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CHAPTER III

The Study Of Medicine

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   The study of medicine is divided into four subjects, namely

   I. Pathology: that part of medical science which studies disease.

      A. Etiology: the investigation of morbific causes.

      B. Pathogeny: an explanation of the mode of action of causes-how cause produces the development of disease.

      C. Pathological Physiology: morbid reactions under disease-producing causes.

      D. Pathological Anatomy: which reveals the structural change resulting from disease.

      E. Symptomatology: which accounts for disturbances.

      F. Nosology: which describes and classifies disease.

   II. Diagnosis: which determines the place where a given disease belongs in Nosology.

   III. Prognosis: which fortells the outcome of disease.

   IV. Therapeutics: which endeavors to relieve, modify, and cure disease.

I. PATHOLOGY

   According to medical science, pathology is the science of disease--that branch of medical science which treats of the modifications of function and structure of organs caused by disease. Disease defined is: inharmonious action of one or more of the various organs, owing to functional or structural change.

   There is special pathology, which means analyzing disease. This is divided into internal or medical, and external or surgical, pathology. Then there is comparative pathology, which considers a study of diseases in man, animals, and vegetables; experimental pathology, and general pathology.

   General pathology defines terms and fixes meanings; determines the laws of morbid phenomena, determines causes, defines symptoms, names diseases.

   Pathology is a description of the body, and the organs which compose it, when they are laboring under the effects of abnormal, unusual, and perverting influences.

   Physiology is the study of the body and its organs in that state known as health, and under influences that give health and strength.

   Pathology, then, is that state of the body known as bad health, while physiology is that state of the body known as good health.

   Disease is inharmony, and health is harmony. Both are different states of one and the same thing.

   When we study pathology in connection with the influences that produce it, we learn in time to recognize real cause in its effect.

   To study effectually the phenomenon pathology--disease--we must combine with it physiology--health--and etiology--cause.

   To study pathology--to note change in function and structure--without a correct understanding of the cause of the change, leads nowhere. To study physiology-to study the secretions and excretions from men en masse, like a composite picture--will show an average--show about what an average individual should secrete and excrete under a given environment and a measured dietary. This is good as far as it goes, but no approximation can do more than give general knowledge of physiology and pathology. This generalization will give a like knowledge of dietetics, hygiene, and all branches of medical science.

   Morbific effects will be found following certain morbific causes; but on closer investigation it will be found that there are exceptions to every cause--that there is no cause that always produces the same effect; hence pathology, physiology, their causes and effects, must be studied, not only in a general way, but in a special way, and the reason for exceptions must be as thoroughly understood as the rules.

   Health and disease are related in that they are two phases of one state, and neither can be known without contrasting it with the other.

   Living organisms are unstable. Their state must vary with the changes that take place in the environing influences.

   The phenomena recognized as different acts of life are not dependent on some mysterious force outside of the body--some vital energy animating the body--but are simply actions and reactions produced by external agents.

   For example, when external variations are slight, adjustments are readily made in those of a full measure of health, but not so readily adjusted in those with resistance broken down. Where the temperature falls forty to sixty degrees in a day or night, the most robust will suffer more or less from the adjustment, and the delicate may be killed.

   Pathology given exclusive attention is a fruitless study. Health in all its phases must be studied, and cause and effect must be found in everything that affects the body.

   The general study of pathology today too frequently starts with an established state of the blood or the organs of the body. The primary causes are ignored or not thought of. For example: Typhoid fever is thought of as cause, which leaves, when over, modifications which persist; being too slight to be recognized, they nevertheless continue their evolution. Ten to fifteen years later a heart, lung, liver, or kidney disease develops, which is ascribed to the changes wrought by the initial fever. A correct way to view these phenomena is to recognize the typhoid as an accidental but possible link in a morbific chain started in perverted nutrition, back perhaps in childhood, or back farther in a nutritional diathesis, that makes the development of a morbid chain of perverted nutrition, with possible links of typhoid, pneumonia, catarrhal inflammations, et al.

   Crises.--Life is made up of crises. The individual establishes a standard of health peculiarly his own, which must vary from all other standards as greatly as his personality varies from others. The individual standard may be such as to favor the development of indigestion, catarrh, gout, rheumatic and glandular inflammations, tubercular developments, congestions, sluggish secretions and excretions, or inhibitions of various functions, both mental and physical, wherever the environmental or habit strain is greater than usual. The health standard may be such--the standard of resistance may be opposed so strenuously by habits and unusual physical agencies--that the body gives down under the strain. This is a crisis. Appetite fails, discomfort or pain forces rest, and, as a result of physiological rest (fasting) and physical rest (rest from daily work and habits), a readjustment takes place, and an unusual standard is attained for a short time--the patient is "cured." This is what the profession and the people call a cure; and it is for the time being--until the customary habits and usual style of living have had time to establish the regular ante-crisis standard. This standard is maintained until an unusual enervation is brought on from accident or dissipation; then another crisis. These crises are the ordinary sicknesses of all communities--all catalogued diseases. Cold and hay-fever are simply forms of crises belonging to a chronic state of toxin poisoning characterized by catarrhal inflammations of mucous membranes. When the cold is gone, or the hay-fever fully relieved, it does not mean that the patient is cured. Indeed, he is as much diseased as before he suffered the attack (?)--the crisis--and he never will be cured until the habits of life that keep up toxin poisoning are corrected. If the intoxicating habits are continued, nature will undertake to cure by hardening the tissues--sclerosis. Arterio-sclerosis is one of nature's cures. Such a cure will not take place before old age, if not forced to.

   A standard of health may be such as to be forced into frequent small crises, such as colds, frequent headaches, neuralgias, toothache, acute fevers, throat affections diarrheas, constipation, etc. Each of these attacks may be looked upon as a crisis. To recover from a crisis is not a cure; the tendency is back to the individual standard; hence all crises are self-limited, unless nature by maltreatment is prevented from reacting.

   All so-called healing systems ride to glory on the backs of self-limited crises, and the self-deluded doctors, and their credulous clients, believe, when the crises are past. that a cure has been wrought, whereas the real truth is that the treatment may have delayed reaction. This is largely true where anything has been done except rest. A cure consists in changing the manner of living to such a rational standard that full resistance and a balanced metabolism are established.

   One hundred per cent efficiency is seldom seen. No one with an established sensual habit is one hundred per cent efficient.

   Tobacco, coffee, tea, cocoa, alcohol, drug habits of all kinds lower the standard of resistance and personal efficiency; and if the habitue starts life with less than one hundred per cent efficiency, his habit or habits will bring him into more pronounced inefficiency and more frequent crises.

   Any habit of mind or body that uses energy faster than it is generated must establish a resistance and an efficiency below the normal standard. Then, if the normal standard is below the ideal one hundred per cent, it must be obvious to all thinking minds that those who belong to this class must have a very precarious hold on health, and must be of the class forced into a crisis at every unusual change of environmental influences. Babies will have the diseases peculiar to nursing and teething; older children will develop the so-called contagious diseases; while grownup people will have crises peculiar to, and in keeping with, their diatheses.

   All of the above concerning crises is demonstrable. Indeed, so self-evident is it that it has taken a lot of selfish conceit and dogmatism to prevent these simple truths from becoming commonplace.

   I suppose it is not quite human to expect those of a standardized school of healing to give utterance to discovered truth which, if accepted by the people, would rob them of the glory of being curers of disease. Indeed, nature, and nature only, cures; and, as for crises, they come and go, whether or not there is a doctor or healer within a thousand miles. For the good of most patients, it would be well if the schools of slightly varying phases of fallacious therapeutics were driven into the sea of oblivion.

   If typhoid or any disease is managed correctly, the patient will recover, and if the habits of life are corrected and the patient continues to live right, there can be no sequel from the typhoid; but if the style of living followed before the fever be continued after it, other diseases will be developed; and if an organic change has been caused by the interpolated disease, then certainly the organs so affected is most liable to give down from years of toxic infection.

   Disease, functional or organic, must be looked upon as interpolated affections. The real disease is in faulty nutrition, and is of daily development.

   Intestinal intoxication, from bacterial fermentation due to overeating, improper eating, and eating potentially acid foods, and foods devoid of enzyme, is a constant source of toxin poisoning. This condition is added to by retained excretions, which will always take place when the organism is enervated. The amount of food intake may not be too great under correct conditions, but the subject's power to digest and assimilate is impaired by overwork, worry, venereal excess, alcoholics, tobacco, coffee, tea, and other stimulants.

   Without impaired nutrition, which is initiated by toxins introduced from without, or developed in the body, diseases, acute or chronic, cannot develop.

   Suppose we take heart disease. It may have developed with rheumatism, typhoid fever, or other diseases. The effects on the heart are identical. The new disorder--the heart disease--is not caused by the rheumatism, the fever, or any other disease, but evolves from the same cause that evolved the rheumatism or other diseases--namely, the toxemia.

   To treat any disease correctly, its cause must be understood. To say that the heart was diseased by rheumatism is an etiological error. The heart was poisoned by the toxins that created the rheumatism, and the drugs and other treatment for rheumatism joined the, toxins to put the heart out of commission.

   The leading authorities say that visceral diseases take their origin from some antecedent cause, but that the initial disease is not always easy to find. They declare that the disease may be dormant, or develop silently, for twenty or thirty years before manifesting. This is true and it is not true. A tuberculous diathesis favors the development of tuberculosis, and the gouty diathesis favors the development of gouty diseases; but the primary cause is the same--namely, chronic toxin poisoning. This state of the blood and other fluids of the body must exist before any of the organs can go into a state of degeneration.

   If the subject is scrofulous, scorbutic, or has developed a state of acidosis, and the glandular system has once been septically infected from a syphilis, gonorrheal bubo, carbuncle, vaccination, or wound infection, the gland lesions will get well under proper treatment; but if the subject becomes careless in his habits, and builds back the chronic autotoxemia, it would be the natural thing for the glands to become diseased. When the glands are once infected, they are made sensitive and will respond to toxic influences more readily.

A. ETIOLOGY

   Post-mortems are held for the purpose of discovering the cause of death, and the cause is found. It may be an organic change of the heart, liver, lungs, or some other organ. Suppose an abscess is found in the liver, spleen, pleura, or elsewhere; suppose apoplexy is found; without doubt a reasonable cause for death has been discovered. But what light has been shed on the real cause of disease?

   None whatever. Post-mortern revelations are as silent on the subject of ancestry as they are on the cause or causes of disease.

