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In spite of the ease and speed with which people could prove for themselves the truth of the starch – protein concept, the Hay system received a battering of criticism.

The bitterest attacks came from Dr Hay’s fellow physicians. The teaching of the means of preventing disease had not, in Dr Hay’s time, caught on with the medical profession, simply because their entire teaching had been directed towards the treatment of disease, not its prevention. Dr Hay’s teaching was therefore stark heresy and naturally condemned as such.

As he became more and more convinced of the truth of his findings, so his colleagues became more and more sceptical. Ironically, while realizing success in his treatment of disease beyond his wildest hopes, restoring to normal health countless cases termed hopeless by the highest of medical authorities, he found himself written off as a simple quack. His frustration must have been immense when, armed not only with an inspired idea but also with proof of its truth, he was met with a blank wall of disbelief and incomprehension.

The medical profession was most certainly not ready for Dr Hay’s concepts. At that time doctors were fervent apostles of ‘the germ theory of disease’. They were also enthusiasts for the new wonder-drug era which promised ‘a pill for every ill’; so they believed that there was no need whatsoever for nutritional therapy. His concepts were rejected with scorn and he was constantly subjected to the vehement opposition of entrenched orthodoxy, even to slander, libel and the most diabolical of rumours. But he was a courageous man who never faltered in defending his beliefs and in countering all opposition with lucid and reasoned arguments, never losing his temper or his strong sense of humour. The latter attribute, and his great personal charm, endeared him to his patients and to all who had the good fortune to hear him lecture.

It is significant that many physicians attended his lectures in both England and Scotland, and many of these spoke to Dr Hay afterwards and said they were in full accord with everything he taught. Some admitted that they were students of the Hay system and were using it in their work with their patients. Many, moreover, told of results which could not have been achieved in any other way, except by applying the system with real understanding.

Dr Hay died in 1940, at the age of 74, a year after a serious accident, sadly, just as medical thinking was beginning to appreciate the important relationship of nutrition to health.