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5. Nervous Reactions

   As had been stated before, all acts of the living body are reactions. Every movement of our bodies, either voluntary or involuntary, is a reaction--the result of shock or stimulation--and is aroused by an external cause. Voluntary movements are directed from the mind--the mind wills the movement. Voluntary movements may become so automatic that it is difficult to distinguish them from involuntary movements. For example, the players on musical instruments seem to perform without thought. They read music, and their fingers find the notes on the instruments without hesitation and without a mistake--and that, too, so rapidly that it does not appear to be possible that the acts can be the results of mental deliberations.

   The same may be said of reading. The person of educated mind will take up a book in which its author sets forth new and novel ideas regarding an old subject, or perhaps presents new ideas, or ideas contrary to those of convention; and almost instantly, without apparent time for analytical thought, the author's premise is interpreted and compared with the fundamentals of knowledge, and the book and its author are placed where they belong. False or true, the reasons for either are forthcoming and final.

   The mind becomes so familiar with the foundation of knowledge that it detects an error on sight; yet it does reason, but with lightning-like rapidity, or, what is more true, with the rapidity of thought.

   Every act (and thought is an act) is a reaction from an external stimulation. The effects of stimulation are of two kinds. In some the full reaction may take place at the point of stimulation; others, more complex, cause multiple reflex actions. The impulses are sent to the center from the surface terminals by the centripetal (afferent) nerves, and the irritations are reflexly sent from the center over the centrifugal, or efferent, nerves.

   The afferent nerves are the nerves of general sensation; also of special and visceral sensibility. impulses of an irritating character imparted to those nerves result in changes of a psychic, sensory, motor, vasomotor, secretory, or trophic character.

   Psychic changes may be produced by fear, anger, happiness, etc. Fear may be caused by a telegram conveying bad news; anger, by anything capable of producing anger.

   Sensory changes may take place. For example, if ice cream is eaten too rapidly and the stomach is chilled too suddenly, intense pain or severe frontal headache may result, which will pass off as soon as the nerves of the stomach are relieved from the irritation of cold. Headaches are often the result of indigestion, constipation, etc.

   Motor changes take place when toxic or other stimulation has become habitual, until tabes dorsalis or other forms of degeneration manifest themselves.

   Vasomotor changes occur when alcoholics, tobacco, coffee, or other chemical toxins are used over a long period of time; or when constipation of long standing has caused systemic infection by forcing absorption of the toxins of putrefaction. Sclerosis, or hardening of the arteries, is a vasomotor change.

   Secretory changes are produced by many forms of irritation. Pronounced pain, anger, or fear inhibits secretion, stops digestion, and causes poisoning by modifying the fluids of the body. Pleasant thoughts, renewed hope, or success revive secretions and excretions, and transform the invalid into full health.

   Trophic or nutritional changes are caused by any and all influences that irritate, depress, or pervert the nervous system. Any influence that puts the mind at rest will improve digestion, establish secretions and excretions, and transform the invalid into health. Those who have cultivated a fear or worry habit must be cured of the habit, after which they may continue in health.

   An irritation may spend its force locally, as an escharotic (caustic) may cause an ulcer without awakening reflexes. The sun may burn the skin brown without causing a reflex irritation.

   A poised mind may be abused--subjected to abuse that is looked upon as insulting--without having its equilibrium disturbed.

   A local irritant may cause a sensation at the nerve center, which stimulates a motor impulse, and the part injured will instantly be removed from the point of irritation.

   An irritation may cause a multiple of reflexes. A fright may cause vomiting and purging, a chill, headache, heart palpitation, and other vasomotor changes, as well as perspiration. An injury may cause many--or, if severe, only a few--reflexes.

   A simple reflex is produced where the impulse from the point of irritation passes to the nerve center and back, or passes to a multiple of points.

   Stimulants which act as builders of disease must be continual. For instance, tobacco, when first used, causes great prostration and vomiting. The nicotine is absorbed in the mouth; it enters the circulation and is distributed to an parts of the body. If the boy or man, at his first experience, were no larger than a cat or a kitten, the amount of nicotine required to prostrate him temporarily would be sufficient to kill him. His size is what saves him. The fact that the boy does not die is no proof that nicotine is not a rank poison.

   The continuous use of nicotine establishes a toleration, but at the cost of a slow and continuous loss of nerve energy.

   Those of low vitality, brought on from chronic tobacco poisoning, break down and die of some form of acute disease. No one ever suspects the truth that, if they had been possessed of the energy they have wasted on stimulants, they could have survived the disease.

   This truth is not known, and will probably be disputed by the world of tobacco-users. But it is simply a matter of mathematical calculation. Tobacco is a poison. It uses up nerve energy, It requires nerve energy to resist shock, and, if a given shock is too great for the amount of energy possessed by the injured man, he will die. If he had been possessed of the amount thrown away on stimulants, he would have had enough to withstand the shock.

   This is true of any stimulating habit. The inebriate, or the individual with used-up nerve energy from other stimulants, will go down under the influence of a disease that otherwise would not cause death.

   The nicotine poison affects the mind by dulling ambition; it affects the sensory centers, and causes more or less loss of taste, smell, sight, and hearing; the vasomotor system is deranged--the heart is overworked, and the arteries are hardened; the trophic or nutritional system is deranged, and the subject loses weight--or, on the other hand, obesity may develop.

   So long as man has the balance to the good, he can boast that his habits are not injurious to him. But what about sickness and the death-rate between thirty and sixty-five years of age? Why do more than twice as many men die between thirty-five and forty-five as between twenty-five and thirty-five, and nearly three times as many as die between forty-five and fifty-five? Because the ten years from thirty-five to forty-five is where man comes to the parting of the ways of life. He must let up on his habits or die.

   Why should men in the prime of life be prostrated and die of acute disease? Lost resistance is the answer. What causes lost resistance? Persistent, excessive stimulation.

   Acute disease cannot down a normal man.

   When prostration comes, if a little of the wasted energy could be restored, it would make recovery possible.

   To restore lost power reestablishes immunization.

   When threescore and ten comes, if habits have been such as to conserve energy, life will be prolonged, and the sane and rational faculties will make the enjoying of life possible.

   People who are healthy are normal, and normal people have the faculty of enjoying, be they twenty or a hundred and twenty years of age. Disease is what ruins life; for it means discomfort in mind and body. To enjoy, one must hold the right perspective of life; and this is impossible for those who are drunk--toxin--poisoned.

   Dotage and driveling belong to disease--not to old age. Nature never makes a clown of old age. Man builds his own grotesqueness.

   The lay reader must keep in mind that shocks of every kind are stimulating, and that stimulation to the point of awareness is overstimulation; and, when this is persisted in, organic change (degeneration) sets in; then the output of sensation is abnormal, and means mental and physical disease.

   This is why men in the prime of life become prostrated with acute diseases, and die, or develop such chronic diseases as tabes dorsalis, diabetes, Bright's disease, arteriosclerosis, heart disease, epilepsy, et al.

   There is but one reason for disease, either of an acute or of a chronic character; namely, lost resistance--enervation--from habitual overstimulation.

   Tobacco, alcohol, coffee, tea, overstimulation from food, wrong food mixtures, sensuality, lasciviousness, overworked emotions, misanthropy, a life of selfishness and dishonesty--any one of these stimulants, used continually, lowers nerve resistance, causing man to become vulnerable to unusual shocks, and at last to the usual shocks of his environment.

   The difference between health and disease--between a normal state of resistance and enervation--is that health, or normal resistance, reacts and readjusts from unusual stimulation or shock, and is so adjusted to local environment that its stimulating effects are not noticed--they are subconscious, as they should be if ideal health is desired; while disease is that state of health marked by lost resistance, with little power to react.

   A man is not old until the stimulating effects of his environment are too shocking for him--not until he loses his reacting and readjusting power.

   Reaction is the body's protector; pain is an educator, a protector. When we listen to the voice of pain--the call of reason--and remove its cause, we conserve our powers and lengthen our lives.

   If fear of disease and death is the stimulant that is using up resisting power, then the cause of fear must be removed. If the cause is the bad habit of consulting doctors who frighten--who cause fear--but who do not impart an antidotal knowledge, then such doctors should be avoided.

   People should be shown the danger they are in because of the life they are leading, and then have a way pointed out to them that will lead to health. But brutally to tell the sick what their disease is, and then to add that recovery is doubtful or impossible, is quite enough to convert a curable disease into an incurable one.

   When all the people shall know that the making and the curing of disease are in their own hands, then schools for teaching health will be more popular than drugs, vaccination, and surgical vandalism.

   It is worse than childish to declare that teaching people to live carefully, eat carefully, and be prudent about the care of the body is disease-building. As well declare that education should be condemned, because, when full and well rounded, it too will cure the ignorance that leads to disease.

   Nothing bad can come from teaching children that they must not handle guns, or that, if they do, they must be careful lest they kill themselves; that, for the same reason, they must avoid poisons; that food is body-building, and needed to keep well and happy, but that, if too much is eaten, or wrong combinations are made, disease, and even death, may result. Surely nothing wrong can come from telling young people that all their joys and pleasures may be turned into disease and death, if indulged in until resistance is broken.

   Forewarned is forearmed. Disease and premature death come from ignorance, or possibly from the fact that habit is established before knowledge of its danger is acquired. Degeneration is established before cause is removed.

   Knowledge will not save all; but it stands a better chance to save if it is taught before habits are formed.

   Fear is an offspring of ignorance. Relief from fear is wonderfully curative and health-conserving. If fear is the sole cause of a given disease, then a full cure will follow when fear is removed. But if fear is simply a complicating cause--if fear, and the derangement that caused the patient to seek a physician in the first place, have been allowed to run on until enervation is so profound that one or more organs have lost their power to function physiologically--then to remove fear does check the speed of the patient's decline, and cause a feeling of mental and physical betterment which is often interpreted as a cure. Unfortunately, however, the original causes--namely, stimulating habits, and their effects (enervation), plus perverted organic functioning--still exist, and that, too, without the warning voice of apprehension and discomfort to guide the victim away from danger.

   Suppose a trophic (nutritional) change has taken place to such a degree that sugar or albumin appears in the urine--what is to be done? Remove fear? Yes, fear, and every other cause of overworked reactions, must be removed, and then the slow march back to a restored resistance and nutrition will be made.

   What can treatment directed to the organ do? What can removing organs do? Nothing. They are only servants of the master--nutrition--and, like all good servants, do whatever menial service is placed upon them. The master of the show is nutrition, and he does good work so long as he is supplied with sufficient food and nerve energy.

   Pain and discomfort should be mentally suppressed and ignored, but not until their significance is understood and a well-directed plan for removing their cause is inaugurated.