   To find an abscess of the liver or spleen may account for death, but the very important knowledge of what caused the abscess, or what caused the cause of the abscess, is not found. On knowledge of morbid processes that would help the living to shun a like fate, all post-mortems are as silent as death--except in deaths from injury, and in those cases only the cause of death is found; the dead tell no tales regarding the cause or causes bringing about the accident.

   How is anyone who has not studied the history of morbid processes to know that a slight injury to the neck of the womb twenty years ago is one cause of cancer today? Or that the habit of drinking hot coffee twenty years ago caused chronic inflammation of the stomach that ends today in cancer of the stomach?

   After having gained the knowledge that injuries, such as related above, are the cause of a fatal disease twenty years or more afterward, it is rather confusing to be confronted with the truth that only a few of those who have suffered a like cause have also suffered a like effect. Hence there must be collateral causes which are not considered, and without which the true causes and effects leading to the final fatal effect remain speculative. The profession moves in a diagnostic circle of misapprehension, always coming back to the starting point with no more true knowledge of cause than at the start.

   So very obscure are the real causes of disease that it is not strange that nearly all professional men willingly disregard anything pertaining to disease except the symptoms which palpably present.

1. Enviromnent in Its Relationship to Health and Disease

   The two words "health" and "disease" are used daily, but few know anything, except in a general way, of what either means.

   The general conception is that health is a fixed, ideal state or entity, and that disease is a fixed state or entity whose particular purpose it is to war on health.

   In aboriginal man's conception, disease was an evil spirit. In the early days epilepsy was caused by the devil. According to the Bible, an epileptic was a person possessed of the devil, or of devils.

   A doctor in Cincinnati has discovered that epilepsy is caused by a particular germ, which the doctor has named "bacillus epilepticus."* (* Since this was put in type the doctor has recanted.) This devil germ takes up his abode in the colon, and from this throne torments his victim.

   The Bible doctors cast out the devil Epilepticus in the name of the Lord. The Cincinnati doctor advocates casting the throne or habitat of this devil bacillus out by a surgical operation, on the theory that by destroying his abode Mr. Devil will depart forever.

   It takes about as much faith to accept the germ theory as the devil theory. Indeed, both are conceptions built out of hypotheses that have their foundation in the false theory that the universe is governed by two Deities--namely, God and Devil. The whole germ theory is a refined and modernized demonology.

Cell-Life

   As soon as a cell is born it begins to die. Man's body is made up of cells, and his continuance in life depends entirely upon cell renewal and cell integrity.

   The cell is in an ideal state only at the instant of completion; then it begins to wear out. Man's body during his fetal life is in as near a state of equilibrium as is possible; for the temperature of the mother's body is maintained at about ninety-nine degrees F., and his life is carried on by proxy, so to speak. When born, he is subjected sooner or later to all the influences of his environment.

   Health is an abstract idea. It cannot be well defined, for it necessarily must vary from birth to the grave.

   Living organisms never more than approach a state of equilibrium. Indeed, no man would accept life if he could be guaranteed equilibrium; for that would be a neutral state devoid of experience, consequently with no knowledge. He could not enjoy; he could not love; he could not hate; he could not eat; he could not lose his temper; he could not be happy; he could not have friends or enemies; all of which are necessary to his development.

   All man's pleasures and displeasures--happiness and unhappiness--come from the varying of his environment. Through attention, thought, and reflection on these influences is he educated. Man too often goes through life giving no attention whatever to the influences, from a health standpoint, of these various shocks to his nervous system. Indeed, very few recognize the sense of pleasure as a shock, and that evil can come from it. Just a few of the people are beginning to realize that taking food into the system is a shock, notwithstanding the fact that it is a pleasure to take it into the system, and a necessity from a building and repairing point of view. When this subject receives the serious thought and consideration of laymen, as well as professional men, there will be more inquiry for knowledge of just how far stimulation can be carried without harm, and when people get sick they will know that they have been imprudent and gone beyond the point where health can be maintained in eating and caring for the body.

   When man is born in the backwoods, and his mental and physical experiences are confined to a very limited environment, the number of pleasurable and disagreeable shocks which he experiences must be almost nil compared with what he would experience in the heart of population.

   Everything else being equal, he should live longer in his secluded home; but such is not the experience of mankind. The limited experience--the limited shocks--in this restricted home fail to interest him, and he grows old young, and tires of life, and dies. We cannot live longer than we want to. Books and music help to fill the life and will prolong it.

   The metropolitan man is shocked by so much of love and hate, and his experiences are so educational, that life has too much of interest for him to leave it. This does not apply to the sensualist--the man who lives for pleasure; for he becomes ennuied and dies from lack of interest. The man who lives for gain will live long if he continues to be interested in gain; but if he fails, and hope is gone, his health fails and death comes soon. Unfortunately, those who have the faculty for making money--becoming wealthy--are exceedingly unwise in placing it where it will do them the greatest good, or the greatest good to the greatest number.

   The body is made stronger by the shock of exercise and work. Too much exercise pushes development beyond the normal. Most athletes are overdeveloped, and as a consequence die early.

   Men, after they pass middle age, should have a certain amount of exercise; but those who live a sedentary life will not live as long if their exercise is pushed to a hardening of the muscles as they will if they exercise just enough to keep the muscles well shaped--keep the tissues from falling down. Old men never have muscles that stand up and are individual, such as the athlete prides himself upon. A man who is in a trade or business that requires continuous hard work will keep his muscles well up into old age, if he is regular about his work. If he works up to sixty years of age, keeping his muscles hard from his labor, and then retires, he will not live many years--not nearly so many as he would live if he should continue his work, perhaps not doing quite so much; yet, on account of his being accustomed to work, he will live very much longer if he keeps at his labor than he will if he stops and retires.

   Most men of sedentary lives are underdeveloped; their organic life runs down, and many die early.

   Over-mental development always means early death. This is especially true where the knowledge is not of a character to make one wise about his proper relation to his environment.

   When a great physician dies too early because of lime deposit in his arteries, what is the reason? He has not had the proper conception of his relationship to his environment.

   The riddle of health in its varying stages must be known before man can brace himself against the over- and under-effects of environmental shock.

   We have seen that development means shock. The shock of too much nourishment, and of too much exercise, produces disease. Neither of these causes is disease-producing within itself. Food is necessary. The body cannot live long without the stimulation (shock) which it gets from food, and certainly it must have the building material that food furnishes. When food and exercise are given within the needs of the body, everything else being equal, the body may be said to be in a state of health.

   When food and exercise are supplied beyond the needs of the system, or below the needs of the system, disease is said to prevail.

   There is but one deduction from these facts, and that is that health and disease come from the same cause.

   Perfect health does not exist. The state varies from one that is known as robust health to fatal disease. Yet both extremes are states of health.

   How can there be an entity, disease, coming out of food, exercise, pleasure, work, or anything that affects man in his environment? The answer is: There cannot be. As stated before, life is made worth while because of the various influences affecting man.

   Once it was thought that the force which animated living matter was an autogenerated vital energy, but now it is thought to be reactions produced by various agents.

   About as good a definition for health as can be given, according to the foregoing, is: an equilibrium established between external stimulation and internal reaction.

   The temperature of the body in health is about 37' C., or 98-1/2° F. If the temperature of the room or weather is about 60, and is kept at that point, the body becomes adjusted. If the temperature rises or falls slowly, reaction on the external medium will be gradual. Where the change is sudden, either plus or minus, it upsets the heat equilibrium and may cause much disorder, resulting in disease. What is the disease? Enervation and retention of excretion. This produces toxic poisoning.

   Becoming adjusted to any sudden changes causes so much agitation that life may be endangered.

   The cause of disease, or the cause of a departure from health, or health perverted, is not some mysterious entity; it comes from shocks imparted by environmental agents, which cause reactions; and the reactions are for the purpose of modifying the shocks and making them compatible with life's requirements.

2. Physical Agents

   Air.--Air is not classed as a food; yet it is the most important food. We can live without the ordinary foods from thirty to forty days, and we can live without water for a few days, but we cannot live without air for more than a few minutes.

   Air is the gaseous substance that envelops the earth and forms its atmosphere. It consists almost entirely of the gases oxygen and nitrogen, which are merely mixed and not chemically combined.

   An ordinary-sized man is supposed to take through the lungs about two thousand cubic feet of air each twenty-four hours. It is from the air that we secure our greatest supply of oxygen.

   Air at sea-level has a pressure of about fourteen and three-fourths pounds to the square inch. It decreases about one-twentieth of a pound per square inch for every ninety feet of altitude. High altitudes cause a quickening of the pulse and breathing. Most people have an idea that there is much danger in going to a high altitude quickly. There is very little discomfort, and almost no danger, to persons in good health.

   It is said that, whatever the altitude, the composition of the air is always the same; namely, 21 parts of oxygen, 78.06 of nitrogen, 0.94 of argon, and a trace of carbonic acid.

   The only change in the composition of the air in high altitudes is an increase in ozone. Ozone is an allotropic (allotropism: the existence of an element in two or more distinct forms--distinct physical properties).and more active form of oxygen. The variations of the chemical composition of the air do not account for the evil effects experienced in high altitudes; hence the effects must be caused by temperature, pressure, and the action of the sun's rays, which strike more perpendicularly in high than in low altitudes. At an altitude of 4,500 to 5,000 feet the temperature will mark a difference of ten to twelve degrees Fahrenheit in the sun and in the shade. If the bulb of the thermometer be covered with black cotton, the difference will often reach sixty degrees Fahrenheit. This should warn. those in delicate health to prepare themselves with a proper amount of clothing when going into high altitudes. It should not be forgotten, however, that the cold of high altitudes is more tolerable than that of low altitudes, because the air is drier.

   The sun, however, does not melt snow unless accompanied with warm air. Black or dark clothes retain the sun's heat and enable the traveler to keep warm in a temperature that would be very uncomfortable at sea level.

   The absence of wind and humidity in high altitudes gives comfort, whereas in low altitudes, with a much higher temperature, those who are sick and of low resistance will suffer from the cold.

   Altitude.--Snow does not melt in high altitudes, even when the sun's rays are quite warm, until the air becomes warm. Snow, or white clothing reflects the sun's rays; hence dark clothing should be worn in winter, and white or light-colored clothing in summer.

   As an experiment: Place a dry leaf on a bank of snow where the sun is shining; in a little while it will be seen that the snow under the leaf is melting.

   Absence of wind and humidity causes high altitudes to be comfortable places to live.

