- facturers and writers, who have come hithef to listen to ''the voice of sii- ence'' while living under special hygien- ic conditions.
 The proprietor and manager of this sanatorium- colony is a Hollander nam ed Henri Oedenkove. Despite his long curls, bound with q ribbon, despite his white tunic, there is nothing priestly about hin, nothing mystical. He is S4 years old, the son of g. Dutch nanu- facturer. Until he was 20 he lived the usual life of city man, but under un- favorable conditions, for he was in wretched health and constantly under the doctors care. Result, an organism completely ruined His physician sent the poor fellow to pr. Kuhn's sana- toriu1n at Leipsic. After a sojourn of several months Oedenkove came out ctlred--simply by following a system of natural hygiene and giving up all use of medicine.
 At this point the story of his adven- lures departs from the commonplace. It appears that whenever a man has been initiated into the secrets of nat ural hygiene and vegetartanism he un- dergSes a process of personal evolution that modifies his way of looking at life It sohns comes about, they tell me, that the convert finds himself unable to re- s,,rns the silly burden of our city ways, whose falsity and harnlfuiness he has learned to appreciate.
 While you and 1 are looking upon the naturists as cranks; they are looking with profound commtseration upon the selg-styled civilization that prsscribes ridiculous clothing, eats food poisonous to the system, lives in vitiated air, ahandcns itself to stimulants that ex- cite only q demand for more stirnu- iahts. and runs the whole gatnut from the mere cigar to horrible morphine
 It was under the influence of what he calls his conversion that oedenkove came to take refuge in the solitude of Monte Verita, in a country co1nbiutng the conditions necessary fer the appii- cation of the thearies of the flaturist , doctrine. He bought this isolated noun tain (renote from any city) where abounded the three essential and sufff- ciAnt eiements-air, water, sunshine He had primitive cabin built there-ahd waited. Soon other adopts in naturism came to visit him, and established themselves hard by. Wooden shacks multiplied. It was necessary to con- trive sort of central pavilion for life In common; then baths, douches, glass houses for sun baths; finally corn- .plete plant-rudeiy constructed, to be sure, but serving as a realization of clearly thought out plan, and wholly different from camp of mere crack brained enthusiasts.
 Here we find representatives of all nationalities and of all classeS-a Bel elan rnodiste and a Parisian doctoresse, Mme Sosnowska; Hamburg I1anu-