   To stop pain with drugs, or to ignore it, is not removing cause. Those who are wise will remove the cause; then palliatives will not be required.

   Nervous reactions are necessary; they are constructive; it is only when excessive that they become destructive.

   Exercise, up to a given point, is necessary for developing the greatest nutritive efficiency.

   Exercise to the point of abuse overstimulates and becomes destructive. The first effects of stimulation are that the heart and blood vessels respond to extra work; the glands take on increased functioning; the mind becomes more active; the entire body responds; secretions and excretions take on renewed activity, and nutrition approaches the ideal.

   This type of stimulation--exercise--is not an unmixed good. When pushed to excess, we see the common result of any form of overstimulation--namely, enervation. The athlete barters a long life for a short and active one.

   The sensualist deliberately yields a long, sane, comfortable, and pleasurable life for a bacchanilian feast and the hell of repentance.

   Reactions must not be pushed to the point of excess. If they are, nutrition is impaired; and that means that the whole organism is impaired, leaving the brunt of all future shocks to fall upon the weakest organ of the body. If that organ happens to be the lungs, tuberculosis, bronchitis, asthma, or pleurisy will be the headliner, or principal feature, of the pathological play on which the curtain of life will fall. If the vulnerable part of the body happens to be the bursal membranes, deforming arthritis (rheumatism) will take the front of the stage of life. If the kidneys, heart, liver, or other organs happen to be the vulnerable points, the type of disease will be one peculiar to these organs.

   This should furnish a key to how it is possible for many unlike diseases to spring from the same cause. Is this fact so very wonderful, when we remember that all the different organs of the body--all the different tissues of the body--with their many varied functions, are all built from the same food? And the mode of treatment is so simple that it should be obvious to even a child mind; namely: if overstimulation--if shocking by any form of stimulant--has worn out the reactive powers of the system, and enervation is established, a cure must consist of conserving energy by avoiding shocks of all kinds. Rest--physical, mental, and physiological--is necessary. In established diseases, all foods must be given up for a time; certainly exercise of all kinds; and the mind must be freed from worry. To inaugurate such a treatment requires educated skill. Even if a child mind knows that the treatment must be rest, great skill is required in knowing what to eat, when and when not to eat.

   Sensual pleasures of all kinds become enervating when indulged in to satiety. When they are, then it is that "life's apples turn to dust;" then it is that we see the "dregs" in the "wine of love," and know we have "bartered life's bread for a crust, and a draft that is as bitter as brine."

   The discomfort of excess--overworked reaction--may be pushed so far that the warning voice of frequent crises is lost; after which the organism may be abused to the point of a fatal collapse without warning.

   For example, the victim of apoplexy has the discomfort of overworked reactions early--years before the collapse. He suffers from overworked heart, rapid pulse, headache, vertigo, fullness of the head, roaring in the ears. More or less of these symptoms he will have from ten to twenty years before the final collapse. Slowly but surely a toleration for these discomforts is built. Apprehension is dulled; the "still, small voice" of self-protection is hushed; and all unexpectedly and without warning the collapse comes, and the victim is not permitted to say goodbye and farewell to his best friends. This is the price we pay for ignoring warning.

   Food is a stimulant, and necessary to the building of body and mind. The stimulating effects of food are necessary to secure digestion and assimilation. Nutrition depends upon the reactions stimulated by food, as well as upon the building material furnished by the food. This being true, it must be obvious to a thoughtful mind that too much food, or food too highly stimulating, must frustrate the object of food by causing too much reaction, ending in enervation. Overstimulation from excessive eating is the commonest cause of disease.

   Stimulation is necessary; for reaction must be continual. Without reaction there can be no heart action; breathing must stop; metabolism ends; in fact, life goes out.

   Stimulation, like every other need of life, is good up to a given point; then it becomes bad. Again we are reminded that every good is linked to bad, which is educational and a test of worthiness to survive.

   Indispensable stimulants are those which carry on their work subconsciously. All that is necessary to carry on vital action can be supplied without creating enough reaction to receive conscious attention. It is when reaction arouses consciousness that the stimulation is excessive.

   The intensity of reactions increases, as does the excitability of the centripetal nerves-the nerves carrying impressions from the surface to the centers. For example: The nerves in the skin over a boil, an inflamed joint, or a blistered surface create central reactions, noticed in general nervousness.

   The reaction is greater when the part irritated is naturally sensitive; for example, the eye, the ear, or the tongue.

   Heat increases the excitability, while cold diminishes it.

   A body made too warm by overheated houses, overclothing, too heavy underwear, is made too sensitive. This is a form of overstimulation that leads to enervation; following which, catarrhs; of any and all mucous membranes develop. When toxin poisoning is added, sensitiveness is diminished. This is a conservative measure; but, like all other good things, it becomes destructive when pushed too far.

   An organ rendered less sensitive from overstimulation. is also rendered less efficient in carrying on its regular functioning; hence, when a cure is desired, the cause of its overstimulation must be removed, and, until time is given for a normal reaction, the organ must not be forced into a functioning which it is not able to perform. A season of rest is nature's remedy for all exhaustions following overstimulation. In this matter nearly all systems of healing are based on theories of cure that work in just the opposite way. When the organs where reflex action ends are badly altered, very grave symptoms are developed by stimulation of the peripheral or afferent nerves.

   Chronic irritation, inflammation, and the accompanying organic enlargements from overwork, or from rheumatism, cause the organs to be sensitive to reflex stimulation.

   In the case of myocarditis, or rheumatism of the heart, an impression--a shock-that would not be noticed by a normal heart will cause death. Heart stimulants are dangerous remedies.

   On the other hand, when exercise has been neglected, the various organs of the body are weakened from lack of stimulation. Under such conditions the heart becomes so enervated that unusual exercise, such as running to catch a car, may end in collapse and death, the heart being unable to do the extra work forced upon it. Often such heart weakness has been aggravated by the use of alcoholics, tobacco, coffee, tea, and sugar. The excessive use of sugar tends to weaken muscular energy, because of its power to overstimulate.

   When stimulation has been excessive-such as overindulgence of the grand passion--there may be such an alteration of the nerves of transmission--the centripetal (afferent), nerves--that sensation is retarded, or perception and reaction end in impotency. On the other hand, indulgence may be so great, from the excitability of the transmitting nerves, that the reflex centrifugal (efferent) nerves are so altered in their functioning that trembling and irregular movements, up to lost coordination, are established.

   Syphilis is credited with building tabes dorsalis and paralysis; but overstimulation from the drugs used in its cure, and excessive venery, are more likely to be the cause. Excessive venery lays the foundation; then toxins from septic infection and drugs may prove to be the exciting cause.

Mental or Physical Reactions

   In the foregoing it has been my endeavor to explain, as well as I can, physical reflexes, their causes and variations; also to give a hint regarding the diseases brought on from overwork and underwork.

   Nervous reactions, when expressed in the highest order, are mental or physical. All ideas, as well as all movements, have an external origin.

   The spiritualistic school will not agree that our psychical nature is built from sense-impression, and that, for us to learn or know anything, we must have sensation. Our special senses are educated by external impressions. Without external stimulation, or without the sense-perception to recognize external impressions, we remain in ignorance--a state of ignorance known as idiocy.

   Mind-potentiality evolves as the ages roll on. We do not inherit mind or innate ideas; we do inherit potentiality--an aptitude to understand. Probably the most potent factor in this inheritance is power of attention. With mental alertness a child will gather knowledge so rapidly that to dull pupils it will appear as though it must have inherited its knowledge.

   The study habit, when once formed, is a great help to the dull mind.

   Mind can never come into its own until man ceases to build physical disease. The mind of a sick man is handicapped. Habits that build disease of the body affect the mind also.

   It is common knowledge that the character and type of intelligence and capacity for work are under the influence of various diseases. For instance: A deranged liver causes pessimism. Liver and stomach derangements cause sadness and the so-called neurasthenia. Genito-urinary affections produce irritability, jealousy, and a desire for revenge. Hypochondria and self-destruction are among the potential effects of venereal derangements. Granular inflammation and stricture of the urethra create irritability.

   Delirium in fevers and drunkenness is a well-known phenomenon.

   Psychical impressions are reflected on the body. Fear envy, and jealousy provoke excessive kidney, bowel, and heart action. Digestion is very seriously affected by worry. fear, or an unsatisfied state of the mind.

Nervous Reactions in the Normal State

   In the normal state reactions vary; the conditions also differ.

   Species.--The higher the species, the more powerful the reactions. Shocks, stimulations, or irritations which cause little or no response in animals, produce suffering and sometimes fainting in man. Shock seldom occurs in animals; when it does, it is always due to violent causes. This being true, why should vivisection throw any light on the management of man's diseases?

   Influence of Sex in Bringing about Shock in the Human Species.--Women are far more easily affected than men.

   Women are more easily affected through their emotions than men. This condition, however, is of artificial development; for the spermatozoon is more lively than the ovum, the male fetus is more active than the female, and boys are more active than girls.

   Possibly the reason why women are more responsive through the emotions than men is because they have a different training. Women are protected, pampered, and kept back, and perhaps under. Men have done the world's work and the world's fighting, and that would educate them into a control over the emotions. Everything else being equal, it would be logical to presume that women should be less sensitive and emotional. They need control; for they take care of the children.

   It is generally taught that the nervous system of children is feminine; that reactions are quick, mobile, and excessive; and that, as they grow older, the male becomes less reactive, until advanced age finds the old man physically and psychically without reactive ability. This lost sensitiveness, however, can be accounted for from habits of life. Men use more stimulants than women, and indulge themselves more in every way; hence their reactions are suppressed or inhibited by overstimulation. The fact that stimulants impress the child greatly, while they scarcely affect the old man, is proof that the matter of little or much reaction is wholly a matter of education. Mind, with its auto-suggestion and imagination, builds sensitiveness.

   The difference in the reactive power of races is a matter of climate, food, and education. The animal is dull compared with man, and the difference is a matter of mind. Animals differ in their reactive power, and the difference is a matter of intelligence.

   In man, education should teach poise; for it certainly teaches imagination and sensitiveness, and poise is necessary for self-control.

   If irritability is not a matter of imagination, after leaving the animal state, why are children of young parents more apt to react--more lively and cheerful--than children of older people? Experience teaches poise; hence reaction is largely a matter of education without experience, until sensation is dulled from satiety.

   Children of very old parents lack youthfulness; they appear to continue the aging of the parents. This indicates that physical energy is transmissible, but that education and physical training leave a legacy of impotency and senility.

6. Nutrition

   Nutrition is that which takes place in the body of a live, healthy animal between the time when food is taken into its body and the time when the ash resulting from the combustion of the food is excreted.