   Mountain air is so dry that putrefaction does not occur to the same extent as at sea level. In high altitudes meat will dry and cure without salt. Desiccation is effected before decomposition can set in. At St. Bernard, in the Swiss Alps, the corpses of men and animals never decay. The dead are placed in morgues, where they are preserved indefinitely--a form of immortality.

   The air is so rarefied in high altitudes that patients are made quite nervous because of the absence of noise. Sound does not carry, because the air is not dense enough to transmit it.

   It is said that the absence of noise causes a feeling of sadness.

   The effect of altitudes ranging from six to twelve thousand feet, on one seeking health, will be at first, while becoming acclimated, that of a feeling of warmth on the skin. The lips will redden, and the eyes will flush. For a while one will be troubled with insomnia; a slight palpitation; or, if the heart is weak, the palpitation may be severe. There will be a feeling of dyspnea (shortness of breath); dizziness; and sometimes headache. The urine is dark, and constipation is the rule; and, from the first, the appetite is increased.

   In a short time the skin becomes a tan color. The lips, nose, and hair become so dry that salves and vaseline are used to secure relief from the dryness. Strength increases, and long walks, and even mountain-climbing, do not fatigue until overeating brings on the tired feeling peculiar to food poisoning.

   There is mountain sickness, which is said to be unavoidable in altitudes of from twelve to fifteen thousand feet, but not equally in all countries--probably the result of overeating and fatigue. The exhilaration caused by the mountain atmosphere induces the traveler or sightseer to exercise to excess; this uses up so much nerve energy that imperfect digestion results, following which comes intestinal toxin infection; and that is what mountain fever is.

   Mountain-climbers are not equally subject to mountain sickness. This, of course, is true of every section of the country. It is said that the lack of oxygen, the increased cold, and the fatigue have much to do with bringing on mountain sickness. Obviously harm must follow an increased appetite and a decrease in oxygen supply. A decrease of oxygen favors decomposition; this is one reason for auto-intoxication.

   The symptoms of mountain sickness are a feeling of growing malaise; pains in the legs, especially the knees; the mouth fills with saliva; sickness of the stomach, followed by vomiting of food; and, in severe attacks, bilious and even blood vomiting. In the advanced stages of the disease, pain in the bowels and diarrhea set in.

   According to Paul Bert: "The quantity of oxygen in the blood diminishes as the atmospheric pressure diminishes. If the rarefaction corresponds to pressure existing at 6,000 feet of altitude, the oxygen diminishes thirteen per cent; at 9,000 feet, twenty-one per cent; at 25,000 feet, fifty per cent." He thinks oxygen starvation causes death in these high altitudes, and experiments that he has carried out have proved that he is right.

   By "becoming acclimated" is meant that the blood acquires an increased capacity for absorbing oxygen; which means an increase in the red corpuscles and an increase in the iron contents. This being true, patients suffering from anemia, and especially chlorosis, will find benefit in living in high altitudes. They will also suffer much in traveling in high altitudes.

   This is according to the best medical authority. I will say in this connection, however, that such diseases are brought on from imprudent eating. My experience is that anemic and chlorotic patients eat foods that are devoid of oxygen, until they lose their power for carrying oxygen. Why should not this be true? Nature removes an organ no longer used. If oxygen is not taken into the system in large enough quantities to supply work for the red corpuscles, there will be a gradual diminution of these corpuscles to correspond with requirements. High altitudes force breathing; hence the demand for more blood corpuscles, and the supply.

   To those who are anemic or chlorotic I will say: If resort to a high and dry altitude cannot be taken, do not be discouraged; stay at home and get well. Stop sugar-, candy-, and cake-eating; use sugar in foods very sparingly. Eat uncooked fruit, also salads made from fresh, crisp vegetables, or a slaw, every day; and teach yourself deep breathing.

   An increased capacity for absorbing oxygen may be developed in low as well as high altitudes by getting rid of toxins in the blood. This can be done by correcting the eating: by lessening the amount of the so-called staples--meat, bread or cereals, pudding, pie, cake, etc.--and eating more fresh fruit and vegetable salads; and exercise should not be forgotten.

   Pulmonary tuberculosis is a disease supposed to be best treated when sent to high and dry altitudes. This supposed benefit is not without its drawbacks. All lung cases with a high pulse-rate should seek as dry a climate as possible, but avoid altitudes more than a mile above sea level.

   Almost irreparable harm is done to blood-making and nutrition before the tubercular bacillus is discoverable in the lungs. Prevention of this disease must start in childhood, with those of the tubercular diathesis. After adenitis (lymphatic infection) has been developed in a tuberculous diathesis, it will require unusually good judgment on the part of the patient, and unusual medical skill on the part of the medical adviser, to bring the patient back to the normal. To stay normal with a diathesis and a record of one breakdown will require great good judgment--certainly more than a residence in a high altitude, etc.

   I have learned from observation that those who are well advanced with pulmonary tuberculosis, and who have a high pulse-rate, die off very rapidly when brought to Denver.

   If we are to believe in the eternal logic of the universe, we must believe that sound judgment is an accompaniment of a sound body. This being true, all tubercular subjects should be directed by the wisest minds; for their own is as prone to go wrong as the sparks are to fly upward.

   Curing this disease means correcting the mind and body-it means right thinking and acting.

   If it is a fact that more lung capacity is needed in high altitudes, is it wise to force diseased lungs to expand? Oxygen starvation is one of the symptoms of tuberculosis, due to imperfect lung action. The lungs of these subjects are not used to their full capacity, and, as the disease advances, breathing grows more shallow, because the lungs grow more sensitive to the air. Cold air irritates and causes coughing, and, to avoid coughing, the patient learns to breathe in a more shallow manner all the time; and, of course, the less oxygen taken in, the less food is digested, and the farther away from health the victim drifts.

   Sleeping-porches and other devices for furnishing fresh air and a greater oxygen consumption have been a dominating fad since a few years ago, when it was the custom to have patients sit out-of-doors in the coldest weather--wrapped, of course, enough to keep warm.

   Obviously both plans are rather more detrimental than good. The object is fine, for it is necessary to have as pure air as possible; but the good is, according to my way of thinking, more than offset by the irritating effect of the cold on the lungs. Reader, stop and think: These patients are in heated houses all day, and some of them in superheated houses. At night they breathe an atmosphere many degrees colder than it is throughout the day. The house temperature through the day is seventy degrees Fahrenheit, or more; while on the porch it ranges, in Denver, from thirty-two degrees above to ten degrees below zero. The range is from thirty-eight to eighty degrees. Can anyone with common sense believe that a weak, diseased lung will thrive subjected every twenty-four hours to such extremes of temperature?

   If the above is true, the modem treatment of this disease could not possibly be much worse.

   If houses are as clean as they should be; if bedding is as clean as bedding should always be, patients will do much better in a closed house--closed up for the entire night--and fire enough to keep the night temperature within ten or twenty degrees of the day temperature.

   All of us (doctors and laymen) must go through the fresh air insanity. Converts to new thoughts, or old thoughts, are always nearsighted, enthusiastic, and even fanatical in their loyalty in following literally and not wisely such fads. The fresh air craze has surely killed its quota. Filthy houses have done their share. Now sensible people should split the difference and keep both foul and cold air out of their lungs. To encourage those who read this, I will say: The composition of the atmosphere is always the same,* and, like all organs, it is maintained at the same composition, and must remain so until destroyed; and along with its destruction must go all animal life. (*This does not mean that the air of proper composition cannot be made the vehicle of filth. Houses, bedding, clothing, and the body must be clean.)

   It is all nonsense to talk about burning up or breathing out of the atmosphere all the oxygen. If houses are clean, no harm will come to the sick by closing doors and windows to prevent them from chilling their lungs and blood by breathing an atmosphere much colder than their bodies.

   Harm from breathing cold air does not end with simply causing irritation; the patient's nerve energy is used up in resisting the cold. It takes nerve energy to resist cold; it takes nerve energy to digest food. This being true, should not sick people be kept in a warm atmosphere, and fed on food that will nourish the body at the least expenditure of energy in digestion?

   The nervous system of a plithisical patient should not be severely taxed in resisting cold. It must be remembered that digestion cannot be carried on with a bodily temperature varying much from 99' F.

   It is a mistake for sick people to live in an atmosphere so cold that wool or other heavy, impervious underwear is thought to be necessary to keep the body warm. Air is a tonic and stimulant to the skin, and, neither last nor least, it is a disinfectant. To keep the surface of the body sweet and clean, air must get to it, and it cannot when the body is swathed in tight-fitting woolen or other underwear. Open-woven cloth is better; no underwear at all is best.

   It matters not how clean a housewife may be-if she does not air her closets and clothing, she cannot boast of her cleanliness. Men who ruin their homes with tobacco smoke, rendering them unfit for women and children to live in, certainly pay a lot for their pleasure. I have known of invalid wives who could get well if their homes could be freed from stale tobacco smoke. Invalid wives are expensive.

   A part of humanity live in ill-smelling houses and clothing. Many men think they are excused for ill-smelling bodies because their work is dirty. This is not necessary. Grease, smoke, dust, and iron rust or filings will make the clothes, hands, and face dirty; but I deny that it is necessary for any man to emit an odor that is offensive.

   Women who take advantage of dirty work as an excuse for making themselves a nuisance from malodor should be boycotted. It is no disgrace to do work that makes one's body and clothes dirty; but there never can be any excuse for filth, and the odor that accompanies it. People who are filthy are a menace to society and should be taken care of by the health authorities, in the same manner that all decomposition is cared for.

   Air and dust, sometimes called dirt, are aseptic and antiseptic. Dust is fought against by housewives, and cities hold it down with the sprinkling cars. In this way one of nature's health-imparting agencies is made inefficient.

   Winds and storms are necessary; they are nature's sanitary measures. Wind is necessary for lowlands and low altitudes. Canyons are frequently swept by windsthe reason given being that they act as chimneys for conveying hot air out of the plains: the hot air rises and the cold air goes to the bottom, creating currents. These winds are sanitary; they carry out of the canyons malodors, and antisepticize the accumulated decomposition.

   Vegetation grows more luxuriantly, everything being equal, in a windy country than it does in a windless country. Trees grow more rapidly in Kansas because of its winds. Chicago is noted for large, fine-looking girls, and wind. The relationship is obvious.

   Walls of wood and stone around private residences in cities are menacing to the health of the neighborhood.

