By Katherine A. Carroll, CFO with GROK

“Give me a library, and I’ll build a university about it.” Benjamin Ide Wheeler, UC President, 1899-1919

Just as a great university is expected to maintain an exceptional library, one would expect premier health-freedom organizations to physically steward unique, uncensored collections of books on health, alternative and complimentary therapies, medical freedom, and health liberty. Yet only the National Health Federation has done so. It has preserved the NHF Memorial Library – a dedicated, uncensored resource on health, nutrition, and health freedom = since the library’s inception in 1970. This positions the NHF and NHF Memorial Library as a singular and unparalleled institution in the field of health and health freedom.

NO OTHER HEALTH FREEDOM ORGANIZATION can make this claim. The NHF Memorial Library’s value is inestimable today in this climate of censored libraries, book bans, falsified research, altered online posts, and suppression of healing models that cut the profits of the Medical Mafia and Big Pharma.

NHF and the Foundation for Health Research (FHR), our sister organization, are exclusively positioned to guard and shepherd uncensored health knowledge with our rare collection of literature, dating back to the 1800s, from every discipline and category: nutrition, fasting, chiropractic, osteopathy, naturopathy, Chinese Medicine, natural hygiene, herbs, nutritional supplements, agriculture and soil, dental, homeopathy, psychiatric, medical and natural healing, spiritual, and much more.

The three-fold mission of NHF centers on a vital purpose: To educate consumers, producers, healthcare professionals, government, and other leaders about health and healing modalities and how to secure and preserve health and health freedom. The NHF Memorial Library exemplifies this mission. Our digitized NHF bulletins dating back to the very origins of health freedom in 1955 provide a window to the past. The early battles prove that access to health education so we can make informed choices is crucial.

During the COVID-19 era, as censorship spiked sharply, tightening its grip around the World, and even earlier, as concerns grew over how search engines such as Google and major platforms were filtering, shaping, and steering information, we appreciated anew the importance of reliable, truthful, and independent sources of knowledge.  One statement I’ve heard repeatedly throughout my years with NHF is, “I’m so grateful that you tell the truth and that I can trust what I read from your publications!” That trust reflects the value people place in our quarterly publication, Health Freedom News®, as well as our news releases and educational resources shared through the NHF website, news releases, and the NHF Memorial Library.

But what do you know about the NHF Memorial Library? Let me share with you what I know.

NHF founder Fred J. Hart announced plans in June 1970 to establish the library (originally called the National Health Federation Royal Lee Memorial Library in honor of his contributions to health freedom) as a central resource for books, scientific papers, legal records, and historical materials related to health, healing, and nutrition. The library was created to preserve valuable research and reference works for legislators, attorneys, students, and the public, while also supporting legal efforts involving health rights. The idea was strongly supported by nutrition author Linda Clark, who donated extensive materials and emphasized the importance of preserving rare health literature for future generations. The project called on NHF members and supporters to contribute books, documents, and funding to help build and maintain the library.

In 2022, the NHF and FHR offices and NHF Memorial Library moved from Monrovia, California to Washington State, finding a temporary home in Morton, a small mountain town in the foothills of the Cascades in a charming, historic office building. While many cities staggered under street riots and violence with windows smashed and buildings burning, this one-of-a-kind Library found safety in the countryside. This temporary home persists as of 2026, while it awaits funding for a larger building able to hold its expanding collections, the most recent donated by NHF’s researcher, the late Bill Sardi and a Chinese Medicine collection coming this year from the late NHF Board of Governors member Dr. Dan Kenner.

 As part of NHF’s commitment to empowering people through education, the Library stands as an extraordinary, unique, and richly diverse collection of approximately 6,000 uncensored health and health-freedom volumes, cherished classics, new releases, and over 1,200 rare natural-healing historical, medical, and soil health books. Volumes of research, legal cases, and antiquated medical devices and old photographs also fill the archives and storage units. This is a lifetime project and one well worth pursuing and supporting. Administered jointly with FHR, the Library is committed to preservation of these rare and valuable works dedicated to healing, nutrition, natural health, and the enduring principle of health-liberty and informed choice and medical freedom in healthcare.

Just as a lingering scent is left in a room where a vase of flowers once sat, so the NHF Memorial Library enfolds the heady, lasting fragrance not only of old books but of intellectual curiosity, unbridled scientific investigation, and distilled wisdom of the ages. It is palpable. It is actionable. A patron learned from a 1970s book that simple comfrey, regarded as a weed by many, would stop the painful psoriasis sores from bleeding through his shirt when all of the dermatologist’s and doctor’s expensive creams did not work. Another early volunteer, who writes below, found help for her Down’s syndrome son that was transformational. It just takes one book or article to change a life or someone’s experience…

NHF Memorial Library’s young volunteer Victoria Pearl says of her experience, “I have always wanted to work surrounded by hundreds of books, so volunteering at the NHF Memorial Library has definitely been a dream come true as well as a valuable experience. At the library, there are a myriad of different copies and antique editions. At least one hundred books even have the author’s signature penned on the cover page.