   Life is the phenomenon we call nutrition, or, vice versa.

   We see an automobile or a train moving with all the grace and celerity of an ideally constructed machine, and we say that its mechanism is perfect; hence its nutrition is perfect. If we see it halting, coughing, puffing, and blowing, in an effort to move, we know that something has gone wrong with its nutrition, or its mechanism. When we see the machine at rest, we know that the life of the engine is killed, The phenomenon which in animals and plants we call nutrition, and motion in the case of machinery, is life.

   The power behind all activity--the power that makes activity possible--is the sun.

   A machine is a synthetical arrangement of properly constructed and adjusted parts. When all parts are ready, it will not move until the sun's rays are thrown upon it by way of oil, coal, or electricity, all of which represent static energy, or stored-up sunshine.

   Those who hold the dualistic idea persist in teaching that there is a mysterious force behind and on the outside of nature that causes the phenomenon we call life. They will not admit that it is the sun. Such minds are not satisfied with a simple explanation; they must have an unexplainable, mysterious, or, as Spencer declared, an unknowable cause.

   It is wonderfully consoling to have faith in something--to have something that faith can lay hold of. Such a something I have. But, while I myself can get rest and comfort out of it, I realize that the majority of people cannot. I do not ask anyone to give up his beliefs for mine; but certainly no one can be injured by allowing me to try to explain the cause of life that gives me satisfaction.

   Those who never have taken a peep into the world that is above, below, and beyond their unaided sense-perceptions must feel their limitations and know that there is an Infinite existence which has not been revealed to them. They are right; but they have no right to declare that it has not been revealed to others.

   The study of bones, flesh, and organs gives us an acquaintance with the animal, its mechanism and personality; but how its bones, flesh, and organs are constructed is quite another study; indeed, it is a world all to itself--a world hidden from common observation. Because of its infinitesimalness, this world is beyond the horizon of unaided sense-perception. On the other hand, the telescope and spectroscope reveal the infinitely large and distant.

   To explore the regions where nutrition is going on, one must take one of the torch-lights of The Infinite--the microscope--and there will be revealed the mysterious--the handiwork of the Creator!

   In the workshop of The Infinite there is a department where the rudimentary units out of which everything is made are evolved. They have but recently been discovered, and they are called electrons. For the sake of brevity, and to have a definite and inexhaustible source whence to draw a supply of electrons, we will say that the sun's rays are made up of electrons. So necessary a substance as the base out of which everything is made, should be everywhere: and certainly sunlight is everywhere.

   In another part of The Infinite's workshop there is a place where cells are made. Cells are the units out of which living matter is made. The human body is made out of cells, the same as houses are made out of brick.

   As stated before, we cannot observe The Infinite work unless we are aided by The Infinite's torchlight--the microscope. With this instrument we discover that the tissues of the body are made up of cells. To understand a cell, it will be well to examine some of the lowest forms of life.

   The ameba is a colorless, single-celled, jelly-like, protoplasmic organism found in sea and fresh water. It is constantly undergoing changes of form, and nourishing itself from surrounding objects.

   The white corpuscles of the blood perform ameboid movements--i.e., changes of form, consisting of protrusions and withdrawals of substance. (Gould's "Medical Dictionary.")

   The ameba is found in mud and decaying vegetation at the bottom of pools of water. On examining a drop of this slime with a microscope that magnifies two or three hundred times, life is observed. A great variety of living forms are seen.

   The ameba is the lowest type of cell-life. The structure of a cell is made up of a nucleus (a small nut) and a body which is composed of a substance known as protoplasm. In biology a cell is known as a bit of protoplasm containing a nucleus.

   All tissues--nerve tissue, muscle tissue, bone tissue, and tissue of cartilage--are made up of cells. These vary in size, notwithstanding they are all microscopic. The microscope reveals the fact that there are characteristic forms of cells for each tissue; and, so far as known, all have a cell body and a nucleus.

   The microscopic appearance of protoplasm is a colorless, semi-fluid substance, in which are seen solid particles, or granules. The nucleus is found near the center of the cell, and is composed of protoplasm denser than that of the cell body. The cell body may be likened to a bit of the white of an egg; but it should not be forgotten that the white of the egg is not living substance. The fertilized egg needs the sun's rays to add the missing link--to breathe into it the breath of life. The unfertilized egg needs a nucleus that is potentized with life. All the rest of the egg is body food, if you please.

   An egg is not complete without the nucleus; and then, without the sun's rays, it can never take on life. This is true of the cells of a living body; for the sun's rays must be utilized to the extent of furnishing a pent-up heat of about one hundred degrees Fahrenheit, or these cells cannot renew themselves.

   Nutrition is the principal attribute of matter. The phenomenon known as nutrition is life; and this life cannot continue to manifest without the properties imparted by the sun--electrons and heat. The sun, then, is the source of all life.

   Assimilation means that the cell seizes upon the nutritive materials placed at its disposal, and groups them together into an organic synthesis--a molecule--that is very unstable. In order to do this, heat, or the sun's rays, or the electrons, must be furnished in sufficient quantity. Every cell of the body is an electric cell; all are connected into a whole instrument, or battery, represented by the cerebro-spinal system; and the refined output is mind.

   The feeding and the waste of this wonderfully complex electrical apparatus take place in the cells, which are microscopic bodies, and which have the power to gather the electrons from the sun, and select other elements from the food, with which to build a living organism.

   Each cell is made up of molecules. A molecule is the smallest quantity into which the mass of any substance can be divided and retain its characteristic properties.

   Disassimilation means that the molecules of the cells disintegrate and are reduced to simpler and more stable elements; and at the same time there is a loss of energy.

   The disintegration of molecules is attended by the loss of forceh-heat or energy. This means the wearing-out of the cell; and the phenomenon is a manifestation of life, the same as the building-up. One is appropriating nourishment, the other is discarding worn-out material; and all the phenomenon is metabolism--nutrition or life.

   It is well to note, in this connection, that life is the same, from the ameba found in the slime at the bottom of a pool of waste water, to the cell in the gray matter of a Websterian brain; from the lowest vegetable cell found at the mouth of the sewer, to the highest type of the most exquisite flower. All cell life is generically the same, differing or dividing into species.

   The laws of nutrition are the same. The plant cell liberates force as does the animal cell, and both produce carbonic acid. The electron or carbon from the sun's rays, and the oxygen from the earth's atmosphere, meet in the cell and are united into carbonic acid, This phenomenon is not carried on in plant life to the extent that it is in animal life. The plant does not spend so much energy; assimilation predominates in plant life. The cells of the plant feed upon carbonic acid and water, which, under the influence of the sun's rays, unite into hydrate of carbon, furnishing vital force to animals. It was Herschel who first declared that the sun's rays are the source of all life.

   In the study of cell life, four chief phenomena are observed; namely, a physical--that of taking in nourishment--absorbing--endosmosis; a chemical, consisting of organizing the material absorbed; disorganization; and, lastly, the throwing-out of the waste, which is called exosmosis.

   Necessary to Cell-Building.--That these processes may be carried on properly, the nutritive material must be in a state of solution. Life is possible to the cell only when its nourishment is liquid. The cells of the human body are in a liquid medium-namely, blood, lymph, and plasma--from which they draw their nourishment.

   The phenomena of cell life have been hastily gone over, and now it will be necessary to study the phenomena of cell-colonization.

Functions of Nutrition

   The animal body is made up of organs. Each organ, may be regarded as a colony having individual as well as systemic attributes.

   In the nutrition of an organized being there are seven successive functions, each one important. For ideal health to be maintained, they must all be carried on well.

   1. Preparation of Food for Absorption.--Mastication and swallowing of food; transformation of food into a liquid state--the starch being transformed into sugar, the albumins into peptones, the fats emulsified, and all rendered liquid.

   2. Absorption.--The liquefied food passes through the intestinal walls. This is what physically takes place, but in some way there is imparted to this absorbed nourishment a property that resists change--it is given resistance.

   3. Dehydration.--The surplus fluid, a part of which is left behind when passing through the mucous membrane, would, if not left behind, cause elimination as fast as absorbed. Dehydration is finished in the lymphatic glands and liver. The liver has deposited in it the fatty acids, the peptones, and the sugar.

   The glucose is dehydrated and becomes glycogen, which accumulates in the muscles and liver.

   4. Cell-Nutrition, which has been explained before, takes place when the intestinal plasma--digested pabulum--reaches the cells. The cells appropriate the matter they want, and eject the waste, which passes into the blood and is eliminated.

   In all cases of constipation that are not due to mechanical obstruction, the cause may be traced back to faulty cell-functioning. The endosmosis (absorption) and the exosmosis (organization, disorganization, and elimination) fail to be carried on ideally. One reason why this work is not carried on properly is because there are not enough enzymes generated in the system to render the food material dializable. The nutritive material that bathes the cells must be capable of passing through the cell walls; and, once in the cell, cell enzymes must prepare it for organization and elimination. Where there is more food material furnished than the secreted enzymes can take care of, or the amount secreted is below normal, cell-exosmosis fails to take place, and, as a consequence, elimination into the blood is retarded. Once in the blood, there may. again be a retardation, because the excretory material is not dialized enough to be excreted by the organs of elimination. Hence there follows a state of obstinate constipation which nothing can overcome except a treatment that reaches cell-inactivity; and, inasmuch as the real cause is a lack of enzymes, the amount of food taken into the system must be reduced to within the digestive capacity. I do not mean the digestive capacity of the stomach and bowels; for it is self-evident that there is more than enough of this digestion, or the cells and blood would not be taxed beyond their capacity.

   The remedies for this constipation are fasting, resting, and water-drinking. After elimination has cleared cell- and blood-obstruction, a properly selected diet, taken in sufficiently moderate quantities not to force a recurrence of the obstruction, will bring about a permanent cure.

   Where interference with elimination is of a grosser character than that which takes place in the cells--namely, in the liver or kidneys--we see stone-formation. When the excretions of these organs are rendered dializable--rendered liquefiable--the integrated stones will disintegrate and pass out of the body. In order that waste products may leave the system readily, they must be dializable; which means that waste matter must be liquefied fit for exosmosis. In the matter of gallstone and stone in the kidney, these stones are on the outside of the body, because such cul-de-sacs as the gall bladder are connected with the outside by the bowels, into which the bile and disintegrated stone can pass. Stone does not need to liquefy, for it has no membrane to pass through.

   5. Disassimilation.--The liver changes nitrogenous products into urea--a crystallizable body which readily leaves the organism, favoring renal elimination.

   6. Elimination is by the lungs, kidneys, skin, and bowels. By examining the excreta, it has been found that 250 grams of carbon and eighteen grams of nitrogen are voided by an adult each twenty-four hours.