   Houses for stock and chickens should be nothing more than windbreaks--never airtight pens or houses. All that animals need are windbreaks; they do not need warm houses, notwithstanding the fact that such protection is often given as a matter of economy--the warmer the animal is kept, the less food is needed. But this is economy at the expense of health. Warm houses and tuberculosis are close friends, and are found among the human animals as well as the brute creation.

   The more air we breathe, the better our digestions will be. Warm, close houses are not so menacing to health as people generally believe. The real health-destroyer in our houses is dirt that is taking on septic change: dirty clothes, kept in closets that cannot be ventilated and are not cleaned; decaying food, and never thoroughly cleaned pantries and ice-chests; old beds that are dressed with nice, white pillows and spreads--veritable whited sepulchers; and then the habit of keeping an ill-smelling cesspool under the diaphragm, from eating beyond the digestive capacity.

   Keep the home, in every comer and recess, sweet and clean; keep dirty clothing from accumulating; keep the body and mind clean; then, when cold weather comes, it will not be necessary to keep doors and windows open or to sleep out-of-doors. Keep clean and comfortable, and avoid shocking the lungs and nervous system by breathing air seventy to eighty degrees colder at night than at midday. When necessary to breathe cold air, do so in action--when walking, exercising, or at work. Do not sit out-of-doors wrapped up, or sleep out-of-doors.

   In all things it is worth while to take a commonsense view; and in the care of the body, moderation--avoiding fanaticism, which is another name for ignorance--is the safer practice, and much more conducive to long life and success.

   Heat.--Heat is not food; yet it is one of food's most important allies.

   A temperature of the body of approximately ninety-eight degrees Fahrenheit is necessary to insure digestion and assimilation. A continuous temperature of one degree less than normal will lead to physical destruction sooner than a continuous temperature of one degree above normal.

   Just what causes the increased temperature in fevers is an unsolved problem; and it is doubtful whether it ever will be solved. Every case of fever will have to be settled individually; for, as in all things connected with health and disease, there are no unitary causes. Every effect depends upon multiple causes.

   The nervous system presides over organic functioning. When nerve energy is below normal, the functions of secretion and excretion are impaired. As secretions are necessary to digestion and assimilation, these functions are impaired, and, excretions being imperfect, the waste products are retained and act as inhibitors of functioning.

   Following this state will be cold hands and feet. People are said to have poor circulation, which, indeed, is true; but poor circulation must have an explanation, for those two words are meaningless in themselves. Poor circulation means enervation; means that nerve energy is low; means that the nerves distributed to the blood vessels fail to impart tonicity to their muscular and fibrous coats, stimulating normal contraction.

   Heart and blood-vessels in health act rhythmically--contract and relax--under the influence of nerve energy; and this causes what we know as circulation of the blood.

   Nerve energy is necessary to keep up the blood circulation and the normal temperature of the body indicated by warm feet and hands.

   Anything that uses up nerve energy brings on enervation and, as hinted before, impairment of the functions of secretion and excretion. The lungs fail to exchange carbonic-acid gas for oxygen gas. When there is imperfect exchange of gases in the lungs, digestion is impaired; for perfect digestion requires that oxygen be brought in by the lungs.

   Nerve energy and heat are generated when the oxygen in the blood of the arteries acts upon the carbon in the veins; and when, from any cause, the supply of oxygen is low, heat is not generated, and cold hands and feet follow. The remedy must be to remove the first cause of enervation. What is it? Excessive eating, drinking, enjoying, working, or what not. The feeding must be in keeping with digestive limitations, not in keeping with the bodily needs. There is little science and less sense in advising an enervated patient to eat "lots of good, nourishing food." The chasm that exists between my dietetic system and every other system that I have heard of is too great to be bridged with any possible compromise. I feed my patients in keeping with their digestive capacity, while all others endeavor to force feeding in keeping with apparent systemic needs, without respect or consideration for the patient's ability to digest and assimilate.

   The foods that furnish heat are the carbohydrates. Sugar is the most rapid heat-producer, fat next, and starch next.

   An oversupply of heat-producing foods, indulged in continually, will end in great enervation and whatever disease the individual has a predisposition to develop.

   When sugar is eaten beyond the system's needs, it will not be acted upon. If all were used up and heat generated, life would be put out from hyperpyrexia, or overheating. The amount taken above the body's needs will go out of the body by way of the kidneys or bowels; not, however, without more or less injury to these organs of excretion. It is a mistake to believe that we may indulge ourselves beyond the system's needs, with any food or drink, with impunity. Indeed, the surplus is a tax on energy to get rid of it, and this tax divides the work of nutrition. Ideal nutrition cannot be had when its work is interfered with by the work of eliminating a lot of unnecessary material.

   It should be bome in mind that the law of correlation of forces must govern in the matter of food and nutrition, the same as in dealing with natural law anywhere in the realm of knowledge and science.

   Heat is being consumed when the body is in pain; when overclothed or overworked; and when mentally worried, depressed, or overjoyed.

   Fever is not an indication of the generation of surplus heat. Indeed, quite the contrary is true; for the body is not generating so much as when normal. The reason for the excessive temperature is that nerve energy is impaired; elimination by the skin, lungs, and kidneys is suspended, and, as a result, the excretions are retained. One of the functions of the skin and lungs is to radiate heat. If, through food or other poisoning, the nerve energy supplied to these organs is cut off, heat is retained in the body. If the cause is infection from an injury, or pent-up decomposition in the bowels, the source of infection must be got rid of as soon as possible; then the temperature will run down. Physicians in general practice often see an increase of temperature from two or three to five and six degrees Fahrenheit following indigestion caused by overeating, and if the indiscretion is not repeated, the fever may subside in twelve to twenty-four hours.

   After childbirth or abortion, if from any cause the uterine discharge becomes pent up, pain and fever will quickly follow. If understood, however, and the womb washed out, and drainage established, pain and increased temperature will be controlled at once, never to return, unless the cause is allowed to return.

   Pain inhibits the physiological manufacture of heat, and if it did not stop radiation, the patient would probably die from refrigeration--from loss of all bodily heat. Hence fever may be looked upon as one of the most remarkably uniquely conservative acts in all the world of pathological conservatism.

   Health and long life cannot be looked for by those who are careless and indifferent about keeping their extremities warm. Cold, clammy hands and feet indicate malnutrition, and must be cured by correcting the bad daily habits that build this symptom.

   Until the extremities keep warm from restored circulation, following the correcting of the disease-producing habits, artificial heat must be used to keep the feet warm. Covering on the feet and legs to the knees should be double the weight of that over the body and shoulders; or a jug of hot water may be kept in the foot of the bed to use when necessary. Do not sleep with the feet against the heater. Through the day, if sitting much, an electric pad should be used. Keep the feet warm, and prevent further decline in health.

   Do not overclothe in an effort to keep warm. Lightweight, open-woven underwear, with heavy top clothing when going out, is the proper way to meet the cold. When riding in cold weather, the feet must be kept warm. Overeating and chilling spell pneumonia.

   Heat of summer can be easily borne--in fact, enjoyed--if the eating is correct. Cut the heat-producing foods down to the minimum; meat, with all fat trimmed away, not oftener than once a day or three times a week; fruit and salads, with milk and cheese; bread once a day for those who are not overweight. Wear only the lightestweight, open-woven underwear.

   People who persist in overeating make themselves very uncomfortable, and they are the people who meet with prostrations and sunstrokes.

   Workmen who are subjected to great heat should leave starch, fats, and sugar, or any form of sweets, alone. Drink freely of pure water--positively no alcoholics; for lunch, ice cream and fruit. The ice cream is sweet and fat and evolves heat. its effects should be watched, and if the heat is harder to endure on days that the ice cream is used, it would be wise to stop it.

   Ices may be used too often, and to the detriment of health. The injurious effects of all classes of foods are so little known by laymen, and even by physicians, that few are willing to believe that their favorite "bonnes bouches" cause the discomfort they experience. I see people daily suffering so greatly that they are driven to seek relief and cure; yet they are unwilling to part with the habit that causes their unhappiness. Indeed, it is almost impossible to convince them that ill can come from so simple a pleasure.

   Iced drinks should be taken in great moderation. The cold drink habit is like all other habits--it grows on what it feeds. The more ice used, the stronger the demand. A drink of ice water taken an hour after a hearty meal often generates an insatiable thirst, which, if satisfied, will positively cause indigestion, and not infrequently start a derangement that may end in typhoid fever or some other acute malady; or a chronic irritation may be started that will end in ulcer or cancer of the stomach.

   Extremely cold drinks and extremely hot drinks are equally injurious. The very sick should always be watched, and artificial heat used continually to keep the extremities warm.

   Thousands and thousands have died who would have lived if that one little chore of keeping their feet warm had been attended to properly.

   If it could be generally known and remembered that the function of heat-making is suspended during sickness, and that the very old, the very young, and those who are greatly run down are liable to freeze up--collapse--in the hottest weather, deaths from this cause might be prevented by seeing to it that they are kept comfortably warm.

   Many cholera-infantum cases die every summer--July and August--because those who care for them believe the babies feel the heat as other people do, and no attention is given to keeping them warm. Death in such cases comes from chilling or freezing to death.

   Dry heat is more endurable than moist heat. A humid atmosphere is very enervating.

   Every summer nearly all cities of this country suffer deaths from heat strokes.

   Sunstroke usually occurs among those who are dissipated. Sensuality perhaps covers the whole class. I do not believe any suffer from this disease who are not enervated from sensuality.

   Those who work in overheated places and are food- or alcohol-poisoned are in line for heat prostrations.

   Various disorders may persist after a recovery from heat stroke; namely, neuralgia, headache, and sometimes strange ideas or notions. These troubles, however, result as much from wrong daily life as from the previous sickness . Indeed, such cases may be cured of these relics of former sickness if the patients will follow a proper style of living.

   Cold.--Cold climates are said to be more healthful than warm climates. I am not prepared to accept that statement without qualifications. Under correct sanitary control, I believe that warm countries are more conducive to long life than are cold countries; but under neglected and bad dietetic, hygienic, and sanitary conditions, cold countries are better. And, of all countries, those of high altitudes are best. Decomposition is the menace to health in warm countries; the people die of sepsis--blood poisoning--and hepatic derangements; whereas in cold countries health and life are menaced by overstimulation and its consequent enervation.

   It is true that heat is enervating, but the bad habit of eating heat-producing foods in hot countries causes hot climates to be more unhealthful than is natural. Investigation will show that there are more people who grow old in warm countries. Cold is hard on old, and on very young, people.