“My homeschool schedule is extremely flexible, which allows me to be at the library once a week. When I started volunteering, I was asked to assist with scanning the Health Freedom News magazines into our computer. What might seem like a simple, quick task is actually meticulous. I must verify each step of the lengthy process – disassembling, scanning all pages in order, and proofing the complete scan – multiple times. After scanning, each volume is forwarded to a webmaster who publishes them on the National Health Federation (NHF) website at www.thenhf.com for global access and public viewing. To date, there are approximately forty-six magazines remaining to be scanned in order to complete the NHF’s online library of current and back issues (https://www.librarycat.org/lib/NHFMemorialLibrary).

“Preserving these magazines and articles is an important way to protect NHF’s past and ongoing efforts to promote health freedom around the World. Because scanning is a time-consuming process, I have time to read bits and pieces of various informative articles while each page is on the scanner. This exposes me to health topics, different viewpoints, and ongoing issues in the world of health freedom, which are things that greatly interest me. I believe that the experiences we have when we are young, whether positive or negative, greatly shape who we become in adulthood.”

The last several years’ focus has been on preserving the original health-freedom journals from the 1955 initiation of the National Health Federation. These priceless volumes are available on the NHF website as PDFs. There are still some gaps in available titles as we are still in process or need the actual bulletins, some of which have been lost in history to us.

One of NHF Memorial Library’s original volunteers, Ruth Martin, shares, “I was honored to help establish the NHF Memorial Library inside the Carroll’s historic Medical Vision Center building. As an avid reader with a lifelong passion for the healing arts, particularly natural and integrative approaches, I worked with other volunteers to transform a large collection into a more accessible, organized health resource.

“Drawing upon 12 years of medical-transcription experience across diverse specialties, I brought practical familiarity with medical terminology, clinical documentation, and the strengths and limitations of conventional care. My personal background – rearing five children while combining conventional medicine with naturopathic, Ayurvedic, and Chinese treatments – further helped us when we structured the library. While Dr. Carroll located the Library Thing/Tiny Cat online system that we now use, I helped design an intuitive in-office categorization system that allows users to quickly locate materials on specific conditions, nutritional therapies, herbal medicine, vision improvement, historical texts, and cutting-edge integrative research.

“Working hands-on, I unpacked, evaluated, cleaned, cataloged, and shelved over 6,000 books ranging from rare 19th-century volumes to modern scientific works. This involved both meticulous detailed work and broader planning to create a user-friendly space where patients and health seekers could easily find reliable information.

“This experience deepened my conviction that access to quality, diverse health knowledge is essential for informed wellness decisions. The library’s value became personal when I used its collection and NHF magazines to locate Dr. William J. Walsh’s“Nutrient Power”article in a back-issue of Health Freedom News, which provided critical nutritional insights that significantly helped manage my son’s serious mental-health symptoms, support that conventional approaches had failed to deliver. I remain deeply grateful for the opportunity to contribute to a resource that continues to empower individuals on their healing journeys.”

Fred Hart would never have imagined that his vision for starting this library would make it uniquely significant throughout the World, or that its early writings would one day reach so far through digitization. We have “miles to go before we sleep” however. Here is some of what lies ahead:

  • The new collections and donations coming into the NHF Memorial Library need to be entered into our system. See https://www.librarycat.org/lib/NHFMemorialLibrary
  • We seek donations and grants (and grant writers) to supply additional titles, labor, complete digitization and offering in other languagesso uncensored knowledge is preserved
  • A capital grant or donation for a dedicated building much larger than our current home for the library
  • We wish to provide audible, low-vision, and braille libraries as well
  • We hope to develop the children/youth section more fully
  • We want to develop the research arm of the NHF Memorial Library with dedicated space for researchers as fragile and rare books are not released outside the Library
  • We need volunteers
  • We envision NHF Memorial Libraries in other countries as, despite the moniker, NHF is an international organization
  • We foresee lectures, book signings, and education occurring at the Library and online
  • We seek healthcare professionals who will include a small NHF Memorial Library selection in their offices for patient education and true co-management of health

For those of us privileged to be a part of this great endeavor, it is deeply humbling and we are so honored and grateful to preserve this healing wisdom for the ages to come.

If this project captures your imagination and passion, please donate to www.foundationforhealthresearch.org and www.thenhf.com to further this vital work. Moreover, should you have any old NHF bulletins, please consider sending them to the NHF Memorial Library, 240 West Main Street, Suite 1388, Morton, Washington 98356, so we can scan and upload them to the NHF website. If you have other relevant publications or library collections to donate, we can provide a tax-deductible receipt.