   To eliminate eighteen grams of nitrogen, it is necessary to consume 500 grams of meat. To throw off 250 grams of carbon, two kilograms of meat would be required.

   In a mixed diet of five parts of carbohydrates to one part of albuminous matter a perfect blend is had. Health depends upon a properly mixed diet.

   7. To have all the foregoing stages of nutrition carried out properly, the mental state must be that of optimism; for the opposite mental state depresses, and inhibits more or less every process.

   Fasting.--To keep food away from a man slowly starves him to death. Disassimilation continues, and it is supposed that death comes after forty per cent of the weight is lost. This may be true of those who are very thin, but it is not true of those who are overweight.

   The loss of the various tissues is not equal. Fat diminishes ninety-five per cent. The organs lose most in the following order: spleen, liver, muscles, kidneys. The heart, nerves, and brain are most resistant. It has been said that the brain shows no loss from starvation.

   Fat goes first; then the muscle or nitrogenous substance. When the muscle begins to go, there is an increase in the urea; albumin appears in the urine; the temperature falls, and the symptoms become serious.

   Drinking water enables the one starving to live longer. Fear will cause a fatal termination much earlier than fasting and going without water; for fear inhibits elimination, if it does not also generate a poisonous toxin.

   A dog, deprived of food and water, died in twenty days; another, deprived of food but given water, was still living at thirty days. Much depends upon the weight at the beginning of the fast, and the treatment during the time. If warmth is supplied, life will be prolonged.

   People who take a fast to control disease must be kept warm. Chilling during a fast is very dangerous.

   Unless much water is used during a fast, toxin poisoning will take place; and that, with chilling, is liable to kill the one fasting in ten days. When fear is added, death will come in from three to seven days.

   The first common cause of disordered digestion is improper chewing. Next comes overeating, or eating of improper combinations.

   When more food is taken than can be prepared for absorption, the food is caused to ferment because of the ever-present germ of fermentation. The result is fermentation, catarrh, or inflammation of the mucous membrane; gastritis, dilation of the stomach, diarrhea of the lienteric type; then poverty of flesh, nervousness, etc.

   In those cases where too much sugar and starch are consumed (in children), gastritis, pharyngitis, tonsillitis, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, constipation, polyuria, and nervousness are common; in adults, rheumatism, glycosuria, diabetes, flatulency, headache, eczema, heart palpitation, constipation, colitis, piles, and prolapsus of the rectum.

   It is hard to define exactly, or clearly to draw the line between cause and effect, when a mixed diet is being used; but it is safe to say that there will be no putrid or septic poisoning from food decomposition unless animal alburninoid is mixed in the dietary.

   When animal foods are taken to excess, a severe type of whatever disease is developed may be looked for. In children, a tonsilitis will be diphtheria or scarlet fever. Fevers will take on a typhoid or septic character. Wounds and puerperal derangements will take on septicemia.

   The glands of the body--the lymphatic, liver, and ductless glands--are probably quarantine stations for the purpose of arresting and detaining septic toxins. These glands probably secrete enzymes which neutralize the septic toxins. The liver undertakes to care for the surplus protein and fit it for cell nutrition; it stores the sugar in the form of glycogen.

   If the liver is out of condition, from overwork, it allows the sugar to escape. Then the kidneys take up the task of eliminating it. This is a glycosuria, caused by hepatic insufficiency. It is not diabetes proper. Real diabetes is a nervous derangement, and must be cured by restoring nerve energy.

   The different acts of nutrition in man are now to be reviewed, with their perversions.

Liquefying Food

   The first process in digestion is the liquefying of food. The food is ground by the teeth, and then mixed with the digestive secretions. When the individual is normal, and eats normally of a properly balanced dietary, and when everything else is normal--i.e., the mind is at rest, and the care of the body (such as bathing, rubbing, clothing, etc.) is normal, and properly adjusted to external influences--it can be said that ideal health is enjoyed. But, inasmuch as an ideal adjustment of man to his environment is obviously impossible, ideal health is a utopian dream. Like all such ideals, however, it is useful, in that it feeds ambition and rewards approximate attainments.

   In every branch of life's activities the ideal is unattainable. The best is secured by endeavoring--the reward is in pursuing, not in attaining; for attaining is reaching an equilibrium where life ceases. Life is activity, growth, attaining. Health is activity, building, doing, striving, fighting against deterioration, and endeavoring to give life, or activity, to every potential of body and mind. It should be known that the possibilities potential in man are drawn upon very lightly.

   When food is unfit, when it is taken in too great quantities, or when the quality is bad, or made bad by improper preparation, very complex derangements are set in motion.

   When the food supplied is appropriate, but partaken of too abundantly, or when it is bad in quality or wrongly combined, and is not suitable to the demands of the individual, digestive disturbances result, Fermentation takes place; for the microbe of fermentation is everywhere. It is retrograde nature's enzyme, is omnipresent, and is for the purpose of fermenting and disintegrating the excess, defective, and worn-out material in the body. It is the function of fermentation to remove everything that is unfit, or not appropriate, for physiological digestion--life--building--growth and repair.

   Life and death-growth and decay-are presided over by two elements of destruction. Life, at its beginning, has enzymes that ferment and dissolve and prepare food for integration--organization into living bodies; while death, at its beginning, has enzymes (microbes) that ferment, dissolve, and prepare surplus, waste, and worn-out material for exit from the body--to give back the elements to nature.

   These two processes are at work side by side, and a study and understanding of them give knowledge of how to aid each in its particular sphere. It is a physician's prerogative to understand life and death--growth and decay; for he must lend a hand in freeing each from its particular entanglements.

   When more food is taken than can be appropriated by the body, it must be got rid of; otherwise it obstructs and prevents normal operations. The germ of fermentation dissolves and fits this surplus for immediate exit from the body. When too much is eaten continually, this microbic fermentation creates irritation, inflammation, or catarrh of the digestive tube and the associate, contiguous, and communicating organs.

   On account of the gas generated by microbic fermentation, and the consequent distention of the stomach and bowels, dilation of the various parts of the digestive tube takes place. As a result of this distention, constipation is built, and the heart is disturbed, in that its action is interfered with by pressure on the diaphragm. All contiguous organs are pressed upon and put out of commission.

   It is after intestinal fermentation is established as a habit that the reproductive organs of both sexes become functionally deranged.

   The first functional disturbances set up by an oversupply of food are indigestion, dyspepsia, and sometimes diarrhea--usually constipation.

   Nervousness and reflex symptoms accompany functional disturbances; namely: headaches, frequent urination--in children polyuria, causing bed-wetting; rapid pulse and palpitation of the heart; cough from throat irritation. Between insensible eructations of gas escaping from the stomach, causing throat irritation and cough, and a purely nervous cough from stomach and bowel irritation, it is hard to draw the line; but, as the treatment must be the same, an erroneous diagnosis will not prevent a cure.

   Gastrectasia, or dilation of the stomach, is caused by years of overindulgence at the table. A common symptom of this derangement is the development of nodules around the second joints of the fingers, named "nodosities" or "bonehard." In subjects of low resistance, or in subjects who have become profoundly enervated, the nodules may be the early symptoms of a developing rheumatoid arthritis.

   The kinds of food taken in excess govern the type of disease. An excess of starch, sugar, and fat--especially the starch in the form of whole grain--causes deforming rheumatism and builds stone in the gall bladder (gallstones), kidneys, and urinary bladder in the lithemic or gouty diathesis; lime is deposited in the heart and arteries, around joints, and in other parts of the body.

   An excessive intake of sugar and sugar compounds--such as puddings, cakes, and pies--develops obesity. Where the intake of carbohydrates is in excess of the needs of the system, glycogen is stored, and when there is more than can be utilized, it is passed in the urine, producing glycosuria. It is the function of the liver to arrest and store sugar by dehydrating it to glycogen. When the liver is altered, the sugar passes into the blood and goes out of the body by the kidneys. Both these varieties of glycosuria are alimentary diabetes--the first cellular, the second hepatic from liver insufficiency.

   Where animal proteins are taken in excess, they are taken up, but their digestion is not complete--cell- and blood-digestion flags. This nutritive perversion favors putrescence, and the building of simple catarrhal inflammations into ulcerations.

   Gout is supposed to develop from defective digestion of animal foods. Alcoholics stand first as a cause of this disease, and the alcohol produced in the body from imperfect digestion of carbohydrates is a common cause of all types of rheumatism.

   It was observed that digestion by the cells of the body is carried on by the aid of endosmosis and exosmosis (physical laws), but nutrition cannot be accounted for by physical laws alone. When peptones (the liquefied nitrogenous foods) pass through the walls of the bowels, the membranes appear to possess the power of dehydrating, so that peptone, as such, never reaches the blood so long as digestion is normal. In abnormal states peptone is found in the urine, causing peptonuria of intestinal origin. The nutritive materials that are carried to the liver by the portal vein are dehydrated by that organ. When the liver is diseased, however, peptones and sugar appear in the urine.

   When intestinal indigestion and catarrh develop, the pelvic organs become involved; menstruation is made painful, irregular, and often too profuse; toxins are absorbed from the bowels; the lymphatics acting as quarantine stations are, in time, overworked, and catarrhal inflammation develops in the ovaries or womb, or both.

   Because of a thickening of one side or the other of the womb, this organ is bent on itself, crooking and obstructing the passage or canal, causing pain when the menstrual flow seeks exit.

   The womb and ovaries become very sensitive, and the downward pressure from gas in the bowels causes much discomfort.

   The mucous membrane of the lower bowels takes on a catarrhal state from the constipation and gas distention. Colitis, appendicitis, proctitis, ovaritis, metritis, inflammation of the spermatic cord, urethritis, prostatitis, piles, and prolapsus of the reproductive organs, bladder, and rectum, are possible diseases coming from fermentation and gas distention. Indeed, a part or all of these derangements are so common that there is a procession of people, young and old, headed toward every surgical institution in the country.

   When operating is once started--when, for example, the appendix is removed--the causes remain. The habit of overeating, or improper eating, fermentation, gas distention, toxin absorption, catarrhal inflammation of the intestinal mucous membrane, and lymphatic involvementall these remain to continue the discomfort for the removal of which appendectomy was performed.

   Occasionally the patient has a respite from discomfort following the operation--not because of any curative effect produced by the operation, but because of the powerful suggestion often imparted by a surgical operation. Those who undergo an operation have faith that they will be cured, or they would not submit to it. The power of this suggestion holds the patient's belief for a time. If there is any discomfort following the operation, it is thought to be the consequence of the necessary mutilation, which will pass off in a short time.