   Explorers of the polar regions state that they stood a temperature of from forty to fifty degrees Fahrenheit below zero, without suffering, when there was no wind. It is said that life may be maintained at from seventy to ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit below zero. Authors of this statement, however, counsel against exaggerating the importance of this fact. On an average, about seven hundred persons perish every year in Russia from cold.

   All ages do not stand cold equally well. Adults resist the cold best. The old and young chill easily.

   The enervated, or those with weakened nutrition, must keep warm.

   Discouragement, overwork, starvation, or any influences that depress the mind as well as the body, render the individual unfit to stand exposure to cold. Any enervating habit removes resistance to cold. Drinking of alcoholics overcomes man's resistance. Brandy-drinking, as practiced in Russia, often causes serious suffering, and a few fall dead on being exposed to extreme cold after indulging.

   There still persists a popular obstinacy or ignorant belief that alcoholics, or so-called stimulants, are an advantage to those who are exposed to cold, or subjected to fatiguing labor. The truth is exactly the opposite of this belief; for alcohol, in any form, enervates by removing the normal tonicity. Man in a full state of health has tone--a normal irritability or excitability--that enables him to act and react on his environment. A man in full vigor can control or react of strike back, but the impotent man has no control and cannot react or strike back. The rage of King Lear marks the acme of senile impotency. Indeed, anger means impotency; the greater the lack of self-control, the more impotency is marked.

   Alcohol is not a stimulant nor a tonic; it is a drug that deadens sensation. Hence its first, last, and only effect is to paralyze. The reason why drinkers like it is because it deadens sensation. The more enervated the alcoholic habitue, the less responsible he is for his acts.

   To send a drunkard or a drug fiend to the electric chair is certainly the acme of social stupidity. We have quit legally killing those whom we know to be insane; yet we are slow to recognize the drunk or the dope fiends as artificially and temporarily insane.

   Fever often produces mental hallucinations, but these states of aberration are not so often due to fever as to drugs. Alcohol and opium have sent many patients through windows to their death. Suicides and homicides are oftener the acts of brains crazed with drugs than the result of viciousness. And society is so ignorantly stupid as to license drug and gin shops, and clothe physicians with authority to build lunatics for our courts to run into the penitentiaries, hang, or electrocute.

   Habits are easily formed. It is an easy matter to go from alcohol to morphine. These drugs do not act the same, yet both of them deaden sensation and are habit-forming, and both produce physical and mental impotency. It matters not in what quantities taken, they weaken resistance and render those who use them less and less efficient for their work.

   There is nothing except food that gives man strength. And too much food--eating beyond the digestive capacity--will cause weakness. When food is taken beyond digestive capacity, and a habitual intestinal fermentation is established, the individual loses his power to keep warm. Victims of this state may put on the heaviest clothing--indeed, they usually wear heavy woolen underwear, often two suits, and the heaviest top clothing--yet the more clothing they put on, the more they may. Still there is no comfort for them; for the more clothing put on the body, beyond just enough to protect from wind and weather, the more such people suffer from cold. Heavy clothes break down resistance, and if the habit of wrong eating and heavy clothing is continued, the refrigeration of death will relieve the unfortunate victims of this health-destroying habit.

   When a man is in full health, nothing can add to his strength. Emotional excitement may cause him to use all the power he has for the moment, but the result is enervation that will require more than the usual amount of rest to restore. The same is true of protection with clothing. The body in health has power to protect itself from the varying temperatures. It can adjust itself to all degrees of heat and cold, and needs no protection except from inclemency. And when these facts are ignored and artificial protection is indulged in, self-protection is lost, which results in disease.

   Food and clothing beyond necessity, close houses, artificial heat, stimulants (?), and tonics (?), make a conglomeration of influences that spell d-i-s-e-a-s-e and early death.

   The body should be protected from wind and weather, but not from contact with the air. The body must live in the air. Open-woven cotton or linen underwear, or a sleeveless and legless light-weight garment that stands for cleanliness rather than bodily protection, is all that is necessary; then the top clothing may be adjusted to be in keeping with the weather conditions.

   This is quite the opposite of what is recommended by modem medical science. But it should be known that modem medical science is a wonderfully wroughtout system of palliation which in every particular "borrows from Peter to pay Paul;" breaks down health to relieve suffering; builds a fatal disease by relieving or palliating an innocent one.

   In the matter of prescribing for those who are breaking themselves down--becoming so enervated that the chill of death is sending its messengers of warning--the really up-to-date doctor will prescribe heavy woolen underwear and more "good, nourishing food;" and, as auxiliaries, stimulants and tonics to quicken the circulation and give strength! Such trifling with health and life is a disgrace to our civilization. Patients applying for advice--for relief from such symptoms--should be educated into health habits; not turned off with short-lived palliatives that will become allied with the patient's bad habits to hasten his destruction.

   Those who find themselves distressed by a weather temperature that does not appear to inconvenience those about them should get busy correcting bad eating, clothing, and housing habits.

   Do these people need heat-producing foods? Most of them have broken themselves down by overindulgence in these very same foods. Will they be benefited by eating more of them? This is exactly what modem medical science declares; and the result is more breaking-down, more disease, and at last premature death.

   Rest--physiological and physical--whole or partial withdrawal of food, and quiet in bed, with artificial heat, and food only when comfortable, will soon right such patients.

   As soon as habitual decomposition in the bowels is overcome, these patients begin to warm up; feet and hands gradually grow warm; the mind and body grow more active; the outlook becomes brighter. Often this change not only restores physical and mental health, but it puts the victim on a solid financial basis. People poisoned with alcohol or drugs, or who are toxin-infected, stumble over opportunities every day; they see others succeeding by, perhaps, picking up the opportunities over which they themselves have stumbled.

   Those who are cultivating cold feet must not be surprised to find themselves lagging behind in the affairs of life; and they will certainly grow more diseases from day to day.

   Death is a coldness that knows no warming; and the unfortunate person who has cultivated cold hands and feet is started toward that final state.

   The greater the intensity of cold, the more pronounced its effects on the parts exposed. At three or four degrees below zero, redness is excited; treble the amount will cause swelling; and six times that amount of cold will result in gangrene.

   The first effect of cold is a feeling of fatigue and a desire to sleep. But if sleep be indulged in, there will be no awaking.

   Light.--Light is necessary for health. Germ life is destroyed by it. Plants do not thrive any better than animals in the absence of light.

   Light is a stimulant, and of course can do injury to those who overindulge in it. Those who chase fad cures, and who are not happy until everyone is in the ground too deep for resurrection, will, while taking the sun-bath cure, blister their bodies and torture themselves in every way, that the sun's rays may be used. When this so-called cure ceases to be disagreeable, they will decide that the remedy has lost its effect, and away they go searching for a new cure that will be disagreeable enough to be curative. A cure with them is valued according to the extent of its disagreeableness. The cure idea with such people has not evolved away from exorcism--disease and cure still being a system of demonism. With the profession the demon has dwindled to a microscopic germ.

   Clothes keep the light away from the body, and, because of this, man suffers more or less from light starvation. When such subjects are persuaded by a monomaniac healer to expose their delicate bodies to the direct rays of the sun, they will be very uncomfortable.

   When people become accustomed to living in Colorado, and have cultivated the sunshine habit, they are not satisfied to make their homes in a country where the sunlight is shut out by clouds and rain. Light builds optimism, while cloudiness or shade causes more or less pessimism.

   Light increases the amount of carbonic acid thrown off. It is said that when the body is brought into the light with the eyes shaded, carbonic acid rises twelve per cent; then, if the eyes are bared and the body covered, the carbonic acid rises to fourteen per cent; when eyes and body are exposed simultaneously, this acid rises to thirty-six per cent, exceeding the combined separate exposures by ten per cent. This increase indicates more combustion; and, in fact, there is a slight elevation of temperature. In children it ranges from one-tenth to one-half degree Centigrade.

   The sun's rays, either direct or reflected, will cause a skin irritation--erythema--accompanied by an elevation of the epidermis, with serous liquid; that is, the skin blisters and causes great discomfort. When the sun's rays are reflected from water, the action on the skin in one day is very pronounced.

   Pellagra is supposed by a few to be caused by the sun's rays; by others, to be caused by consuming spoiled maize--corn. It has not been my privilege to see more than one or two cases of pellagra; but, judging from what writers say about it, it is probably caused by excessive starch-eating; or it may be the combined effect of starch, sweet (molasses), and the sun's rays and hot weather. This disease, and hookworm, should be eradicated by correcting the personal habits of those afflicted with them. It is a mistake to look for a unitary cause for these diseases; for, as with all others, there are many causes, and just what causes them in one individual may not be the cause in another. impaired nutrition is the fundamental cause.

   Darkened houses are proverbially unwholesome houses. All houses should be built in such a manner as to secure as much light as possible. When light is furnished, air is sure to be, and provision for both these elements makes it almost impossible to overheat.

   Blue rays have been used to restore hair; Roentgen, or X-rays, and violet rays are used to treat cancer; and all the rays of the spectrum have been used as remedies for diseases. But these remedies soon fall into disuse because of lack of merit. A few enthusiasts--specialists on skin diseases, or cancer specialists--have lost their lives from administering the X-ray; others have lost fingers, hands, and arms. I have seen cancer patients fearfully burned by the use of the X-ray--and that, too, without corresponding benefit.

   The ability of radium to disorganize tissue has caused it to be used and recommended. All these remedies, including the plaster cure made from escharotics, appeal to patients as well as to doctors. Why not? If these remedies can cause the disease to drop out, "root and all," what can possibly do more? Commercialism is just now exploiting radium; but, like all cures based on a false theory of disease, it must fail.

   The professional mind seldom thinks farther than to the radical removal of the disease-which is seldom, if ever, anything more than removing effects. That the cause may hark back to a faulty nutrition, and that this fault may be caused by one or more of a thousand-and-one enervating causes, is not thought of; or, if it is, no consideration is given it. It is easier to think palliation and work palliatives.

   It is doubtful if anyone will develop a cancer who lives in a properly lighted, aired, and heated home, and who takes reasonable care of his body and mind, and keeps intensely interested in life.

   Shut out the light and air from the body with thick, closely woven, close-fitting, and overheating underwear; live in a house in keeping; then have a dietary to correspond, and this will create a habitat in which any disease is liable to spring up and thrive.

   A bright light held before the eyes and gazed upon is liable to bring on a state known as artificial slumber or hypnosis. The name of "Braidism" is given to this phenomenon because a man by the name of Braidy discovered it.

   The influence of light and shade on the nervous system must be very great, and it should be better understood. Let us hope that it will be.

