R. F. E. Austin

Reginald Francis Edward Austin, known as R. F. E. Austin, was a British physician, naturopath and anti-vaccination activist, born in Bellary, India, in 1866 and dead in 1939. He qualified in 1891 and spent thirty years in Indian military service, reaching the rank of major in the Royal Army Medical Corps and serving as a laryngology specialist and civil surgeon at Kasauli. In the 1920s he practised naturopathy in London and worked at the Nature Cure Clinic and Hospital in Baker Street. His book Direct Paths to Health argued against drugs and vaccines and for diet, fasting, respiratory exercises and osteopathic manipulation. He denied that germs cause disease, condemned appendectomy and blood transfusion, and was summoned before the General Medical Council after a controversial article, apologising within a year and keeping his place on the register.