   After a brief, questionable rest from pain, the patient begins to complain to the doctor of pain similar to that suffered before the operation. The doctor may declare that the post-operative pain comes from adhesions; or the pain may be declared to be due to ovaritis or gall bladder disease. In due course of time the ovary or ovaries are removed, and the gall bladder is drained; or, as in the case of the late Governor Johnson, of Minnesota, operation after operation may be performed for overcoming adhesions--all to no purpose, for the cause is not removed, not even suspected.

   In the case of men, the appendix, gall bladder, prostate gland, piles, and prolapsus of the rectum are attacked with the knife because of the pain produced by intestinal indigestion, catarrhal inflammation, and gas distention. Of course, each and every operation must be a disappointment; for none of the organs is pathologic to such an extent as to justify its removal. Besides, the disease is not of these organs proper, which are sensitive only because the real disease has developed a neurosis of all the organs.

   Where appendicular operations have been performed, and the appendices have been found normal, the patients often remain better for a time, because of the suggestion carried by the operation; but in pronounced types of intestinal indigestion, with catarrhal inflammation of the bowels and infection of the lymphatics, there is a general sensitiveness, with periodic attacks of pain, apparently confined to one or more of the organs of the abdomen or pelvic viscera. The real cause, however, of the paroxysms of pain that pass as appendicitis, ovaritis, or disease of other organs, is gas distention, the pressure on the hypersensitive organs from gas being the sole cause. This being true, it should be obvious to every thinking person that surgery can be nothing but detrimental to those afflicted in this way.

   The above is a true picture of the physical states of the great majority of those operated upon in the past two or three decades, and those who are now on their march to a surgical hospital. It must be continued; for it is certainly obvious to the discerning, with the illumination above given, that removing any one, or a half-dozen, of these organs will not remove the disease. Removing the lymphatic system of the lower bowels and pelvis, were it possible, would not cure a derangement of this kind.

   Lymphatic or scrofulous diathesis is a structural evolution of the lymphatic system favoring the development of tubercular diseases. The word "diathesis" is out of date, and "germ infection" is made to cover all diseased states once ill understood under the name "diathesis." It may be said of disease, the same as of a rose: "What's in a name?" This is true when a name carries no meaning.

   Names only confuse, and help to hide from the mind's eve the true cause.

   If we may look upon every child, born of well-disposed parents, as a purified lump of protoplasm with the potentialities of health and mental development normal, we can use the child as a standard of ideal health.

   There are children, born of vicious parents, who are said to be born with venereal disease. It may be true; I believe that children are born with disease; but they were infected after conception.

   My practice has been confined to a superior class of people, While I have always enjoyed a large private practice, it has been with those of a middle to a superior class of intelligence. The ignorant and vicious have always sidestepped me, because I require the giving-up of bad habits as a first step to a cure. Consequently, children born with venereal infection have never occurred in my practice. If they had, I should not believe that nature allowed the infection to take place before conception; for nature makes sterile all who are unfit to propagate.

   Starting with perfect physical health, a child is fed too frequently, and kept from fresh air and sunshine. Many are bathed too much, handled too much, and subjected to too much noise. As a result the child's resistances--its enzymes and body defenses--are inadequate to meet the enemies of health; and the result is that a catarrhal state is developed. The child "catches cold" easily. The stomach and bowels are made sensitive, and ready to take on a state of indigestion; then toxin poisoning takes place, resulting in an effort, during the cold months, to throw off the poison by the skin and mucous membrane--gastritis, sore throat, and the exanthemata (eruptive fevers). It is a fact that the eruptive fevers--skin diseases--occur all the year around; yet their tendency is to appear more frequently in the winter, or during cold weather; whereas diseases of the stomach and bowels--mucous membrane--occur oftener in the summer, or during hot weather. Gastritis, bowel diseases, and the various eruptive fevers are a necessary sequence to feeding beyond the child's nutritional needs, and catarrhal inflammation of the mucous membrane is established as a habit. Finally resistance is broken, making the child susceptible to epidemic influences. When the heat of summer comes, it adds the last link to a chain of causes that ends in cholera infanturn. If treatment is unsuitable and the nursing bad, the child may die; indeed, many do die.

   Children who get over the diseases peculiar to the teething age, carry, and further develop, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, gastric irritation, intestinal indigestion, constipation, intestinal parasitic diseases, the so-called contagious diseases, glandular enlargements, adenitis, tuberculosis, rickets, lymphangitis, scrofula, etc.

   These diseases develop from childhood to puberty. Those children who are not swept out of existence will have seasons of betterment; a few will be carried by the force of development, which in a cyclonic fashion sweeps everything before it into health--and that, too, often in spite of wrong life, and a medical treatment that might prove fatal if administered at any other time in life.

   These health storms, typhoons, revolutions, often sweep invalids into health, starting up without apparent cause, and carrying many victims of ill-health into physical states approximating good health. Then, if they are fortunate in having sense enough to follow proper advice, they may recover from the ill-health of youth and live to a ripe old age, enjoying life, health, and success. A few will enjoy approximately good health from early puberty to early middle life. Perhaps it would be better to say that there are a few who, through the impetus of development, will enjoy fairly robust health until perhaps the end of the first ten years of business life; then, because of neglect of exercise, and the practice of bad eating, and other habits, they break down and die of acute or chronic disease.

   There are others who reach middle life before they have, by vicious habits, broken down their resistance and placed themselves in a physical state out of sympathy with health's revolutionary forces. These go down and out with tuberculosis, Bright's disease, diabetes, tabes dorsalis, apoplexy, and other diseases.

   There is still another class who die between fifty-five and sixty-five of kidney, heart, brain, blood vessel, and nerve diseases, because they have lost their resistance to such an extent that they fail to attract the evolutionary forces that would carry them on another decade.

   We hear of disease influences, but never of health influences. The truth is that there are more epidemic influences for health than the reverse. Indeed, if man ever learns to court heatth--cultivate resistance, attune himself to the harmonies of nature--he can make himself immune to disease-producing influences.

   Chlorosis is thought, by many writers on medicine, to be caused by a syphilitic "taint;" but this is no more true than the claim, set up by the same authorities, that the whole human family is tainted.

   Chlorosis I have found to rest on a basis of toxin poisoning derived from intestinal indigestion. After the uterine lymphatics have taken on a state of subacute inflammation (sometimes called adenitis), painful menstruation begins to develop, and the amount of menstrual discharge grows gradually smaller, until many such cases cease to menstruate entirely. In the opposite state--hyperemia--the pelvic circulation, due to toxin infection of the lymphatics, causes painful and profuse menstruation; if not corrected, cystic and fibroid tumors may follow.

   Chlorosis presents a catarrhal state of the neck of the womb; the mucous lining thickens up and prevents the menstrual discharge from escaping freely. The discharge is bottled up to such an extent that decomposition takes place. It is the absorption of this decomposition that causes the anemia peculiar to chlorosis. When the disease is well developed, patients suffer from oxygen starvation. Carbonic acid accumulates; digestion and nutrition are impaired, and cell renewal is almost impossible.

   The blood becomes so thin that there are noises in the head and giddiness. The patient is troubled with cold feet and hands. The mind is dull and inactive. Shocks--such as disappointment in love--may be fatal. In many chlorotics, excessive venery, sorrow over the death of a near relative or friend, inability to keep up with classes in school, worry, etc., further impair the health and prevent a return to health.

   Mothers who eat imprudently and worry over family affairs--mothers who worry over boys who are unruly and who are getting into trouble--build indigestion, catarrh, and toxin poisoning.

   Business men who carry their business worries around with them, or who use tobacco, coffee, tea, and other stimulants, and overeat, develop toxin poisoning.

   Any worry that is habitual, in one who is severely taxed in a business way, and who eats too much, or eats improperly--for example, bread, butter, and fruit jellies, jams, or preserved fruits--will lead to a premature grave with hardening of the arteries. When excessive venery is added, nerve resistance is lost, and the ordinary fermentation changes into septic decomposition. Bright's disease, suppurative inflammations of the lymphatic glands, liver, appendix, pleura, lungs, and other parts of the body, are liable to develop. Tabes dorsalis is a common disease in those who abuse nutrition with food, work, stimulants, and excessive venery.

   Those who live far away from the markets, who live on dry beans, cured meats, and an inferior quality of bread, potatoes, and a few canned vegetables, and who are shut out from sunlight, fresh fruit and vegetables (such as miners), develop a state of acidosis, and, when predisposed to tuberculosis, break down and die of that disease. Others develop rheumatism and paralysis.

   Emotional disturbances derange nutrition. Fear inhibits digestion; it deranges heart action to such an extent as to develop, in time, organic heart disease.

   Anger has a serious effect on digestion and the heart.

   Jealousy changes the whole being. From a sweet, even-tempered person, with mild, kindly features, the jealous subject is changed into a demon, with hard, cruel features; a kind, benevolent, philanthropic nature hardens into a cruel, selfish misanthropist; a disposition incapable of causing pain to the lowest animal is metamorphosed into a hatred that can kill the thing it loves.

   Envy disturbs the entire body in the same way.

   The giving-way to these emotions not only disturbs nutrition and interferes with cell-development, but alters the secretions from a benign, health-imparting influence to a malignant, disease-producing influence; from a neutral or agreeable odor to a rank, offensive smell that causes disgust even in those who are bound by love to the unfortunate one whose emotions have gone astray.

   The cause of insane emotions is a wrong understanding of the relationship that should exist between people. The most violent types of emotional insanity spring up between married people. There is, and has always been, a feeling of ownership among married people. This is a survival of the chattel-slavery idea; it belongs to an ignorant age, and is not in keeping with advanced civilization.

   Do away with the ownership idea, and have married people stand or fall on behavior--merit. Indeed, an abiding love must rest on the everlasting bonds of respect which spring up from conduct becoming, and in harmony with, dignity and refinement.

   Too often, when men and women are united in the "holy bonds of matrimony," they forget all estheticism. They are more polite and considerate of the most inferior member of society than they are of each other.

   So long as marriage means license to be common, immodest, indelicate, and too often vulgar, just so long will love become shipwrecked.

   Why should a man expect a woman's infatuation to ripen into everlasting love, when she discovers him to be a cad with disgusting personal habits, or vice versa?

   The bonds of "holy matrimony" are not sufficient to disinfect vulgar habits. Nothing but habits of cleanliness of mind and body can keep men and women aseptic--worthy of love.

   What has all this to do with disturbed nutrition? Allow the veriest swain, or professional novitiate, to answer! Indeed, marital infelicity is a common cause of intractable indigestion and chronic toxin poisoning. What can palliatives do toward curing such cases? The surgeon is busy removing complaining organs; but, much to his surprise and his patients' dismay, the same old symptoms are back after the operation. If the surgeon had not been so material, he would have known that he had to deal with pathology of the mind instead of the body.