   I have seen young children thrown into convulsions by allowing a bright light to glare into their faces when they were nervous and feverish.

   Care should be exercised with babies to prevent shocking them by allowing strong lights to flash into their eyes.

   The moving picture shows, attended frequently and over a long period of time, will create nervous derangements. No doubt many are being injured in this way. Those with functional, as well as organic, diseases are having their symptoms aggravated by frequent attendance at these shows; but they have not suspected the cause. One or two hours at a picture show will use up as much nerve energy as a whole day at the usual vocation. The combined effect of eye- and ear-strain--the picture and the music--is very strenuous and nerve-exhausting.

   Sound.--The nervous system of those who live in large towns and cities is put to great stress. We are fast approaching a time when the noise nuisance will have to be legislated out of existence, the same as other nuisances that have been squelched.

   The automobile need not be a nuisance, but it certainly is. The majority of people who drive their machines act as though they had a special commission to make as much noise, split as much air, and kick up as much dust as possible.

   Since the automobile and motorcycle have come to stay, there has sprung up a type of people who really believe that their other name is pandemonium. Unless they are kicking up enough noise to wreck the "nerve" of a political lobbyist, they will not be able to "split the ears" of His Majesty, the Prince of Perdition, when they go to him; which they will, for they certainly will be out of place at a "rest" resort. The average chauffeur plays with the cut-off as the average motorman on the street car plays with his bell.

   The street car is made up of the quintessence of noise, and the motorman has become so noise-crazed that he clangs his bell--not because he is approaching a crossing; not because he has a slow coach in front of him, but because he is playing an accompaniment to his thoughts. He thinks noise, hence he plays noise.

   The car itself is a gamester of noise "par excellence.'? But health declares it a disgrace to civilization. Not the slightest attention has ever been given to constructing a silent-running car; it is put together so that every part becomes a rival of every other part in creating din. Then, when this roar-monger is manned by a real bellringer, hell is certainly turned loose when this peace- and quiet-destroyer is sent over a street every thirty to sixty seconds. There is positively no excuse for inflicting such punishment on humanity. Surprise is expressed at the number of people committing suicide and going insane every year. Unless commercialism is controlled in its selfishness, it will fill the world with mad-houses and penitentiaries.

   Fill a street with modern cars, and a lot of automobiles with their cut-offs opened and conks conking, and we certainly have a state of uproar that must cause degeneration of the nervous system of all human beings subjected to it.

   Why should we wonder at the increase of insanity and crime, when we add to the din the thousand-and-one other nerve-destroying habits of social and business life?

   Every lover of music and art should protest without ceasing against the growing tendency to convert this beautiful world into a hideous nightmare of inharmony. When it is admitted that "silence is more musical than any song," why should the mongers of noise be allowed to rule?

   Is there anyone so simple-minded as to need to be told that such a bedlam as exists in every large town and city is subversive of ethics, art, and religion? The beautiful, sonorous, and euphonious sounds are suppressed by the uproar, and the prospective mothers of the coming generation are forced into developing a distorted nervous system to impart to their children.

   We must certainly expect to reap as we sow. Can any but the fool believe that we can sow inharmony and reap harmony--sow pandemonium and reap Utopias?

   Disagreeable sounds, smells, sights, tastes, and feelings are so intimately united and blended with commercialism that there is little hope of overcoming them. With this it is the same as with disease-producing beliefs and so-called cures. The present style of curing and immunizing is so much a part of Rockefeller's millions, and other millions, that there is no hope of any considerable reform. The masses move along tied to the yoke of mammon; the poor, sick fools denounce the system that they declare usurps and exploits them; yet in every other way they uphold it with ballot and voice.

   The noise system is a cheap-John scheme. It gets up cars as cheaply as possible--which means that they must be noisy. It charges as much as the law will allow. The patrons are shaken and jolted as only a springless and bumperless car or wagon can shake or jolt; and then their finer senses are shocked, through the auditory nerves, by the noise that almost prevents thinking. All this wears out the patron; it injures him as a citizen; his health is impaired. The health, morality, estheticism, and artistic development of the people of any city may largely be measured by its cleanliness and absence of noise. A public utility that is grossly selfish, and tears the people down to lift itself, is certainly penny-wise and pound-foolish.

   When people are nervous, they lack in judgment--they do not make the progress in trades, professions, arts, music, and business that they should. A city made up of noise-crazed people will not make progress in a substantial way. Why? Because noise-crazed people are nervous selfish, disloyal, and unable to see that to gratify themselves to the detriment of the city's best interests is to cut their own economic throats. This is exactly what every street-car company is doing when its economy lowers the moral, health, and sanity standard of its patrons.

   Make a city clean and quiet-or as nearly noiseless as possible. Every utility should be run in the interests of its patrons, on the principle that people well served are happy, healthy, and prosperous, and possess drawing power. They attract other people to their city. Such a city grows; its property advances; and, according to the law of "like attracts like," a prosperous community attracts prosperity.

   All physicians who know that sickness is brought on, wittingly or unwittingly, from practicing many bad habits, and from unwholesome environments, by wearing out the nervous system with a lot of unnecessary noise, or by any influence that uses up nerve energy, know that rest is one of the most important elements in any therapeutic plan-rest of body and mind. This means that the body must not labor; that the mind must not labor; and that the nerves of special sense-namely, sight, sound, taste, smell, and touch--must rest from labor.

   Everything may be done for a broken-down individual except securing quiet--absence from noise; and if this requirement alone is neglected, restoration to health will not take place. Nervous people must secure rest from noise, because nothing is so uncompromisingly destructive to the nervous system as noise.

   It is the duty of parents to control children. When several get together, they are inclined to push their funmaking to excess, and from small noises they go to larger and larger, until they become hysterical. If this is permitted day after day, the decidedly nervous temperament will lose more or less power over coordination, and this will lead to chorea, or St. Vitus' dance, or other nervous diseases.

   Light, very restricted eating, and quiet in bed, with visits from children interdicted, is the proper treatment. Such patients must be kept in bed until every sign of irritability and muscle-twitching has subsided.

   After nervous children recover, a limit must be set to the amount of play indulged in; and excitement of all kinds must be avoided. The diet of such children must be simple: toasted non-yeast bread, butter, and milk for two meals each day; and fruit, cottage cheese, and milk for one meal. Quiet and rest is the principal remedy.

   Not many know that music has other qualities besides the power to "soothe the savage breast;" or perhaps I would better say that most people think that only good can come from music. Inharmony disturbs rhythm, and anything that interferes with rhythm strikes at the base of development and interferes with growth--nutrition.

   Everything capable of producing an effect may be said to have at least four influences; namely: a good, natural, or wholesome influence; then an excessive, defective, and perverted influence. This is true of music. I know of people who are made very miserable by music--it might be said that they are badly influenced by it. Then there are strong, healthy people who are driven almost mad by poor or defective musical execution, but who thrive in an atmosphere of harmony.

   All people are not attuned to the same key; or it may be possible that it is easier to adjust the nervous system to the different tones than to fall into harmony with varying time.

   Sensitive children drive themselves into nervous prostration by the inharmony they produce when compelled to spend long hours in practice.

   It may be that only inharmony (noise called music) is to blame for the nervousness I have seen in music teachers and their pupils; but I know that many suffer much from music, or the noise of practice, or butchered harmony. Of course, there are other influences which must be considered besides the noise of musical instruments. They are food, mental, and physical bad habits that help noise build nervousness and break nervous people down.

   School children are overworked. School, music, and social duties wear some of those who are food-poisoned to nerve exhaustion.

   When enervation is pronounced, as we often see in mothers of undisciplined children, such mothers must be taken away from home environments to be cured of their diseases. There is always something unusual--something out of the ordinary--the matter with mothers who cannot get well in the environment of home and children; for the mother-love converts din--what uninterested people would call bedlam--into sweet music. The ear-splitting shouts coming from one of her future great men she interprets as orders by the captain of the guards; another, whose voice dominates all others, is her Beecher or Spurgeon; still another is a captain of industry who will control all the iron industries of the country. So intensely is her mind fixed on the future of her children that their noises are material out of which she builds their future, and the success that she has in placing each one at the head of his specialty medicines every pain she has. Where this is not true, an accident at one of her confinements has caused septic poisoning, which has reduced the oxygen-carrying power of the blood fifty per cent, causing oxygen starvation; and her brain is so illnourished that her self-protecting imagination fails to convert din into sweet music, and she languishes and dies unless removed and carefully nursed back to the normal.

   If our noises are grinding a grist that feathers our nests, the success antidotes to a degree their evil influences on the nervous system.

   When a din becomes the vehicle in which to ride to success, it becomes for the time being a tonic, even if it builds insanity when reverses come.

   Sound may be health-building and it may be mind-destroying; it all depends on our relationship to it. It comes under the old rule: What is one man's food is another man's poison.

   Electricity is a mode of motion. It is said to be interchangeable with light, heat, cold, and sound. The power of a waterfall, and mechanical energy generally, may be converted into electricity, and it may be generated by transforming chemical energy also.

   Life may be looked upon as a mode of motion; or, if you please, transformed light, heat, or electricity.

   Matter and motion appear to be the cause and effect, and the effect and cause, of everything. It is a mistake to look upon matter and motion as two entities. Matter is. In one of its states, when at rest, it is static--in a condition of absence of motion; when active, it is in a dynamic state--in a state of motion. Motion is inconceivable as an entity; it must be the expression of something--and something is mentally conceived as matter. There are no such things as matter and motion, health and disease, strength and weakness, knowledge and ignorance, etc.

   There is matter, and it may be in a static or dynamic state; there is health, and it may be in a good or bad state; there is force or strength, and it may be in a strong or weak state.

   In the last analysis there is something, and we call that something matter. The various manifestations-the various shocks and reactions that we experience--are caused by the different states of matter of which we ourselves are a part.

   The primary or elementary states of matter we denominate light, heat, cold, sound, life, etc. Why light, life, or any other state of matter presents may be explained in many correct ways, but a kindergarten explanation may be such as I have sometimes used, namely: The elements of matter may be brought together in such a way that the summa summarum (sum-total) expression is that of light. A little change in the arrangements of atomic structure gives out heat, and another change gives out sound; and so the changes may be made, each giving out a sum-total expression, one of which we call life, and still another, more subtile than all the rest, we call mind. And all these states of matter we like to think of as entities'. but they are notthey are different states of matter.

   Animal life cannot be suspended longer than a few minutes at a time, with any hope of resuming its manifestation. Hence it is possible that the elements of the body may be so compounded as to develop the different states we call light, heat, cold, sound, electricity; and, in doing so, air, food, and water are converted into life.

   It is almost, if not quite, proved that the energy presiding over, or governing form, is electrical energy. Probably all formative energy is electrical, and possibly the question of sex is a question of a given number of electrons in the atoms comprising embryonic cells.

   The ultimate atom, or unit of matter, according to present scientific developments, is conceded to be the electron, which is declared to be a literal atom of negative electricity.

   We have become so used to thinking of the various states of matter as entities that it becomes almost impossible to express ourselves in any other form. If I lapse into referring to the different states as individual, I crave the reader's pardon and his indulgence in substituting in his mind the word "state" where I possibly may express myself as referring to "entity."

   If in what follows I appear to individualize, entitize electricity, I do not mean it. Electricity, the same as every natural force, is a state of matter.

   "Like electricities tend to repel one another," and, according to Lord Kelvin, the atom is held together by a core of positive electricity, which is known as an "ion." The problem of atomic architecture is to reconcile the common attraction of the ion for all the electrons with the mutual repulsion of the electrons themselves, so as to produce a stable structure.

   By the aid of mathematical theory, checked by actual experience with magnetized needles--to represent electrons--floating freely in water, under the influence of a centrally placed electromagnet, Professor Thompson has been able to unravel the architecture of the atom.

   The atoms of the different "elements" vary only in the number and arrangement of their electrons; every electron, wherever observed, being absolutely identical with every other.

   Electrons are found to be arranged in concentric rings within the atom, and the presence of a certain number of them in each ring is necessary for holding any given number in place outside of them. The stability of the atom, therefore, depends on the number and arrangement of the electrons it contains.

   Such a thing as an absolutely stable atom--a fixed, never-changing atom--is inconceivable.

   Professor J. H. Thompson, of Cambridge, explains how atoms of one element, by losing their outer ring of electrons may be transformed into those of another. This also explains or suggests a law of natural selection among atomic species.

   Of the many atoms that have attempted to gain a place for themselves during the countless past eons, there are some eighty that have survived.

   This theory is consistent with evolution, and it is to be hoped that it will be proved out in all departments of learning.

   We have seen, according to the latest accepted theories, that atoms are in reality atomic electric batteries--that each atom is an arrangement of electrons, or negative atoms of electricity with central core, or ion, of positive electricity.

   To prevent perplexity, I will say that, from present knowledge, there are no literal atoms except electrons; all other so-called atoms are compound structures, made up of positive and negative electricity.

   Electrical energy is hardly ever used as such, and only after it is transformed into other forms of energy; namely, mechanical, heat, chemical, and light.

   Electricity as a remedy for the cure of disease is one of the fads of modern therapeutics. Outside of the benefit derived from suggestion, and the harm caused by so-called therapeutists in their endeavor to cure the sick, there is nothing in the remedy as understood and used today. The market is full of electric belts, garters, amulets, rings, hair-restorers, oxonizers, and all sorts of monstrosities in the shape of instruments and appliances, too numerous to mention. Outside of the suggestion of cure, or what the patient believes will take place after their use, they are not worth a fig a carload.

   The profession uses the galvanic and faradic currents; also the X-ray, high-frequency, and static electricity. Very little good comes from any of these. A foreign body and broken bones may be diagnosed by the X-ray, and as a means for diagnosis this form of electricity has come to stay. For the generation of mechanical power, electricity is used. Vibratory instruments for giving mechanical massage are beneficial; but electricity is used only as a generator of the power. X-ray and other light-producing agents are used for the effect of the light--for the stimulation and tonic action. The X-ray can and does kill the tissues, and causes sloughing. Cancer has been, and is yet, treated with electric light. Results are unsatisfactory and doubtful. The radium treatment causes sloughing of tissue. All the new fangled remedies are not a whit better than the old-fashioned escharotic drugs that have been used in the manufacture of the well-known cancer plasters; some of which are "trained to eat out only the cancerous tissue. root and all"!

   Electricity, as electricity, cannot be utilized by the human organism. How is it possible to use a state of matter? Life, light, heat, cold, sound, electricity, are states of matter. How can these states be used as food or remedy? Perhaps only as electrons, found in atomic and cellular lifein organized form. Is electricity utilizable? Possibly as electrons--units of matter--but not the force with which these units are torn from organized matter. The force is what is called electricity--not the units of matter carried with the force. The debris gathered in a cyclone is not the cyclone; the force or energy set in motion is the cyclone. The idea of imparting electrical energy to the human body lacking in energy is one of many common errors.

   An enervated subject cannot be forced to receive energy. This is attempted by many physicians when they undertake to force food on those who are run down and enervated from lack of digestive power. Nature will not stand for forcing measures. There is no place for heroic treatment. Every vital process has safeguards thrown about it by nature, and those guards cannot be ignored or torn down with impunity.

   In enervation, organic functioning is impaired. This means that the organism is deficient in power to take from the blood such matters as are necessary for repair or for the performance of its normal functioning. The organism, once reduced to this state, will remain so, unless the necessary rest can be procured. It is not mere building material that is needed; it is not stimulation that is needed; for enervation is the sequel of overstimulation. Rest is the remedy; and, as rest is secured, electrical energy will be supplied by food, air, water, light, and heat. This subtile energy cannot be forced on the organism in the gross manner offered by the bull-in-the-china-shop methods of modern medical therapeutics; an enervated state cannot be cured other than by physiological rest--fasting--and physical rest; not exercise, work, stimulation, and starvation. Electric therapeutics amounts to but little more than chemical or mechanical irritation. Locally applied, it may do as much good as a mustard plaster-act as a counter-irritant.

   Giving iron to those who are anemic or dysemic, and lime to those who need lime, is on the same order. The rule is that very few are dysemic because their food is deficient in the elements needed. The cause of deficiency is lost selective and appropriative power, and the more of the inorganic elements offered the system by way of drugs, as remedies or food, the more the dysemia develops, until the unfortunate victim is forced from functional to organic derangement, and on to premature death. This is not necessarily a rapid development. Such patients are seeking in vain for cures for from ten to twenty-five years. If they start at from twenty-five to thirty, and require twenty-five years to wear out, trying palliatives and false cures, they certainly die early enough. Besides, efficiency has been wasted in physical and mental impairment caused by disease and so-called cures.

   If present scientific developments augur well, it will not be long before we shall know positively that electricity, or electrical energy, or more surely the electron, is the alpha and omega of all things; and, from a health standpoint, a knowledge of bow to conserve, utilize, and generate this energy will be the "summum bonum" of a successful therapeutics.

   The most we know today of how to supply electric energy is to have the enervated--the impotent-rest. In a state of rest this energy appears capable of accumulating; and we know from daily observation that unrest, activity, and overstimulation cause its dissipation.

   The farmer knows that rest restores energy and potency to land that has lost its fertility from use. But he does not know that ground granite or feldspar will restore its productiveness, and that in all probability the fertilizer "par excellence" contained in it is the static electricity that has entered into its formation and is liberated when the rock is made into bread.

   I have proved out on electricity as a remedy the same as I proved out on the regular materia medica.

   I once used the galvanic current in treating fibroid tumors, and believed that the electricity caused absorption. But I have learned, after years of experience, that the only really effective remedy is the correcting of bad habits which break down resistance, after which, physiological equilibrium is lost, and this allows cell growth to be perverted.

   Lost resistance means lack of energy--lack of life force; and, according to the few hints thrown out regarding the electric architecture of the atoms, when enervation is pronounced, there is probably a dissipation of electricity--electrons--and a consequent change in the structure of the atoms that build the cells. As a result, we see tumors and growths of different kinds, and hardening of tissue--arteriosclerosis--stone formation, etc. If this is a true explanation of the cause, the logical remedy would be to furnish the system with electricity; but to turn. the battery and flood the body with a great current of electricity would be about as appropriate or logical as to tie a rock around the neck of a thirsty man and throw him into a river to relieve his need of water.

   Nature never supplies wants in such a blustering way. The rock is built by feeding it with an impalpable supply. If this is true of rock-building, what must be the subtleness of tissue growth, and how slight the change required to convert normal tissue into abnormal-healthy flesh into cancerous!

   Instead of flooding the surface of the body with a current of electricity--which the use of a battery means--the therapeutist must know how to cause the body to secure its electricity from the air, light, and food.

   The average work done by physicians and surgeons in their application of remedies is what one would expect of a house painter put to work to paint a portrait. There is a lack of delicacy. It is true that there are many skillful and delicate operations performed; there are also skilled matadors and butchers who perform skilled operations. We should not hold the idea that expert skill in operating is sufficient excuse for operating. I say, with no fear of successful contradiction, that the majority of operations performed have no excuse for being done except that they are done skillfully. In treating patients with electricity, they must be placed in a state favorable to receiving the inflow as offered by nature. All that is necessary, usually, is to learn in what way this energy is being dissipated; then stop the waste. Indeed, this is the simple formula for supplying the human body with all its needs.

3. Chemical Agents

Caustics

   Caustics are chemical agents which produce disease through their power to destroy tissue.

   As followers of my medical philosophy will use no drugs, they will not be interested in drugs, either of high or low degree.

   The action of a caustic is that of causing necrosis or gangrene of the flesh that comes in contact with it. After the flesh is killed, the process of sloughing takes place. This process means that under the dead tissue the living is carrying on the work of separating the living tissue from the dead. The dead undergoes suppuration--disintegration--dissolves, and runs away as pus. Enough serum of the blood is carried to the borderland of the injury to neutralize and wash away the poison of putrefaction.

   The normal chemical state of the fluids of the body is alkaline, while that of decaying tissues is acid. To prevent the acid--the septic--fluid of decaying tissue from being absorbed or taken into the body, where it would set up septicemia--blood poisoning--the living tissue that is in proximity to the sloughing tissue is infiltrated--saturated--to overflowing with the alkaline serum of the blood. This accounts for the great amount of fluid and pus seen in all suppurating processes. Pus is laudable when alkaline. Pure vaccine--if there is any--is dried laudable pus, and is inert.

   If a wound is closed and the discharge has no outlet, the pus becomes ichoroid--septic--poisonous, sets up blood poisoning when forced absorption takes place, and death follows from blood poisoning. Septicemia is the professional term for pus poisoning.