   Women have disturbed nutrition during pregnancy. The vomiting of pregnancy is often due to catarrhal inflammation of the neck of the womb. In all cases of excessive vomiting in pregnancy the womb should be examined; if congested, scarification of the mouth and neck of the womb, allowing a little of the surplus blood to escape, will relieve the tension and the reflex irritation. Often one or two treatments will correct the vomiting. There are cases of vomiting that cannot be controlled short of dilation of the mouth and neck of the womb.

   The real cause of morning sickness harks back to overeating, fermentation, toxin absorption, and the concomitant causes. It is hardly necessary to spring an Irish bull by saying that people who are well will not be sick. However, the best writers on the subject of disease write much about the diseases of pregnancy, of change of life, of teething, etc., etc. In fact, it is necessary to have an undercurrent of toxemia, and, without this undercurrent, disease cannot develop. Indeed, toxemia is the only disease to which flesh is heir. Medical nomenclature clothes the various symptoms with individuality, but they are no more basically individual than are the limbs of a tree.

   Diseases were clothed with a vague, uncertain specificity before bacteriology stamped them with an assumed individuality satisfying to the profession. I say "satisfying" advisedly; for the profession is so sure it is right that in all diseases where a germ has not been discovered to account for it, one is assumed to exist, and, as in infantile paralysis, all care, nursing, and treatment are in keeping with this assumption.

   The nervous system must be normal, or nutrition will be interfered with.

   Loss of sleep, overwork, excessive venery, overworked emotions--anything that uses up nerve energy--lower the digestive and assimilative powers, and also lower the power of the organism to organize its defenses--its enzymes. Hence, an amount of food that could be eaten and utilized by an organism in health would be too much, and would cause toxin poisoning, which would further enervate, and create nervous derangements.

   Those in the habit of using coffee, tea, tobacco, alcoholics, or other drugs will find that these stimulants have a much more profound effect on them when, from food poisoning (toxins from fermentation) and lowered nerve energy caused by irregular daily life, their resistance is lowered.

   Where the enervation is great, elimination is inhibited.

   Urea.--The amount of urea excreted by a healthy adult thirty-five to forty years of age is about 500 grains (32 to 33 grams). A child five years of age secretes 180 grains (10 to 12 grams). In hysteria the amount may fall very low--sometimes to 35 to 50 grams. When this takes place, nutrition is almost at a standstill. Hysterical women can refuse nearly all nourishment without getting thin.

   The elimination of phosphates is affected by hysteria. After an attack, the earthy phosphates increase and correspond to half of the phosphoric acid, whereas normally the proportion of earthy to alkaline phosphates is as one to three.

   Drugs acting on the nervous system cause disassimilation. Mercury and iodid of potash pervert cell life; and where cells are broken down, sclerosis follows, and then the diseases peculiar to hardening of the tissues--tabes dorsalis and arteriosclerosis.

   Drugs like those above mentioned spend their influence on organs which are most enervated. If the nerve centers have been outraged by a lascivious mind and excessive venery, such drugs as those that are given for syphilis will cause such disassimilation of the great nerve cells that spinal sclerosis will follow; and this change will be ascribed to syphilitic infection, when the truth is that the sclerosis is due to the treatment. All secondary symptoms are due to lesions of the connective tissue, brought on by celldestruction from drug action--not from syphilis; for that disease spends its force on the surface of the body

   If the vulnerable organ should be the kidney, the epithelium would be first affected by the drugs; or if the liver, the biliary cells would be affected by the drugs.

   If the mucous membrane should be catarrhal, mercury causes ulceration.

   Gall-stone is very common. The foundation is undoubtedly laid, in many cases, by mercury; first enervation from the thousands of influences which use up nerve energy, then toxin poisoning, which ruins the body's defenses. With this basis, chronic organic disease can be built by any habits or treatment that will cause disassimilation of the cells of the most important structure of the weakest organ of the body.

   The seat of the primary lesion of all toxic poisons is in the highest organized cells. If a poison spends its force on the nerves and brain--as morphine, alcohol, and other drugs do--the disease will be of the brain and nervous system.

   Morphine produces emaciation and morphinomania; alcohol often produces obesity and alcoholism, rheumatism and gout.

   Lead disturbs the metabolism of proteids and causes an accumulation of urea, and rheumatism develops.

   In those who are poisoned on starch and sugar, when the habit of taking too much is discontinued, and the intoxication and its influence are overcome, loss of flesh will be marked; but if proper habits of eating are adhered to, a normal weight will be restored as soon as physiological adjustment can be reestablished.

   Constipation, with its infection, often causes great poverty of flesh; but, when overcome, fatness may follow.

   The habit of overeating not only creates catarrhal inflammations and the toxin poisoning described, but in those who have great digestive power it causes plethory--full habit--and great strength for a time. A time comes, however, when the organism begins to go down, obesity takes the place of muscle and strength, and rheumatism, "gout, lithemia, oxaluria, or the formation of renal, vesical, and hepatic calcule" (stone) are established. Biliousness, or congestion of the liver, with engorged stomach and intestine, with the accompanying symptoms--namely, constipation, heavily coated tongue, bad breath, foul odors from the body and bowels, piles, prolapsus of the rectum, colitis, appendicitis, engorgement of the ovaries and uterus--are developed; and, when toxin poisoning is added, the usual pelvic diseases follow, including tumors.

   The secretions are altered; the urine becomes overloaded with salts, sugar, albumin. The overstimulation at last ends in enervation; then comes sluggish elimination, with headaches, fatigue, lassitude, chronic tired state, drowsiness, mental stupor, apoplexy; and the linking of this diseased state with the state described before, coming under the head of chronic intestinal toxin poisoning, all together completes a vicious circle or chain, the links of which furnish the cause of all diseases.

   The foods that feed this state are the carbohydrate and nitrogenous foods--the starch or sugar, and the meat or protein. When these staple foods are eaten in a refined state, with the tissue or building salts left out, or the foods that furnish them--namely, raw fruits and vegetables--the body starves for the salts, and disease must follow.

   Few people in the centers of civilization starve to death from lack of food. They have food enough, if it only were the proper kind.

   Many people eat what may be seen in the bakeshop windows. These windows contain what the masses want. This starch, fat, and sugar are eaten to the exclusion of fruit and vegetables, and the result is acidosis--scorbutus--ill-health, dull mind, and early death.

   It has been the fashion in penal institutions to punish the refractory by placing them in solitary confinement and limiting their food supply to bread and water. Nothing more stupid could be done. If it is the institutions' desire to make the criminal or insane more criminal or insane, no better method could be adopted. But if the institutions exist for the cure of these invalids, they should be put in well-aired and sunlighted rooms, with the comforts of reading matter and a good bed, with fresh water and apples, keeping bread--one of the causes of their insanity--away from them.

   Fresh fruit three times a day, with wholesome environments, will start these incorrigibles on the road to recovery. Then, if they are fed properly afterward, they may be cured, with a prospect of staying well.

   Tumors or neoplasms are allied with infection. Without toxins, and obstructions to the free circulation of the blood, there can be no tumors developed. The cure for tumors means the correcting of toxin poisoning and freeing the circulation.

   All the nutritive changes we have gone over are caused by external influences. These changes are not transmissible, but there is no question but that children born of parents whose nutrition is perverted are more sensitive to like influences than those who are born of healthy parents.

   The victim of alcoholism will beget a child with a sensitive nervous system.

   Abuse to nutrition may extend to sterility. Any stage short of sterility is stamped on children as a potentiality for taking on perverted nutrition far more acute than normal, but not a state that cannot be resisted, and even improved upon after birth. Nature puts the stamp of sterility on the positively unfit.

Disturbed Nutrition

   Auto-intoxications are imminent under ordinary conditions--when health is normal.

   In that state known as health, assimilation is approximately balanced with disassimilation.

   The disposal of waste--of the catabolic products--is as necessary as the proper assimilation of the anabolic products.

   Man is nearest an ideal state of health when his digestion and assimilation are almost balanced with his disassimilation and elimination.

   Health is that state of man's body and mind that oscillates between near-health and near-death.

   Disease is health's thermometer, so to speak, which marks the degrees of departure from an assumed ideal state of health to complete loss of health.

   Disease, per se, is non-existent. The state of the body which we call disease is nothing more or less than the degree of departure of health from the ideal standard.

   The cause of the departure may be any influence that increases, decreases, or perverts nutrition.

   In previous articles cellular nutrition has been gone over; the causes of increase, decrease, and perverted nutrition have been cursorily referred to. Now it is necessary to give a thought to the consequences of inhibited elimination of the waste products of metabolism.

   Auto-intoxication.--When there is retention of waste products in the system, the phenomenon is called autotoxemia.

   The waste products are all toxic. They are eliminated by the different emunctories.

   The bile is not entirely an excretory product; it serves several physiological needs. First of all is its action on the bowels. It is nature's laxative. When its elimination is interfered with, the liver becomes diseased. When carried into the bowels as it should be, it is taken up by absorption and used over; after which it is excreted by the skin, lungs, and kidneys.

   The skin eliminates the fatty acids and other toxic substances. The lungs carry off water, carbonic acid, and volatile substances taken in with the food. For example, when onions are eaten, the volatile substance is thrown off by the lungs, skin, and kidneys, as evidenced by the breath and the strong odor from the urine. Asparagus causes the urine to be offensive for several hours after that vegetable has been eaten.

   The solids in the bile are thrown off by the kidneys. Before this can be done, however, the solids must be rendered soluble. The nitrogenous products must be converted into urea.

   The liver assists the kidneys by preparing different substances for excretion.

   All organs of the body are commissioned to furnish enzymes for the purpose of preparing all solids within their jurisdiction for assimilation; in other words, rendering the solids dializable. This is necessary, or the system would become fatally clogged up. In this, bacteria become allies of the enzymes.

   Blood.--The blood has enzymic properties to a great degree. And this is well; for the blood vessels are so numerous and so small that if the blood did not have the power to digest--render all solids dializable--deaths from embolism (obstruction to blood vessels) would be most frequent.

   Pancreas.--When the pancreas is obstructed in its work, and fails to secrete its digestive ferment, sugar appears in the urine. It is thought that the primary trouble may begin with faulty functioning of the liver.

   Thyroid Gland.--The thyroid gland has a secretion which appears to be necessary for keeping a perfect nutritive balance. When the gland is cut out, it is said to be followed by tetanic convulsions. Why? Because of imperfect digestion of starch; it also disturbs nutrition to such an extent as to cause myxedema (mucous infiltration of the tissues).

   In suppression, from any cause, of the thyroid secretion, it is said that the administration of thyroid extract will correct the symptoms caused by the suppression. The administration of too much extract has been known to kill.

   Trembling and albuminuria are symptoms of excessive use of the thyroid extract.

   In some cases of obesity and albuminuria it is thought that there is a suppression of thyroid secretion.

   Suprarenal capsule has a function to perform in nutrition. Suppression of its secretions gives rise to melasma (dark discoloration of the skin), or bronzed skin. Addison's disease is a tubercular infiltration of the capsule. Symptoms: skin discoloration, progressive anemia, and asthenia, ending fatally.

   Testicles and Ovaries.--The removal of these organs in young subjects is followed by defective development. Boys remain boys; they fail to develop; their hair is thin and lacking in full development. In animals, the brain is smaller in those that have been mutilated.

   Toxins in the Tissues of the Body in Standard Health.--As has been made plain in previous chapters, ideal health is a utopian dream; for the most perfect state of health which it is possible to attain carries a given amount of toxins in the blood and tissues.

   Disassimilation means the breaking-down of cells; the result is the accumulation of debris, or waste, which is toxic, and it must be removed from the body as soon as possible. The blood contains a quantity of waste. The organism is adjusted to a reasonable amount of this poison--it is necessary, for it stimulates to action. But when elimination is checked and an oversupply is retained, then excessive stimulation becomes disease-producing. All parts of the body contain poisons. When nutrition is best, there is a balanced state of unorganized and organized ferments. Agreeing with what I have often said, health is only an approximate state. The body at best--under normal conditions--is a laboratory for building tissue, and necessarily becomes the receptacle of the waste and by-products, which are poisonous. An over-supply of toxins is liable to occur at any time from almost any indiscretion.

   An extract of the tissues of the body will kill, if it should find entrance into the blood. When elimination is slow, the tissues carry more toxins. Exercise is necessary to force elimination.

   It requires about one-fifth as much of liver as it does of muscle to furnish an amount of poison necessary to kill. Then it must be injected into the veins, or it cannot do harm.

   Toxicity depends mostly on the nitrogenous matters.

   The Toxicity of Urine.--An adult in health passes approximately three pints of urine in twenty-four hours. The poisons contained in the urine come from the food fermentation, and the waste products of tissue building.

   Urotoxy.--A term invented by Bonehard to denote the standard of toxicity of the urine necessary to kill a kilogram of living substance. In order to find the toxicity of urine, inject a representative specimen into the veins of a rabbit, allowing it to enter at a uniform rate. When the animal is dead, the amount of urine necessary to kill should be divided by the weight of its body. This gives the dose necessary to kill one kilogram, or two and two-tenths pounds.

   It is said that a man weighing one hundred and forty pounds secretes enough urine in fifty-two hours to kill him or kill his own weight.

   The poisons in the urine, if not eliminated properly and if retained in the blood, cause many symptoms, a few of which are: sleepiness, headache, eczema, spasms, coma, overworked heart, arrested heart action.

   The toxicity of urine may be inhibited by reducing the amount of potash salts taken in. A milk diet reduces the amount of poison in the urine; moderate exercise does the same. But if exercise or work is pushed to the point of great fatigue, the urine becomes loaded with the toxins.

   The bile, gastric juice, pancreatic juice, and sweat are all poisons, to a greater or less extent, when injected into the blood. It is common knowledge that the expired air is poisonous. Investigators have found that in expired air there is a poison similar to ptomains.

   It is reasonable to believe that the expired air must vary in keeping with the individual. The person who is living normally certainly cannot pollute his expired air, as one does who eats and lives in such a way as to keep his system poisoned with the toxins absorbed from a chronic state of intestinal putrefaction. This must be true of every other natural excretion of the body.

   If the excretions of the body under normal conditions are toxic, then this toxicity must vary as health declines.

   Auto-intoxication varies from the amount that exists in the physical and mental state known as health, to the amount that causes death. All the degrees between these extremes are states of health.

   To make my meaning clear: Alcohol is not a disease; it is a distillation from fermented grain--from starch. Grain, starch, bread, and alcohol are not diseases. If a man in health (standard health) takes small portions of alcohol, frequently repeated, he will gradually lose his power of coordination of mind and body. This gradation from full bodily control to a helpless lump of protoplasm is not disease; it represents different states of health. If the drunk man is diseased, what is the disease? There has been no entity added or generated. As soon as the alcohol is eliminated, the man returns to his former state--not suddenly, but gradually as he departed. If he eats grain, starch, or bread beyond his assimilative capacity, he develops certain symptoms of poisoning. Is not the man's state the same as that of his normal being, plus overeating? Surely nothing has been added--no entity has gained entrance; hence, if the drunk state, or the food-poisoned state, is a disease, then what is disease? Certainly not an entity, but a state of health brought on by any influence that increases, decreases, or perverts the state of man recognized as health. There is no such thing as disease per se. "Disease" is a word that should not carry other meaning than that a sick man is one whose health standard has been lowered by some external or internal influence which has disturbed nutrition.

   If the influence is continuous, that organ on which the stress falls will take on functional, and later organic, change. Suppose the liver is the organ and is made to enlarge--is it rational to give special treatment to the liver? Is enlargement of the liver, or is hardening or atrophy, per se disease? Certainly not. The cause lies back in nutrition; the liver enlargement is merely a symptom.

   The reader may extend this analysis to all the organs of the body; for it applies to all. The chronically alcohol-poisoned develop enlargement of the liver. The alcoholic poisoning is the cause. Possibly the enlargement has been brought about by the consumption of too much bread, starch, or sugar. Should the liver be taken out, or massaged, or drugged? Why? Would it not be rational to remove the cause, and allow nature to take care of the effects? Apply this theory to all organs and parts of the body.

   Enervation is the principal cause of auto-intoxication, and it is sequential to overstimulation and any influence that uses up nerve energy.

   When the body is enervated, functioning, both of secretion and of excretion, is lowered, which condition interferes with nutrition and causes a retention of excretions, resulting in autotoxemia.

   Constipation is a common source of toxin poisoning. A few of the symptoms due to this poisoning are: headaches; a feeling of exhaustion; indeed, in chronic constipation is to be found the cause, or auxiliary cause, of about all the diseases caused by toxins.

   Toxemia, irritability, monomania, delusional insanity, mania, epileptic convulsions, colitis, appendicitis, and many other symptoms, are brought on, directly or indirectly, by constipation and putrefaction in the lower bowels.

   Overworked Organs.--It is obvious that overworked organs must fail to perform their functions, A stomach abused to the point of developing dyspepsia favors the development of poisons from food. An excessive intake of fat--butter, for example--favors the development of skin diseases. In nursing babies too much butter-fat in the milk causes deranged digestion. So much alkali is required to emulsify the fat that, unless the child can take fruit, a state of acidosis--scurvy--may develop.

   When too much nutriment is carried to the liver, the hepatic cells are altered. If too much sugar is consumed, the liver fails to act upon it well, and the kidneys are forced to do vicarious work for the liver, by carrying out of the system sugar that cannot be utilized. The liver fails to act on the nitrogen, and the amount of urea is diminished.

   Jaundice is caused by toxin poisoning, or by a weakened liver function from overwork or from obstruction of the bile-duct.

   Cancer, hydated cyst, stone, catarrh, etc., are the results of years of wrong living habits-except the hydated cyst. This derangement is supposed to be caused by a parasite furnished by dogs.

   An overworked liver and underworked lungs force extra work on the kidneys. When kidney derangement is to be treated, as auxiliary treatment the lungs and liver must also receive attention. If they do not, it should be obvious that failure to cure the kidneys must follow; for causes must be removed.

   Icterus, or jaundice, is a toxic infection caused by an overworked liver, bringing on liver insufficiency.

   Auto-intoxication from Enervated Skin, Lungs, and Kidneys.--The lungs throw off poisons--eliminate the volatile substances; but probably their greatest role is that of neutralizing poisons, such as tobacco, volatile drugs, and toxins from fermenting foods. Their action is not experienced unless respiration is normal and a sufficient number of red corpuscles are found in the blood. Breathing may be normal; but in anemia, dysemia, and chlorosis, oxygen starvation is experienced, and certainly there must be a failure to neutralize poisons which depend on a sufficient amount of oxygen.

   The skin eliminates volitile substances. An animal varnished, shutting off elimination and radiation, dies in coma. The temperature falls; the urine becomes scanty; albumin and blood show in the urine before death. The same occurs if an extensive burn is suffered, or if the skin is covered by a disease.

   To a certain degree the functions of the skin are inhibited by heavy underwear. It is a common thing to have consultants come in the winter wearing two or three heavy undershirts. In spite of this, they invariably complain of feeling chilly. The fact is that they dress so heavily that they suffer more or less as the varnished animal--namely, from suppressed skin function. Such subjects cannot be cured until they are rid of their bad habits--especially that of overdressing. These patients are always surprised to find that they are more comfortable in every way with the thinnest gauze than they were with all the clothing they could pile on themselves. The skin is a protector; when pampered and spoiled, it goes out of business.

   Uremia is caused by the kidneys endeavoring to do vicarious work for the liver and skin.

   Strong condiments, alcoholics, and toxins generally overwork the kidneys. When these organs are long overstimulated by overwork, they flag; and if they fail to carry off the urine--if they fail to separate the urinary elements from the blood--the excretion will be retained and uremia will be developed.

   Lactic Acid Poisoning.--This poisoning takes place when breathing is shallow, or when from any cause there is oxygen starvation. In gastro-intestinal affections and diabetes this acid accumulates. This is the cause of so-called growing pains and polyuria in some children.

   Acetous Fermentation.--This fermentation causes acid stomach, rheumatism, headaches, nervousness; in children, coughs, colds, enlarged tonsils, adenoids, etc.

   Acetone or Ethy1diacetic or Acetylacetic Acid Poisoning.--This acid causes irritability. Unless controlled, it may lead to insanity. The breath is strongly that of ether or chloroform.

   If this acid is suspected, a drop or two of perchlorid of iron should be allowed to run down the side of the test tube into the urine. The iron being heavy, it will go to the bottom and turn a brownish-red color.

   Other acids are formed, but all those developments come from auto-intoxication, and will disappear when the errors of life practiced by the patient are corrected.

   We should get away from belief in certain diseases; for excesses of all kinds pervert nutrition and interfere with elimination. In this may be found both cause, effect, and cure.

7. Diatheses

   Bad habits of speech and language are formed, as well as other bad habits. I have been in the habit of using the word "diathesis" in a reckless and meaningless sense. My only excuse is that I learned it early in my medical education, and continued to use it in the belief that my meaning would be understood better than if I should undertake to reform my language. Time has taught me to believe that truth can never be taught by fallacy, and so long as expression is fallacious it will hold thought to its dead-level.