   It is said that the skin resists the action of caustics by throwing out a secretion which furnishes chemical elements that join the caustic elements to make an insoluble compound. Nature is busy meeting and destroying the influence of enemies of health and life. In this work help is needed, and the physician should be able to read the language of nature and assist her in her efforts to keep a rational and sane balance. On account of misunderstandings or lack of interpretation of systemic needs, the physician is often enlisted with the body's foes, and is tearing down rather than building up or defending the body.

   Caustics are divided into coagulating and liquefying.

   Coagulating caustics are those known as metallic salts, the various acids, etc. Nitrate of silver, nitric acid, nitrate of mercury, zinc chloride, and the actual cautery (white-hot) are a few that may be listed with these chemicals. These are so powerful that they kill the skin at the instant of contact.

   Acids may be neutralized at once if plenty of water is handy; for water dissolves the acid and dilutes it into a harmless solution. The leading acids are: nitric, hydrochloric, sulphuric, and chromic.

   Nitric acid produces a yellow eschar; sulphuric causes a black eschar.

   Liquefying caustics are potash, soda, and ammonia.

   The scars following the sloughing caused by caustics are often severe, causing contractions and disfigurements.

Toxin (Poison)

   Any poisonous nitrogenous compound produced by animal or vegetable cells.

   "Any poisonous substance--protein in nature--produced by animal or vegetable cells."--Gould's Medical Dictionary.

   Toxins are those substances which, when taken into the body, or if developed within the body, are capable of so changing the fluids as to cause sickness or death.

   There are two orders of toxins resulting from the fermentation of protein and protein compounds. One is physiological and the other pathological. Snake venom is a type of the first, and sepsin---putrefaction--is a type of the other.

   Toxins that are developed physiologically, like the venom of the snake, are said to be for the purpose of defense. If we could know all about the subject, it is possible that the poison serves a physiological purpose in his snakeship's physical economy.

   Man's interpretation of venom, odors, teeth, beaks, horns, hoofs, and claws has been from the standpoint of an eternal warfare for existence. Those attributes of animal life--physiological functioning--have been studied quite largely from the standpoint of weapons of offense and defense. If studied from an optimistic point of view, all those supposed defensive and offensive organs, and their functions, will be found to be indispensable aids to metabolism--digestion and assimilation--and to be physiological necessities.

   When we keep steadily before the mind's eye that what we call bad is the reverse side of good, that unity is the key to universal order, and that the old and childish belief in two warring forces, namely, good and bad--God and Devil--is unworthy of present-day enlightenment, we are equipped mentally for analyzing chemical, physiological, and pathological processes rationally and certainly sanely.

   There is no question but that autogenous toxins are first of all physiological necessities, and when forced to play the role of an enemy in physical economy, it is because it serves nature's purpose better. Hence optimism sees only good in all processes.

   It may be asked: What of it, if the ending must be the same?

   But the ending is not to be the same. A father chastises his son, not because he is an enemy of the boy, but because he is vitally interested in the son's welfare.

   If God is good, then His chastening rod is not to defeat His purpose--to oppose cosmic necessity.

   Pain is for good, for education, for development. No good can come from assuaging pain without removing cause; and certainly no good can come from negating--denying its existence, It is true that the opiate stops pain, but the patient dies afterward because the cause of the pain was not removed. It is true that removing the fibroid tumor cures (?) the patient of the tumor, but it does not remove the cause, and in from one to ten years afterward the patient dies of a pneumonia, kidney disease, or cancer. That the doctor is too limited in his reasoning to trace the connection between the cured (?) disease--the removed tumor--and the disease that proves fatal years afterward, does not militate at all against the truth that the two are one, neither does it change the working out of the unchangeable law of cause and effect.

   To negate--to deny that there is pain--may banish nature's warning voice, but it does not alter the law of cause and effect; and if cause is not removed, the effect will certainly obey the laws of its nature; for law is God, and God is unchanging--not even the prayer of all mankind centered on one purpose will change one iota or tittle of law.

   Pain and discomfort are reactions from undesirable influences. Remove the cause of the irritation, and the irritation and the discomfort of it disappear.

   With an understanding of the inflexibleness of the laws of nature, in little as in great things, we should proceed with the subject of toxins with a mind cleared of some of the befogging beliefs of superstition and modern false reasoning.

   The toxins that form within the organism are called endogenous poisons. They are called auto-intoxicants, and they set up autotoxemia when not eliminated properly.

   These poisons alter the chemistry of the fluid medium--blood and other fluids--in which anatomical elements--tissues of the body--live and are nourished. It may be well to carry the idea that all the tissues of the body live in a sea of blood, as fish live in water, from which they gather nourishment.

   At this point it may be well to say that health depends entirely upon the proper chemistry of the fluids of the body; and the chemistry depends upon the elements in the food, the mind, and the toxins developed or taken in. How is it possible otherwise for the various tissues of the body to select the elements needed for their upkeep? This being true, the importance of the part played by food in health and disease should be obvious to all giving any thought to the subject.

   Toxins are divided into two groups; namely, exogenous, those formed in the alimentary canal from fermentation and decomposition following imperfect or faulty digestion. These toxins are attributed to germ secretions, but in all probability the ferment furnished by the germ is no more toxic than the ferments (ptyalin, pepsin, et al.) furnished by the digestive organs of the body.

   The action of the germs is to set up fermentation (for the ever-present germ is a ferment) in all the foods taken into the alimentary canal beyond the digestive limit of the body's physiological ferments.

   As a result of germ fermentation, toxins are formed, and their nature is in keeping with the chemic medium. If the fermentation is of vegetables or fruit, the toxins are irritating, stimulating, and enervating, but not so dangerous or destructive to organic life as putrefaction, which is a fermentation set up in nitrogenous matter--protein-bearing foods, but particularly the animal foods.

   Endogenous toxins are autogenerated. They are the waste products of metabolism.

   Metabolism means the power possessed by organized bodies of continually using up and renewing the tissues composing the body. In the process of building there must, of necessity, be a waste. This waste must be carried out of the body by the emunctory organs; but if, because of enervation, excretion does not take place, this waste product (toxin) is left in the body to poison it.

   Exogenous toxins are those taken in with food and those formed outside of the body, and endogenous, those generated within the body.

   When the body is enervated from any cause, or from many causes, excretion is always more or less inhibited, and as a result of accumulating the natural excretions (toxins) the fluids of the body are poisoned. The first symptom is a toxic stimulation--intoxication state; then comes a general soreness of the flesh, which is described as an aching from head to foot. A pronounced state causes one to feel very old, and unless relief comes in a few days, life loses all interest to the sufferer. An interested, hustling person will be transformed into a discouraged pessimist in a few days.

   Alimentary Poison.--Potash salts are necessary to the well-being of the body. It is said that dogs fed on meat freed from potash died in ten days--sooner than by starvation--showing that potash is necessary to prevent putrefaction.

   Scurvy (acidosis), or ship disease, is due to a deficient supply of potash, furnished by fruit and vegetables, which, when oxidized in the process of digestion, renders the fluids of the body potentially alkaline.

   To eat fresh or cured meat, eggs, fish, oatmeal, cookies, bread, rice, cake, puddings, coffee, tea, chocolate, etc., is to generate a slow acid poisoning.

   Fruit and raw vegetables--salads--will correct any type of disease caused by acid poisoning.

   Meat, potatoes, tomatoes, lettuce, cabbage, coffee, or tea, without fruit, will cause potash poisoning.

   Albumin is a rank poison when injected into the blood; but when converted into peptones by the digestive secretions, it becomes one of the most important foods.

   Where albumins (nitrogenous foods) are taken in excess, fermentation (putrefaction) takes place, and the absorption of this toxin causes enervation, high blood pressure, arterial diseases, heart diseases, catarrhal inflammations, and other ailments.

Beverages

   Water, alcohol, coffee, tea, chocolate, and cocoa are common sources of toxin poisoning.

   Water quite often contains minerals and organic matter in a state of putrefaction. Water with these elements in it is not so toxic as many professional men believe.

   The elements--earth, air, water, and fire--are self-purifying; hence putrefaction taking place in water of sufficient protein toxic potency to render it dangerous to drink will be so offensive to the nerves of special sense that the one about to imbibe will turn away from it in disgust. Too much mineral in drinking water is not desirable, because it is left in the system to harden the tissues and prematurely age those who drink it.

   Alcohol is toxic and inclined to bring on rheumatism of joints, gout, gastric and liver diseases, and in time neuritis and other nervous diseases. Why? Because all stimulants continued for any length of time bring on enervation. When the system is enervated, elimination is imperfect; then the toxins resulting from metabolism are retained in the system to poison. The deposits of these waste products in the muscles or the tissues of the body create such diseases as rheumatism.

   The danger from fatal poisoning--from taking fatal doses of alcohol--is not so great as that resulting from the slow toxic poisoning--chronic poisoning--or alcoholism.

   There is very little drunkenness today, compared with fifty to a hundred years ago, notwithstanding the fact that there is more alcohol consumed per capita. The reason for this is that alcohol is taken in the form of beer and wine, which are not so toxic as brandy and rum.

   The continuous stimulation from the daily use of alcoholics causes enervation and imperfect elimination.

   The use of alcoholics whips the appetite into taking an excess of animal proteid; and this is the reason why many users of alcohol have rheumatism and gout.

   Absinthe contains nine different essences. All are toxic. There is very little of this poison consumed now in this country. New Orleans has an absinthe house which ranks in age with her most ancient relics.

   Coffee is a slow, insidious poison that encourages retention of excretions by its slow but sure enervation.

   Coffee fools many into believing that it is an eliminant, because while they use it they have an action of their bowels daily. This is a false belief; for all the time coffee is used as a daily beverage there is a gradual enervation, with retention of the toxins or excretory products--waste from body--building. Coffee outranks alcohol in building endocarditis and sclerosis of blood vessels.

   Ordinary reasoning should help anyone to understand that a drug that stimulates as coffee does, must in time cause much trouble by way of enervation, faulty elimination, and autotoxemia.

   Tea stimulates, and in time enervates; following which comes retention of toxins in the system. Tea has a special toxic and sedative influence on the nervous system, and when used for a long time it causes neuralgia of an intractable nature.

   Coffee and tea cause deposits in the grooves and openings in the bones through which nerves pass, causing in time neuritis or neuralgia that will not down until the habit of taking these table beverages is given up. These are the cases that surgeons undertake to cure by nerve-cutting or nerve-stretching.

   Chocolate builds catarrh, and should not be used as a daily table beverage.

   Cocoa is a stimulant and, like all stimulants, develops a habit. It brings on enervation and the usual consequences.