   The meaning attached to "diathesis" has varied. The general and prevailing idea has been that there are a tubercular, a syphilitic, and a cancerous diathesis. Since bacteriology has become the headliner on the medical vaudeville stage, and has been handing out "specific" etiology, the idea of diathesis is considered painfully deplorable. Notwithstanding the deplorability of the diathetic idea, the germ-theory advocates talk glibly of a universal syphilitic taint, and have appointed Wassermann to censor all suspects. After a blood test, if Wassermann nods assent, the doctor proceeds to medicate specifically; if he shakes his head in dissent, it is not final--oh no! The taint is suspected, and the victim is dismissed for a few months on suspended judgment. Like Victor Hugo's Jean Valjean, he must return and stand trial again and again. There is no hope of his ever being free from the sleuth hounds of persecution and prosecution. Neither the medical Sherlock Holmes' nor their victims suspect that the continual hounding builds in time the positive Wassermann reaction for which they are looking.

   Taint, like diathesis, is never overcome; so what is the advantage of changing terms, if both carry an eternal fiat?

   Diathesis, with a few, means a morbid temperament; and this definition is better than others. Hippocrates was nearer right than the mass of authority since his day. He declared that there were a diathesis of health and a diathesis of disease. But, as health and disease are two different phases of one state, there could not be a diathesis of health or disease; for neither is entitative--both being states.

   Health and disease are different states of one and the same being. Perhaps the two states cannot be better defined than by saying that one is optimism and the other pessimism. One person believes in health and knows intuitively that it is his for the asking; another person believes in disease--believes that it is a heritage vouchsafed to him by divine providence.

   To the discerning in physical as well as psychological health phenomena it is so plain that he who runs may read the truth; namely, that mind is the court of last appeal.

   When the mind declares for health, health, and all that goes with it, will be realized. When the mind declares for disease, disease, and all that goes with it, will be realized. It should not be understood, however, that the mental declarations referred to are meant to be passive assumptions. Indeed not! The mind that declares for health believes that health is potential in life., and that, if the proper efforts are put forth, it can be realized. To make a homely illustration: Sugar is a potentiality of the sugar beet; but without effort--intelligent effort--sugar can never be a realization. Again, mind is a potentiality of brain; but unless the proper efforts for development are put forth, mind will not be realized. Passively to assume that health is positive and disease negative, and that by assuming the positive idea the negative must disappear, is self-delusion. Simply to assume that health is imminent, and will appear when its imminence is acknowledged, is pure, unadulterated delusion. Health must be the realization of properly adjusted means to ends. This state may be brought about fortuitously or by intelligent effort. It is not well, however, to trust to chance.

   A belief in disease--a belief that man will be ill in spite of his best endeavors--is fatalism. Germs are everywhere, and that man cannot escape the disease they create is the attitude of the medical mind today. Watch the priests of this belief in convention assembled. Their wise deliberations are carried on in a cloud of tobacco smoke. One of their gods--namely, Lord Nicotine--goes before them "by day in a pillar of cloud.. and by night in a pillar of fire," in their search after truth. These priests of modem medical science are protected by their gods of sensuality, who move before them in pillars of smoke, fire, booze, and food--eating to keep up their strength. These gods do not abandon them "by day . . . nor by night, from before the people." And their constituencies stand for it. Great are the people, Selah!

   As society stands today on the subject of health, the professions of religion, law, and medicine have declared for disease. And they should rejoice at their success; for disease is universal. Jails, penitentiaries, insane asylums, alms-houses, hospitals, sanitariums, sanatoriums, and, neither last nor least, the World War, all declare for the god of disease.

   Only those with a philosophical comprehension will understand the significance of the above indictment. Those who have the proper understanding will know that to right all this world of error--disease--and its cause, will require much time; for health must be returned as it has been sent away-namely, by the slow process of evolution.

   Is it not a fact that fear has been taught from the pulpit for ages? Fear of death, on account of the hell beyond, has caused a fear and belief in disease, because disease precedes death. Medicine has taught, and is teaching, with all the vehemence of sordid selfishness or stupid superstition, that disease is inevitable, with no escape by a route that is fraught with as many subtle causes for developing disease as there are schemes for immunization. All modem plans of immunization, except sanitation, are disease-building.

   And what of law and order? It dare not take one step which is not squared on medical superstition. As much as it boasts of its erudition, and affects charity for the mental shortcomings of its weaker sister, medicine, its jails. penitentiaries, electric chairs, and insane asylums are built and filled on the authority of the preacher and the doctor, who censor the moral responsibility.

   Our government gets its ethical eyes, ears, tongue, and opinions from doctors (medical dogma). Only a few months ago I saw a confidential letter from the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce of the Department of Commerce at Washington. The letter was for the use of the morning papers of Monday, March 19, 1917, and for the benefit of proprietary-medicine men, calling their attention to the rich field that China now offers for education in the patent medicine line. That country must have dropped back rapidly; for not long ago--twenty- five years ago--all our cities had skilled Chinese doctors. Is it possible that the medicine men of this country have run away from Drs. Sam Lang, Hooch Cooch, Ham Fat, and Wun Lung in so short a time?

   That the readers may know with what zeal Washington is endeavoring to enlighten and benevolently assimilate the Heathen Chinese medically, I quote the last two paragraphs of the confidential letter:

   "Through judicious and persistent advertising, the natives are gradually being educated to the necessity of paying some intelligent attention to their ailments, and are responding remarkably well. For this reason it is not difficult to introduce a good article (proprietary drug) at a reasonable price, if supported by the right kind of advertising.

   The Bureau's report is devoted chiefly to sales methods and advertising, and the material presented on these subjects is new and important. Copies of the bulletin, which is entitled "Proprietary Medicine and Ointment Trade in China," Special Consular Report No. 76, may be purchased for five cents from the Superintendent of Documents, Washington, or from any district office of the Bureau of Foreign and Domestic Commerce. It contains twelve pages."

   If, as prophesied by wiseacres, China is to be the future hope of republicanism, civilization, and the highest enlightenment, and if she is to pattern after the republicanism of today, it will be a case of "Hope long deferred maketh the heart sick." When in our imagination we see the present four hundred million Chinese, and the billions of their progeny that must follow before they can arrive at the stage of adopting even our medical and ethical superstitions; and then when we think of how long it will take the Chinese republic to give up the joy of forcing every other country to bow to it commercially before its ethics is evolved to the point of adopting the principle that in building others we build ourselves, hope is certainly deferred to such an eternity of waiting that it might as well die; for the realization is not for us nor our posterity.

   It is not reasonable to believe that a people will escape the superstitions of the country from which they derive their inspiration. Obviously, then, the immediate future offers little hope for the retirement of disease--building beliefs and customs.

   It is true that drugs have gone out of favor very rapidly in the last fifteen years, but the fundamentals on which health rests have not changed to more rational principles. Indeed, the medical mind has laid hold of bacteriology, which is a much more elusive delusion than any, if not all, of the profession's previous theories concerning etiology. With a new theory of causation, real cause, which should be largely intuitive--planted in the consciousness of man by the law of self-protection--is no longer of any use. Literally translated, the new law of cause and cure reads: Man may do as he likes; his acts count for nothing; if he is ill, a microscopic germ has attacked him, and the cure must be accomplished by a wise use of the cause. According to this theory, cause of disease is specific and entitative, and the cure and prevention must be specific and entitative. This being logically true, there is no excuse for the failure to cure disease, as is only too evident on every hand.

   Modern medical science declares that disease is caused by a specific entity. If this declaration were true, therapeutics should be specific, and so certain that there would be no chance for disease to get a foothold. Certainly quacks and empiricists would have so little success, compared with established medicine, that no laws would be required to keep them from selling their inefficiency to an innocent and confiding public.

   The germ theory is just one other false promise of vicarious atonement--a promise of immunization from the effects of broken law. If the offender will believe, and have a priest of the faith vaccinate or inject the immunizing agent (Savior) into his blood, he will be cured of all his sins.

   With this superstition ingrafted on church and state, and even accepted by liberals, or those who pride themselves on having evolved out of superstition, what possible chance has a rational scheme of cause and effect--a rational interpretation of health--a real Philosophy of Health?

   Before the nutrition of man's body can be advanced to a stable type--before man can build a state of health that will be dependable and allow him to develop his full efficiency--superstitions of all kinds must give way to truth. This is the truth that will make man free. When will it come? When!

   Meanwhile we shall be busy with our pick and shovel, doing what we can toward leveling this mountain of error that stands between man and his health and normal development.

   Probably apologies are due for such a lengthy digression from disturbances of nutrition. But is it possible to digress from the subject of nutrition when showing up fallacy? It is to be hoped, however, that this digression will be found potentially laden with enough side illumination on subjects the bearing of which on health is not well understood, to justify the liberty--or perhaps I should say outlawry committed against the writer's art.

   To resume the subject of diathesis: It appears reasonable that a continual increase or decrease of physiological functioning must modify structure to correspond; and when structure is changed from the effects of use--continual functioning--then it is transmissible, and not before.

   The athlete can transmit as much of organic change as he has brought about in his nervous system. Not his muscles; no, he transmits nervous change--a potentiality--an ability to become an adept in athletics.

   Organized skill transmits potentiality. Organized skill means that nerve- and brain-cells have taken on a memory that is transmissible in potentiality. A Webster transmits potentiality of brain. But such transmission does not necessarily mean that his progeny will be above mediocrity; for brain potentiality may be the only transmission. The nerve centers that furnish will power to work, concentration, capacity for continuous effort, may have been abused in the senior Webster to the point of degeneracy, and therefore the young Websters lack power to labor enough to bring out their mind potentiality.

   The rule is that the masters in art and science do not leave children who represent them. One reason, perhaps, is that great skill comes to progenitors after families are begotten; and another reason is that great skill is the precursor of dissolution.

   Great composers are near death physically when they reach their zenith. Is it strange that death should sing? Death should be the lowering of the curtain on the stage of life, at the close of the most skilled performance.

   It would be strange for a Mozart or a Mendelssohn to transmit. But not so with great singers, or interpreters of their art; for the former are creators, and pay with degeneracy for their creative skill--in other words, they are consumed by their production; while the latter simply digest and function music, and may develop a transmissible ability to enjoy and reproduce.

   Singers, as a rule, are not producers. A producer must climb the ladder of experience with educated faculties; and if he will give ear to the music of the spheres, he may be honored with a message to convey to his people before he dies. Those who enjoy what he brings may transmit the ability to enjoy to others. But the producer, the creator, pays with his life for his power to produce--and de